The Forbidden Love of a Southern Belle

By Pearley Brown

On a warm, moonlit night in mid-June 1865, three days prior to Beau and Carlotta Wells's scheduled departure, an unsigned note was attached to a door at the main entrance to the vigilance committees' headquarters in a small community called Quiet Creek, located about fifteen miles west of Pine Grove City, Kentucky. The note asserted that a fugitive slave named Beau Wells had returned to the plantation that he'd run away from in 1860, purchased the farm, married his former master's widow, and that he and his wife, Carlotta, could be found residing at his newly acquired estate. Beau and Carlotta's outright defiance of the moral code enraged the vigilantes, and all hell broke loose!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642143034

Book preview

Prologue

Slavery is a practice in which human beings are owned by other human beings. A slave works for his master, or owner, without pay although he receives food, clothing, and shelter. Slavery has existed for thousands of years. The earliest slaves included debtors and people captured in warfare. Some historians consider early slavery a forward step toward civilization, because at one time, ancient conquerors, such as the Assyrians, Syrians, Chaldeans, Persians, and many others simply killed their prisoners. Early slaves belonged to many races. Most later, slaves were Negroes.

Slavery in Europe slowly changed into serfdom and had almost disappeared by the 1300s, but during the 1400s, Portuguese explorers began capturing African Negroes and bringing them into Europe as slaves. In 1516, King Charles I of Spain gave slave traders permission to take slaves into the Spanish colonies in America. This trade was formalized by a contract between Spain and another country for furnishing Negro slaves. Slavery soon developed into a profitable industry with several nations taking part. At or near the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, British ships were carrying about half the slaves brought to America.

Abolitionists agitated to do away with the slave trade. In England, the Society of Friends, Quakers, started an antislavery movement in 1671, which the American Quakers supported in 1696. In 1792, Denmark became the first nation to put a stop to the slave trade. Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce persuaded the British House of Commons to pass a bill against the slave trade in 1807. Slavery was abolished in all British colonies in 1833.

In March 1807, the United States prohibited further importation of slaves after January 1, 1808. This act legally ended the overseas trade in slaves, but slavery itself continued until after the Civil War. Slavery in the United States began as early as 1619. Because of the nature of farming in the North, slavery was not profitable there. It became concentrated in the South, where farming on large plantations formed the main industry. By 1860, there were about 3,954,000 Negro slaves in the United States, nearly one-third of the total population of the fifteen Southern slave states.

Most slaves worked as field hands in gangs. They planted, weeded, and harvested tobacco, rice, sugar, and especially cotton. Their hours were long, lasting from sunrise to sunset. House slaves worked as servants in the master’s home and had more privileges. An adult slave received a weekly food allowance. He was housed and clothed at his master’s expense. If he failed to do his assigned work or attempted to run away, he might be whipped or otherwise punished. There is no reliable evidence to indicate that, as late as the outbreak of the Civil War, slavery was a dying institution in the United States. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed the slaves in the South. But until 1865, when the states ratified Amendment 13 to the US Constitution, slaves in other parts of the country were still legally not freemen. Amendment 14 and 15, passed after the Silver War, gave former slaves citizenship and civil rights.

Introduction

The Forbidden Love of a Southern Belle

Our story begins with a clandestine love affair between a slave and his master’s wife on a farm in the old South in the days of cavaliers, slaves, and cotton fields. In 1857, a planter named James Freeman, his wife, Carlotta, and their twenty-one slaves migrated from the state of Mississippi to a large plantation in the state of Kentucky. As soon as the Freemans were settled into their new estate, the intrigue between Carlotta Freeman and one of her young male mulatto slaves resumed.

Chapter 1

The Forbidden Love of a Southern Belle

In January 1857, a Southern planter named James Freeman and his wife, Carlotta, purchased a three-thousand-acre plantation in Pine Grove County, Kentucky. Four months later, The Freemans, with the assistance of their slaves, moved into their new manor. Live Virginia oaks enmeshed in Spanish moss dominated the scenery behind a ranch-style wood fence that ran parallel to a narrow, deeply creviced wagon trail that was an eastbound exit off the main road. The trail extended one mile before it terminated at a grand antebellum Georgian-style second-storied mansion. The huge structure featured a large living room, formal dining room, conference room, ballroom, ten bedrooms, his and her office, gym, library, wide double-door entrance, large windows, and six classic white columns erected on an unconventional long, high porch. The slaves called it the Big House.

Servants who worked in the master’s house lived in a small house called Scullion Quarters. It was located at the immediate rear of the main house. A succession of small cabins that housed field-workers was encompassed by barbed wire on both side of a circled farm road that began and ended at the main house. James Freeman didn’t tolerate infringement on his property. No Trespassing signs were visible throughout the estate. Slave visitation beyond the perimeter of the plantation was prohibited. News from family members and friends of servants who were living on neighboring farms were minimum and frequently unreliable.

In the old South, high-quality and vast quantities of cotton were the desire of almost every planter. Many planters believed that the success of their cotton crops depended entirely on the work performance of the slaves. In view of that dire contingency, numerous planters implemented stricter rules and a reduction of privileges with the hope that would motivate the slaves to work harder, faster, and more efficiently, as well as eradicate any thoughts of conspiring to rebel or escape. By late 1860, the Freemans’ plantation had produced three successful cotton crops. The servants had worked diligently. There hadn’t been a hint of rebellion or chronic complaining from anyone, except a radical-minded twenty-one-year-old male mulatto who didn’t agree with his master’s rules. His name was Beau Wells, alias—Bo Weaver. He was six feet four inches tall, with athletic build, curly black hair, brown eyes, and weighed about 210 pounds. Beau Wells was intelligent, articulate, and persuasive. He voiced grievances about things such as child abuse, lack of medical care for pregnant women and the elderly: unsanitary foods and unsafe workplaces.

Whites who were friends, neighbors, and business constituents of the Freemans considered Beau Wells’s attitude to be impudent, uppity, and intolerable. The planters became especially concerned about the inflammatory remarks that Beau made constantly. Some of the planters believed the slaves would eventually rebel if such bold defiance was permitted to continue. Contrary to her contemporaries, Carlotta Freeman didn’t think Beau’s aggressive behavior was appalling at all. In fact, she defended Beau every time a complaint was uttered against him. It was said Carlotta favored Beau because he was more white than black. No one had a clue she was in love with him, a fact she wouldn’t even admit to herself.

James Freeman went away on business trips two or three times a year. Sometimes he didn’t return until three or four months later. During his absence, Carlotta managed the plantation, which required giving the slaves their daily assignments. She spent her leisure time teaching Beau Wells how to read and write, a practice that was frowned on but tolerated to a modest degree on a few plantations. Carlotta never had any intentions of falling in love with Beau Wells or even becoming intimate with him on a full-time basis. Loneliness, combined with an insatiable sexual appetite, compelled Carlotta to cheat on her husband. She used Beau Wells for stud service and to have fun with until she could find someone whom she liked better to occupy her time.

Beau Wells was ridden with poignant anxiety over whether the vigilantes had found out about the love affair between him and his master’s wife. At some point during the night, he dozed off with that dire prospect on his mind. He was awakened suddenly by voices of white men and the sound of horse hooves clopping against the hard surface of the road near his mother’s cabin. Beau sprang up from his cot and dashed across the room in a near state of panic. Nauseated and weak in the knees, Beau eased the curtains back and gazed out the window. His eyes were dilated, and big drops of sweat streamed down his face copiously. The night was pitch-black and eeriely quiet. Even the nocturnal creatures were silent. There were no men or animals nearby. Beau had experienced another appalling nightmare. He was a man hagridden by the future, haunted by visions of an imminent lynching. Beau couldn’t sleep nights, he’d lost his appetite, and fear caused his heart to flutter every time he heard the slightest noise at night on the outside of his mother’s cabin. Carlotta either didn’t know or didn’t care about what he was going through. After all, she wasn’t worried about the vigilantes coming to burn her house down and leave her tarred and feathered and hanging from a tree in the middle of the night.

Why should she care about a common slave? God knows slaves are plentiful. Hell, some people say slaves really are not bona fide human beings, and no great amount of time, money, or consideration should be attributed to them, Beau mumbled as he wondered how long it was going to be before a bunch of white men showed up on horseback with guns and torches in their hands and lynching on their mind.

Chapter 2

Carlotta Freeman was a twenty-five-year-old white woman. She was extraordinarily beautiful, curvaceous, five feet six inches tall, with red hair and green eyes. She weighed about 105 pounds. Education: law school graduate. Career: farm manager / housewife. Hobbies: painting, swimming, horseback riding. Carlotta appeared to be a perfectly normal, energetic, and happy young person who was experiencing a worry-free life that was filled with prosperity. An ancient adage asserts that if things seem too good to be true, they usually are. In Carlotta’s case, the saying couldn’t have been more accurate. She was a woman tormented and driven by nymphomania. Numerous times, she endeavored to satisfy her compelling sexual craving by demanding Beau Wells to sleep with her longer and more frequently without giving any consideration to possible consequences. Carlotta insisted on intimacy with Beau almost every day. Beau was sure their relationship would eventually end with him dangling at the short end of a rope. Ascribed to that ominous possibility, he became increasingly reluctant to make love to her. Beau was unsure about how Carlotta would react if he told her how he really felt.

Carlotta was aware of Beau’s adverse feelings toward her, but it wasn’t a matter she was concerned about because she believed with a powerful enthusiasm that it would be extremely difficult, if not utterly impossible, for any real man’s resistance to prevail in the presence of her captivating beauty.

Carlotta was particularly proud of her ability to mesmerize and manipulate men. Beau, you better get your ass in here right now! Don’t force me to call you again! Do you hear me, boy? Carlotta yelled vehemently.

Yes, madam, I hear you. I’m coming in now, Beau replied while rushing into the house.

My god, Beau, what is it in this world that took you so long to get in here? Carlotta asked in a harsh tone of voice as her eyes flashed wrathfully.

Well, madam, I decided to finish a job that I started yesterday. And—

"You decided! Boy, who authorized you to