Channelling George Washington: What If ... Slavery Ended Peacefully?
“Do you enjoy playing my favorite historical game, what if?”
“All historians do. Do you play it in Elysium?”
“All the time. We can take the long view up here. It’s amazing what you can see was a possibility, if people hadn’t been too impulsive, or crazed, or just plain stupid.”
“What’s your favorite topic?
“What if we avoided the Civil War? Could slavery have ended peacefully?”
“That one is pretty popular down here too, General. There’s a growing suspicion among our historical fraternity that if we could have waited another forty or fifty years, slavery would have disappeared peacefully, the way it did in Brazil and other countries.”
“Exactly what I—and some others think. Jimmy Buchanan demurs. He has no confidence in people recovering from diseases of the public mind. But I’m an optimist on such matters. In 1787, we overcame a huge prejudice against a strong central government. The doomsters like Pat Henry and Sam Adams shouted themselves hoarse, but we beat them.”
“What were the signs of hope for a peaceful end to slavery in 1861?”
“The number of free blacks was growing every year. In 1860, they totaled a half million! Not many people know that. Talented blacks were running plantations all over the South—even while they were enslaved. Do you know the story of the real Uncle Tom?”
“Tell me about him.”
“His name was Josiah Henson. He was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s fictional black hero. Harriet admitted it on numerous occasions. But she never mentioned that he was totally different from the character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
“Different in what way?”
“Stowe knew almost nothing about slavery. She was outraged by the institution—that gave her book its enormous appeal. She mentions almost casually that her Uncle Tom ran his master’s farm. But she never described him at work. Instead, there were endless pages describing him as a good-natured simpleton who loved everybody, white and black.”
“Then Tom falls into the hands of Simon Legree?”
“His original master sells him to Legree, who starts working and beating him to death, while Tom forgives him ad nauseam, as the professors say. It’s why being called an Uncle Tom became an insult among blacks.”
“The real Uncle Tom wasn’t like that?”
“He couldn’t have been more different. From the beginning of his enslaved life, as Henson tells it in his autobiography, he set himself to ‘out-hoe, out-reap, out-husk, out everything every competitor.’ He was soon master of every kind of farm work.”
“Amazing stuff!”
“When Henson caught the white overseer defrauding Isaac Riley, the owner of the plantation, he reported him and the grateful Riley gave him the job. He doubled the production of the farm’s various crops, took them to market and bargained skillfully with wholesalers, soon making Riley one of the most affluent farmers in Maryland.”
“Were there other blacks like Henson in the 1830s?”
“Definitely. By that time dozens of overseers were black. Soon only 30 percent of the plantations with one hundred or more slaves had white overseers. Farming was not the only skill blacks acquired. Twenty-seven percent of the adult male slaves in Charleston, SC were blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers—skilled artisans. They operated like free men, negotiating contracts, and even living in their own houses. They paid only a percentage of their incomes to their white masters.”
“Did some of them begin buying their freedom?”
“This became more and more common as the century advanced. These black entrepreneurs testified to the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. They also bore witness to the injustice of slavery. They would have become leaders and spokesman for reconciliation if slavery had ended peacefully.”
“At the very least, this new information makes us aware that blacks are NOT inferior to whites and never were.”
“I never doubted that fact after I saw how well black soldiers fought in the army of the Revolution. By the end of the war, one out of every seven soldiers in the ranks was black. They were as brave and committed to independence as any man in the army. Do you know the story of Lafayette’s valet?”
“You tell it, General.”
“It’s my favorite story about a black American. The Marquis, who was all of 23, was trying to defend Virginia against Lord Cornwallis and his army of 7,000 men. The Marquis wrote me a plaintive letter, saying he wasn’t even strong enough to get decently beaten. He barely had 1,000 men.
“Plus his valet?”
“He was given this young black man named Jim as a bodyservant, as they called them in Virginia in those days. It sounds awful to your era, I know. I hoped valet was more acceptable. At any rate, Jim was very intelligent. He offered to infiltrate the British army camp at Yorktown, pretending to be a runaway. He brought back valuable information—the British were planning to spend the winter there. Lafayette rushed this report to me, up north. It helped me decide to march to Yorktown in the hope of trapping Cornwallis.”
“And it worked. One of the miracles of military history!”
“The French fleet arrived from the Caribbean as they had promised they would—and we had a victory that more or less decided the war. Lafayette was so grateful, he persuaded the Virginia legislature to free Jim.”
“Did you meet Jim—congratulate him?”
“I’m afraid not. There were too many things going on. French generals and admirals to deal with, worries about how to feed our army. But Lafayette saw him again, more than forty years later.”
“Jim got to France?”
“No. Lafayette came back to America in 1824 to help us celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He visited almost every American city from Boston to Savannah. There were all sorts of parades and tributes and salutes. In Richmond, he was in his carriage, waving to a cheering crowd, when a black man rushed up to him. ‘Jim!’ Lafayette cried.”
“It was really Jim?”
“Lafayette had an amazing memory for names and faces. Jim told the Marquis he was now known as James Lafayette, and was a respected citizen of Richmond, with a wife and family and legions of friends.”
“You’re convincing me that a peaceful end to slavery is a what if that was a real possibility. It’s a heartbreaking—but somehow deeply consoling thought.”
“I feel the same way. “
“Any other what ifs on your mind, General?”
“I’ve got a really good one. You’ll be hearing from me soon!”