Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy, Sally Young and Sue Davis for their ongoing research collaboration; specifically to William for providing a scan of the original document, and in turn many thanks to Peter Binckley and Patricia D'Arcy "Trish" Binckley (1951-2007), at the source.]
My grandfather [Harvey] Michel thought slavery was wrong, and freed all his slaves before the Civil War. Several of the young men went off and got jobs. Henry became a cook on a Mississippi River steamboat. But every now and then they would "come home" as they called it, and visit. The women stayed, and also Grandfather's body servant, Uncle Harrison, who never left him as long as Grandfather lived. In the old days of the South it was the custom, when a son was born to the family, to select a colored boy about six years old, and give him to the baby as a body servant. A daughter was given a maid. The two were always together through life, and the tie of affection was very close and strong. When the Southern gentlemen went into the Confederate army, the body servants went with them as a matter of course.
Northern people were, naturally, unaware of the actual conditions existing under slavery, unless they themselves lived in the South, As a matter of fact, the slaves were usually treated kindly, and were fond of their masters and mistresses. I have heard my grandmother say that it was a rare exception when a family ill treated their slaves, and darkies (like white people) are often lazy. So, to get the work of the plantations done, the overseers were always imported. [They] were invariably northern men, who were of sterner stuff. Even in Uncle Tom's Cabin [italics added] the villain was the overseer -- a Northern man!
I never read the book myself, few Southerners ever did, I imagine. Grandmother would not allow the book in her house. And apropos: not long after the turn of the century, when I first came to New York, I had the privilege and great pleasure of meeting F. Hopkinson Smith, that man famous in three professions: painter, author and engineer. He spent his winters in Florida, and had just returned from there. He told me he [knew] Harriet Beecher Stowe very well indeed. She had been living in Florida for some years. He said she had told him she would give anything in the world if she could undo the harm that her book had done. She said that when she wrote it she had never been South and had merely intended it as a piece of fiction. Since she had lived in the South and had learned the true [sic - P.D.B.] facts, she had bitterly regretted writing it. She said she never dreamed the book would cause the uproar it did.
It seems to me that the best proof of the affection of the slaves for their "families" -- as they called them -- is the conditions existing in the Southern States during the Civil War. Every man and boy who could carry arms was in the Confederate Army. Only women and children and the aged were left on the great plantations, with none but Negro men to protect them. And protect them they did. They could have easily run away, if they had wished to. Some did. But never was there any instance of a Negro harming the white people, who certainly were utterly at their mercy. Would the white men have gone off and left their women and children alone if they had not been sure they would be safe with the Negroes? The house servants buried the family silver and jewels in places known only to themselves, while the Northern soldiers were overrunning the South, And after the soldiers were gone they brought the valuables back again. Would they have given such loyalty to people who had ill treated them?
As is well known, the slave traders were all Northern men, With their rocky soil and unfriendly climate, most New Englanders were seafaring men. The Southerners never were, and seldom sailed far from their own coasts. Agriculture was their chief occupation. The slave traders first brought the Africans to New England, but they died off rapidly in the cold. So they took them South and sold them. There they throve and multiplied. In time they became a real burden to the South. It is a matter of history that several times, before the Civil War, the State of Virginia tried to get Congress to abolish Slavery. But the New England States opposed it, as it would deprive them of a lucrative business.
[Ellen/Nellie/Nella Fontaine Binckley (September 1, 1860-April 27, 1951). Family names and dates were whimsically tweaked by their owners during their lifetime, adding mystery and sometimes causing confusion. For Binckley's "Artist's Life," I'm opting for the full artist's signature name, Nella Fontaine Binckley.
Harvey Michel/Harvey Mitchell (1799-1866).
My grandmother = Jane Johnston Mitchell/Michel (1811-1892).
Henry = unknown details beyond what Binckley provides here.
"The women stayed." In the 1860 US Federal Census, there are two African American servants listed with Harvey Mitchell and family in Washington City, Ward 2 (on July 26, 1860): Martha Lucas (born in Virginia, circa 1832) and Jacee Watch (born in Virginia, circa 1831).
Uncle Harrison = unknown details (yet) beyond what Binckley provides here.
F. Hopkinson Smith = Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915)
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896).]
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