Sally Heming (38 page)

I laid her next to Edy, in the slave cemetery. Four of his
white children lay under their stones in the white cemetery. The dividing line
did not even stop at the grave. But what did it change? They were all his
children, and they were all dead.

Harriet's death brought me low, undermining the fragile
movements of still another new life in my womb. The winter reminded me of Paris
in
'88,
long and cold and
nothing like normal Virginia winters, with candles burning in the afternoon,
keeping everyone, slave and white, indoors. My first-born, Tom, survived, and I
clung to him with all the desolation I felt that winter.

Martha, who had lost a daughter at the same time I had lost
Edy, raced back to Edgehill and her children in mortal fear, leaving me alone.

Only one living child left, except the one in my body. I kept
Tom indoors the whole winter, never letting his sturdy red-headed figure out of
my sight. My heart pounded at every cough, stopped at every complaint.

At the end of March, I sent word that my time was
approaching. A few days later, a sofa came made of fine mahogany with carved
legs and back in the Jacobean style; a feather mattress and down coverlet of
silk arrived as well. He had not forgotten me. When I wrote that I was safely
delivered of a boy, the reply came back, "Name him Beverly," and I
did.

Not long afterward, a harpsichord arrived from
Philadelphia. Martha came up from Edgehill to see it almost immediately. I
looked with envy on her four healthy children. I too would have had four ...

"It is for Maria, you know."

"Yes, so I understand."

Martha didn't mention the fact that Maria no longer lived
at Monticello, but away at Bermuda Hundred. I was delighted with the
harpsichord.

"It is a charming one, I think," she said,
"but certainly inferior to mine."

She was looking not at the harpsichord, but at the white,
blond, blue-eyed slave child I held in my arms ... her half brother.

CHAPTER 29

MONTICELLO, OCTOBER
1800

What security for domestic purity and peace there can be
where every man has had two connections, one of which must be concealed; and two
families....

H
arriet martineau,
Society in America,
1837

The organ of justice, is the couple considered as a
personal duality, forming by the contrast of attributes a complex being, the
social embryo.... Nature in man and woman is not by consequence, the same.
Moreover, it is through him that the conscience of both of them opens onto
justice, each one becomes for the other at the same time witness, judge and a
second self. Being in two personages, this couple is the real human subject.
proudhon,
Pornocracy or Women in Modern Time
[published in
1875]

The Richmond Jail, Sept.
13,1800

Sir,

Nothing is talked of here but the recent conspiracy of the
Negroes. One Nicholas Prosser, a young man who had fallen heir, sometime ago,
to a plantation within six miles of the city, had behaved with great barbarity
to his slaves. One of them, named Gabriel, a fellow of courage and intellect
above his rank in life, laid a plan of revenge. Immense numbers immediately
entered into it, and it has been kept with incredible secrecy for several
months. A number of swords were made in a clumsy enough manner out of rough
iron; others by breaking the blade of a scythe in the middle, which thus made
two swords of a most formidable kind. They were well fastened in proper
handles, and would have cut off a man's limb at a single blow. The conspirators
were to have met in a wood near Prosser's house, upon Saturday before last,
after it was dark. Upon that day, or some very short time before it, notice was
received by a fellow, who being invited, somewhat unguardedly, to go to the
rendezvous, refused, and immediately informed his master's overseer. No
ostensible preparations were, however, made until the afternoon preceding the
night of the rendezvous, and as the militia are in a state of the most
contemptible disorganization, as the blacks are numerous, robust, and
desperate, there must have been
bloody work. But
upon that very evening, just about sunset, there came on the most terrible
thunderstorm, accompanied with an enormous rain, that I ever witnessed in this
state. Between Prosser's and Richmond, there is a place called Brook Swamp,
which runs across the high road and over which there was a bridge. By this the
Africans were of need to pass, and the rain had made the passage impracticable.
Besides they were deprived of the junction and assistance of their good friends
in the city, who could not go out to join them. They were to have attacked the
Capital and the penitentiary. They could hardly have failed of success, for
after all, we only could muster four or five hundred men of whom not more than
thirty had muskets. This was our state of preparation while several thousand
stands of arms were piled up in the Capital and penitentiary. I do not pretend
to blame the executive council, for I really am not sufficiently master of the
circumstances to form an opinion. Five fellows were hung this day and many more
will share the same fate. This plan was to massacre all the whites, of all ages
and sexes, and all the blacks who would not join them; and then march off to
the mountains with the plunder of the city. Those wives who should refuse to
accompany their husbands were to have been butchered along with the rest, an
idea truly worthy of any African heart. It convicts with my knowledge that many
of the wretches, who were, or would have been, partners in the plot, have been
treated with the utmost tenderness by their owners and more like children than
slaves....

I read through the rest of the letter, which dealt with
general political opinions, and to the name of the sender: Thomas T. Callender.
I fixed the name in my mind, then handed the letter my master had asked me to
read back to him.

"I suppose you already know all about it," the
familiar voice added with something like sadness.

Indeed, the slave intelligence had brought the news long
before now, and the story of Gabriel Prosser was already legend.

Davey Bowles had brought the first news and told me of the
uprising. Gabriel Prosser and Jack Bowler had been the leaders of the
insurrections. Gabriel, a handsome, twenty-four-year-old giant of
six-foot-three and his comrade Jack, three inches taller and four years older,
had organized more than a thousand men in Henrico County. Brilliant and
literate, he had carefully planned his rebellion. Gabriel's wife, Nanny, had
been active as well, as were his brothers Solomon and Martin. They had all been
betrayed by a fellow servant called Ben Wolfolk, who had heard of the
conspiracy through two loose-mouthed slaves, George Smith and Samuel Bird. The
insurrection was to have taken place on the first of September; the rendezvous
for the rebels had been a brook six miles from Richmond. Eleven hundred men
were to have assembled there and were to have been divided into three columns.
All were to have marched to Richmond under the cover of night.

The rebels had counted heavily on the French, whom they had
understood to be at war with the United States, for the money that was due
them, and that a warship, which would help them, had landed at South Key. If
successful in this first stage, the penitentiary in Richmond had enough arms,
the powderhouse was well stocked, the capital contained the state treasury, the
mills would give them bread, the control of the bridge across the James River
would keep off enemies from beyond. Thus secured, they had planned to issue a
proclamation summoning to their standard of red silk, with the words
"Liberty or Death" printed on it, their fellow slaves and
humanitarian whites. In a week, they had estimated they would have had fifty thousand
rebels and could have taken other towns. In case of failure, they were to
retreat into the mountains, as the rebellious slaves of Santo Domingo had done.

There had been intimations all summer of insurrection in
Richmond, and the white table talk had been ominous with it. Yet the attack
itself had surprised and shaken them. Why? I wondered, when they all lived,
black and white, with this threat every day of every year. The whites had been
surprised and unprepared. Only treachery had prevented success—treachery and
God, for the appointed day had been prey to the most furious storm ever known
to Virginia's memory. Why? I asked myself again and again. A tempest had burst
upon the land instead of insurrection. The governor of Virginia, Master Monroe,
had called in the United States Cavalry and the hangings had begun. I looked at
the date on the letter. It was already outdated. Gabriel Prosser was already
dead. Captured by treachery on a schooner in Norfolk, he had been brought back
to Richmond in chains. There he had manifested the utmost composure and taking
all the responsibility onto himself, had conducted himself as a hero, and had
made no confession. Now, I looked at a fourth letter. Master Monroe was writing
to Thomas Jefferson for advice. How to stop the hangings? More than thirty-five
had gone to the gallows, and the Richmond jails were groaning with prisoners.
They had suspended the trials. If they hanged everybody, they would annihilate
the blacks in that part of the country.

"I think there has been enough hanging."

Why, when he kept so many things from me, did he want to
share this particular burden? Did I not already have enough to bear? He knew
that I could never come down on his side in this.

My lover looked at me with surprise.

"You know about the hangings?"

"Yes."

"You know how many?"

"Rumor has it forty or fifty, with hundreds waiting to
be tried."

"Governor Monroe doesn't know what to do. Here, look
at this." I read Master Monroe's letter.

"All I can say is," I said, "you can't kill
every slave in Virginia."

He got up from his desk and came toward me. "No,"
he said slowly, "you can't kill everyone." He took the letter from my
hands and went back to his desk. "When to stay the hand of the executioner
is an important question. Those who have escaped from immediate danger must
have feelings which dispose them to extend the executions...."

"I still say there's been hanging enough. You can't
kill everyone."

I thought of the new seed planted in my womb. A new slave.

"You must understand," I began, "they are
not felons or common malefactors, but persons guilty of what our society
obliges us to treat as a crime, and which their feelings represent in a far
different shape—"

"I know this," he interrupted. He was turned away
from me, the frightened, imploring letter of Master Monroe still in his hand.

He turned toward me but did not approach. He was afraid of
me. He could forget in private, but he could never forget in public.

More to himself than to me, he said, "It is certain
that the world at large will forever condemn us if we indulge or go one step
beyond necessity."

At the word "necessity," I looked into his eyes
but said nothing.

"Our situation is indeed a difficult one," he
continued, "for I doubt if those people can ever be permitted to go at
large among us with safety."

"Then exile them! The French and British do so,"
I begged. "Those people" were my people! Even as we spoke, he forgot.
Banishment. Was that not James's choice? I pressed my palms to my womb. If I
could save one...just one of them.

"I have thought of it," he said. "Surely the
legislature would pass a law for their exportation, the proper measure as you
have pointed out on this, and ... all similar occasions."

I thought again of Gabriel Prosser. He had died on the
gallows with ten of his men and with hundreds in the Richmond jail waiting to
be tried and hanged, but they, the slaves, didn't believe it. Already there was
a song that had started somewhere on some plantation, and was now winging from
slave quarter to slave quarter. Prosser, the song went, didn't die on the
gallows, but escaped with the help of a young slave boy named Billy. He lived
to rise again. We were not about to let Gabriel Prosser die. He would rise
again. Another black man would rise to take his place just as he had at Santo
Domingo. My master looked down into my eyes.