Wayne County, NC - Letters File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Paula Krimsky __________________________________________________________________________ USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. The electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. __________________________________________________________________________ Handwritten letter on stationary headed with crest of slave and Miss Liberty proclaiming Lovejoy, 1st martyr as upholder of freedom of the press, Alton, 11/7/1837. The letter is addressed to “D. B. Brinsmade Esq.” on an envelope incorporated into page 4. Washington Conn Goldsboro, N.C. July 15th 43 Saturday eve - My dear friend I am in such a hurry to say ten thousand things that I shall hardly be able to say anything – you have seen sheep attempt to escape from an enclosure through a narrow gate.- How they press forward blocking up the passage & hinder each other! Just so, my ideas, this evening, are crowding forward for utterance – Perhaps, sheep-like in another sense. When I received your letter on Tuesday morning I was preparing to start on a visiting tour, from which I have just this moment returned to peruse another letter from the land of steady habits, for which many thanks. I wish to answer these two, also one received a week ago from Amaryllis, as well as communicate with a half dozen to whom I have not written or from whom I have had no reply –. I can’t find time to write to all, & so I have concluded to make you a kind of universal interpreter unto all & impose (sic.) you the task of reading before all others the long flow of nothings which I know are to follow when my pen gets limber. Being one of Uncle Sam’s servants, you will have to grin and bear it. You told me to write as much as I could and I can write acres, for I have not touched a pen since Monday. I have had wrath & pity, laughter & tears, piety & profanity, indignation & forgiveness, a feeling of wretchedness and of unbounding joy, all accumulating in my heart until now it is so superlatively charged, it must go off! Or rather to resume the figure with which I commenced, lions & lambs, blue birds and whippoorwills, turtle doves & turkey buzzards, fierce bull dogs & fearful rabbits, the little veery that utters his mournful trill in the deep woods, at the decline of day, and the blythe sky-lark that with the dawn soars singing up to heaven all these & many more for whose characters you will find no language in any symbolic lexicon, have made their home in my breast & now, the harder I try to drive them out, the harder they wont go. This is a sorry figure and looks like a conceit; but I have not any expression & may as well be dumb. Let me describe my tour. Perhaps by the time we are through I shall have nothing to say or shall have said all I wish to. We rode out to Waynesboro to take in a lady & started from that place about 10 o’clock in the following order. No 1 Prince Albert, a long slim pointer or setter, who if possible runs over more ground in a day than old Brogue, & who is now going down to Mr. Griswold’s to visit Queen ____ with whom he passed his infant years. No 2 Dr. Singleton, a young man looking out sharply for patients and more sharply for a wife as he visits the ladies more frequently than the sick, offers more sacrifices at the shrine of Cupid than at Apollo’s altar, and who will yet die of any other disease, but a palpitation of the heart – withall a good jolly sociable fellow, a little addicted to a half dozen vices, but these are only marks of a gentleman you know. This doctor in his sulkey with a fiery charger makes the sand fly nicely. No 3 Barouche and span, F.W. Gunn A. B at the reins _____ P.P. Andrews at his elbow & Miss Mary McBinney on the back seat. Seems to me I wont describe this load. No 4 Maj. W.L.G. Andrews mounted on Bucephalus or Bosinante with umbrella over his head, at a gay gallop. There, “You see us on our winding way”. I will turn over the leaf and tell you more. After a two hour ride through such a country as I have described in former letters, though rather more open and cultivated, we arrived at the house of David Everitt. Slaves hold our horses, we enter gracefully welcomed, our beasts are cared for by men half transformed to beasts & we are introduced to the household & stay to dinner. The ____ board is produced and the dice rattle briskly. Wine is circulated of which all partake except your humble servant, the solitary teetotaller of all the county. Since I left home, I have seen but one advocate of abstinence, Mr. Tillet the Methodist minister. He introduced it into his sermon one evening and defended the principle very stoutly. The dinners here are worthy of the Astor house and if a man makes himself sick it would hardly seem to be his own fault. One taste of each kind is sufficient to satisfy the most voracious cravings of my appetite. Well, after dinner we take to the sand path as before. I could describe this route but it is unnecessary. My description of Goldsboro and vicinity will apply to this section with only one qualification expressed by the Paddy thus. “Faith Patrick, did ya never see a mile?” “Yes, John, that I have indeed”. ”Well, Patrick, the Ass is just like a mule only more so.” In short ‘tis either a wilderness of corn or a wilderness of pine woods. We did not pass a dozen dwellings, small to great, in travelling 15 miles. If the tour I have just taken be a fair specimen of all this region (and the gentlemen with me say it is) then it suggests some interesting topics of reflection. But I cannot stop to reflect now – the greater part of the road is through the pine woods. All the trees are boxed to get the turpentine which is the most valuable product here. The trees continue to yield for 10 to 15 years. For many miles the trees brushed our carriage top on each side and it seemed every moment that the ____ was coming to an end. But we always found a comfortable passage. At last we saw a long avenue to the left and at its head a gate; some 20 rods beyond a fine house. We turned in and were shortly introduced to the family of Judge Griswold. In front of his house is a park of some 2 or 3 acres of scattered trees hanging over a platform of white sand for there is no grass. But O! the sight of his beautiful door–yard was enough to repay me for leagues of sand & pine. An ocean of dahlias from yellow to crimson, beds of verbena as large as a table, many plants I never saw before, and to crown all a splendid cactus in the piazza more than six feet high with a crimson or scarlet blossom as large as your fist. The judge is a gentlemanly, intelligent & influential man with a fine taste & a finer daughter. There we stayed 2 nights paying a visit on the intervening day on the Sappora Hills. The people here very properly call a pebble a rock and upon the same principle they call this place a hill. The bank of the Neuse River is here nearly perpendicular & almost 100 feet high – quite 75. This is as great a descent as from your house to L. A. Canfield. The top is a level cornfield and the descent abrupt. At the sides it slopes gradually off to the ordinary level of the lowlands. What a prodigious hill! Yet it is a famous hill, known far & wide. The bank is but little harder than a clay bank & contains a share of copper__. I plucked a buzzard’s quill from the waters of the Neuse which I mean to bring home as a memento. The next day we started for Spring Hill, the residence of General George Whitfield taking with us Judge Griswold’s daughter, Martha. This is a beautiful residence on elevated ground & surrounded with an extensive park of huge oak trees. Here the air was cool, the Genl courteous, his wife kind, her sister very agreeable, the parrot very cross, the ____ pigs very gentle, the great banell organ very noisy, the piano old and half crazy, the table splendidly loaded, the wine first rate but my cold water better. Be at home, gentlemen, & as happy as you please., walk where you please, take any recreation you wish … only stay. Stay. Stay. Really this slaveholder’s life is a dull life after all. How they long for society. How you would long for it if your nearest neighbor were 3 miles off the next 5 or 10. Just let Abby imagine all her companions away and Lib Day the nearest. But Martha Griswold’s case is worse even than that, Gen Whitfield’s is worse than yours would be. There they have nothing to do; servants to obey every word – how happy they must be! From Spring Hill we rode to the School House where Mr. Pierce was preaching a very good sermon & thence to Col. Mosis where we took dinner. Here the wine was of home manufacture and I should presume from the Col’s face of home consumption, too. After dinner finding my companion disposed to stay all night I mounted Mr. Goodhue’s charger and galloped beside Mr. Petersillie’s sulkey to Goldsboro to hear from old Judea & write this letter. When I was within 4 miles of home I overtook an aged negro trudging along with a staff in each hand. I bid him good evening and began to introduce conversation with commonplace casual. He took me for a preacher. I corrected his mistake and remarked, “You find it hot working on the plantation today?” “Yes, Massa, but hell will be hotter” was his reply. I rode by his side for half an hour talking about religion and slavery. I can’t repeat our talk and yet I wish I could. It interested me greatly. He was sincerely but ignorantly pious, Said men did not think as much of Hell as of hot weather. Said I, “Mr. Everitt appears to be a fine man; I suppose he is a kind master.” “Yes, he is a tolerable good massa with the strongest kind of emphasis on the tolerable. But said he would not be sold to another, there are not many so good. He thought whites and blacks ought to be separated. Said he, “ I once talked with a minister going to Raleigh & he said we should be made free in 5 years, but I have lived more than 5 years and I haven’t seen it yet. The preacher said he wished we were free but I told him we must let the Devil have his way … this is his best card & we must let him play it to suit himself … that God would set it right in the other world. The fact is, massa, the white folks are smarter than niggers; they do know more. God made three sorts of men, no more. He made niggers and put them in Guinea, then he made Americans and he put them here, then he made white men and put them in England. But they were so cunning they found out a way to make Guineans sell one another for a pocket handkerchief and they brought them over here. But they ought to be separated.” I told him No that they ought to live together and love one another and be kind to one another. “Yes”, he said “but they won’t and niggers don’t know enough.” Said I, “Why don’t they let you learn to read?” “O! that wouldn’t do , we should write our own free papers and get away but there are a great many know how to read & their masters don’t know how they learned either but they don’t know how to write.” Said I, “Your masters say you are contented and would not run away if you could.” “Well, we can’t get away; they catch up again.” “Would you run away, Jack, if you could get clear away?” “I should be mighty certain to do that” and he spoke with such emphasis on the certain that it was a powerful word indeed. Then I went and told him about the abolitionists and what they are doing & what they advise the slaves. But, said I, “Jack I am afraid you will never see it! “No, mazza, the best part of my life lies behind me. I am an old man and have almost got through my work here … I care not much about being a free man for I expect to be free pretty soon.” And so we talked along the dark road until we came near a house when I bade him good-bye and galloped on for if I had been overheard, the nearest tree might have been my halting place. I thought of the danger then but I did not care. My heart was all full to overflowing with the gathered eloquence of a week and I could sympathize more with poor Jack than the polite and hospitable masters with whom I had been living. Here was a slave wending his way heavenward by the dim farthing light of such selected christianity as he can hear in this dark and despotic land; his mind all bedazzled with only a dim flickering of celestial radiance to break the gloom yet he is journeying onward with a constant faith, hoping ever that the misty twilight will soon become a glorious day. Yet here am I born in the very focus of whatever moral light that heaven has shed upon the earth with all the help that man can furnish yet groping darkly on, unbelieving and unhoping. His poor farthing candle is to Jack the noonday sun where to me the noon-day is but a fire fly spark or meteor of the marsh. Happy is the man who can unfalteringly believe in his narrow formula however meager it be; unhappy the man who has no formula and no faith in the one whom he most cherishes. Jack thought Masters were responsible for their slaves so he had been taught. Said he, “I had 3 little children sold away from me, sold by the pound, & they didn’t all fetch a hundred dollars: now, massa, don’t know as they are taught religion, he is responsible if they are not. “Well,” said I “Jack, he is responsible for selling them” “What’s it! What’s it!, he no right to sell them away from me.” But I can’t give you any idea of his talk, it came [The middle of the page is the envelope and there is writing on three sides of it. This as you hold the page with the envelope correctly facing you is the writing on the right (written perpendicular)] right up from the heart. Such hearts don’t get crusted over like ours. Society weaves a wrappage (sic) around ours labeled respectability or politeness or perhaps religion and we respect it as divine and dare not break through it. So we bury the natural to substitute the artificial, the formal, live in fair outsides till we really lose the power of nature & fly from it as something ugly. If a fashionable Mantua homemaker were to look on the Venus de Medici, would she not turn up her nose at it as the ugliest form she ever saw & recommend a corset and 4 quarts of bran. Slaves have not time to become unnatural. But enough of this I have just got ready to moralise (sic) when my paper is all gone. I have just got ready to say what I want to say when space fails – You will give me credit for being long-winded at least. I wanted to say a thousand things about home, a word to each, & a reply to the .. [This writing is on the left as you face the envelope correctly (written perpendicular facing the opposite side] Letters I have received but I cant I am coming home. Don’t you see I am a slave when I cant talk to John Everitt nor his slave unless I do it secretly upon a subject which if they knew me as I am we should all 3 be thinking about! I feel the chains tighten every day and I mean to break them. I cant start till Tuesday & perhaps not till Wednesday. I have not much fear of billious fever though they begin to talk about it a great deal. But it is contemptible to be a dough face (??) here for any motive. But when I get where I can be free I mean to take it easy & perhaps shall be some time in coming back. If I had somebody to accompany me, I would go to the White Mountains but I suppose I shall never see them. Give my love to all. You see I don’t write secret letters and if any of my friends wish to read this, I am perfectly willing they should. I wish you would lend it to Amaryllis & Susan. You can read but I don’t know as anybody else can … the fault is in the ink more than me. [This third section of the fourth page is at the bottom of the envelope as you face it. (written upside down)] Many thanks to my girls for planting a forget-me-not in the center of my heart. I hope to water it yet though not with tears. I hope Belle has quite recovered before this. Tell her Mimi (?) Gunn is a way off but he was sorry to hear Belle was sick. You may give my love to Eleanor’s sister just as though we were old acquaintances for I am sure the sister of Elinor & William & Cornelius ought to know me a little. I don’t suppose Frank has missed me at all but I know Red Brave has lost many a long walk the month past. Please give a particularly good bone on my account. Good bye – F.W. Gunn