by James Fearn
Anna’s delighted response was immediate. Here, at last was a chance to build a future. A parcel of land, however small, was the best investment anyone could have. With it a family had security. Was not this the reason they had come to Louisiana?
‘I’ll need to take a loan of two hundred dollars, but that shouldn’t be a problem,’ said John. He had heard that there were some respectable moneylenders in Shreveport who would advance the capital to young farmers of proven diligence at quite reasonable rates.
And so it was arranged. A mortgage at 7 per cent per annum to Brown and Steele together with his own hard-earned savings enabled John to raise the purchase price and the sale was transacted. John reckoned that he would need four or five good years to be free of debt even with his work as overseer. He was still young and strong, willing to work hard. This was at last his opportunity to make good after all those years as convict and prospector. Always the optimist John thought it was worth the gamble.
Although of simple construction, the little cottage of split timbers was their own, and almost a palace in comparison with the bare canvass tent that had served as home in faraway Forest Creek. It consisted of a large rectangular space partitioned off at one end into two small bedrooms and at the other end a kitchen. A cast-iron stove with an external flue provided heat for cooking and warmth. In the cool of the winter, the house was kept at a pleasant temperature, but in the humid summer, the heat was sometimes unbearable. In springtime, the garden beds, which Anna had created and tended with care, bloomed in profusion.
The social layering of Louisiana society in the mid-nineteenth century was no more evident than amongst its women. Those of the older affluent families enjoyed a lifestyle characterised by the same self-indulgent attitudes that had infuriated John in his younger days in Sheffield. With black slaves to attend to their every whim, life had acquired an unreality based upon unbridled self-interest and petty jealousies. The affluence of these women bore little resemblance to their social value. Life for them, so it seemed, centred upon their wardrobes, bridge parties, and fashionable balls in season. Their indifference to everything but their own interests led to a snobbish aloofness, which would have done justice to the pre-revolutionary French aristocracy. Anna realised that she had no chance of breaking into this culture. It was so far removed from the poverty of her Irish childhood and the rigours of her experiences as a miner’s wife in Australia that she had no desire to do so anyway.
There were of course many exceptions. Some southern women, for instance, took an active interest in politics. The more articulate of these made speeches in support of secession and State’s rights. There were also a few who saw their affluence as a philanthropic responsibility and sought for ways to use it wisely. In Mansfield, a small group of such ladies conducted the local infirmary for black women and their children. Their good intentions, however far, outstripped their successes in hygiene and disease control.
It was among the lower class white women of Dixie that Anna felt more comfortable. Many, like her, were married to small farmers who worked as overseers on the larger plantations. Some were quite well educated and were devoted to applying their knowledge and compassion to the service of the needy. One could find many of these women engaged in the education of their own children and those of the plantation slaves. Amongst this group, a Protestant evangelical spirit spread its influence throughout the whole society.
The black women of secessionist Louisiana were, almost without exception, victims of the institution of slavery. Anna observed that many of these were forced to work as hard as their husbands and brothers in the cotton fields, hoeing, planting, harvesting, and pressing. Their self-esteem and dignity were constantly being shattered by the degrading conditions in which most of them lived, and by the abuse of white males. What really troubled Anna and John was that the marriages of those black girls were often not recognised as valid, and the Master had the legal right to sell his ‘property’ or its offspring at the market if he so desired.
Anna had also noticed that many of the slave women were intolerably offensive in their person, a knowledge of hygiene being non-existent. Indeed the southerners, in general, regarded this uncleanliness as an inherent weakness in the black races and a measure of their lack of civilisation. But disagreeable as they were in these respects, Anna was amazed to learn that the some southern white women hung their own infants on the breasts of the nursing Negresses and had one or more little black ‘pets’ sleeping like puppy dogs in their very bedchambers. Nor did such disagreeable proclivities prevent some of the white planters admitting one or two of their younger female slaves to the intimacy of their beds.
The new responsibilities of her small farm enriched Anna’s life considerably, adding to her maternal and social duties. John retained his position as overseer of Jesse’s plantation, while Anna attended to the growing and harvesting of the corn crop. Jesse had kindly enabled Molly to assist Anna when help was needed, and that liaison had grown into a strong friendship. The two spent many hours together on the farm, talking and singing as they worked.
‘What’s it like being owned by someone, Molly?’ Molly looked up with a start at Anna’s sudden question.
‘What’s it like bein’ free, Mrs Anna?’ For both women the inner feelings of the other seemed out of reach.
‘Bein’ a slave’, said Molly, ‘is like not bein’ a real person. Sometimes, Ah feel like a bird with a broken wing. Sometimes, Ah cry but Moses, ’e puts ’is big arms aroun’ me an’ Ah feel better. Ah know dat Moses cares for me. An’ Ah know God loves me. An’ you love me, don’ yer, Mrs Anna?’ Anna put down her hoe and went to Molly and, putting her arm around her, drew the black girl close to her reassuringly.
‘Being free?’ mused Anna. ‘Well, it depends what you do with your freedom. It alone doesn’t make you happy. You only feel that way when you are loved and valued by other people. There’s a lot of free people in this world who are very unhappy because no one loves them. You can be free in your spirit even though you are someone’s slave, I guess.’ Molly began to realise that white people could be respected for their love as well as their status, while Anna began to sense the pathos of the heart of the slave.
Anna spent some of her time as a helper in the local infirmary. Her experience in nursing her brothers and her neighbour’s son was being put to good use. It was in this place that Anna’s revulsion at the reality of slavery was reinforced. On her first visit to the hospital, if such the place could be called, she was appalled by the sights that confronted her. There were many older slave women there whose health and strength had been exhausted in unrelenting labour for white overlords, who perhaps even as late as yesterday had been driven mercilessly in their unpaid labour. There were those whose husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons were sweating right at that moment in producing the wealth that was to bring all of the luxuries and the comforts which alleviate suffering, not to the slaves themselves but to their owners.
Here too lay young slave women, some fearful of the coming pains of childbirth, some having recently brought their doomed offspring into the world, and others who were groaning with the anguish and bitter disappointment of miscarriages. Some were burning with the fever of malaria, others chilled and aching with rheumatism, lying upon the hard cold floor, the draughts and dampness of the atmosphere exacerbating their sufferings. Here was dirt, noise, and stench. Here was to be found every agony which humanity is capable of enduring. Here they lay like a brute beasts consumed by physical suffering, forsaken by all that is good.
Making one of the new mothers as comfortable as she could, Anna directed the duty nurse to open the shutters and began to set fire in the large fireplace at the end of the room. ‘Let it be, missus! Let be! What you lift dat wood for? You got niggers aplenty to do it,’ said the nurse.
Most of the inmates were in the same deplorable condition, the upper rooms being rather more miserable with no glazed windows. The shutter
s were kept closed to keep out the chill winds and filth, disorder and misery abounded. The floor was the only bed for some, and thin grimy rags of blankets the only covering. Anna was beginning to appreciate why the black Americans were so demoralised. Slavery had so eroded their psyche that the concept of freedom was not part of the intellectual repertoire of many of its members.
Anna became aware of this when she met Jack, the husband of one of the new mothers in the infirmary. Jack was a great flatterer, but completely devoid of physical or moral courage. ‘Tell me, Jack,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do when you get your freedom?’ A momentary glimmer of hope lit up his face, but soon disappeared like a shooting star.
He stammered, hesitated, became confused, and finally said, ‘F . . . free, missus? Why me wish to be free if Massa let me keep a pig?’ The outlawed keeping of a pig was of greater value to him than freedom. The fear of offending, even by uttering that forbidden wish and the dread of the consequences of admitting the slightest discontent with his present situation, cowed him into submission.
Anna usually felt depressed after her day at the infirmary, and was glad to work the farm on the other days of the week. The freshness of the air and the warmth of the sunshine were in such a stark contrast to the bleak atmosphere of that dreadful place. Spring was just commencing, and the young corn shoots were breaking through the soil. The beautiful carpet of green and the hope of an excellent crop gave Anna a great sense of achievement and optimism for the future of her family in Mansfield.
This blend of hope and sadness ebbed and flowed through Anna’s mind as she closed her eyes in sleep that night.
John was usually the first to wake up and to dress. But on one particular morning, early in April, after a very late-night talking politics with Jesse Godbehere, he slept a little longer than was his custom. Anxious to start her household chores early, Anna sprang out of bed and shivered in the unusually cold atmosphere. Frosts were not common in Louisiana, but, on occasions, were known in the northern part of the State. Anna glanced out of her kitchen window and then looked again in wide-eyed disbelief. With a cry of dismay, she ran to the door and out on to the veranda. Disturbed by the commotion, John dragged himself out behind her and gazed at the fields.
‘Oh, John. Look at the crop! It’s ruined!’ she cried.
John could hardly believe what he saw. Every shoot or so, it seemed was glistening with a layer of frost. They both realised immediately the significance of this quirk of the weather. Frostbitten shoots die quickly and the crop is ruined.
John put his arms around his sobbing wife. He knew how much this crop had meant to Anna who had worked so hard to raise it. The financial implications of the disaster had not escaped him either. ‘Do you know what this reminds me of, Anna? That awful drought in Victoria when nothing would grow. The people thought they would have to leave their farms, and the children went about barefoot and hungry.’
‘Don’t worry, my dear. We have each other and the children,’ said Anna trying to be positive. John accepted the blow philosophically, but Anna wept occasionally as she saw the destruction of her efforts displayed before her. She realised that a second sowing would not be likely to survive the hot midsummer sun, and the yield would be very poor indeed. Still as John thought stoically to himself, one had to learn to live with the vagaries of the weather in this business. It would take much more than this to deter them.
Since their days in Melbourne Town, John and Anna had had little opportunity to attend any church regularly. However, it was expected that all of Jesse Godbehere’s employees and slaves would practise Sunday observance, and to this end, Jesse had constructed a small chapel on his property. On the Lord’s Day, everyone put on their Sunday best, and gathered in this little house of God.
First the slaves in their colourful cotton dresses and shirts would arrive to take their places in the serried ranks of wooden pews. Some of the girls decorated their hair with fresh flowers, which made the hot, humid atmosphere of the summer months tolerable to the sensitive nose. John, Anna, and baby Anola always sat in the front pew, while Jesse conducted the service from a little wooden lectern. Mary Godbehere played a small harmonium, which squeaked and puffed disconcertingly as she strained at the foot bellows. It was not uncommon for the music to die away while the poor lady regained her breath during a particularly vigorous hymn of praise. Although few in number, the congregation sang lustily the great hymns of their faith like ‘Shall We Gather at the River’ and ‘Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit’, a great favourite with the slaves.
The Master’s homilies were long and ponderous. His favourite theme was the Second Coming, and although his audience were mostly interested in hopes of a better future when ‘every valley shall be exalted’, few could resist the soporific effects of Jesse’s unmodulated voice. Such was the state of affairs, one hot Sunday morning in July, when Jesse was in the midst of an exposition of a passage of the Revelation. Even John was struggling to keep his eyelids from closing, and Moses and Molly were dozing comfortably.
Suddenly, a shriek of surprised fear came from a little black girl sitting in the back pew with her mother. Jesse looked up from his notes with a disapproving frown on his face. ‘A rat! A rat!’ rang out from the rear rows. The women, including Anna, jumped up on to the pews and chattered, while one of the little slave boys darted hither and thither chasing the frightened rodent under the pews. Jesse called in vain for order in God’s house. But the fear and fascination for this most loathsome of God’s creatures had pushed all higher thoughts far from their minds.
The rat finally disappeared through a hole in the floor, but the chatter of excitement could not be contained. In desperation, Jesse snapped his Bible shut and stalked out of the chapel, muttering to himself. ‘Well, so much for the Revelation,’ said John as they strolled home.
‘Poor Jesse,’ said Anna. ‘He was trying so hard to teach us the scriptures.’
‘Well, I wish he was a bit quicker in getting to his points,’ replied John. ‘Perhaps we’ll arrange for a rat to appear again one Sunday,’ said John with a devilish look on his face. ‘Might liven things up a bit!’
‘Oh, John, don’t be so awful,’ chuckled Anna.
Reaching the door of their cottage, John and Anna were somewhat surprised to find it wide open. ‘I thought I’d closed the door before we left,’ said John, agitatedly. Anna stepped inside.
‘Oh no!’ she cried. ‘Look, what they’ve done!’ Whilst the couple had been at chapel, thieves had broken in and ransacked the place—furniture was upturned, cupboards and drawers opened, and the contents strewn around the bedroom. Anna went over to the chest of drawers and, to her dismay, discovered that her only possession of real value, the small gold nugget that John had given her at Forest Creek, had been taken. She burst into tears at the thought that their first home had been so violated.
John didn’t wait to comfort her, but sped off on his horse to the Sheriff’s office. Within ten minutes, a posse of horsemen had been organised. ‘There are two of ’em,’ barked the Sheriff. ‘Last reported travellin’ down the Old Post Road. If we ride across country, we might cut ’em off.’ Taking a little known track through the forest and over shallow bayous, the posse reached Pleasant Hill in thirty minutes and set up an ambush in the approaches to the township.
Slipping away from the other horsemen, John rode on into town to make inquiries about any recent robberies. To his surprise, two black riders galloped past him and came to a halt outside the little bank building. One remained mounted and looked nervously up and down the road, while the other walked quickly into the bank carrying a large green carpet bag. He wore a broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his forehead and carried a rifle at the ready.
Remembering his earlier experience in the bank heist in Van Diemen’s Land John dismounted nonchalantly and strolled into the bank just in time to hear the question, ‘What’s ’dis gold nugget worth?’ The unsuspecting
teller was weighing the nugget on his scales when John recognised it as the one he had given to Anna on the goldfields.
Without hesitation, he yelled, ‘Drop that rifle and raise your hands!’ John aimed his own rifle at the man.
‘Lie on the floor!’ ordered John. He seized the fallen rifle and tipped the contents of the bag on to the counter. As he suspected there, it was all pieces of jewellery, banknotes, and expensive-looking trinkets, the typical haul of a petty thief. Seeing that his companion had been apprehended, the accomplice outside took fright and galloped off back up the road towards Mansfield.
The Sheriff and his men by now convinced that they had missed their quarry rode on into town. They found John outside the bank with the alleged robber standing with his arms tied behind his back. John held the bag with his reclaimed possessions in his left hand and in the other his gun, which was buried in the captive’s back. ‘The other felon’s riding back towards Mansfield. Didn’t you pass him? He left just a moment ago,’ called John in exasperation. Realising that the man had slipped past them, the posse swung around and gave chase.
Half-hour later, John and the Sheriff, accompanied by the suspect, rode slowly back up the Old Post Road towards Mansfield. To their horror, just past the three-mile bayou, they came across a sickening sight. A black man stripped to the waist was lashed to a tree. His back was cut and bleeding from a recently delivered flogging.
Having caught the offender, the angry men of the Mansfield posse had dispensed a rough justice on the spot. The frontier mentality still lay just below the surface despite the veneer of culture and respectability, which clothed this southern community.
Anna’s friendship with Molly had brought her into contact with other slave women on the Mansfield plantations. Her friendly manner and her caring reputation at the infirmary had enabled Anna to build bridges into the black community in ways that few white women had been able to do. This was evident when she received an invitation to attend the funeral of the mother of one of Molly’s friends. It was held in the black section of a Mansfield cemetery.