I also began browsing books my father had never heard of in his library: volumes left by previous owners or accidentally included in lots purchased at estate sales. Among them were works of abolitionist literature, technically illegal in Mississippi: “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” published in 1845; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852; and essays by William Lloyd Garrison and other Northern abolitionists.
I read these forbidden books late at night, when the house was quiet, and they deeply disturbed me. I grew up accepting slavery as something natural, divine, beneficial to both master and slave. The belief that enslaved people were inferior, childish, incapable of self-determination: this was what everyone around me believed and taught me.
But these books painted a different picture. Frederick Douglass wrote with an intelligence and eloquence unmatched by any white author I’d ever read. He described the cruelty of slavery: the floggings, the separation of families, the sexual abuse, the psychological torture of being treated like objects. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” though a work of fiction, depicted the horrors of slavery with devastating emotional impact.
I began to notice things I’d previously ignored. The scars on the backs of laborers’ hands. The way the slaves’ faces became expressionless and submissive as white men approached. Children who looked suspiciously like my father’s overseers. Women who disappeared from the fields for months at a time, only to return without the babies they apparently carried.
But I did nothing about these observations. I was too weak, too dependent, too trapped in my comfort zone to challenge the system. I told myself I was different from other slave owners, that I should treat the slaves with more kindness. But kindness doesn’t make slavery any less horrible. It simply makes the owner feel better for having participated in it.
In September 1858, my father made another attempt to find me a wife. He contacted families outside Mississippi, in Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia. He lowered his expectations, turning to families of lower social class and wealth. He offered increasingly generous dowries, guaranteeing that any woman who married me would live in luxury and lack nothing.
The responses were variations on the same theme. “Thank you for your generous offer, but Caroline is already in a relationship with someone else.” “We appreciate your interest, but we don’t think she’s a suitable candidate.” “Although your son seems like a good guy, we’re looking for a situation with other prospects.”
This last one was particularly cruel. “Different perspectives” is a polite way of saying that my husband could give us grandchildren.
In December 1858, my father stopped trying. Most evenings we ate dinner together in silence. The clink of silver on porcelain was the only sound in the vast dining room. Sometimes he looked at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. Disappointment, certainly, but also something akin to despair.
The explosion occurred in March 1859. It was late at night and my father had drunk more than usual. I was in the library reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations when he burst into the room.
“Thomas, we need to talk.”
I put the book down. “Yes, Father.”
He sat down heavily, the bourbon swirling in his glass. “I’m 58 years old. I could die tomorrow or live another 20 years, but either way, sooner or later I’ll die. And when I die, what will happen to all this?” He gestured vaguely around the room, the house, and the plantation in the background.
“The inheritance will likely go to our closest male relative, cousin Robert from Alabama.”
“Cousin Robert,” my father growled, “is an incompetent drunk who lost two small plantations to debt. He’d sell them within a year and squander the proceeds on alcohol. Everything I’ve built, everything my father built before me, would be lost.”
“I’m sorry, Father. I know this isn’t the situation you wanted.”
“Apologizing doesn’t solve the problem.” He stood up and began pacing the room. “For 18 months, I’ve tried everything. 18 months of searching for a wife who would accept me despite my condition. No one will. No one wants a husband who can’t have children. That’s the reality.”
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