Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  The two men left the next day. Charles was still undecided about the direction of his life or how he could reconcile the moral and spiritual conflict of his heart. On the boat trip Ross gave Charles an account of Jackson’s victory at the battle of Horseshoe Bend and, no doubt, told how the Cherokees had played a role in Jackson’s defeat of their ancient rivals the Creeks. Charles and Ross parted in Philadelphia never to see each other again, but Charles had ample opportunity in the future to think about Ross and his efforts to save the Cherokees from a looming tragedy.33

  Back in Princeton, one thing seemed certain to Charles—his love for Mary and his happy anticipation of their approaching marriage. “I ask from you,” he wrote Mary, “indulgence for my numerous defects of character, your earnest prayers, and your affectionate reproofs. Remember that you have but a frail, imperfect man. Expect to see faults, expect to meet trials. All my hopes of whatever happiness is to be found in this vale of tears in the closest bonds of friendship and love are lodged in you.” As he prepared to leave Princeton, he assured her “that my affection for you is unabated; that I look forward to our union as the happiest event of my life, leaving out divine things, and that it is my desire and will be my delight and labour to make you a tender and affectionate husband, and do every thing in my power consistent with my higher duties to God, to make you comfortable, and to meet your desires.”34

  Twelve days later he wrote her about his decision and the plan he wished to pursue. He would attempt on his return home to introduce into Liberty County a system of oral religious instruction “for our poor degraded slaves, and thus if the plan succeeds and God opens a door to me, to devote my life to missionary labours among them.” He wondered what Mary thought of the plan. “You perceive at once,” he said, “that it will be somewhat unpopular, and may excite against me much opposition and that I shall need great judgment and prudence…. You will therefore take care of this letter and keep to yourself this plan of mine and let me have as early as possible your own views and opinions of it, and of its probable success.”35

  And so Charles made his decision. During the preceding months he had struggled with the divided self of a young man’s conscience. He had found his conscience both bound and free—bound by a love of his Liberty County home, bound by all the attachments of the place of his birth and the pull of family and friends, and bound too by the long cultural history that he had inherited and that justified human slavery. But he knew and believed his conscience to be also free—free to decide against home as a remembered and loved place, free to claim a modern homelessness and a broad attachment to an ideal of justice. This claim for freedom was central to his theology and was to be at the heart of much of his mission work and his evangelical appeal to family and slaves.

  Charles knew too that his own bondage was in some deep sense linked to the concrete bondage of slaves. What was for him a moral dilemma and spiritual crisis was for Cato and Phoebe, for Rosetta and Sam, and for all who lived in the scattered settlements of the South a bitter struggle of daily life. With the rising of the sun each day, these sons and daughters of Africa knew only too well the bondage of a long cultural history and the struggle for freedom within that history. “How often do I think,” Charles had written Mary the year before, “of the number of hands employed to furnish me with those conveniences of life of which they are in consequence deprived—how many intellects, how many souls perhaps, withered and blasted forever for this very purpose!” Their cruel bondage had seemed to him to cast a net over both the enslaved and the enslavers. “What I would not give,” he cried, “if our family were not freed of this property and removed beyond its influence!”36

  Charles’s decision to return to Liberty County as a missionary and reformer thus seemed to him one way to negotiate between duty and home, between the bondage of place and its cultural heritage that he felt so keenly and the claims of freedom. A program of mission and reform of the system of slavery, he was convinced, could help to meet the real needs of slaves and, because it would not challenge the foundations of slavery, it also had the possibility of receiving the approbation of the whites. Charles, of course, did not think he was trying to serve two masters, that he was somehow succumbing to a “disinclination” of the will by avoiding a decision for either freedom or bondage. Rather, he thought and he prayed that he was making a decision that bridged the tensions of his psyche and that allowed him to follow a path of faithfulness both to his Christian duty and to the loving home he had been given. What he did not foresee as an earnest young man were the ways his decision would lead him slowly and steadily away from the cause of freedom to the side of bondage.

  9

  SOLITUDE

  While Charles had been struggling in the North with the issues of slavery and his vocational decision, wedding preparations were proceeding at the Retreat. Mary was the apple of her father’s eye, and Joseph had kept a number of slaves busy for months painting and repairing the house and making it ready for the wedding of his oldest daughter. Among those who worked on the house was Sandy Jones, the carpenter who as a young man had been an apprentice to Jacob at Liberty Hall. The year before he had had his own wedding to none other than young Phoebe. Their marriage had been a prize for both of them. For Phoebe, Sandy represented the security of an older husband who, as a skilled carpenter, was one of the most respected members of the settlement. Saturdays were free days for him, and he could work for nearby planters or for merchants in Rice-boro and keep his wages. And on his side, Sandy had in Phoebe a young wife who was not only winsome and strong but also the influential daughter of Jack. Their wedding had been a simple affair in the settlement. Since Sandy was a church member, old Sharper performed the service. In July 1830, while Mary Jones was away visiting the Spaldings on Sapelo Island, Phoebe had given birth to their son John.1

  The wedding of Charles and Mary was, in its own way, also simple but of course of a different order from one in the settlement. Elizabeth Jones had the responsibility of seeing that the Retreat was decorated for her stepdaughter’s wedding. Smilax vines with long bronze leaves and bright berries were gathered from the nearby woods and woven into garlands around the railings of the piazza and strung over doorways and over pictures in the drawing room and parlor. Winter-blooming camellias were floated in glass bowls and arranged on tables, while the mantles were covered with magnolia leaves—large, shiny, and dark green—mixed with the red berries of low-country hollies. And everywhere candles were placed to cast their soft light. Some had been bought in Savannah and others made on the plantation from beeswax and the fragrant wax myrtles that grew in thick profusion along the edges of Bulltown swamp and by the marshes of the South Newport.

  In the kitchen in back of the Retreat, Mom Sylvia directed the preparations of the wedding dinner: beef, venison, and wild ducks, oyster pies and glazed hams, a sweet and creamy syllabub, puddings and jellies, and breads and cakes—all had to be prepared in a timely fashion, and Jack had to see that they were arranged on the tables and sideboards as directed by his mistress.2

  William McWhir performed the service on the evening of 21 December 1830 in the drawing room where Charles and Mary had become engaged. The night was cold and misty. Years later Charles wrote his son: “We dined at Henry’s on Friday, the thirtieth anniversary of our wedding day (nearly a generation), and in the same house we were married. It was easy to recall the past and paint in memory the cheerful scenes of the wedding day and evening. I saw the figures, the countenances, the dress, the smiles, and heard the conversation, and saw myself and your mother too, and the wedding party (but four in number), and our venerable friend performing the ceremony, the supper and all things else—a bright and pleasing vision.”3

  The young couple made their home at Solitude, a plantation home on the North Newport near Carlawter rented for them by Joseph. It was a quiet and secluded place, not too far from family and friends but far enough—an idyllic spot, full of natural, simple charm and with the space and privacy for a couple who
had spent so much time apart to be alone together in all the intensity of their love. But with them, of course, were Phoebe and her family, and Lizzy, now growing old, who came from Carlawter to see about the cooking, and Phoebe’s young cousin Patience, who came from the Retreat to help in the kitchen and learn the ways of a plantation cook.4

  Charles and Mary, however, were not together at Solitude ten days before their honeymoon was interrupted with frightening news—Mary’s brother Joseph Maybank Jones was dangerously ill. He had left the Retreat a few days after the wedding and had been on his way to Milledgeville, the state capital, when he had been struck with a violent illness at a wayside tavern. Charles and Joseph rushed to him, but it took two days in the gig driving Joseph’s horse Wilberforce as hard as he could go. They found him deathly sick with pneumonia. They took immediate charge of him, and a doctor was summoned from a nearby town, but young Joseph grew worse. “He complained of intense heat, which was wholly internal, and expressed the intensity of his suffering by comparing it to the ‘torments of the damned.’” They used a fan to cool him. He cried: “‘My life depends on the fan—fan me, fan, fan me.’” He began to pray that God would “smooth his passage to the grave.” Charles and Joseph wept as they watched him die in agony, Charles sustained by his Christian faith, Joseph sustained by his stoicism. “Father,” wrote Charles, “commanded his feelings astonishingly.” They took the body home to the Retreat and buried him beside his mother, Mary Maybank, and his stepmother, Sarah Anderson, and among all the children who now slept in the cemetery behind the house.5

  And so the marriage of Charles and Mary, which had begun with such joy, was quickly surrounded with sorrow in the death of one whom they loved and with whom they so closely identified. It was for them a reminder of what Charles had written Mary earlier: “Let us be warned. Earth is not our home. Our affections must be in heaven.”6

  The death of Joseph Maybank Jones—he was a year older than Charles—intensified for Charles and Mary their sense that their time together was a gift. So even in their sorrow they delighted in being together and in the beauty of the world around them. A few years later, on their wedding anniversary, Charles remembered this “springtime of our love” and wrote Mary of the early days at Solitude:

  In wintery morn, with deer and gun

  We walked in fields and leafy woods

  Or drove along the level roads.

  An evening fire our chamber warmed,

  With books and work our circle formed,

  Most pleased of all to be alone

  Most pleased to feel that we were one.7

  These quiet days together provided time for them to talk about their hopes for the future and to discuss in detail Charles’s plans for his missionary labors among the slaves of Liberty County. On visits around the county Charles began to talk discreetly about his proposals—at first with William Maxwell and Joseph and then with Robert Quarterman, the minister at Midway, and with other friends and family. Some encouraged him, but many thought working among the slaves would be a waste of his time, and others wondered whether such work would undermine discipline on the plantations. Some in the county were openly hostile to his proposals, but they were not influential enough to stop the discussion. Charles, after all, was Charles Jones, and Joseph was not only his uncle but also his father-in-law; besides, there was a host of other powerful relatives who would at least stand with him if he wanted to try an experiment, even a foolish one, in the religious instruction of slaves. What must have eased some minds was the fact that Charles was not only a Jones but also a slaveholder, and with his marriage to Mary he had become a slaveholder of some substance.8

  Mary, as a surviving child of Sarah Anderson, was entitled to one third of her mother’s slaves, together “with the issue and increase of the female slaves.” The thirty-eight slaves that Sarah Anderson had brought in 1806 to her marriage with Joseph had grown, through the children of the female slaves, to sixty-five by 1831. William Maxwell and Andrew Maybank appraised these sixty-five men, women, and children in early 1831. From among their number, the appraisers selected twenty-two for Mary Jones.9

  Phoebe was, of course, among those selected, together with her two children, Clarissa and John. Her father, Jack, was included, as was his brother Robin, Robin’s wife, Lizzy, and their children Elsey, Stepney, and young Patience, the apprentice in the kitchen. Forty-year-old Flora and her eight children and one grandchild were picked to go with Mary, as were Tony, Little Caesar, and Adam. Sandy Jones, with his apprentice Syphax (the son of Hamlet and Elvira), had responsibility for constructing the new houses at Carlawter.10

  Those who were sent to Carlawter from the Retreat moved into a settlement of relatives and former residents of the Retreat. Hamlet had taken over from his brother Jupiter the position of driver, and he now had responsibility for managing the work of more than sixty slaves. Charles hired Strong Ashmore, a neighbor whose father had a store in Riceboro, to be the white overseer and to visit Carlawter on a regular basis.11 So Charles, in addition to having influential family connections, was known throughout the county as the owner of many slaves.

  What was needed, Charles had told Mary, was a cautious, prudent approach to the question of slavery. He was convinced this was the only way any real progress could be made in addressing the great curse of slavery and in bringing salvation to those “held in the grossest bondage, and with the highest injustice.”12 Charles knew the low country too well; it was too much a part of his heart, too deeply ingrained in his manners for there to be any questions on this point: if he wanted to work in the South among the slaves, he had to use not only the wisdom of Solomon but all his knowledge of southern manners, all his family connections, and all of his prestige as a slaveholder to win the necessary approval of the white planters.

  What he proposed was the formation among Liberty County planters of a voluntary association for the religious instruction of slaves. Such a plan had proved itself in other reforms—there was a voluntary society for almost every ill in the nation—but it was a plan that had to be sold to the planters. They might have Puritan ancestry, but they lived along Georgia rivers and by Georgia swamps and not in Boston or New Haven. They had formed a Temperance Society and a Library Society and an Education Society, and they had a Domestic Missionary Society at Midway, but they had no Lyman Beecher or Catharine Beecher among them, much less a Gurley or Lundy or a young William Lloyd Garrison. No, they were well educated and widely traveled southern planters with broad interests and concerns, but they were still southern planters, first and foremost southern planters. What more prudent and cautious approach, then, than to get friends and family together and make a proposal? This was precisely what Charles did.13

  A small preliminary meeting was held in early March, and plans were made for a general meeting later in the month. Robert Quarterman, pastor at Midway (no one could accuse him of anything radical or rash!) joined Charles in issuing the invitations. At the end of March the planters gathered at the little courthouse in Riceboro. Charles, together with the others going into the courthouse, had to cross a sandy yard shaded by live oaks and long grieving wisps of Spanish moss, the very place where slaves regularly stood to be auctioned. Twenty-nine planters came. They represented not only the wealth and leadership of the community but also some of the most distinguished southern families. James Stevens Bullock, planter and president of the United States Bank in Savannah, crossed the yard to the meeting. His grandfather had been the first president of the Provincial Congress of Georgia, and Bullock was soon to marry Senator Elliot’s widow and thereby link himself to the Jones clan through their Stewart connections. Bullock’s brother-in-law John Dunwody came from his Arcadia plantation near Midway. A graduate of Yale and a leader in the Midway congregation, he was called “Cousin John” by Charles, in the southern manner of reaching out and claiming relatives hidden in the mysteries of genealogy. Odingsell Hart, the wealthy brother-in-law of Joseph Jones, made the trip from his plantation on the Medway Rive
r. Barrington King, brother to Roswell, Jr., and a handsome, energetic young man, arrived from his nearby plantation South Hampton. And of course Joseph was there, as was William Maxwell. All in all, it was a distinguished group of wealthy, pious, and good citizens. But it was also unquestionably a cautious group of white planters who were the owners of hundreds of slaves.14

  Charles looked them over with all the earnestness of a young minister. How different they were from those with whom he had met the previous summer in Washington and Baltimore to discuss the issues of slavery!

  Evangelism was his theme, and his text was “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” “All the world,” Charles reminded his listeners, included not only foreign shores and distant climes but also Liberty County, and “every creature” meant not only white planters but also black slaves. Evangelism, Charles insisted, was a task that was laid upon every Christian, a responsibility that could not be avoided. Because black slaves, like their white owners, were creatures of God “moving onward to the retributions of eternity,” they needed the Gospel presented to them with saving power. They needed their hearts changed and their morals reformed. Could there be any doubt about this, he asked, when one looked at those who lived in the settlements of Liberty County?

  They lie, steal, blaspheme; are slothful, envious, malicious, inventors of evil things, deceivers, covenant breakers, implacable, unmerciful. They are greatly wanting in natural affection, improvident, without understanding and grossly immoral. Chastity is an exceeding rare virtue. Polygamy is common, and there is little sacredness attached to the marriage contract. It is entered into for the most part without established forms, and is dissolved at the will of the parties: nor is there any sacredness attached to the Sabbath. It is a day of idleness and sleep, of sinful amusements, of visiting, or of labor. They are generally temperate through necessity; when ardent spirits can be obtained, they will freely drink it. Numbers of them do not go to church, and cannot tell us who Jesus Christ is, nor have they ever heard so much as the Ten Commandments read and explained. Of the professors of religion among them, there are many of questionable piety who occasion the different churches great trouble in discipline, for they are extremely ignorant, and frequently are guilty of the grossest vices.15