After Bondage and War

The early years, starting in late 1835, were filled with back breaking work and ceaseless activity as Marcus built the plantation on his swamp timber land. He had purchased six field hands, a carpenter, a blacksmith, and a house servant girl at the slave auction in Natchez to get started. One of those field hands was the female named Sarah.

After two years, most of the work was completed to start the plantation operation. The first planting was started on 95 acres of his land. The cottonseed was in and work had begun on the mansion. The network of dirt roads had been established for entrance to the main house and access to the slave cabins and work fields. Funds were depleting from Hendrick’s investment in his son’s new business.

Marcus had made remarkable progress. By 1838, he was ready for and had procured the 50 slaves he needed to support his cotton production on 525 of his 650 acres. The rest would remain unused open or forested land. The main house was completed and Marcus and Rebecca moved out of their crude temporary house.

Rebecca was pleased to move into her mansion and settle the fine household she had waited for. She learned how to manage and direct her staff of Negro attendants. Marcus left her to her role since he was completely immersed in his. He was determined to make a success of the plantation and keep his promises to Rebecca and his father.

Hendrick made the trip to visit them shortly after that.

He looked the plantation over and told Marcus, “You have done well son.”

He thought to himself, ‘Even with its refinements, I wouldn’t want to live in a place like this. There’s nothing can be done about its rural crudeness.’

Marcus thought his father looked much older and less enthusiastic about his life.

Between the planting and harvesting seasons, he and Rebecca made the trip to Savannah to visit him. They gathered the family together. Jane was not well, but still alive and living with Hendrick in their home. Marcy and Constance and their families came to join them.

The Taylors held a party so that all the Stanleys could come down from Charleston. Rebecca was so happy to see them all again. She had missed her family and her brothers in particular. She had been very close to them from all the time they spent traveling together. But things seemed different now. Everyone was older and had gone on with their lives.

She thought, ‘I guess there is no going back.’

She decided to make the best of it at Savannah Oaks. She began an effort to build a social structure with the neighbors in two of the nearby plantations. She planned and carried out many successful parties as she had known in the past.

But the scale was not as grand and the people were more concerned about their cotton and the control of their slaves than the social graces. This rural life would never be the same as she knew in the earlier days in Charleston or Savannah. But there was no going back.

Marcus and Rebecca had surely changed - they were slaveholders now. The Negroes were a means to their end. Their human property was the same as their other non-human property and equipment. The immorality of this became suppressed until it was forgotten.

They were morally corrupt and inhumane but viewed themselves as paternal and maternal benefactors caring for their inferior children. Their children were well cared for, but when they misbehaved, punishment was meted out with harsh brutality.

By 1843, Savannah Oaks had prospered better then Marcus had ever hoped for. He had 160 slaves and had brought his cash crops to market in Natchez for many seasons. The household was splendid and alive under Rebecca’s management. There were cooks, seamstresses, housekeepers and servants looking after all her needs at the mansion. Noticeably missing were nursemaids since Marcus and Rebecca had never had children.

In 1852, Marcus bought Josiah and brought him to the plantation as a prime, 23 year old field hand with potential as a fair hand at carpentry. Josena was 15 years old and working in the house as a servant. Josiah fell in love with Josena and married her in 1853.

Marcus had fought with Rebecca for years over Josena. Rebecca had been unable to conceive and remained childless. She knew Marcus was Josena’s father. He had no choice but to acknowledge that fact and care for his daughter. As Josena grew up over the passing years, Rebecca’s resentment grew. Even when Josena married Josiah, Rebecca would never let Marcus forget his disloyalty to her.

Finally the pressure convinced him to sell her. He found a way to do so, and in February 1856, he secretly sold her in Natchez. He brought her by wagon and she never came back.

Josiah was up at the saw mill away from the main house and road that day. When he returned and Josena didn’t come home from the mansion, he was beside himself with worry and didn’t know what to do. His first thought was to go to Marcus and ask where she was but he knew that was not wise. He frantically asked everyone he saw if anyone had seen her or knew her whereabouts. Two of the slaves told him they saw her go off with Massa Marcus early that morning in the back of his wagon. The Massa came back with an empty wagon. They all knew what that meant.

Josiah went to Ned’s cabin. He was angry, distraught, desperate and frightened.

He thought, ‘This can’t be true. Where is she?’

Sobbing so hard his throat would barely let him croak, “Ned, what has happened to Josie?”

Ned confirmed what he had heard about Marcus selling Josie.

Josiah hung his head and sobbed, ”How could he sell his daughter? What should I do, Ned? I don’t know how to go on without her.”

Ned tried to console him as best he could, said, “Yo can’t face up ta Massa, Josiah. Yo mus ‘cept dis and go on with yo life. We neva understan da cruelty of a man like dat Massa. Yo mus let yo faith in Jesus hep yo go on. Josie wouldn’t want anythin’ to happen to yo; yo knows dat.”

Josiah told him, “I don’t think I can go back to our cabin. Everywhere I look there is a reminder of her. What am I going to do?”

Ned offered, “Come stay with me, boy. Leas’ fo tonight. In the mornin’ we kin think ‘bout what we do tomorra.”

So Josiah stayed with Ned and, after a few days, moved his meager belongings and a few treasured books that he had kept when no one at the mansion missed them, into Ned’s cabin. Life went on in the slave quarters, as it had before, without Josena, just as though she had never existed.

Josiah grieved for her absence and wondered if she was still alive. He poured himself into his work and bided his time. On some bright clear days, his hands slowed down and fell to his side as he stared at the wood he was fashioning. He looked out across the cotton fields at the sad live oaks, draped in moss, lining the road leading away and wondered.

By July 1863 Grant had won the siege of Vicksburg and the Mississippi River was under the control of the Union. Grant had left the west to participate in campaigns in Virginia, but some Union forces remained behind to maintain control of the Mississippi Valley area.

For Marcus Taylor, this meant he could no longer access Natchez for selling his cotton or for trading in slavery. His slaves were theoretically freed, but no federal forces had entered his plantation.

When Marcus learned about the occupation of the federal troops in Natchez and Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves, he became very concerned for his plantation and his way of life. He knew it was only a matter of time until they discovered his remote plantation. He feared that the Union forces would emancipate his slaves and possibly burn his plantation.

While he and Rebecca no longer felt any love between them, they still shared a bond as master and mistress of Savannah Oaks. They were still partners in their life’s business and livelihood. Marcus talked to her about his worries.

He said, “Rebecca, the Yankees have now occupied Natchez. We are in deep trouble. We can’t bring our crops to market or buy or sell any slaves with them there.”

“Can’t we bribe some officials and get around them if only to sell our cotton?”

Marcus looked resigned and said, “No, we will get caught and then they will come here and find us.”

Rebecca had a thought and suggested, “Maybe we will have to put more work into our vegetable garden and have our coloreds do the same for theirs. The men will have to spend their time hunting for game. We will have to live off the land until we see how this ends.”

It ended when the federal troops arrived at Savannah Oaks in July of 1865. By then, the plantation had seen its better days. After nearly two years without income from cotton production, Marcus had let many of his slaves wander away. He had no means to support them. And his attitude and treatment of them had changed under the new circumstances. He had come to realize that his control over them was weakening while perhaps he and Rebecca were more dependent on them than before.

Some had stayed for lack of a better alternative until the authorities arrived and forced the decision. Particularly the older slaves stayed since they were more dependent on their owners for their welfare. But they were not as useful as the younger ones who had left.

Marcus and Rebecca survived the best they could, subsisting on Savannah Oaks plantation.

Josiah quietly kept to himself and stayed because he had become a respected craftsman and was treated better than most. The slaves looked up to him, often came to him to seek advice and accepted him as a leader. They were respectful of his loss.

He continued to try to improve himself and find his faith. He reread the books he had kept. He practicing reading them aloud to hear the sound the words made with his voice. His favorite was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s cabin, or, Life among the lowly. It was Rebecca’s but she had not missed it and likely not read it.

Alone at the saw mill he spoke out with emotion and passion:

A day of grace is held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved, - but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than the stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!

It had been nine years since Massa Taylor had sold Josena. He had been bitter and angry about losing her for a long time. He wondered again and again, ‘How could a father sell his daughter?’ No one had come into his life to replace her, nor would he want that. He drifted along and found gratification in his work.

When word came about the emancipation of slaves in Confederate controlled territories, he was still conflicted about what to do about it. He didn’t see any way to do anything at that time. So he waited until the officials came and declared him free. He never gave up hope that he would find Josena again someday.

The year was 1865. The bright sun in the southern sky had faded by late afternoon in the late spring - past its former glory, never forgotten, but gone forever.

At the end of the war, Savannah Oaks became a sharecropper farm, with freedmen as labor, under the new post-war reconstruction arrangements. Their slaves had all left and their land was sub-divided into small plots for the new farmers - Negro strangers - to manage. Marcus and Rebecca moved to a small plot near the place where the new town of McComb was being built.

With their human property gone, they had lost most of their wealth. They sold off their land for what little they could get and kept a small plot of 20 acres for themselves. Marcus worked the land as a small farmer and hired a couple Negroes to help him with the planting and harvesting. He had no place for them to live on his land. He paid them wages and they came in from their cabins on the other side of McComb.

They grew vegetables for themselves and some cotton to help pay for what they had to buy. He hunted small and large game in the woods and fields of Savannah Oaks on their former property. He cut wood and they survived the winters as the years passed away.

Rebecca kept the house and read her books about genteel people living their elegant lives in grand cities. They lived together as working partners and companions. They subsisted in that way too, since there had been no love between them for many years.

Finally Marcus’s heart gave out at harvest time and she buried him in the cemetery in McComb in the fall of 1881. They had no rights for the use of the cemetery on the former Savannah Oaks plantation. After that, she lived by herself, never left the house, and retreated from the world more and more as time passed. She was a widow who had no grief for her husband but grieved for her own life throughout most of its remainder. That was, until she lost her mind.

The town folk passed by her house and saw her delicate frail hand holding back the lace curtain as she stared out of the window of her dark room. Each time they saw her, she never looked at them or knew they were there; her trace-like eyes were gazing at some other thing, some other place.

A Negress in town had been helping several white families keep house. She had come to Mississippi from Mobile, Alabama by herself to look for work. She did their laundries and was a nanny to their children. This black Christian woman gave their children love or a sharp tongue in just the best way it was needed. The white folk took exception to her color and loved her as the fine Christian woman she was.

She took mercy on the demented widow who lived by herself and began going to her house one day a week to help out in any way she could as an act of Christian charity. The Christian woman looked after the woman’s needs and kept her company as her only companion. She patiently listened to the fantasies living in the old woman’s mind.

Rebecca recounted her stories as she remembered them, not as they were in truth or knowing, “We had the finest plantation and the grandest mansion, just as Marcus had promised. We fed the brave Confederate soldiers that came through in our grand dining room with our best silver and services. The starving and famished men were served our most lavish diners and our musicians played them the glorious music of our south in our grand ballroom.

But after a while the niggers began taking our fine things little by little. I never could catch them but you can never trust niggers. Soon everything was gone and soon Marcus was gone. I look out the window for him.”

The Negress companion listened patiently week after week to the old woman, sitting with her in the small dark living room with only the afternoon light coming through the lace curtains of the windows. She watched this woman in her dirty frayed dress, the same she wore each week. She saw that her mind had slipped its moorings - she was hopelessly insane.

She comforted her, “Now, now ol girl, yo kin always rely on de Lord. He make it right.”

When Rebecca died in 1888, the Christian colored woman arranged Rebecca’s pauper’s funeral and the burial service in the McComb town cemetery. A few town folks came, more for curiosity than care. The woman had been the last person to speak to Rebecca and now was the last one to speak about her.

She prayed, “Oh Jesus, sweet Jesus, take dis wumun in yo eva luvin arms. Keep her soul in hevin with yo for all eternity. Amen.”

She had come by herself from Mobile, Alabama to work for the white folk. She had never known her daddy but had heard her mamma’s name was Josena.