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

by Taylor, Alan

  At about midnight on April 21–22, the British came back to retrieve the relatives and friends of Baton, Loney, and Saunders. Expecting the enemy to repeat the route of the first raid, Richeson and Carter’s manager, James J. White, stood guard at night near the mouth of Carter’s Creek. Instead, the three young men shrewdly guided the raiders around Richeson and White by ascending the adjoining and unguarded Taylor’s Creek. The raiders then marched across the neck of land to the new slave quarters at Deadman’s Bones. In his distraught report, Richeson observed, “Canada, Tom Sanders & Zekel made their elopement 2 days Sooner than the rest, without the least cause, and I believe was the cause of bringing the British up to the new Settlement.”46

  In this second raid, the British took away thirty-nine slaves from Deadman’s Bones and another twenty-seven from Carter’s adjoining estate. Carter’s slaves may have preferred his ownership to Cabell’s, but they favored freedom most of all. This flight by sixty-nine slaves (including the original three) represented the greatest number to leave one Chesapeake plantation during the war. Speaking for himself and Tucker, Cabell lamented, “The 43 negroes we lost are the flower of our people. By this plunder . . . I lose one half the personal property I acquired by my wife.” Cabell overstated his loss by one slave, but perhaps he knew of the determined young pregnant woman who delivered her child on board the Jasseur within a few hours of leaving Corotoman. She took a great risk to ensure that her child would be born free. As assessed by their owners, the runaways included the highest-value slaves: relatively young, healthy, active, and resourceful—the usual sort who fled to the British. Richeson set their aggregate value at $11,080: a great fortune for that time. Carter set his loss for twenty-seven slaves at $7,210.47

  About half of Cabell’s and a third of Carter’s slaves fled to the British—which meant that most of the Corotoman slaves did not escape. What explains those who remained behind? Suddenly awakened and forced to choose, many groggy people must have been confused and torn by the agitation. On the one hand, they longed for freedom and disliked Richeson’s management. On the other hand, they also cherished the familiarity of their homes, friends, and connections. By Virginia standards, Corotoman had an especially isolated, insular, and parochial slave community. Those who ran away would probably never again see anyone left behind. At midnight not everyone could immediately give up all that he or she had known—however laced with exploitation. And they could not know how they would fare with the British. What would freedom mean in the context of a crowded warship? And at the end of the raid, some militia appeared and opened fire, apparently killing one Briton. Some of the slaves may have been blocked from getting away.48

  Age helped to differentiate those who left from those who stayed. The oldest and sickest people found staying easier than going, while the youngest children generally followed the choices of their parents. Among the runaways, ten were men and fourteen were women. They brought along forty-five children but left behind the old people, for the oldest runaway was the last to go: forty-five-year-old Dick Carter. Some in the adult middle probably stayed because they could not bear to forsake their elderly parents. Those who remained may have regretted their lost opportunity, for two weeks later a Carter friend reported that he had visited Corotoman and “found the rest of the negroes on the estate in a perfect state of rebellion.”49

  Married adults in their twenties and thirties led the flight and drew from their marriage and kin connections to recruit others, primarily their own children, but sometimes nieces and nephews. The oldest of the initial three runaways, Tom Saunders, helped to organize the mass escape, which was at its core a Saunders family reunion. Half of the adults (12 of 24) were a Saunders or married to one, and nearly half of the children (21 of 45) had a Saunders for a parent. Family relationships largely determined who fled and who stayed.

  Many choices pivoted on the early decision of a key person in the family, with the influence to persuade or dissuade others. One of the “deciders” was Sukey Saunders Carter, the thirty-two-year-old sister of Tom Saunders. By joining her brother and taking her four children, she compelled her reluctant husband, Dick Carter, to leave too, while waving his hat and telling Richeson, “I do not wish sir to leave my master, but I will follow my wife and children to death.”50

  Sisters apparently led the decision to go, for nine of the fourteen departing siblings were women, and they were the oldest in five of the seven lines. It is also revealing that they left behind two relatively elderly brothers, “Old Sam Loney” and the millwright Charles Saunders, who seem to have been disqualified by their age, as was “Old John Brown,” aged sixty, the husband of the much-younger Sukey Saunders Brown (twenty-three), who did leave. Given more trust and lighter work by the masters, older men may have been loath to leave, so their younger sisters and wives took charge.

  At age forty-two, Fanny Loney Saunders was the apparent matriarch among the sisters. She seems to have bestowed prestige on her younger brother Ezekiel Loney, one of the original three runaways, for he became an especially influential uncle, drawing away his nieces Betsy Bush, Nancy Loney, and Gabriel Loney, who left their parents behind. And the sisters Nelly Marx Loney and Hannah Marx Saunders united two of the early refugees and leaders: their husbands Ezekiel Loney and Tom Saunders.

  Some families had been ruptured by the recent partition of the estate between Charles Carter, on the one hand, and Tucker and Cabell, on the other. The British raid enabled such families to reunite by fleeing together. For example, the division had separated Hostler Joe Cox (forty-two) from his wife Franky Cox (thirty-eight). He retained three of their children, but seven others went with their mother. On April 22 the couple reunited by escaping with the British, taking along eight of their ten children.

  Not all marriages and families were happy ones, however, so the midnight decision may have enabled some members to escape from others. For example, Fanny Saunders took away seven of her children, two of them retrieved from the Carter side, but two other young children, James (six) and Elizabeth (eight), remained behind, as did Fanny’s husband, Charles Saunders. Fifty years old and respected as “the millwright,” Charles may have been relatively well treated and perhaps felt too old to go. In the gap in the evidence, we can imagine a heated argument, in which Fanny defied Charles and wrested away seven of their nine children. But we can equally well imagine a hobbled but noble Charles sacrificing himself to stay behind with two sick children, while urging his wife and the others to risk the escape.

  The runaways included a few loners, usually adolescent males who lacked any evident kinship ties to the others. The departure of thirteen-year-old Charles James mystified because he left his parents and apparently had no relatives among the other runaways. One of the original three, twenty-one-year-old Canada Baton (or Kennedy Beaton, as he became known among the British), was an especially intriguing outlier. He not only lacked apparent kin among the refugees but also left behind an especially large and influential family.

  His mother was “Great Jenny,” the premier matriarch among the Corotoman slaves. Evidently great in proportions, personality, and influence, she bore many children by her husband, Smith Peter (probably a blacksmith). Tucker’s wife Lelia had a long and sentimental attachment to Jenny, for they had grown up together on her father’s plantation. Sir Peyton Skipwith had given Jenny as a present to his daughter during her first marriage to George Carter (who died in 1788). After Lelia married Tucker in 1791, Jenny and her family went to Williamsburg to serve as house slaves. They later returned to Corotoman and became the only plantation slaves that Tucker took a continuing interest in. When Cabell later hired them out, Tucker urged that they be assigned only “to respectable farmers who would treat them with kindness as well as bare humanity. I would rather they should remain near you & their friends and connections among the other negroes than remove them . . . for the sake of a better hire.” Great Jenny had her reasons to stay behind: age and a relatively privileged position with the ownership. In l
eaving such a matriarch, Canada Baton was very much on his own.51

  Inevitably, the confusion of the raid produced separations. Tom Saunders returned to retrieve his wife, Hannah Marx (twenty-eight), and two of their children, Jo (six months) and Delia (six years), but they left without Delia’s twin brother, Thomas Jr. Another community leader, Jim Bully Cook, and his wife, Betty Saunders Cook, got away with three of their children but left behind two others, only six and eight years old.

  Cabell demonized the British for disrupting enslaved families, whom he insisted had enjoyed his paternal protection. Cabell asserted that the slaves were “carried forcibly from our shores, accompanied by circumstances of enormity, such as the separation of husband from wife, brother from sister, [and] parents from their infant children” contrary “to the laws of civilized warfare.” Cabell probably wrote the propaganda account of the raid published as “The Inhuman Enemy,” in the Richmond Enquirer: “Visit the Northern Neck—behold . . . negro cabins pilfered—& Slaves dragged on board their ships—infants torn from their parents, and parents torn from their children. On Corotoman estate, a woman hurried off in the pangs of child-birth—the foreman forced away at the point of the bayonet, . . . the whole plantation rung with the shrieks of the sufferers.” Cabell, however, forgot that he had sold slaves and divided their families. Slavery exercised distorting power over the minds of masters, who rarely could recognize the moral evasions driven by their self-interest and prickly honor.52

  Priding themselves on their paternal superiority, the masters felt unjustly disgraced by the runaways. To clear their own consciences, Tucker and Cabell blamed foolish slaves, deceptive Britons, and an uncooperative Carter. Refusing to believe that the runaways could fare better with the British, Tucker castigated them as “unhappy wretches who have been deluded to their ruin.” Cabell cast himself as the chief victim and Carter as his prime tormenter, assuring a friend, “The storm that has long been gathering has at length burst upon me. . . . But Polly this morning . . . with uplifted hands acquitted me of all blame & acknowledged that all my counsels & efforts had been over-ruled by the family. Mrs [Lelia] Tucker in her letter, on the subject, expresses the deepest regret at having opposed the plan (often suggested by myself) of removing the property.” Reinventing his relationship to Carter, Cabell confessed that he had “sacrificed about half my wife’s estate to the desire of conciliating her connections.” In his view, Carter’s obduracy had left the slaves in harm’s way, frustrating Cabell’s sage plan to sell or remove them.53

  Removal

  After the great escape of April 1814, the Corotoman owners wondered what to do with the slaves left behind. Once again, Tucker dithered, “Situated as we are I really am at a loss to know what to advise.” Washing his hands of the cruel business, Tucker expected Cabell to take charge: “I cannot manage such property. I never could. They are yours at my wife’s death—take care of them in the meanwhile. . . . Whatever they may earn I wish you to have it as some compensation for your trouble and Expense.” And he deftly appealed to Cabell’s filial loyalty: “Have I ever behaved to you otherwise than as to the husband of her choice & of mine & her mother’s approbation?” Although Tucker could not manage slaves, he could manipulate his family.54

  His other son-in-law, John Coalter, dished out harsh advice, proposing that Tucker and Cabell retain only the elderly slaves and some young children, who “would be no object with the Enemy.” They would suffice to tend the livestock and raise enough corn to feed themselves. “As to the able bodied slaves—males & females,” Coalter would “sell all above 14 [years], as they will now be so broken in upon & deranged that it will not be easy again to get them in proper training.” The children Coalter “would keep as a stock to begin on after the war.” Of course, this plan had to be kept from the slaves, who would resist the dispersion of their families: “All this I would keep profoundly to myself until you have them at least on board ship or indeed until they were up the Country at the place of sale . . . least the slaves should take the alarm & abscond.” Coalter considered slaves a tricky form of livestock meant for breeding and working. He dismissed their family ties as irritating inconveniences best ignored by their masters. Across the bottom of the letter, Tucker penned an endorsement that it contained “better advice than I was probably able to give.” He then forwarded the letter to Cabell. Tucker had completed his retreat from his earlier rhetoric about the injustice of slavery.55

  Loath to sell the mature slaves at a loss on the war-disordered market, Cabell decided to remove them into the interior. In early May he headed to Corotoman in a schooner with five armed guards. “What a scene of trouble, difficulty & loss lies before me!” Cabell anticipated. Dodging British warships, he reached the estate and forced the able-bodied slaves on board and sailed away to Hobbes Hole. Disembarking, they marched over land to Richmond, where Cabell hired boats to take them up the James River. To keep them moving, he relied on food and whiskey, augmented by prodding from the guards. Cabell took some slaves to work at his Nelson County plantation. He hired another sixteen, primarily Great Jenny and her children and grandchildren, to farmers near Lynchburg. “The estate is now broken up—as it ought to have been at the beginning of the war,” Cabell concluded.56

  In this caricature from 1831, Thomas McLean, a British engraver, depicts a white sailor and a black cook on a British warship. Note the graffiti of a warship on the cookstove. (Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England)

  8

  FLIGHT

  Our poor Negroes, I wish they were al[l] happy some where. A grate many went of[f] last night from Richmond County.

  —MRS. T. B. GLASSCOCK, DECEMBER 4, 18141

  DR. WALTER JONES was the leading man of Kinsale in Westmoreland County on Virginia’s Northern Neck. Trained in medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Jones was a cosmopolitan man of the Enlightenment, an avid Patriot, and a friend of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Lauded by the Richmond Enquirer as “sternly republican,” Jones served five terms in Congress before retiring to his plantation in 1811. Jones considered himself a benevolent master, but his slaves voted otherwise with their feet during the war.2

  Jones felt shocked that the runaways included his most trusted slaves. He extolled Ben as “a hale man, uncommonly large & strong, trusted and trust-worthy in every Business of a farm”; Rachael as “a healthy woman, very trusty & an excellent house servant”; and Presley as “a very likely lad & good body servant.” Fleeing first, in November 1813, Presley represented the greatest blow, for a body servant was a master’s favorite and confidante: no one knew Jones better than Presley did. Presley, however, preferred to serve a Royal Navy captain. In 1815 a visitor to HMS Havannah recognized Presley, whom he praised as “uncommonly likely & trained as a House Servant.” The visitor noted that Presley had renamed himself “Washington,” evidently after the great revolutionary leader who had won liberty and independence for the Americans.3

  As a black Washington, Presley returned to free his friends and family left behind. In October 1814, Presley guided a British raiding party to Kinsale, liberating the rest of the slaves and casting Jones out. Presley’s return represents a common pattern in the slave escapes during the war. Runaways tended to bolt in two stages: in the first, a pioneer runaway made initial contact with the British, and then in the second stage, he returned home to liberate kin and friends.

  Presley left behind an embittered and homeless master. In early December, Jones wrote, “I have dated this [letter] from no place as I am still an unsettled vagabond & am not sure where I shall spend the winter.” Blaming the inept militia for his losses, Jones concluded, “The disaffection of the blacks is daily gaining extent & boldness. . . . The same heedless Imbecillity that destroys our efforts against the external Enemy paralyzes every thing like vigilance & Police in respect to the more dangerous internal population.” No longer seeing Presley as a trusted dependent, Jones had to recast him as part of the menacing internal enemy.4


  Stages

  The first runaways tended to escape on a calm night after spotting a British ship during the day in nearby waters. Sight and sound drew them to the warships, which were loud as well as large. The Royal Marine officer Major Wybourn noted that Rear Admiral Cockburn sailed in his flagship with “the band playing almost the whole day, while the fleet glided along with a rapid tide.” Mary K. Hall dwelled beside Chesapeake Bay in Lancaster County on May 11, 1813, when the British fleet “anchored in full view” of the shore “and the drum was distinctly heard to beat,—and on the following night” two slaves escaped in a stolen canoe. At night the British kept lanterns lit at their mast heads “for the purpose of shewing the negroes the position of the ship for better facility in getting to her.” The runaways sought British attention by waving pieces of white cloth from the shore or from the prows of canoes. Captain Robert Barrie recalled that slaves “were constantly escaping from the shore & joining our Ships. On these occasions their general practice was to shew something to represent the white Flag.”5

  Masters and militia officers scrambled to lock down and guard the boats and canoes, but resourceful slaves exploited the many lapses by negligent owners. In July 1813 a dozen slaves escaped from three different owners by uniting to steal the six-oared mail boat that served Hampton, Virginia. A month later some careless American naval officers left a large boat at a landing on the Potomac. Exploiting the windfall, seven slaves from two farms came together to escape by stealing the naval boat. In September 1813 the overseer John Parrott on Gwynn Island had his slaves haul the farm’s heavy boat up from the river into the yard of his home. Somehow, during the next night, the sly slaves proved both quiet and strong enough to lug the boat away without awakening Parrott.6