flight
What planter who prided himself on efficiency—and ledgers that showed a profit—wouldn’t prefer to purchase a cowed, completely unlettered black from Africa? A black whose legal status, from the beginning, was vague? And whose fatally distinctive coloration made him easier to detect if he fled his bondage? Even the meanest petty criminal from the London stews at least had a white skin to keep him relatively invisible if he succeeded in escaping.
But what had begun as a natural tendency to seek the most stable and permanent kind of agricultural labor force had degenerated into outright ownership of one human being by another.
It was a source of sardonic amusement for Judson to recall that the very first blacks on the continent—twenty—were put ashore and sold at the Jamestown colony by the largely British crew of a Dutch privateer. The date was 1619—one year before the arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth, carrying forty-one stiff-necked Puritan families, whose children and grandchildren prided themselves on being descended from “founding fathers.” What a pity there were no genealogical tables to permit the offspring of the Jamestown twenty to dispute that claim!
In the early years of the colonial blackbird trade, the word slave had seldom if ever been spoken. Gradually, though, it came into common use as the more unscrupulous members of the landed class realized that New England shipowners were quite willing to supply a constant stream of African bucks and wenches, and that a combination of evolving custom and clever writing of new statutes could transform purchased black workers into permanent chattels with no hope of ever earning freedom—a condition the redemptioners and transported prison inmates never faced.
Now the institution had grown so entrenched—producing fear and repression on one side, submission and hatred on the other—that Judson could only foresee an eventual confrontation between those who listened to their consciences and those who heard nothing but the jingling voice of the pound.
By mid-morning, his reflections had put him in thoroughly miserable spirits. He lay in a grove at the edge of the plantation, glooming over the explosive potential of the situation with the local blacks, then experiencing even deeper depression over his own behavior.
Why in God’s name was he driven to such excesses of word and deed, both in his father’s presence and elsewhere? Gazing out across the tobacco fields where heat-devils rippled the air, he saw the white walls of Sermon Hill rising on the crest of the low rise above the Rappahannock and wished he were anywhere but here.
He wished he were out beyond the Blue Wall with his friend, for instance. In empty country. No laws, no Bible-spouting hypocrites, no incipient rebellions, no pea-headed overseers, no—
No Peggy to haunt him.
His father’s words came back to him with tormenting clarity.
Taint.
Poisoned.
Devil’s blood —
Try as he might, he couldn’t scoff away the uneasy suspicion that Angus had struck a vein of truth. One from which Judson turned in terror and loathing. The only way to blunt the fear was with rum. Slowly drinking himself insensible, he was able to convince himself that he only needed to escape Virginia to escape his demons.
He fell into a stupor that brought bizarre dreams.
He saw flame-haired George Rogers Clark stalking through the wilderness, standing as tall as the trees themselves. He saw Peggy naked, beckoning him with lewd gestures, a slut’s teasing smile. He saw his father, fierce as Moses, hand raised to deliver a blow while lightning flashed in a sky of churning storm—
He awoke suddenly. Lying on his back in the grass, he felt chilly. Nearby, his roan stood head down, a statue against the first faint stars. In the west, red stained the horizon.
Judson licked the inside of his furred mouth. He heard a sound so faint that the slightest change in the direction of the breeze silenced it for a
What planter who prided himself on efficiency—and ledgers that showed a profit—wouldn’t prefer to purchase a cowed, completely unlettered black from Africa? A black whose legal status, from the beginning, was vague? And whose fatally distinctive coloration made him easier to detect if he fled his bondage? Even the meanest petty criminal from the London stews at least had a white skin to keep him relatively invisible if he succeeded in escaping.
But what had begun as a natural tendency to seek the most stable and permanent kind of agricultural labor force had degenerated into outright ownership of one human being by another.
It was a source of sardonic amusement for Judson to recall that the very first blacks on the continent—twenty—were put ashore and sold at the Jamestown colony by the largely British crew of a Dutch privateer. The date was 1619—one year before the arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth, carrying forty-one stiff-necked Puritan families, whose children and grandchildren prided themselves on being descended from “founding fathers.” What a pity there were no genealogical tables to permit the offspring of the Jamestown twenty to dispute that claim!
In the early years of the colonial blackbird trade, the word slave had seldom if ever been spoken. Gradually, though, it came into common use as the more unscrupulous members of the landed class realized that New England shipowners were quite willing to supply a constant stream of African bucks and wenches, and that a combination of evolving custom and clever writing of new statutes could transform purchased black workers into permanent chattels with no hope of ever earning freedom—a condition the redemptioners and transported prison inmates never faced.
Now the institution had grown so entrenched—producing fear and repression on one side, submission and hatred on the other—that Judson could only foresee an eventual confrontation between those who listened to their consciences and those who heard nothing but the jingling voice of the pound.
By mid-morning, his reflections had put him in thoroughly miserable spirits. He lay in a grove at the edge of the plantation, glooming over the explosive potential of the situation with the local blacks, then experiencing even deeper depression over his own behavior.
Why in God’s name was he driven to such excesses of word and deed, both in his father’s presence and elsewhere? Gazing out across the tobacco fields where heat-devils rippled the air, he saw the white walls of Sermon Hill rising on the crest of the low rise above the Rappahannock and wished he were anywhere but here.
He wished he were out beyond the Blue Wall with his friend, for instance. In empty country. No laws, no Bible-spouting hypocrites, no incipient rebellions, no pea-headed overseers, no—
No Peggy to haunt him.
His father’s words came back to him with tormenting clarity.
Taint.
Poisoned.
Devil’s blood —
Try as he might, he couldn’t scoff away the uneasy suspicion that Angus had struck a vein of truth. One from which Judson turned in terror and loathing. The only way to blunt the fear was with rum. Slowly drinking himself insensible, he was able to convince himself that he only needed to escape Virginia to escape his demons.
He fell into a stupor that brought bizarre dreams.
He saw flame-haired George Rogers Clark stalking through the wilderness, standing as tall as the trees themselves. He saw Peggy naked, beckoning him with lewd gestures, a slut’s teasing smile. He saw his father, fierce as Moses, hand raised to deliver a blow while lightning flashed in a sky of churning storm—
He awoke suddenly. Lying on his back in the grass, he felt chilly. Nearby, his roan stood head down, a statue against the first faint stars. In the west, red stained the horizon.
Judson licked the inside of his furred mouth. He heard a sound so faint that the slightest change in the direction of the breeze silenced it for a
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