Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  Charles watched the work of the plantation and saw the comings and goings of those who lived in the settlement. They were not only shaping through their labors the swamps and fields of the Retreat, but they were also creating with their very bodies and their activities an image of the landscape he called home. They would be—with his Uncle Joseph and Aunt Sarah, his sister Susan and cousins Joseph and Mary—inseparable from his images and experiences of the Retreat and his understanding of what it meant to be at home in its world. Of course he and his sister and cousins were not the only young ones who saw the comings and goings of those who lived in the settlement, nor was he the only young one on the plantation during these years who was exploring its fields and swamps and learning about its landscape. In the settlement Cato and Cassius, not yet old enough to be put to work, were beginning their own process of looking and seeing and interpreting life at the Retreat. And in the yard behind the plantation house, four-year-old Phoebe was beginning to develop her own understanding of what it meant to be black, and what it meant to be white, and what it meant to be the daughter of Jack, the majordomo on a low-country plantation.

  Following the Christmas holidays, 1813, Charles and Susan left the Retreat for Sunbury and for Dr. McWhir’s academy. They were beginning a period of studying in Sunbury and visiting among various relatives, with the Retreat as their home base and an anchor in their lives.17

  When they arrived in Sunbury, their Aunt Eliza was there with her children, but Sister Betsy was out on Colonel’s Island. She had married in their absence, at age seventeen, and she and her husband, William Maxwell, were living at Orange Grove Plantation at Yellow Bluff on a site that overlooked St. Catherine’s Sound. Their home was to become a second home for Charles and Susan, and in time the young couple became another set of “kind relatives” who would love and nurture the orphaned brother and sister.18

  As students of William McWhir, Charles and Susan had a teacher with high standards who pushed his students to think clearly, read widely, and speak and write persuasively. While he was himself a student of Greek and Latin, and while he hired teachers proficient in the classical languages, he had reservations about making a study of the “dead languages” the center of an educational enterprise in a young republic. This meant that Charles and Susan received what Mary Jones would later call “the rudiments of an excellent English education.” In addition to the study of mathematics and the natural sciences, recitations from famous speeches and literature, public addresses, and written essays formed much of the heart of the educational process in Sunbury.19

  A classmate of Charles’s, T. B. Smith, kept his essays written as a young teenager at Sunbury, and they reveal the questions that McWhir had his students address in compositions:

  Which is the most beneficial to his country, a warrior or a statesman?

  Which has the most influence over the mind of man, music or eloquence?

  Are theatres beneficial to a city?

  Can misfortune without the concurrence of vice ruin our happiness?

  Would it be beneficial for the United States to abolish slavery?

  Are the bad effects of war counter-balanced by the good?

  Could not the youth of the present time be more beneficially employed than at the study of the dead languages?

  The questions were intended to be provocative and to engage the students in issues of polity and economics, ethics, and aesthetics. McWhir required his students to set their responses in the context of a debate, to address the positions of an opponent, and to utilize the disciplines of rhetoric, which was understood to be the art of persuasion, in order to make a convincing case.20

  It is not known how Charles answered question five, “Would it be beneficial for the United States to abolish slavery?” Did he think, when he wrote his essay, of Lizzy and Rosetta, of Old Jupiter and those who had been at Liberty Hall, or of Jack and Sylvia and Pulaski and all those at the Retreat? Whatever Charles thought or wrote, his classmate’s essay reflected Charles’s own coming struggle with the question.

  “Slavery,” wrote young Smith, “is one of the most inhuman though at the same time the most beneficial things that ever was introduced into the United States, but more especially the Southern part.” “Liberty,” Smith insisted, “is a right inherent in all mankind, though without the assistance of African slaves, where would be our commerce?” He granted “his opponents” that “it is against all the feelings of humanity and the principles of independence to deprive our fellow men of that treasure which is their birthright. I must allow that it is a right belonging to man at his birth. Yet Gentlemen, if it is to the interest of the community, surely, it must be beneficial to the Union.” And so went his argument, acknowledging slavery to be an inhuman institution, against all the great principles of the republic, but now established and necessary for the happiness, unity, and prosperity of its white citizens.21

  Such arguments were fundamental to the white world of Liberty County and to the ethos of those who governed its black slaves. Charles grew up hearing these arguments refined and expanded in classrooms and parlors before they were presented to a wider world. And while he was hearing the arguments, he was also learning day by day about the realities of power that the arguments sought to cover and justify—that whites ruled blacks and would not tolerate any threat to their rule or authority. As he breathed deeply the air of the low country, as he came to understand this place as his home, he was also internalizing such arguments as they did their work of shaping the ways he saw the world around him. To be sure, he later resisted mightily the power of these arguments by calling on a religious tradition and alternative vision of human life. But Charles would never escape the arguments or the dispositions induced by them. His sense of what was reasonable, of what was practical, of what was humane and moral was always to find its way home to Liberty County and to its social arrangements. In this way Charles was to face in the years ahead a struggle with a history that was broader than his own and more powerful than he realized. And he was to encounter in this struggle others who were also growing up in Liberty County and who were also breathing deeply the air of the low country—but they were breathing its air as it mingled with the fires of the settlements and with the sweat of hard labor. Cato and Cassius and Phoebe and the other sons and daughters of the settlements were to have their own more bitter struggle with the history of this place and with the arguments that sought to conceal the harsh realities of a land they too called home. And in a way that Charles would never fully understand, their struggle was to be not only over the history of the low country but also over its destiny. For in the settlements a future was being imagined that was different from anything that had been seen before in Liberty County. That imagining was largely hidden from the eyes and ears of whites, but during Charles’s second year at the Sunbury Academy, he and other low-country whites caught a surprising glimpse of what that imagining might look like.

  In January 1815, Admiral Sir George Cockburn, who in a daring raid had put to the torch public buildings in Washington the previous August, ordered the British Royal Colonial Marines to land on Cumberland Island to the south of Liberty County. Cockburn did not know of Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the British at New Orleans, nor did he know that the United States and Great Britain had a few weeks earlier signed a peace agreement ending the War of 1812. What he did know when he sent the Royal Marines ashore was that the isolated plantations of the Georgia coast offered easy pickings for the British navy. What made the invasion so startling for white planters was another British admiral’s offer to free all slaves who came on board British vessels and his promise to send them to British colonies in North America and the West Indies. With Royal Marines soon on nearby St. Simons Island, Cockburn ordered his commanders to “bring back with them such negroes as may be willing to join our standard.”22

  Meanwhile, in Liberty County, the operation of the British fleet could be observed from Sunbury and Colonel’s Island. Charles and his classmates coul
d see the “smoke of merchantmen, captured, robbed, and burnt” by the British, rising from St. Catherine’s Sound and the waters south. Local defense was organized, largely under the direction of the now General Daniel Stewart. Joseph Jones was elected captain of the militia, the Liberty County Independent Troop, and led this cavalry south to Darien to face the Royal Marines should they attempt to take the town. Jupiter, the son of Old Jupiter from Liberty Hall, went with him as his body servant.23

  On the islands the marines were spreading the news that freedom awaited all who wished to leave slavery and board the British ships. At Cannon’s Point plantation on St. Simons, the British offer was received with some skepticism. The plantation owner John Couper had a reputation for treating his slaves kindly and made his appeal for them to stay. But more persuasive were the warnings of the driver Tom, “a devout Mohammedan from the village of Silla on the Niger in the Foolah nation,” who was “held in awe by his fellow slaves.” He had been a slave in the British West Indies, and he warned that life was much better on St. Simons than in the cane fields of Jamaica or Barbados. Half of the Couper slaves who were headed to the ships turned around and remained, while sixty took their chances for freedom with the British.24

  Roswell King, Sr., the Yankee manager of the large Pierce Butler holdings on St. Simons and the Altamaha River, wrote to Butler in Philadelphia of his attempts to persuade his slaves to reject the British offer:

  I tried to reason with some of the most sensible of the Negroes not to be so foolish and deluded as to leave their comfortable homes and go into a strange country where they would be separated, and probably not half live the year out. I found none of the negroes insolent to me, they appeared sorry, solemn, and often crying, they appeared to be infatuated to a degree of madness. While endeavouring to reason them out of their folly, some said they must follow their daughters, others their wives. I found my reasoning had no effect on a set of stupid negroes, half intoxicated with liquor and nothing to do but think their happy days had come. Five old negroes went off that had no work to do only for themselves for these four to fifteen years past. Many others started but were obliged to return finding they were not able to walk to headquarters (Frederica) about 7 miles. Many went off and left their children, others carried off children from their parents and all relations, some left their wives and others their husbands.25

  In spite of Roswell King’s appeal, 138 Butler slaves went over to the British to be settled in Nova Scotia. King, who was well known as a skilled and successful manager, was furious over the decision of so many to seek their freedom. From his perspective they had been treated kindly and had shown a gross betrayal and deep ingratitude by choosing the British offer of freedom. He could explain it only by their “madness” and “folly,” by their being “stupid negroes, half intoxicated with liquor.” But in the midst of all his rage and ranting, he indicated that he had some awareness of what was happening when he noted they “think their happy day has come.”26

  The flight of slaves to the British was a clear warning to the white planters of the low country that their slaves might envision a different future for themselves than one of continued servitude. Young Charles would remember what happened in 1815, as would his future neighbor and friend Roswell King, Jr. Such a memory would be in great tension with Charles’s emerging view of home. If the Royal Marines had come to the Retreat, what would have happened? Would Lizzy and Rosetta, Jack and Sylvia, Hamlet and Elvira, and all the others who made up such an important part of his home—would they have accepted the offer of freedom and abandon their white owners?

  Of course there were other signs besides the arrival of the British that those who lived in the settlements were not content with their place in the low-country landscape. Some signs, such as running away, were clear for all who had eyes to see. But in Liberty County there were signs that were not so visible to white eyes, that were camouflaged within the familiar landscape of the low country, and that pointed to a daily struggle for greater independence and a different future. Those signs were embedded in the settlements themselves and in the distinct community and culture being created by the African Americans of the low country.

  5

  CARLAWTER

  When Joseph Jones moved the men, women, and children from the settlement at Liberty Hall into the settlement at the Retreat, he had solved the immediate problem of what to do with them after the sale of his brother’s plantation. They had simply become a part of those who cleared the ground, plowed the fields, and harvested the crops at the Retreat. The fruits of their labors, mixed with those from Pulaski’s teams, provided for the maintenance of his nephew Charles and niece Susan.1 The arrangement worked reasonably well for Joseph as the children’s guardian, but it was not a very precise financial settlement of his sister-in-law’s estate, and Joseph liked to be precise in such matters. The situation was further complicated with the return of Eliza Robarts to Liberty County. As her brother and protector, how was he best to manage her slaves and financial affairs? To address these problems, Joseph decided to purchase a plantation whose character and size would make for an easier management of both the children’s and his sister’s slaves and finances. The arrival of the British fleet off the coast of Georgia, and Joseph’s military responsibilities as captain of the Liberty Independent Troop, delayed him for several years, but in November 1816 he purchased the first of three tracts of lands for Eliza, Charles, and Susan.

  Carlawter contained 355 acres and lay on the south bank of the North Newport River, about a mile downstream from Riceboro. Its previous owners had given the tract its name, a clever combination, they no doubt thought, of two family names—Carter and Law. The tract was L-shaped, with one leg running south from the riverbank and the other running east. A settlement was on the place, but no plantation house. On 26 November 1816 Joseph Jones paid $2,000 for the tract—an indication that this was good land—and deeded one half to his sister Eliza and one half to Charles and Susan. Two weeks later he bought the neighboring Cooper tract for $1,000 and also deeded half to Eliza and half to Charles and Susan. This 399½-acre tract ran straight south from the riverbank and bordered the eastern leg of Carlawter. It had neither plantation house nor settlement, but it did contain good bottomland by the river and rich cotton land in its southern section. Between Carlawter and Cooper, in the empty part of the Carlawter L, lay the 202-acre Lambright tract that was also known as Montevideo for a gentle rise above the river. Joseph had to negotiate for several years before he was successful in securing this tract, but in February 1819 he paid $1,900 and once again deeded half to his sister and half to his nephew and niece. The tract contained no settlement, but it did have rich soil, and on its gentle rise there was a grand site for a future plantation house.2

  By skillfully combining these three tracts, Joseph created a plantation of 956½ acres capable of producing fine crops of Sea Island cotton, rice, and provisions. In the years ahead, the plantation came to be known simply as Montevideo, but the individual tracts of Carlawter, Lambright, and Cooper retained their names as designated areas within the plantation. Of particular significance for the whole plantation, for its physical and social landscape, was a river swamp with huge live oaks, cypresses, and sweet gums. The swamp stretched along the entire riverfront of the plantation and sent a wide arm up a slough that separated Carlawter from Montevideo. This swampy arm would provide an ideal location for rice production and, in its drained upper sections, for cotton fields. It also served as a physical divider between the two tracts and as a reminder of the gulf between those who lived in the settlement at Carlawter and those who were to live in the plantation house that one day would be built at Montevideo.3

  Joseph did not wait until he had completed the purchases of the three tracts before he moved the people to Carlawter. He put the young carpenter Sandy to work repairing the houses at the settlement. When all was in order, Joseph ordered the oxcarts loaded, and the slaves of Charles and Susan were sent out from the Retreat to join the
slaves of Eliza Robarts at their new home by the waters of the North Newport.4

  Jupiter, the oldest son of Old Jupiter from Liberty Hall, followed in his father’s footsteps and was made the driver. He was already fifty-seven when he arrived at Carlawter in 1817, well on his way to becoming the Old Jupiter of a new generation. Because he had no sons, his younger brother Hamlet was his right-hand man and was waiting in the wings for his turn as driver. At the time of the move to Carlawter, Hamlet was fifty-two and Elvira was in her mid-twenties. They brought with them not only their four-year-old Syphax but also a little girl, their daughter Peggy, born in 1815. Old Jupiter of Liberty Hall had clearly been successful in passing on to his sons the skills and prestige of the driver’s position.5

  The move to Carlawter meant another reunion for Lizzy and Robinson. He had gone to Sunbury with the Robartses when Lizzy had gone to the Retreat, and he had had to make the long trips on Saturdays to his “wife house.” Sometime during this period of weekday separations, Robinson had been struck with smallpox. He evidently had been quickly isolated, and the contagion had not been spread widely in the community, but he had been left with pockmarks that disfigured his face and an immunity that was to make him a valuable nurse when the disease again struck the county.6

  At the time Lizzy and Robinson were united at Carlawter, they were expecting their fifth child. Lymus and Cato had been born at Liberty Hall, Cassius in Greensboro, and their three-year-old daughter Sina at the Retreat. Shortly after their move to Carlawter, their son Porter was born. Another healthy and strong child, he was destined, like his brothers Cato and Cassius, to make his own distinctive mark within the Gullah-speaking community of Liberty County.7