Chapter Sixteen: Chip's New Job

September 13, 1861, Green Point, Brooklyn

Chip Jefferson, whose slave name was Reginald Sims, was a free Negro who had moved two years before with his parents, Emil and Sarah, from a plantation in Virginia. They had traveled the newly constructed Underground Railway to the North, conducted by a white man, James Fairfield, who posed as a slave trader, and purchased the entire family from John and Wendy Sims for two thousand dollars.

It was a wonderful day in May 1861 when they first set sight on the "promised land," as his mother called it, although Chip, at fourteen years of age, did not think New York City was quite as hopeful as Virginia. Brooklyn was a rather crowded, noisy borough, and people did not say, "How y'all doin'?" the way they did back in Tidewater. Chip's family was known as "house niggers," so the Jefferson’s had never experienced the degradation that the "field niggers" were subjected to back at the Sims’ Plantation outside Richmond. In addition, Chip's father, Emil, had learned to read and was constantly devouring the books in the rather substantial Sims' library. Emil often engaged in some rather pointed and heated "discussions" with Master Sims, but Emil was ultimately respected for his intelligence and for his memory of history and geography.

Chip had also been taught to read and write by his parents and by Mrs. Sims, a pale and sickly, yet kind woman, who seriously believed Negroes could become civilized beings. Of course, she did not think they could ever become American citizens, with the legal rights of white people, but she did trust in the Lord that they could "learn to run their own shantytowns with some amount of industry and education."

It was a topic that often escalated into a dinner argument at the Sims table, and Chip and his parents first learned about the "emancipation" for Negroes being "cooked-up" by radical Northern industrialists. Mister Sims said these Yankees were "subjecting their darkies to worse working conditions than the Southern plantations could ever hope to do."

Chip would flit in and out of the white folks' dinner places at the table, like a black ghost, yet he was taking in all that they said with some amount of interest. When his parents told him about Mister Fairfield and the plan to get them to freedom in the North, Chip thought it was all a great adventure. Once, he almost told Mrs. Sims about the plan, but he caught himself at the last moment. "We're going to ride the Underground Railroad, Missus," he began, but then he stopped short, as he watched the eyebrows furrow on the white woman's usually kind face.

"What did you say?" she asked, turning Chip's chin to face her own, as he was reading from the Holy Bible seated on her lap.

"Oh, I was saying how my Mamma told us we could one day ride the railroad cars to Richmond. They lets us darkies ride in the cattle car for free."

Nevertheless, Mrs. Sims looked suspiciously at Chip for many days after this near disastrous slip of the tongue.

The New York Abolitionists got jobs for his parents at the new Hotel Belvedere, in downtown New York, and they rode the overhead elevator trains to work every day, and it was a miracle to see them sail off into the sky from his vantage point at the Brooklyn station on Bedford Avenue. Chip liked the feel of the wind as it rushed back at him when the cars took off. He called it the "angels' flight," and the grownups standing around him smiled down at him whenever he said this.

It was Mrs. Townsend who came one day to employ him at her Brooklyn Seaward Rooming House. Chip remembered her wearing a gigantic peacock feather sticking out of her red hat, and it kept tickling his nose whenever she turned her head to talk to his parents. "I shall put your son under my immediate stewardship, Mr. And Mrs. Jefferson," she said, swishing her tail at him. "As a member of the Women's Abolitionist League, it is my sworn duty to advance the cause of Negro sovereignty in this great country of ours!"

The job at the rooming house was hardly showing Chip how to be "sovereign," as he saw it, because he had to do all of the dirty jobs that none of the white boys wanted to do, such as cleaning the toilets, carrying the luggage, and mopping all the wood floors on every level of the hotel. However, his parents also did such menial tasks, so he soon learned to take his predicament into stride, as he received something he had never experienced before in his life: he was paid forty cents a week for his work!

His life changed when Mister Ellwood checked into the hotel. Chip was fascinated with the foreigner's speech, his dress, and his secretive ways. He knew this man was up to something, and he made it his duty to find out what. From that first day when the gentleman came to the door of his suite in that silk dressing gown with the colored flowers all over it, Chip began to follow his every move. It was not difficult to do, as Chip was short and black, and the shadows were excellent hiding places. He knew this man was in America to watch the shipyard down the street, as he observed him during the first few days, looking down into the grounds with a long spyglass. Was he a spy from England? Chip's father said the English war profiteers were running blockades for the South, as they wanted the cotton and other foodstuffs they needed. But Mister Ellwood did not seem like a sea captain. He seemed as if he were interested in the construction going on inside the Continental Ship Yard.

Chip Jefferson made it his secret duty to follow the mysterious Mister Ellwood whenever he could, and he was bound and determined to discover what this stranger was really up to. Chip expected there would be something important happening inside that ship yard, and the new adventure gave him a purpose beyond the boring drudgery he had to experience each day at his job in the hotel. This new employment made him feel as if he were doing something for the war effort. What if this Mister Ellwood were a spy? What if he were stealing secrets from the Navy? It was all very exciting to Chip's young imagination, and it became his personal, underground obsession.