SEARED BY CONFLICT: Fear and freedom of York County slaves
Nicole Moore kneels, her hands quickly pulling the weeds hiding the tender cotton plants. She moves down the row, removing more weeds under the June sun. Within seconds, sweat beads on her forehead.
She is reminded of the previous year, when she and others worked the field daily from spring to winter, planting the seeds, weeding the rows, and, when harvest came, pulling the prickly cotton.
At the end of each day, "you feel oppressed, beat down," Moore said. "Sleep feels so good because your body hurts."
Standing up, she looks around the small patch of neatly spaced rows. She wonders where the slaves who once worked thousands of cotton-bearing acres at plantations such as Brattonsville, Mount Gallant and Strawberry Hill in York County got their stamina.
"It is the ultimate survival story," Moore said of the slaves. "I admire their will, their making the best of the situation."
Today is Juneteenth, which commemorates the ending of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. As Americans this year mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of that war, Moore wants the conversation to move beyond social balls and battlefields.
"We need to look past the politics and examine the lives of the people," said Moore, a historic interpreter at Historic Brattonsville in York County who holds a master's in history from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
For slaves, their story was one of fear and freedom.
Fear because a slave was always under the watchful eye of an owner.
"You were a bought man with no voice," Moore said.
Fear because a slave could be punished, whipped, mutilated. Fear because a slave was property, and if the owner fell short of money, his only assets were land and slaves. Slaves were usually worth more than the land. One of the biggest fears of a slave was to be sold south to work on sugar cane plantations. It was a death sentence, accounts suggest.
As a nation went to war, slaves hoped for freedom. Slaves had rebelled before against their masters. As war news passed from plantation to plantation, slaves learned of the possibility of freedom.
There was also fear among the slave owners over what might happen if the slaves were free.
"The war was a catalyst for change, and it wasn't easy," Moore said. "It broke the shackles of the slaves, and it broke the slave owners."
High numbers, few voices
The story of slavery in the districts of York, Chester and Lancaster is one great in numbers, but largely devoid of voices.
The federal slave censuses of 1850 and 1860 lists slave owners and a line for each slave, recording age and gender - but no names. The 1850 census of free blacks and mulattos provides more details, listing name, age, occupation, where a person lived and who was the head of the household.
The free black census shows that 10 years before the war, there were local communities of free blacks who farmed and held domestic jobs.
Court records sometimes reveal more details. When Dr. John Bratton died in 1843, an inventory was taken of his 139 slaves. The inventory lists names grouped by families - and worth. Adam, the plantation's blacksmith, was worth $1,000, the highest individual value.
Appraisers said Bratton's slaves were worth at $41,643.66 - more than $1.2 million in today's dollars.
The voices of the slaves, and to a lesser extent of their owners, are largely absent. The law prohibited educating slaves, so few written accounts exist.
Between 1936 and 1938, the Federal Writers' Project interviewed hundreds of former slaves who were small children at the time of the Civil War.
The oral histories - stories passed down from generation to generation - have become an important part of remembering slave life, said Moore and Kitty Wilson-Evans, another interpreter.
By weaving together the data, the historic record and family stories, a picture of slaves and their families emerges. Slaves worked hard, in the fields and in their masters' houses. They married, had children, and valued family and, for some, faith.
But the picture is by no means universal, said Moore and Wilson-Evans. Slave life was dictated by the slave owners.
Some were benevolent to their slaves; others were not.
The slave economy
When the York District went to war in 1861, one-half of the district's 21,800 residents were slaves.
Cotton was the cash crop, although slaves did many more tasks for their masters. The district had 1,096 slave owners, and about one-fourth of them owned one or two slaves, according to an analysis of the 1860 slave census. Just 2 percent were large slave owners with 50 or more slaves.
While not everyone owned slaves, it was a lifestyle that drove all sectors of the economy. The slave economy was a reason for the war.
"The proper status of the negro in our form of civilization ... was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution," wrote Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America in 1861.
Slavery of blacks was introduced in America in 1619 when a Dutch captain traded slaves for food in Virginia, according to some historians. At one time, slavery existed in all 13 colonies. In 1808, Congress abolished the importing of slaves, an action that limited - but did not end - the practice.
By the 1850s, many Virginia and Carolina plantation owners had exhausted the land's capacity to grow tobacco, and their slaves were sold south - as many as 835,000, estimate historians. Prices for slaves ranged from $100 for a child to $1,450 for a "no. 1 man" and $1,225 for a "no. 1 woman" - about $41,000 and $35,000 in today's dollars.
One of the larger regional slave sales occurred on the steps of the Lancaster Courthouse on Jan. 21, 1861, when the slaves of the estate of William McKenna, one of the county's richest and largest land owners, were sold - all 185 of them.
Benjamin Russell, who was once the property of Rebecca Nance of Chester, told the Federal Writers' Project he remembered going to the Chester Courthouse with his young master, William, to see "slaves put on the block and auctioned off to the highest bidder, just like land or mules or cattle." Russell's mother was Mary, born on the "Youngblood place" in the York District.
Brattonsville was one of the larger plantations in the region, with 83 slaves during the Civil War and about 6,000 acres to farm.
The slaves who worked in the house and performed other skilled functions likely lived in the 16-by-22-foot brick buildings that flank the Bratton house. These houses have wood floors and large fireplaces. If you look closely at the bricks, you can find the fingerprints of the slaves who made them.
Inside were beds and mattresses filled with corn shucks. There were even second-hand dishes, castoffs from the Brattons' house. The interiors were whitewashed to add some light when the wooden shutters were closed.
The construction suggests the Brattons treated their slaves well. But Moore said it is also possible the buildings were made of brick because of the Bratton's wealth.
The Brattons' field slaves were housed in 14 log cabins with raised wood floors. The accommodations were better than some slaves who worked, and slept, in the dirt.
Whether it was in the field or in the house, the work was hard, suggests Moore and accounts from the Federal Writers' Project.
Jessie Butler, who was 79 when he was interviewed, told the writers that work at the Rose plantation in Charleston started at 4 a.m. in the garden, and at 8 a.m., "they went into the big fields. ... If you didn't do your work right, you got a whipping."
At Brattonsville, the slaves not only cultivated the cotton but also ginned it to remove the seeds, then pressed the cotton in 500-pound bales.
Baling the cotton was arduous. The cotton was put into a pit past the gin house where it was pressed by hand and animals into bales. After it was bound, the bale was manhandled out of the pit.
"There was a heavy reliance on getting the work done," Moore said.
But she wonders who was in control. The slave owner and his overseers could push - and punish - only so much. Slaves could slow down the process, and often, timing was everything. Growers wanted to get to the Charleston cotton markets as soon as possible when the best prices were offered.
While the work of a field slave usually ended at sundown, work as a house servant was at the whim of the master and his wife, Moore said.
"The house servants might dress better, might eat better, but at the end of the day, you are still run into the ground. As a handmaiden or hand servant, you are their right hand," Moore said.
Slave life was not all work and no play. Accounts focus on the importance of family - even if a parent or spouse was located at another plantation.
Faith was important, too. Some slave owners took their slaves to church, having them worship from the balcony. In 1860, 26 percent of the membership of the Southern Baptist Church was slaves, according to research at the University of Houston.
"Saturday afternoon ... were given to the (slave) women to do the family washing, ironing," remembered Benjamin Russell, who was 88 years old and living in Winnsboro when the Federal Writers' Project came calling. "The men cut firewood or worked in the garden...
"Dancing? There was lots of dancing. It was the pastime of the slave race. The children played shimmy and other games, imitating the white children, sometimes (playing) with the white folks."
He even remembers sometimes getting "coppers, 3-cent pieces," even dimes from white folks, which he used to buy "extra clothing for Sunday and firecrackers and candy at Christmas."
A pass system allowed slaves to travel between plantations.
Bill McNeil, an 82-year-old resident of Ridgeway, told the Federal Writers' Project that his father, Leah, "had to get a pass to see his wife and chillum. Dat was one of the hard parts of slavery."
Leah belonged to the Rainey family of the York District. McNeil was born in December 1855 on the "McNeil place" in York County.
Groups of whites regularly patrolled the roads, looking for slaves without passes.
Lewis Evans, who was the slave of John Martin near Jenkinsville, told the Federal Writers' Project, "You had to have a pass with your name on it, who you b'long to, where you are going to and the date you were expected back. If they find your pass was to Mr. James' and they catch you at Mr. Rabb's, then you got a floggin'."
Evans was 96 when she was interviewed.
Some errant slaves suffered worse consequences. Patrollers sometimes sold them rather than returning them to their owners.
The education and religious practices of slaves, while largely prohibited by law, depended on the slave owner.
A slave found learning to read or write could face punishment of Biblical proportions, interpreter Wilson-Evans said - an eye gouged for learning to read, a finger cut off for learning to write.
Other slave owners educated their slaves, with children of slaves learning from their white counterparts.
While some slaves worshiped with their masters, others risked assembling by themselves in the woods. In these "brush harbors," they would talk about the Biblical freedoms and how they applied them, Evans said. They could be severely punished for this. Slave codes made it illegal for slaves to worship without the presence of a white minister. Even in worship, whites sought to control their slaves.
While the slaves lived in fear of their masters, some established strong bonds with them.
John George Clinkscale of Spartanburg remembers the relationship his father had with a slave named Essex.
In his book, "On the Old Plantation," written in 1916, Clinkscale remembers Essex had been a runaway slave "who knew the pains of cold and hunger... many of the dogs that chased him he knew by name."
When he came back to the Clinkscale plantation, his master made him the overseer.
When his father lay dying, Clinkscale said he called for Essex.
"The big-hearted, broad-shouldered slave ... stood by the bed trembling like a leaf and sobbing like a wounded child," Clinkscale wrote. "... He took my father's emaciated hand in both his and then pressing them to his lips said between sobs, 'Gawd bless you Marster, ef Gawd spare me. I'll take (care of the) Missus and the children. Gawd know I will.'"
Yet the urge for freedom was often stronger.
Mary Boykin Chesnutt writes in her diary about a slave named Dick.
"Dick the butler, reminds when we were children I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself," Chestnut wrote. "But, he won't look at me now. He looked over my head. He senses freedom in the air."
When Union soldiers started rolling through South Carolina, some slaves left their plantations and followed the army - doing many of the manual labors they had done for their masters.
Many stayed on their plantations, watching the soldiers plunder, taking provisions and any household items they thought had value.
Violet Guntharpe was a slave on a Fairfield County plantation, "up close to Great Falls," when soldiers under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman arrived.
"Honey, us wasn't ready for the big change that come," the 82-year-old Guntharpe told the Federal Writers' Project. Slaves, she said, had "no education, no land, no mule, no cow, not a pig, nor a chicken to set up house keeping."
The soldiers ravaged land before crossing the Catawba River, she said, leaving "the air full of the stink of dead carcasses and the sky black with turkey buzzards." White women were "weepin' in hushed voices," and the former slaves did not know what to do next while their children were "suckin' their thumbs for the want of sumpin' to eat."
When things returned to more normal times, some former slaves prospered.
Brothers Isom and Frederick Clinton had been the slaves of Irvin Clinton, a lawyer and land owner in Lancaster. He educated his slaves.
After the war, Isom became treasurer for Lancaster County, organizer of the Carmel Church and a bishop in the AME Zion Church. Clinton Junior College in Rock Hill is named after him. Frederick was elected the first - and only - black senator from Lancaster County.
Others faced a different future, signing Freedmen Bureau contracts to sharecrop the land of their former masters. According to a copy of an 1865 contract with John Bratton, freedmen had to work six successive days of the week, "be polite and respectful to the said John Bratton and of the members of his white family," not entertain "idlers or vagrants from other plantations," nor leave the plantation of said John Bratton without his written permission.
Bratton agreed to house and provide for his freedmen for a year. Provisions "made" on the plantation "shall be used in common for members of both white and black families."
At the end of the contract Bratton agreed to give one-fourth of the remaining crop, be it corn, peas or syrup, as payment for a freeman's service.
"A freeman's contract tied them to the land," Nicole Moore said. "They were not free to be their own person."
Slaves finally were free. Freedom was still years away.
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This story was originally published June 19, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "SEARED BY CONFLICT: Fear and freedom of York County slaves."