Charleston (17 page)

Saucy Lady
eluded British blockade ships, captured an enemy frigate off the Atlantic coast, then two smaller Spanish merchantmen. Prize courts made Crittenden Lark a wealthy man shortly after he turned thirty.

 

Edward's son, Edgar, meanwhile, had continued to live in the house of his grandfather. Edgar read law at the prestigious firm of Henry DeSaussure. Calhoun had done it before him, then gone off to finish his legal training in Connecticut.

Like his father, Edgar took up law for its practical value in the business of Bell's Bridge, a business that demanded his full attention in the years of the cotton boom. He did establish a law office in partnership with Argyll Buckles. Simon's son handled virtually all the cases brought to Buckles & Bell.

Edgar Bell was a plain, quiet, conservative man, with strong opinions on the affairs of his city, state, and country. In 1813 he married Cassandra Mayfield, daughter of Llewellyn Mayfield, a retired schoolmaster from Moncks Corner.

Mayfield was a large, amiable man with a talent for making unprofitable investments. He was a founding shareholder of the Santee Canal Company, which financed a water link
between the Santee River and the head of the Cooper, for easier transportation of cotton and rice to the coast. Though busy for a time, the canal never became the overwhelming success Mayfield and his colleagues envisioned.

Mayfield ably fulfilled the role of doting grandfather after the arrival of his daughter's children, Hampton in 1814 and a sister, Alexandra, one year later. Subsequently Cassandra delivered two stillborn daughters. She and Edgar decided that God meant them to have only two children, but that was enough for them, and for Mayfield. He constantly overextended himself buying books, toys, and sweets for infants too young to appreciate them.

 

In 1814 enemy ships bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor but failed to reduce and capture it. Out of this came verses for a new patriotic song, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The British marched on Washington, savaging and burning the capital. Yet they couldn't find a victory; the Americans were too fierce and determined.

That same year, at the Horseshoe Bend of Alabama's Tallapoosa River, Gen. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, sometimes called Old Hickory, sometimes Old Sharp Knife, defeated the Cherokee and the feared Red Stick warriors of the Creek nation in a spectacular battle. When this became known in Charleston, a few graybeards recalled a skinny hot-tempered boy from the Waxhaws, Andy by name, who had come down to the city in 1783 to claim a small inheritance. Fascinated by the rattle and snap of dice in Charleston's gambling dens, he lost it all.

Jackson gambled again in 1815, vanquishing British regulars at New Orleans two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent was signed; news of the peace had not yet reached America. Jackson's reputation was made. When he visited Washington, he was hailed as enthusiastically as any Roman Caesar. He would loom large in the country's future, and that of John Calhoun, and South Carolina.

 

Of these events Lydia was only marginally aware. Simms continued to question his mother about the source of her nervous condition. She refused to name it, but another incident in the summer of 1816 offered a clue.

Simms and Bethel invited Lydia to one of the city-sponsored concerts in the public garden at White Point. They left three-year-old Ouida with her Negro nurse at Simms's new town house on Legare Street. The house was an older one that the Bells had enlarged and redecorated. Its finest feature was a pair of intricate gates to the side garden. The unknown craftsman had created a pattern of swords and spears in wrought iron. Simms, never wildly imaginative, christened the house Sword Gate.

Charleston's full burden of summer heat and humidity had not yet arrived. The evening air on the Battery was mild and pleasant. The only thing unpleasant for Lydia and, to a lesser degree, Simms, was the proximity of Tom Bell's house. Relations between the two sides of the family were cool; social meetings were few and always strained.

The concert crowd was largely elite, representative of old families and those of newly rich planters. One of the latter, an unidentified gentleman who bore a slight resemblance to Tom Bell's younger son, caught Lydia's attention. From the first note of the first selection, the rousing “Hail, Columbia,” she ignored the performance, her son, and Bethel, fixing her eyes on the stranger. Her expression grew strained. Nervous excitement made her blink and breathe rapidly.

Simms asked if she felt ill; his mother had enjoyed several months of relatively normal behavior. Her hand clamped on his sleeve. She whispered, “He's here. Don't look.”

“Who's here, Mother?” Simms said as the chamber orchestra began a piece by Mozart. Those on nearby benches cast disapproving looks at the talkers. Lydia lunged to her feet.

“His ghost.”

“Please sit down. There's no such thing.”

“Yes, he's here, he's here.” Lydia threw off her son's hand. “He won't let me alone. He won't rest until our family's destroyed.” Tears streamed from her eyes.

Unnerved, Bethel issued one of her rare fiats. “Simms, we must go. This is humiliating.”

Simms put his arm around his mother. Lydia began to struggle. Heads turned. The musicians stopped randomly, creating a cacophony of strings and woodwinds. Red faced, Simms said, “Ladies and gentlemen, forgive the interruption. My mother is indisposed.”

He led her away. She continued to struggle, but he was stronger. Leaving the garden, she threw looks over her shoulder at the baffled nonentity whose appearance had triggered the outburst. She kept whispering. “He'll see us all ruined. Ruined or dead.”

In bed on Legare Street after a heavy dose of her calmative, Lydia refused to answer questions about her imagined tormentor, or name him.

 

Edgar's son, Hampton, grew up a frail boy who showed signs of remaining that way. His sister, Alexandra, was large at birth. Cassandra fretted over the possibility that her daughter would be an inordinately tall woman, very inconvenient for romance. A dear friend had stayed a spinster due to extreme height and a paltry dowry.

The four years from 1815 to 1819 were the summit of Charleston's prosperity. People invested and expanded, built and bought, with reckless enthusiasm. In 1818 Edgar emulated Crittenden Lark and put money into a scheme to launch two oceangoing cargo ships. When the price of cotton plunged a year later, he faced heavy interest debt on the first ship, which sat unfinished on the ways of the Pritchard & Shrewsbury yard. At the same time, with trade declining, Edgar's income from the wharf was sharply down.

He had been approached more than once about selling Malvern. He and Cassandra and the children seldom visited the river house. Looking after it complicated his life, but he felt he owed it to the memory of his forebears to hold on to it. By 1820 his financial position required a rethinking of family loyalty.

An attorney known for sharp dealing came to him with
an offer from a Mr. Stiles Blevins, merchant, of Georgetown. Edgar had never heard of Blevins, but his money was safely in escrow, so after consultation with Cassandra, Edgar signed the settlement papers and transferred the deed. Six months later Blevins sold Malvern to Simms Bell.

Edgar was furious. He confronted Simms at a performance of the reopened Charleston Theater at Savage's Green, on Broad Street west of Meeting. For years people of color, free and slave, had been permitted to buy seats in the third tier. In 1818 that was stopped.

Edgar accused Simms of using deception to acquire Malvern. Simms was all charm and good humor.

“Of course I had to resort to a subterfuge, cousin. My dear mother wanted the place, but I knew you wouldn't sell it to us directly.”

Edgar would have knocked him down and challenged him to a duel at Washington Race Course if he'd been that sort of man. He had a conservative's dislike of duels and those who resorted to them. Dueling broke the law and set a bad example for the lower classes. Turning his back on Simms, Edgar collected Cassandra from their first-tier box and missed the last two acts of
Richard III
.

Edgar and his late mother had always suspected that Lydia Bell had a hand in Edward's death, or at least knew more about it than she would admit. Since there was no evidence to support the suspicions, the mystery remained unsolved, a source of frustration and private pain.

 

Inevitably, slavery became a national issue. In 1819 Congress confronted the expansion of slavery, specifically in the Louisiana Territory purchased from France in 1803. It was more than a question of a state's right to choose its system of labor—it affected the fragile balance of power in the country.

Maine and Missouri wanted to enter the Union of twenty-two states, half of them free, half slave. Maine would join as the former, Missouri the latter. Debate in Washington was fierce and partisan. An 1820 compromise
admitted both states and, with the exception of Missouri, prohibited slavery above an east-west line running along the northern border of the Arkansas territory. Ex-President Jefferson, himself a slave owner, heard a warning in the divisive clash of North and South. He called it “a firebell in the night.”

 

From 1800 to 1820 Charleston had not escaped its familiar civic woes: another catastrophic fire in 1812; a devastating hurricane a year later. Epidemics of smallpox and malaria came as regularly as the seasons. Through it all the better sections of the city had grown more opulent and attractive, while the run-down areas became filthier and more crowded.

By 1820 nearly sixty percent of Charleston's population was Negro, three thousand of them free. The lightest of these made up the so-called brown elite, a minority of proud, prosperous people of color who felt they had more in common with whites than with their darker brethren. Most looked down on other Negroes. Some owned slaves.

The wife of Morris Marburg came from the brown elite. So did the cabinetmaker Hamnet Strong, Poorly's son; he married a woman named Mary Ward, whose skin was scarcely darker than old ivory. Their children were correspondingly light. Edgar's son and daughter were friends and playmates of Henry and Marcelle Strong.

Whether black or brown, the city's colored population still intimidated whites. More laws were drafted to restrict the rights and behavior of slaves and freedmen. Edward had freed Sally and Hamnet by signing a simple statement. Now manumission required a special, individual dispensation from the state legislature.

In the early summer of 1822 Charleston saw its oldest nightmare realized. On June 14, a Friday, a mulatto slave named George heard of a plot to murder every white man, woman, and child, then burn the city. George's owner informed the intendant, James Hamilton.

In the next two days rumors of the impending revolt ran through the white community like a grass fire. If the ru
mors were true, the slaves had secret caches of weapons and would rise up to kill and burn when darkness fell on Sunday night.

Alexandra Bell, already called Alex, was seven years old on that night of terror.

Sunset painted White Point a deep red. The pathways of the broad, sandy promenade were deserted, unusual for a summer evening. Out of sight on Church Street, horses galloped, coming fast. Five curious children squeezed against the garden gate of the Bell house, watching for them.

Drayton, the black gardener, called out, “You best come away from there.” The children ignored him. Two of them were white—Alex and her brother, Hampton. At seven Alex was already an inch above four feet, taller than the rest. She was slender as a reed, with a long waist and large blue-gray eyes. Ten-year-old Maudie, Drayton's daughter, served Alex as a personal maid, though Alex preferred to call her a friend instead of a slave. Like Alex she was barefoot.

Both Henry Strong and Ham were eight. Ham was sallow, and slender like his sister. Loose limbed, with round shoulders, he already had the look of a little old man. Henry was a handsome, stocky boy with smooth beige skin and curly black hair. Henry's sister, Marcelle, was four. Henry loved Marcelle but resented her following him everywhere. Marcelle's threadbare doll, her eternal companion, rested on her shoulder. The doll's china face was white.

Half a dozen armed men galloped out of Church Street and across South Battery past the house. As the dust cloud settled and the mounted patrol disappeared up King Street, footsteps on the piazza announced the arrival of someone with more authority than Drayton. Edgar Bell's normally pale face glowed pink from the June sun. Coming up behind the children, he clapped for attention.

“Henry, Marcelle, time to run along home. Maudie, take Alex inside. Don't put on your nightclothes or get in bed. The same for you, Hampton. We'll stay downstairs tonight. You children can make pallets on the floor. We must remain alert. There are rumors of unrest.”

Henry said, “We heard them, Mr. Bell. Pa says Gullah Jack's been all over town, stirring up the colored.”

Alex tugged the exposed tail of Henry's much-laundered gray shirt. “Who's Gullah Jack?”

“Conjure man. People are scared of him. They say he can't be killed. I say that's stupid, anyone can be killed.”

“Jack's a born troublemaker,” Edgar said. “The worst kind of colored man.” He tapped the shoulders of his children. They backed away from the gate, Ham obediently, Alex with an annoyed toss of her long blond hair. Edgar prodded her. “Inside, missy.”

Henry said good-night. Leaving, he managed to brush Alex's hand with his. As he opened the gate, she blew him a kiss. Maudie giggled. Edgar wheeled around to see the cause of the merriment. Alex smiled sweetly, curtseyed to him, and ran inside.

In the hall by the large Henry Benbridge portrait of Joanna, Cassandra directed Alex to the downstairs front, Tom Bell's old office. Alex puzzled over the unusual precautions. Were Charleston's Negroes really preparing to do something bad? She had trouble believing it. The Negroes she knew best, those in the household, were quiet, polite—her friends. She adored Maudie. The only black person who scared her was a sullen houseboy, fourteen or so, owned by Great-Aunt Lydia. He always looked mad enough to bite the head off a nail. Oddly, his name was Virtue.

Alex, Ham, and Maudie settled down on blankets. The red light leached from the sky; the tall windows turned black. Alex beat Ham at three games of checkers. After the last one Ham shouted, “Oh, damn you anyway.” Cassandra smacked his hand and ordered them to lie down.

Itchy and hot without a bath, Alex still managed to doze. Maudie snuggled against Alex's bare feet, snoring softly. Sometime later Alex woke to see her father rush from the room with a pistol. Another mounted patrol thundered by. She heard distant shouting. Cassandra knelt, kissed Alex's forehead, and murmured soothing words. Alex fell back to sleep.

A terrific clang, and her mother's shriek, jolted her upright again. Ham jumped up, ran to the dark hall, whispered, “Someone's in the house.” He raised his fists.

Titus, the black butler, appeared from the back of the house. “Ain't nothing wrong, Mist' Ham. Just my wife, stirrin' around when she shouldn't. Dropped a chamber pot, clumsy woman. We's very sorry, Miz Bell.” Cassandra managed a forgiving smile.

Alex slept soundly until daylight woke her. Through slitted eyes she saw Ham sitting up with his Latin grammar. She couldn't see her mother, who was behind her, but she saw Papa, his legs stretched out, his boots dusty, the pistol on the rug beside his chair. His heavy dark beard showed; it always did in the morning, before he used his razor.

Cassandra said, “We sat up all night, Edgar. Nothing happened.” She sounded cranky.

“You should be thankful. Now you understand the purpose of the slave code you're always criticizing. It may be onerous, but it's necessary.”

Drowsy, Alex wondered what the slave code was, and why it was necessary.

“I suspect the trouble isn't over yet,” Edgar added.

He was wrong; there was no public disorder, nor had there been any during the night. A hundred and forty Charleston blacks were quickly rounded up and thrown in the workhouse, however. Whips and truncheons soon loosened tongues about the aborted uprising.

The headquarters was said to be Reverend Morris
Brown's African Methodist Episcopal Church in the outlying district of Hampstead. Jack Pritchard, the bandy-legged Angolan known as Gullah Jack, was a recruiter. The workhouse interrogators heard one name more than others—Denmark Vesey, a communicant of Brown's AME church and a teacher in Bible classes. One informant said he feared Vesey more than he feared God.

The following Saturday, in a raging tropical storm, authorities broke into a Bull Street house and seized Denmark Vesey. The freedman's hatred had grown until he refused to bow or step aside for whites on public footpaths, as was expected. Year after year he'd traveled the Low Country, secretly promoting his plot—his vision from Joshua:
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city.

Or so it was alleged by the white court convened on the second floor of the workhouse to try Denmark Vesey and his fellow conspirators. They were convicted with virtually no evidence but the self-serving accusations of others. On July 5 five of them were removed to a desolate area of brush and tidal inlets known as Blake's Marsh and hanged. Vesey was taken to Ashley Street where it straggled out of town at the city's northern limits, for a similar end. The executions were hasty, the burial sites of the six kept secret.

Alex learned most of this from Henry Strong. He took her to see the oak where Vesey died. “You ever say a word to your pa, he'll whip me to pieces,” Henry said. The wide-eyed girl clung to his arm. The intimacy drew fierce looks from a farmer in a wagon passing by.

“I won't, Henry, I swear to the Lord Jesus I won't,” Alex said.

“You're crying. What the devil's wrong?”

“I know they say Mr. Vesey was a bad man, but I feel sorry for him. And I never saw a place like this before. A place where they killed someone.”

“Don't worry, you'll see plenty more before this settles down.”

“Do you think Vesey's gone to heaven?”

“No. He was a sinner. Anyway, I don't expect niggers
can go to heaven, just like they can't go a lot of places in Charleston.”

 

Later executions were less secretive. The
Courier
and the
City Gazette
advertised that twenty-two conspirators would be hanged en masse on July 26, Friday, at the Lines, an area outside the city where defensive earthworks once stood. Grandfather Mayfield was visiting the Bells. He wanted to take Alex and Ham to see the condemned men. “Not an edifying experience, I grant you, but educational,” he said at the breakfast table. The children picked at their food, heads down. Maudie ate on a stool in the corner.

Cassandra said, “I think it's cruel. I don't want them to go.”

“Permit me to decide,” Edgar said.

“As you decide everything important in this house. What does a mere woman know?” She put down her linen napkin and left the room.

Mayfield wiped a smear of egg from his chin. “Get much of that from my daughter, do you?”

“Enough to make it annoying, frankly,” Edgar said. Alex felt bad. Papa must think that being female was less desirable, less important, than being a man.

Mayfield said, “What I'm suggesting will be a good lesson for them. They'll see how the Negroes must be treated if we are to have peace.” Mayfield owned no slaves but never questioned the propriety of the system.

Edgar said, “Children, would you be upset if you went with your grandfather to see such a thing?”

“No, sir,” Ham cried loudly, to show his bravery. Alex covered her ears and made a face.

“Alex?” Edgar said.

“No, sir.” Her cheeks felt feverish; she was sure Papa saw through her lie. Two hours later Grandfather Mayfield and the children stood in a huge crowd on Meeting Street. Maudie had asked to stay behind; Alex gave her permission.

In the middle of the street the City Guard escorted a
long line of horse-drawn carts, each one carrying a prisoner with his hands tied behind him. Most looked frail and helpless. Almost all were badly bruised. Alex tugged Ham's sleeve.

“What are those boxes they're sitting on?”

“Their coffins.”

A few white people cursed or jeered the condemned men, but mostly it was a solemn crowd. Alex saw few Negro spectators. Then suddenly, across Meeting, she spied Aunt Lydia's houseboy. Virtue stood out because scowling whites had drawn back to call attention to him, and the black rag tied around his sleeve.

“That's trouble,” Grandfather Mayfield said when he saw the armband. “No nigger's permitted to mourn Vesey or his gang. It won't be long before—”

The sentence ended there. Armed men of the City Guard quickly surrounded Virtue. He flung off the first hand that touched him. The butts of muskets beat him to the ground. A knife flashed, cutting the armband and gashing his shoulder.

“For that he'll get thirty-nine stripes in the workhouse,” Mayfield said. “Surely the boy knew the penalty before he flouted the law.”

Alex yearned to go home but feared her grandfather would think it cowardly if she asked. They joined the procession of carriages and pedestrians following the carts. At the Lines drummers beat a slow rhythm while the first three blacks fearfully climbed the steps of a new scaffold.

Ropes dangling from a projecting beam dropped over their heads. One by one the men were booted off the edge of the scaffold. A sigh ran through the crowd. Alex's eyes watered.

Mayfield muttered, “Something's wrong.” Ham gasped, pointed.

“They're not dead, Grandpa.”

Alex wanted to scream and run. The three black men seemed to dance in the air, naked feet just inches from the ground. An officer of the City Guard stepped forward, put his pistol against a bare stomach, fired. The victim stopped
his mad dance. His head lolled; blood ran from his belly and sopped his trousers. The officer signaled his men to shoot the others.

Grandfather Mayfield's voice was strangely subdued. “Children, I am so sorry. I was not prepared for this. We are leaving.”

Trying not to weep, Alex clung to his big hand. Two more shots crashed as they fled.

At home she ran to her room. For the rest of the day she refused to come out or speak to anyone, even Maudie. Grandfather Mayfield was not welcome in Edgar Bell's house for months.

 

Thirty-five black men died in the summer of 1822. Denmark Vesey's rebellion, the rebellion that never was, permanently scarred Charleston, the state of South Carolina, and all the South. It scarred Alex. Something new and horrible had spoiled the beautiful city she loved.