Beyond All Price

by Carolyn Poling Schriber

  If I had seen a marriage like theirs when I was growing up, I would have known what I had with Otis was a sham, Nellie told herself. She realized she had never really seen other couples as they worked out the intricacies of their marriages. Certainly she had not been aware of any real interaction between her own parents. She couldn’t even remember hearing them talk about anything except the mundane details of daily life.

  The Leasures spent long hours with the children from whom they had been separated. Daniel could often be found on the floor of his office with the little ones, helping them play with their toy soldiers or reading them a story. It was obvious Isabel had feared for the safety of Geordy, her first-born son. She could hardly keep her hands from him, wanting to brush the hair out of his eyes, admiring his new military posture, and marveling at how grown-up he looked and sounded.

  “I promised you he would be all right, Isabel,” Nellie heard the colonel telling his wife one day.

  “I know, dear, and I believed you, as I always do. But it hurt to be separated from him. I knew you had enough experience to keep yourself safe for me, but I wasn’t sure Geordy was ready to leave the nest. Obviously he was. You’ve done a wonderful job with him, Daniel.”

  The Browne reunion was a bit more restrained, but no less sincere. Willie was an energetic child, never able to sit still long. The chaplain’s efforts to learn from him what was going on at home usually ended with Willie wriggling in his seat until his father gave up in exasperation and let him run on to his latest explorations. Willie had become quick friends with a couple of the slave children, and he spent long hours with them, learning how to gather oysters (and eat them raw!), how to extract the seeds from cotton, and how to pole a skiff across a sea of pluff mud. He ended each day scratched, muscle-sore, and exhausted. But his childish eyes glowed as he told his father of his adventures.

  For his part, Robert soon learned to step back and watch his son blossom before his eyes. Willie had brought with him a set of family portraits, so his father could see the youngest children, including the newborn baby who had kept Mary Browne from making this trip. Nellie did not miss the sadness when Robert looked them over time and time again. Gently, she offered to put the photographs on display. When she noticed the chaplain was being left out of discussions about family members, she frequently pointed out the pictures or commented on what a handsome family the Brownes were.

  At the first of their nightly dinners in the staff dining room, Nellie quietly ceded her seat at the end of the table to Mrs. Leasure. But when she attempted to leave the room as soon as the meal preparations were complete, the colonel intervened. “Nellie, you are as much a part of this military staff as any man here,” he told her quietly. “If you want to let Isabel sit at the foot of the table, that’s fine and gracious of you. But you will join us for meals. Sit on her right side, so you can still keep an eye on things. Please.”

  And so it was that Nellie also witnessed her first intellectual debate between husband and wife. Nellie had never seen a wife disagree with her husband in public, but the occasion arose almost immediately.

  “Daniel? Do these Negroes wait on your table all the time? Or is this a show for my benefit?” Isabel waited until the soup course had been served and the slaves had withdrawn to the kitchen. But now there was no mistaking the disapproval in her voice.

  “These are the house slaves the Leveretts left behind when they fled from our November invasion,” Daniel explained, watching his wife warily. “They are doing the jobs they have always had.”

  “Then they are slaves. And you are using them as slaves.” Her voice was cold. “I thought you were coming down here to free the slaves, not appropriate them.”

  “And what does that mean, Isabel? To free the slaves. It’s a lovely-sounding phrase, but how would you go about that?”

  “It means turning them loose. Letting them go where they will and become whatever they want to become.”

  “Just exactly how would they do that, pray tell? With what resources? Where would they go? What skills would they have to market?”

  “Whatever—wherever—they wanted.”

  Daniel was shaking his head. “No. They would have to do whatever they knew. And what they know is what they do here. You have to understand, Isabel, this house and yard is all many of these people have ever known. There is a cemetery at the back of the yard. Some of their grandparents and great-grandparents are buried there. This is home. To drive them away would be more cruel than keeping them as slaves. Besides, we don’t think of them as slaves. They are servants. We pay them a small amount, feed them, clothe them, put food on their tables. I would not stop them from leaving if they so chose, but they don’t so choose.”

  “But they must be freed.”

  “The law of the land says they are still slaves, Isabel. President Lincoln is in no hurry for emancipation because he recognizes the problems I’m trying to show you. You can’t send an army in and tell these people to go away and be free. They have to be taught what freedom means. And we’re not at that point yet. It’s going to take a massive government effort to put an end to slavery, and it will probably have to wait until we win the war first.”

  “I can’t accept that.”

  “You will. Take some time this week to talk to Uncle Bob, who runs this house with the efficiency of an English butler. Talk to Maybelle, our table servant, who is related in some way to almost every Negro on this property. Talk to Bessie, the cook who dishes out wisdom with every dish. Ask them what they want. They’ll tell you they want dignity, respect, protection from hostile attacks, security—the list could go on and on. But freedom will not be high on their list.”

  “I want to believe you, Daniel, but it goes against everything I’ve ever heard about the evils of slavery.”

  “Yes, and the people you’ve been listening to have never lived the reality. It’s easy to paint a picture of Simon Legree with his whip, slaves in chains and manacles, babies being torn from their mothers’ breasts, families being broken up and sold to different owners. Maybe that happens some places, but I’ve never seen it. What’s real is exactly what you will see here. Have Nellie show you around the yard tomorrow. She is loved and welcomed in the slave quarters. She moves among them easily and does whatever she can to make their lives better. Spend some time with her, and then see how you feel.”

  “All right. I’ll do as you say. Perhaps I have rushed to judgment, but I must make that determination on my own.”

  “I would expect no less from you, my dear. Now could we please summon the ‘servants’ and get on with our meal?”

  The next day, Isabel asked Nellie to show her around the slave quarters. The two women moved down the east side of the yard, stopping to pat some horse muzzles and meet the stable hands.

  “This is Samuel, Mrs. Leasure. He is married to Maybelle, who served us our dinner last night. Oh, and that bouncing little five-year-old doing somersaults on the grass is his delightful daughter, Glory.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Samuel. What exactly is your job here?” Mrs. Leasure inquired.

  “I’se in charge of all des stables here. I sees to it dat de animals is fed right an’ brushed down, an’ has der pens cleaned out. De stable slaves all reports to me an’ I gives dem der orders.”

  “And you are happy with your job?”

  “Yes’m. I’se been workin’ over here ever since I been a litl’un like Glory.”

  “Can you read and write, Samuel?”

  “No’m. Never did see de need for book larnin’. De horses, dey don’ needs me to reads to ‘em.”

  “But what if you could leave here? Go out in the world and make a better life for yourself? Wouldn’t you need to read and write, then?”

  “What fo’ I be wantin’ to do dat? I be happy here. My fam’ly be here. No need for me to go traipsin’ off.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Leasure was at a loss for words, and she would experience that same feeling over and over as they walked the length of
the yard. They stopped to visit the blacksmith, busy shoeing a horse. They got some help from a slave woman in identifying the various herbs still growing in the garden. They saw the pig pen, the chicken coop, and peered into the laundry room, where billowing steam almost obscured the women working there. Each time Mrs. Leasure asked a version of her same questions, she received the same answers. Most of the slaves looked at her, puzzled as to why she was asking about such foolishness. Not a single slave seemed interested in the idea of freedom.

  Isabel had specifically asked to visit the oldest woman in the compound. She had heard the story of the Gullah Christmas story that the children heard during Slave Yule, and she was anxious to meet the story-teller. They found Old Letitia sitting a spell in the kitchen with Bessie the cook.

  “I’ve been told you did a beautiful job of telling the children the Christmas story,” Isabel ventured.

  “Yes’m. Dat be my job fo’ as long as I lives.”

  “I’d be interested to know who taught you to read the Bible.”

  Letitia shook her head and chuckled until the blackened stubs of her teeth showed. “I’se never see’d dat dere Bible, and I sure as shootin’ cain’t read it.”

  “But you knew the whole story from the Book of Luke, my husband told me.”

  “I don’ know no Luke. I jis’ tells de story de way I’s been hearin’ it since I be a wee girl.”

  “From memory!”

  “Yes’m. I knows most o’ de Bible stories—all ‘bout dat Noah an’ his boat, Adam and dat big ole’ snake, Moses in de sea oats, de walls dat came tumblin’ down. I ain’t never read em, mind. I jis’ has ‘em up here and in here.” She pounded herself on her forehead and then on the chest. “I’se de place dey is stored. An’ when I passes, den de oldest woman here be gonna take over and recite the same stories ‘cause she’s hear’d ‘em from me for so long. ‘Scuse me now. It be time for my nap.”

  Isabel turned to Nellie as the old woman made her teetering way out the side door. “I am overwhelmed. I’ve heard those stories, too. But I couldn’t recite them. I’ve never memorized them.”

  “Perhaps because you have the privilege of relying on the written word,” Nellie suggested. “These women must rely on their memories, so that’s what they do.”

  “But if they could read. . . .”

  “Then their oral culture would disappear. And I’m not sure that would be a change for the better.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to see that. There’s much I don’t understand about the Negroes, isn’t there?”

  “Why you be askin’ so many questions ‘bout us, den?” Bessie asked.

  “Because I want to understand. I thought you slaves wanted to be freed. Now I can’t find anyone here who feels that way.”

  “I’se not sure I knows what freedom be,” Bessie replied. “It sure not be freedom if somebody make us leave de place we calls home. It not be freedom if we all gets sent to school to larn readin’ an’ writin’ if’n we doesn’t want to go. De only freedom I knows is when peoples leave us be an’ don’t try to change us.”

  “But you could have a better life.”

  “I believes de bes’ life is jist stayin’ where you be planted and doin’ you’ best right here. Now why don’t you white ladies git outta my kitchen an’ let me git back to what I does best.”

  “So much for the stereotypical brow-beaten slave,” Isabel observed as they made their way back to the main house. “Do you think she’s ever heard of Voltaire’s Candide?”

  “Nellie laughed. “I doubt it, but she’s pretty good evidence Voltaire’s wisdom transcends generations—and classes—and races.”

  It was a subdued Isabel who joined the staff at the dinner table that evening. She smiled at the slaves as they served her, but made no comments. Finally Daniel could stand it no longer. “Did you and Nellie have an interesting day, my dear?”

  “Yes. And I must apologize for judging you harshly last evening. But I still need to know. What are you going to do about these people? You can’t become a slave owner like the southerners you drove out of here. What is being done to preserve their culture while you try to integrate them into our society?”

  “You’re talking about the tasks of generations, I’m afraid. But now that you are more open to hearing about them, I’ll be happy to point out some changes that are coming. As a matter of fact, all of you need to know what’s going to be happening,” Daniel said as he looked around the table.

  “Changes, Sir?” The staff officers looked apprehensive at the word.

  “Yes, indeed. Or more precisely, new arrivals who are coming as the instruments of change.”

  “Now I am curious,” Isabel said as she leaned forward toward her husband.

  “Well, a mail ship has arrived in Hilton Head, and aboard was a gentleman by the name of Lieutenant Colonel William H. Reynolds. He’s been sent by Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury to take charge of the cotton plantations here on the islands. When we arrived last November, we disrupted the cotton harvest. And as you know, the white population of the low country fled in panic when our ships appeared in Port Royal Sound. Most of them left behind their slaves and all the possessions they could not carry.

  “Some cotton fields had been picked but not taken to market; others were still waiting for the slave crews to move through. There’s a valuable crop out there, and it’s still viable. On several plantations, the black overseers have kept the slaves at work in the fields, and I hear reports they work better when they are bossed by their own rather than by the white masters. But the sad truth is, not even the overseers know the first thing about getting the crops to market. Even if they could transport it, most southern cotton was shipped overseas to England, and those markets have been disrupted by our blockade of the southern coastline.

  “Colonel Reynolds and his staff will be moving onto these plantations in the next weeks to set up shop as cotton agents. Where necessary, they will organize work details to get the harvest picked. And they will take charge of shipping the cotton crop north to be used in our own United States cotton mills. Reynolds also has the authority to confiscate whatever he needs to get the job done. That means he well may appear here in Beaufort and take over some of the plantations we have been using for our own convenience. Once the crops are in, he is to organize the slaves to replant.”

  “Take over our plantations? That’s unfair.”

  “He can’t do that, can he?”

  “That’s not right.”

  Colonel Leasure shook his head. “That’s how important that cotton crop is to the financial stability of the United States government, gentlemen. I don’t think you want to challenge the methods by which it gets into our hands.”

  “But how is that a change for the better, Daniel? Isn’t it just exchanging one slave driver for another?” Isabel was back on the attack.

  “I hope not, my dear. Lincoln’s intention, I believe, is to turn the slaves into independent farmers. But that will take training, as you yourself have pointed out. The cotton agents will act quickly to salvage the current crop. Then they can make plans, along with the Negro overseers, to turn the plantations into self-governing smaller farms. The slaves will be given their own land, and the agents will be there to guide them as they make the transition. It could be a good thing.”

  “I’ll wait to hear how it works out,” Isabel said doubtfully.

  “You may be more excited about the other new arrivals.”

  “And they are. . .?”

  “Teachers.”

  “Really?” Isabel and Nellie both leaned forward in anticipation. “Where from?”