Black Fortunes

Inside a church made of laid stone and canopied by trees on a clearing in the woodlands of Arkansas, an enslaved woman named Emmeline was summoned to the front of the congregation to undergo a confirmation ceremony. She was purportedly the first enslaved person to undergo the ritual in the state. The faces of the congregants at the Episcopal Church of Arkansas were of slave-owning families from the cotton plantations of the western part of the state. They watched with absorption as she marched to the front of the congregation. Not only would Emmeline confirm her faith, but she would also join slave-owning men and women as a member of the congregation and a sister in Christ.

Emmeline was a fair-skinned black woman described as “the most beautiful type of creole.” She was unmarried and had two children by two different men. That couldn’t be held against her, as her body had been sold and rented out at various points by the family who owned her, who claimed that “she lived the most Christian life of anyone we ever met.” The confirmation ceremony consisted of a series of questions about accepting Christ and renouncing evil, which had to be answered affirmatively; it ended with prayers and the laying on of hands. Emmeline’s ceremony was presided over by Bishop George Washington Freeman, a stoic man who dressed in gray vests and jackets with a preacher’s collar on his shirt. He put his hands on Emmeline’s head and shoulders and prayed over her as amens arose from the congregation. With this sacrament, she hoped, a place would be prepared for her in Heaven. She was near the end of her life, and she was getting her affairs into order.

Emmeline was on borrowed time; at nearly forty years of age, she had surpassed the normal life expectancy for an enslaved person and had lived a long life for her era. In the 1850s, the average life span of enslaved African Americans was between twenty-two and thirty-six years. Between tetanus contracted from rusted farm equipment, food- and waterborne illnesses, sexually transmitted infections, disease-carrying mosquitoes, and hemorrhaging childbirths, enslaved people were considered lucky to reach their thirtieth year. Emmeline had survived dozens of outbreaks of cholera, malaria, and yellow fever in the mosquito-infested backwater of the Mississippi delta. She had survived the doctorless births of two sons, but now she was waning, and as the year 1851 dawned on the plantation where she lived near the Arkansas-Tennessee state line, she could sense that she had entered the final stretch of her life. She had lived in one form or another of bondage since birth, and she hoped that before she joined her Lord of lords and her ancestors in the afterlife, she could secure the freedom of her children, Robert Reed Church and James Wilson.

Emmeline was born on a tobacco plantation outside Norfolk, Virginia. Her exact birth date was never recorded, but she was told she had been born about the year 1815. Her mother was an enslaved woman named Lucy. When Lucy was first sold as a girl on a slave auction block in Virginia, the slave seller claimed she was a tribal princess who had been taken from the island of Hispaniola. The rumor of royal blood would become family lore. Whether or not it was true, Lucy and her descendants would always believe they were from royalty despite their station as chattel.

For the first years of her life, Emmeline lived with her mother on a plantation in Lynchburg, Virginia, owned by a doctor named Phillip Burton. When she was a small girl, Dr. Burton gave her as a gift to his youngest daughter, Rosalie Virginia Burton. A few years later, the Burton family sold off her mother, Lucy, to a planter in Natchez, Mississippi, along with ninety-nine other slaves for more than $85,000 ($1.7 million). Emmeline’s mother was sold away so early in life that Emmeline couldn’t remember much about her. Rosalie, her owner, was the closest thing she had to family for most of her life. Emmeline and Rosalie were “more the order of sisters than mistress and maid,” the family that owned her claimed.

When Emmeline reached womanhood, Rosalie transferred the rights to her to a white businessman from Memphis who had taken an interest in her. Captain Charles B. Church was a married man and spent most of his time away on the Mississippi River, where he commanded a fleet of steamships. Emmeline would serve as his concubine while continuing to reside with Rosalie. Captain Church would send for Emmeline when he wanted her. In 1839, their trysts produced a son.

Robert Reed Church, whom everyone called Bob, was born on June 18, 1839, on a cotton plantation outside Memphis, Tennessee. Captain Church fathered several white children with his wife, Mary Church, but Bob was his healthiest offspring. His only white children to live past infancy were Molly Church, a deaf-mute, and Charles Church Jr., who was sickly. A few years after Bob was born, Emmeline conceived another son, a boy, whom she named James Wilson. James was not Captain Church’s son, however, which was obvious from his blond hair and fair skin. Captain Church was a dark-featured, dark-haired white man.

In her final days, Emmeline underwent confirmation and brokered deals for her sons to be set free after she died. James, the younger of her boys, had blue eyes. He could pass for a white boy without much difficulty. He was described as being “as perfect a specimen of the Caucasian as could be found anywhere in the world.” Emmeline planned for James to live with Rosalie after she died; Rosalie promised to pass him off as one of her own kin. Robert, on the other hand, had fair skin, narrow dark eyes, and wavy dark hair, and though he had “very little African blood,” he could not have passed for white as easily as his younger brother. Emmeline had to work out a different arrangement for him.

One day, as her health was declining, Captain Church called on Emmeline. When they were in her quarters, she pleaded with him to free their son, Robert, upon her death and send him to a school for colored children in Cincinnati. Captain Church agreed, setting her mind at ease. In 1851, Emmeline finally passed away on Rosalie’s plantation; in her last moments she hoped that her soul was bound for heaven and her sons would grow up free. Her death left her sons without a mother and crushed Rosalie. “I could never see as much sunshine in the after,” she said.

Not long after Emmeline was buried, a horse-drawn carriage arrived on Rosalie’s estate. The buggy carried Captain Charles Church, a thirty-nine-year-old white man of large stature. Church had tanned skin and dark hair that he wore parted at the side and tucked behind his ears. His face was round and boyish with small blue eyes and a downturned mouth. He wore expensive suits with ties knotted into a stubby bow around his collar. As a boy growing up in Ohio, he had become fascinated with the work of Robert Fulton, the developer of the commercially successful steamboat, and taken to the river. He skipped his later years of schooling to work in the machine rooms of steamboats and taught himself engineering and sailing. In a few years, he worked his way up to the rank of captain. Now he was successful and wealthy and owned a steamboat line, multiple properties, and several slaves. His purpose in going to Rosalie’s estate was clear: he had come to the estate to take Robert away.

Robert was twelve years old when Captain Church came for him. He packed his things, said good-bye to his younger brother, James, and boarded his father’s carriage. They departed down a dirt road, rolling through acres of cotton fields, leaving the life he knew behind. Reflecting on Robert’s departure, Rosalie later lamented, “my love for your mother endeared her little ones to me. . . . I never intended to hold them in bondage . . . but your father promised your mother . . . he would put you in school and educate you.”

Captain Church had no intention of putting Bob in school; he told him he was taking him to Memphis to put him to work aboard his steamship. There were several factors that could have influenced his rationale in breaking his promise to Robert’s mother. First, he was a slaveholder; he owned at least half a dozen slaves, several of whom he used as workers on his boat. He lived in Memphis, a town of cotton warehouses, storefronts, and mansions built around four town squares named Market, Court, Auction, and Exchange, where slave traders held regular auctions. A boy Robert’s age went for as much as $650 ($19,000) at the slave auction in Court Park near Captain Church’s residence. Perhaps he decided his black son would be safest where he could keep an eye on him. The fugitive slave law of 1852 empowered slave traders to capture free African Americans and enslave them with or often without proof that they had ever been enslaved. It is also possible that he may have wanted Robert to be with him, his desire to leave a legacy. He had given his white son, Charles Jr., his name, but he knew it was unlikely that the sickly boy would ever follow in his footsteps on the river. Some part of him may have hoped that the strong black son, whom he had given the first name of his hero, Robert Fulton, and his own last name would follow in his footsteps, even if he knew it was unlikely that a black boy could ever be a captain or that the two of them could ever live openly as father and son. Whatever his reasons were for putting him to work, Robert had no choice in the matter.

Robert was excited when he learned he was going to Memphis. Captain Church had taken him there once years before. Robert recalled how thrilled he had been to see the hustle and bustle of the big city and looked forward to seeing it again. Robert’s mother had been a house slave all her life, serving as an assistant and seamstress to Rosalie and a concubine to Captain Church. In the world Robert knew, black people could not rise past servitude. A life working on steamships was certainly at least as good as if not better than anything that awaited him on the plantation he’d left. When Robert and Captain Church got close to the riverbank in Arkansas, they could see Memphis, across the Mississippi River. They caught a ferry across the river and arrived at the Memphis wharf, a clearing on a part of the shore that curved in and created a natural harbor. There, ships arrived and departed carrying passengers and cargo. The wharf was alive with activity as dockworkers and sailors scuttled among dozens of steamships tied to the pier at the river’s edge. Jugglers and newspaper boys caught the attention of travelers coming and going from the pier. This was Robert’s new home.

Captain Church operated a line of steamships at the Memphis wharf, and Robert was to work and live on his vessels. He was given a job as cabin boy on Captain Church’s ships. Every day, he helped the cook in the kitchen and took the officers on the ship their meals. He was also a messenger for the crew, sprinting from one end of the ship to the other to relay instructions, messages, and even jokes between the men.

Captain Church’s ships were described by one customer as floating palaces. The ships chugged up and down the Mississippi, churning the river as their paddle wheels spun and splashed, powered by a steam engine housed in a boiler in the center of the ship with a chimney extending from it. Travelers spent their time in expensive salons with cut-glass chandeliers and draperies made of scarlet velvet and thickly woven silk. The window frames and doors were finished with gold-painted woodwork. The rooms were filled with easy chairs and sofas, and there was a band playing at either end of the boat.

The passengers on Captain’s Church steamboats were cotton planters, wealthy families on holiday as well as gamblers. Most of them were intrigued by the presence of a child on the boat. Often they engaged Robert in conversation to pass the time or asked him to run errands in exchange for hefty tips.

In the dining room, Robert scurried about, following orders from the waiters and kitchen staff as they served fine cuts of meat with fresh vegetables, fruit, and cakes on china with sterling silver cutlery. The glasses of the travelers were kept full of sherry wine and mint julep. Passengers looked on jealously at those who were chosen to eat with Captain Church at the captain’s table, where he would regale his dinner guests with stories of the river and his travels.

The captain seemed to be in multiple places at once, moving between the pilot house and the parlor. Robert caught glimpses of him charming his passengers with his sparkling blue eyes. He seemed to know each passenger by name, greeting each like an old friend.

Though Captain Church enjoyed transporting travelers up and down the river, his main source of income was transporting cotton. He transported thousands of bales of cotton at a time, stacked like bricks on the deck of the ship. Sometimes the deck was packed so full, passeners could barely find a spot to stand on if they tried to venture out of the interior of the ship onto the deck.

Cotton shippers like Captain Church were part of the global supply chain for cotton fiber. Cotton was planted, harvested, ginned, and baled into parcels by enslaved African Americans on plantations in the Mississippi delta. From there thousands of bales of cotton were loaded onto carts pulled by horses and donkeys and taken to a port along the Mississippi, where it was then loaded onto steamboats and transported to warehouses in Mississippi river towns or to St. Louis or the port of New Orleans. From the port of New Orleans or St. Louis, it was then shipped via the Atlantic Ocean to factories in New York, Massachusetts, and Manchester, England, where it was spun and woven into textiles. Cotton fiber, an industry worth $100 million a year ($20 billion), was the United States’ top export and made up 60 percent of the gross domestic product. The United States’ second-largest (and England’s biggest) industry, textile production, depended on cotton, which was much cheaper than wool or silk. Wall Street fed tens of millions of dollars of financing into cotton growing. Planters often put up the people they enslaved as collateral to secure loans. By 1851, cotton had become so profitable that Natchez, Mississippi, the cotton-growing capital of the world, was home to half of the millionaires in the United States and per capita had the most millionaires of any town in the world, beating out New York City, Paris, and London. Robert’s grandmother had been enslaved to a planter in Natchez.

Robert got along well with the adults who worked for his father aboard the ship, who seemed to take pity on him. The chambermaids mothered him and he roughhoused and played pranks with the men on the ship. “I remember your childhood capers,” Kinder Blair, an Irishman whom his father employed as pastry chef, recalled. “All of us men used to play tricks on each other . . . we worked hard but we enjoyed ourselves.”

Captain Church understood that Robert was a boy among men on the ship and kept an eye on him and offered him guidance. “Don’t let anyone call you a nigger,” he told him. “Fight if necessary to protect yourself against such insults.” He taught Bob how to defend himself, telling him, “If someone strikes you, hit him back and I’ll back you.” “He urged me never to be a coward,” Robert remembered of his father’s advice on the river.

Although Captain Church never allowed Robert to refer to him as his father, he did show him affection. Once he took his son to a photographer’s studio so they could get their picture taken together. For the occasion, the captain purchased matching outfits. The outfits were Knights Templar costumes, consisting of dark-colored pants and jackets with a matching hat and a sash. The hat had frills above the brim. In the matching costumes, Robert and his father looked almost identical.

After a few months on the river, the excitement of it all began to fade, and Robert felt alone. He was the only boy on the boat and never saw any other children. His mother was gone and he missed his younger brother, James, but none of that could be helped; the Mississippi was his home now.

ON MARCH 22, 1855, CAPTAIN CHURCH’S STEAMSHIP, Bulletin No. 2, was docked in Memphis, readying a large shipment of cotton. As the crew prepared the vessel to sail down the Mississippi, slaves in linen shirts and straw hats rolled bales of the cotton up a gangplank onto the boat and stacked them in six-foot-high piles on the deck.

Robert was sixteen years old and worked as a dishwasher on Bulletin No. 2. He had grown tall and had slick black hair, a straight nose, and a cleft chin. His eyes were small, dark, and piercing. He had taught himself to read by collecting the discarded newspapers passengers left behind. He had not learned how to write, but he could sign his name—Robert R. Church—with looping strokes. The newspapers the customers left scattered about the cabin that day carried news of the construction of a locomotive line in Memphis that would carry passengers to the gold rush in California when it was finished.

That evening, Bulletin No. 2 was destined for Vicksburg, Mississippi, a cotton depot between Memphis and New Orleans. Men in top hats and suits and women in colorful dresses and skirts boarded Bulletin No. 2, alongside its crew, making their way around the piles of cotton on the deck and into the cabin house. In the kitchen Bob prepared for the dinner service that evening. Just before sunset, Bulletin No. 2 set sail for the three-day voyage with fifty passengers, more than sixty crew, and over 3,500 bales of cotton valued at more than $100,000 ($2.6 million).

On the second day of the journey, as the ship neared Transylvania, Louisiana, Robert was in the kitchen, preparing to play a practical joke. He hid in the kitchen as a crew member came ambling in with a tall stack of dirty plates. He then jumped out and threw a handful of paprika onto the stove in front of the man, hoping to make the open flame flare up and startle him. He scurried out of the kitchen and shut the door behind him. As he listened by the door, he heard someone in the front of the ship yell, “Fire!”

While Robert was playing his prank in the kitchen, a few passengers had made their way out to the deck to smoke and get some fresh air. As they chatted and puffed cigars, an ember carried by the wind landed on one of the many bales of cotton stacked near them. When Robert ran to the deck he saw several bales of cotton on fire. The crew grabbed buckets and threw water on the cotton, but the blaze spread faster than they could haul water, and before long the whole boat seemed to be on fire. Captain Church had neglected to equip the ship with a working water pump and fire hose, and fighting the fire without them was a losing effort. Captain Church appeared on the deck. “Run the boat aground!” he commanded the ship’s pilot. The ship steered toward the riverbank.

When the boat arrived at the shore, the crew fastened it to the bank with a rope. Robert then went to the aid of the women, helping them off the ship and onto the shore. Once all the female passengers were on land, he ran around to the other side of the boat, where he ran into the captain, who was supervising as his men pushed the flaming cotton bales off the boat and into the river. Captain Church noticed one passenger still on board. The man was standing in the cabin calmly looking out at the flames around him. “Save yourself!” the captain told him. “Make yourself easy, Captain,” the passenger replied as the flames smoldered around him. Out of the corner of his eye, Bob noticed that one of the flaming bales that had been pushed overboard was floating back around on the river toward the shore, near the rope that was anchoring the boat. Before he could react, the bale brushed the rope and set it aflame. The burning twine eventually snapped, and one of the crew members grabbed it, straining to hold the ship to the shore with brute strength. Bob jumped off the boat and swam to the bank. The man finally lost his grip on the rope, and the boat began drifting from the bank with most of the crew still aboard.

As the boat floated farther and farther from shore, Captain Church yelled for everyone aboard to jump ship and grab a floating bale of cotton. They jumped into the river and grabbed bales, which they used as floats. A few of the chambermaids used their hoopskirts to float on the river. The skirts were held into a fashionable shape with a scaffolding that projected the fabric away from their legs, and in the water the opened-out skirts acted as flotation devices. In a matter of minutes, the boat was engulfed in flames and had drifted more than two hundred feet from the bank into the river. The man who had been standing in the cabin among the flames at last came out to the deck. He turned to Captain Church, said, “Now, gallows, save your own!” and leaped from the boat into the water.

Captain Church remained on the boat with four of his other slaves and worked to help those remaining on board. The boat continued to drift into the river until he gave up and jumped. He left four of his slaves behind in the flames. They, along with twenty-one other people, died in the fire that night. Bob watched from the bank as Bulletin No. 2 burned and then finally sank into the Mississippi. He hoped, perhaps for the first time, to escape life as his father’s slave on the river.

2

King Cotton’s Bastard