The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 50
As the late clerk, bookkeeper, and partner of Gouge and McGrab, now, as it seemed, professional blackleg and gambler, might be able, from his former connection with that respectable slave trading firm, to afford me information essential to the search in which I was engaged, I received his advances very graciously. In fact the manliness of sentiment which he had evinced the day before in the defence of his favorite candidate for the vice-presidency had inclined me in his favor; and as to his present pursuits, I was disposed to think them quite as honest and respectable as the slave trading business in which he had formerly been engaged, or as the slave breeding business by which so many southern gentlemen of unquestioned respectability gained at least a part of their livelihood.
I found him, indeed, a very agreeable companion, free, in a great measure, from those local provincialisms and narrownesses almost universal among even the best educated and most liberal-minded Americans — keen in his observations, acute in his judgments, (a vein of sly satire running through his conversation,) but good natured rather than bitter.
Such was the beginning of a companionship which gradually ripened into something of a confidential intimacy. I did not conceal from Mr John Colter (for that was the name by which he chose to be known to me) my knowledge of: his rather dubious profession; at the same time, I was willing to accept, at their full value, his graces, talents, agreeable parts, and the frequent indications which he gave, at least in words, of a naturally generous and kindly disposition. Why not make allow-ance for his position and circumstances? Why not regard him with as much charity as is asked generally for slaveholders?
As if to confirm me in this toleration, by which he was evidently not a little flattered, and to which he did not seem much accustomed, in the course of a second night's stoppage, in a ramble by moonlight, Mr Colter having at hand no more pigeons to pluck, let me pretty fully into his history.
It appeared that he was the son of a wealthy planter, or of one who had once been wealthy, and who, while he lived, had maintained the reputation of being so. He had, of course, been brought up in habits of great profusion and extravagance. His literary instruction had not been neglected, and he had been sent to travel a year or two in Europe, where he spent a-great deal of money, and fell into very dissipated habits, and whence he was recalled by the death of his father; whose estate, when it came to be settled, proved insolvent, the plantations and slaves being covered by mortgages, and a large family of children left wholly unprovided for.
Thus thrown entirely on his own resources, he had great difficulty in finding means to live. The general resource of decayed families was to emigrate to the new lands of the west; but this was hardly possible, unless one could take a few slaves with him, and he had none, nor the means of procuring any, his character for profusion and extravagance being too well established for any of his father's old friends to be willing to trust him. Indeed, since the estate had turned out insolvent, it was curious to remark, notwithstanding his father's numerous acquaintance, and the ostentatious hospitality with which for so many years he had kept open doors, how very few friends the family had.
Being a good scholar, he might have found occupation as tutor in some family; but this was looked upon as a servile position, incompatible with the dignity of a southerner, and only fit to be filled by fellows from the north. "The Romans, you know," — so he remarked to me, — "intrusted the education of their children to slave pedagogues; we generally get ours from New England." As to going into mercantile business, that would require capital; and that business, too, was mostly engrossed by adventurers from the north, who generally procured their clerks and assistants from the same quarter.
At length, unable to do any better, he had obtained employment from the rich slave trading firm of Gouge and McGrab, rising presently to be their first clerk and bookkeeper, and being finally admitted as a partner.
But this kind of business he had found objectionable on several accounts. In the first place, it was, not considered respectable, though on what grounds he was puzzled to tell. He could well understand how I, an Englishman, and even how oné of those Yankee fellows, — if it were possible to find one, which might be doubted, with courage enough to say that his soul was his own, — might find something objectionable in this business of trading in human muscles and sinews, buying and selling men, women, and children, at auction or otherwise. Tor himself, he did not pretend to any great piety or morality; he left that to the other members of the firm. McGrab was not actually a Methodist, but his wife and children were devoutly so, and as the old man himself frequently attended their meetings, the Methodists expected to get him, too, at last. Gouge was a very devout Baptist, who had been regularly converted and dipped, and had built a church at Augusta, almost entirely at his own expense; but with all his piety, he had never been able to see any harm in the business, buying and selling fellow church members with as little scruple as the mere unconverted heathen. Indeed, Gouge thought slavery and slave trading a very good thing every way, not only in the concrete, but in the abstract also. Didn't St Paul say, "Slaves, obey your masters"? And didn't that settle the question that some were to be slaves, and some were to be masters, and that the slaves had nothing to do but to obey? Such was the way that Gouge reasoned, putting the matter with wonderful force and unction; so much so, that once, when on a visit to New York in search of three or four prime house servants, — who had been purchased in Baltimore, but had broken prison the night after, and whom Gouge had traced to that city, — falling into an argument on the subject, at the hotel where he was stopping, and having a very grave address and clerical aspect, he had been mistaken by a clergyman, who happened to be present, for a D. D., and had been invited to preach on the divine origin of slavery, in one of the most fashionable churches of that city.
"Still," said Colter, "in spite of the reasoning and the texts of my pious partner, I never have been able to approve either slavery or the slave trade in the abstract. What, indeed, could be more contemptible, than for a parcel of intelligent and able-bodied white folks to employ their whole time, pains, and ingenuity, in partly forcing, partly teasing, and-partly coaxing a set of reluctant, unwilling negroes into half doing, in the most slovenly, slouchy, deceptive, and unprofitable manner, what those same white people might do fifty times better, and with fifty times less care and trouble for themselves? Viewed thus in the abstract, the whole system, I must Say, seems to me a very pitiful affair. But in what respect the slave traders are less respectable than the slave raisers, or the slave buyers, I am unable to see; and yet it is a fact that Mr A B, of Virginia, who only saves himself from emigration and a sheriff's sale by selling every year a half a dozen or so of prime young hands, male and female, for the southern market, pretends to look with a certain contempt on the trader to whom he sells them, while Mr C D, of Georgia, who invests all his surplus cash, and all that he can borrow besides, in the purchase of fresh slaves, pretends to look with a similar contempt on the trader of whom he buys them." For some reason-or other, — so Mr Colter humorously remarked, — the old maxim, that the receiver is as bad as the thief, did not seem to hold good of the slave trading business; for what reason, except that it is so much easier to see the mote in a neighbor's eye, than the beam in one's own, he was. quite unable to tell.
Then, again, there were things about the trade very unpleasant. To be sure, with the worst part of it, he had little to do. The buying up the slaves in the more northern states was principally managed by McGrab. The getting them away from their homes, and the separation of families, was often a troublesome and disagreeable business; at least, it would have been to him, though McGrab never complained of it. The principal management of the sales at Augusta had been in the hands of Gouge, who understood, as well as any body, showing off the stock to the best advantage. Very few persons could outdo him in passing off a consumptive or scrofulous hand as every way sound, or a woman of forty-five for a woman of thirty. His (Colter's) share of the business had chiefly consisted in having charge of the slave pen at Augusta, where the stock was kept to be fatted and put in order for market. Indulgence and plenty were the order of the day at the pen, the object being to keep the people as cheerful, and to put them into as good plight, as possible. Yet some scenes would occur there — such as the separation of mothers and children hitherto kept together — rather distressing to a man of sensibility, like himself; so said Colter, laying his hand upon his heart, with a sort of theatrical, mocking air, which made it difficult to tell whether he was in jest or earnest. "To confess the truth," he added, "I always had a foolish susceptibility about me to the tears of women and children, which a little unsuited me for the business. Not being by any means pious, — I've tried my hand at several things, first and last, but have had too much respect for the memory of my mother, who instilled into my youthful mind a great veneration for religion, to make any pretensions to that, — I was not able, like my partner Gouge, to shelter myself behind St Paul and the patriarchs; and my natural, carnal, unconverted heart, as Gouge said, would sometimes betray me into very bad bargains.
"Tn fact, the first serious quarrel that I had with my partners — and which led to my going out of the concern — grew out of an incident of that sort. McGrab had brought in a superior lot of people from North Carolina, and among them an uncommonly fine young woman, with a nice little boy, just old enough to talk — very light mulattoes; in fact, they might have passed for white. The deep melancholy of her great black eyes, and, in spite of a sadness which no smile ever enlivened, the sweet expression of her face, made an impression on my susceptible heart the very first moment that I saw her. I should have desired to retain her as my own, but this I knew was a piece of extravagance to which my partners would never consent, especially as I was already indebted to the firm for two other girls selected from the stock. She had evidently been raised very delicately, the body servant of a lady whose goods had been sold on execution; and McGrab, relaxing into a grim smile, chuckled over her as about the finest piece he had ever purchased — and such a bargain too! He had bought her and her boy for five hundred and fifty dollars, while she alone was worth at least two thousand, and the boy might sell for a hundred more. She understood needle work very well, and would fetch a thousand dollars any day as seamstress or body servant; but at least twice as much, said McGrab — winking with one eye at Gouge, whose solemn face lighted up into a sort of smile at the anticipation — at least twice as much in the New Orleans market as a fancy article!"
Struggle as I might, it was impossible for me, at these cruel words, to suppress a deep sigh. The keen eye and quick observation of Colter had not failed to perceive that the mention of the young woman . and her child from North Carolina had touched me in some tender point, and he seemed to have dwelt with more detail on the incident, as if with design to probe me.
"What is the matter?" he exclaimed, coming to a stop, and looking me full in the face. "You seem to be strangely affected. If you are going to sigh and mourn over every handsome young woman sold as a fancy article in the New Orleans market, you will have a pretty sad time of it."
It was only by the greatest effort that I controlled my voice to inquire if he remembered the young woman's name.
"O, yes," he replied; "it was some time ago — twenty years, I dare say; but names and faces I very seldom forget. The girl, I think, was called 'Cassy.'",
At the sound of that dear name, my heart beat violently; but supporting myself against a tree, under which we stood, "Can you recollect," I asked, "the name of the child?"
"Let us see," said my companion, reflecting for a moment. "O, yes, I have it. I think she called the child 'Montgomery.'" That was the name we had given to our boy, out of compliment to Cassy's kind mistress; and I no longer doubted that it was of my wife and my child that he spoke.