Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  When Julia’s father, Colonel Audley Maxwell, died in 1840, he divided his 1,900-acre plantation on Colonel’s Island into three parts—with one part going to Julia King, one part going to his son Joseph Maxwell, and one part going to his grandchildren Laura and Charles Edward. The Kings turned their part into Woodville Plantation, their summer home, while Laura’s and Charles Edward’s part, which contained the old Maxwell plantation house, was known as Social Bluff. In this way, the Kings became neighbors to Charles and Mary and their children not only at Montevideo but also at Maybank. And Laura and Charles Edward, with their mother, Susan, had with Social Bluff a plantation home that they could call their own.17

  Colonel Maxwell divided not only his land but also his ninety slaves. Those who went to Julia became, like their white owners and other King slaves, a part of the world of Montevideo and Maybank, visiting in the settlements and sharing the rhythms of life and work on low-country plantations. Over the coming years webs of kinship were stretched along the roads and paths between Carlawter and the settlement at South Hampton, between the cabins on the marsh at Maybank and those along the banks of the North Newport at Woodville and Social Bluff.18

  The leading figure in the South Hampton settlement was Paris, the driver, who had been the driver for Colonel Maxwell. Roswell King had great respect for him and for his skill in the growing of Sea Island cotton and rice and in the management of a large labor force. Paris was eventually included in Roswell’s will, not only as a valuable slave to be willed to heirs but also as a recipient of an annual stipend of $30. Like many drivers, Paris was a large man, powerfully built, and he commanded respect from whites and blacks alike. He was also a pious man, a leading watchman at the North Newport Baptist Church, and the sexton at the little church at Pleasant Grove that was located on the southern end of South Hampton. During the coming years, he came to be closely associated with Charles’s missionary labors.19

  Susan Jones Maxwell, as Julia’s sister-in-law, had with Laura and Charles Edward visited the Kings frequently at their St. Simons home and at Butler Island. She was no doubt delighted when South Hampton was purchased and the King family moved near to her brother Charles’s Montevideo. But Susan’s life had its own important developments in that year. In November 1838 she became the wife of Joseph Cumming, a widower with four children, the oldest of whom was eighteen and the youngest eleven. Suddenly becoming the mother of four new children must have been a challenge to her. With Laura, who was fourteen, and Charles Edward, who was nearly thirteen, she had five teenagers to see after, plus an eleven-year-old: a daunting task even for a mild-mannered woman.20

  Sister Susan—as Charles, Betsy, and Mary often referred to her—had grown into an attractive woman who enjoyed a wide circle of friends. Yet she tended to linger in the background and not make her presence felt in the way in which the widely read Mary would do with her strong opinions, or Betsy would do with her laughter and her hospitable and affectionate embrace of family and friends. Susan was certainly dependent on strong male relatives and lacked much of the self-confidence of Mary or Betsy, especially in regard to the work and management of a plantation. Being an urban woman whose life was deeply involved in the social circles of Savannah no doubt shaped much of her character. And when she was in the country, she was for most of her life the guest of others—her uncle Joseph, her sister Betsy and brother-in-law William Maxwell, her sister-in-law Julia and Julia’s husband, Roswell, her brother Charles and sister-in-law Mary, and then in later life her daughter Laura and Laura’s husband.21

  Susan’s passivity, however, should not be exaggerated. She could give wise advice when needed to her children and stepchildren, and even to her confident Uncle Joseph and brother Charles. Moreover, when troubles came, when the world that she knew was turned upside down, she found within herself courage to face a new order and the will to do hard physical work for her family and friends.22

  If Susan tended to linger in the background in her circle of family and friends, just the opposite was the case with Laura. When her mother married Joseph Cumming, the fourteen-year-old was already demonstrating the playful spirit and good humor that were to draw people to her all her life. She was developing a self-confidence and a grace that were to make her a most attractive young woman. In a few years her uncle Charles wrote to William Maxwell that Laura “has created quite a sensation among our young gentlemen.” And that “sensation” was long lasting, as various “beaux” hovered around her for years until her marriage at age thirty-two. Her brother Charles Edward was a studious and thoughtful child, and as a young man he was always attentive to his mother and sister, but he lacked the good health and robust constitution of his younger cousins Charlie and Joe. He did, however, hunt, fish, and ride with them at Montevideo and Maybank, and he and Laura were loved and regarded by Charles and Mary as if they were their own children, while the childless Betsy and William Maxwell also looked on them as their own.23

  When Susan married Joseph Cumming in 1838, she was entering a circle of another prominent Georgia family. His father had been the first mayor of Augusta after its incorporation and president of the Bank of Augusta, and his mother was a relative of Thomas Clay. His sister Anne had in 1836 married General Peter Skenandoah Smith, whose father was a business partner with the fabulously wealthy John Jacob Astor.24 Susan’s marriage, however, like so many other marriages of white masters and mistresses, was to have consequences for those who lived in the settlements. It was not long before Joseph Cumming decided that he should take responsibility for the management of his wife’s property, including her slaves, as well as those who belonged to Laura and Charles Edward.

  When Charles and Mary had begun the construction of their home at Montevideo, Charles and Susan had agreed that if there were ever the need for a division of the property given them by Joseph Jones, Charles would get the improved section of Montevideo and Susan would get the Cooper tract. Following her marriage to Joseph Cumming, the Cooper tract was separated from Montevideo to form White Oak plantation. (Charles bought a tract west of Carlawter from a neighbor and kept Montevideo approximately the same size as it had been before the division.) In the meantime, Charles and Susan divided the slaves that had come to them through the gift of Joseph Jones—those of John Jones’s slaves whom Joseph had purchased at the Riceboro courthouse in 1808. Susan got the first lot of slaves, which included the family of Hamlet by his first wife Phillis; old Jupiter, who was soon to die; and the family of Lizzy’s sister Willoughby. In addition, Susan had as a gift from her father the children of Elvira, Hamlet’s second wife, which included Syphax the carpenter and Peggy, who was a domestic servant and who later had a child by Cassius. Altogether twenty-two men, women, and children were moved from Carlawter to the new settlement at White Oak. Prince was made the driver at White Oak, following in the steps of his father, Hamlet, his uncle Jupiter, and his grandfather Old Jupiter, who had blown the conch-shell horn at Liberty Hall. From the settlement at Maybank, Joseph Cumming removed twenty-three slaves who had been gifts to Laura and Charles Edward from Major Andrew Maybank and from their grandfather Audley Maxwell. These were sent to the nearby Social Bluff settlement. Fortunately, these two moves were not far from the familiar settlements at Carlawter and May-bank. But for the children of Hamlet and Elvira and all the others whose lives had been bound up with the slaves of Charles and Mary, the moves were simply another indication that they were regarded as valuable resources that could be allocated according to the situation and needs of white owners.25

  Charles did not hesitate to name Cato the new driver at Montevideo. While he was not the oldest of Lizzy’s sons and while he was not, like Prince, a descendant of earlier drivers, Cato was clearly the man for the job. Charles trusted him and trusted his judgment. He belonged to the North Newport Baptist Church, was faithful in attendance there and at the plantation meetings, and was soon to be made a Watchman. Over the years he had shown himself to be a skilled worker who had internalized at some deep level a disci
pline and a self-confidence that made him a leader. And while he would wear the high leather boots and the greatcoat that were symbols of his authority and carry over his shoulder the “cotton planter”—a “short whip with heavy handle and tapering thong, plaited in one piece”—he would not, Charles believed, abuse his authority and become a tyrant in the settlement. To be sure, his relationship with his brother Cassius and with Phoebe was to be tumultuous and troubled. But Cato’s long service as the driver at Montevideo would be marked by his ability to gain and keep the trust of those who lived in the plantation house and of those who lived in the settlement. He would be Charles’s right-hand man, and he would also be the one who would lead Carlawter as the settlement sought to create as much free space for itself as possible within the confines of slavery and to protect itself from the threats of outside intrusions into its life. The absence of a sustained white presence at Montevideo during much of the year, and later the almost entire absence of the white family for five years, would provide a context for Cato’s leadership and for Carlawter’s development into an even more tightly knit village among the village settlements of the Gullah people.26

  17

  MIDWAY

  Charles returned to Montevideo in early December 1838 as a man about to begin the happiest and most productive period of his life. He felt that he had been set free from his work at the seminary to go home to his calling as a missionary among the Gullah people and to live once again above a flowing river and beside a waving marsh. Above all, however, he would be free to be with Mary. He had missed her terribly when he was in Columbia and she was in Liberty County, and he had filled his letters to her with increasing expressions of love and longing. “You are my own darling Mary,” he wrote from Columbia. “Separated from you, I am ever restless, homeless, lonely, desolate, and I look forward with the most delightful anticipation when, if it shall so please a merciful Providence, I shall embrace you and take you once more, the wife of my youth, the mother of my children, the joy and comfort of my life, to my bosom: and then I will tell you over and over the constancy and ardour of my love.”1

  Charles’s experience in Columbia had turned his attention more sharply than ever to issues of marriage and family life, and to the relationship between husbands and wives. These had long been subjects of great concern to him, lodged most deeply perhaps in his own quest for home, but they were issues that now came to a focus in his own life and in his work in the settlements.

  When he had been a student at Princeton, Charles had written Mary a series of letters on marriage that, taken together, were intended to form a sort of marriage manual for the young couple. The letters reflected the boldness and confidence of a young man, a single seminarian, who knew all about marriage and family life because he had studied such matters at Andover and Princeton. Yet beneath his pretensions—and he was never again so pompous as he was when he was writing these letters—he had distilled from his readings a vision of marriage and family life that, tempered over time, was to inform his hopes for his Liberty County home and his relationship with Mary.

  He had begun by emphasizing that their marriage would depend “very much upon the degree of our intellectual cultivation, and the pains which we take to maintain and advance it.” They should share, he insisted, a disciplined schedule of reading and study and conversation for their mutual improvement and piety. They were to seek to create a hospitable home, free of gossip and undue inquiry into other people’s business, one that was respectful of the poor as well as the rich. Great restraint was to be used in what was to be said to others—especially about personal family matters—in order to avoid an unbecoming familiarity. On the other hand, as husband and wife they were to be open and confiding to one another. They were to be “true and best friends,” having at the heart of their relationship an intimate friendship that was grounded in mutual respect and in a fervent love that sought the good of the other. Such respect, Charles wrote, was particularly important in “little things.” These, Charles said, “make up the greater part, by far, of our lives. Pass no reflections upon personal appearance, upon intellectual powers, nor do anything that will serve to cherish the thought that we are in any way contemptible to each other.” “The sum of the whole,” he wrote, “is that we must at all times and in every thing treat each other with the greatest delicacy and respect. Let us feel this, and actions will spontaneously be delicate and respectful.”2

  Mary received and responded to the letters with appreciation, sometimes with amusement, and on occasion with strong disagreement. She thanked Charles for the thoughtfulness of the letters and for the time he had spent writing them, assuring him that they would serve as a “textbook to which I may ever turn when the duties and circumstances of life call for such assistance and direction of conduct as they amply afford.” But she was amused when he tried to inform her about women’s underwear, about the dangers of corsets and stays, which, Charles feared, tended “to destroy that fullness of the chest in all its parts, which is the distinguishing beauty of the female person.” Mary thanked him for his interest in what might make her flat-chested, but she let him know that she knew much more about such matters than he. And while he spoke of husband and wife as “heads of a family,” he also wrote that wives were finally to be submissive to their husbands as commanded in the biblical texts. To this Mary replied that the biblical texts “do not imply I should suppose any thing like the absolute servility of a slave but that enlightened and cheerful acquiescence which reason and religion would approve.” And then she added:

  For myself, I do not know what kind of a submission I shall yield by and by. I would hope however that will be other than that which merely a selfish policy dictates. Experience has taught me but little of the grace of obedience. As you may know, I have been all my life pretty much my own mistress there being no one but my Father to whom I felt it a duty to submit and his great indulgence made his requisitions of the most lenient kind. So you must not be surprised if you sometime have to bear with the self-will of a spoiled child. You must not scold too often at all events.

  And on one occasion when Charles had “scolded” her for what seemed to him a certain fickleness and attributed it to the female character, she had responded in kind: “[your] unwarrantable attack upon my sex, with an accusation of characteristic changeableness is what I shall not here discuss, not that I am in the least convinced of the truth of your insinuations, but that like all other time-strengthened delusions it would require reason, substantiated by fact, to prove its fallacy; and this would occupy rather more time and space than comports with my present design.”3

  By 1838 Charles had learned what Mary’s brother John would later say about her: “She was not afraid of her own opinions,” and “the fear of man brought no snare to her.” She was obviously not easily intimated by “time-strengthened delusions” with regard to the role of white women.4

  Mary would have to express, of course, her “own opinions” in a social and cultural world that assumed that wives were to be submissive to their husbands and that assigned carefully defined roles to women. Such roles, after all, were part of ancient household codes. Greek and Roman philosophers had taught such codes, which also had been incorporated in some of the letters of the Apostle Paul. “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord,” was regarded as an apostolic injunction as surely as “Servants be obedient to them that are your Masters, according to the flesh.” Mary accepted this injunction, but she resisted any implication in it that would make her anything less than a fully responsible human being endowed with the capacity to know right and wrong, with the right to act on her convictions, and with the ability to manage when needed the practical matters of a plantation.5

  Mary, perhaps ironically, employed the traditions of evangelical piety to resist a narrow definition of the role of white women. In particular, she called upon an evangelical understanding of her duty before God and upon the evangelical expectation that a Christian live, as she wrote to
Charles, “a life of usefulness in one way or another to my fellow creatures and consequently of happiness to myself.” When Christian duty and usefulness were linked to the particular circumstances a woman might find herself in—when duty and usefulness were linked to demanding “providential arrangements”—then the narrow confines of a white woman’s place and role could be resisted. Mary consequently did not hesitate to inform her brother John, when death left a woman responsible for the management of a nearby plantation, that she did “not believe in ladies’ assuming responsibilities—but when the Lord is pleased to lay them upon them, I do not see why they should not trust him for grace and strength and go forward in their performance.”6

  What had clearly emerged by late 1838 in Charles and Mary’s marriage was a relationship marked by mutual dependence and affection. Over the coming years their love would deepen their youthful passion for one another, but not, as Charles said, “tame it.” And their letters would be filled with expressions of deepest respect and love—a love that, while always reflecting their spirituality, never was afraid of sensuality. When away from Mary, Charles would write that he longed to embrace her and “smother” her with kisses. And after another absence he wrote: “I shall be ready to eat you up for joy and love. I do not wish to meet you in public, but somewhere, where we may give expression to our overflowing affection.” And Mary would write Charles: “Of one thing only am I assured: that you alone possessed and now possess the first, the only, the undivided affection of my heart.” Such was the character of Charles and Mary’s love for each other and of their hopes about their life together. Their understanding and their experience of marriage were foundational for their vision of family life and of the home they were seeking to create together at Montevideo and Maybank. And their own marriage and home would be the background providing underlying assumptions in Charles’s concerns for the marriages and homes of those who lived in the settlements, whose labors, sorrows, and struggles made possible so much of the comfort and sweetness of life for those who sat on the piazzas at Montevideo and Maybank.7