Sugar in the Blood (39 page)

The casualties included the rebellion’s leader, Samuel Sharpe. His composure as he was taken to the gallows profoundly impressed the spectators, just as his oft-repeated last words were used to recruit more people to the abolitionists’ cause: “
I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery.”

It was in this strained context of revolt and change that, in 1832, Robert Cooper decided to grant freedom to one of his slave families: Sukey Ann and her four children. This was an interesting decision on his part, since full emancipation was now likely and there was a certain cachet in becoming a freed person before the official date for liberation: Sukey Ann and her children would be classified as free coloureds, rather than just being part of the mass of liberated slaves. But it was still an intrepid move for a planter, since across the Americas the manumission
of slaves had been discouraged by the authorities, who feared that if too many slaves were liberated they might destabilize the social order. For many years, freeing a slave had been an expensive gesture that the planter had to justify before a magistrate, usually on the basis that the slave had provided exceptional service.

Robert Cooper’s decision to manumit Sukey Ann and her children implies a real sentimental attachment, but there might have been other motives: perhaps he felt guilty about replacing her with other women? Pragmatically, it was also now a much more affordable gift. The cost of manumission, which had soared from £300 for females and £200 for males, was now, after the Bussa Rebellion, down to £50 plus a £4 annuity fee for both sexes. In fact, the liberation of female slaves with whom planters had relationships was common. Women made up 60 per cent of those manumitted in Barbados, and the most common reason was as a present to a black concubine by a white planter, which one described as “the only adequate reward for such an endearing service.”

The document recording Sukey Ann’s freedom reads:

After the Christmas Rebellion, the march towards emancipation had become unstoppable: the worst revolt in the history of the English
sugar isles had reinforced the abolitionist arguments that slavery was an institution Britain could not afford to maintain. In 1833, a petition signed by 187,157 abolitionist women was presented to Parliament. They focused particularly on the plight of female slaves, reminding the nation’s monarch, Queen Victoria, that women and fellow mothers were being raped, brutalized and sometimes beaten to death. (Though the new queen said very little directly about slavery, she was assumed to be supportive of the abolitionists because of her willingness to entertain blacks and anti-slavery personalities like Harriet Beecher Stowe. And certainly the belief that she was sympathetic to the abolitionist cause did nothing to diminish Victoria’s well-nurtured image as matriarch of the nation.) To bring the point home, the abolitionists produced a new Wedgwood cameo that depicted on this occasion a kneeling woman.

Their pro-female stance had been buoyed by the fame of
The History of Mary Prince
(1831), the only memoir of a British West Indian slave woman to be published in that era. Born in 1788, Prince had worked as a household slave in Bermuda and Antigua and in the salt mines on Turk’s Island, where she suffered relentless abuse. She was taken as a slave to London by yet another family in 1828, before escaping to live at a mission house. There she went to work for someone from the anti-slavery league who arranged for the publication of her story. John Wood, the owner who had transported her to London, sued to have her reinstated as his property; but mercifully he lost. Mary, whose back was severely disfigured by an intricate lattice of scars, the product of innumerable whippings, became a living indictment of the evils of slavery, and her book was a powerful plea for the sympathy of the English public: “
I feel great sorrow when I hear some people in this country say, that the slaves do not need better usage and do not want to be free … I say, Not so. How can slaves be happy when they have the halter round their neck and the whip upon their back.”

In the end, the abolition of slavery came about through a combination of events, and the pressure of popular opposition to the practice, whether from slaves themselves or from the abolitionist movement, was only part of it. One major factor was economic, for the financial significance of the colonies that relied upon slavery was beginning
to wane. As the historian Robin Blackburn noted, the value of West Indian imports from the mother country was falling, while exports to Asia were rising; so they were no longer such a vital market for English goods. And though the British colonies still produced most of the sugar consumed in the mother country, it was so heavily subsidized that many argued that the British public was propping up the West Indian proprietors. There was also greater competition from cheaper sugar, from places like Cuba. Domestic politics played a role, too. In a Britain beset by internal unrest brought about by the changing conditions of the industrial revolution, throwing the public a bone in the form of the abolition of slavery was a clever way of avoiding greater losses, at a point when the whole colonial system was in decline.

In 1833, a new governor was dispatched to the island to sell emancipation to the Barbadians. The islanders knew that the battle to maintain slavery was lost and had already shifted their attention to the matter of compensation. In July the Barbadian Assembly sent a strongly worded missive to Parliament. “
As England is avowedly the author and was for a long time the chief gainer [of slavery] … let her bear her share of the penalty of expiation … Let a fair and just indemnity be first secured to the owner of the property which is to be put at risk.” It ended with the warning that without “the cooperation and instrumentality of the resident Colonists,” the hope for a peaceful emancipation process was doomed, and could only be attained “through rapine violence and bloodshed, destroying all the elements of civilisation and ending in anarchy.”

The mood in Barbados was predictably gloomy. The slaves were impatient for change. Most of the West Indian planters felt paranoid and misunderstood. They resisted the spirit of the times and took whatever measures they could to maintain “the distinctions they deemed necessary to their safety,” including the harassment of the missionaries, whom they felt were stirring up the black population. In the end, it was a relief when compensation was finally agreed on and Britain granted the West Indian proprietors the sum of £20 million in lieu of the “loss of their lawful property.”

Critics of compensation who feared that it would be a drain on the Crown’s reserves proved to be misguided: in fact it was a long-term money spinner since much of the sum went to the great sugar planters
of the region, and then found its way back to England, invested in the city or real estate. A few years later an editorial in
The Barbadian
complained about this pernicious trend. “
We should like to know,” enquired the editorialist,

In August 1833, the Emancipation Bill that had been introduced in the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for the Colonies three months earlier was finally passed. The Act became effective on 1 August 1834. Despite the anxiety of the planters, the day passed peacefully and the Bishop of Barbados was able to report favourably to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: “
800,000 human beings lay down last night as slaves and rose in the morning as free as ourselves. It might have been expected that on such an occasion there would have been some outburst of public feeling. I was present but there was no gathering that affected the public peace.” Indeed, the most raucous aspect of the slaves’ festivities was the folk song “Lick and Lock Up” with which they celebrated their freedom.

IT WAS IN THIS
celebratory atmosphere that John Stephen decided to marry a seamstress called Mary Fitzpatrick. It is likely that the couple met on one of his professional trips to her owner’s plantation. They had a lot in common: both were the mixed-race progeny of esteemed white planters who had provided them with solid professions and secured them a place at the top of the slave hierarchy. Mary’s father, James Fitzpatrick, was an elderly planter who, like Robert Cooper, had taken a black mistress called Nanny Hill after the death of his wife. He owned a number of plantations, including the modest property Hopewell, which he sold to the planter John Archer, who had become notorious for the murder of one of his slaves. Mary had a number of brothers and sisters also carrying the Fitzpatrick surname. One of them, James Fitzpatrick, became the long-standing headmaster of Foundation School, which Robert Cooper had built on Ashby land and which would go on to play a prominent role in the elevation of this branch of the Ashby family.

John Stephen would have had to make strenuous efforts to see his lover, visiting her whenever he was in the vicinity. Like most other slaves in love with women on other plantations, or whose partners and children had been sold away, he probably slipped away from Burkes on some evenings so he could see her. These “nocturnal perambulations” were so common that most planters overlooked them, provided the absence did not interfere with work or last too long.

On 12 January 1835, John Stephen was baptized in the parish of Christ Church. This was probably a prelude to his marriage, since many slaves who had recently converted to Christianity and wished to
marry in church got baptized before they organized their nuptials.
The baptism record describes him as an “Adult, owned by Robert Cooper Ashby.” He was listed thus because the new dawn that many of Robert Cooper’s children had dreamt about did not arrive immediately. Emancipation was a bitter disappointment. The terms of the Act meant that only those under the age of six received their freedom straight away. Everyone else had to undertake a mandatory six-year apprenticeship before they could be free. The justification for this was that the slaves needed time to get used to their liberty. The planters’ fear that emancipation would bring “to a dramatic close the golden era of Caribbean history” proved premature. The resentful planters approached apprenticeship not as a transition but as an opportunity to extend the status quo. Indeed, many became more severe and capricious during this period. Requests from the slaves to work the provision grounds were arbitrarily denied; spouses on different plantations were refused permission to visit one another; punishments became harsher; and the predatory behaviour towards female slaves continued as before. So the dream of freedom was a dream delayed for John Stephen and his contemporaries.

Nonetheless, on 14 February 1835, the marriage records show that “John Stephen Ashby, apprentice labourer of Burkes estate, married Mary Christian, apprentice labourer of Mr. James Evelyn.” Witnesses to the occasion were James Osborne and Edward Thomas Fitzpatrick. The marriage was a triumph for them both. For Mary Christian, John Stephen represented the security of an older husband who, as a skilled carpenter, was one of the most respected members of the non-white community. His work for nearby planters and householders meant that he had been able to build up what was—for a slave—a considerable nest egg with which to begin family life. For John Stephen, Mary Christian brought with her the privileges associated with her planter parent: her lighter skin and enhanced social status, as well as the skills she had and the money she could earn as a seamstress. He might also have been considered lucky, as many mulatto women preferred liaisons with white partners because of the financial and social advantages that came with them.