Slave Girl
Page 12
Miz Lilly has put me in the fields. I’m happy here, because I’m making more and more choices. I see why Spicy wanted to be out here, away from Miz Lilly and Mas’ Henley who are mean as ever. So is Waith.
Since Spicy and Hince ran away, Waith’s been very hard on us. We try not to give him reasons to beat us, but he still finds them. When it’s time for me to teach school or when it’s time for a runaway, we know how to handle Waith. See, he took a liking to Aunt Tee’s root tea, so we just put a little sleeping herb in Waith’s tea. He never knows the difference.
Sunday
Without us even noticing it, spring has pushed up everywhere. Easter came and went. We will celebrate Aunt Tee’s birthday.
The orchards bloomed weeks ago. No late frost got them, so we’ll have a good crop of apples this year. Uncle Heb’s garden is in bloom. Mas’ Henley finally realized how much work it takes to keep Belmont grounds looking beautiful.
Epilogue
During the summer of 1939, when Clotee Henley was 92 years old, she was interviewed by Lucille Avery, a student at Fisk University, which is in Nashville, Tennessee. Miss Avery, along with many other writers, had been hired by the government to visit aging slaves and record their stories. Clotee’s story first appeared in the Virginia Chronicle, summer 1940.
Miss Avery visited Clotee at her home in Hampton, Virginia. And for over two months, Clotee shared her diaries, photos and papers. From Miss Avery’s research, we know that Clotee served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, helping over 150 slaves get to freedom, and as a spy for the Union Army from 1862 – 1865. She was awarded a commendation by General Ulysses S Grant for her valour.
During the war however, life at Belmont changed forever. Briley Waith was at Fort Sumter with Edmund Ruffin, Sr, who fired the first shot. Mas’ Henley lost an arm at the battle of Fredericksburg, and Miz Lilly went mad when Yankees camped on Belmont grounds and turned the Big House into a Union hospital. Aunt Tee used all her knowledge of roots and herbs to save the lives of soldiers, even when army doctors snickered and called it voodoo. They stopped laughing when she saved more lives than they did. Sadly, Aunt Tee died of cholera on Christmas Day 1864, months before the war ended. She was buried beside Uncle Heb in the plantation cemetery. When Missy’s mama died, she ran off and later married a Buffalo Soldier out West.
After the war, Mr Harms arranged for Clotee to travel up North, where she received a hero’s welcome. After several business failures, Mr Harms moved to Scotland where he dropped out of sight. Although Clotee never met Sojourner Truth, she did meet Frederick Douglass, with whom she corresponded until his death in 1895.
In 1875, Clotee returned to Virginia, where she attended Virginia Colored Women’s Institute, then dedicated her life to the education of former slaves, women’s suffrage, equal rights and justice for all people regardless of race, creed or nationality.
Inside her diaries, Miss Avery found two other interesting items that help conclude Clotee’s story. One was a photo and packet of letters from Dr William Monroe Henley, who had become a professor of philosophy at Oberlin College in Ohio. He had been disinherited by his father for taking a stand against prejudice. “Through education Mr Harms did more to destroy slavery than all the laws on the books could legislate,” he wrote to Clotee in 1891.
There was another photo of a handsome elderly couple, surrounded by a large family. On the back was written: To our beloved sister-friend, Clotee from Hince and Rose Henley and family. 50th Wedding Anniversary. Louisville, Kentucky, 1910.
Spicy is holding a Bible in her hand, and Hince has a quilt folded over one knee. There is an old article from a Kentucky newspaper attached to the photo, praising Hince for being one of the finest horse trainers in the racing business.
Clotee never married or had children of her own, but when she died on May 6, 1941, hundreds of her former students attended the funeral. As a teacher she had challenged them. As an activist, she had inspired them. As a friend, she had encouraged them. Clotee Henley’s legacy lives on in the epitaph engraved on her gravestone:
FREEDOM IS MORE THAN A WORD
Historical note
The first Africans were brought to the Virginia colony as indentured servants in 1619. Slavery was a well-established institution in the United States by the 1850s. But the resistance against it was equally old and persistent.
Virginia legislators, who were often wealthy planters, took the lead in passing laws that safeguarded their rights as slaveholders, discouraged runaways and protected themselves against insurrections. These laws were known as “Slave Codes” or “Black Codes”. As a matter of record Virginia and other Southern states had hundreds of Slave Codes on their books. For example one stated that “…the status of the mother determined whether the child was born free or slave.” Others forbade interracial marriages and outlawed the education of slaves. Blacks could not hold public meetings, or testify against a white man in court. Any slave suspected of running away was dealt with severely.
Resistance against slavery took many forms, beginning first with the captives themselves. They used work slow downs, arson, murder, suicide and armed rebellion to gain their freedom. When they could run, most did. In fact, the runaway problem was always a pressing one for most slaveholders. As early as 1642, Virginia introduced a fugitive slave order that penalized all those who helped runaway slaves.
Even the United States Constitution contained a fugitive slave clause. Most slaves who managed to reach a free state could live as a free person. But with the passage of the revised Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the government allowed slaveholders to go into free states and recapture their “property”.
In 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave, was arrested and jailed in Boston, Massachusetts, but Bostonians attacked the federal courthouse and attempted to rescue him. Burns was returned to his master, but he was later freed. Burns’ case, and others like his, brought the issue of slavery to the forefront.
As early as 1688, a group of Pennsylvania Quakers signed the “Germantown Mennonite Resolution Against Slavery”. It was the first written document that protested slavery in the North American colonies and marked the beginning of a formalized abolitionist movement. Since that time, blacks and whites, men and women, southerners and northerners organized with the purpose of abolishing slavery. One of the largest and most effective of these organizations was the American Anti-Slavery Society, founded in Philadelphia in 1833. New York, Philadelphia and Boston were the centres of the movement, but anti-slavery groups flourished all over the country.
William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass spoke out strongly against slavery. Women such as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Sojourner Truth also made an impact through their lectures and writing. Truth had been enslaved in New York, one of the last Northern states to abolish slavery. Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold out its first printing in less than a week because people were fascinated by her depiction of slave life. Southerners tried to argue that the book was fiction, but people read it as fact.
To help runaways make the long and dangerous trip to freedom, often to Canada, abolitionists formed a network of people who served as “conductors” on an “underground railroad”. It was not underground and it wasn’t a railroad, but a route by which slaves were taken to freedom. Good and decent people – farmers, teachers, housewives, labourers, college presidents and even children – risked heavy fines and imprisonment to take part in this dangerous venture. Some conductors were caught and served time in prison but nothing could stop people from running away from tyranny or assisting those who would try.
One of the best-known conductors on the Underground Railroad was Harriet Tubman, a fugitive slave. Although there was a price on her head, she continued to serve as a conductor, leading hundreds of runaways to freedom in Canada.
Slaveholders had their sights on the fertile lands out West. They wanted to expand slavery west of the Mississippi River. Abolitionists were determined to stop them. Dred Scott, a Missouri s
lave, sued his master for freedom because he had been taken to live for a while in free territory. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1857 that a slave could not sue for his freedom because he was “property”. The court added that “no black man had rights that a white man [had] to respect.” The decision was a bitter defeat for anti-slavery forces, because it disenfranchised all blacks – whether free or slave. Now, neither could vote, hold public office, patent an invention, serve on a jury or testify against a white person in any court of law. African Americans were not considered citizens.
While most abolitionists chose to end slavery through peaceful means, some were beginning to think that slavery could not end without an armed struggle. Henry Highland Garnet was an outspoken black leader who called for violent resistance to slavery long before anyone else agreed with him. Another man who believed that freedom would have to be won by the sword was John Brown.
In October 1859, John Brown, along with five blacks and thirteen whites, led a raid on the federal armoury at Harpers Ferry in Virginia (now located in West Virginia). Brown planned to organize a slave army made up of fugitives who would fight for their own freedom. Their success would inspire others to take up arms. Colonel Robert E Lee led the federal counterattack. Most of Brown’s men were killed in the fight. One man escaped. John Brown and several others were captured and hanged. Before he died, Brown warned the South to end slavery or risk God’s wrath.
To anti-slavery sympathizers Brown had become a hero, a martyr. Songs were written about him and schoolchildren honoured him. In the South, Brown was dismissed as a madman, symbolic of all abolitionists.
The South was confident in 1859 that their way of life would go on indefinitely. But change was inevitable. The Republicans were a new political party, organized in 1854. In less than five years they had won numerous seats in Congress. Abraham Lincoln from Illinois was nominated to run for the presidency on the Republican ticket. He stood a fair chance of winning the 1860 election. His position seemed moderate, nothing radical. He supported Congressional prohibition of slavery in Western territories and the gradual abolition of slavery in the United States. Some abolitionist groups felt Lincoln’s position was not strong enough. Some leaders, especially in Virginia, realized that slavery could not last much longer and the gradual approach seemed plausible. Sadly, these people were in the minority. South Carolina declared that if Lincoln won the election, the state would secede from the Union.
Meanwhile political posturing had done very little to ease the lives of the 4,000,000 slaves who lived on the plantations throughout the South. Most of them lived in miserable conditions, yet they never lost hope. It is reflected in the songs they sang:
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.
A band of angels comin’ after me.
Comin’ for to carry me home.
The words were coded. “Home” was freedom. The “sweet chariot” was a wagon or some vehicle that they hoped would take them to freedom. The “band of angels” were the abolitionists. Slaves sang songs for many reasons. Often, their singing was misunderstood as a display of happiness and contentment.
The conditions under which a slave lived depended largely upon the personality of his master. Planters were the masters of their estates who conducted their affairs autonomously. Their wives, children and slaves were under their authority and could be treated any way the planters chose within the limits of the law (and the laws were always in the slaveholders’ favour).
The mistress of the plantation was generally younger than her husband, sometimes by as much as twenty years. Girls often married at fourteen and were expected to have children as soon as possible. But the rearing of the children was usually left to slave women who nursed and cared for them through infancy.
The master’s children grew up on the plantation and sometimes played with slave children because there were no other children around. Sometimes slave children were half brothers and sisters, sharing the same father. Loneliness caused some mistresses to select a slave woman to be her confidante and companion. The relationship was rarely allowed to develop into real friendship. Each situation was as unique as the people who were involved.
In 1859 most slaveholders owned no more than 25 to 30 field hands and four to five household servants who took care of the family’s personal needs. Field slaves’ lives were filled with endless misery and suffering. Death was welcomed. They worked from sunup until sundown, driven by fear and brutality. Their diets were poor, and so was their health care. People aged early and died too young. Children died needless deaths and the elderly were turned out to fend for themselves when they were no longer useful. The huts the slaves lived in were small, crowded and filthy, and up to as many as ten people would sleep in one 6 metre by 6 metre cabin.
Those servants who worked in the “Big House” had a few advantages, but there were even more disadvantages. As grand as the old mansions were, they didn’t have any of the modern conveniences we take for granted today. Work in the Big House never ceased. Servants were expected to do all the washing, ironing, cooking, serving of food, cleaning, caring for children and even fanning. House slaves were on call 24 hours a day.
Even though every effort was made to keep slaves ignorant, many of them learned to read and write, using any opportunity available to them. Then they, in turn, taught others. Secret teachers – who were sometimes disguised abolitionists, free blacks or fellow slaves – formed “pit schools”. They dug a hole large enough for two to four people. They pulled a lid made of brush over the top. Down in the pit they practised their lessons with less chance of being caught.
Being discovered was an ever-present danger. Literate slaves were usually sold to the Deep South where escape was nearly impossible. Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner were literate men who had led rebellions in Richmond and Southampton, Virginia. Slaveowners knew they were outnumbered on some rural plantations, so masters stayed on the lookout for budding insurrections. They used bribery, threats and fear to coerce slaves into betraying anyone who might appear suspicious. It was not uncommon for the informer to end up being sold himself.
Frederick Douglass, publisher of The North Star, wrote in his autobiography that “No man who can read will stay a slave very long.”
Sojourner Truth, who had been a slave in New York, said, “Slavery must be destroyed. God will not stand with wrong, never mind how right you think you be.”
And Harriet Tubman said, “I mean to live free or die.”
Emboldened by the spirit of these and other freedom fighters, the stage was set for slaves who dared to defy their masters.
People didn’t know in 1859 that the nation was on the threshold of a terrible war that would kill thousands. But the unfolding political drama would climax when Edmund Ruffin, Sr, a Virginian, fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, a few months after Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. The war ended five years later in 1865. The cost had been high on both sides. The lives of the 4,000,000 slaves living in the United States and the 250,000 fugitive slaves that had escaped to Canada would be changed forever.
They were free at last.
Experience history first-hand with My Story – a series of vividly imagined accounts of life in the past
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Clotee is a fictional character, created by the author, and her diary is a work of fiction.
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First published in the US by Scholastic Inc, 1997
First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2003
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2015
Text © Patricia
C McKissack, 1997
Cover photography © Jeff Cottenden, 2015
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