Roots: The Saga of an American Family

  The massa firmed his voice. “But I’m afraid we’re going to have to solve a problem—concerning you.” He paused. “I understand that in Burlington yesterday you met Mr. J. D. Cates, our former county sheriff—”

  “Yassa, reckon could say I met ’im, yassa.”

  “Well, you probably know Mr. Cates has visited me today. He brought to my attention a North Carolina law that forbids any freed black from staying within the state for more than sixty days, or he must be re-enslaved.”

  It took a moment to sink in. Chicken George stared disbelievingly at Massa Murray. He couldn’t speak.

  “I’m really sorry, boy. I know it don’t seem fair to you.”

  “Do it seem fair to you, Massa Murray?”

  The massa hesitated. “No, to tell you the truth. But the law is the law.” He paused. “But if you would want to choose to stay here, I’ll guarantee you’ll be treated well. You have my word on that.”

  “Yo’ word, Massa Murray?” George’s eyes were impassive.

  That night George and Matilda lay under their quilt, hands touching, both staring up at the ceiling. “ ’Tilda,” he said after a long while, “guess ain’t nothin’ to do but stay. Seem like runnin’s all I ever done.”

  “Naw, George.” She shook her head slowly back and forth. “’Cause you de firs’ one us ever free. You got to stay free, so us have somebody free in dis family. You jes’ can’t go back to bein’ a slave!”

  Chicken George began to cry. And Matilda was weeping with him. Two evenings later, she was not feeling well enough to join him in having supper with Tom and Irene in their small cabin. The conversation turned to their child, which was due within two weeks, and Chicken George grew solemn.

  “Be sho’ y’all tells dat chile ’bout our fam’ly, y’all hear me?”

  “Pappy, ain’t none my chilluns gon’ grow up widdout knowin’.” Tom strained a smile. “I reckon if I don’ tell ’em, Gran’mammy Kizzy come back to set me straight.”

  There was silence for a while as the three of them sat staring at the fire.

  Finally Chicken George spoke again.

  “Me an’ ’Tilda was countin’ I got forty more days fo’ I has to leave, ’cordin’ to what de law say. But I been thinkin’ ain’t no good time to go. Ain’t no point keep jes’ puttin’ off—”

  He sprang up from his chair, fiercely embracing Tom and Irene. “I be back!” he rasped brokenly. “Take care one ’nother!” He bolted through the door.

  CHAPTER 110

  It was early in November of 1860, and Tom was hurrying to finish his last blacksmithing task before darkness fell. He made it. Then, banking the fire in his forge, he trudged wearily home to have supper with Irene, who was nursing their baby girl, Maria, now half a year old. But they ate wordlessly, because Irene elected not to interrupt his thoughtful silence. And afterward they joined the rest of the family crowded into Matilda’s cabin, cracking and shelling hickory nuts that she and Irene—who was again pregnant—had been collecting for use in the special cakes and pies they planned to bake for Christmas and New Year’s.

  Tom sat listening to the light conversation without comment—or even seeming to hear—and then, finally, during a lull, he leaned forward in his chair and spoke: “Y ’all ’member different times I’se said white mens talkin’ ’roun’ my shop done been cussin’ an’ carryin’ on ’bout dat Massa Lincoln? Well, wish y’all coulda heared’em today, ’cause he been ’lected Pres’dent. Dey claim now he gon’ be up dere in de White House ’gainst de South an’ anybody keepin’ slaves.”

  “Well,” said Matilda, “I be primed to hear whatever Massa Murray got to say ’bout it. He sho’ been steady tellin’ missis gwine be big trouble less’n de North an’ South git dey differences settled, one way or ’nother.”

  “Different things I’ve heared,” Tom went on, “whole lots mo’ folks dan we thinks is ’gainst slavin’. Ain’t all of ’em up Nawth, neither. I couldn’t hardly keep my min’ on what I was doin’ today, I been studyin’ on it so hard. Seem like too much to b’lieve, but it could come a day won’t be no mo’ slaves.”

  “Well, we sho’ won’t live to see it,” said Ashford sourly.

  “But maybe she will,” said Virgil, nodding toward Irene’s baby.

  “Don’t seem likely,” said Irene, “much as I like to b’lieve it. You put together all de slaves in de South, wid even jes’ fiel’ hands bringin’ eight an’ nine hunnud dollars apiece, dat’s mo’ money’n God’s got! Plus dat, we does all de work.” She looked at Tom. “You know white folks ain’t gwine give dat up.”

  “Not widdout a fight,” said Ashford. “An’ dey’s lot’s more dem dan us. So how we gwine win?”

  “But if ’n you talkin’ ’bout de whole country,” said Tom, “it might be jes’ many folks ’gainst slavery as fo’ it.”

  “Trouble is dem what’s ’gainst it ain’t here where we is,” Virgil said, and Ashford nodded, agreeing with someone for a change.

  “Well, if ’n Ashford right ’bout a fight, all dat could change real fast,” said Tom.

  In early December, soon after Massa and Missis Murray returned home in their buggy from dinner at a neighboring big house one night, Matilda hurried from the big house to Tom and Irene’s cabin. “What do ‘seceded’ mean?” she asked, and when they shrugged their shoulders, she went on. “Well, massa says dat’s what South Ca’liny jes’ done. Massa soun’ like it mean dey’s pullin’ out’n de Newnited States.”

  “How dey gon’ pull out de country dey’s in?” Tom said.

  “White folks do anythin’,” said Irene.

  Tom hadn’t told them, but throughout the day, he had been listening to his white customers fuming that they would be “wadin’ knee deep in blood” before they’d give in to the North on something they called “states’ rights,” along with the right to own slaves.

  “I ain’t wantin’ to scare y’all none,” he told Matilda and Irene, “but I really b’leeves it gon’ be a war.”

  “Oh, my Lawd! Where’bouts it gon’ be, Tom?”

  “Mammy, ain’t no special war grounds, like church or picnic grounds!”

  “Well, I sho’ hope don’t be nowhere roun’ here!”

  Irene scoffed at them both. “Don’t y’all ax me to b’lieve no white folks gwine git to killin’ one ’nother over niggers.”

  But as the days passed, the things Tom overheard at his shop convinced him that he was right. Some of it he told his family about, but some not, for he didn’t want to alarm them unnecessarily, and he hadn’t decided himself whether he dreaded the events he saw coming—or hoped for them. But he could sense the family’s uneasiness increasing anyway, along with the traffic on the main road, as white riders and buggies raced back and forth past the plantation faster and faster and in ever-growing numbers. Almost every day someone would turn into the driveway and engage Massa Murray in conversation; Matilda employed every ruse to mop and dust where she could listen in. And slowly, over the next few weeks, in the nightly family exchanges, the white people’s frightened, angry talk gradually encouraged all of them to dare to believe that if there was a war—and the “Yankees” won—it was just possible that they might really be set free.

  An increasing number of the blacks who delivered blacksmithing jobs to Tom told him that their massas and missies were becoming suspicious and secretive, lowering their voices and even spelling out words when even their oldest and closest servants entered a room.

  “Is dey actin’ anyways ’culiar in de big house roun’ you, Mammy?” Tom asked Matilda.

  “Not no whisperin’ or spellin’ or sich as dat,” she said. “But dey sho’ is done commence to shift off sudden to talkin’ ’bout crops or dinner parties jes’ soon’s I come in.”

  “Bes’ thing for us all to do,” said Tom, “is act dumb as we can, like we ain’t even heard ’bout what gwine on.”

  Matilda considered that—but decided against it. And one evening after she had served the Murrays their
desserts, she came into the dining room and exclaimed, wringing her hands, “Lawd, Massa an’ Missy, y’all ’scuse me, jes’ got to say my chilluns an’ me is hearin’ all dis talk goin’ roun’, an’ we be’s mighty scared o’ dem Yankees, an we sho’ hopes you gwine take care of us if ’n dey’s trouble.” With satisfaction, she noted the swift expressions of approval and relief crossing their faces.

  “Well, you’re right to be scared, for those Yankees are certainly no friends of yours!” said Missis Murray.

  “But don’t you worry,” said the massa reassuringly, “there’s not going to be any trouble.”

  Even Tom had to laugh when Matilda described the scene. And he shared with the family another laugh when he told them how he had heard that a stablehand in Melville Township had handled the ticklish matter. Asked by his massa whose side he’d be on if a war came, the stablehand had said, “You’s seed two dogs fightin’ over a bone, Massa? Well, us niggers be’s dat bone.”

  Christmas, then New Year’s came and went with hardly any thought of festivity throughout Alamance County. Every few days Tom’s customers would arrive with news of secessions by still more among the southern states—first Mississippi, then Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, all during the month of January 1861, and on the first day of February, Texas. And all of them proceeded to join a “Confederacy” of southern states headed by their own President, a man named Jefferson Davis.

  “Dat Massa Davis an’ whole passels of other southern senators, congressmens, an’ high mens in de Army,” Tom reported to the family, “is resignin’ to come on back home.”

  “Tom, it’s done got closer’n dat to us,” exclaimed Matilda. “A man come today an’ tol’ massa dat Ol’ Jedge Ruffin leavin’ Haw River tomorrow to ’tend a big peace conference in dat Washington, D.C.!”

  But a few days later, Tom heard his blacksmithing customers saying that Judge Ruffin had returned sadly reporting the peace conference a failure, ending in explosive arguments between the younger delegates from the North and the South. A black buggy driver then told Tom that he had learned firsthand from the Alamance County courthouse janitor that a mass meeting of nearly fourteen hundred local white men had been held—with Massa Murray among them, Tom knew—and that Massa Holt, Irene’s former owner, and others as important, had shouted that war must be averted and pounded tables calling anyone who would join the Confederates “traitors.” The janitor also told him that a Massa Giles Mebane was elected to take to a state secession convention the four-to-one vote in Alamance County to remain within the Union.

  It became hard for the family to keep up with all that was reported each night either by Tom or Matilda. On a single day in March, news came that President Lincoln had been sworn in, that a Confederate flag had been unveiled at a huge ceremony in Montgomery, Alabama, and that the Confederacy’s President, Jeff Davis, had declared the African slave trade abolished; feeling as they knew he did about slavery, the family couldn’t understand why. Only days later, tension rose to a fever pitch with the announcement that the North Carolina legislature had called for an immediate twenty thousand military volunteers.

  Early on the Friday morning of April 12, 1861, Massa Murray had driven off to a meeting in the town of Mebane, and Lewis, James, Ashford, L’il Kizzy, and Mary were out in the field busily transplanting young tobacco shoots when they began to notice an unusually large number of white riders passing along the main road at full gallop. When one rider briefly slowed, angrily shaking his fist in their direction and shouting at them something they couldn’t understand, Virgil sent L’il Kizzy racing from the field to tell Tom, Matilda, and Irene that something big must have happened.

  The usually calm Tom lost his temper when Kizzy could tell him no more than she did. “Shouted what at y’all?” he demanded. But she could only repeat that the horseman had been too far away for them to hear clearly.

  “I better take de mule an’ go fin’ out!” Tom said.

  “But you ain’t got a travelin’ pass!” shouted Virgil as he went riding down the driveway.

  “Got to take dat chance!” Tom shouted back.

  By the time he reached the main road, it was starting to resemble a racetrack, and he knew that the riders must be headed for Company Shops, where the telegraph office received important news over wires strung high atop poles. As they raced along, some of the horsemen were exchanging shouts with each other, but they didn’t seem to know much more than he did. As he passed poor whites and blacks running on foot, Tom knew the worst had happened, but his heart clenched anyway when he reached the railroad repair yard settlement and saw the great, jostling crowd around the telegraph office.

  Leaping to the ground and tethering his mule, he ran in a wide circle around the edge of the mob of angrily gesturing white men who kept glancing up at the telegraph wires as if they expected to see something coming over the wires. Off to one side, he reached a cluster of blacks and heard what they were jabbering: “Massa Linkum sho’ gon’ fight over us now!” . . . “Look like de Lawd care sump’n ’bout niggers after all!” . . . “Jes’ can’t b’lieve it!” ... “Free, Lawd, free!”

  Drawing one old man aside, Tom learned what had happened. South Carolina troops were firing on the federal Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, and twenty-nine other federal bases in the South had been seized on the orders of President Davis. The war had actually begun. Even after Tom returned home with the news—arriving safely before the massa got home—the black grapevine was almost choked with bulletins for weeks. After two days of siege, they learned, Fort Sumter had surrendered with fifteen dead on both sides, and over a thousand slaves were sandbagging the entrances to Charleston Harbor. After informing President Lincoln that he would get no North Carolina troops, North Carolina Governor John Ellis had pledged thousands with muskets to the Confederate Army. President Davis asked all southern white men between eighteen and thirty-five to volunteer to fight for up to three years, and ordered that of each ten male slaves on any plantation, one should be turned over for unpaid war labor. General Robert E. Lee resigned from the Army of the United States to command the Army of Virginia. And it was claimed that every government building in Washington, D.C., was thick with armed soldiers and iron and cement barricades in fear of southern invasion forces.

  White men throughout Alamance County, meanwhile, were lining up by the scores to sign up and fight. Tom heard from a black wagon-driver that his massa had called in his most trusted big-house servant and told him, “Now, boy, I’m expectin’ you to look out after missis and the children till I get back, you hear?” And a number of neighboring whites dropped in to shoe up their horses before assembling at Mebane Township with the rest of the newly formed “Hawfields Company” of Alamance County to board the train that waited to take them to a training camp at Charlotte. A black buggy-driver who had taken his massa and his missy there to see off their eldest son described the scene for Tom: the womenfolk bitterly weeping, their boys leaning from the train’s windows, making the air ring with rebel yells, many of them shouting “Goin’ to ship those sonsabitchin’ Yankees an’ be back’fore breakfast!” “Young massa,” said the buggy-driver, “had on his new gray uniform, an’ he was a-cryin’ jes’ hard as ol’ massa and missy was, an’ dey commence to kissin’ and huggin’ till dey finally jes’ kind o’ broke apart from one ’nother, jes’ standin’ in de road clearin’ dey throats an’ sniflin’. Ain’t no need me telling no lie, I was acryin’, too!”

  CHAPTER 111

  Within their lamplit cabin late that night, now for a second time Tom sat by the bed with Irene convulsively gripping his hand and when abruptly her moans of suffering in labor advanced to a piercing scream, he went bolting outside to get his mother. But despite the hour, intuitively Matilda had not been asleep and also had heard the scream. He met her already rushing from her cabin, shouting back over her shoulder at a bug-eyed L’il Kizzy and Mary. “Bile some kittles o’ water an’ git it to me quick!” Within the next few moments, the other ad
ults of the family had also popped from their cabins, and Tom’s five brothers joined his nervous pacing and wincing while the sounds of Irene’s anguish continued. In the first streaks of dawn when an infant’s shrill cry was heard, Tom’s brothers converged upon him, pounding his back, wringing his hands—even Ashford—then in a little while a grinning Matilda stepped through the cabin door, exclaiming, “Tom, y’all got anudder l’il ol’ gal!”

  After a while there in the brightening morning, first Tom, then the rest of the family became a procession trooping in to see the wan but smiling Irene and the crinkly faced brown infant. Matilda had taken the news into the big house, where she hurriedly cooked breakfast, and right after Massa and Missis Murray finished eating, they also came to the slave row to see with delight the new infant born into their ownership. Tom readily agreed to Irene’s wish to name this second daughter “Ellen,” after Irene’s mother. He was so jubilant that he had become a father again that he didn’t remember until later how much he had wanted a boy.

  Matilda waited until the next afternoon to drop by the blacksmithing shop. “Now, Tom, you know what I’m thinkin’ ’bout?” she asked. Smiling at her, Tom said, “You late, Mammy. I done already tol’ eve’ybody—an’ was fixin’ to tell you—to come squeeze in de cabin dis comin’ Sadday night an’ I’se gwine tell dis chile de fam’ly story jes’ like I done wid Maria, when she born.” As planned, the family did gather, and Tom continued the tradition that had been passed down from the late Gran’mammy Kizzy and Chicken George, and there was much joking afterward that if ever anyone among them should neglect to relate the family chronicle to any new infant, they could surely expect to hear from the ghost of Gran’mammy Kizzy.

  But even the excitement of Tom and Irene’s second child soon diminished as a war’s swiftly paced events gained momentum. As Tom busily shod horses and mules and made and repaired tools, he kept his ears strained to hear every possible scrap of the exchanges of talk among the white customers gathered before his shop, and he winced with disappointment at their successive jubilant reports of Confederate triumphs. Particularly a battle the white men called “Bull Run” had set the white customers hollering, beating each others’ backs and throwing their hats into the air as they shouted such things as “What Yankees wasn’t left dead or hurt run for their lives!” or “Soon’s Yankees hears our boys comin’, they shows they asses!” The jubilance was repeated over a big Yankee loss at a “Wilson’s Creek” in Missouri, then not long after when at a “Ball’s Bluff ” in Virginia, hundreds of Yankees were left dead, including a bullet-riddled general who had been a close personal friend of President Lincoln. “Dem white mens was all jumpin’ up an’ down an’ laughin’ dat Pres’dent Lincoln heared it an’ commence to cryin’ like a baby,” Tom told his somber family. By the end of 1861—when Alamance County had sent twelve companies off into the various fighting—he hated to report more than a little of what he was continuing to hear, for it only deepened his family’s gloom, along with his own. “Lawd knows sho’ don’t soun’ like we’s gwine git free, keep gwine like dis!” said Matilda, glancing about one late Sunday afternoon’s semicircle of downcast faces. No one made any comment for a long while; then Lilly Sue said, as she nursed her sickly son Uriah, “All dat freedom talk! I done jes’ give up any mo’ hope!”