Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South

by John C. Inscoe

Sarah Gudger was 121 years old in 1937, when she was interviewed in Asheville by a local volunteer of the Federal Writers Project. Her story is as poignant as any told in that massive collection of ex-slave memories. Before she was emancipated in her late forties, Gudger was a slave on what she called a large plantation of the Hemphill family in the Swannanoa Valley east of Asheville. Her memories of bondage were of a grueling regimen of hard work conditions and heartbreaking family trauma. Her original master, Andy Hemphill, “was a good ole man, and the Missus she was good, too. She usta read de Bible t’ us chillum afoah she pass away.” Their deaths left Sarah and her fellow slaves in the hands of their son, William Hemphill, a much harsher taskmaster, under whom, she testified, “I nebbah knowed whut it was t’ rest. I js wok all de time f’om mawnin’ till late at night.” Work included working in cornfields, chopping wood, washing clothes, and spinning until late into the night. She was whipped frequently and never got much to eat. She had to endure long, harsh winters with inadequate clothing or bedcovers to withstand the cold.

  Most striking in Gudger’s testimony was the impact of “specalaters” on the local slave community. Although none of the slaves on her own plantation was ever sold away, those on William Hemphill’s other plantation were—and apparently often. “Oh, dat wah a tebble time!” she recalled.

  All de slaves be in de field, plowin’, hoein’, singin’ in de boilin’ sun. Ole Marse he cum t’ru de field wif a man call de speculater. Dey walk round jes’ lookin’, jes lookin’, All de da’kies know whut dis mean. Dey didn’ dare look up, jes’ wok right on. Den de specalater he see who he want. He talk to Ole Marse, den de claps de han’cuffs on him an’ tak him away to de cotton country. Oh, dem was awful times! When de specalater was ready to go wif de slaves, effen dey was enny what din’ wanta go, he thrash em, den tie em ’hind de waggin an’ mek ’em run till dey fall on de groun’, den he thrash em till dey say dey go ’thout no trubble. . . . When de da’kies wen’ t’ dinnah de old niggah mammy she say whar am sich-an-sich. None ob de othahs wanna tell huh. But when she see dem look down to de groun’ she jes say: “De specalater, de specalater.” Den de teahs roll down huh cheeks, cause mebbe it huh son o’ husban’ and she know she nebbah see ’em agin. Mebbe dey leaves babies t’ home, mebbe jes’ pappy an’ mammy. Oh, mah Lawdy, my old Boss wah mean, but he nebbah sen’ us to de cotton country.9

  Sam and Nancy Williams make for one of the fullest and most compelling stories of individual slaves in the mountain South. Historian Charles Dew has reconstructed in much detail Sam’s story, as he became and remained the chief forger in the extensive Buffalo Forge ironworks created by entrepreneur William Weaver in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in the late 1830s and operated through the rest of the antebellum era.

  One of the more intriguing aspects of Sam’s story is the fact that that both he and his wife, Nancy, established savings accounts at a bank in Lexington, nine miles north of Buffalo Forge. They each earned cash under a system of “overwork”—longer hours and work on Sundays and holidays—Sam through further work in the forge, and Nancy from housework and extra duties in Weaver’s dairy operations, of which she was in charge. This added compensation was part of a system of positive incentives that Weaver applied not only for his enslaved workforce in his ironworks, but for his agricultural workers as well. For the Williamses, this overtime earned them cash payments of a mere fifty cents a day. Nonetheless, the pay accumulated enough through the 1840s and 1850s that the couple could buy sugar, molasses, and coffee to supplement their diet and also purchase cloth, decorative items, and substantial furniture for their home. Christmas presents from Sam to his wife included a silk handkerchief in 1841, a pair of buckskin gloves in 1849, and nine yards of silk in 1851.

  The whole issue of a slave with a savings account came to a head in 1855, when a local free black cooper named Henry Nash refused to believe that a slave could have such an account and bet Sam Williams his watch that it wasn’t so. The bet drew the attention of Weaver’s nephew, who was also incredulous, until Weaver’s lawyer confirmed that such was indeed the case, and that Sam had the right to withdraw funds from his account anytime without authorization from his owner or anyone else. Sam thus gained a second watch from that bet, after proving his claim by withdrawing his cash from the bank, showing it to Nash, and then redepositing it all.10

  In 1842, the mayor of Greeneville, Tennessee, who was also a tailor and speculated in real estate, purchased his first two slaves, a brother and sister, both adolescents. His name was Andrew Johnson. The slaves’ names were Dolly and Sam. As Johnson’s political career advanced, on to Tennessee governor and U.S. senator, he acquired several other slaves. Though there are discrepancies in how many he ultimately owned, the total never seems to have been more than six or eight. Of those, Sam remained Johnson’s favorite, so much so that the rest of his family chided him on how much he indulged Sam. Johnson’s eldest daughter claimed that Sam did not belong to her father; rather, her father belonged to Sam. Sam’s cockiness and often brash behavior elicited community disapproval as well as that of the Johnson family; on several occasions during Andrew’s long absences from home, they threatened to sell Sam “down the river,” though all knew there was little chance that such a threat would ever be acted upon.

  Most resentful of Sam’s favored status in his father’s eyes was Charles Johnson, a ne’er-do-well and alcoholic who was fully aware of his father’s disappointment in him. In January 1860, Charles wrote a letter to his father, then serving in the Senate in Washington, in which he revealed not only specific actions of Sam’s that he found particularly offensive, but also his own frustrations that he himself had neither his own slaves nor any authority over his father’s. Charles began by urging his father, once again, to sell Sam. “It does not suit him to stay in this country,” he insisted, noting that “he is quite the independent gentleman.” He informed the senator that Sam had defied an order from his mother (Andrew’s wife Eliza) to go cut wood on her daughter’s farm, stating that “he would ‘be damed’ if he wanted to cut wood there.” Charles reported another spat between mistress and slave in which she accused him of not turning over the share of his earnings from hiring himself out to others in town; he responded that he was entitled to all income he derived from such work, and not merely half.

  “I do not desire to own negroes,” Charles assured his father, “but if I did, they should know their place or I would not have them about me. . . . It does seem that the more attention, the more kindness you show a negro, the less account he is; they seem to misconstrue it;—but after all, the negro to be of any value must be subjugated.” Only the fewest of men, he asserted, “are fit to have neggroes; that is especially the case in E. Tennessee. The negro must have a Master; and those who use them severly seem to have the best slaves.”11

  Each of these stories raises as many questions as it answers. One of the most basic is the question of typicality in terms of the slave experience in Southern Appalachia. We see here slaves in four different states—some engaged primarily in agricultural labor; others in industrial enterprises. Some were part of relatively large slave communities; others part of much smaller holdings; one was a free black; others acted at times as if they were free. We see in their stories instances of great cruelty and inhumanity, as well as instances of kindness and tolerance. We see examples of repression, of violence, of bleak circumstances in which slaves were victimized and exploited in a variety of ways—some systemic to the institution and to the economy that it served in the highlands, some far more personal and vindictive—but we also see examples of opportunities within that system for slaves to become active agents in bettering their circumstances, even if only within the limited parameters dictated by both racism and bondage. So which of these varied situations are most representative of slavery in the mountain South? Does any one or more of these scenarios best reflect the nature of master-slave relationships within the region, thus rendering the rest flukes or anomalies?

  I
would suggest that all are equally valuable in understanding the multifaceted nature of Appalachian slavery, and—perhaps by extension—that throughout the American South. To begin with, each of the stories embodies ambiguities that blur any clear-cut lines as to the qualitative nature of slave life within the region; in almost all of these vignettes, we can find elements of both—opportunity and repression; benevolence and abuse; compassion and cruelty; tolerance and intolerance. In short, these stories point up the inherent contradictions in a system that was to a certain extent always subject to and driven by the foibles and even capriciousness of human nature on the part of both owners and slaves.

  Take D’lea, for example, the literate young slave whipped for reading a religious tract. That her literacy enabled her to serve her master as an accountant of sorts, and perhaps in other managerial capacities, is extraordinary, particularly for a female slave. And yet, frontier historian Marilyn Davis-DeEulis used D’lea’s story as one of several to illustrate a relatively high degree of literacy among slaves on both the Kentucky and Virginia sides of the Ohio Valley during slavery’s formative years there. In applying her reading skills for something other than the utilitarian functions required by her master, however, D’lea suffered a whipping by a possibly insecure or even envious overseer, who was anything but appreciative of her intellect or religious conviction.

  D’lea faced very different treatments by her owner and his overseer, a situation not at all uncommon in the plantation South. No less surprising perhaps are those several slaves subjected to differing treatments by different owners, even those who were members of the same family. Sarah Gudger bemoaned the death of her first master and mistress, under whom she felt she was treated well—and who had even provided her with some religious training; yet under their son, she and her fellow slaves faced far harsher working conditions, material deprivation, physical abuse, and emotional torment. Perhaps less explicably, the same man, William Hemphill, applied a double standard to slaves on different farms. Those slaves on his second plantation found themselves far more vulnerable and insecure, in that they were regularly subjected to the whims of speculators who bought them and sold them south; though fully able to describe that experience in wrenching terms, Gudger only knew of it secondhand; for somehow Hemphill never allowed slave sales to take place on the farm where she lived and worked.

  The difference in generational attitudes toward slave property and the vulnerability of the slave trade appears again in Andrew Johnson’s family. The indulgences of the future president led to what his son viewed as the totally unacceptable behavior of slave Sam, who was canny enough to take full advantage of Andrew’s authority and protection to defy both Mrs. Johnson’s and certainly their children’s attempts to control him, and even expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that he didn’t have full rights to his earnings. As secure as Sam felt, though, it is apparent that the easy solution for slaveholders with temperamental or overly independent bondsmen was sale south—no idle threat, even in Greeneville, Tennessee, the heart of abolitionist Appalachia.

  The legal battles waged by Daniel Bates’s slaves suggest a very different set of cross-generational issues for slave owners. The failure of sons to live up to the final wishes of their father toward his bondsmen and women is not surprising. In collusion with local law authorities (the sheriff authorized and oversaw their continued hiring out), first Daniel and then Stephen sought the continued exploitation of men and women who should have been freed long before. Yet it was the slaves themselves, through local lawyers championing their interests with little expectation of monetary gain, who prevailed upon a legal system that they believed would and should protect their interests. Although it took nearly seven years for right to overcome might, these black men and women ultimately triumphed against powerful local interests—and overcame decades of legal and racial precedent— to win their freedom.

  Edward Tarr’s tale tells us much about the shifting sentiments toward African Americans at the community level over time and the vulnerability that often accompanied success on the part of black entrepreneurs or overly independent slaves. Tarr’s blacksmith operation testified to the relative openness of early settlements in the remote back-country and the absence of the repressive infrastructure that would have precluded his achieving the same level of success in the more established and rigidly ordered Tidewater. But as the 1750s became the 1760s and 1770s, community norms evolved, and earlier forms of racial fluidity and tolerance gave way to more conventional forms of hierarchy and racial order. If the unruliness of Tarr’s clientele was the excuse that led to ostracism and ultimately legal harassment and exile, the fact that his business proved so prosperous over the years and that many of those who frequented the site were both slaves and other free blacks must have bred communal resentment and discomfort among the growing white community. Tarr’s experience took place on the colonial frontier, but it represents an all too familiar scenario of white discomfort with black economic success that would reappear in multiple other guises throughout the South from the antebellum years through the long and repressive era of Jim Crow.

  And what are we to make of the McElrath slaves who were part of the California gold rush? It was certainly an unusual opportunity in and of itself, though one in which many Burke County and other western Carolina slaves participated. Some slaves did take advantage of their rights on free soil and remained in California, despite efforts by owner and guardians to force their return home. But many also came back to their homes in Burke County—often with little choice, and certainly few with the complete free agency with which the McElrath four returned. But for all of the self-congratulation their return sparked among the local slaveholding community—and the propaganda uses to which the story was put long afterward, the real motivation for their return home had little to do with fidelity to a benevolent owner. McElrath had shrewdly chosen four slaves who happened to be both husbands and fathers, and it was of course the love of family—parents, wives, and children—that ultimately brought them all home.

  In Sam and Nancy Williams’s story we again see both opportunity and its limitations. Their story is in some respects typical of many Appalachian slaves who found themselves exploited by grueling work in often dangerous circumstances in various antebellum extractive enterprises—coal, iron, and salt mines—and in the equally exploitative operations like Buffalo Forge that processed those raw materials. Yet by both temperament and talent, Sam Williams found himself in a leadership capacity of trust and responsibility that opened up prospects for material acquisition and a more comfortable life for his family. Even so, while he and his wife generated enough income to establish separate savings accounts, and to use those funds as they saw fit, they were still owned property and thus their options remained tightly circumscribed: they could not buy land, they could not travel, they could not move. All of their diligence and extra hours of hard work were ultimately applied to the furnishings of a house they neither owned nor could claim should their owner decide to sell them or merely to move them elsewhere.

  Nor should we attribute any altruism to Sam and Nancy’s owner. If the overwork system provided William Weaver’s other slaves with similar opportunities to earn cash income, it does not mean that he was as an exceptionally benevolent master, but rather that he was an astute labor manager and businessman. His strategy obviously worked in his own self-interest: it provided him with a great deal of extra work, which in turn increased the profitability of his enterprise while raising the morale of a potentially unruly and inefficient workforce. That these were higher priorities than any goodwill toward those he owned becomes more apparent in light of the fact that Weaver on occasion resorted to more conventional forms of control and retribution: he sold to traders slaves whose behavior or attitude he found problematic, which meant separating spouses or parents from children.12

  Finally, there is the tragedy of Hannibal in Newport, Tennessee. His story reflects the worst of slavery’s abuses, the unrelenting phys
ical—and most likely mental—cruelties that could drive a slave to suicide. The accident that led to the master’s death also doomed the slave so determined to free himself from the reach of that master. And yet, while Hannibal’s acquittal or even conviction on a reduced charge would have made for an even more extraordinary story, the most striking aspects in Ezekiel Birdseye’s account of the case are the emotional reactions of both judge and courtroom observers, who obviously sympathized far more with the slave than with his master. (This story strikes me as perhaps the one most tied to a particular place. This area of East Tennessee—as Birdseye’s activity there itself testifies—exhibited as much abolitionist, or at least ambivalent, sentiment toward slavery as any part of Southern Appalachia or the South; and yet even there, such sentiment failed to save a man from legally being hanged for an act of self-defense.)

  Only at this most intimate level in which we see slaves and masters interacting as individuals within very particular settings and circumstances can we fully appreciate the contradictions and variables that so complicate the essence of the “peculiar institution” as it existed over the course of a century. As impressionistic and even fleeting as these snippets of reality may seem, we are attuned to the fact that they did not occur in a vacuum, either in time or in space. Each of the individuals in these stories, black and white, reflects larger entities— families, slave communities, slaveholding communities, both agricultural and industrial enterprises, government institutions, towns, and counties that comprised very particular locales in that vast geographical expanse we know as Southern Appalachia. Each of these incidents took place at particular moments in time as well, with the time period often integral to the ways in which these stories played out. From early frontier settlement to fully developed industrial era of the late antebellum period, chronology had much to do with the circumstances in which these African Americans found themselves, for better or for worse.