Chesapeake (112 page)

If Taney had let the matter drop there, he would merely have deprived one Negro of his freedom, but the old fire-eater had been at the heart of political strife all his eighty years, and it was against his character to hide. He decided to grapple with the most explosive issue of his age. He would settle once and for all this pernicious problem of slavery. Backed by Justices who themselves owned slaves, as his family always had, the old man threw into his basic decision a group of obiter dicta which startled the nation: no arm of government anywhere within the United States could deprive an owner of his lawful property; the Missouri Compromise was void; Congress could not prevent slavery in the territories; and individual states were powerless to set black men free.

When the decision reached the Choptank the plantation owners were delighted; all that they had ever wanted from the federal government they now had, and it seemed to men like Paul Steed that divisive argument must cease. At the Steed stores throughout the region he posted
copies of the decision and told his overseers, ‘Now we can fight the runaway problem with a real weapon. Explain to your slaves that even if they do happen to escape for a few days, they must eventually be returned. The problem is settled for all time and we can go forward with our work.’

The middle group of citizens was pleased with the decision; it would end strife. The Irish were unconcerned. And freed Negroes, such as Eden and Cudjo Cater, realized that they must walk very carefully indeed, for at any moment someone might claim them as slaves, produce spurious documents in court and whisk them away to some cotton plantation. Eden checked her manumission papers, but she checked her guns and knives more carefully.

It was the Paxmores who were shattered by this extraordinary decision, and when they received a copy they came upon that amazing passage in which Chief Justice Taney wrote:

When George Paxmore heard these awful words, he bowed his white head and could think of no way to contradict them. Twice he started to speak, but it was useless. If the highest court in the nation judged that a black man possessed no rights which a white man had to respect, there was no hope for this country. It must subside into barbarism.

Rachel Starbuck Paxmore led the fight against the Dred Scott Decision. Wherever she went she preached against its inhumanity. She rose in meeting and harangued those Quakers who had assumed that with the earlier compromise, some kind of peace had been attained. She argued with customers in Steed’s store. She wrote letters. She quoted Taney’s pernicious words as proof that the Union must soon be dissolved—‘We cannot abide such theories. Men and women of good conscience must rise up and shatter them.’

And the sad aspect of her crusade was that Chief Justice Taney never said those words. He merely quoted them as opinions of a former generation, but when this correction was pointed out to Rachel, she snorted: ‘He may not have said them, but he wrote his decision in consonance with them.’

In October of that year she found her chance to rebut the Dred Scott Decision. She was seated at home, on Peace Cliff, with her husband and the older Paxmores. They had been reading together some writings of Horace Greeley, from New York, and George Paxmore was finding cause for hope in his reports. ‘Greeley thinks there’s a subsidence of passion.’ And Elizabeth said quietly, ‘I should certainly hope so.’

Rachel was about to turn down the lamps and lead the group to bed
when a knock came at the door. Without speaking, she returned the lamp she was carrying to its table, carefully turned up the wick, then told the others, ‘We have work to do.’

When she boldly opened the door, she found such work as the Paxmores had never faced before. There stood nine huge black men, looming in the darkness. ‘We is from Cline’s,’ the spokesman said, and when Elizabeth saw his lacerated and bleeding back she gave a weak cry and fainted.

‘I di’n mean to scare her,’ the wounded black started to say, but Rachel took him by the arm and motioned him into the house. With her elbow she indicated that George should tend his prostrate wife; then she led the other eight massive slaves into the kitchen. They filled the room and looked with dismay at the fallen woman; she was old and frail, but when she was revived she steadied herself at the table and with a weak hand turned the first black around so that she could inspect his scarred back.

‘Dear God,’ she whispered. ‘We must get these men to freedom.’ All her life she had been opposed to abetting runaways; her religious principles told her that slavery could be eradicated by slow persuasion. She had been willing to teach and encourage and help; now, at her first sight of a truly beaten slave, she moved to new understandings.

‘We not stand no more,’ the lead-slave said.

‘Thee didn’t kill him?’ George asked cautiously.

‘No matter,’ Elizabeth said sharply, and with that, she began moving about the kitchen, preparing food. As the slaves gorged themselves, she hurried upstairs to gather together the clothes Rachel had been collecting for such an emergency.

‘We goin’ north,’ one of the slaves said.

‘Of course you are,’ Rachel said, ‘but how?’ Nine big men! How could they slip past the guards who prowled the highways?

It was Bartley who came up with the plan, and he did so with such quiet authority that he convinced everyone it would work. ‘Clearly, we can’t sneak so many past the watchers. And we can’t risk holding them here and slipping them through one at a time. So what we’ll do is this. Rachel, get thy brother Comly and hurry to Philadelphia to arrange for our arrival. George, slip into town and have Parrish print up an announcement for an auction. Patamoke slave market. Describe these nine men and Eden Cater.’

‘Why Eden?’ his father asked.

‘Because I’m going to drive these men north as my property. Openly. Purchased at public auction, as the bill of sale will say. I’m taking them to my plantation on the Sassafras, and if a woman is moving with us, it will look more natural.’

‘Thee will have to leave tonight,’ Rachel warned. ‘Cline will be after thee.’

‘Mr. Cline, he think we cross de bay,’ the lead-slave said. ‘Cline follow our tracks, he in Virginia.’

This false lead gave Bartley’s stratagem a frail chance. Before dawn Rachel was on her way to the Starbucks’ and George was sailing to Patamoke to get the printing done. Bartley said that he would bed the slaves down in the woods behind the house, but his mother would not allow him to remove the wounded man before she had poulticed his bleeding back. The big man lay on the floor and she knelt to cleanse the wounds, a white-haired old lady of seventy-three morally outraged by the fundamental savagery of a system she had thought she understood.

In Patamoke her husband found the Quaker printer John Parrish and confided the family’s plan. Working feverishly, Parrish set type for a public auction presumed to have been held in this town four days ago. He used a woodcut of a male slave resting on a hoe. The seller was T.T. Arbigost of Georgia, and among the slaves was an older female answering to the name of Bessie, and she was described in some detail.

While this handbill was being printed, and a bill of sale filled out, George moved quietly to the Cater cabin, knocked politely and waited for Cudjo to open the door a crack. ‘Cline’s slaves have run away.’

Cudjo said nothing, but the powerful muscles in his neck tightened. He listened as Paxmore explained his son’s proposal, then said enthusiastically, ‘Eden come home tonight, we both go.’

‘No. Bartley fears that would be too conspicuous. Someone would notice thy absence. Thee must be here when Cline comes through, two or three days from now.’

Again Cudjo said nothing, but Paxmore could see his hands clenching. ‘Dear friend, thee must not touch Mr. Cline. Our task is to get his slaves to Pennsylvania.’

‘You want Eden come to Peace Cliff?’

‘Immediately.’

‘She be there. Them slaves, they reach Pennsylvania.’

So the expedition was readied. Rachel was on her way to Philadelphia. Elizabeth turned over the money she had been saving for garden seeds, and Bartley stayed with the slaves, coaching them as to how they must repeat ‘Yassah’ to anyone who questioned them. Then Eden arrived.

She had sailed her own skiff down the river, dressed like the maid in the broadside. She was tense, and eager to be on the way; when she looked into the faces of the escapees she assured them, ‘We gonna reach Pennsylvania,’ but her manner was so aggressive that Bartley would not accept her as a member of his group until Elizabeth had searched her, taking away the pistol from her dress and the knife strapped to her leg.

‘There must be no violence,’ Bartley warned the slaves. ‘We shall be protected by the grace of God.’ But Elizabeth, standing at the door to the kitchen as the slaves filed past, told each one, ‘Don’t let them capture thee.’

The chain of slaves, bound together by a lust for freedom, marched silently to the river, where Bartley had anchored a large ketch, and in this they sailed quietly up the Choptank, keeping to shore farthest from Patamoke. When they were well upstream he beached the ketch and told the men, ‘Now starts the dangerous part.’

It was a perilous journey, one white man, nine black, and one slave woman. They walked single file, hoping to avoid towns and inquiries. Toward noon on the first day, when they were safely past Easton, they were stopped by a farmer who asked where they were headed, and Bartley replied, ‘Sassafras,’ and the farmer said, ‘I hope you got some niggers there you can trust,’ and Bartley said, ‘Tom and Nero’s real good hands.’

They slept in fields, but as the peninsula narrowed they could not avoid towns, so after the most minute coaching, Bartley led his file right down the middle of a community, turning now and then to inspect his blacks as if he owned them.

‘Where you headin’?’ a law officer asked.

Since they were now north of the Sassafras, Bartley answered, ‘Head of Elk. Got a lot of plowin’ to do.’

The officer studied the slaves and asked, ‘You got papers for these niggers?’

‘Sure have,’ and while the blacks stood at rigid attention, trying not to show their fear, Bartley produced the documents John Parrish had forged.

‘Good-lookin’ wench,’ the officer said. ‘She can cook, too,’ Bartley said.

‘We see a lot of runaways up here. Keep your eyes peeled with this lot.’ Gratuitously he gave the last slave in line a vicious whack with his club, and for a moment Bartley feared the whole deception might fall apart, but the slave grabbed a lock of hair at his forehead, bowed several times and mumbled, ‘Yassah. Yassah.’

Now came the nerve-racking part. They were north of Head of Elk, not far from the Pennsylvania border, but it was precisely here that mercenary slave-trackers patrolled the roads, expecting to catch fugitives grown careless in that last burst for freedom, and as Bartley had anticipated, some of the men wanted to break away, each making the final attempt on his own.

He argued against this, warning the slaves that if they dispersed, they would lose the advantage of all he had done. To his surprise, his most ardent supporter was Eden, who told the men, ‘Doan’ be stupid. You is five miles from freedom. Keep brave.’

But one slave named Pandy refused to share the corporate risk. He predicted that so large a group would be spotted. He would make the last push by himself, and off he went.

Bartley was uncertain what he would do if challenged in these last few
miles, and he was therefore dismayed when he saw coming at him on horses three men who were obviously slave-trackers. ‘What you doin’ with all them slaves?’ the leader demanded.

‘Takin’ them to my place at Risin’ Sun.’

‘Why you this far east?’

‘Bought ’em in Patamoke. Much cheaper than Baltimore.’

‘That’s right,’ one of the men said.

‘You got any papers provin’ they’re yourn?’

‘All in order,’ Bartley said. He was trembling, for he knew that these eight slaves did not intend being taken prisoner, and he feared Eden’s violent action if any attempt were made. He scuffed dirt with his toe as the men read the sale documents, feigning indifference.
God, would this moment never pass?

‘They don’t look like Georgia niggers to me. They look like ordinary Maryland field hands.’

‘They been broken,’ Bartley said, and he raised the shirt of the slave who had been most recently beaten. The slave-trackers, seeing the welts, realized that here was a difficult nigger. The leader, with a powerful kick of his boot, knocked the slave into the dust, while the other two riders showed signs of wanting to snatch the whole file. If the fallen slave had made the slightest response to the kick, there would have been a general battle, with lives lost, but the fallen man groveled there, and the riders passed on.

When they were gone, Bartley cried, ‘As fast as possible. North to the line.’ And they had made much progress when to the rear they heard the clatter of hoofs; the trackers were bearing down upon them.

‘We knowed you was escapin’!’ they shouted as they reached the last slave in line.

Now it was Eden who took command. With a wild leap she threw herself upon the lead rider, knocking him to the ground. He fell in an awkward position, which allowed her to grab a stone and drop it on his head. When she looked up, she saw that the Cline slaves had pulled the other two riders off their horses, too, and before Bartley could intervene, the three men were trussed.

‘Take their horses,’ Eden said, but Bartley warned the slaves most passionately that if they moved the horses into Pennsylvania, they would be hanged.

‘Stealing horses is a terrible crime,’ he said, and Eden began to laugh, but Bartley continued, ‘They will never let you go. Men will track you to France to punish a horse thief.’

‘Take ’em in the woods,’ Eden told the slaves, and the three trackers were hauled away. Eden would not allow Bartley to follow, and he waited in agony until the men reappeared. He would not, however, allow the horses to be taken.