Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  David Buttolph, as the pastor of Midway, was perplexed and mortified that a faithful servant had chosen to hide in the woods as a free man rather than remain under the kind care of a paternalistic master. He wrote to John Jones, now back in Rome, that Joefinny’s

  leaving was the hardest blow which could be given. I do not remember that I ever gave him a cross word. Indeed, I never had any occasion to do it, for he was a most faithful and willing servant. If he wanted anything, he had only to ask for it. I have felt deeply hurt and mortified at Joe’s leaving, more so than if the whole plantation had left.18

  Charles, for his part, felt no mortification but only anger at such a betrayal. He wrote Charlie that he thought those caught must be turned “over to the proper authorities to be tried and dealt with as the public welfare may require.” He was determined that “some example must be made of this matter. They are traitors who may pilot an enemy into your bedchamber! They know every road and swamp and creek and plantation in the country, and are the worst of spies.” So Charles moved quickly from thinking that runaways were naïve persons yielding to the temptations of Yankee freedom to believing them traitors who were betraying a land and a people to whom they owed loyalty. Moreover, they were traitors who might lead the enemy during the night into the very bedchambers of their white masters and mistresses, there to commit some heinous crime. And so some example must be made of these traitors—and soon the example was made, as ringleaders of plots and escapes began to be hanged in Hinesville, and others who were caught were whipped and sent off to hard labor.19

  As tensions grew on the coast, Charles and Mary began to consider a removal of the people from the settlements to a more secure location. As early as November 1861, Charles had written, “We are thinking of removing a part of our people up the country.”20 By the end of the summer of 1862, Charles and Mary, together with their children, were clear that such a move was necessary. Charlie began an intense search during short leaves of absence from his military duties. After investigating a number of possibilities, he settled on a fourteen hundred–acre plantation in Burke County in middle Georgia. Charlie thought it “without exception the best place” he had seen, with fine forests, fertile fields, and a good location on Buckhead Creek, a broad stream that would provide a steady supply of water. He named the place Indianola.21

  In this way preparations began for the removal of people from Carlawter and the settlement at Arcadia. They had, of course, been moved around before at the whim of whites. But those moves had been within the circle of a familiar Liberty County community. This move involved a radical relocation to middle Georgia. Charles had no illusions about its implications, for he had already written Charlie before Indianola had been purchased that he considered “the removal pretty much a permanent one, for by the time the war is ended the people will be so well fixed wherever they go that it will be a losing business to break them up again. And the places in this county, if retained, will have to be worked by small forces until increase comes to our aid.”22

  With an increasing sense of urgency—Lincoln had already declared his intention to emancipate the slaves in the rebelling states—decisions began to be made about who would be sent and who would stay. Because they thought of themselves as kind and benevolent owners, the Joneses did not want to divide any families. Charles, after all, had preached and written against such divisions for years. But that policy was now easier said than done. It had been one thing to move people from Montevideo to Arcadia. Husbands could still visit their “wife house” on Saturday nights. But shipping people from Liberty County to middle Georgia was another thing, especially since many of those who lived at Carlawter or Arcadia were married to people on other plantations. What were Charles and Mary to do with Clarissa? She had already had her mother, Phoebe, sold away. Now she was faced with being separated from her husband, Patrick, who lived at a nearby plantation. Or what about Martha, whose husband, Peter, lived at one of the Fleming plantations? Was she to be sent far from him? Was Peggy, with her little girl Eva Lee, to be separated from Henry, whom she had so recently married and who belonged to a neighboring planter? Or what about Cato’s brother Lymus, whose wife of many years lived at the Chapman place? Or Cato’s brother Daniel, whose wife lived at South Hampton? Or Elsey, whose carpenter husband, Syphax, lived at Lambert? Or Patience and Porter’s daughter Miley, whose husband lived at old Liberty Hall? And what about those who had a husband or wife who belonged to Sister Susan and Laura and David Buttolph—the carpenter William Pitt, Little Andrew, Little Titus, and Betty? What was to be done with all of these people and these families for whom the Joneses believed they had responsibility? Hasty negotiations began to be made to try to keep families together. Sister Susan allowed Tom to go with Betty and his family, but she said she would not send Syphax to Indianola with Elsey if she were sent, since his skills as a carpenter were needed, and besides he was not well. And Susan agreed to rent William Pitts’s wife to Charles so that his family could be kept together. But all of these negotiations were complicated by the plans to empty the settlements at Lambert and White Oak by moving Susan’s and the Buttolphs’ slaves to a plantation in south Georgia, and by other settlements’ being desolated by deportations. So of the twenty-one Jones slaves who faced separation of families, only a few—generally through their own pleading—were able to take a spouse from another plantation with them to Indianola.23

  It was decided that of the 129 Jones slaves, 71 would go to Indianola. Stepney, the driver at Arcadia and Patience’s brother, was selected to be the driver at the new plantation—a source of great sorrow for his father, Daddy Robin, who remained with only a handful of others at Arcadia. Cato was kept at Carlawter with a small work force—only 11 full hands to keep the plantation going. Old Tony remained and continued to look after the gardens at Montevideo, and Rosetta kept an eye on the few children who were still in the settlement, and Gilbert was kept to drive the carriage and help around the house. And of course Patience remained with her young children, although Porter was sent to Indianola for a few months to help build new slave cabins. Old Andrew and Mary Ann, together with their daughters and grandchildren, were sent to John Jones’s Bonaventure to boil the briny water of the Medway River to make salt. There they found Bona-venture largely deserted, since John had carried most of his slaves to his plantation in southwest Georgia. They did find Mom Sylvia there, she having been moved in her old age from the Retreat, where she had raised John Jones and his sister Mary. She was lonely and angry with John for sending her children and grandchildren to southwest Georgia and leaving her in Liberty. He told her that she would be more comfortable at Bonaventure than in the new plantation in a rough, recently settled area, but she continued to complain until John made arrangements for his Old Momma to join her family.24

  Once Charles and Mary had completed their calculations—who was going to Indianola and who was staying—and the negotiations were completed with other owners, the logistics of the move began to be addressed. Those who were selected to go began to sell most of their pigs and cows and other livestock they could not easily take with them. Four boxcars were ordered for the people and their possessions, and all those being removed were brought to the Arcadia settlement. There on 18 November 1862 they gathered for their last worship service with their master, whom whites had for some years been calling the “Apostle to the Negro Slave.” After the service, they moved down the Arcadia avenue in a great procession of people, baggage, and remaining livestock, turned right at the road, and went to the rail station, which was a few miles distant. Arriving at the station, they found the cars waiting for them. They loaded their baggage, their reluctant livestock, their children, and themselves into the cars, and when they were all in, there was little room left. With the sound of the whistle, those who had lived all their lives in Liberty County were on their way to a cotton plantation in middle Georgia.25

  That evening Charles wrote in his journal a brief description of the day’s events. “The people,” h
e wrote, had gone to the new plantation “for quiet and safety from the enemy’s raids upon the coast. They all went cheerfully—a few leaving husbands and wives for the present, until matters become more settled.” Believing that he had acted responsibly, he wrote: “This removal involving great expense we have undertaken from a conviction of duty and with much pain at the separation from the people and pray God’s blessing and that it may issue in his glory and our good.”26

  A few days later, Charles and Mary rode over to White Oak “to see sister’s people and tell them goodbye.” The people of the settlement, and all but a few at Lambert, were preparing to leave the next day for southwest Georgia. As Charles and Mary moved among them saying their goodbyes, they saw the descendants of Old Jupiter, who had blown the conch-shell horn for Charles’s father at Liberty Hall, and of his wife, Blind Silvey—their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. There was Prince, who had followed his father, his uncle, and his grandfather as driver. His wife, Venus, had died shortly after the breakup of the Retreat settlement, when she had been carried to north Georgia to be sold. And there was Peggy, who had a family by Cassius and who had, years earlier, been so jealous of Phoebe that she had reported her theft of keys. And there were others—but no Joefinny, nor his brother Isaac, who had made their break for freedom. Around them all, many memories must have swirled for Charles and Mary, for with these men, women, and children much of their lives had been lived.27

  These Gullah people who were being shipped from Montevideo and Arcadia, from White Oak and Lambert, and from the surrounding plantations to distant places were part of families who had lived in Liberty for generations. They were the ones who had built the dikes and plowed the fields, cooked the meals, and fished the rivers and marshes. They had driven oxcarts and carriages, had walked the land and winnowed the rice and carried the cotton. They knew Liberty County like few if any of the whites. They had been born here, they had courted and married here, they had struggled here to keep their families together, they had walked the sandy roads on Saturday nights, and they had buried their loved ones here. Yet most did not weep when they were taken from this land that they and their ancestors knew so well. They did struggle to keep their families together, and they used all the resources of the weak to persuade the whites that it was the right thing to do to keep them together. But when they went together, they went cheerfully as if some new thing was in the air, a long-expected liberation that they had prayed for and hoped for. To be sure, there were anxieties, because the separations were real and the cotton plantations toward which they traveled hardly seemed like the Promised Land.28

  But the power of white owners was clearly being challenged as never before. Those who went off to interior counties knew that the Federal fleet was off the coast and that raiders had come up the dark rivers. And they knew that some of their own had made their breaks for freedom, some paying for it with their lives, but others having reached safety on the other side. Even the proud and pious claims that had been used to justify slavery—that whites were kind and benevolent owners who regarded their people as part of their households—were being exposed as mere bombast and fraud as the settlements were emptied and the train whistles sounded. So those who were sent on their way went cheerfully, for they sensed that they were on the road to something different from the slavery they had known in Liberty County. What they didn’t know was how long the road was going to be.29

  On the November day when the people were shipped to Indianola, Charles acknowledged to himself: “My weakness is becoming so great that I cannot longer look after the temporal affairs of the family as formerly.” His creeping palsy was now moving rapidly toward its victory. As Charles felt his body giving up its remaining strength, he knew that he was fast approaching the dark valley. He had been able to resist the ravages of his disease for a remarkable period of time. His long walks, his concern about his diet, his horseback riding when the walks became too much, and his happy home life by the river and the marsh—all of this had no doubt contributed to his resistance and perhaps added to his years. But now in late 1862 and the early months of 1863, he saw his low-country world breaking apart, and he sensed that all the Confederate solders and all the sacrifices of brave men and women could not bring back a vanishing world. Everywhere he looked, he saw abandoned plantations and felt the absence of families who had made the Midway congregation and Liberty County such a distinguished community. Charles was not sentimental—he was too much a Calvinist for that—but the breakup of his world seemed to be hastening the final collapse of his body.30

  Joe came to give him what medical attention he could in the midst of his military responsibilities. And Charlie managed to come out for a visit, and later wrote his father from Savannah: “I am very much pained, my dear father, to hear that you are still so weak. All I can do is to hope and pray that you may soon be better, and that it would please God in tender mercy to us all to prolong your days, so precious to us all.”31 But such was not to be the case.

  Charles and Mary had spent the summer of 1862 in Walthourville with Mary Sharpe and Robert, but after the first frost they had moved to Arcadia. There Charles had settled in for his last days. His books had been brought from Montevideo, and he had a pleasant library on the west side of the house, where he enjoyed studying surrounded by the authors he loved. The library had a fireplace, and he would sit reading in a rocker before it. When an early spring came in March, the windows were opened and he could hear a mockingbird singing from morning until night, and sometimes even in the night. And he could feel and smell the delights of a low-country spring that he loved, and he had Mary close by him and Sister Susan too. But he wrote in his journal: “My disease appears to be drawing to its conclusion! May the Lord make me in that hour to say in saving faith and love: ‘Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth’ (Psalm 31:5). So has our Blessed Saviour taught us by His own example to do; and blessed are they who die in the Lord.”32

  Early on the morning of 16 March, as the sky began to grow pale in the east, Charles rose, carefully dressed himself in black with a “pure white cravat,” and went downstairs. Patience had prepared breakfast, which he ate with Mary and Susan. Then he went for a short walk on the front lawn, but returned greatly fatigued. After lunch, he sat in the study with his wife and sister. They realized that he was dying. Mary began the ritual of guiding him through the lonesome valley. She repeated some of the promises of the Savior “that He would be present with those who trust in Him, even when called to pass through the dark valley of the shadow of death.” Charles responded: “In health we repeat these promises, but now they are realities.” Mary said: “I feel assured the Saviour is present with you.” Charles answered: “Yes. I am nothing but a poor sinner. I renounce myself and all self-justification, trusting only in the free and unmerited righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Charles believed that death would bring not oblivion but an encounter with the Holy One, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the God of Israel before whom there could be no pretense, no self-deception, but only truth. Yet as he felt this moment approaching, he felt no terror, for he put his trust in Jesus Christ, the one whom he had loved and sought to serve. Charles believed in the depth of his being that Christ was his Savior, and he believed that this Righteous One would stand for him, in Charles’s place, before God’s judgment seat. This was Charles’s hope as he saw death standing at the door looking at him—that when death finally came in and ushered him before the High and Holy One, God would see not Charles the poor sinner but Jesus, who was without spot or blemish.33

  Mary and Susan helped Charles upstairs to his bedroom. There, as he lay on his bed fully dressed, with Mary and Susan beside him, death came into the room for him. That night Mary wrote in her journal:

  His death, it was not death, it was gently going away, passing into the heavenly light. The inexpressible peace which marked his whole countenance as he breathed his last seemed to say “My b
eloved is mine and I am His forever!” There were no death sounds; no contortions of muscles or limb or cries from the Monster’s sting; no lingering shivering on the brink, no fearful passage through the dark valley, no shadow of death.34

  His funeral was held at old Midway “in the presence of a large concourse of citizens and of Negroes.” Charles’s body lay before the pulpit in a coffin built by Porter. A grieving David Buttolph preached. God’s sovereignty, David said, means that God is working God’s purposes out in human history. “There can be no refuge, no solace, no comfort in such a bereavement as this, if we do not find them in the assurance that God rules in the Kingdom of Providence, and that He will make all things work together for good to them who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”35

  32

  THE REFUGE

  Three months after Charles’s death, Robert Mallard wrote in his journal: “I have this day written to Atlanta accepting a call to the Central Presbyterian Church of that city.” The call was to be the pastor of a large and influential congregation in Georgia’s rapidly growing metropolis, and there could be no doubt of the importance of such a pastorate. But the call, however important or whatever its promise for usefulness, was also a call for Robert and Mary Sharpe to move with their children away from Liberty County, away from Montevideo and the old Mallard Place, and away from a grieving Mary.1

  With Mary Sharpe and Robert making plans to move away with the children, Mary was undecided about where she was to stay and what she was to do during the summer of 1863. She still had responsibility for Charlie’s daughter Mary Ruth—“my dear little baby,” Mary called her, for she had come to think of the motherless child as her own, a gift given her in the midst of deep sorrow and the turmoil of war. She knew that she had to find “some resting place for my dear little baby and self during the summer,” and she trusted that the Lord would provide and lead her in the way that she should go. But she clearly missed Charles. It had been their custom to talk through important decisions and to pray together and seek divine guidance before deciding on what course to follow. Now that the “great separation day” had come and Charles was no longer there, she had to decide by herself. “For thirty-two years,” she wrote Charlie, “I have had a strong arm to lean upon—a wise head to guide, a heart all love and tenderness to bless and make me happy.” Now her constant prayer was that she “not be permitted to murmur or repine, and that what of life remains to me here may be spent in the discharge of duty, in the love and service of my God and Saviour, and in preparation for the solemn hour of death.” So Mary prepared to do her duty as she had so often sought to do in the past, only this time she faced her duty with the loneliness of a widow.2