The owner of Sourwood Plantation
was a gentle-spirited man of Scottish Descent who proudly wore the name of
McClure. The plantation was established
in the late 1600s by an ancestor who acquired the land through marriage with an
English Noblewoman who was a distant cousin of George III, king of England. Since the McClure’s of his lineage landed in
the new world they had been a driving force in the history of the region. His grandfather had been instrumental in
convincing the May 2, 1776 South Carolina Delegation to be the first to vote to
Declare Independence from England in what was then called, The Province of St.
Charles. His grandfather, Matthew McClure
was also a very close associate of William Hooper from Orange County North
Carolina one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Matthew McClure was reputed to have been one
of the authors of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence from May 20, 1775
signed in Charlotte N.C. nearly a year earlier than the one authored by Thomas
Jefferson and signed into law on July 4, 1776.
The plantation was the seat of his family in America set in the fields of
Mecklenburg North Carolina But the familial ties with England had all but died
after the American Revolution. For many years now there had been unrest
concerning the spectre of secession from the newly formed Union. James McClure, the family patriarch, was
proud of the legacy of his ancestors who had fought and died to create this
sublime and unprecedented union of states.
His hesitance to support the
first kernels of the Confederacy carried the power to split his family and
community apart. In his heart he longed
to have the slaves freed but he was alone in his sentiment. His kindness toward the slaves was
interpreted merely as the confidence and comfort gleaned by a highly successful
planter. He understood all too well that
a southern gentleman of his position could not support abolition; it would be
the equivalent of heresy to his southern brethren since his ownership of
Sourwood had been inherited father unto son as a matter of divine right. As the proprietor of one of the largest
plantations in the region he was expected to side on the cause of slavery.
His grandfather, Matthew McClure,
like many of the framers of the Union had romantically envisioned America as
the re-creation of the Greek City-States of ancient legend. He embraced the new spirit of Federalism and
it’s overture’s to ancient Greco-Roman policy, fashion and architecture as a
means of identity for the new Republic but just as quickly as the Union of
States had been created this vision came under fire by the southern
slaveholding states that threatened it with permanent erasure in a mortal
battle over the divine right of white men to own human slaves stolen from
Africa! The framers had had a unique chance
to end slavery in 1776 but they fell short of the very ideals they imagined
they had captured in the Declaration of Independence. Instead, they chose to uphold the traditional
view that white men were divinely superior to black men. Whether for political, philosophical or other
reasons, that is the hand that fate had dealt the children of African descent
forced into slavery in the young United States of America, it could be argued
that had they pressed to abolish slavery as a condition of the Constitution the
southern colonies would have pulled away leaving a dis-unified 13 colonies to
fend for themselves against the tyranny of Great Britain. It was a calculated risk that the question of
slavery would resurface at a later time when the sentiment of Americans was
more favorable towards the Emancipation of slaves but the south was inexorably
entrenched in slavery and whether it was profitable or not did not matter anymore;
it was a matter of tradition. The
question of slavery and specifically the ending of slavery was one that every
white man and woman of conscience surely must have contemplated many times over,
their hugest concern being the destiny of the slaves once they were freed? Freeing
the slaves would have been a great humanitarian gesture but the conditions of
institutional racism that pervaded the country on every level would hardly have
allowed them to live peacefully. Would freedom mean citizenship and would
citizenship mean equality with white men?
Without affording the freed slaves full equality with whites in every
respect including citizenship these people would have been forced to exist in a
sociopolitical and economic vacuum. What
good would freedom be if only on paper?
Ojibwe had been listening closely
to everything discussed by his master, his eldest son and a select contingency
of other affluent men of Charlotte while surveying portions of the property
with masters eldest son Briarton or whilst waiting in the main house to receive
instructions regarding the repair of one of the tobacco barns within the
plantation. What he did not hear or
missed was adequately filled-in by Phaedra one of the house servants whose
duties centered around the parlours, drawing rooms and other reception areas of
the house. Briarton’s father James
McClure could often be heard reciting his most famous commentary regarding the
Secession, “By the spirit of my ancestor Matthew McClure signer of the
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence I will not so easily dissolve that
which so many young and innocent lives were sacrificed to build!” But in his heart James McClure knew that he
had no choice real choice in the matter, he was expected to support the rebel
forces with every inch of the reach of his great influence. He had already donated signifiacant financial
support to the effort, a matter that weighed heavily on his conscience. On the contrary, his son Briarton McClure was
all in with secession from the Grand Old Union.
Ignorant of the hardships and horrors of real warfare Briarton
romanticized himself as a monumental, equestrian hero brandishing his families’
ancestral sword before the Yankee usurpers!
Briarton could not have been more unlike his father, he anticipated his
inheritance as master of a large and affluent plantation as a divine right for
a southern gentleman of noble descent that was rendered meaningless by the
American Revolution. He sided with his
cousins across the Atlantic and longed to escape to Europe leaving the baseness
of slavery and his families’ plantation to his younger brother to manage while
he enjoyed the life of a young aristocrat amongst those of his own kind. His father refused to have him educated in
England as he had wished so that he could prepare him for the realistic task of
husbanding the family business, a formidable plantation with over 2,000 slave
but finally compromised allowing him to complete half of his education in Paris
and England.
From what Ojibwe had gathered,
the southern planters had been orchestrating the secession for nearly 20 years
since John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill
Address. He has secretly been
communicating with a Yankee spy telling him everything he could find out about
the progress of the rebellion. The spy
had posed as a botanist and ornithologist who was studying the local flora and
fauna giving him a reason to wander around the wild places across the
plantations of North and South Carolina.
The botanist pretended to be a Frenchman commissioned by the government
of Napoleon III, who was a known sympathizer with the Confederacy. He went by the faux name of Thierry De
Montvert and his papers had been carefully forged, even the contacts in his
official chain of command had been bribed into collusion with this dangerous
scheme should anyone question his pedigree.
Ojibwe met Briarton in the south
park of the main house in the orangery where he had been drawing up the plans
for the new building. The structure was
to be erected beside an existing storage warehouse for cotton further out in
the southern fields nearly a mile from the main house. A new train track was being constructed to
connect it with the existing tracks leading from the warehouse to downtown
Charlottesville. He had designed the
building to be a long low wooden factory designed for the manufacturing of
confederate uniforms and other articles such
as tents, back packs and etc. He
knew this because he had overheard Briarton’s conversation with another white
man who was to supervise the manufacturing process. The building was very small and would be
equipped to accommodate an intake area where fabric and materials would be
stored, a work area where the material would be measured and cut against
patterns an assembly line of sewing machines where the primary panels would be
assembled and finally a detailing section where finishing touches, buttons,
embroidery, etc., would be applied. At
the far end of the room were high racks of shelving where finished uniforms
would be stored until they could be shipped out to Charlottsville, a loading
berth and platform opened up directly outside the storage racks and the train
tracks would pull up directly to the loading berth. The cieif concern at this meeting was the
location of the windows. Briarton had
shown Ojibwe’s preliminary plans to one of the conspirators and they had determined
that it was too open to view. They
wanted fewer windows and decided to add a guard booth at the entry and at the
loading berth, they had also decided to more than double the size of the
structure so that it could also store ordnance.
Because they wanted to conceal the true purpose of the structure the
arsenal was to be constructed of brick but as a freestanding building within
the shell of the wood frame building.
The entire complex would be designed to take on the appearance of a
large barn of the type typically used to store tobacco and cotton until it
could be moved to market. Ojibwe
responded to Briartons revisions with encouragement but noted that the
revisions would take a couple of days before they could be turned into
comprehensive plans. He said,
“Briarton, Surh, I see’s jus what
you means by dis here change and I can have some new plans drawed up by the
next two days fo sho if’n I starts out rhight now Surh.”
“Allright then Kallicrates, you
know we need these plans as soon as they can be readied. I expect you will need at least 60 nigrus to
get started. Go to the woodshed to see
how much wood we have and how much more we need to order from the lumberyard in
Charlottesville. We will also need to
know how many bricks and roughly how much stone to get from the quarry. That tree you found will do just fine for
shingles and finishes by the time we are ready to put the roof on. I’ll make sure Lydia comes by to bring you
whatever you need in the nature of provisons.
I have to go to Richmond and I won’t be back for at least a week but my
brother will check with you in two days to get the plans. You are not to discuss this with nobody else!
Is that clear! Other than my brother Justice you are not to utter a word about
what we’s doing here. If any white men
come lookin around claimin they’s from Charlotte come out t’find out what
provisions we need you tell em you don’t know nu’thin and send em to Justice,
you got that now boy?”
Ojibwe nodded yes to Briarton’s
commands and continued to make reassuring overtures to reassure him hoping it
would hasten his departure to Richmond.
From what he had learned from Thierry, Richmond was the focal point of
all the activity with regards to the southern states pulling out from the
Union. He had a bad feeling about the
rebellion like an aching sense of dread as if he would never live to see life
as a free man. If the southerners were
successful he and his people would be doomed to dumb servitude forever, they’d have
to do the bidding of men with half their wits and pretend to be happy about the
prospect like children taking candy. Most
white folks really believed blacks were docile sycophants panting like dogs by their
master’s feet, wagging their tails just to get a morsel of fat or a bone thrown
to them from the kitchen. He didn’t know
much about business but he did know that white men got payed a whole lot of
money to do what he was doing for free. Hell,
most white people didn’t even have the knowledge to design buildings and draw
up plans, even his owners could not do that but yet they owned him and even the
most ignorant drunkard, hell even a crazy white man that could not feed himself
or speak a word of plain English was considered to be superior to him just
because of the color of his skin. If
white men were so much smarter than him then why didn’t Briarton let one of
them draw up the plans for the uniform factory and arsenal? But what bothered him more than anything else
was the fact that Briarton expected a slave to help further the cause, to
tighten the choke hold, to redouble the chains of his own enslavement! It was an arrogance and ignorance that was
completely incomprehensible to him because he could not escape the reality of
slavery it pinned him down from every angle.
Although he possessed far greater intelligence than most of the white
people he encountered he was never permitted to forget the crippling brand of
inferiority slavery had scorched into every square inch of his being. While it was his experience that most white
folks were living in a fantasy of racial and intellectual superiority to blacks
he also knew that many mean spirited and lucid whites were keen as the devil
about the way most blacks thought about them.
Usually it was those who had inflicted the most pain and dehumanization
upon black men, they knew in their hearts that racially or intellectually
inferior or not black men had the ability to strike back and should they be caught
at unawares, return the same harsh treatment.
That was the whole point of racism, to scare blacks into submission
since they could never truly convince them that their servitude was just. Even institutionalized Christianity was
ultimately impotent in the face of oppression, it merely offered slaves a
moralistic platform from which to argue equality. No where in the bible did it say that white
men were so created to oppress and own black men. The concept of divine right was an
affectation white men imposed upon Christianity to suit their own needs, to
justify and ease their guilt and fear in the face of the omnipotent. Every god fearing white man and woman knew in
the back of their clouded minds the price for playing God in this life meant
eternal damnation in the next! Blinded
by hatred and ignorance it was clearly a risk they were willing to take for a
few brief years of wealth and comfort frontwards of the grave…
When Ojubwe was a child he saw a
beloved slave man being carried to his death bed after having been beaten by a
white man to within a quarter-inch of his life.
To the white man he was just another nigger who moved him the wrong way
and needed to be taught a lesson. But to
the slaves he was a distinguished and wise elder who had shown much compassion
to his people and to many whites as well.
The slaves called him “Speaker” because of his gift of the spoken word… Ojibwe was his favorite and when he was
permitted to see him he asked why the white man had beat him so badly, nut yet
understanding the mortal implications of Speaker’s wounds. Speaker motioned the crying boy to come
closer and to sit on his twisted legs while he explained, he must have been in
excruciating pain but endured it because he knew he was near to death… Speaker
said to him,
“Ojibwe, the white man wants to
convince himself that we are dogs, that we are unfit to be men and so he in his
ignorance has lied to himself to justify his anger and hatred of the black man because
no matter what he does he knows we will not submit to his lies. He knows we are not like his pigs and horses
and chickens who are no less content with captivity but who do not possess the
will to challenge him. He see’s in us
himself though darker and stronger and he understands that save with guns and
torture he could not keep us captive for long.
In his evil mind he imagines what he would do to a man who had abused
him so and he sees only the evil he would do to himself if in our place. He fears retaliation because he is consumed
by evil and ignorance he has to do this
in order to make the lie seem real. He
is acting from the gut of mankind, the basest, most barbaric fiber of
mankind. He cannot comprehend
understanding…He is so invested in the lies of racism and the fear of
retaliation that he is utterly blinded to the possibility that men can be
compassionate and move on when they have been freed. But even greater than his fear of retaliation
he fears the probability that once freed, a black man would beat him at
everything he holds important. He knows
we are hungry, having been so long denied and he knows hunger is a greater
driving force than comfort, but it is tantamount to fear! The white man fears us because he knows his
evil must eventually be paid for. He has
lied about a God even he does not believe in.
It is a God of his convenience, perpetrated to poison the minds of the
weak and to render them docile. That is
why God and religion alone are not sufficient, the white man needs guns to
enforce his superiority and he does not strike the black man alone but in
groups. His fear is so great he thinks
he has left nothing to chance. Any man
who understands the power of revenge and has wronged another man lives in fear
that at some time, perhaps unexpectedly, that man or some other will move
against him to exact repayment for wrongdoing.
So a man who has killed fears he will be murdered in retaliation, a man
who has enslaved fears enslavement. That
is what you must learn to understand as a man.
Study closely the white man’s fears and you will learn his mind for he
is driven so intensely by fear. Now
there are white men of noble heart but they are very few and they will not
reveal their true heart openly. If you
should ever find such a man hold him dear and when you know there is mutual
love between you then you should be confident you have made a brother of the
white man. But do not push him to side
with your cause publicly, allow him to do so of his own will because it is a
danger he alone must accept.” Ojibwe
watched as Speaker died in front of his eyes.
He died holding Ojibwe’s hand and he felt the power and compassion of
that old man pass into him.
CHAPTER III: A DESPERATE PLAN REVEALED…
Ojibwe had taken a walk into the woods just at high noon
to watch the bold rays of the sun wash his body through the skeletons of the
trees. The air was bitterly cold so the
sun could lend him nothing more than a means to light his way save when the
wind ceased to comb the whistling treetops allowing the thin layers of wool to
gather heat ere the wind sucked it away again.
Ojibwe had been working on the foundation design for the gunpowder
magazine and armory based on one he had seen in Charleston South Carolina. That structure was reputed to have been
constructed in 1713 and besieged in 1780 leading to an eventual surrender of
the Continental Army to the British. He
anticipated the scale of this Powder Magazine and Arsenal to greatly exceed
that of the Revolutionary War edifice but was concerned about the ability of
the soft organic soil at the proposed site to carry the large masonry
structure. He was concerned that the
masonry would settle more aggressively pulling the frame structure down and
causing structural damages in the roof walls and floors. He had seen this happen to a masonry
structure to which a frame porch had been added encircling the original
structure entirely. His mind drifted to the forest and as the shadows
lengthened he became fascinated with a spiders web. He marked how the web had been spun between
the branches of a ring of brambles at the floor but spun around a large
fern. Suddenly he got it, the spider had
not attached his web to the fern because of it’s tendency to blow violently in
the wind therefore eventually rupturing the web. He utilised the stronger, firmer branches of
the low, lying shrubs to secure his web well over and around the flailing
fronds of the fern. Therein was his
solution. In his mind’s eye he saw the
gunpowder magazine and arsenal as an independent structure hidden within the
wood frame warehouse and factory. It
could be constructed first having its own foundations, walls and roof. Afterwards, the wooden structure could be
built around it. In this way the two
buildings could settle independently. He
had already completed the plans in his mind when he was accosted on the path by
a white man who seemed to have materialized directly in front of him as if from
the wind itself. The man was dressed as
a proper gentleman and carried with him a large back pack bulging with
instruments. Several finely wrought
tripod stands had been lashed to the sides of the pack and numerous lenses
protruded from individual pockets lining the outside of his gear.
At first Ojibwe was startled by
the sudden appearance of the gentleman so engrossed in the matter of his design
but after at least a strong minute of careful examination of his face in the
waning forest light he recognized and greeted him as if some great caution had
arrested him.
“Mister Thierry De Montvert, how might
I help you Sir? I see you is still stud’n the birds and trees down these parts. You be careful that you don’t run into any
bears or cats out here, they start lurk’in out bout now”
He fashioned in a hurried breath
before pausing again as if to check the man’s face to verify if it had been
received as sufficiently polite enough. The
man did not smile back to affirm his graciousness but he did respond to him
perhaps unwittingly in a rather agitated and aloof tone.
“Kallicrates, right now isn’t one
for exchanging southern pleasantries, I need to talk to you now but this place
is way too open and I daren’t keep you for long but we must talk tonight. I’ve been looking for you away’s back near
the slave cabins but you haven’t been there for the past two or three days now
so I took a chance that I could find you nearer to the Plantation House. There’s a lot going on and I need to get some
information from you by tonight as I am heading back up to Washington, D.C. in
the morning. I do not know what schedule
your masters have set for you but what time seems to you to be the best for a
brief meeting of an hour or more?”
Ojibwe thought long on his
question, there was definitely something afoot.
An ill ease began to encroach upon what had been a thoughtful walk through
the woods ere nightfall shuttered its stark, brilliance away. Briarton now quite obsessively consumed with
preparations for the succession of the southern states from the union had left
unexpectedly 3 days ago for Richmond with little preparation and now Mr. Thierry
De Montvert typically the portrait of calm and patience was feverishly hunting
him down with some unnamed dread upon his tongue. Things moved very slowly amidst the tall
Carolina pines; ironically all of the recent agitation around him was in full
due to the South’s resistance to change.
The prospect of war was discussed secretly amongst the slaves
speculating on how they might be used by the white man to further the cause of
their own enslavement. They imagined
that they would be given only the most menial and undesirable of chores,
digging trenches and transporting explosives on the front line. Their lives would be easily given away to the
Yankees in exchange for the safety of a southern white man. None of them had experienced or remembered
war of any kind save that of slavery itself which had surely proven enough to
survive. He finally did manage a short
response to the gentleman:
“Mr. Thierry De Montvert Sir, I
reckons I be able to get free anytime tonight but I cant stay for long I’s got
to get them plans drawed up for Master Briarton an I spect he’ll be back by
tomorruh mownin wantin them done. It
wouldn’t be proper for you to meet me on the grounds so I’ll slip away round
3:00 A.M. and meet you right here. Spec
I be gett’n back myself now Mr. Thierry De Montvert Sir.”
No other words were shared
between them at that time. Mr. Thierry
De Montvert had posted his horse about a half mile away. He had been permitted to stay in a small but
brilliantly appointed guest house on a neighboring plantation belonging to a
distant relative. His eccentricities
were entertained only because he was a relative and while he stayed there he
was constantly being set up with southern dames by his cousin Daphne who
imagined herself to be the county matchmaker.
Fortunately he was already going to be terribly late for dinner
tonight. Daphne had presaged a matching
with one of the local ladies with whom he was only vaguely acquainted but who
he remembered as having no conversation at all save upon the subject of the
misconduct and rudeness’s of her many slaves who had had the unfortunate fate
to have been given by her the silliest and most demeaning names. He understood why she remained unmarried in
spite of her great inheritance for surely no gentleman southern or northern
would entrust his household to such a buffoon!
Her voice alone was intolerable, a shrill braying instrument that might
shatter stone. Perhaps, he thought, she
might marry a deaf gentleman as she seemed to be otherwise the picture of
beauty and ladylike charm.
Ojibwe finished the preliminary
plans just around midnight finally having a chance to eat the cold supper that
Lydia had bought hot from the kitchen house nearly 6 hours ago. He mused over the elevations and sections for
a while. He had solved the problem of
concealment masterfully. His design
placed the powder magazine and arsenal in a subterranean chamber ventilated and
lit by a vertical shaft made to look like a chimney stacks lined on axis and a
cupola. The actual size of the flue
would be only a fourth of the structure allowing light and ventilation to get
into the subterranean chamber. In this
way the volatility of the ordnance would be checked as it would be safely
buffered by the earth behind 2 ft thick masonry walls and a huge vaulted
masonry roof covered by earth. A
dumbbell waiter would be placed directly beneath the loading berth so that
ordnance could be hoisted directly onto the platform and loaded easily onto the
ammunitions train. If there was an explosion
the fire would be contained and at the very worst the heavy masonry structure
would implode quelling the fire and containing the explosion. On the exterior no trace would be discernible
that might disclose the secret that there ever had been anything other than a
warehouse inside. The dumbbell waiter
operated in a large brick-lined shaft heavily weighted so that it could easily
be hoisted and equipped with a geared winch so that fine, precision could be
employed to match the elevator with the level of the train or wagon to be
loaded. The short distance between the
powder magazine and the dumbbell waiter shaft was equipped with a conveyor of
wooden rollers. Ojibwe was proud of his
design and he knew that master Briarton would be pleased.
At 3:00 sharp Ojibwe was waiting
in the small clearing for Montvert to arrive.
Mr. Thierry De Montvert was 15
minutes late and there was rouge smeared about his cravat as if he had been
with a lady. Without any greeting
Montvert dove into the particulars. One of
his contacts in Richmond had informed him that there was going to be an
important gathering of folk in Richmond at the Governors Mansion to discuss the
preparations for defense should the southern states decide to secede earlier
than planned. Preparations that had been
underway for two decades would be redoubled.
A man to man, gun to gun, cannon to cannon assessment of the readiness
of each side would be made. Critical
contacts from every region of the south including spies in the north would be
carefully recorded and maps updated to include the locations of militia, and
weapons. Monies which had been donated
by wealthy southern planters would be directed toward the production of
weapons, uniforms and railroads. The
final drafts of the new constitution uniting the rebel forces would be voted on
in Richmond. The first rough draft would
undoubtedly be rejected but it would set a dangerous and virtually irreversible
precedent that once given wind would be impossible to turn back to shore. Mr. Thierry De Montvert had surmised that the
McClure family, having played a significant role in the Revolutionary War and
representing the largest financial interest in the region would play a pivotal
role in gearing the Carolinas up for secession and almost inevitably war. He wanted to know everything that Ojibwe had
heard and seen of late as the fate of the Union and the possibility of the
freedom of the slaves were on the plate.
He passed a small, embossed silver flask smelling of bourbon to Ojibwe
to soothe him in the cold night air as he thought upon Mr. Thierry De
Montvert’s words. Ojibwe drank slowly at
first but as he realized the fineness of the spirit took another healthy
draught. Ojibwe was in the perfect position to filter intelligence regarding
the plans of the rebel south to Washington, D.C. and he had already resolved to
do so. He updated Montvert with
everything he knew including names, places and he even informed him about the
plans he was working on but would not disclose the location yet. As he did so a terrible fear overtook him and
he realized that if word ever got out that he had informed a Yankee spy of the
confederate plans for war he would have to run for his life or die
enslaved. Thierry assured him that the
information he shared then and in the future would be kept in utmost confidence
to protect his life. Thierry mentioned
that he knew of the meeting in Richmond but it was far too dangerous for him to
go there, then he mentioned other spies within his midst of which he had no knowledge
that would approach him in his absence.
He bade him to be weary of just anyone identifying themselves as a spy
and warned him not to consort with anyone that he did not personally introduce
to him as an ally. He went on saying:
“Things are about to change here
my friend Kallicrates, The world as you and I know it will no longer exist if
matters press themselves into being.
Whether the south wages war against the north and whether it wins or
loses, we will all be looking at a country caught in a great rush to catch up
to the rest of the world. If it gets to
the point where it is too dangerous for you to remain at Sourwood Plantation be
sure to get word to me well in advance of any evil, time will not be our friend
if things get difficult. I can assure
you safe passage to freedom in the north, after all it is the very least I can
do. But until such time I will need you
to watch everything around you closely and to speak nothing, do not even let on
that you are paying attention to what the white men here are doing and
thinking. Do not give them any reason to
second guess the level of confidence they have placed in you. It is fate that in their arrogance
underestimating the slave, treating them as if they were beasts; they have
excluded a mighty force of men who might otherwise prove brave and loyal to
their cause. But no man will be loyal
to a cause that spells his demise. In
the ensuing days especially if war comes and the south begins to see its doom
the attitudes of white men will drastically change toward black men and you
will be looked upon as potential enemies.
They will never arm you lest you side with the north in the hope of
winning your freedom. But they have set
themselves up for the most strategically obvious sabotage by the very people
they fight to enslave. As a reaction to
bitter defeat these cowards may slay the slaves rather than see them
freed! Beware of their treachery
Kallicrates, in the ensuing months lend a close ear to whomever I reveal as our
ally, your life may depend upon your ability to connect with them as the world
drastically changes around you. But if
you survive I see great hope for you, for unlike many of your kind who work on
the land or clean great houses you have a talent that not many slaves or white
men possess. When this is all done you
should go from here and work for your peoples in the north or in some enclave
of freedmen who will want to establish their own churches and homes and
communities. They will be in need of
such talent and from one who understands their ways and will treat them with
dignity. Once you are freed do not
depend on the white man to employ you as an architect for hire, his vanity is
far too great and do not allow any white man to lease your services out to
other white men, always remain in control of your fate!”
A heaviness passed between the
two men, both realized that they might not speak again in this life. Ojibwe had never been spoken to with such
respect by a white man and he expected it would never happen again. People do and say strange things when they
see their mortality before them, his mother used to say to him. But a dying man has no longer any lies to
tell… he is already free of this life. A
stubborn man who yet clings to the evils of his life will lie ere he dies thinking
to confound those who know no better but secrets taken to the grave are
forgotten utterly opening a new promise to replace the lie. In the end all that ever counts is what is
true… He could almost hear his mother’s
voice and feel her rough hands stroke his brow as she spoke to him. They had both drifted into their own musings
when Montvert started up again:
“You will not see my face again
for nearly a month; I have urgent business in Washington, D.C. If war ensues and I am not able to get back
there is only one man whom you may trust, that is yourself! A contact of mine will come to check on you
but you must not let on that you know of him nor engage him at all in public or
if you hear his name called show no interest or knowledge of it. He will come to you in secret in the slave
cemetery this Sunday night at 2:00 A.M. if you are unable to make it wear this
scarf around your neck when you call on Ms. Eugenia Pettiford Lyles as you do
every Wednesday morning when you come into town to pick up your masters handkerchiefs
and personal effects. A man by the name
of Dearborn will introduce himself to you and you should both hasten to some
remote place where you can speak freely and secretly.”
Montvert’s dark form was quickly
lost to the darkness of the bare, winter woodland. It was nearly Christmas but Ojibwe not being
religious at all thought it odd that Montvert would not wish him Seasons
Tidings ere he left. An unmasked
urgency within him bade him hasten back to the plantation house so he crept
back to the old mansion finding every window lit brightly as if something had
happened. Damn, he thought, hoping he
had not been missed. What were the odds
that anything would happen at such an hour?
He slipped into the window of the small room where he had been posting
up while preparing the architectural plans.
Beneath the heavy walnut table he had fashioned a small, uncomfortable
berth to rest if he pretended to sleep he might find the excuse that he had
been sleeping soundly through all the commotion. He had left a small pebble behind the door as
a marker to check if anyone had entered the room while he was gone but the
stone remained unmoved. Rather than
creep up to the house claiming he had awakened to find lights burning and
decided to see what was going on, he chose to remain and wait to discover the
news when he was awakened in the morning.
Something bad had happened; he heard crying and much indistinguishable
conversation. Someone passed by his
window on their way to the stables, by the uneven footfall he surmised they had
been drinking and then he heard them ride up to the house, dismount, re-enter
the house and then leave hastily down the main road to the city. Whoever it was
had taken Showboat, a beautiful and gentle horse; he could tell by the horse’s
trot and his champing. In about an hour
or so he had fallen into an uneasy sleep haunted by the many unexpected
happenings of the day.
At exactly 6:30 A.M. Lydia woke
Ojibwe up, straw was sticking out of his wooly hair and he let out a huge
sneeze due to his allergy to the hay. He
read the graveness upon her face, she was not smiling and appeared to have been
crying as her eyes watered still and were red and swollen as were her
lips. In spite of the fact he had not
slept well he was uncertain that wakefulness would be any better at least no
today. He braced himself for what
portended to be very bad news but wished he had been able to tell her to go
away for a couple of more hours.
Although he could not guess what sorrowful news would eventually escape
from her lips he knew that he was neither interested nor prepared to manage the
crisis but somehow he knew he would figure out a way to cope until he had got
back the sleep he missed last night. The
first time Lydia spoke he did not hear her at all and motioned to her to repeat
herself. Lydia was markedly irritated at
his lack of compassion and at his apparent disinterest but she was far too
caught up in her own grief to linger on his lack of grief for too long. At length she managed the lugubriously
delivered announcement again, and her words seemed to fall out off of her
tongue and freeze momentarily in the air until they could be fully
comprehended…
“Y’all wuz sleep’n so sound las
night wile Massuh James had a misery in his chest. Well he tried t’ make it out to duh hallway
but he couldn’t breathe an his legs jus give out right there before duh
stairs. Was a good thing too cuz he jus
passed out right there on duh stairs. Dhat
doctor came by this morning an said Massuh James had him a stroke. We wuz all thinking he would be fine after a
couple days of rest but he never did wake up from pass’n out on dem stairs an
doctor Burdock says he died in his sleep dhis morning right befo duy sun
rose. Now you know dhat means Mastuh
Briarton’s in charge of the house and doe nobody know wheres he at! We sent a message t’ Richmond early dhis morning
but it could be a’lese two days before he get here if’n they can find him a’tol. Duh slaves is get’n things ready fo his
burial now dhey done already took his body down to duh family chapel, we’s gone
have tuh bury him least by tomorruh. Dhis morning I said t’ myself why he had
tuh go an die right befo Christmas like dhat?”
Montvert’s words had proven
uncannily accurate, now everything had changed indeed, so suddenly in fact that
Ojibwe was reeling from the possibile implications. With the death of James McClure years of
mutual respect between master and slave had come to an end. Briarton, unlike his father, did not see any
nobility or equality in his slaves, to him they were merely chattel. He frequented the violent toned meetings held
by the poor white men deep in the woods these men were responsible for the
deaths and beatings of countless innocent black men, good and proud men. His father would not even allow them on his
land. Now, he supposed, they would be
all over the plantation like vermin rats posturizing as if they were someones
master… truth is they owned nothing and they were dumb as wood. The only thing of value they imagined they
had, and this itself was an illusion, was their white skin. Dumb as they were they had the potential to
cause trouble and Ojibwe knew they would target him because of his skills,
calling him an uppity nigga when it was really their own ignorance and hollow
arrogance they despised. For the first
time Ojibwe did not know where he stood on the plantation he had come to call
home. Master James had been so good to
him, if keeping him enslaved could ever be seen as good, he had not had to imagine what it would be like if the tide should turn…
and this time it had turned. He
immediately saw a narrow window of opportunity to satisfy the needs of Montvert
and make his escape from what he knew would end up as a ruinous saga.
Ojibwe did not know much about politics
or warfare but he did know that these rebels were acting at a disadvantage to
the northern states who already had a soundly established foundation and
infrastructure with which to deal with traitors. In his mind he knew the rebels would fail,
and fail to the ruination of all they had known. This dangerous enterprise Briarton had
embarked upon had marked his ancestral home as a target for union soldiers
looking to put down the rebellion. It all
became clear to him. This rebellion had
been years in the making. Many
southerners who had descended from the landed aristocracy of England had never
really embraced the American Revolution and Independence from Great
Britain. Though they had kept their
wealth they had lost their titles as American citizens but they coveted their
lost legacy of divine right. Although
the poor whites had begun to rally
around the cause of the rebels it was not their war at all, they were merely
peasants in the eyes of the landed gentry of the south. In Europe they would have been nothing but
serfs, crude, uneducated and living in squalor.
Their lots had not really ever changed in America, they were still
mindless, powerless thralls no different than slaves save for the color of
their skin that bought them an empty power to say only, “I am white like them,
I am better than you!” They only had
real power over freedmen who did not have the protection of their masters to
stay the anger and wrath of the poor white men.
These white vigil antes would not dare harm the property of wealthy
white men, damaging property they could not afford to pay for but they were
used a pawns by the wealthy to instill fear and inflict pain upon the slaves so
that they would accept their forced labor and socioeconomic disenfranchisement. Using the slaves as laboratory rats the theory
of operant conditioning was practised and refined, it was largely successful in
keeping them docile but it lacked the ability to purge their humanity from
hoping for freedom from the oppression of slavery and racism.
This was the war of rich white
men who wished to reaffirm that they were descended from the landed aristocracy
of Europe and the inheritors of the princely laws which included the divine
right to own men and exact absolute judgment and control over their lives. The poor white men who they used as pawns,
giving them a false sense of propriety and power by virtue of their race
comprised the massive army of innocent lives they were willing to sacrifice in
order to manifest their lust for power. These
poor white men, denied any real power or wealth, nonetheless found a way to
express their own lust for power by inflicting insufferable evils upon black
men, women and children. They coveted,
imitated and affected what they imagined to be the philosophy and airs of
entitlement that the wealthy classes had themselves affected. It was a bonfire of the vanities! The opportunity had eluded the framers of the
American Constitution many summers ago in 1776 in Philadelphia to address the issue
of slavery and kill forever the old regime founded upon the principles of
Divine Right. Had the brotherhood of
citizenship and egalitarian equality been extended to the slaves and freedmen
at that time this bitter pouring of blood, might have been avoided. But the hugest deception had been perpetrated
against the poor men who had been tricked into thinking they were superior to
others merely based upon pigmentation.
For this deception and foolishness they would pay with their lives. The rich planters were nothing more than cowards;
they used the weaknesses of poor, desperate men to fight their battles and they
used the helplessness and vulnerability of slaves to do their work for them
without compensation. This disparity and
deception would never be acknowledged by the wealthy planters, themselves entangled
in their own lies. It was not in their
interest to risk the wrath of poor white
men who had been so bitterly deceived as automatons in a process from which
they would reap no benefit. Then as now the princely laws of Divine Right
could not apply to them, they would never be its beneficiaries’.
Ojibwe struggled now to gather
his humanity in the face of such focused hatred against his race. He could not comprehend how anyone would kill
another man in order to enslave other men, families, generations upon generations;
it was a magnanimous sin before all humanity.
He understood that these were men of their times acting as they saw fit,
as they had been taught to act. But he
knew also, being human, that there was only so much space that this kind of blindness
could occupy, there had to be some place within the hearts of these men that
sympathized with the plight of slaves.
He swore not to let the anger and hatred that had become the proud
hallmark of some men’s honor cause him to hate all white men. In fact, he did not hate any of them, really…
he only hated their ignorance.
Whenever something is being
oppressed but yearns for freedom it’s desire to be free is ahead of its
time. The time it takes in order for it
to be freed cannot be measured in hours or days or years because it represents
time lost to life itself! A second spent
in captivity can never be regained. The brilliance
that hatred suffers to die or to be suppressed cannot ever regain the time it
has been withheld. Liffe is a candle that is always burning itself out of
existence, its flame growing less and less brilliant as it dwindles to
naught. Count then the billions of
slaves whose potential to bring brilliance to the world was utterly lost and
you shall see an indelibly wrought stain upon the fabric of the American
flag. So potent is this legacy that still
it dims the brilliance of the stars upon that flag to a dull yellow and grey
and some it has utterly burnt out. But
America may one day regain its former brilliance when it finally lives up to
its promise to humanity…
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