The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 40
I lost not a moment in profiting by the kind advice of my sermonizing friend, the chairman; and by the assistance of the lawyer, who seemed really anxious for my safety, I evaded the mob collected in the street, who appeared inclined to put me on trial a second time, and as speedily as possible obtained a conveyance out of town, there to wait the approach of the great southern mail stage coach, my legal friend promising to see that my*baggage was put on at Richmond. Two or three days' ride in this conveyance, in which I was the only passenger, brought me to the little village, a court house, jail and tavern, in which last was the post office, the nearest point on the route to Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, which I intended next to visit. As the coach, which was little better than a sort of lumber wagon, drove up, there were collected about the tavern door a dozen or two of those idlers, several of them rather out at the elbows, and more than half of them decidedly tipsy, commonly to be found on that route, about the doors of such places. They were engaged in discussing, with most vehement gesticulations, what then seemed to be the only topic wherever I went — the wicked plot and conspiracy of the bloodthirsty abolitionists. One of them held in his hands a little tract, which had come directed to him through the post office, entitled, "Human Rights," the sight of which seemed to have upon him and his companions much the effect of the bite of a mad dog; for they were all more or less foaming at the mouth, and all seemed exceedingly anxious, if not to bite, at least to hang somebody. 'The man with the tract, as I was told, was a candidate for congress in that district. He seemed to suspect a little that the sending him this tract on human rights was a contrivance to damage him with the people, on the part of his rival, who had a brother living in New York; but the prevailing opinion appeared to be, that the tract was a bona fide abolition emissary, a sort of bombshell stuffed with sedition and murder, which might at any time explode; and though some wished to preserve it as a palpable proof of the reality of the abolition conspiracy, the prevailing opinion seemed to be, that it would be safest to burn it forthwith. Accordingly, amid oaths and execrations, and wishes that a dozen or two of the abolitionists were tied to it, it was solemnly deposited in the kitchen fire. Their hand thus in, the company, headed by the would-be member of congress, beset the coach, and insisted upon searching the mail bags for the detection of like dangerous missives. Nor could the driver protect his charge in any other way than by the most positive asseverations that the mail bags from the north had undergone a thorough search and purgation at Richmond. I had taken care to secure the good graces of this driver, who was a very shrewd fellow, a Yankee from Maine, and who gave me such an excellent character to the landlord, as, together with a little prudent dissimulation on my part, secured me from the danger of fresh annoyances. The old story of having, during a former tour some twenty years before, enjoyed the hospitality of Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, served as an excuse for wishing to visit those plantations, and for inquiring about their former and present inhabitants. Of their former possessors, Mr Carleton and Mrs Montgomery, I was able to learn but little. Mr Carleton had adopted the common resource of emigration to the south-west. The Montgomerys were gone, it was said, to Charleston, but nobody knew any thing more of them. Both plantations, I was told, belonged at present to a Mr Mason, a very odd sort of a gentleman, who would, no doubt, be very glad to see me.
I slept that night at the tavern, or rather tried to sleep, but, disturbed as I was by the singing of mosquitoes, the barking of dogs, and what was infinitely worse, the sound of the handmills with which the slaves of the establishment were busy all night in preparing their next day's allowance of meal, with but little success. No sooner did I sink into a doze, than that well-remembered sound mingled with my dreams, and I began to imagine it was myself who was grinding.
Rising in the morning unrefreshed, I proceeded on horseback to Carleton Hall.. Having introduced myself as once the guest of the former proprietor, I received, according to the hospitable custom of the south, where the leisure of the planters makes them always eager for company, a very cordial and friendly welcome. Mr Mason I found to be a gentleman, in manners, education, and sentiment, such as would do honor to any part of the world. In the course of the week that I remained his guest, I learnt from him that his father, a man of natural energy, who had raised himself from a humble position, after acting many years as an overseer had become the purchaser of Carleton Hall and Poplar Grove, when those two plantations had passed out of the hands of their former proprietors. Having enjoyed very small advantages himself, being, in fact, hardly able to write his name, he had been the more anxious to educate his son, whom he had sent to a northern college, and afterwards to travel in Europe. Unlike a large number of the young men of the south, sent to the north for their education, the young Mason had made a good use of his opportunities; and four or five years before he had returned home, just in time to receive, under the will of his dying father, possession of the estates, and the guardianship of two young. sisters, — and charming little girls they were, — joint heirs with himself of the plantations and the people.
The plantation at Carleton Hall, instead of being worn out and just ready to be deserted, like too many others in that neighborhood, I found to be in a much better state of cultivation than when I had formerly known it. The buildings were all in good repair, and the negro houses were so well clustered, and so neat and tidy, with little gardens about them, as, instead of an unsightly nuisance, as is usually the case, to be real ornaments to the landscape.
Under the profound dissimulation, which slaves know so well how to assume in all its varieties, from stupid indifference to appearances of the strongest emotion, whether joyful or sorrowful, it is often extremely difficult to get at their real feelings. Yet: there was something hardly to be mistaken in the broad, good-natured smile with which, wherever we went, Mr Mason's friendly greeting was looked up for and returned, by young and old, man and maiden, and especially in the joyous clamor with which the children of the plantation gathered about him. We went to see them in the school-room, as he called it, where they were all assembled every day, not to be taught any thing, but to be kept out of mischief, under the care of a venerable, white-haired old woman, bent half double with age, whom they called "Granny;" and a merry sight of it they were, from infants of three or four months, in the arms of little nurses just big enough to carry them, to children of twelve or fourteen, all cleanly dressed, — a thing I had never seen before on a plantation, — the larger ones having the range of an ample play-ground about the nominal school-house, where they amused themselves with sports and monkey tricks innumerable. The only thing that Granny undertook to teach was good manners, upon which subject her lectures, at least during the presence of visitors, were very incessant and sufficiently amusing. The title of "Granny" was not in her case merely nominal, so Mr Mason told me. She was, in fact, grandmother, or great-grandmother, or great-great-grandmother of nearly every one of the children about her. Mr Mason himself addressed her by the title of aunt Dolly, with almost as much kindness and affection as if she had been his own grandmother — treatment on his part to which he said she was well entitled, as being in fact the founder and source of the fortunes of the family. His father's first earnings had been invested, some fifty years before, in the purchase of aunt Dolly, then a young woman with three or four children. She afterwards had others, twelve in all, and all females. The daughters had been scarcely less fruitful than the mother; and it was from this source that the whole plantation, as well as that at Poplar Grove, had been stocked. In fact, his father, who was a man of some scruples, had never sold a servant in his life, and never bought one except Aunt Dolly, at her own special request, and a number of likely men as husbands for his superabundant females.
The system of management upon Mr Mason's plantation, inherited, as he told me, in part from his father, but improved by himself, I found to be totally different from any thing I had ever seen elsewhere, except that it reminded me, in several points, of the discipline of major Thornton, to whom I had myself formerly belonged. Mr Mason was, like major Thornton, his own overseer, though he employed an assistant under him for each of the plantations, men, like himself, of intelligence, education, and humanity, but whom, he said, it had cost him great searching to find, and great labor to train. Every thing went on with the regularity of clockwork. The allowances to the people, both of food and clothing, were generous, and the tasks by which every thing was done, moderate. The whip was only used on very rare occasions, and that rather for the punishment of the misdemeanors which the people committed against each other, than for those against the master; for said Mr Mason, "I am not only plantation manager, but judge and magistrate to settle all our internal disputes, and, in fact, to tell the truth, the very hardest worked slave in the whole establishment. How many planters in North Carolina do you suppose would accept my property on condition of managing it as I do?" The great stimulus employed to make the people work was emulation. They were divided into eight or ten classes, according to their capacity and aptitude for labor, individuals being promoted or degraded according to their merits, and each class, according to the amount of labor it performed, being distinguished by certain privileges and badges of honor. The lowest class of all was called the "lazy class," into which there was a great horror of falling, except on the part of two or three habitual sluggards who were always in it, and who served as standing butts for all the wit of the plantation. At the close of every harvest, there was a grand fancy ball, at which the people were allowed precedence according to their merits. The best of them had the first choice of characters, the range of which first choice was, however, rather limited, lying between General Washington in sword and cocked hat, and old Master Mason, my host's father, till lately General Jackson, since he was chosen president, had come in as a rival. All the rest had the choice of characters, each according to his place on the list of merit; and as Mr Mason allowed a certain moderate compensation for extra labor beyond the regular task, the buying of finery to figure at this fancy ball proved a great stimulus to many, the women especially. Some of the people were excellent mimics. Every doctor, minister, and overseer in the neighborhood got taken off; and on the whole, Mr Mason said, the acting was often superior to such as he had seen a good deal applauded on the New York and London boards. The idea itself he had picked up from a West India planter with whom he had become acquainted in England.