Read Online 1824: The Arkansas War by Eric Flint - Free Book Online
Authors: Eric Flint
Tags: Fiction
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don’t matter what you think. By law, those two daughters you spoil so badly are your slaves.”
“I freed you!” he protested.
“Not till after the girls were born,” came her immediate rejoinder. “Richard Mentor Johnson, how in the world can a lawyer like you be that deaf, dumb, and blind?”
It was a good question—and the wide-open mouth of the senator made it perfectly clear that he’d never even thought about it. By Kentucky law, as well as the law in any slave state, a child born to a slave inherited the legal status of the mother, not the father. That was in complete opposition to the standard way of figuring birth status as usually applied to white people. But the South’s gentry had made sure and certain that their frequent dalliances with slave women wouldn’t produce any legally and financially awkward children.
As foul a breed of men as ever lived,
was Patrick Driscol’s assessment of southern slave-owners. Sam felt the categorization was far too harsh, as was so often true of Patrick’s attitudes. But he didn’t deny there was more than a grain of truth to it. Slavery corrupted the master as much as it degraded the slave. If there was any true and certain law of nature, there it was.
“Long as you’re alive,” Julia continued, “we don’t got to worry none. But if you pass on, the girls are just part of your estate. And you got debts. Lots and lots of debts. You think your creditors will pass them over?”
“I’ll free them, too, then. Tomorrow!”
She shrugged. “Good. But you trust judges way more than I do. With all those creditors circling like vultures, won’t surprise me at all to find some judge will say the manumission was invalid.”
The next words were spoken very coldly. “They’ll be pretty, real pretty, give ’em another three or four years. But they inherited my color, too—enough of it, anyway—along with my looks. They’ll fetch a nice price from some slave whorehouse somewhere. Your ghost can watch it happen.”
“It’s not unheard of, Dick,” Sam said.
The senator was back to gaping. Again, obviously, never even having considered the matter. The man’s blindness could be truly astonishing at times. The same blindness that led him into one financial disaster after another. Not so much because Richard Mentor Johnson was dishonest or rapacious as because it never seemed to occur to him that friends and relatives and acquaintances of his might be.
One of the house slave women came into the room. “Dinner’s ready, Miz Julia.”
One black woman addressing another as if she were a white mistress. The world had a lot more crazy angles in it than most people wanted to admit. Much less allow.
Imogene and Adaline were on their best behavior at dinner. That might have been because of Sam’s presence, but he didn’t think so. It was more likely because their mother had drummed it into them over the years. Dinner at a great house like Blue Spring Farm was rarely a small and private family affair. And so the girls of the family would act proper, they would, or they’d suffer the consequences.
The dinner table seemed as long as a small ship, with tall and stately candlesticks serving for masts and sails. Johnson at one end; Julia, presiding over the meal, facing him at the other. With, in two long rows down the side, well over a dozen other people in addition to Sam and the children. Disabled war veterans or their widows, for the most part. But there was also one of nearby Lexington’s prominent lawyers, and one of the local plantation owners.
Sam wasn’t surprised to see them there. Not all of the South’s well-to-do disliked Johnson. Many admired him. That was true, starting with the president of the United States himself, James Monroe, who came from Virginia gentry. As always, in Sam’s experience—contrary to Patrick Driscol’s tendency to label people in sharp and definite categories—attitudes and habits blurred at the edges. Blurred so far,
“I freed you!” he protested.
“Not till after the girls were born,” came her immediate rejoinder. “Richard Mentor Johnson, how in the world can a lawyer like you be that deaf, dumb, and blind?”
It was a good question—and the wide-open mouth of the senator made it perfectly clear that he’d never even thought about it. By Kentucky law, as well as the law in any slave state, a child born to a slave inherited the legal status of the mother, not the father. That was in complete opposition to the standard way of figuring birth status as usually applied to white people. But the South’s gentry had made sure and certain that their frequent dalliances with slave women wouldn’t produce any legally and financially awkward children.
As foul a breed of men as ever lived,
was Patrick Driscol’s assessment of southern slave-owners. Sam felt the categorization was far too harsh, as was so often true of Patrick’s attitudes. But he didn’t deny there was more than a grain of truth to it. Slavery corrupted the master as much as it degraded the slave. If there was any true and certain law of nature, there it was.
“Long as you’re alive,” Julia continued, “we don’t got to worry none. But if you pass on, the girls are just part of your estate. And you got debts. Lots and lots of debts. You think your creditors will pass them over?”
“I’ll free them, too, then. Tomorrow!”
She shrugged. “Good. But you trust judges way more than I do. With all those creditors circling like vultures, won’t surprise me at all to find some judge will say the manumission was invalid.”
The next words were spoken very coldly. “They’ll be pretty, real pretty, give ’em another three or four years. But they inherited my color, too—enough of it, anyway—along with my looks. They’ll fetch a nice price from some slave whorehouse somewhere. Your ghost can watch it happen.”
“It’s not unheard of, Dick,” Sam said.
The senator was back to gaping. Again, obviously, never even having considered the matter. The man’s blindness could be truly astonishing at times. The same blindness that led him into one financial disaster after another. Not so much because Richard Mentor Johnson was dishonest or rapacious as because it never seemed to occur to him that friends and relatives and acquaintances of his might be.
One of the house slave women came into the room. “Dinner’s ready, Miz Julia.”
One black woman addressing another as if she were a white mistress. The world had a lot more crazy angles in it than most people wanted to admit. Much less allow.
Imogene and Adaline were on their best behavior at dinner. That might have been because of Sam’s presence, but he didn’t think so. It was more likely because their mother had drummed it into them over the years. Dinner at a great house like Blue Spring Farm was rarely a small and private family affair. And so the girls of the family would act proper, they would, or they’d suffer the consequences.
The dinner table seemed as long as a small ship, with tall and stately candlesticks serving for masts and sails. Johnson at one end; Julia, presiding over the meal, facing him at the other. With, in two long rows down the side, well over a dozen other people in addition to Sam and the children. Disabled war veterans or their widows, for the most part. But there was also one of nearby Lexington’s prominent lawyers, and one of the local plantation owners.
Sam wasn’t surprised to see them there. Not all of the South’s well-to-do disliked Johnson. Many admired him. That was true, starting with the president of the United States himself, James Monroe, who came from Virginia gentry. As always, in Sam’s experience—contrary to Patrick Driscol’s tendency to label people in sharp and definite categories—attitudes and habits blurred at the edges. Blurred so far,
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