The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 51
Mastering my emotion as well as I could, I begged Colter to go on with his story. But this he was in no hurry to do.
"You seem," he said, eyeing me closely, "to have some more than ordinary interest in this affair. You mentioned, I recollect, this not being your first visit to America, but that you had formerly travelled here, some twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, you must have been a young man, and young men are easily captivated; and you young Englishmen, when you get among us, notwithstanding all we hear about English virtue and decorum, are no more anchorites than the rest of us. But even the chaste Joseph, or Scipio, or the pope of Rome himself might readily be pardoned for melting a little before such attractions. There is a soft, winning, captivating way about some of those girls that makes them perfectly resistible. I don't wonder at the envy, rage, and jealousy of our white women. They can't help being conscious of their own inferiority in these respects. Of course, it makes them cross and fractious — natural enough; but that does not help the matter, nor render them any the more agreeable. So they have to be content with being mistresses of the house and the servants, while some slave girl, black, yellow, or white, as the case may be, is mistress of their husbands' affections,
"There are a good many of these girls whom it is quite enough to spoil the temper of the best-natured woman in the world to have in the house with them.
"As to this Cassy, in whom you seem to take such a particular interest, she would do credit to any body's choice. I say this as both connoisseur and amateur in these matters, and indeed professionally, as a dealer in the article — in all which respects I reckon my opinion to be worth something. The boy was a fine boy too. I wonder who his father was! Fact," said he, looking me full in the face, with a comical sort of an air, "I shouldn't be surprised if there was some resemblance!"
Perceiving, however, that his attempted jocularity did not suit the temper of my mind, and his keen glance detecting, probably, the tear that stood in my eye, he modified his tone a little.
"They do, sometimes, get a tight hold of our hearts. It is all very well for us to lord it over the men, as if they were brutes, monkeys, inferior animals; but the women are very often too much for us. Why, I have known, before now, the most fierce, brutal, savage fellow, who feared neither God nor man, made a complete baby of — as manageable as a tame bear who dances to order — by some little black or yellow girl of fifteen or twenty, who has thus contrived to play the Queen Esther on the plantation, and to stand often between the fury of her lord and master and the backs of her dingy kindred. This is one of its alleviations not much dwelt upon by those who undertake to apologize for slavery; but which, perhaps, does more than every thing else put together to infuse a certain modicum of kindly feeling into the relation of master and slave. That is the way that nature takes to bring both master and slave to their natural equality. Cupid, with his bow and arrows, is the sworn enemy of all castes and patrician distinctions.
"Pray, sir, did you ever read Edwards's History of the West Indies?"
"Yes, I have."
"Then, perhaps, you recollect an ode inserted in it, addressed to the Sable Venus. Edwards, you know, was a Jamaica planter, a grave historian, an advocate of the slave trade, perfectly orthodox on that whole subject, but a man of sense and observation, experience and sensibility, who had both seen and felt too much to undertake to found an argument for slavery, such as we hear nowadays on the pretended antipathy between the races; and who, in wishing to give a correct view of the state of things in the West Indies, thought it best to assume the disguise of verse and allegory. Happening to meet with the book, lately, at Charleston, the ode quite 'struck my fancy, and, by way of joke, I wrote off several copies, and sent them to a number of our leading southern statesmen at Washington. I dare say I can repeat it, preserving the ideas at least, if not always the words, and changing, as I did in my copies, the scene from Jamaica, where Edwards lays it, to this meridian, which it suits just about as well."
So saying, he repeated, with a sort of mock earnestness suited to their tone, the following stanzas, of which he afterwards gave me a copy: —
THE SABLE VENUS.
AN ODE.
Come to my bosom, genial fire,
Soft sounds and lively thoughts inspire;
Unusual is my theme;
Not such dissolving Ovid sung,
Nor melting Sappho's glowing tongue —
More dainty mine I deem.
Sweet is the beam of morning bright,
Yet sweet the sober shade of night,
From rich Angola's shores;
While beauty, clad in sable dye,
Enchanting fires the wondering eye,
Farewell, ye Paphian bowers!
O, sable queen! thy wild domain
I seek, and court thy gentle reign,
So soothing, soft, and sweet;
Where melting love, sincere delight,
Fond pleasure ready joys invite,
And unpriced raptures meet!
The prating French, the Spaniard proud,
The double Scot, Hibernian loud,
And sullen English own
The pleasing softness of thy sway,
And here transferred allegiance pay,
For gracious is thy throne.
From east to west, o'er either Ind,
Thy sceptre sways: thy power, we find,
Beyond the tropic's felt;
The blazing sun, that gilds the zone,
Waits but the triumphs of thy throne,
Quite round the burning belt.
When thou, America to view,
That vast domain, thy conquest new,
First left thy native shore,
Bright was the morn, and soft the breeze;
With wanton joy the curling seas
The beauteous burden bore.
Thy skin excelled the raven's plume,
Thy breath the fragrant orange bloom,
Thy eye the tropic's beam;
Soft was thy lip as silken down,
And mild thy look as evening sun,
That gilds the mountain stream.
The loveliest limbs thy form compose,
Such as thy sister-Venus chose
In Florence, where she's seen:
Both just alike, except the white —
No difference at all at night
The beauteous dames between.
O, when thy ship had touched the strand,
What raptures seized the rayished land!
From every side they came ;
Each mountain, valley, plain, and grove,
Haste eagerly to show their love;
Right welcome was the dame.
Virginia’s shouts were heard aloud,
Gay Carolina sent a crowd,
Grave Georgia not a few ;
No rabble rout. I heard it said
Some great ones joined the cavalcade ;
The muse will not say who.
Gay goddess of the sable band,
Propitious still this grateful land
With thy sweet presence bless :
Here fix secure thy constant throne ;
We all adore, and thee alone,
The queen of love confess.
For me, if I no longer pay
Allegiance to thy sister’s sway,
It act no fickle part:
It were ingratitude to slight
Superior kindness. I delight
To feel a grateful heart.
Then, playful goddess, cease to change,
Nor in new beauties vainly range ;
For whatsoe’er thy hue,
Try every form thou canst put on,
I'll follow thee through every one ;
So stanch I am, so true.
Do thou in gentle Phibia smile,
In artful. Beneba beguile,
In wanton Mimba pout,
In sprightly Cuba’s eyes look gay,
Or grave in sober Quashaba,
I still should find thee out.
“There,” said he, repeating the last stanza, and giving to it all the benefit of a very graceful elocution, "that's a chorus, equal to any thing in Tom Moore, in which three quarters of our young men, and a good many of the old ones, too, for that matter, might join; and yet half of them, perhaps just fresh from love-making to some sable inamorata, will talk to you about the antipathy of the races, and just as likely as not wind up with a discourse on the horrors of amalgamation! What a world of cant, humbug, and hypocrisy we do live in!"
As I remained silent, he still went on — "Supposing, though, this Cassy to have been a sweetheart of yours, — and I can't conceive why else you show so much interest in her, — still I can hardly set you down as a votary of the sable Venus. She rather belonged to the white race; but you know, here at the south, we reckon all slaves as 'niggers,' whatever their color. Just catch a stray Irish or German girl, and sell her, — a thing sometimes done, — and she turns a nigger at once, and makes just as good a slave as if there were African blood in her veins."
"If," I said, commanding myself as well as I could, "you really suppose I have any such interest as you speak of in the girl and her child, you might as well leave off this fooling, and tell me what became of them. We will, if you please, discuss these matters of antipathies, and amalgamation, and the sable Venus, which you seem so fond of, at some other more convenient opportunity."
"Well," said he,"so far as I personally am concerned, I stand quite clear. If I had actually foreseen that, twenty years after, I was to be hauled over the coals by yourself in person, — and, having been watching your eye for the last half hour, I judge you to be one I should not care about quarrelling with, — I could not, on the whole, have done better by the girl than I did.
"Should I say that I made no amorous advances to her, you would scarcely believe me. I did; but she replied with such a mere agony of tears and entreaty, as quite extinguished all my passion, and converted it into Pay, "I soon found that her most immediate and pressing source of suffering was the apprehension lest she might be separated from her boy; and indeed there was some occasion for it. A New Orleans trader, with whom we often dealt, had evinced a great disposition to buy her. After a careful examination of her person, taking more liberties than I shall care to mention to you, he pronounced her a prime wench, a first-rate article, A, number one, extremely well adapted to the New Orleans market; and he offered to-pay two thousand dollars for her, cash, which Gouge agreed to take, provided he would give an additional hundred dollars for the boy. But the trader. did not want the boy, who would only be a drawback upon the value of the woman when he came to sell her; at least so he pretended, and he insisted that the boy ought to be thrown into the bargain. A lady of Augusta, in search of a small boy to bring up as body servant to her infant son, offered to give seventy-five dollars for him. The chance seemed to be that the boy would be sold to the Augusta woman, and the mother to the New Orleans trader. Aware of this, in the greatest distress she appealed to me to save her from this separation. It so happened that during Gouge's absence at a sheriff's sale some ten miles in the country, where he thought some bargains might be picked up, a lady and gentleman called at the pen in search of a female attendant for the lady. The gentleman was a Mississippi planter, resident somewhere in the neighborhood of Vicksburg, returning home with his new wife, whom he had lately married at the north. I pointed out this Cassy to their notice, and she besieged them with pressing entreaties, making the little boy kneel, and put his tiny hands together, and pray first the lady and then the gentleman to buy him and his mother, and not to let the New Orleans trader take his mother away from him.:
"The lady, after due inquiries of Cassy as to her accomplishments and capabilities, declared her to be just the person she wanted. She had been bred up at the north, did not like niggers, and could not bear to have a black wench about her; whereas this one, she said, was as nice and as white, almost, as a New England girl, and the boy might soon be taught to clean the knives, wait at table, and make himself otherwise useful.
"I offered to take, for the two, two thousand and fifty dollars — a price which the husband thought enormous. He could buy three first-rate field hands for that. Somebody that was not quite so young and good looking would answer his wife's purpose just as well, and might, perhaps, too, be a safer bargain all round — an intimation clear enough to me, but which the wife did not seem to understand. She still insisted upon buying Cassy; and being yet in the honeymoon, she carried the day; and the bill of sale was signed, the money paid, and the mother and child-delivered to their new owners just as Gouge rode up to the pen.
"When the hard-hearted old rascal found out that I had sold the mother and child together for twenty-five dollars less than he could have got by selling them separately, you can't imagine what a fuss he made. This pious Baptist church member, who had been mistaken in New York, as I have told you, for a Doctor of Divinity, thrown quite off his balance, cursed and swore like a pirate. If I had fairly given them away he would not have been more abusive. I should have thought that for the moment at least he had fallen from grace, only that was no part of his creed. He was no Methodist; he and McGrab used to have warm disputes sometimes on that head. McGrab thought that even the best man might sometimes fall away; but Gouge insisted very positively upon the perseverance of the saints, of whom he did not doubt himself to be one.
"I dwelt upon the hardship of separating the mother and her child, and told Gouge he ought to be satisfied, as we made a handsome profit on the transaction as it was. I had ascertained — so I told him — that the woman was pious, and that, apart from her dread of being separated from her child, she had a great horror of being sold for the New Orleans market, and I insisted that as a matter of religion and conscience, it was better to dispose of her, as I had done, to a private family, and most probably a kind mistress, than to sell her to the New Orleans slave trader. Here I thought I had my pious partner at advantage, and I followed it up by. quoting the text, 'Thou shalt not oppress the widow and the fatherless' Though I was not so well read in the Scriptures as Gouge, it came into my mind as quite to the purpose. But highly indignant that such a graceless fellow as I, who belonged to no church, and made no pretensions to have any religion, should presume to dictate him on that subject, Gouge turned upon me with a perfect fury. The text, he said, did not apply. He had once had a long talk on that very subject with Parson Softwords. As slaves could not be married, there could be — so the parson thought — no widows among them; and as to the children, not being born in lawful wedlock, they could not become fatherless, — for they had no fathers, — being in the eye of the law, as he had heard the learned Judge Hallett observe from the bench, the children of nobody. As to pious niggers, that was all moonshine; he did not believe in any such thing. He belonged, in fact, to a pretty numerous sect in these parts, called Anti-mission Baptists, or Hard Shells, who don't think the Lord ever intended the heathen to be converted, or negroes to be any thing but slaves, or any body to be saved except their own precious selves, and that entirely by faith and grace, wholly independent of works. As to the girl's making such a fuss about parting from her child, that, Gouge said, was a piece of great nonsense. Wasn't she young enough to have a dozen more?
"The upshot of the matter was, what with Gouge's brutality and purse-proud insolence, and my hot temper, which I had not then learned so well how to command, that we soon got into a violent quarrel, which ended in my giving him a caning on the spot, and of course in the breaking up of the partnership.
"I was, indeed, quite too soft for that business. As to the men, I should have done well enough with them; but the women, old and young, were always getting up such scenes, and were always so full of complaints about being separated from their daughters, and their mothers, and their babies, and their husbands, that to a man who had the least of a tender spot in his heart, it was perfectly intolerable.
"Thus ousted from the slave trading business, it became necessary for me to find some other occupation; but that was not so easy. The occupations that a southern gentleman can adopt without degradation, are very few indeed. My manners, address, the good songs I could sing, and good stories I could tell, had made me rather a favorite in society; and as I never drank, and understood a thing or two about cards and dice, billiards and faro tables, I was able to replenish my pockets in that way; and finally, for want of a better, that became my regular profession."
"And," said I, wishing to pay him off a little for his late tantalizings, "is this one of those few occupations which a southern gentleman can adopt without degradation?"
"The gentility of gambling can't be denied," he said, "since it is very freely practised by the larger part of southern gentlemen. Once in a while the legislatures are seized with a fit of penitence or virtue, and pass laws to break it up; but nobody ever thinks of paying any attention to those laws, or attempting to enforce them, except, now and then, some poor plucked pigeon, who undertakes to revenge himself in that way. But though gambling is just as genteel as slaveholding, some how or other, by an inconsistency like that in the case of the slave traders, we who make a profession of it, though we associate constantly with gentlemen, are not, I must confess, reckoned to belong precisely to that class, except, indeed, we get money enough to buy a plantation and retire."
"It is charged," said I, "upon those of your profession, that, not content with the fair chances of the game, you contrive to take undue advantages."
"Yes; and so do half of the gentlemen players, as far as they know how, and have the opportunity. There is always a tendency, in games of chance, to run a little into games of skill. Suppose we do plunder the planters — don't they live by plundering the negroes? What right have they to complain? Isn't sauce for the goose sauce for the gander? I tell you our whole system here is a system of plunder from beginning to end. 'Tis only the slaves, and some of the poor whites who own no slaves, who can be said to earn an honest living. The planters live on the plunder of the slaves, whom they force to labor for them. The slaves steal all they can from the planters, and a good many of the poor whites connive at and help them in it. A parcel of bloodsucking Yankee pedlers and New York agents overrun our country, and carry off their share of the spoils; and we who have cool heads and dexterous hands enough to overreach the whole set, planters, Yankees, and New Yorkers — we stand, for aught I see, upon just as sound a moral basis as the rest of them. Every thing belongs to the strong, the wise, and the cunning; that is the foundation stone of our southern system of society. The living upon the plunder of others is one of the organic sins of this community; and the doctrine, I believe, has been advanced by a celebrated northern divine, that for the organic sins of a community, nobody is individually responsible. Now, if this good-natured sort of doctrine, which, for my part, I don't find any fault with, is going to save_ the souls and the characters of Gouge and McGrab, or of the planters who patronize and support them, per we professional gentlemen also have the benefit of it?