All That She Carried

by Tiya Miles

  One formerly enslaved man from North Carolina, Moses Grandy, recalled how his mother had lost multiple children to death or sale before he, the youngest, was born: “I remember well my mother often hid us all in the woods, to prevent master selling us.”15 Another mother struck awe into members of her enslaved community when she escaped to live in the woods for two to four years with her children. “She had been cruelly treated and run away with her children…seeking shelter under the ground. There another child was born to her,” a formerly enslaved woman from Alabama recounted.16 Fannie, an enslaved mother in Tennessee whose story we will learn more about in the next chapter, threatened to kill her infant rather than be separated from the child. Fannie’s older daughter, Puss, recalled that her mother and father had been hired out to Memphis. When the master ordered Fannie to leave her baby behind, Puss reported: “At this, ma took the baby by its feet, a foot in each hand, and with the baby’s head swinging downward, she vowed to smash its brains out before she’d leave it. Tears were streaming down her face…and everyone knew that she meant every word.” After this breathtaking threat of an infanticide that she knew would decrease her owners’ wealth, Fannie was permitted to take her baby when her owner sent her to work in the city.17

  Other enslaved mothers were not so fortunate as Fannie, if “fortunate” is ever a word safely used in conjunction with slavery. Rescuing one’s child could mean, as in the case of Margaret Garner, who killed her toddler daughter when the slave catcher pounded at the door to retake them, a present death in exchange for the dream of an afterlife of freedom.18 And enslaved mothers did not go psychologically unscathed by the violence and separations that daily confronted them. One woman who had been enslaved in Virginia remembered, simply: “My mother nearly died when they sold my sister.”19 At times, mothers perceived frightening or beating their children as forms of protection and rescue. Lewis Hayden, who would become a key abolitionist organizer in Boston following his escape from slavery in Kentucky, recalled his mother’s mental distress and the fear she instilled in him. Hayden describes his mother as a woman of “high spirit…part Indian” with “long, straight black hair.” His mother attempted suicide multiple times and would fall into fits, during which she fixated on the children from whom she had been separated. Jailed for her unpredictable and dangerous behavior, Hayden’s mother was released once and went immediately to find her seven-year-old son. “She sprung and caught my arms, and seemed going to break them,” Hayden recollected. She “then said, ‘I’ll fix you so they’ll never get to you!’ I screamed, for I thought she was going to kill me; they came in and took me away.”20 One formerly enslaved woman painfully recalled how her mother beat her in the same sadistic way that her mother had been abused by whites. “She would make me thank her for whipping me….That was the way they wanted her to do in slavery.”21 Fannie, who swore to kill her own infant rather than be separated from the child, threatened her older daughter, Puss: “I’ll kill you, gal, if you don’t stand up for youself.” Puss was both terrified and in awe of this mother, whom she described as a “demon” and a “captain,” with smarts “as quick as a flash of lightning.”22 The scars Black mothers bore and sometimes inflicted on their children as a reaction to and defense against captivity were prominent topographical features of the shadowland.23

  Mothers schemed silently and sometimes with the aid of others to “rescue their families, and especially their daughters” in the best ways they knew how.24 Black mothers cherished and feared for their sons, just as their sons adored them. There is no question of this in the emotionally wrought stories of parting described by men who had been sold from their mothers as boys in slavery. When Charles Whiteside was ninety-three, he still remembered viscerally the day his mother was sold in Tennessee, and the “something fierce [that] burned in his heart when he saw the planters who had come to buy, pushing her and looking into her mouth as though she were a horse.”25 But daughters, “ties to life” who could also create new life that accrued to the credit side of an owner’s balance sheets, were exposed in ways routine and systematic, sexual as well as physical and psychological.26 Because of their value as producers of pleasure and of labor (in the form of staple crops as well as slave babies), unfree daughters suffered the most intimate of horrors and humiliations.27 Enslaved mothers knew that daughters required special protection, creatively fierce defenses that circumvented the laws and customs of a slaving society. So Black women prayed and appealed to forces both divine and terrestrial and, when they had the social connections and the means, “made a special habit of buying and manumitting their daughters.”28

  When enslaved mothers could not prevent the theft of daughters, they pursued reunion against the odds of missing information and crushing distance. A rare letter written or dictated by an enslaved woman in North Carolina gives us a glimpse into these desperate reunification efforts prior to the end of the Civil War, when, according to a South Carolina Freedmen’s Bureau agent, “every mother [seemed to be] in search of her children.”29 Writing in 1857, a woman named Vilet wrote to her former mistress seeking knowledge about the whereabouts of her daughter. Vilet had changed hands at least three times over the course of nearly eleven months while being sold from North Carolina to Georgia. At her final place of captivity, Vilet was owned by a man who had held her for four years and, she disclosed in the missive, “says that he will keep me til death Siperates us.” The language Vilet attributes to her new owner, “a man by the name of Lester,” rings with the uncanny trills of wedding vows in a context dark with sexual exploitation. Despite—or perhaps because of—her trials, Vilet is writing her former mistress, Patsey Patterson, to achieve an end. She adopts a tone both respectful and affectionate, calling her mistress “My Loving Miss Patsy” and mentioning times the two spent together as “play mate[s]” (likely childhood years when Vilet acted as a servant and companion to Patsey). Vilet’s letter meanders as she tells her “Dear Mistress” how desirous she is of seeing her, as well as the mistress’s mother. Vilet expresses her longing to see her own mother and inquires after others who had not been sold. Then Vilet fishtails into her last and central point, the clear intention of this purposeful letter. “I wish to [k]now what has Ever become of my Presus little girl,” Vilet pleads. “I left her in goldsborough with Mr. Walker….I do wish to see her very much and Boss [her current owner] Says he wishes to [k]now whether he will Sell her.”30

  Vilet’s report about this separation makes it appear as though she had some choice in leaving her child behind, when the account she opens her letter with suggests the opposite—that she had suffered a harrowing chain of exchange among traders and owners after being sold by her mistress, with her daughter likely taken along the way. Her precious girl, the last Vilet knew, was slated to go to the sister of an unnamed trader who had handled them. Now that she was situated with an enslaver who intended to keep her (for reasons we should question), Vilet sought information and help from the mistress who had known her at the “Long Loved home.” Vilet had managed to convince her current owner to buy the girl, through, we can guess, a sacrifice related to her condition. Vilet’s is one of the few letters in existence attesting to the feelings and strategies of enslaved women in real time rather than in retrospect. The sentimental language of the letter was likely intended to draw Vilet’s former mistress into a sympathetic act. This letter stands alone in the historical record, as perhaps “Presus little girl” stood alone in her new place of servitude. The archive contains no indication of how this story ends. Vilet’s love for this particular child was hers alone, as was the pain of losing her, but she shared with other unfree mothers the determination to save a daughter and the ever-present sense of mourning when efforts failed.31

  Did Rose devise similarly inventive methods in an attempt to rescue Ashley?32 Did she set in motion elaborate escape or purchase schemes before the day of final parting? Enslaved people who were hired out sometimes saved earned funds to purchase their o
wn freedom or the freedom of a loved one. However, such efforts required years of overwork while putting aside small amounts from earnings of typically less than a dollar a day, the majority of which went to one’s owner. In addition, bids to purchase freedom sometimes ended in the enslaved person being betrayed or defrauded.33

  Even if Rose was hired out and could save enough to buy Ashley for the price of $300, where could she have sent a lone Black child for protection? Rose would have had to earn at least $1,000 in order to free her child and herself in hope of having a life together. This price was astronomical and nearly impossible for a woman like Rose to raise in the 1850s, and, even if she could get the money, the successful negotiation of manumission was not guaranteed. South Carolina had regulated manumission since 1800 and had tightened those regulations in 1820 such that an owner had to seek approval from the state legislature in order to free a slave. Among the relatively few Black women in Charleston who did achieve freedom for themselves and their daughters after 1800, associations with white men, often sex partners and fathers of the enslaved, facilitated that outcome.34 If Rose could not purchase liberty, would she have tried to escape on foot with a nine-year-old? Most unfree people did not have opportunity to run, and very few of those who tried would ever make it to freedom. Long-term escapes were extremely hazardous and, therefore rare in a society where unfree people were intensively surveilled, policed, and punished. As one historian of slavery and capitalism concluded: “The number of enslaved migrants who made it from the depths of the cotton and sugar frontiers all the way to the free states probably numbered under a thousand during all the years of slavery. That amounts to one-tenth of 1 percent of all forced migrants.”35

  Ruth’s stitched record does not address whether Rose ever attempted to buy or take her family’s freedom. What we do know from the sewn account is that Rose responded with a practical tactic driven by a sense of higher purpose. She gathered items to provide for her daughter’s basic needs in the temporary time of the present and the possible time of the future. By sustaining her daughter’s life in the now, she forged a pathway for Ashley’s longer-term survival. And setting her daughter down that path was a projection of continuation, both for Ashley herself and for the kin from whence Rose came. In packing the sack, Rose rescued not only a single beloved girl but also the persistence of a family.

  Rose’s packing highlights an essential element of enslaved women’s experience. Black women were creators, constantly making the slate of things necessary to sustain the life of the family, “one of the supreme social achievements of African-Americans under conditions of enslavement.” These made things included clothing, brooms, quilts, meals, medicines, and an array of mementos, like buttons and beads, that might one day be pressed into the palm of a parting loved one’s hand. Black women fashioned and gathered these things into emotional nets that affirmed their love for self and others, channeling visions of perseverance through the work of their thoughts and hands, often at their own risk.36 As Alice Walker illuminated decades ago in stories and essays, Black women of past generations poured their souls and creative energies into the things they made and the plants they grew. Searching for our mothers’ things, the gardens and garments of their eras, can yield a sense not only of their experience but also of their strategies for surviving the shadowland, while “bind[ing] blood-relations in a network of feeling, of continuity.”37

  One day when Rose cast her gaze about the Martins’ brick kitchen in the city, or perhaps their plantation storehouse in the country, she decided she would repurpose a sack as a parachute. It would tie together mother and child while gently lowering that child down to a new and dangerous patch of ground. We can imagine her sable fingers drawing open the lip of the sack, see her staring into a bottomless well of trepidations. Was the sack empty when Rose first grabbed it for this purpose? Or was it in use as a storage container for seeds or nuts, like the handfuls of pecans Ruth said it would later carry? Perhaps Rose had to turn the cotton bag upside down, scattering husks, shells, or debris in order to make room to refill it. Picture her by a candle’s light. She holds the rough cloth in rougher hands. She tucks a dress around the nuts, then lifts a knife. In one swift slice, she harvests a braid, laying claim to the very body that her deceased master and living mistress would have called their property. As we watch her hands fall away from her hair, we know that one more thing has yet to be packed. “My love,” Rose whispers in our mind’s ear, cinching the sack shut.

  OBJECTS EMPOWERED

  As Rose packed the cotton seed sack with things and words, she drew on all of her resources. The specific mix of items enclosed may have been unique to Rose, but the logic of the need to prepare was shared by her fellow enslaved. Others also packed a bag or had a bag packed for them, in frenzied moments of departure. When one girl of around eleven who had already lost her mother and sister ran into the woods to avoid her own relocation, it was her aunt who explained that she must go with the new owner and, the speaker recalled, “tied my clothes up in a bundle.”38 Jane Clark was raised in the home of her maternal grandmother until, at age six or seven, Jane was “taken in payment of a debt.” The girl was hired out and labored “with two other children, to bring water a long distance from a spring for culinary purposes for all on the plantation.” As a young woman, Jane became a cook back on her owner’s farm. There she experienced multiple whippings and “scenes of severity” that made her “determined to escape or die in the attempt.” While keeping a close eye on her master and mistress’s daily routine, Jane packed two pillowcases with “such things as she could take with her.” She “dropped her bundles out of the window” while her owners sipped their tea, and fled “carrying both bundles on her head.” Jane made good her escape to New York after months on the run, with the aid of her enslaved brother as well as white and Black helpers on the “underground railway.”39

  Miles Brewton House, back stairs, n.d. By Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (American, 1876–1958). This photograph of an unnamed Black servant at the rear of a Charleston manor house may help us picture Rose in similar environs. Image courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art.

  Like these women, and they like her, Rose took a planful step. She packed a bag to aid in an unpredictable journey. It is rare that we get to peer inside one of the hastily prepared bundles that sold or escaping enslaved people grasped in times of sudden change. Rose’s bag, enhanced by her great-granddaughter’s inscription, allows us an illuminating visibility. Each item Rose packed for so significant a parting was both essential and versatile. The tattered dress, listed first, could protect a body from exposure and shield an enslaved girl’s inner dignity. What is more, a different item of clothing, such as a dress an individual had not yet worn, could also function as a costume, altering that person’s external identity and thereby aiding escape. (This is why many accounts of enslaved people who took their own freedom include cross-gender dressing or wearing someone else’s clothes.) The dress Rose packed also had another potential function, as fabric stored wealth, especially for women, who used cloth as currency or a trade good.40 Although Rose seems to have packed a shredded dress most valuable for its personal meaning, she must also have recognized that Ashley could repurpose the fabric or trade it. Next Rose packed pecans, a concentrated energy source and a specialty food in the 1850s Lowcountry that Ashley could have eaten to stave off hunger or bartered for another necessity. Rose also tucked a lock of her own hair into the bag, the most unusual element of her care package. While hair seems at first a whimsy in an emergency bag such as this, it may be the most potent item, symbolically and even spiritually, that Rose packed that day. For hair may offer a glimpse into Rose’s beliefs about spirit power, transcendent connection, and the importance of carrying on a sense of lineage.

  Rose’s packing priorities—clothing, food, and a token of memory—mirrored the material agendas of other enslaved people as reflected in letters, narratives, and plantation store l
edgers. Her packing also revealed a collective hierarchy of human need. Food was included. Clothing was there. Only physical shelter was missing. Or was it? The sack itself, over two feet long and more than one foot wide, notably large enough for a young child to partially crawl into, could have served as a tented covering, a pillow, a blanket, or a sleeping bag along the road of Ashley’s forced journey. And more than this, Rose transferred another kind of protective structure through her parting words. The emotional shelter of love eternal would travel with Ashley inside the sack. Fitted to a range of needs—physical, emotional, and spiritual—Rose’s kit was ingenious.

  A gift is never given without anticipation—indeed, expectation—of the recipient’s response. The giver predicts and hopes for a desired reaction, as small as a thank-you note or as large as a promise of marriage. Sometimes this aspect of gift giving can take manipulative forms and poison the well of right relations. Examples are plentiful in the records of slavery—when, for instance, enslavers parceled out extra food on Christmas Day or bestowed “gay” gifts of cloth to mandate enslaved people’s gratitude and mold their behavior. When we give, we often want, or even demand, something in return. What did Rose demand of her daughter, in their last meeting on this earth? What did Rose hope her bestowal of food, clothing, and shelter would give rise to? Rose had a vision for her daughter after the amputation of sale; she held out a hope for Ashley’s survival. Although a disintegrating dress could not endure for long, and three handfuls of nuts might be devoured in one hungry sitting, Rose communicated a message through this special collection of things. Ashley could carry on in the light of love and connection. With the sack as her lifeline, she could persist.