Twelve Years a Slave - Enhanced Edition (38 page)

92.
.“Piazza” is not a word used by people in Bayou Boeuf country. “Porch” or “gallery” would have been the words used by people in this area. Wilson may have substituted “piazza” for one of the local words.

93.
The editor has found no account of the details of this incident.

94.
Cook and Ramsay, as overseers, probably were overstepping their authority to make a decision to hang the rebellious Solomon, but they were acting under the mandate that a slave must not be allowed to strike a white man. There was the belief that this could incite more violence between blacks and whites within the tightly controlled plantation society. Since plantations formed the base of all Southern society, this control was critical. In such an encounter of a slave with a white man, the danger to the black slave was overwhelming. A Louisiana law passed in 1806 provided the death penalty for striking a master, mistress, or one of their children so as to cause contusion or effusion of blood. A similar act in 1814 included striking an overseer with similar effect [See Gray, 517].

Dr. Edgar Thompson, premiere plantation scholar of Duke University, called the unwritten code that ruled plantation country, “The Plantation Survival Code.” This code was required in the caste society where maintaining the status quo had much to do with securing the base of the economy: the plantation and slavery. The code included rules developed to maintain plantations with a dependable slave work force, and breaking them was not permitted—whether by a white or black dissenter.

Gray confirms the role of neighbors and the community regarding the control of slaves:

The actual well-being of slaves, however, was dependent not so much on laws as to the humane instincts and economic interest of the master, and the power of neighborhood opinion. The latter was undoubtedly an important source of protection.

Sir Charles Lyell declared, “The condition of negroes is the least enviable in such out-of-the-way and half-civilized adventurers and uneducated settlers, who have little control of their passions, and, who, when they oppress their slaves, are not checked by public opinion as in more advanced communities.” [See Gray, 517]

James Cook, one of the overseers mentioned in this chapter, was married to Mary Eliza Robert, daughter of Alonzo and Tuzette Eliza Pearce Robert. He managed his father-in-law’s plantation south of Cheneyville [See O’Neal, 95-97]. Ramsey, the other overseer mentioned, was a partner in Ford’s sawmill venture, as previously noted.

95.
Tibeats, an itinerant carpenter, would have had low status in the plantation community partly because he had not learned to live by the rules such as the one enunciated by William Prince Ford and overheard by Solomon Northup. Such a person was almost as unwelcome as an abolitionist in planter society.

Chapter Nine

96.
John David Cheney married twice: Elizabeth Martha Fendon, by whom he had two children, and Henrietta Polhill Audebert, by whom he had two other children. His progenitor, according to Stafford, was John Cheney, who was a resident of Newton, Massachusetts in 1637 [Stafford,
Three Pioneer Families . . .
, 406].

97.
“John Gilpin” is a reference to William Cowper’s popular comic ballad, “The Diverting History of John Gilpin,” published first in 1792 in England. It is reflective of the period in which David Wilson, the ghost writer, lived.

98.
Louisiana was not alone in denying a black man the right to testify in court. Solomon Northup was not allowed to testify in the case filed by him and attorney Henry Northup in the court in Washington, D.C., against the men associated with the slave pen; he was offered as a witness but rejected “solely on the ground that I was a colored man” [
Twelve Years a Slave
, 216]. Though Northup celebrated the arraignment of his kidnappers in New York on July 11, 1854, the trial never materialized, so we don’t know whether his testimony would have figured in the trial or not [“An Individual Identified by Solomon Northup ...”, 2].

99.
Francis Myers was among the migrants to Cheneyville from South Carolina. He was married to Alma Coe “about 1840.” He is listed in the U.S. Census, 1840. He was a frequent customer at the Ezra Bennett store and evidently had a plantation in the same area as that of William Prince Ford’s place. Francis Myers went with Thaddeus Sobieski Robert to pursue the 1849 Gold Rush and never returned to Louisiana [Stafford,
Three Rapides
Families
, 74, 95, 121. See photo of Bennett’s store in the Extras & More section of our website at
www.TwelveYearsASlave.org
].

100.
Peter Tanner, age thirty-eight in 1850, and his brother, Jabez, forty, probably represented the best and worst of traits associated with leading planters along the Boeuf [U.S. Census, 1850]. This is especially true of Peter. He saw himself as the cocksure leader of the area, and he was certainly highly influential. He was on the board of the Planters Private Academy about fifteen miles from Bayou Boeuf at Cheneyville. The goal of the leading planters, which was passionately pursued, was not only preventing slaves from learning how to read and write, but also did not support the education of the white masses. Private academies were set up for exclusive use by the planters, using state funds for the construction of buildings under a policy of “beneficiarism.” A select few “indigents” could attend these private academies, which existed across the state.

Peter Tanner, owning a large acreage of land, which appreciated in value decade after decade, is listed in the U.S. Census as having real property valued at $17,000 in 1850, [U.S. Census, 1850] with his brother Jabez listed as having a value of $30,000 in real property. Peter owned nineteen slaves, eight of these being between the ages of four to eight years. In this period when families, black or white, included a dozen or more children, nineteen slaves may have meant there were only two families on his plantation, and therefore a small farming operation despite the large acreage of land. However, Peter did operate a sugar plantation in Cuba and owned slaves there; other planters of the area also operated sugar plantations in Cuba, as evidenced by correspondence in the Ezra Bennett Collection.

Peter became a representative to the state legislature and was appointed to various positions of importance in Rapides Parish. He was known for being “hot-headed” and for his frequent outbursts in hearty laughs [Stafford,
Three Pioneer Families . . .
, 306].

Neither Peter nor Jabez were listed among large slaveowners (those with over fifty slaves). It was Jabez who was known among their neighbors for reading the Bible to his slaves on Sundays. Whether David Wilson transferred the story to Peter or whether Peter adopted the habit is not known.

101.
The editor found no surviving stocks left on Bayou Boeuf, but did locate a set at Magnolia Plantation, Cane River, now included in a national park.

102.
Providence Tanner, wife of one of Cheneyville’s founders, Robert, was instrumental in the founding of Beulah Baptist Church at Cheneyville in 1816. Both Tanner sons, Peter and Jabez, considered themselves religious, but it was Jabez who headed the historic break of many members of Beulah Baptist Church. More slaves, who sat in a balcony of the church, belonged to Beulah Baptist than white people. In the early 1840s a division developed from an intense argument over predestination, a concept rejected by Jabez. The split impacted the Boeuf community so much that a saying repeated by residents from that decade was: “The Up the Bayou Tanners didn’t speak to the Down the Bayou Tanners.” Peter did not leave Beulah Baptist, but Jabez led the dissidents and published a booklet,
A
Concise History of the Rise and Fall of the State of Affairs in the Religious
World at this Place
. Jabez led in the founding of the Campbellite Church in 1842.

Reverend William Prince Ford presided at the installation of the board of the Campbellite Church. Because of this act and the act of serving communion to a Methodist at Spring Hills Baptist Church near his home on Hurricane Creek in the pine woods, William Prince Ford was expelled as a member of Beulah Baptist and from his position as pastor of the Hurricane Creek Baptist Church. The founder of the Campbellite Movement, Alexander Campbell from Kentucky, spoke at the new Campbellite Church in Cheneyville [See Ford letter to Wright; Eakin,
A Source Book: Rapides Parish History,
33].

Charles David Bennett, brother of Ezra, in 1894 wrote from Cayuga, New York, to his niece: “From a region almost destitute of religious meetings, it has become used to many of them—the whites and the blacks. Besides preaching and social meetings in Cheneyville, meetings were commonly held in the Ford and Eldred neighborhood or in the Tanner and Roberts on the other . . .” [See Bennett to Virginia].

103.
Peter Tanner became one of the deacons at Big Cane Baptist Church in St. Landry Parish after he moved to Evergreen in Avoyelles Parish [See Fisher].

Chapter Ten

104.
The plantation “Big Houses” were usually built several decades after the plantations were in operation. They were usually built of lumber from woodlands in the back of the plantations—ordinarily with high ceilings to offer better circulation during the hot semi-tropical summers, usually one story but sometimes more. They were often made from cypress and were mostly “dog trot” houses with a central opening, later closed in to become a hall, with rooms on either side.

105.
There was no law against slaves swimming in the waters of many bayous, creeks, lakes, and rivers, though some slave owners may have forbidden it.

106.
Cocodrie (Pacoudrie in
Twelve Years a Slave
) Bayou marks the boundary of the alluvial soil in the area where Solomon Northup lived as a slave in the pine woods. On Bayou Boeuf, the term “across Cocodrie” became an epithet conveying the idea of a mysterious and fearsome place. There were areas of swamp in the forests “across Cocodrie,” but there were larger stretches of pine trees growing on low hills. There were tales of how folks protected the area from outsiders and made their own rules by which they lived, no matter what the outside world with its laws tried to force upon them. In the twentieth century, Prohibition bootlegging was said to be flourishing “across Cocodrie,” and the inhabitants did not allow blacks to go there.

107.
There were bears, wildcats, and reptiles, but the presence of tigers may have been a local rumor or myth.

108.
The Ford plantation faced a ridge known as the Texas Road that wound through the pine woods from Washington, Louisiana, to the northwest. The road was called “Texas Road” because it reached the Sabine River, the boundary between Louisiana and Texas. [For more information, see endnote 73].

Chapter Eleven

109.
Oranges do not grow along the Boeuf, so it’s possible that Solomon was referring to tangerines.

110.
John David Cheney, descendent of one of the founders of Cheneyville, William Fendon Cheney, owned eighteen slaves in 1855 [See
Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana,
607; see endnote 96].

111.
John Dunwoody (“Dunwoodie” in
Twelve Years a Slave
) (1782-1862) owned a plantation in the pine woods southwest of Lecompte. He married Delia Pearce in 1807, and they had three children, including Mary L. Dunwoody, the mother of Mary Dunwoody McCoy mentioned later in the narrative. John Dunwoody was born in Georgia. The Dunwoody cemetery, restored by the town of Lecompte, lies at the site of his plantation in the pine woods near Lecompte [See Stafford,
Three Pioneer Families . . .
, 403].

112.
The strategy of William Prince Ford relating to the treatment of slaves by owners was not unique to the Reverend Ford. An unwritten Plantation Survival Code included rules that planters respected even above the law. Planters were the final authority in “the small colonies,” as the first plantations laid in Virginia in the seventeenth century were called. They were macho individualists accustomed to obedience from everybody residing on the plantation, including their wives and children. As patriarchs concerned with every aspect of the lives of the people on their plantations, they simultaneously bore the responsibility for all residents—food, shelter, health and medical care, and burials.

Planters sometimes risked action against themselves by fellow planters in cases of extraordinary violence or cruelty against a slave or slaves. The Plantation Survival Code included combined planter action against a planter whose behavior toward his slaves threatened the working relationship between planters and their slaves. The reason for the Plantation Survival Code was practical. Without slaves working under the direction of a planter, no crops could be raised, which meant no income to pay off the borrowed money the planter owed. To protect their interests, planters attempted to tightly control every aspect of plantation life possible, especially since they worked under the sure knowledge that nothing could be done to protect the crops they were cultivating against other substantial risks, such as acts of nature—too much rain in the tropical climate, too much drought, winds, early freezes that made the sugar cane worthless—or the devastation caused by pests such as caterpillars and boll weevils. Crop failures happened often. In addition to the unwritten code, a Louisiana law passed in 1830 allowed courts to take control of slaves abused by a planter, sell them, and reimburse the owner from the proceeds of the sale [See Robert to Eakin].

113.
The Big Cane Brake consisted of a thick grove of what must have been exceptionally large, tall switch canes through which ran Little Bayou Rouge. Pioneer settlers reported that thick forests of switch canes grew densely along the bayous of the area. In these lowlands with a network of rivers and bayous switch canes seemed to cover the land. Reportedly, an early settler on horseback riding through the canes found them taller than his height on horseback [See Goins and Caldwell].