My Sons! My Sons!

By Charles E. Miller

"My Sons! My Sons!" is not an apologetic for Southern culture of the 19th
century, nor is it an indictment of the South for slavery, the divisive racist
culture of cotton that resulted in the Civil War. All civil wars are culture
clashes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465363510

Charles E. Miller

Charles E. Miller graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English, studying at the late Wallace Stegner’s Creative Writing Center. He believes that literature is the most comprehensive, profound, and mysterious voice of people living their lives. Great creative literature presents multifaceted human problems, failures, and victories.

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My Sons! my Sons!

Charles E. Miller

Copyright © 2011 by Charles E. Miller.

Library of Congress Control Number:       Pending

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-6350-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-6349-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-6351-0

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CONTENTS

Introduction To My Sons, My Sons

A Foreboding

Haggling Over Hell

Soiree Of Dark Choices

Rail Center, Manassas

Stading Watch

Shiloh

Erin Seddon—Chaplain Antietamp—Bloodiest

Bruce & Grimstock

Hell Under Construction

Emancipation Proclamation

Kingsley And Sargum In The Senatebalcony

Caprpetbagger Beaten, Dragged From Senate Chamber

Brief Interlude

Last Rites

Bruce The Courier

Jenny’s House

The Wedding Invitation

Finis

Postscripts

Annonymous Poem

My Sons! My Sons! is not an apologetic for Southern culture of the 19th century, nor is it an indictment of the South for slavery, the divisive racist culture of cotton that resulted in the Civil War. All civil wars are culture clashes.

The novel is more than a story about the lives of a Southern Planters family. It is the drama of the lives of Jeremiah Seddon’s five childen’s involvement in the War Between the States…

Miller wrote the novel to dramatize the journeys of a wealthy Planter’s daughter and four sons who have inherited the war, a legacy of danger and anguish that began with the Lincoln-Douglas debates that focused on the remarkable and evil, Godless notion that a man could own another person, like a tool or a souleless mule—not just because he was black but because he posessed no political power. material stuff or social status.and was therefore helpless to be immorally used.

The tale reveales a clash of cultures, the results of whch lingered long in the South, economically and socially, including Jim Crow laws and relatlive poverty The devastation and radical changes generated by the war, extending well into the future. They brought about industrialization of parts f the South and the Civil Rights Movement. The lesson from those changes is that a vibrant, healthy society requires respect and indemnification and freedom of individuals to live life without the government’s interference. The Planter class was that government. Leading, as it did, to Federal intervention… .

Miller’s book is the story of endurance, pain, hatred, survival, acceptance of differences in our society. It reveals some of the truths engendered by a War that changed America forever.

INTRODUCTION

TO MY SONS, MY SONS

The traditional and most acceptable structure for a complex novel is to allow the reader to follow one, at most two, of the characters through the narrative of their inner anguish or their outer struggles and adventures.

With a family of four sons and one daughter-farge families were common in the mid-nineteenth century—to make any importance of their lives would be to structure the novel so that it allows for a dramatic inter-leaving of pre-written war-scenes that are anticipated scenes. They interlock, and we learn of the characters’ lives by appeal to the reader’s imagination, instead of from artificially contrived encounters The element of chance would destroy the believability oft\he story. My solution to this problem of civil-wartime unity was to structure the novel more as a gathering of novellas, the sons meeting at different times during the Civil War but in ways that were natural to wartime life, the wedding, the prison camp, and actual occasions of family get-togethers… and also by suggestion, as through letters and mutual friends and common experiences of the entire family///such as during ginning time, whiskey distilling, sharecropping slaves and whites—the apparatus of northern industry and southern slave labor—and during slave transport,(ultra—important) all the while the war was going; on and these sales and exchanges of slaves were a part of the Southern life during the Civil War. In my book, it is not just the narrative of the involvement of one Southern; family in the war, but the involvement of the entire nation that makes up my story that is so dynamically influenced and determined by events of the Civil War. It lis the wa that overwhelms the lives within it.

Also, this structuring of the novel into novellas allowed me to introduce scenes, pre-written, as I say, inspired by Christ’s parables but far from them in the scenes I devised. These pre-written scenes then became adaptable to which ever narrative line I chose that would be consistent with the character n his or her story line.

But the importance of transitions could not be overlooked, transitions, between these novellas. I decided that the ma;gnitude of such a loody and ltrlallllgedic ; war could be the ;mleans for drawisnf the; novellas together, the thoughts nd emotions of central characters are a bindin force in the novel that brings it alive and imparts unity to its complexity. My Sons, My Sons is a family narrative with somewhat the aspect of an enlarged family diary that melds distinct family-member stories into one complex novel. I have just described a methodology. Except for the Senator’s mother, Mme. Katruska, I have omitted tangential narratives that would have doubled the length of the novel and diminished its focus on the Seddon family.

The political venues could have explored the similitudes of combat and the mutual simultaneous suffering, war’s bloody abstractions that gave me an opportunity to expand upon the character of civil war itself. I avoided politicuzation of the war by describing the battlefield struggle, the alienation and antagonisms that arose. Essentially, much of this bonding commentary would be the author’s omniscient, neutral view of the war. It wassnot m intention to perform the tasks ofan historian of the Civil War. in which case Iwould hve included copious footnotes. My book is a lwork officion against the bakbground of the most consequential war in our histoy except for theAmerican Revolution.

A FOREBODING

Lincoln was an Abolutionist who wanted to abolish what more than the control of one man over the life of another. Linoln saw the tyranny of the obsession, the danger of its spread to others not of color, the suggestion that a Plutarchy of the rich should own slaves, and that their rich counsels, cohorts and advisors would infiltrate and eventually dominate the Federal Goverment. On his part, Douglas coveted the people’s power, the sovereilntty of choice because he espoused the regimentation of social codes of class distinction. He had few if any words to say for the quality of slave performance. What was there to quality among a people so untutored in Western ideas and ways? He placed all his faith in the dichotomy of social subserviance of slaves and power to the Whites, who in their wisdom, he expected, would elect to master all Negroes.

With few formalities, the debates began in Ottowa, Illinois. Then their site moved to Freeport, Indiana. The people readily accepted Douglas’s dicta of the right of the people to chose slavery or not. Many had come by wagon, buggies, horse-carts from surrounding farms, a gathering of fifteen thousand in a town of5,000 only. The debates moved to Jonesboro, then to Charleston, where Lincoln practiced law.

There amongst the crowd sat two boys, Their names were Loren and Jack. They shared their father’s deep-set eyes and square chin, thier mother’s small hands and stature. They were of stout Scotch stock, spirited, agile, athletic, and with a good quantityof fighting blood in their veins. They were Jeremiah Seddon’s boys to the soles of their feet to the tops of their heads. Both excelled in school. There was this difference in their natures, Loren, the older of the two boys, was fiercely for the North. He detestsed the very sight and notion of slavery as an nstiution that was ignorant and boorish. He possessed a refined sense of human dignity, howwever, he had used his fists numerous times on the schoolyard, to the disgust and consteration of his father, who with the last incident, took him out of school for a week. His sense of the rightness of a thing he had apparently come by from their father, who had fought the English as a clansman at Blor.

Loren’s younger brother Jack savored the Southern way of life, its courtly manners, its assumption of superiority, its gentility, as he had come to know it. So there sat these two boys, on the brink of manhood, listening to a revolutionary debate over slavery versus freedom. Loren admired Lincoln and aspired some day to become a lawyer. Jack wished to own property.Jet someone else resolve the slavery issue. He saw them not simply as shoddy offshoots of a system but as cheap and uneducated labor. He thought no further, at least not for the present. These were the sons of a man Jeremiah Siddon. They sat attentively and heard buoyant, stentorian words, their young chins up close to the platform where the contestants were in debate.

Sir, your pot-pourri of indignation achieves little. I have said, and I repeat it here, that if there be anyman amongst us who does not think that the institution of slavery is wrong in anyone of the aspects of which I have spoken, he is misplaced and ought not be be with us. Has anything ever threatened the exitence of this Union save an except this very institution of slavery? That is the real issue. That is the issue that will contnue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. We represent to you Americans gathered here today the external struggle between these two principles-right and wrong—throughout the world."

Lincoln’s rejection of slavery was moral more so than it was pragmatic. At Charleston, he spoke quite openly bout the immrality of slavery, to hisses and applause of the audience of thee thousand South Carolinians. Few persons in the audience of cheerless spectators expected the speakers to examine the defaults of the civil unrest in Washington and among the communities of America where slavery and freedom coexisted and where a beknighted kind of stubborn rejection of liberal government held sway. Stephen A. Douglas was the incumbent of the Senate seat for the seven districts in Illinois/ He had helped to craft the Missouri Comprimose of 1850 that gave California its free-choice, and he had authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1850 that had established the Mason Dixon Line between the Northern and Southern states. As he stood bowed over his table on the debate platform, sorting through his speech and evidentiary documents, he ground his teeth in frustation with the task ahead of him. How could he tolerate this newcomer, gaunt, gangly, woods-hardened with an axe like intellect into his manger of liberal-codes addicts?

Here in Charleston, he sighed with exasperation in anticipation of an encounter with a Kentuckyan railsplitter, who had found a home and a law practice on the plains-perimeter state, specifically in Charleston.

Slavery had arrived in America in the form of a need for labor in th agricultural South. It was almost fortuitous that a sea captain had disembarked in 1807 the first boat load of Negroes gathered on his voyage to Africa. He had had the assistance of tribal leaders in Nigeria and the Gold Coast. Yet he did not, could not, have forseen the thin edge of the wedge he had driven into American civil society with his profiltable shipload ofBlack laborers for the homes and workshops of the new nation, decades before the Southern Planter class hit upon the new labor for their expanding fields of cotton white. There was no other source so plentiful; it was free if slave to exploit the immoral paradox of slave while free, in a larger sense for Southern socety. That socity existed free not for the workers but for the owners. Reluctance to share personal liberty with primitive Blacks was not born of hatred but of a bewillderment as to possibilities of successful Black understanding of the Bill of Rights, the White Man’s creation by God’s beneficence. Logically, Black ignorance was the way to White control. It was when the culture of the Nigerian Gold coast and Southern Plantation culture clashed that the fear and anger arose. Lincoln appreciated the clash but was uncertain as to the resolution. Stephen A Douglas saw the gross differences and inequities, but he was content to accept labor on its own terms, without any distribution of his culture’s amentiies. Thus the attitude of Douglas was fundamentally self-interests and status-quo/ The attitude of Abraham Lincoln was basically bewilderment combined with a forced examination of the problem of culture differences and their consequences. The Colonials had never found the co-existence of the two culures a problem, just so long as they could maintain their distance howsoever artificial. This was easily done in New England where remnants of a pre-revolutionary British class-society still prevailed in dress codes, manners and attitudes. This alienation produced the clash of cultures that led to the crisis in adaptation that indued amid civllashes a civil war… and the Lincoln Douglas debates. Lincoln coveted the Senate seat of his opponent which Douglas had held since 1854.

Senator and Judge Douglas, mixed his infatuation of lawful power with his dramatic insolence in espousing the poroperty value of DredScott. Lincoln was wrong to cling to the primitive notion of individual freedom in bond wilth social libertarian choice or, in a word, anarchy.

Among Douglas’ adherents were slave owners, who should by themselves, and not of the govemmen, decide slavery issues, the sovereignty of the people. From this position sprang his charge that Lincol took debate cues from his mixed audience of free staters. Douglas respned at one point in the Charleston debate:

I am not nor ever have een in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, but I am not nor every have been in favor of making voters or jurors if negroes, persons who are qualified to hold office, or, for that matter, to intermarry with white people… . I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior civil position assigned to the white man, I say upon this occasion. I do not perceive that because the white man ils to have the superior possition the negro should be denied life’s simple amenities. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.

Lincoln tried tot reoncille his contradition of a Negro presence with their feedom by stating, that the authors of the Declaration of Independence, intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men ar equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They affirmed with considerable distinctness the belief that they considerd all men created equaL.equal in certain inalienablerights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Douglas reponded to his assault in another venue. He accused Lincoln of being a deserter from Whiggery, from Democracy, and an upholder of the abolition platform. His assmptiuon was that the people wanted slavery therefore to deny them that right was ani-democratic and pro-liberty for slaves. At the Springfield convention of his nomination for the Senate, he gave his famous house-divided speech: "In my opinion it (slavery) will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that government cannot endure permantedntly half dlave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved… I do not expect our house to falL.but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and plaIce it where,n the public mind, it shall rest in the belief that is is the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push slavery forward untill it shall become, alike, lawful in all the States… old as well as new… North as well as South,

Mister Lincoln says… . that this Government cannot long endure permanently in the same condition in which it was made by its Framers-divided into free and slave.

He says that the House has existed for about seventy years thus divided, and yet he tells you that it cannot be long endure permantntly on the same principles. and in the same relative condition in which our fathers made it. Why can it not exist divided into free and slave states? Washington, Jefferson, Franaklin, Madison, Hamilyton, Jay, and the great men of that day, made this Government divided into free States and slave States… .

On their return trip horne that night in Charleston, the brothers argued, bitterly and violently. The older brother Loren called the younger, Jack, a peevish young lout without good sense, who was spoiled by his fiance beyond repair.

"I don’t know what you are talking about, Loren. You follow our father’s old-world notions of right. Right is right if it appears to be so."

Your standard of judgement!

If it demonstrates the value behind the judgement, Your wife will telllyou the same… the application, which islike a good tonic or a medicine.

Did they teach you that in medical school? Jack asked.  . . . That a tonic for the shakes is a value medicine?

If it prevents an attack and promotes a cure, it is.

Paahh. I cannot stand your righteous attitude, Loren.

Nor I your dogged denial of the truth.

Here we go again. What is the truth? Tell me that.

"Not what works, as you assume. Pragmatic truth can be false… like cuttlng your throat to cure smallpox. The cure kills the patlient.

Truth is thle best defense again defamationl. That may be the law… which you detest, Loren. But lin a court… .

Oh, damn, damn… in a court. Do you actually think Lincoln and Dougleas gave a hoot abou tthe law? . . . no, it was all about winning the Senate seat.

That can be done… nay, it should be done by voicing the truth, zjsvl. I at least learned that at Memphis med school.

"Well, they did not teach you how to use truth to manipulate the ignorant, as Papa’s Southern planter statesmen try to do.

"Jack’s response was fillle with vitriol.

"They are good men.

Good, good! What does that word mean, Loren? Jack’s growing cynicism did not escape Loren’s notice. The brothers sat in silence for a long time, until their father’s farm wagon arrived at the front door and they had climbed down to the ground.

Be sure to put down in your log, Jack, that Lincoln is an abolutionist. You heard him yourself.

He is as much for the people as Douglas. He hates slavery. He believes in the sovereignty of the people. Douglas believes in the sovereignty of slave owners—those are his people.

Loren’s words cotained the wisdom of a young man’s keen observation of life around him.

Slaves are not citizens, and by law they are not the people. In fact, they are not even… peole. I mean, I with the rights and privileges we own,l Jack.

Th e younger brother thought for a moment.

Lincoln would bind all the citizens. I see that. How, I do not know. I cannot tell you, Loren.

"No, of course not, because the only way is by war.

You know, Loren, I think we can agree on that. Yes, brother, I think we can agree on that."

Their quarrel did not end on the front steps of their large two storied manor house In fact it only began in the wagon, after the debate in the center of Charleston. Jack’s imagination flashed back to those stupid banner cards… free white men not the slaves. What the devil did that mean? And… all are under the law, by right, by choice, by force. Of course, Loren had thought, not of murder, even of a black man. Keep America white. Nor would their father’s success in the London cotton market warrantee happy accord in the Seddon family. Jeremiah Seddon had made money. His land was fertile bottom land, the cotton bolls had grown huge and without weavils. He had used approximately twenty five Blacks to pick the cotton last season, including two pickaninnys. He had not worried about their status.They were simply the labor he needed. He was both a Christian and human, so he had built some rickety shacks to house them, one for a family alone. Six to a shack-vdivided up any way they chose-van outhouse provided for each shack, a special house for a complete family. Families were a nuisance to Seddon. But he went along with the requirements of reality. Hog pork and collard greens, a corn patch for a month’s table fare, apple trees, when the worms did not get to the fruit first, and some small things like hard-crusted round bread, coffee. flour and sugar, portioned out to the master, so called, of each shack. He would have one of these litnerant cloth-—tailors outfit his slaves, who was due to come through at the end of the summer, his wagon carrying ready-made pants and shirts, and the equipment for fashioning a shirt or altering britches right at his wagon, like a traveling ferrier prepared to customilze shoes for the plantation horses. on his portable forge. One pair of shoes for two years. How, where could his slaves wear out shoe leather? After all, the shoes of the children in the wilderness had lastsed for thirty years on one pair of sandals. Seddon also kept a bondsman, Black but competent as insuance against runaway slaves.

Standing in front of their home, Jack struck his older brother across the face. The fight continued for ten minutes, until the old slave servant of the house, Sargum, stepped out onto the porch and into the battle. When he had vaguely discemedthe cause for the ffight.,he reportedil to Dr.Seddon. Finally Pa Seddon stepped in, having heard the break up the boys’ fight and the squawks. It broke his heart to find them fighting wlih their fists; it augurer illfor the plantation. They were his sons, his wife having died in giving birth to Jack because of a wrong foetal position, a breech birth, accompanied by unstaunchable bleeding. The midwife had not known what to do. They had buried her in the family plot beside the house. Jeremiah was still in deep anguish over the loss of his beloved Georgine. And now, as if a curse had been put upon his house, his two sons were fighting with greater intensity than they ever had fought as boys. There was about their argument the seriousness of a family duel, not a fist fight over some picayune matter. The old man was greatly troubled. He had not appeared for breakfast or dinner, but had remained in their bedroom for several weeks, not wanting to visit other parts of the house inhabited by memories of his beloved wife. Instead he had turned to reading his Bible for comfort.

HAGGLING OVER HELL

-A Slave Markett-

Along the Mississippi Delta, one lonely black sang his mournful wail of the blues to another black man, a slave, working in an adjacemt cotton field.

Greedy by nature yet penurious by practice, Jeremiah Seddon was asking a reduced price for his Negroes to facilitate matters.

Barker!

yep… .

Drop the price ten dollars if the buyer seems ready. Forget the complaints. They’re all hale and hearty… good for any Planter’s stable.

Yes, sir.

And barker… . don’t crack your whip when they get outa line. I’m not peddling malcontents or runaways, y’ hear me?

Aye, Cap’n. They’s reliable, ever one of ’em.

Your’ve hit it right, barker., And… put on a smile. They’s a fine lot and worth ever Washington dollar..

Should he fail to dispose of his property, to liquidate a portion of the stock who had labored for him in the range of almost ten years, the black children he had planned for by forced cohabitation in his slave shacks, the Planter Mister Seddonr would be otherwise obliged to return his property to their plantation shacks to await the next sale. His own childen were grown, and he was getting up in years. One of the slaves, a middle-aged woman, collapsed in the torrid heat. Her friends caught her and carried her to a spot under the same awning where Mister Seddon sat. He stood momntarily to watch the business, standing, then resumed his chair and continuing to draw on his long red cigar. He shook his head in mock wonderment.

The sun shone down with torrid and unrelenting heat, onto the sweating faces of a thirty-one black importees. Planter Seddon was lso liquidling some of his slave sock. The Nigerian cargo—from African Nigeria hence the corruption ofNige’n into nigger—was the cargo of a cruel ship’s captain and transit slave-master who were soon to become slaves. Like cattle waiting for bales of hay to be thrown to them from a wagon, they stood patiently, distrubuted along the wooden platform, in their rags of clothing, rancid shorts and trousers, scrap dresses on the women and girls. The thirty-three blacks on display had newly arrived on a two-masted schooner, a slaver named The Christiana. They stood some of them shivering even under the broiling sun, sweat running down their faces yet from fear, shivering, mute, a handful in low tribal conversation, their black gleaming flesh and their language the only reminders of village life from whence their Chieftan had dragged them down to the waterfront and into Captain Clyde Olmsby’s waiting ship. These wretched immigrants by the force of a civilization gun, tribal authority and chains stood waiting under the unrelenting sun for a summons from a buyer down among the onlooking audience who crowded below the platform. The small town was Dixon, not Savannah. The audience consisted of women, housewives, visualizing slave help with a large family, a good dresser or two, accomplices of questionable characters,a feed and grain dealer, a ferrier hopingfor a helper to pump his forge bellows, and a gathering of farmers from this and that area of river land. They watched with the eagerness of children waiting for the magician to perform his trick. They stood a few of them shivering even under the broiling sun, sweat running down their faces yet from fear, shivering, mute, here and here blacks exchaning tribal grunts nd tribal babble, their black gleaming flesh and their language the only reminders of village life from whence their Chieftan had dragged them down to the waterfront and into Captain Clyde Olmsby’s waiting ship. These wretched immigrants by the force of a civilization gun, tribal authority and chains stood waiting under the unrelenting sun for a summons from a buyer down among the upturned white faces in strange clothing, the onlooker audience who crowded below the platform. Buyers for cheap labor, courtiers of wealthy Planters, shippers looking for dock hands, a crowd that also consisted ofwomen—housewives, visualizing slave help with a large family, a good personal valet or two, accomplices ofquestionable characters, a feed-and-grain dealer, a ferrier hoping for a helper, and a gathering of farmers from this and that area of river land. They watched withs the eagerness of children waiting for the magician to perform his trick. The slaves on display stood in fear and terrified anxiety, miserable creatures, made in the image of God, who had come all the way by rail in an oven-like box car from that port city to work in the indiigo and cotton fields, and in the white man’s domicile where cool air would be their only luxury. A huge sign was posted on the side of the store-front building before which the auction was to occur. It read:

GREAT SALE OF SLAVES, January 10,1861.

It inclued—

3 Bucks, ages from 29 to 28, Strong,

Alebodied 1 Wench, Sallie, Age 42, Excellent Cook

1 Wench, Lize Aged 23 wilth 6 mo. old Picinini

One Buck, Aged 52, good Kennel Man

16 Bucks, Aged from twelve to twenty, Escellent.

Excellent specimens! Jeremish Seddon, Esq.

The excitement of fear and dread continued to cause certain of the weaker captives to shiver in the heat of the midday sun. Mister Seddon was not a heartless man, just esceedingly ignorant both about his slaves and about life in general, surrounded as he was by the cotton culture of indulence. He ordered a bench to be brought up onto the platform for the children and any women who wanted to sit. He could not bear the sight of a fainted slave, for that would reduce his or her price before an audience of skeptical spectators, a few of whom had the money to purchase outright his lot of field hands. He needed to retain his house-boys and his chief house slaves, three in number. Also, he had kept back one Black man named Sargum who would travel with his only daughter to Washington, as he escort. Sargum was the name, given to him because of his suspiciously light color for an African import… perhaps he was the son of a white missionary.

There was stirring amongst the crowd that day. a man named Lamberth Smith who cast a bid of one hundred and fifty dollars for eight of the Bucks. Mister Jeremiah Seddon, a milky small man in a parched white suit and straw hat, sat in a rattan chair to one side of the platform, under a store awning, watching. He was smoking a red cigar rolled bya Jamaican house servant from dried domestic leaves. The auctioneer was a short burly Scott, with a brogue, teeth in need of repair, stained like his hands with tobacco handing, and dressed in a pair ofcollier’s coveralls. He appeared to know his business. Seddon, he avowed before many of his friends, was moving to the free-state. so-called, of Illinois—there had to be a reason for the sale-sand he was liquidating his assets to Planters who were moving into states such as Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas, where land had to be cleared and cultivation begun. Older colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey were selling their slaves to compenate for losses in profits due to declines in the London cotton market and land-taxes still being collected by the Federal Government to pay off debts of the Revolutionary War. The truth of the matter was that Seddon fit into that category of liquidators, with this one reservation, that he intended to replace his slaves by the purchase of cheaper field hands of greater vigor. However, he patiently awaited the turn of events for such an investment. There had been rumblings of war down in South Carolina,at Fort Sumter. Was would threaen the transpor r of cotton to London markets. War woul also fore Southern planters tos ell their cotton to Yankee mills in the North, in Massachusetts, for one, and in Connecticut. Meantime, the liquidation continued under way.

In this sale process, families of the Black villagers were irretrievably broken up, a crisis that caused great anguish, heartache, tears and sadness among the slaves, for which white society pleaded they possessed no cure. Yet the condition of distancing, as it was called, was endemic. The baker announed, as he stode back and forth infront of the slaves up for sale, Along the Mississippi Delta comes this hyre woman named Lisa. She done raised hell oncet. She done kept house and cooked meals. Yo all go ‘bout in dirty-filthy coveralls to wersh, she kin do it. The barker walked along the boards. This hyers Samuel, he kin do a tad a carperntering… hes a good fisherman… have to loan him yer line an pole. I spect. He shot at a bear oncet an so he’s a brave boy. Good fer yer pertection. The barke stopped in front of a female Black. He was reading the name-and-skill tags that hung by coarse twine from the necks of the slave offerings. This hyers Minnie, she be a good midwife, any you out there too far from the doctor. Ah, she’s the one. This hyers Clopper…he walk with a limp, but tain’t no matter when hes behind the plow. He kin plow yer land fer next year’s cotton crop. Folks, ye got to think ahaid… think these hyre offerin’s over. They’s all in good health and ready to go to work fer yeo Take one fer yer house servant and one fer yere stables… this hyer’s Romer… he kin shoe a horse… so Mister Seddon says right hyere… ." He read he man’s neck-tag. He adjusted the small name tags on the clothing of the slaves. He shuffled on down the line giving the audience ilnech case the slave’s accomplishment.

This hyer’s… I see he haitn got no name on his tag. Well, I can guess he’s one of them Bucks what was advertised. He can do any sort a work. You got brush-land got to be clearsed? This heyer’s yer man, folks, I kin tell yo that. Just about then one of the young Bucks broke free, jumped down from the platform and started to run away.

Git after him, some ofyew gents… catch that damned nigger. He don’t know what’s good fer him . Three whites chased the fleeing black youth and brought him, hands behind him with a loop of whip thong, back to the platform and pushed him backonto the stage.

What’s yer name, boy? Speak Still breathing hard he answered Ga." He had heard a missionary use the word God as a person with power over blacks and whites…

"Wall, Ga, ye got to learn they’s no runnin’ away.

I thnk he was jes tire a standin’ around," came Seddon’s voice of survey, control and command. J

Next time, yew tell us, tell me… y’ hear?

The barker heard only silence when he expected a Yas sub.

Git back there in line. I think what ye ought to be a prayin’ fer is a fine home wit good vittles… .

He did all that at my place, Seddon’s voice intruded.

Wal now, hit hain’t Christian to go runnin’ off from a man what owns you. Keep that fak clear in yo haid, boy, an ye’ll niver get into no trouble.

Yas, suh.

What can y’ do, boy?

He kin talk better’n you s’pose, Barker. He’s jes scared.

I kin dig wit a shobel

Y’ hear that folks? This hyer young boy’s in need of a good master… so’s he kin dig yo a new welL.so he say. That right, boy?.

Yas, suh.

Askin’ price is gone up to two alnd fifty… ’cause he is young, got many years ahaid a’m.

I gave him a bonus when he brought in water up on the north forty last year… . Seddon spoke out.

Great worker, he won’t niver want ter run away… . ifyou treat ‘m right… like the obeyin’ creture he is… .."

And yet the slave market continued to flourish in Dixon, Savannah, Valdosta and other towns throughout the deep South. Massah not happy with fainting, the barker muttered to the Negroes, standing like the dead, the lifeless yet alive, before the crowd. He wanted to express himself. He heard an offer from an unidentified source, but the voice was too low for him to catch the words. There was a certain shame that attached to this method of transacting for labor. Nobody could explain it if asked, but it was there in the turning of the face, as if the person wated to escape or avoid detection, or somehaow accomplishs the purpose without admitting the inhumanity of it all. The withholding of courage was subtle yet visible… Seddonr smoked on, watching his charges as they stood baking under the hot Kentucky sun. He heard a "whish sound and then a snap, as Clarence, his favorite Controller… as he called his slave driver, snap his whip for no obvious reason. The whip was the symbol of plantation authority. Its use often cruelly replaced language for communiction. The cheap food and clothing and one pair of shoes per year were all necessities for the proper operation of his work force. The institution had come a long way since 1684 when the first slave shipment arrived in Philadelphia to supply Quaker farmers with labor to clear their lands, just three years into colonial status. With a gourdful ofwater on her face, a slapping of the wrists and hands, calling her name, Albasa, the woman who had fainted in the sun slowly came around again and was usherded by the same two bucks back into the display line. The excitement of fear and dread continued to cause certailn of the weaker ones to shiver in the heat of the midday sun.

The barker was trying to separate the whiter faces from the darker ones He was having his problems because some differenes belonged to famiies and the families did not want to split up. There was stirring amongst the crowd that day a man named Lamberth Smith who cast a bid of one hundred and fifty dollars for eight of the Bucks. Mister Seddon, a milky small man in a parched white suit and straw hat, sat in a ratten chair to one side, under a shop awning, watching. He was smoking a red cigar rolled by his house servant from dried domestic leaves. The auctioneer was a short burly Scott, with a brogue, teeth in need of repair, stained like his hands with tobacco handing, and dressed in a pair of collier’s coveralls. He appeared to know his business. Seddon composed the fiction tht was moving to a free-state. so-called, of Illinois, and he was liquidating his assets to Planters who were moving into states such as Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas where land had to be cleared and cultivation begun. Older colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey were selling their slaves to compenate for loss of profits due to declines in the London cotton market and land taxes still beling collected by the Federal Government to pay off debts of the Revolutionary War. In this sale process, families of the black villagers were irretrievably broken up, a crisis that caused great misery, heartache, tears and sadness amongt the slaves, for which whit society pleaded they possessed no cure. Yet the condition of distancing, as it was called, was endemic. Boostling the value of his wares on display, the Barker bellowed in a high, harsh voice:. Here is Lisa, she’s raised ter help folks… kept house and cooked meals. And you all whlen y ge them dirty filthy coveralls to wersh, she kin do it. This hyer ‘s Samuel, he kin do a tad a carpentering… possum pens, chicken houses and th’ like… . hes a good fisherman, . . . have to lend him yer line and pole. He shot at a bear oncet and so he’s a brave one. Good fer yer pertecshun… ‘nd this hye r ‘s Minnie… she be a good midwife, any you out there too far from the doctor. she be the one. This hyer ‘s Clopper, he walks wit a limp, but tain’t no matter when he’s behind th’ plow. He can plow yer land fer next year’s cotton crop. Folks, ye got ter think ahaid, think these here offerins over. They ‘s all in good healt and ready to go to work fer yeo Take one fer yer house servant and one fer yere stables… Ythis hyer ‘s Romer… he klin shoe a horse,so Mister Seddon tells me. The Barker adjustsed the small name tags on the clothing of the slaves. He went on down the line giving th eaudience the list of the slaves’ accomplishments. This hyer ‘s… 1 ‘see he hain’t got no name on his tag. Well, I kin guess hes one of them buscks what was advertised. He kin do any sort a work. You got brush got to be cleared. This hyer ‘s yer man, folks, I kin tell ye that… ." He had no sooner spewn his barker pomise than one of the young bucks broke free, jumped down from the platform and started to run away.

Go after ‘m some 0’ ye gents… catch that damned nigger. He don’t know what’s good fer ‘m. Three whites, a boy and two men, chased down the fleeing black youth and brought him, hands behind him back to the platform and pushed him onto the stage.

What’s yer name, son? Son. Still breathing hard he ansered I’m Henry.

Well, Henry, ye got to learn theys no runnin’ away.

I can see that. I was jes gettin’ tyired 0’ standin’ aroun’,

Next time, you tell us, tell me, y’ hear?

Yas suh.

Now get back there in line. I think what ye ought ter be a-prayin’ fer is a fine home wit good meals…,

I done all that at Mister Seddon’s place.

Wal now hit hain’t Christan to run off from a man what owns y’. Keep that fak clear in her haid, boy, ‘nd ye’lll niver get inter lno trouble.

Yas, suh.

What can y do, boy?

I kin dig wit a shobel

Y’ hear that folks? This hyer young boy’s in need of a good man’ger… to dig you a new water well, so he say. That right, boy?.

Yas, suh.

Asking price is gone up to two fifty, ’cause he is young, got many years ahaid a ‘m. Mister Seddon done give ‘m a bonus when he brought in water up on’s north forty last year. Great worker… he won niver want ter run away… . ify’ treat ‘m right. The barker was tireless as he worked his way through thirty three slaves, includug the children.

The folks of Dixon, unlike in Boston, on the Common, needed slaves for the picking season in the fall or late summer. Mister Seddon had gone to the port to await the