‘Now that’s difficult to say. I have a few thousand saved but …’
‘Don’t tell me “a few thousand.” How much?’
‘I have eight thousand, and I suppose Father would want to give me something.’
‘Don’t count on that. His father gave my father nothin’. But you could take your slaves with you?’
‘Lissa and I have about six each, personal. We could surely take them.’
‘Hell! Excuse me, ma’am, but I’m talking’ about fifty, sixty. Surely you could talk your family into at least fifty.’
Obviously he had for some months been reviewing the possibility, for he took from his pocket a carefully tabulated list of things he and Petty Prue could provide for such an expedition, and the Cobbs were amazed at its completeness: ‘I’ll provide the cotton gin, because it has to be the best. I’ll provide the cotton seed, the best Mexican strain, tested on land like we’ll find in Texas. I’ll take the blacksmith shop.’
‘How many wagons are you thinking about?’ Somerset asked.
From another pocket Reuben produced a list of wagons, each specified as to size, the numbers of mules or oxen required to draw it, and its order of contents. Thirty-seven were numbered, at which Millicent asked: ‘But why the frenzy? You don’t have to move. We do.’
And then little Petty Prue, in her high-pitched voice and delightful accent, revealed her real reasons: ‘Georgia’s changed. Old men makin’ new rules. What we seek is a new life where we can invest our money and our energy and build our own paradise.’
Millicent was startled to hear this giddy child speaking so boldly: ‘You’d be willing to take such great risks?’
‘I want to take them. I’m bored with Georgia.’ When she pronounced the word boe-we-edd it sounded amusing, but when Millicent saw the hard set of her chin, it wasn’t funny at all. Now Petty Prue hammered at Lissa: ‘After all, you sent the letter, we didn’t. And you sent it because you knew you were finished here. It was one of your best ideas.’
But when the three Cobb families dined together on the second night, some of the things that motivated red-headed Reuben began to surface: ‘Another reason I’d like to be in Texas, I’d like to keep my eye on the northern part of the Indian Territory that they’re calling Kansas.’ The word had never been mentioned before in Edisto, and it sounded strange the way Reuben said it, as if it carried terrible freight: ‘Great decisions are going to be made in Kansas, and I want …’
‘What decisions?’ Millicent asked.
‘Slavery. If those swine in the North can prevent us from carrying our slaves into open territory like Kansas, they can halt our entire progress.’
‘Will Texas remain slave?’ Somerset asked, and his cousin cried: ‘Without question. They fought Santa Anna because he wanted to end slavery. They know how to protect their rights.’
‘I would not care to bet on anything, where Texas is involved,’ Persifer said, but Reuben stopped this reasoning bluntly: ‘Where are Texans from? Tennessee, a slave state. Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, all slave. Texas will be there when we need her.’
‘Will we need her?’ Persifer asked, and a hush fell over the candlelit room. The long silence that followed was broken only by the chirping of crickets in the warm night air, until finally Reuben stated his beliefs: ‘I’ve met a few abolitionists. Sneaked into Georgia. Fine-looking men, but absolutely corrupt at heart, coming here to steal our property. They’ll never surrender. But men like us three won’t ever surrender, either. There must come a testing.’
‘I should think you’d want to be here,’ Persifer said, for he had heard that his Georgia cousin was a violent man.
‘In Georgia, each good man will count for one. In Texas, he’ll count for two.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because many of the big decisions will be reached there. Control of the West. Control of Kansas. And a role in helping to control the Mississippi. I want to be where I’ll count double.’
The men now went onto the porch, where Somerset tried quietly to explain that he believed the real disparity between South and North was not slavery, but the callous way in which the North profited from Southern raw materials and then imposed through Congress excessive tariffs which prevented the South from obtaining the goods it needed from Europe.
Millicent, listening to an argument she had heard before, indicated to Petty Prue that she wanted to pursue further their abbreviated table discussion, so when Tessa Mae took herself to bed, the two younger women sat in the light of a flickering candle and discussed the tremendous matter of moving a civilization west for more than a thousand miles. ‘Does it frighten you?’ Millicent asked, and Petty Prue said brightly: ‘Not a bit. Thousands are going to California all the time. If they can do it, we can easily reach Texas.’ She sought for a word and said: ‘It’ll really be like a great picnic … that lasts for a hundred days.’
‘A hundred days!’
‘Yes, Reuben has it all worked out, from Edisto—’
‘He seems sure we’re going.’
‘And so am I.’ With never a faltering doubt, the little Georgia woman, in her mid-twenties and already the mother of three, said: ‘The time comes, that’s all I can say. It’s like when a young man of twenty and a young girl of eighteen … the time comes, and everything that seemed so tangled falls into place. It’s time for you and Sett to get out, and that’s that.’
In the days that followed, when it became generally accepted that the Somerset Cobbs were going to withdraw gracefully from any competition for the Edisto plantation, both Persifer and Tessa Mae became wondrously generous. No decision had yet been voiced by their father as to how much money Sett could take with him, but word on that would come in due course; for the present, Persifer said: ‘You can take twenty of our Edisto field hands, no question.’
‘Trajan belongs on Edisto, really. But I’d want him.’
‘Trajan you shall have. I’ll explain to Father.’
Millicent nominated nine of the best female house slaves, women who could sew dresses and shirts, and they were surrendered too, with Tessa Mae adding two others that she knew Lissa favored, making thirty-two in all. Persifer, looking far ahead, said: ‘Western Alabama and Mississippi, those roads were never solid. You’ll need the best wagons,’ and he started his wheelwrights and carpenters to mending nine wagons already in existence and building seven new ones, but when the first provisional lists of gear were compiled, it was obvious that Sett would be wise to buy another three in Charleston.
Maximus Cobb made petulant protest over the loss of Trajan, whom he had been breaking in nicely as a house servant, but on this point his sons were adamant, with Persifer leading the fight: ‘A Carolina gentleman is entitled to at least one perfect servant. It lends him distinction, and for Sett, Trajan is ideal.’ When his father continued to demur, Persifer said: ‘They were like brothers,’ and to this the old man had to assent.
When the time came that discussion of money could no longer be deferred, Maximus said: ‘I’ll tell you one thing. If you were going to Georgia, like my brother Septimus, you’d get not a nickel. Not a nickel. But if you’re going to Texas, to help preserve our Southern way of life … to spread goodness and justice …’
He fumbled with his ivory-headed cane, and tears came to his eyes: ‘Why do young people feel they have to leave? What have we ever done to wrong you, Somerset? Tell me, what?’
‘The time comes,’ Somerset said, and his father seemed to accept this, for he took from his pocket a letter—a copy of one, the original having already been mailed to a New Orleans bank—and before delivering it to his younger son he said, with evident sadness: ‘It’s my gift to you and Lissa in your new life.’ It was a draft for twenty thousand dollars.
On Sunday, the last day of September 1849, the Cobb brothers, their wives and their five children gathered at the mansion in Charleston, where an Episcopalian minister had been invited to say prayers, after which a fine feast was managed by S
uetonius and three of his Caesars: Tiberius, Claudius and Domitian. Trajan was overseeing the four wagons that would leave from Charleston in the morning to meet up with the fifteen others that would be crossing the Edisto ferry and coming up to the main road.
It was a beautiful day, and in the late afternoon the two couples with their children walked along The Battery, looking out to Fort Sumter in the bay. At night singers came from a mansion nearby, and various families who had once thought of allying their children with Somerset’s dropped by to say confused farewells, for they were losing prime candidates for future marriage alliances.
At dawn everyone was alert. The four wagons with their borrowed horses were ready for the taxing ride to where the heavier wagons coming directly from Edisto would be waiting. Kisses, tears, embraces and prayers were exchanged, and finally old Maximus waved one of his canes, and the Somerset Cobbs bade farewell to one of the most gracious houses in Carolina and to the best of the offshore islands. G.T.T. (Gone to Texas) could have been painted on their four wagons, for like thousands who preceded them, they had watched their fortunes at home slowly decline.
But it was at dusk on that first day when the true farewells were said, because as the little caravan approached the spot where the ferry road from Edisto joined the main road, the Cobb children riding in the lead wagon shouted back to their parents; ‘Oh, look!’ And there ahead, waiting as shadows deepened, stood the other fifteen wagons. Around them clustered not only the slaves who would go with them to Texas but also some hundred others who had trudged up from the island to say goodbye.
There was not much sleeping that night, for groups clustered here and there, exchanging little gifts, whispering in Gullah, and savoring the precious moments of friendships that would be shared no more. For as long as anyone could remember, no Cobb of Edisto had ever separated a slave child from its parents, and none were being separated now—for example, Trajan and his wife were taking their boy Hadrian with them—but inevitably, adult brothers and sisters were seeing each other for the last time, and many others were being separated from their old parents. There was sorrow, but as the night waned, there was also singing, soft hymns chanted in Gullah.
‘Oh, I shall never see you again!’ a young woman cried to a man she might have married had he stayed on Edisto, and at dawn the caravan of nineteen wagons moved on to Texas, four white people and thirty-two slaves, plus three babes still in arms.
On this second day of October 1849 the plodding trek westward began, with Trajan’s wagon in the lead as the mules and oxen shuffled along at their own measured pace. By noontime the drivers had learned how much distance to leave between wagons so that dust did not engulf them. By late afternoon, when the first stop occurred, the line of wagons covered about a mile and a half, and there was much joking among the slaves as the last one pulled in.
As soon as the wagons carrying the Cobbs and their private gear halted, male and female slaves sprang into action, pitching the masters’ tents, arranging for baths, and starting the evening meal. On this first night it was a noisy game, with cooks unable to find pots and maids not knowing where the bedding was, but with stern prompting from Trajan, things were straightened out, and the expedition assumed some kind of rational order.
It was a hundred and thirty-four miles from Edisto to the South Carolina line opposite the city of Augusta, and Somerset had calculated that the distance could be covered in not more than twelve days, but on Saturday, when they were about halfway across the narrow part of the state, Millicent announced with some finality that she did not intend traveling on Sunday. When he started to protest, he found that all the slaves supported his wife, most vociferously: ‘We ain’t never work Sundays. Ain’t proper.’ With Mrs. Cobb it was a matter of religion, but with the slaves it was religion-cumcustom, with the latter weighing the heavier: ‘Work six days, God says so. Even He work six days. But corne seven, no more, neither God nor man.’ Trajan was a leader in this rebellion, so at sunset that first Saturday, Sett Cobb ordered the tents pitched securely, for nothing he could say or do was going to change the fact that they would stay beside this rivulet for two nights.
On the second Saturday night the enforced halt irritated him even more, because the caravan had now reached the Carolina shore of the Savannah River, across which the buildings of Augusta could be clearly seen. ‘We could get up tomorrow at dawn and be in the city in time for morning prayers,’ he argued, but Lissa would not listen: ‘The Sabbath is God’s holy day, and if we profane it at the start of our trip, what evils will He pour down upon us in the later days?’ Sett said that he doubted God was paying much attention to one small group of wagons on the Augusta road, but Millicent prevailed.
They entered Augusta very early on Monday, October fifteenth, and spent the next two days making purchases of things they had discovered they needed. Sett figured that this shopping would please his wife, but when he returned to the wagons at dusk on Tuesday, he found her looking across the river and weeping: ‘I shall never see Carolina again. Look at it, Sett, it’s the gentlest and loveliest state in the Union.’ He remained with her for a long time, staring back at that lovely state in which he had been so happy and of which he was so proud.
The next week was hard work, a slow, slogging progress along the bumpy roads of northern Georgia, and for three solid days, enduring a considerable amount of rain, they pushed their way west through the little towns of Greensboro and Madison, and by Thursday morning, when the sky cleared, Sett was in fine spirits. At breakfast he said: ‘Everybody watch closely today and tomorrow. May be a big surprise.’
So the two children rode forward with Trajan, peering ahead like Indian scouts, and about noon they were rewarded by seeing a lone rider, a very large black man, coming toward them on a mule. As he drew closer he began to shout: ‘You de Cobbs fum Edisto?’ and when Trajan waved his whip enthusiastically, the big man reined in his mule, lifted his arms in the air, and began shouting: ‘Halley-loo, I done found you.’
He was Jaxifer, prime hand of the Georgia Cobbs, dispatched along this road to meet the caravan. He had acquired his name in a curious way. Reuben Cobb, seeking to retain a sentimental tie with his cousins on Edisto, had named him Persifer, in honor of the family’s soldier-hero, but in Gullah the word had been quickly corrupted to Jaxifer. ‘My job, show you de way home,’ he explained, and after the wagons fell in behind him, he pranced his mule and shouted: ‘Halley-loo, we on our way to Texas!’
He rode with them all day on the twenty-sixth, shouting to everyone they passed: ‘Halley-loo, we for Texas!’ and that night he told the children, who had by now adopted him, for he was just as vigorous and loud as his master: ‘Tomorrow we home. Finest town in Georgia.’
‘What’s its name?’ the children asked, and he replied: ‘Social Circle,’ and they said: ‘That’s no name for a town,’ and he corrected them: ‘It be the name of dis town, and dis town is Queen of Georgia.’
Early on Saturday he led them along the last dusty roads to Social Circle, an attractive village which boasted two cotton gins, warehouses for the storing of finished bales and a beautiful old well right in the middle of the main street. Waiting there, as men and women had waited for many decades to greet their friends, were Reuben and Petty Prue, who provided ladles of cool water for the travelers.
‘Our town had another name, once,’ Petty Prue explained, ‘but since everyone gathered about this pump for local gossip, it became Social Circle.’
After so many days of dusty travel, twenty-seven of them, the Edisto Cobbs were delighted with the five days they stayed over in Social Circle. The main street was lined with nine large houses, each with handsome white pillars supporting fine balconies that opened out from the upper floors, each with flower beds and finely graveled turnarounds for the carriages.
‘Somebody’s making money here,’ Sett cried when at the end of this first parade of tall mansions he saw another six of somewhat smaller size.
‘Everybody is … for the moment,
’ Reuben said. ‘These men know how to grow cotton, how to work their slaves.’
Sett was especially interested in the cotton gins, for as a grower of Sea Island, he had never worked short-staple and for some years had believed that no one else could, either, so Reuben took him to a gin owned collectively by all the Cobbs of the region, a sturdy wooden building of two stories, with the bottom one mostly open so that slave boys could lead two pairs of horses around and around in a perpetual circle. The horses were harnessed to long wooden arms projecting outward from a central pillar, which revolved slowly but with great force.
The pillar reached well up through the second floor, where its constant turning provided motive power for an Eli Whitney gin of fifty saws. The bolls of filmy white cotton passing these saws had their tenacious green seeds removed, the latter falling down a chute to the ground after wire brushes caught their filaments.
‘Not much different from what we do by hand with Sea Island in Carolina,’ Somerset muttered while studying the wonderful effectiveness of the gin. As it continued its work, handling the fractious seed so competently, he had a vision of that endless chain of which he had always been a part: the land tilled, the seed sown by slaves, the tender plants chopped to eliminate weeds and weaklings, the bolls gathered, the seeds removed, the bales sent to the rivers, the ships loaded, the cotton delivered to Liverpool, the spun thread delivered to Manchester, the cloth woven, the clothing made, civilization enhanced—and every man in the chain earning a good living from this miraculous fiber. Cotton was surely a king among crops.
The slave, Cobb reflected, lived well under the loving care of kind masters; the planter watched his lands flourish; the owner of the gin extracted his fee; the shipper his, and the Liverpool merchant his pounds and shillings. The weaver seemed to earn most, with the manufacturer of clothes not far behind. ‘Wait!’ he called to the busy gin as if to correct some misapprehension under which it toiled. ‘The one who makes the most is the damned banker who finances it all.’ In his many years of supervising the vast fields on Edisto Island, Cobb, unlike Tessa Mae’s family, had never once planted with his own or his family’s money. Now he thought: It was tradition to use the bank’s money. Always they got their share first. He supposed that in Texas it would be the same.
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