‘Trajan!’ Colonel Cobb cried as soon as he saw the graceful figure appear in the doorway, and the slave, having been forewarned by yesterday’s messenger that the young master of the plantation was to arrive, smiled with genuine affection and stepped forward to clasp the extended hand.
Three years younger than Persifer, a year older than Somerset, Trajan had grown up with them, had played with them at wild games along the marshes of Edisto and, at their suggestion, been brought into the Charleston mansion and given a Roman name. He had always liked the boys, finding in them not a single mean streak that the young men of Charleston sometimes displayed in their treatment of blacks, and he had never quailed when one of them became momentarily angry in some game, shouting at him: ‘You damned nigger! I’ll break your kinky head.’ When they had tried, he had fended them off with ease, knocking them about until everyone collapsed with laughter.
Under their tutelage he had dropped his Gullah to acquire proper English, and under his teaching they had learned Gullah, which helped them enormously in dealing with the field hands. He now looked approvingly at the almost emaciated body of his friend Persifer, so debonair in his military uniform, and cried: ‘He come home!’ These simple words, spoken so obviously from the heart, touched Persifer deeply, and he gripped his slave’s hand more tightly.
Maximus Cobb felt, with some reason, that he had only a limited time to spend in any day—for he required long naps—or in the passage of life itself, so with no embarrassment he asked Trajan to tell Suetonius to have the slaves rearrange the porch and move four chairs near his. Then, when the slaves were gone and the two couples faced him, he launched right into the heart of the problem that faced the Cobbs: ‘When our ancestors settled Edisto, English law required that family estates be handed intact to the eldest sons. In South Carolina that’s no longer the law, but we Cobbs and other families of ancient repute still honor it. Just as my father turned the plantation over to me rather than to Septimus, so that I could perfect the Sea Island cotton which has made it flourish, so now it must go to Persifer, who will make the decisions that will enable it to prosper in the new decades.’ He nodded to Persifer, who nodded back, taking at the same time Tessa Mae’s hand in his.
‘When responsibility was given me,’ he said slowly, looking now at Somerset, ‘my younger brother Septimus felt that a great wrong had been done, and as you know, he hied himself off to Georgia, a terrible self-banishment. I could never persuade him to return, and there he rotted, in the wilderness.’ Tears of regret did not come to his eyes, but he did wipe his lashes, for he knew that tears might come at any moment.
‘Somerset, I know this must be a difficult situation for you, because you had reason to suppose that your brother would spend his life in the military. That was not to be. He’s home, and the responsibility becomes his. I know you’ll accept it gracefully, and I do not want you to scuttle off to Georgia like your uncle Septimus. I beg you to stay and assist your brother in running our very large plantation. He needs your help, and so do I.’
Neither Somerset nor Millicent volunteered any response; from the time they received that letter, more than a year ago, in which Persifer first suggested that at the end of the year he was going to quit the service, they had known that this day of decision would inevitably be upon them, and they had often discussed it quietly between themselves, never letting Tessa Mae or the old man know how deeply concerned they were. They had even gone so far as to send Cousin Reuben in the hill country of Georgia a secret inquiry: ‘What is the quality of land in your district? And how difficult is it to grow short staple?’ He had replied enthusiastically—which they had to discount, because everything Reuben did was marked with disproportionate enthusiasm—that a man was a darned fool to waste his energy on worn-out Carolina plantations making three hundred pounds an acre when his good fields in Georgia were making five hundred and fifty. He had added a paragraph which bespoke ancient grudges:
A man is stupid, insanely stupid, to believe that he is somehow socially superior if he grows a few pounds of long-staple cotton with its easy black seed while his neighbor in Georgia grows an immense crop of short staple with its difficult green seed. The world of cotton is dominated by the short-staple men, and if you have any sense, you’ll become one of us.
But such gnawing decisions were relegated to the shadows that evening when Maximus Cobb entertained the Charleston elite in his home by the sea. Now the big gates at the rear were thrown open: six slaves in blue livery guided the broughams and phaetons as they deposited the plantation gentry at the long porch; Suetonius, in gorgeous attire suitable for a French palace, greeted each guest by title and name; and Trajan, in similar garb, led them to the punch table for their beginning glass.
An orchestra played. Couples danced quietly both in the large room and on the porch. Candles in the glittering chandelier from Bohemia and refined whale oil in the lamps along the brocaded walls cast a soft light on the fine faces. Everyone seemed glad to have Persifer back home where he belonged.
The two Cobb boys, as they would always be called while their father lived, passed among the guests, treating each with lavish deference, aware that one day soon they must find husbands and wives for their children from the families here represented. No Cobb within memory had ever married anyone not from Charleston. But if the Cobbs had to be polite to the guests against the day when they would have to seek marriage alliances, so did the guests—especially those with smaller plantations—have to be especially attentive to the Cobbs, for their children would represent the best catches in the 1850s.
The evening was one of the most festive that the Cobb mansion had known in years, and it was capped when Maximus banged on the floor with one of his canes to announce: ‘We welcome home our son Persifer, mentioned in dispatches from the various battlefields in Mexico. Tomorrow he resumes stewardship of our plantations, and we wish him well.’ Glasses were raised; toasts to Persifer’s success were drunk; and in every carriage that pulled out of the circular driveway at midnight, someone asked: ‘And what will young Somerset do now?’
Young Somerset was the gentlemanly kind of man who would never challenge his brother’s assumption of the Cobb plantations, but he was not allowed to surrender because his wife, Millicent, one of the sagest women in Charleston, would not. Under her coaching, he spent the closing months of 1848 outwardly calm, apparently preoccupied with the job of instructing Persifer in the complexities of the big plantation on Edisto, and inwardly contemplating a score of practical alternatives which Millicent kept placing before him.
‘You must see, Sett,’ she said with unwavering determination. ‘We really have to leave. And I think it ought to be done before this year ends.’
‘No, I’d never quit before the next crop is planted. But go we shall.’
They had six sensible choices, which Millicent reviewed whenever they talked, keeping them in strict order of preference: ‘First, buy our own plantation near Charleston, but have we the money? Second, take over the Musgrave place, which their old people have suggested from time to time … not directly, of course, but they have intimated. Third, manage one of the great plantations, of which there seem to be many, but I wouldn’t care for that, and I’m sure you wouldn’t, either. Fourth, with Persifer leaving the army, you could join, but it could only be in the militia, and you’d have to start so low. Fifth, join your cousin Reuben in Georgia, but that sounds so desolate after you’ve known Charleston. Sixth, pull up stakes and move to fresh new land, new friends in Mississippi.’
Unemotionally, and always willing to explore even the more distasteful alternatives, they analyzed the positives and negatives of each solution and found themselves on dead center, almost equally doubtful about each of the options. They were hindered in making a decision because they could obtain no clear understanding of how much money they controlled. Sett had a private bank account, of course, but it contained only eight thousand dollars; he had never received a wage and had no land of his own to sel
l. He had always assumed that when his father died, there would be ample cash to distribute between the two sons, but then again, there might not be, because a great plantation family like the Cobbs often had ‘much land, many Nigras, no cash,’ as the saying went.
But now another Cobb woman entered the debate, never openly, never betraying her plot to anyone but her husband in the secrecy of the night. It was Tessa Mae, daughter of a family that had prospered only because it adhered tenaciously to one rule: ‘Get possession of a good plantation and never borrow money against it.’ In the darkness she whispered: ‘Persifer, I’m glad you chucked the army. I needed you here at home. We must do everything to make Sett and Lissa get out.’
‘I wouldn’t do anything …’
‘Perse, it’s them or us. Mark my words, if quiet Sett stays around long enough, he’s going to lose that modest charm and become a real bastard.’
‘Tessa!’
‘Keep applying pressure on him. I’ll work on Lissa. But let’s get them out of here.’
In early 1849, Millicent saw that any continued co-occupancy of the Cobb plantations was impossible: ‘Sett, that Tessa Mae’s a wily witch. Three times now she’s suggested in various clever ways that we might be moving to Georgia. And mealy-mouthed Persifer, so tall and proper, he throws barbs at you. I’m fed up. I want to hear from your father himself what your financial prospects are, and I want to hear it now.’ So, much against her husband’s wishes, she marched down to the jetty alone, climbed into the longboat, and had the six slaves take her to The Battery, where she clanged her pretty way through the gates and confronted Maximus as he sat on the porch.
‘Somerset and I need to know what money arrangements we can expect, Father.’
The old man harrumphed. He had never discussed such matters with women, not even with his wife, one of the Radbourne girls. Now he equivocated: ‘Well, with Edisto … our income from all that land … he has no cause to worry.’
‘But if we wanted to purchase a plantation of our own …’ Millicent said boldly.
‘That would be foolish in the extreme, wouldn’t it?’
‘We don’t think so,’ she said bluntly.
‘Well, I do,’ and he would discuss the matter no further. He did invite her to stay for lunch, and though she was strongly disposed to reject the courtesy, because he was a lonely old man hungry for companionship, she did stay, but that was a mistake, for when the slaves were gone from the room she said bluntly: ‘Father, you really must explain to Sett and me what our position is going to be …’
‘When I die?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But you meant it.’
‘I did not mean it. I meant that my husband is a grown man of thirty-two and you’re treating him like a boy of thirteen.’
‘Why do you need to know about money? Haven’t you always been cared for?’
In a moment of anger she snapped: ‘Because we might want to move to Georgia.’ As soon as the words were out she regretted them, for at the reiteration of a name which had given him much grief he seemed to wilt, as if his long-absent brother, now dead, had thrown at him once more the word Georgia.
‘You would go to Georgia?’ He uttered the word as if it represented some leprous site denied the graciousness of Carolina, and Millicent was prepared to retract, but before she could do so, Trajan came in to clear the table, and it was in that moment, seeing this impeccable black man, that she thought: When we go we must take Trajan with us.
Upon her return to the house on Edisto, which they now shared with the Persifer Cobbs, she very quietly told Sett: ‘Your father practically dismissed me. Would tell me nothing. On Edisto we’re millionaires. On the streets of Charleston we’re paupers. Now I want you to find out in exact dollars how much we have.’
When Somerset, as an obedient son, learned that his wife had actually revealed their conversations about going to Georgia, he was aghast, for he appreciated how deeply this must have hurt his father. Still, he had long realized that sooner or later the possibility of such a move must surface, and when Millicent’s unemotional review of the situation ended, he concluded that perhaps she had accomplished something desirable in clearing the air. Next day they posted a letter to Cousin Reuben in Georgia, asking him to come down and give advice.
In such speculation, whether family or public, Sett remained so passive that some considered him slow, especially when his wife’s opinions were so pertinent, but it was genteel reserve rather than lack of comprehension which prevented him from airing his opinions. So he allowed her to pose the options, Georgia or Mississippi, with her favoring the longer jump west and he the shorter. However, each was willing to adjust to the other’s preference.
On a fine summery day in June, when the cotton was well established and hoed, Reuben Cobb and his wife, Petty Prue, each twenty-six years old and brimming with vigor induced by the Georgia uplands, roared into Charleston and pretty well blew the place apart. Reuben was six feet tall, slim and fine-looking like all the Cobb men, but with fiery red hair, which none of the others had. He wore long mustaches, also red, which he liked to twirl when disputing a point in a powerful voice which rode down opposition. At the first big dinner in his honor, given grudgingly by his uncle Maximus, he was out on the porch arguing cotton, when his loud exclamations penetrated the room inside as he boasted, to the disgust of certain gentlemen who specialized in Sea Island: ‘Short staple is king. Those Manchester mills can’t get enough of it. And whether you’re ready to believe it or not, the man who rules short staple is goin’ to rule this country.’
The eye of the Georgia hurricane was Petty Prue, the tiny, winsome daughter of a Methodist clergyman who had never planted a row of cotton in his life but who had taught his little girl all she needed to know: ‘To get along in this life, you got to please people.’ She was five feet one, weighed not over a hundred pounds, and had cultivated such an excessive Southern drawl that she could pronounce even the briefest word in three syllables. With her, more became moe-weh-err, delivered in a high, lilting voice. She looked directly at anyone who spoke to her, smiling ravishingly at women and men alike, as if each in turn were the prettiest or wittiest in the room. She was a giddy little bird, all gold and silver, who engulfed the normal reticence of Southern decorum in an irresistible enthusiasm which bubbled unceasingly from her pouting lips.
Two women, watching the visiting Cobbs from a corner, observed: ‘You can tell they’re not from Charleston.’ But they were clearly eligible to belong had they wished, for they were charming, volatile and, according to Georgia standards, well bred, and at every critical moment they assured listeners of their undeviating loyalty to the South.
‘Our men could sweep the field, if it ever came to a test of arms,’ Reuben boomed from his position near the punch bowl. ‘Ask Persifer. In the Mexican War hardly a single Northern officer measured up to the best of ours. Don’t lecture me about railroad mileage and factories that belch smoke. It’s character that counts.’
By the time that first noisy evening ended, the ladies and gentlemen of Charleston were satisfied that the Cobbs of Georgia were not only acceptable but also downright enjoyable: ‘Shame he ever left us. We need men like him.’ And as for Petty Prue: ‘Clearly not gentlefolk, and rather loud, but she has a quality that melts the heart. Let’s have them over.’
However, it was on the plantation that the Georgia Cobb revealed his true merit, for Reuben had the rare ability of looking at evidence and quickly reaching sound conclusions, a skill that few men commanded: ‘Your soil’s failing, Persifer. Per nigger, there’s no way you can do well on this plantation.’ And when Persifer said that he could always import fertilizer, Reuben said loudly: ‘Waste half your profits. At your age, with your skills, you ought to get out of here.’
‘And go where?’ Persifer asked with obvious disdain. ‘Georgia?’
‘No. It’s doomed, too. Yield per nigger way down.’
‘Where then?’
‘Texa
s.’
At the sound of this unfortunate word, Persifer Cobb winced; that any man in his right mind might wish to leave the cultivated paradise of Edisto Island and emigrate to the savage wilderness of Texas was so improbable that it did not even deserve comment. But Sett Cobb, to whom such a proposal had never before been suggested, was intrigued.
Now Reuben took from his pocket a clipping from a Louisiana newspaper, and when Persifer read it, echoes of an earlier discussion began to vibrate: ‘I saw these figures at an office in New Orleans.’ And there they were: South Carolina, 250 pounds of cotton per acre. Texas, 750.
‘And you believe these figures?’ Persifer asked, and with almost trembling excitement Reuben replied: ‘I’ve written to the experts. They assure me that for the first years, virgin soil and all that, these results have been proved time and again.’
‘But for how long?’ Persifer asked, and Reuben replied: ‘Long enough to make a fortune. By then you’d be ready to move on to fresh land. Damn, this could be the most exciting adventure in America. Perse, Sett, let’s all go west.’
The idea that a Cobb would exchange Edisto for Texas was so repugnant to Persifer that he dismissed it haughtily, but when Reuben and little Petty Prue were alone with the Somerset Cobbs, the discussion continued: ‘Sett, Lissa, we must all go to Texas, really. We’re used up in Georgia. You’re obviously used up in Edisto. We can buy land, the best bottomland, for two dollars an acre. Take our wagons, our niggers, money enough to start a new paradise.’ He stopped abruptly and asked: ‘Sett, how much hard cash could you scrape together?’