Winds of the South

By Marty Hambright

Raised on the River Oaks Plantation in Louisiana, Devlin Ruston, son of the plantation overseer, witnesses the cruelty and abuse inflicted on the slaves by the plantation owner, Braxton Hayden. Devlin takes a stand against this oppression and soon becomes the champion of the black people; vowing that one day he will see them set free.
With the impending Civil War on the horizon, Devlin is confident that his vow of freedom for the slaves is about to be achieved. Although Devlin has nothing but contempt for the plantation owner, he complicates matters by falling in love with Master Haydens daughter, Rebecca.
Dreaming of one day marrying this beautiful girl, Devlin recognizes that for someone with his lowly background, this dream could never materialize. Eventually, Devlin rises above his station in life to fulfill his dream and become the owner of the largest plantation in Louisiana.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: May 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781490788234

Marty Hambright

Marty Hambright is retired and lives with his wife, Betty, in Atkins, Arkansas. He enjoys reading, fishing, travelling, and spending time with his family. He has two grown children, five grandchildren, one great-grandson and another one on the way. Marty has always loved making up and telling stories, especially to his grandchildren. Marty lived several years in Louisiana, which is the setting for this book.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I T WAS ANOTHER beautiful April morning, the sun was just coming up over the Mississippi River and sparkling like diamonds dancing on the water, as Braxton Hayden walked out on the back veranda of his home and stopped to look out over his twenty-five hundred acres of land and his two hundred slaves that were already working in the fields. His plantation, which he had named River Oaks, because of the large live oak trees that grew in abundance on the grounds and its close proximity to the river, was located on the east side of the Mississippi River near the small town of Wynbreaux, Louisiana.

He could see his overseer, Jude Ruston, riding his big gray gelding along the edges of the area where the wealth he had accumulated was produced; the cotton fields. He had a Navy Colt forty-five pistol belted around his waist and an ever-present blacksnake whip curled in his hand. Braxton Hayden was a moody man and while he didn’t usually hold with unnecessary cruelty to his nigras, if they started getting a little lax in their work, he considered a little taste of the blacksnake a necessary encouragement for them to do better.

Although Master Hayden, as he was known to everyone on his plantation, considered Jude Ruston good at his job, he would never humble himself enough to admit this to a man he considered white trash. Jude knew how to get the most work out of the darkies, by allowing them to work at a moderate but steady pace. There was also always the threat of that blacksnake whip, although Jude seldom had to apply it to any of the black backs of the slaves.

Jude was in his mid-thirties with a wife named Sarah, who was several years his junior and a rowdy twelve-year-old son named Devlin. This twelve-year-old son of his overseer gave Braxton a lot of unease. It seemed every time there was some kind of altercation on his plantation, this boy was somehow involved. When confronted by Master Hayden for some of his misdeeds, Devlin often showed downright contempt for the master of River Oaks Plantation; which gave him ample concern for this lack of respect.

Master Hayden thought his parents had certainly given him the right name when they named him Devlin Lee Ruston, because at times he thought of him as old Lucifer himself, or at least one of his offspring.

Devlin considered himself a friend to darkies, even though his father was the one who had to administer the punishment to the slave who got out of line or tried to run away, sometimes at the encouragement of his own son; which brought about not only an embarrassing time for his father, but on a couple of occasions a threat of being fired by Master Hayden.

Jude Ruston knew it was only because he was so good at his job that he hadn’t actually been fired for his son’s indiscretions. Although he punished the boy and even gave him a couple of harsh whippings, he still continued to harass his employer through his rebellious nature.

In addition to its twenty-five hundred acres, the River Oaks Plantation was made up of a huge two-story brick mansion, with double verandas that wrapped the entire house. The roof and both upper and lower verandas were supported by twenty massive Corinthian columns. Floor to ceiling windows were located in all the outer rooms on both the upper and lower levels of the mansion and massive double doors made up the front and rear entrances.

At the entrance to the long circular drive that led up to the front veranda, was an arched wrought iron trellis with the words River Oaks Plantation integrated into its metal. Large wrought iron gates were attached to each side of the trellis, which when closed could completely block the entrance to the plantation.

Behind the mansion was a carriage house which was a smaller replica of the mansion and housed two beautiful carriages, one completely enclosed for keeping its passengers out of the elements, while the other was open for fair weather and scenic drives.

To the right of the carriage house was an equally beautiful barn and stable for the many thoroughbred horses kept on the plantation, which were used for pulling the carriages and riding. The other horses and mules, which were used for plowing and pulling the farm wagons, were kept in a functional but somewhat less attractive barn closer to the cotton fields.

Behind these buildings, and out of the view of the occupants of the mansion, was row after row of ugly unpainted cabins, which housed the backbone of the plantation, the slave population. This section of the plantation was simply referred to as the quarters. It was here the slaves were not only housed, but where they were also fed and occasionally beaten.

An open area in front of the slave quarters, contained a huge wooden post planted upright in the ground, with chains and shackles on each side to hold a person’s hands above and to the sides of their head. This was the whipping post, where the slaves were disciplined with a whip that was weaved of leather and capable of tearing gashes in a person’s flesh with each lash. The whip, better known as the blacksnake, was kept clean and well-oiled for this purpose.

Adjacent to the quarters were two functional and essential buildings on the plantation, the carpenter shop and the blacksmith shop. These were maintained by two of the most skillful slaves and therefore the most valuable slaves on the plantation, the carpenter and the blacksmith.

On the opposite side of the quarters from the carpenter and blacksmith shop was the large cabin of the second in command on the plantation, the overseer. It was he who had the duty of ensuring the slaves performed their tasks efficiently as well as timely. It was also his duty to administer the punishment should any of the slaves fail to perform as was deemed appropriate or maybe get a little uppity.

Braxton considered himself to be an honest man, a good neighbor and friend to several other plantation owners who had carved out their large cotton farms and built their huge Greek style homes along the Mississippi River.

Like all the other plantation owners, Braxton considered all the things he owned and the wealth he accumulated his due because of his hard work and determination in turning unbroken and wild land into a prosperous farm and building a home for his family.

In reality, everything he owned was built by the backs of the black horde of African people who had been captured and stolen away from their homeland to be sold as slaves to build the great plantations of not only Louisiana, but other states like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and several other Southern states.

Yet each one of these plantation owners were arrogant enough to believe that they had built these kingdoms by the sweat of their own brow and it was their due to be able to sit on their galleries and talk about what they had accomplished, giving little thought to the black man working in their fields; or the ones serving them their mint juleps for that matter.

To the dismay of Braxton Hayden, here in his great kingdom of the River Oaks Plantation, he was continually reminded of the work these slaves did, almost daily, by this thorn in his side, named Devlin.

While he considered Devlin a thorn in his side, that constantly reminded him of everything he considered being wrong on his plantation, he was no real threat. Another matter that had been on Hayden’s mind, as well all the other plantation owners, in the last few months was a true threat, war.

They were under more and more pressure from Northern abolitionists to free their slaves. Master Hayden failed to see the hypocrisy in his thoughts of how all these Northern protesters expected the Southern land owners to grow their cotton and have it harvested without their slaves; while at the same time thinking that they had built their kingdoms themselves.

Now there was the threat of war in the wind. The Southern plantation owners claimed the North was trying to tell them what they could or could not do on their own land and trying to destroy their way of life; while at the same time, the Northern abolitionist claimed it was wrong for the Southerners to own another human being.

More and more Northerners were taking up the cry to free the slaves as the abolitionists continued to stir them up through newspapers and speeches being made on streets of all the major cities. And now this great white ape, as the Southerners called him, Abraham Lincoln was in the White House and was proclaiming that all men should be free.

Master Hayden and his fellow plantation owners took this as a direct affront to their way of life and worrying about the possibility of having to leave their families and homes to go fight for their way of life. This had been weighing heavily on Hayden’s mind in the past several months since the word war had first been mentioned in one of the many gatherings at the social events these plantation owners were so anxious to give and have an excuse to show off their wealth.

Since the Master only had a wife, Katherine, and one child, twelve-year-old Rebecca, he wasn’t keen on the idea of going off to war and leaving his plantation. With no sons or any other male he trusted the care of his home and slaves to, Master Hayden was troubled with what could happen in the event he indeed had to leave to fight in a war.

Although all the landowners agreed that it would be a short lived war, because there was no doubt in their mind the Southerners could whip the Northerners, it would still require them to be away from their beloved plantations, even if for a very short time.

All these thoughts evaporated as the Masters beautiful white gelding was brought up to the back veranda for him by one of the darkies. He had grown so accustomed to seeing these men and taking them for granted that he hardly noticed him as he mounted and was handed the reins.

The boy, as the Master called male slaves, regardless of their age, handed his master the reins without looking him directly in the face, since that could have been considered a lack of respect and punishment could have been administered for the offence.

Unacknowledged or thanked in any way, the slave returned to his tasks in the stable as the Master rode off towards the fields to talk to his overseer. Though this was an everyday occurrence and was expected by the race of dark skinned people, the scene was not entirely unnoticed. Twelve-year-old Devlin Rustin took it all in from his view beside one of the huge old live oak trees that grew in abundance around the large house and yard, and which gave the name to the plantation.

Devlin held the Master and everything about him in contempt. He saw him as a hard taskmaster and an arrogant, egotistical man. He hated the fact that his father worked for him, especially knowing what the Master actually thought of his father.

Devlin had heard him tell a bunch of his fellow slave holders that Jude Rustin was pure white trash, but he needed him to keep his darkies in line and keep them working, something that he was capable of doing probably because he was only one notch above them.

This had drawn a round of laughter from all the men and had set Devlin’s mind on fire. One day he vowed things would change on the River Oaks Plantation and he would be there to see it happen.

He watched from his vantage point in the big live oak as the Master rode off towards his father. He wondered what words of wisdom he would enlighten his father with today. If he only knew his father also considered him an ignorant, boastful fool he would probably fire him on the spot and run them all off the plantation.

Devlin knew how his father felt about the Master from a conversation he overheard between his mother and father one night as they lay in bed. He had gotten up to answer the call of nature and happened to hear his father talking to his mother even though it was late. His father had told his mother how arrogant the master was and how he tried to tell him how he should raise his family.

What he heard his father say that really stuck in his craw, was that the master had told his father that he should have worked harder and maybe he could have made something out of his life instead of being an overseer.

Devlin knew the only way this pompous fool could have made it at all was from the money passed to him from his own father. Money that was cheated from others in some type of business scheme. Money that was used to buy land and slaves to work it for him. And then this man had the nerve to say his father hadn’t worked hard enough to become anyone of importance.

Watching him now riding on that fat white horse of his, Devlin wished he had a rifle to shoot him out of that fancy saddle, which he had probably spent more money on than he did his slaves in a year. He was more concerned about the things he could buy than the fact that his slaves were poorly housed, poorly fed and poorly clothed, even though they were the source of the money he used to pay for all the fine things he owned. One day this would change and again Devlin vowed he would be here to see it.

Morning, Jude.

Good morning, Mr. Hayden.

I see you are keeping them darkies working at a nice pace out there, but you can’t let them slack off. We have to get them cotton seeds in the ground and get them to growing. We need a good crop this year to pay for all the extras we are doing for them darkies this year.

Yes sir, we will have all the planting done by the end of the month in plenty of time for the regular picking.

That’s good to hear, Jude. Carry on, I am just going to make a tour of the fields then I have some business to take care of in town.

Yes sir, Mr. Hayden, have a good ride.

Jude Ruston watched as his employer rode off and made a wide sweep around the field before heading for the road to town. It was all he could do to keep a civil tongue with his boss these days. The fat fool was so arrogant he actually thought he knew how to plant and harvest cotton.

He had to make a good crop to pay for the extra he spent on the darkies this year. The only extra Jude could think of was the hog that broke a leg in the fence that had to be shot that he gave them to roast back around Christmas. As for the business in town, Jude also knew that was a day spent in the tavern drinking with the rest of the fools that considered themselves planters.

Chapter 2

J UDE HAD BEEN raised on a cotton farm by a man that worked his whole life trying to make a living for his wife and son, but only managed to work himself into an early grave. His mother followed in death soon after his father, leaving their fourteen-year-old son to fend for himself in a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Jude worked as a hand on several small farms until he turned sixteen and got his first overseer’s job. Since then, he had worked on several plantations; and with each change, the plantations became larger until he had gotten to this one, which was greater by far than the others. Jude hoped to make a good living for his family, which he had started along the way, here on the River Oaks, but he didn’t know how much more of this man he could stand. It seemed like the larger the plantation, the more arrogant and more foolish the owner.

What bothered him the most here on this plantation was the way his son Devlin was reacting to the way of life these rich and pompous landowners lived. He was becoming more rebellious every day and showing more and more contempt for his employer.

Jude knew this stemmed from the way his son saw the slaves being treated and from the conditions they were forced to live in. He had tried to make him understand there was nothing he could do to change this; but being his son and just like him, he was bull headed and thought otherwise.

Lately he was even concerned that his son held him a little in contempt because he was overseeing the working of these slaves, which made him a part of their suffering. And maybe he was. Maybe he had a little contempt for himself for choosing this way of making a living for his family. But in his defense, it was all he knew how to do, and his son would just have to understand.

Devlin watched as the Master rode out of the field and out on the road to town, gone to do his drinking with his fellow slavers. Devlin could almost hear him talking and bragging about what he owned and how much money he had and how much he was going to make on this year’s cotton crop.

Looking out at his father, he wondered what the Master had said to him and what his father was thinking about as he watched him ride off up the road. He would have been surprised to know that his father had actually been thinking about him.

Jude was concerned about his son and he was often on his mind these days. He saw Devlin become more and more rebellious every day and often showed downright contempt for his own father because of the job he held on the plantation. He resented the fact that Jude had to knuckle down, as he put it, to the master and treat slaves like they were just so much property. He thought his father was just as bad as the master.

Jude knew like all the other men in the South that war was brewing and lots of young men would be headed out to fight and die in a senseless battle somewhere up north. His greatest fear was that Devlin, although he was only twelve, would be one of those young men. And knowing how Devlin felt about slavery, it would be a Southern boy and not a Northern Yankee that killed his son; because Devlin would most definitely be fighting for the North.

He wished he could do something to change that fact; but Devlin was a very headstrong boy and although he was born and raised in the South, he felt it was wrong for a man like Braxton Hayden and other men like him to own another man just because his skin was black.

All Jude could do was hope and pray that something would change and this impending war would not come about, or by some miracle his son would start to see things different and accept the fact that the black man would always be a slave to white men and that men like Jude would always be required to keep them in line.

As Devlin watched Master Hayden ride off, he thought of the many times he had watched this man carry out secret missions, mostly at night, around the plantation when he was sure no one was watching him.

But he was wrong. Devlin was always watching him. Since most of the work around the plantation was done by slave labor, including his own house, Devlin was only assigned minimal work or chores to do, which gave him a lot of free time. During the day he mostly spent his time with the darkies; helping them with some of their tasks, talking to them, and getting to know their customs.

Customs they had practiced in their home countries but were not allowed to practice on the plantation. In this way, Devlin could understand their feelings: the resentment, the hopelessness and the loss, better than any other white person.

While most of the black people, understandably, did not trust Devlin; after all his father was the taskmaster over them, he did have several friends among the black people. One of these was his best friend Sammy who would often, at the risk of being caught and punished, slip off to go fishing with him.

Fishing was what took up most of Devlin’s daytime hours. He loved to fish; not only because he often caught nice plump catfish for his mother to cook, along with her delicious hush puppies, but also because it gave him time to think and reflect on all the atrocities of slavery. Lazing about on the river bank, he could ponder all the injustices being levied against the black people.

It also gave him time to catch up on his sleep; sleep he lost at night as he prowled the boundaries of the plantation. Night was the time Devlin observed most of the doings and indiscretions of Master Hayden. Indiscretions that caused Devlin to not only loath Master Hayden, but to outright hate him.

Staying up late at night and watching the big house to see what might be happening at night, led to several observances that would become useful to Devlin in the future, but at the time just made him hate Master Hayden more each day.

On several occasions he watched as Hayden, as he often thought of him without the Master, left the big house and visited the slave cabins, which just happened to be the home of a young black girl. These night visits led to the appearance of light-skinned babies appearing from the pregnancies of the young black girls Hayden visited at night. Devlin heard stories of how some of the fathers of these girls protested the Master lying with their daughters, only to be beaten or sold off.

Devlin also noted that these light-skinned babies were some of the first to be sold off when they were old enough. These, however, were soon replaced by more light-skinned babies produced from the same mothers or other girls as soon as they were old enough to breed.

This was the type of misuse or abuse that led Devlin to show contempt for the plantation owner and a vow that someday things would be different for the black people. There would come a day when these people would no longer be considered property to be bred and sold with no regards to how they felt or how they were hurt.

Another thing Devlin observed on these late night visits, was Hayden crawling under his rear veranda with a lantern, a short handle spade, and a molasses bucket.

Devlin watched with fascination on several occasions as Master Hayden drug his fat body under the veranda, to appear a short while later without the molasses bucket. This seemed to happen right after Hayden sold his crops or took a load of slaves to the market in Natchez.

Getting the best of his curiosity, one night after such a trip under the veranda, Devlin waited until Hayden had gone back inside the big house and the light had been extinguished, and then made a little forage under the veranda to see what the Master was burying in the molasses buckets.

With a lantern that he waited to light until he was under the veranda, and a short handled gardening spade like the Master used, Devlin soon located a spot where the dirt had been recently spaded. Using his own spade, Devlin dug and soon unearthed the molasses bucket buried there. Removing it from the hole, he discovered it was very heavy. Using the spade to pry the lid off the bucket and looking inside, Devlin’s heart skipped a beat. Inside the bucket in neatly stacked piles were gold coins, lots of gold coins!

Taking one out and turning it over in his hand, it sparkled in the glow of the dim light of the lantern. Devlin had never seen one of these coins, but he knew immediately what it was from the description he had heard of them. It was a fifty-dollar gold piece.

The way they were placed in the bucket and the bucket being completely full of them, Devlin knew there were several hundred of them. He made a quick guess, and from the teachings of math his mother had taught him, he reasoned that there must be five thousand dollars in this one bucket.

He replaced the bucket in the hole and neatly covered it with dirt, just the way he had found it. He didn’t want Master Hayden knowing he had discovered the hiding place of all the money he had received from the sale of his crops or the slaves he had sold.

Extinguishing the light, Devlin crawled back out from under the veranda and looked around to make sure he wasn’t being observed. He was almost positive there were no black people awake this time of night because they were all too tired from the day’s work they had put in; but someone in the big house could possibly be awake and looking out one of the many windows.

Staying in the shadows and slowly moving back to the cabin he shared with his father and mother, the same way he had done when he left a short while before, Devlin stopped in the shadow of the cabin. He was hunkered down beneath the window of his room, which he always crawled out of each night to do his prowling.

Reaching up and pulling himself back inside, Devlin gave a little sigh of relief. He had seen many things happening at night while moving about the shadows of the plantation, but he knew if anyone found out what he had discovered this night, he might suffer more than any of the darkies had ever done.

Back in his bed in the little storage room he called his bedroom, Devlin started playing over in his mind the many times he had observed Master Hayden crawling under the veranda with his molasses bucket of fifty-dollar gold pieces. He could remember at least ten times in the last two years. That meant if there was the same amount of coins in each of those buckets, there was at least fifty thousand dollars buried under that veranda.

Then he thought that was just the times he had seen Master Hayden crawl under there. What if there were times that he hadn’t seen him? And what about before he came to the plantation? How many buckets had Master Hayden buried before he came there? Devlin’s head was spinning with the possibilities of the amount of gold coins buried under that veranda. If Hayden had been doing this for years, there could be millions buried under there. It was almost too much for Devlin to comprehend.

He went to sleep that night not thinking about the plight of the black people on the plantation as he usually did, but with the riches that were buried just a short distance from where he lay. Maybe that was the greed that prompted men like Hayden to own other men so they could continue to build up their stock pile of gold coins and buy more possessions.

Since Master Hayden continued to buy more slaves, more horses, more guns for himself; and more clothes, jewelry and other fineries for the two women in the big house, what was buried under the veranda must be just a small amount of money he was making off the misery of the black inhabitants of his plantation.

The next morning Devlin was up early as always to eat breakfast with his father and mother. This was one of the ways he managed to keep his night forages a secret from his parents. He would catch up on his sleep, as always, while fishing on the banks of the river. This had been his routine for over a year now.

Looking at his father across the small table now he wanted to tell him about all the gold under the veranda of the big house. Devlin thought with just one of those buckets, he and his family could move away from this plantation and start a new life where there were no slaves and