I always had a vague notion that life as a slave on a southern plantation before emancipation was miserable, but after reading a day-to-day account written by a literate British actress who married a slave-owner, I learned it was much worse than I even imagined. Fanny Kemble was the most famous actress in England during the early 19th century. Her father, also an actor, owned a theater that was struggling financially, so he decided to take his theater to the U.S. where his troupe toured the big cities on the eastern seaboard. Fanny met Pierce Butler in 1834 when she was 25, and he used his southern charm to persuade her to marry him. She gave up her successful acting career to be his wife. She was strongly opposed to slavery, but he conned her into believing his 700 slaves were well-treated and happy to be in bondage on his plantation. Butler lived in Philadelphia off the profits of his plantation, a business managed by Roswell King Sr. and his son Roswell King Jr. (The father founded the town of Roswell, Georgia, now a suburb of Atlanta.) The King family were exceptionally cruel overseers. The Kings managed the plantation for 37 years and the Butler Family hardly ever visited it. Rice was the primary crop, but cotton and sometimes sugar cane were also grown. Roswell King Jr. resigned his position during 1839, and Butler took his family to the plantation during January of that year in order to find a replacement manager. Fanny was horrified to discover how badly slaves were treated.
Location of Butler Island. It’s adjacent to the Altamaha River and close to the ocean.
Fanny Kemble was the most famous actress in England and America during the early 1830s. She was staunchly against slavery but fell in love with a slave-owner and married him. She wrote a day-to-day account of her 4 months stay at the plantation in 1839 in the form of letters to a Pennsylvania school teacher. She was horrified.
During some seasons slaves were forced to work from dawn to dusk. The overseer delegated authority to other slaves who were known as slavedrivers. To force the other slaves to keep working, the slavedrivers used whips. (Slavedrivers remind me of Kapos–the Jewish policemen in concentration camps during the Holocaust who helped the Germans enforce their rules.) Slavedrivers were allowed to give up to 15 lashes with the whip. If they thought the recalcitrant slave needed more lashes, they had to seek out the overseer who could give slaves as many lashes as he thought necessary.
Large slave families lived in 1 room huts with doors and windows always open. There was not enough room in these hovels for the whole family to lie down at the same time. They had leaky roofs and dirt floors and poultry roamed in and out due to the open doors and windows. The houses were filthy and full of chicken and duck shit. There was an infirmary for sick slaves, but it was in the same condition as their huts, and sick people had to lie on dirt floors because there were no mattresses let alone beds. Even the house slaves had to live in these huts because they were forbidden to stay overnight in the master’s house.
Slaves were given 1 set of clothes per year. They rarely could wash their clothes because they had nothing to wear when they were washing their only set of clothes. The clothes turned to rags that barely covered their bodies after working the fields all day every day. Slaves were allowed to make money by gathering and selling Spanish moss (used to stuff mattresses) and by selling poultry eggs, but the merchants often cheated them and sold cheap material, so that when they tried to make their own clothes, the material would tear into useless rags.
The slaves’ bodies were filthy and extremely smelly. After working 12 hour days, they didn’t have the energy to make a bath, a much more laborious luxury than it is today. Back then, it was necessary to draw buckets of water and make a big fire to heat the tub, and there was no privacy. The slaves were often covered in dirt, and this contributed to a high child mortality rate. When a child suffered a simple scratch, they often would contract tetanus, also known as lockjaw, and die. Leprosy was rampant and many slaves were walking around with missing ears, nose, and fingers.
Leprosy and tetanus were common on Butler Island Plantation because of the filthy conditions slaves were forced to exist in.
Overseers used black slave drivers to whip recalcitrant slaves. Women were whipped if they refused the sexual advances of the overseers. They were kept pregnant and constantly abused. It was a hellish existence.
After childbirth, women were excused from field work for just 3 weeks. Small children were relied upon to watch the babies and carry them to the mothers working in the fields when they needed to be nursed. This contributed to many health problems for the women who were not yet recovered from difficult childbirths. Childbirth was dangerous enough during the early 19th century. Many slave women had 10-16 children but often well over half or in some cases all of them had died.
There was no consensual interracial sex on Butler Island. Roswell King (both Jr. and Sr.) and his wife were psychopathic monsters. Ironically, Butler’s family and the owners of the surrounding plantations thought highly of the King family because they were able to keep Butler’s plantation profitable, but they must have been aware of how cruelly the slaves were treated. The planters used racist rationalizations to justify King’s actions. Planters disbelieved slaves complaining of cruelty because they believed slaves were habitual liars. Then slaves were whipped for complaining. Fanny noticed there were many mulattos on the plantation who resembled Roswell King Jr. and Sr., and she learned they were indeed the result of forced sex. Slaves who refused the King’s sexual advances were tied to trees and whipped. Worse yet, Roswell made 3 slaves pregnant within a short time span, and when his wife found out about it, she flew into a jealous rage and had all 3 pregnant slaves whipped, then sent to a remote part of the plantation, known as 5 Pounds, where they were raped again by the black slave driver. Roswell King took any slave he wanted, including married slaves, whose emasculated and degraded husbands could do nothing to stop him without risking a severe flogging and death. King did have some kind of relationship with 1 of his mulatto sons. This man expressed anger when he wasn’t allowed to keep a gun as a memento after his father resigned his position and left the plantation, but Butler did not want any of his slaves to have any kind of firearm for any reason. Fanny amazed the male slaves when she went on boat rides with them unescorted by any white man. Most of the plantation owner’s wives were afraid of the male slaves and stayed hidden indoors all day. Unlike Fanny, they did not venture outside for walks, horseback riding, or boat rides; and they thought Fanny was strange for exercising every day.
Slaves were fed twice a day–at noon and at dusk. They were given rice or grits. Children and handicapped slaves guarded the corn fields all day and night to prevent birds and other creatures from eating their most important food source. John Couper, the neighboring planter, grew peaches and turnips, so his slaves could have fresh fruits and vegetables. (He also successfully grew a fruiting date palm–an interesting novelty for the region.) He suggested growing peaches and turnips to Roswell King who rejected the idea–more evidence that he didn’t care at all about the health of the slaves. Good quality seafood abounded, but slaves were often too exhausted to fish. They did gather oysters and left piles of shells in the middle of plantation roads. Fanny praised the quality of local fish including mullet, shad, and the “Altamaha perch” (I’m not sure which species this refers to); but she was afraid to eat catfish. She often went fishing with a slave child, and he told her it wasn’t fit for white people and took them home for himself. On 1 occasion a neighbor gave Fanny a huge drum fish, and she was disgusted when the cook took the entrails home to feed to his family. Another time, the cook stole a ham and was whipped and demoted to field hand. She had a hard time getting another cook to butcher a sheep the way she wanted. Apparently, the sheep on the island grazed on salt marsh grasses, and it gave the mutton an excellent flavor. Slave children often begged for meat.
Fanny was able to prevent a family break-up. Pierce Butler wanted to reward King for his long-time service by giving him a male slave as part of his severance package. Unfortunately, he was married to a pretty mulatto slave with small children. Fanny objected and convinced Pierce, much to his annoyance, to stop the forced separation. I suspect Pierce wanted the slave woman as a secret side outlet for himself. Slaves often expressed their fear they would be sold off and separated if the plantation was sold.
While reading this narrative, I was most surprised at how ingratiating the slaves were to their owners. They were never sullen and expressed “unbreakable good humor.” They were so brainwashed by the system, they believed the white supremacists were right, and they were inferior. It was the explanation for why the white people were masters, and they were the slaves. It’s difficult for me to conceive of this mentality. The slaves had a big celebration when the Butler family arrived on their plantation, and the slave women, especially, always praised their masters, like they were the greatest people on earth. Even after long days of labor, they would come to the house to say hi and beg for small items, such as sugar or flannel. To me, it seems as if they worshipped their owners. This seems so strange to me, so Stockholm Syndrome-like. Most people, unaccustomed to be slaves would have been driven to violent rebellion, yet 1 small white family was able to control 700 black slaves.
Fanny noted the nature of Butler Island. She loved the Carolina jessamine and other flowers, and she enjoyed the birds. She described a bird that may have been a colorful painted bunting, a species not yet rare. She was impressed with some live oaks but not other individual trees, but she thought the pine savannahs and salt marshes were dreary. The snakes terrified her. Rattlesnakes and water moccasins abounded on the plantation, and she saw large black racers. She did think a green snake was pretty. Sand flies made some of her outings unbearable.
The Butler family left their island in April after a 4 month stay, and they went back to Philadelphia. The new overseer left after 1 year, and Butler rehired Roswell King Jr. who managed the plantation until it went bankrupt in 1859. Pierce Butler lost just about everything, and to pay off his creditors, he sold hundreds of his slaves, breaking up many families. Fanny and Pierce were divorced during 1849. They had 2 daughters. One was pro-slavery, like her father, and the other was against slavery, like her mother. The friction between Fanny’s and Pierce’s beliefs led to their divorce. He divorced her, but she tried to keep her marriage together and delayed publishing her journal for this reason. Her journal was not published until 1863.
Reference:
Kemble, Frances
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839
The University of Georgia Press 1961
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