by John Bailey
The attempt by Miller to explain how he obtained Bridget Wilson was one of the great controversies of the story of the Lost German Slave Girl. Miller’s version (and his mother supported him in every detail) was that he obtained Bridget Wilson in the summer of 1822 in New Orleans, and not in 1818 in Attakapas.
According to Miller, a slave trader named Anthony Williams arrived in the city by ship from Mobile, Alabama, with a number of slaves to sell. No sooner had Williams brought his coffle of slaves ashore than he discovered that the city was in the grip of a yellow fever epidemic. Upward of two hundred of the city’s population were dying each day, business was at a standstill and even the slave auctions had been canceled. Immediately Williams decided to flee the city, intending to take his slaves with him. Then, to his alarm, he discovered that his youngest slave, a pale-skinned girl, was showing signs of fever. No captain would accept her aboard his ship so he would have to get rid of her. Not that this was the extent of Williams’s problems—he was also broke. He had thousands of dollars of value in human flesh in his possession, but no ready cash to pay for the passage of himself and his slaves back to Mobile. Then, across the levee, he saw Miller’s sawmill.
Taking the girl with him, Williams went into the sawmill and offered to sell her to Miller, who, after inspecting her, concluded it was likely that she had yellow fever—but he also knew that if she survived she would be worth three or four hundred dollars. He wasn’t interested in buying her; it was too risky an investment, but he told Williams that he was prepared to lend him one hundred dollars, but only if he left the girl as security. Williams agreed. It was also agreed that if she survived, Miller would sell her, and so recover his hundred dollars. When Williams next returned to New Orleans, Miller would hand over to Williams the balance of the purchase price, after retaining his expenses and profit on the sale.
Sally Miller’s supporters never accepted that such a person as Anthony Williams existed. To them, Miller’s explanation of how he obtained “Bridget Wilson” was nothing more than a pack of lies, told by a man desperate to cover the truth that he and his mother had seized Salomé Müller in 1818 and held her on his plantation in Attakapas, gradually breaking down her resistance until she believed she was a slave and all memories of her German past were gone. However, one aspect of Miller’s story did measure up: there was a plague of yellow fever in New Orleans in 1822 that killed thousands. If there was a slave trader named Anthony Williams in the city, it was perfectly understandable that he would be desperate to escape.
Yellow fever was well known in New Orleans. Between 1796 and 1850, it afflicted the city twenty times, peaking in 1853 when nine thousand people died. It was called “the saffron scourge” by the Americans, “fievre jaune” by the French, and “the black vomit” by the Spanish. It began in summer and ended with the first frost of winter. It lurked in the miasma of decay and rot surrounding the city, and when the weather became humid, it drifted in with the mist, entering through the cracks in walls to attack those inside. Doctors prescribed leeches, cupping, bleeding, and purging, accompanied by massive drafts of mercury and opium, but cures seldom worked. Victims’ skin turned a soft yellow and their eyes creamy. They felt as if their bones were being crunched; their temperatures rose, they shook in cold sweats, and finally, as they began to vomit dark phlegm, it was known that death was near. Prevention was directed toward getting rid of the pestilence that lurked in the atmosphere—by firing cannonballs to puncture the air, burning tar barrels to fumigate the low-lying mist hovering overnight, and, failing that, praying to God for mercy on a sinful city.
With a cruel efficiency, it particularly carried off children and newcomers to the city, earning it yet another nickname, “strangers’ disease.” Eight thousand Irish and German immigrants died of yellow fever while digging the New Basin canal in the American sector (for which they were blamed for disturbing the soil and releasing the miasma). Long-established residents of the city, and those of African and Indian descent, appeared to have an immunity from the disease.*
Miller called in Dr. Alexander, the man who regularly attended to the maladies of his slaves, to examine Bridget Wilson. The doctor confirmed that she was indeed suffering from yellow fever and it was well advanced. It was too late for him to prescribe a cure. Her only chance, he said, was to be given rest while the fever took its course. Miller placed her under the care of Daphne Crawford, a colored nurse the doctor recommended to him. This woman subsequently gave evidence in the case to free Sally Miller about the care she gave to the sick slave child. Crawford said she lived in a house on the corner of Rampart and Customhouse streets. The girl was her only patient, so she “received all my attention.” She described her as “slender, sickly, and not very tall” and, because of the yellow fever, she looked “sunburned.” It took her a month to restore the child to health, and when the child was well, she walked her to the sawmill and gave her back to Miller.
Miller decided to surprise his mother with a gift of the child. He pointed Bridget toward the house where his mother lived, and told her to knock on the door and tell the lady who answered that she now belonged to her.
Mrs. Canby was well pleased with the pretty, pale-skinned girl her son had provided for her, and in a very short time the two became inseparable. A number of witnesses recalled how Mrs. Canby would take her along when she visited friends in the city, showing her off as if she were her grandchild. Bridget would also accompany her on shopping expeditions to the French boutiques on Royal Street and walk be her side, carrying the purchases her mistress had made. When Mrs. Canby was at home, Bridget was required to be in constant attendance, ready to fetch things. Bridget would serve her breakfast in bed, help her dress, and during the day follow her, collecting her books and reading glasses, as she moved from room to room. She would adjust her pillows when she retired at night, and be there, within call, when she awoke in the morning.
After several months Mrs. Canby approached her son, and after indicating her satisfaction with the girl, asked if she could buy her. She explained that she was fearful that Williams might return to reclaim his slave, so she wanted Bridget to be hers—and she wanted to pay the full value. Miller, ever ready to indulge his mother, agreed, and on February 24, 1824, mother and son went before two notaries and, under seal, the transfer was formalized. Mrs. Canby gave her son three hundred and fifty dollars for Bridget Wilson.78
Following the formalities of the purchase, Mrs. Canby returned to her home and called Bridget into her bedroom. She sat the girl down and said there were some important things she wanted to tell her. First she told her the good news, that the old woman was now properly and officially her owner. However, she couldn’t be “Bridget” anymore. Mrs. Canby explained that her cook’s name was Bridget and she found it too confusing. Bridget must get a new name. According to Mrs. Canby, her new slave said that Bridget was only a nickname that she never liked, and she selected for herself the name of Mary. So she became Mary Wilson.
Mrs. Canby ran a busy household. In addition to Bridget the cook, and Mary Wilson, her servant, she owned a black waiter named Jim Brigger and a quadroon boy, Yellow Jim, who tended the garden and did anything else his mistress required. The work of these four was far more than just looking after an elderly widow and her son. A wide circle of friends continually dropped in at the house. Mrs. Canby hosted dinners for her son and held meetings for her charities in the drawing room. She also took in orphaned white girls from the Ursuline Convent and gave them a home until they could be placed elsewhere.
These were days of grand parties and extravagant living for Mrs. Canby and her son. All sorts of important people came. General Lewis, the commander of the state militia, was a constant visitor, as was Charles F. Daunoy, attorney at law, and Emile Johns, Louisiana’s foremost composer and concert pianist. Gentlemen in full-dress coats and ladies in long, elegant gowns of silk would walk up the stairs to be met by Mary Wilson. Dressed in a black frock and a lace apron, she stood ready to take the gentlemen�
��s hats and cloaks and the women’s shawls, and to escort them inside. Guests would ask Mrs. Canby who the girl was, and be surprised to learn that she was a slave. Some would ask Mary herself, Is it true you are a slave? And she would say Yes, and smile when they exclaimed, But you are so white.
Among the slaves in the yard, Mary was envied because she was a house servant. The work was easier, the food was better, and she wore the cast-off clothes of her mistress and not the rags they wore. With her white skin and fine dresses they saw her as different. She was educated in the way of white people and able to mimic their genteel ways.
In these early years, Mary Wilson served Mrs. Canby with fond devotion and the old woman was pleased with her. However, as Mary began to grow into womanhood, Mrs. Canby began to observe things that disturbed her. She noticed that Mary went out of her way to engage visitors in conversation, especially the gentlemen, who in turn, intrigued by her beauty, seemed quite happy to spend time with her. She was a particular favorite of several of her son’s friends, who often dropped in on a Sunday afternoon to chat on the veranda after a ride along the levee. Mary hovered on the edge of conversations, listening to things that a young girl should never hear, ever ready to carry the decanter from the sideboard or to bring an ember from the stove to light their cigars. Mrs. Canby told Mary several times she was too bold with company, but it made no difference, particularly when her son undermined her authority by asking her to fetch for him and his friends. Mary, she concluded, was far too precocious for her age.
Not long after, as Mary delivered Mrs. Canby’s breakfast to her bedroom one morning, she asked if she could marry Yellow Jim. Mrs. Canby could hardly believe her ears. Was she serious? It seemed she was. Mrs. Canby was stunned. She had raised Yellow Jim from birth, and had regarded him as a favorite. “I refused my consent,” she wrote, “because I did not think her worthy of him, as even at that early age she was an abandoned character, and gave me a great deal of trouble.” Abandoned Mary proved to be, for Yellow Jim, got up in a tattered straw hat on his head, and with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a honeybrown skin, proved to be too much for her. A few months later, Mrs. Canby noticed that Mary Wilson was rapidly gaining weight, and a confronting investigation revealed that she was pregnant.
Both Mary and Yellow Jim were expelled from the house and made to live in one of the huts for the yard slaves. However, they were retained as domestic servants, and right up to the birth of her child, Mary would rise every morning to be at Mrs. Canby’s side when she awoke.
In the entire South, slave marriages were no more than cohabitation by the permission of masters, and they meant nothing under the law. In Louisiana, an article in the Civil Code confirmed this: “Slaves cannot marry without the consent of their masters, and their marriages do not produce any of the civil effects which result from such contracts.”79
At first blush it seems strange that that most fundamental of Christian concepts, the joining of a man and a woman for life, wasn’t given protection in any of the slave states. The South was deeply religious, and by the 1800s the African population, most into their second or third generation of bondage, was firmly under control. Southern legislators over the years gave constant attention to the details of slave regulation—tinkering with almost every aspect, reforming, clarifying, increasing penalties—but the family continued to be violated. Marriage meant nothing, “husbands” were split from their “wives,” and children were taken from their parents.
It didn’t have to be so. In Spanish and Portuguese slave colonies it was never doubted that the African had a soul that needed saving. Slave marriages were protected by the church as a Christian institution, and any master who split a man from his wife by sale was not only breaking the law, but also committing a grievous sin. This was never the attitude in America. Perhaps the explanation lies in the strongly capitalistic nature of slavery in the United States. If a master wanted to sell a woman apart from her husband, the bonds of marriage had to give way to rights of ownership. This view of slaves as disposable chattels was buttressed by an unholy alliance of racism and fear. Racism encouraged the belief that black people’s inherent immorality made it impossible for them to adhere to marriage vows. Fear meant that masters didn’t want to lose their power to sell an unruly slave—a threat no longer possible if the law required them to keep families together. It would “make the holding of slaves a curse,” declared Thomas Cobb in his book on slave law, if marriage were to “fasten upon the master of a female slave, a vicious, corrupting negro, sowing discord, and dissatisfaction among all his slaves; or else a thief, or a cut throat….”80
The failure to recognize slave marriages produced far-reaching consequences. One was that all slave children were bastards. Yet another was that children from a slave marriage couldn’t inherit property—even if they were subsequently freed. Consider the case of the children of an ex-slave named Miles Howard. When Howard was a slave, he “married” Matilda, another slave, who bore him several children. Howard was then emancipated by his owner, and as a free man worked until he had enough money to purchase Matilda out of slavery. They had more children. Matilda died, and after a period Howard took a second wife. The marriage was celebrated with due religious ceremony. Further children were born from the second marriage. Howard died a wealthy man—with enough property to make it worthwhile for his children from the second marriage to fight about his assets all the way to the Supreme Court. These children argued that only the legitimate offspring of their father were entitled to inherit—and since the first marriage was a slave marriage, then all the children born of that union were illegitimate. Judge Pearson of the North Carolina Supreme Court agreed. “The relation between slaves is essentially different from that of man and wife joined in lawful wedlock,” he said. “[W]ith slaves it may be dissolved at the pleasure of either party, or by the sale of one or both, dependent on the caprice or necessity of the owners.” When Matilda and Miles became free persons, they “were guilty of a misdemeanor in living together as man and wife without being married, as the law required; so that there is nothing to save them [their children] from the imputation of being ‘bastards.’”81
Another consequence of the failure of the law to recognize slave marriages was that a “wife” could be forced to testify against her “husband.” During a murder trial in North Carolina in 1836, a slave named Mima was compelled to give evidence against her “husband” of ten years, with whom she had had five children. Her testimony convicted him and he was hanged.82 For similar reasons the defense of provocation wasn’t available when a slave found his “wife” in an adulterous embrace. As Thomas Cobb rather brutally observed, “A slave had no honor to defend.”
Although it lacked legal endorsement, the institution of marriage proved resilient in slave society. Social historians, after examining plantation records of the old South, report that the rate of marriages among slaves was as high as among white people. Wise masters encouraged marriages. The advantages were obvious enough: they made for a happier, more docile workforce, each child born was an asset in the master’s hands, and the presence of children reduced the chances of their parents running away. Marriage also enriched the life of the slaves. It afforded comfort, security, and sexuality; late at night, men and women could whisper to each other of their suffering. For a people who owned nothing, they could feel they owned each other.
There was considerable diversity in the form of the marriage ceremony. Sometimes the master dressed up in his best suit, pulled out the family Bible, and conducted a marriage ritual he made up himself on the lawns of his home before a congregation of the assembled slaves. He might speak about the seriousness of the commitment, the sanctity of joining a man and a woman for life, and a determination to whip anyone who fooled around with the bride. On other occasions a traveling parson might be invited to conduct the service, or the wedding party would parade to a log church in a clearing where a black preacher would officiate. Sometimes there would be dancing and a feast around an open
fire and the obeah man* would give his blessing. In slave narratives there is frequent mention of the ceremony of jumping over the broom. The couple would jump three times over a broom laid on the ground, repeating, “I marry you, I marry you, I marry you.” It was said that the one who jumped the highest was destined to be the boss of the relationship. Or perhaps there was no ceremony and all that would happen was that the master would give temporary approval for a man and woman to live as a couple.
In Mary Wilson’s case, in asking Mrs. Canby’s permission to marry, she was doing no more than asking to be allowed to move in with Yellow Jim and that they be recognized as man and wife. By getting herself pregnant, she in effect forced Mrs. Canby’s hand.
Mary Wilson gave birth to a son. She named him Lafayette, after the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who had fought beside Washington in the war for American independence.
“About four years after the birth of this child,” wrote Mrs. Canby “she had another son, whose father was a white man in our employ named Struve.” Mrs. Canby provided no further information and moved on to other matters. It is difficult to know what to make of this. Was this proof of her “abandoned character,” as Mrs. Canby implied? Was Mary Wilson a willing harlot, or had Struve forced himself on her?
In a slave society, it was difficult to tell the difference between rape and seduction. Power in penile form sprouted from the customary rights of ownership, and compliance was overhung with the threat of violence. Brutal rape was rarely necessary—and even if it was, the few cents left on the table turned it into prostitution. Some slave women may have been flattered by the attention of the master; others realized that with acquiescence came gifts, better clothes, and food. But for most, the intimation of violence was enough. As one slave woman was recorded as saying in 1839, “we do anything to get our poor flesh some rest from de whip; when he made me follow him into de bush, what use me tell him no? he have strength to make me.”83 It was only a small perversion for white masters to believe that submission was a sign of the natural lust of black women for white men.