Ouachita Telegraph - Richard Barrignton honors S. W. Downs Date: May 2000 Submitted by: Lora Peppers ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** Ouachita Telegraph Saturday, November 4, 1871 Page 3, Column 2 Notable Instance of Gratitude by a Former Slave. An incident, worthy of note, has occurred in this city illustrating very forcibly the inhumanity of African slavery when that institution flourished at the South' but it is not such an incident as will very likely meet with applause at the hands of many of our Northern brethren. The case is the more notable, because the old master, long since dead, was a member of the United States Senate when that body had among its members, Clay, Calhoun and Webster and other men as great in intellect, but of lesser fame and not so brilliant in debate. This Senator was the Hon. S.W. Downs of this State and parish, who died in 1854. Mr. Downs, though an able lawyer, was also a successful planter, who owned a number of slaves. Among his slaves, was Richard Barrington, the present Grand street barber, who was the Senator's confidential servant and attended him in all his travels and during his stays at Washington. Devoted to his master in life, Richard has given proof that with gratitude he remembers him in death. No memorial tablet marks the grave of the dead Senator, but the faithful old servant is soon to see erected over his old master's grave, a neat headstone, purchased with his own hard earnings, from Mr. D.C. Sparrow who has kindly furnished us with these facts. The stone is of Italian marble, four feet high, sixteen inches wide, and two inches thick. Within a wreath, near the top, two hands clasped are engraved, with the saddest of all words, "FAREWELL," above them. Below, in a plain border, is the epitaph, which reads as follows: S.W. DOWNS: Died August 13, 1854; Aged 53 yrs., 11 mos., and 18 days. _______ "Peace to his Ashes!" _______ ERECTED BY HIS OLD SERVANT, RICHARD, AS A SMALL TOKEN OF HIS GRATITUDE. Here is not only gratitude, but courage and fidelity. Richard is growning old; has several children, and has but lately been able to purchase a small home; but faithful to the memory of his benefactor, he takes from his earnings the money to acknowledge his gratitude in monumental marble, and exhibits the moral courage to perpetuate, at the same time, the rememberance of the lowly station he occupied, even that of a slave! We do not hesitate to express our great admiration for this singularly modest, but eloquent act of gratitude, and to commend to the colored people the cultivation of the spirit here exemplified in imperishable marble. It is a lamentable fact, they should own with humiliation, that they rarely speak or think of their old masters, except in disparagement; when old master was once the only friend they had to whom they could look for protection and succor, and when but for slavery, if living at all, they would now be living as savages in the seserts or jungles of Africa, where many of their most pretentious friends, as friendship now goes, would wish them to-day, if they were not serviceable in a cause involving the future ruin of the country. — There were, we know, thousands of happy slaves, with kind and indulgent masters and sympathetic mistresses; they were cared for better than they now care for themselves; but how long has it been since the reader has met a freedman who spoke with kindness and in grateful rememberance of those who had thus laid him under such weighty obligations? The happy darkies of "Reb times," as we now hear that period called, are all gone. The old "mammies" and "uncles" — the venerable oracles — of the plantation and the kitchen fire, are no more. The rollicking, trusty boy, who had for play-fellows the sons of his master, has wandered off, and now spouts politics, rides a () and drills with the militia. The happy little negroes who were wont to run in droves to tell young mistress good bye when she left home, or push each other down in the struggle to welcome her back — have disappeared, and their places taken by educated idlers who are daily learning the precepts of hatred and fanaticism. — Without homes, without attachments, without a disinterested friend to rely on, with no care for the future and no concern for adversity or affliction, the successors of the old plantation darkies are working out their darksome destiny. # # #