Letitia M. Burwell

“ Finally Miss Burney’s father pays her a visit in this palace prison when “she told him that she was miserable, that she was worn with attendance and want of sleep, that she had no comfort in life, nothing to love, nothing to hope, that her family and friends were to her as though they were not, and were remembered by her as men remember the dead. From daybreak to midnight the same killing labor, the same recreation, more hateful than labor itself, followed each other without variety, without any interval of liberty or repose.” ”

“ If we should sell all we possess, we could never afford to live there. Besides, you know our mother would as soon think of selling her children as her servants—who indeed are beginning to possess her, instead of her possessing them.”
“But,” he replied, “I can’t help talking, for I hear our people abused, and called indolent and self-indulgent, when I know they have valor and endurance enough. And I believe so much ‘material progress’ leaves no leisure for the highest development of heart and mind. Where the whole energy of a people is applied to making money, the souls of men become dwarfed.” ”

“ Confined exclusively to a Virginia plantation, during my earliest childhood, I believed the world one vast plantation bounded by negro quarters. Rows of white cabins with gardens attached; negro men in the fields; negro women sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, house-keeping in the cabins, with negro children dancing, romping, singing, jumping, playing around the doors, formed the only pictures familiar to my childhood.
The master’s residence—as the negroes called it, the “great house”—occupied a central position, and was handsome and attractive ”

“ These last would sit round the fire knitting and talking over their early memories; how they remembered the red coats of the British; how they had seen the Richmond theater burn down, with some of their family burned in it. How they used to wear such beautiful turbans of crepe lise to the Cartersville balls, and how they used to dance the minuet. At mention of this, my grandmother would lay off her spectacles, put aside her knitting, rise with dignity—she was very tall—and show us the step of the minuet, gliding slowly and majestically around the room. ”

“ But the mother of States persisted in sitting contentedly over her old fashioned wood fire with brass andirons, and while thus musing these words fell slowly and distinctly from her lips:
“They call me ‘old fogy,’ and tell me I must get out of my old ruts and come into the ‘advanced age.’ But I don’t care about their ‘advanced age;’ their water-pipes and elevators. Give me the right sort of men and women! God loving; God serving men and women. Men brave, courteous, true. Women sensible, gentle and retiring. ”

“ How few of all these blessings do we owe to our own power or prudence! How few on which we can not discern the impress of a long past generation!” So we were indebted for our agreeable surroundings to the heroism and sacrifices of past generations, and not to venerate and eulogize them betrays the want of a truly noble soul. For what courage; what patience; what perseverence; what long suffering; what Christian forbearance, must it have cost our great grandmothers to civilize, Christianize and elevate the naked, savage Africans to the condition of good cooks and respectable maids! ”

“ Yet we were told that this nation—towards whom we felt no animosity—brought up their children to believe that they would do God service by reviling and persecuting us. Nay more—that their ministers of the gospel preached unto them thus:
“Thou shalt carry fire and sword into the land that lieth South of you. Thou shalt make it a desolate waste. Thou shalt utterly root out and annihilate the people that they be no more a people. Thou shalt write books. Thou shalt form societies for the purpose of planning the best means of attacking secretly and destroying this people. ”

“ Looking out from the parlor window and imagining this savage scene, how strange a contrast with the picture which met the eye within! Around the fireside assembled the loveliest family group, where kindness and affection beamed in every eye, and father, mother, brothers and sisters were linked together by tenderest devotion and sympathy.
If natural scenery reflects itself upon the heart no wonder a “holy calm” rested upon this family, for far down the river the prospect was peace and tranquility ”

“ The atmosphere of our own home was consideration and kindness. The mere recital of a tale of suffering would make my sister and myself weep with sorrow. And I believe the maltreatment of one of our servants—we had never heard the word “slave”—would have distressed us beyond endurance. We early learned that happiness consisted in dispensing it, and found no pleasure greater than saving our old dolls, toys, beads, bits of cake, or candy for the cabin children, whose delight at receiving them richly repaid us. ”

“ A young gentleman from Virginia—bright and overflowing with fun, also visiting New York—coming into the parlor one day threw himself on a sofa in a violent fit of laughter.
“What is the matter?” we asked.
“I am laughing,” he replied, “at the absurd questions these people can ask. What do you think? A man asked me just now if we didn’t keep blood-hounds in Virginia to chase negroes! I told him, O, yes, every plantation keeps several dozen! And we often have a tender boiled negro infant for breakfast!” ”

“ But from that time it began to dawn upon us that all the world was not a plantation, with more than enough on it for people to eat. And when we were old enough to read and compare our surroundings with what we learned about other countries, we found that our laboring population was more bountifully supplied than that of any other land. We read about “myriads of poor, starving creatures, with pinched faces and tattered garments,” in far off cities and countries. We read of hundreds who, from destitution and wretchedness, committed suicide. ”

“ Each generation of blacks vied with the other in extolling the virtues of their particular mistress and master and “their times;” but notwithstanding this mournful contrast between the past and present, their reminiscences had a certain charm. Often by their cabin firesides would we listen to the tales of the olden days about our forefathers, of whom they could tell much, having belonged to our family since the landing of the African fathers on the English slave ships, from which their ancestors had been bought by ours. ”

“ While the tide water Virginians were already practicing all the arts and wiles known to the highest English civilization; were sending their sons to be educated in England; receiving brocaded silks and powdered wigs from England; and dancing the minuet at the Williamsburg balls with the families of the noblemen sent over to govern the Colony, Piedmont, Virginia, was still a dense forest, the abode of Indians and wild animals. ”

“ Time would fail me to dwell, as I should, upon the incomparable rice waffles, and beat biscuit, and muffins, and laplands, and Marguerites, and flannel cakes, and French rolls, and velvet rolls, and ladies-fingers constantly brought by relays of small servants, during breakfast, hot and hotter from the kitchen. Then the tea waiters handed at night, with the beef tongue, the sliced ham, the grated cheese, the cold turkey, the dried venison, the loaf bread buttered hot, the batter-cakes, crackers, the quince marmalade, the wafers all pass in review before me. ”

“ We had not the vanity to think that the European nations cared or thought about us, and if the Americans believed these accounts, they defamed the memory of one held up by them as a model of Christian virtue,—George Washington—a Virginia slave-owner, whose kindness to his “people,” as he called his slaves, entitled him to as much honor as did his deeds of prowess. ”

“ Things did not seem to have been “fixed up” to last as long as our old things at home, and we began to wonder if the “advanced age” really made the people any better, or more agreeable, or more hospitable, or more generous, or more brave, or more self-reliant, or more charitable, or more true, or more pious, than in “old fogy Virginia?”
There was one thing most curious to us in New York. No one seemed to do anything by himself or herself. No one had an individuality; all existed in “clubs” or “societies.” ”

“ Although considered the owner of his house, it was a mistake—if ownership means the right to govern one’s own property—for beyond his law papers, library and the privilege of paying all the bills, this gentleman had no “rights” there whatever; his house, kitchen and premises being under the entire command of “Aunt Fanny,” the cook—a huge mulatto woman whose word was law, and whose voice thundered abuse if any dared to disobey her. ”

“ That this marvellous cooking was all the work of her own hands I am, in later years, inclined to doubt, as she kept several assistants, a boy to chop wood, beat biscuit, scour tables, lift off pots and ovens; one woman to make the pastry and another to compound cakes and jellies. But her fame was great; her pride lofty, and I would not now pluck one laurel from her wreath.
This honest woman was appreciated by my mother, but we had no affinity for her, in consequence of certain traditions on the plantation about her severity to children. ”

“ Had I not Washington, Patrick Henry, Light-horse Harry Lee, and others, ready for the first Revolution; and if there comes another—which God forbid!—have I not plenty more just like them?”
Here she laughed with delight, as she called over their names: “Robert Lee, Jackson, Joe Johnstone, Stuart, Early, Floyd, Preston, the Breckinridges, Scott, and others like them, brave and true as steel. Ha! ha! I know of what stuff to make men! And if my old ‘ruts and grooves’ produce men like these, should they be abandoned? Can any ‘advanced age’ produce better? ”

“ And then came the long dark days; the days when the sun seemed to shine no more; when the eyes of wives, mothers and sisters were heavy with weeping; when men sat up late in the night studying military tactics; when grief-burdened hearts turned to God in prayer.
The intellectual gladiators who had discoursed eloquently of war around our fireside, buckled their armor on and went forth to battle.
Band after band of brave-hearted, bright-faced youths from Southern plantation homes came to bleed and die on Virginia soil ”

“ Dedicated to my nieces, who will find in English and American publications such epithets applied to their ancestors as: “Cruel slave-owners;” “inhuman;” “Southern task masters;” “hard-hearted;” “dealers in human souls,” &c. From these they will naturally recoil with horror. My own life would have been embittered had I believed myself descended from such; and that those who come after us may know the truth I wish to leave a record of plantation life as it was. The truth may thus be preserved among a few, and the praise they deserve awarded noble men and virtuous women who have passed away. ”

“ A great many years ago, after such a wedding as I describe, a dark shadow fell upon Oaklands.
The eldest daughter—young and beautiful, soon to marry a gentleman of high-toned character, charming manners and large estate—one night, while the preparations were in progress for her nuptials, saw in a vision vivid pictures of what would befall her if she married. The vision showed her: a gay wedding—herself the bride—the marriage jaunt to her husband’s home in a distant county; the incidents of the journey; her arrival at her new home; her sickness and death; the funeral procession back to Oaklands ”

“ An ignorant and unlettered woman would doubtless not have found this life in the palace tedious, and our sympathy would not have been aroused for her; for as long as the earth lasts there must be human beings fitted for every station, and it is supposed, till the end of all things, there must be cooks, housemaids and dining-room servants, which will make it never possible for the whole human family to stand entirely upon the same platform socially and intellectually. ”

“ Their theme was, “the best [Pg 62] means of protecting our plantation homes and firesides.” Even the smallest children now comprehended the greatest politicians.
Now came the full flow and tide of Southern eloquence—real, soul-inspiring eloquence!
Many possessing this gift were in the habit of visiting us at that time; and all dwelt upon one theme—the secession of Virginia—with glowing words from hearts full of enthusiasm; all agreeing it was better for States, as well as individuals, to separate rather than quarrel or fight. ”

“ Oh! the long terrible nights helpless women and children passed, in our plantation homes; the enemy encamped around them; the [Pg 63] clash of swords heard against the doors and windows; the report of guns on the air which might be sending death to their loved ones.
But why try to describe the horrors of such nights? Who that has not experienced them can know how we felt? Who can imagine the heart sickness, when stealing to an upper window at midnight we watched the fierce flames rising from some neighboring home, expecting our own to be destroyed by the enemy before daylight in the same way? ”

“ These small servants were always dressed in the cleanest, whitest long-sleeved aprons, with white or red turbans on their heads. No establishment being considered complete without a multiplicity of these; they might be seen constantly darting about on errands from the house to the kitchen and the cabins; up stairs and down stairs, being indeed omnipresent and indispensable. ”

“ The applause of men excited in him no vanity; for those around soon learned that the slightest allusion or compliment, in his presence, to his valor or renown, instead of pleasing, rather offended him. Without vanity, he was equally without selfishness.
One day, observing several quaint articles of furniture about his house, and asking Mrs. Lee where they came from, she told me that an old lady in New York city—of whom neither herself nor the General had ever before heard—concluded to break up housekeeping. ”

“ There was a class of men in our State who made a business of buying negroes to sell again farther south. These we never met, and held in horror. But even they, when we reflect, could not have treated them with inhumanity; for what man would pay a thousand dollars for a piece of property, and fail to take the best possible care of it? The “traders” usually bought their negroes when an estate became involved, for the owners could not be induced to part with their negroes until the last extremity—when everything else had been seized by their creditors. ”