Somerset (28 page)

M
ounted on his horse, Silas looked out over the drought-ridden expanse of Somerset from his favorite spot on the plantation. His vantage point did not allow a full view of his three thousand acres, but it allowed a vista that gave a sense of the width and breadth of his domain. In the past, the scene filled him with such joy of possession that sometimes when alone, he would shout his exhilaration to the sky. At other times, he rode to this place for its serenity and quiet when he required balm for his soul. Today, the land stretching in his line of vision left his spirits as bone-dry as the endless rows of burned, nubby stalks under his gaze. Today, he felt no peace here in this, his Gilead, and wouldn't for a long time to come.

It was late October 1860.

On his Appaloosa beside him, Thomas said, “Hard to look at, isn't it, Papa?”

“In more ways than one,” Silas said. The devastation was harder for Thomas, Silas recognized. Thomas had not lived through as many of Mother Nature's attacks on men's labors as his father, and this one had been the most vicious either had ever encountered. Out of the blue, Silas thought of Morris. His brother would ascribe some apocalyptic meaning to the destruction before him, probably taken from the Book of Revelation, and he could be right. The drought of the miserable summer just passed could be a prediction of the doomsday to come.

The year had started calmly, but cruelly deceptive, as things had turned out. Never had East Texas planters and farmers seen their crops so green and lush, so full of promise of an abundant harvest to come. March had delivered the perfect amount of rainfall and sunshine, and its winds, the dreaded enemy of fine, aerated soil and seeds planted just under the surface of the ground, had been surprisingly mild. They had all gloated, but as April and May passed without a drop of rain, hope for even a small yield faded utterly when June ushered in a blistering heat wave that had scorched the dry earth until hardly a stalk of cotton, blade of wheat, barley, or corn was left to wither in the hot, dusty winds—a harbinger of the ruin that would surely lay waste to Texas and the southern states should they secede from the Union.

Reading his “heart thoughts,” as Jessica called them, Thomas said, “You think secession is inevitable, Papa?”

“As certain as I am that in time rain will come.”

“And then war?”

“And then war.” Silas could no longer deny it. If secession came, war would follow. The senator from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, had been nominated as the Republicans' candidate for president and in all likelihood would win. He'd made his political position clear in a speech delivered to Congress in June of 1858 when he stated that “a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” As president of the United States, Lincoln had vowed he would not compromise on the issue of slavery nor recognize the legitimacy of secession.

“The handwriting is on the wall, son,” Silas said. “The South will secede whether Mr. Lincoln's administration approves or not. Southern firebrands will never stand for a central government overruling states' rights, and men like your grandfather and Texas planters who settled the republic would rather die than submit to any legislative body that would destroy their forebears' way of life.” Silas drew in a deep breath of cool fall air, the first relief from the summer heat, but it only aggravated the needles of anxiety in his chest.

Again his son read his thoughts. “What makes you so sure war will come?”

“The Republican abolitionists are determined to free the slaves in this country, and Lincoln is determined to keep the country intact. The South believes it has the legal authority to hold slaves and the constitutional right to secede. The different attitudes make for a lethal conflict. War is inevitable, and the North will win.”

Thomas readjusted himself in his saddle, a sign of inner disturbance to his father. “Why?”

“Because it has everything the South and Texas do not.”

Silas swatted at a persistent fly buzzing around his head, an annoyance to his enjoyment of the pleasant breeze drying the sweat from his face. “It has industries, railroads, factories, and a huge and ready source of manpower provided by massive immigrations from Europe. The South has a smattering of cities, no railroads to speak of, little immigration, and few factories—all factors that will work against us in a war with the North.”

“What will happen then?”

Silas released his horse's reins to allow him to nibble at the few blades of grass. He blamed himself for Thomas, at twenty-three, not being better informed of the explosive civil situation looming over his future and his very life. Thomas did not show interest in matters that did not pertain to the growing of cotton. He religiously read the
Cultivator
, a periodical published in New York for farmers, and devoured every article in newspapers pertaining to the most recent agricultural techniques and advances in farm machinery, but he was not one to pay much attention to current political events. Silas had seen no reason to muddle his mind with articles of bleak forecasts that might never come to pass. Over Jessica's wise counsel, even at the dinner table, the only opportunity for family discussion, he had avoided talking of the growing conflict.

“What can Thomas do about it?” he'd said to Jessica.

“To be forewarned is to be forearmed,” she'd said.

“Forearmed? With what?”

“A plan to save the plantation from the destruction the changes will bring if war comes.”

Silas watched a prairie falcon swoop down to snatch a lizard in hasty retreat—an appropriate image of the crisis at hand, he thought. “Lincoln will emancipate the slaves, and the plantation system will be over,” he answered his son. “The way of life we enjoy now will be extinguished.”

Thomas stared off across the distance with a hardening of his Toliver jaw. He had reached his full height and breadth of shoulders, a man in every way, but Silas could not let go of the memory of him as a callow youth, uncomplicated and trusting, innocent of the world that lay beyond Somerset. Silas blamed himself for that, too.

“You have only yourself to thank that he lives for and would die by the plantation,” Jessica told him. “Isn't that devotion what you wanted from your son?”

“Yes, but not to the exclusion of everything else.”

“He will have to learn, like his father did, that there is more to love than land and growing cotton,” she said.

Silas, too, could read his son's thoughts. Thomas was imagining Somerset—his inheritance, land of his father, the one and only occupation he felt born to—gone to ruin.

“So what will there be to come home to?” Thomas asked.

It was the question Silas had anticipated, and its answer was the reason he'd asked his son to meet him out here today in this spot of solitude and reflection. Because of course if there was a war, Thomas would go. He would not exercise his legal right to hire another to go in his place, as was his option as an only son of a wealthy man. It was that numbing certainty that kept Silas and Jeremy and Henri up at nights working long in their studies to occupy their minds, leaving their wives as sleepless in their beds. Silas lost his breath sometimes visualizing his son in the midst of battle, vulnerable to a rifle shot, a knife blade, imprisonment, torture, death. Food stuck in his throat, sweat broke out, blood rushed to his head, his speech stopped in midthought whenever he envisioned all the ills that could befall his only child on the battlefield.

And his sleep was never without the haunt of his mother's prediction.

“We must give him a reason beyond us and himself to stay alive,” Jessica had said.

“Like what?” Silas had demanded, feeling the strain of his sleep-deprived eyes glued upon his wife.

“You must save the love of his life for him.”

“Somerset.”

“You know what you must do to preserve it, Silas.”

“Yes, thanks be to you, Jessica.”

And so, following Jessica's proposal of long ago, Silas had formed a plan for the salvation of Somerset when the backbone essential to its survival was no more. The plantation—the certainty that it awaited him—would serve as a vision for Thomas to hold on to that might see him safely home. Such a vision had worked for Silas in coming to Texas. The dream of Somerset was always before his path. That image had given him courage. It also had given him wisdom to meet life-threatening obstacles with patience and good judgment, not to give in to terror and desperation. The mental sight of land to call his own had given him reason to live.

That was what he wished to provide for Thomas. Silas did not mean to inspire cowardice—safety at any price—but to influence his son to exercise prudence, to listen to reason, to take no undue, foolish chances that would prevent his return to the place he loved. It was so little in the face of war when panic and despair—and simple bravery—so often prevailed, but it was all he could give his son. Beyond that, he must leave Thomas's fate in the hands of God.

Silas said, “That's what I've brought you out here today to discuss, Thomas—a way to save Somerset. Let's talk about it over there.” They dismounted and moved to the shade of a heat-stressed red oak tree, where they sat on the ground and Silas explained.

Thomas listened and afterwards, he said, “This is the only way?”

Silas nodded. “The only way. East Texas planters will choke on my plan, but I suspect it will be adopted by all of them who wish to salvage a portion of the livelihood they knew.”

“Bless Mother and her altruistic heart for the downtrodden,” Thomas said.

Silas emitted a brief laugh. “Amen to that. God knows, if it hadn't been for your mother…”

T
he business with Ezekiel had been a pivotal point in Silas's life. For the first time, he saw Negroes as human beings; his slaves as individuals. He had resisted these new perceptions, but it was as if a strong hand had grasped him by the chin and forced him to look upon the landscape of slavery and see it for what it really was. Simply put, it was a law-approved system that forced one group of people to work for another without remuneration for their labor. In the glaring light of that reality, Silas saw that it was wrong.

Well, so be it, he had thought. Somerset could not exist without slave labor, and Somerset
would
exist. But not long after, he directed Jasper, his head man, to inform the slaves that he did not wish to be addressed as
master
, but by his name. Which one was up to them. They must have agreed by unanimous consent, because from that day forward no slave ever addressed him by any other form but
Mister Silas
, a choice that pleased him as it was more affectionate than the more formal
Mr. Toliver
.

He began to make small adjustments in the way things were done at the plantation. As a reward for their loyalty and conscientiousness, Silas allowed his most diligent workers an acre of land to grow their own cotton. At weighing time they were paid for their output, less the cost owed to Silas for seed and the nominal rent of farm animals and equipment. Silas was scrupulously fair in his dealings with these workers, and in time he realized benefits beyond a sop to ease his conscience. The favored bondsmen took on a new stature among their kind, worked harder for their owner, and gave every impression that if offered their freedom, they would not leave. Where would they go? Where would they find work? Where would they get the food, shelter, medical attention, and clothes they had right here? Mister Silas was kind and good. He could be trusted to do right by them.

These sentiments were passed on by Silas's overseers and land manager, and led to other changes. Disputes among workers were heard out rather than all being punished out of hand. Husbands were allowed to stay with their wives during the last days of their pregnancies, and women did not have to work as many hours in the fields as men. Silas did away with the troughs used to feed small children set up in the communal yard. His slaves' offspring were not pigs, he'd have it be known. In their place he hired the Warwick Lumber Company to build a series of long tables with benches where children were to take their meals using proper utensils. Additional measures were taken to increase personal safety, health, and hygiene. Privies were built. Slaves' cabins were kept in good repair. Wide-brimmed straw hats were issued to replace water-moistened towels for keeping the workers' heads cooler under the broiling sun, and gloves were distributed to protect the hands of slaves who worked with ax and saw and machinery. Ground was set aside for a slave cemetery high above water level. A wrought-iron fence draped in red pyracantha enclosed the area, and graves were marked by dignified crosses bearing the names and death dates of the deceased.

Silas loosened his reins on his slaves, but not his grip. The productivity of Somerset was his first and foremost concern. As the year progressed, it had become clear Governor Sam Houston would lose the fight to the secessionists in the Texas state legislature. The supporters of his view—Silas being one—that the United States could get along without Texas but Texas could not get along without the United States was shouted down by shortsighted, hotheaded men who preferred to settle issues with rash and extreme action.

By October 1860, Silas was ripe to accept Jessica's idea of tenant farming as the only way for Somerset to survive the backlash of slave emancipation. Thus the plan he presented to Thomas. To ensure a stable labor supply, Silas explained to his attentive son, he must give his former slaves reason to remain at Somerset. He would offer to rent a tract of land to each head of a family to put under cotton and continue to house, feed, and shelter them as well as provide the seeds, equipment, and animals necessary to farm their acres. When the crop was harvested and taken to market, Silas would give his one-time slaves half the sale price for their crop after deducting the cost of the items he'd supplied during the year.

The plan had its disadvantages. The obvious, of course, was that Somerset's profits would be split. “Your mother calls it ‘
sharing
the revenues,'” Silas said to Thomas, his lips hovering halfway between a grimace and a grin. Cotton production—notwithstanding the capriciousness of Mother Nature and other disasters that could wipe out a crop—was only as good as the hand that tilled the soil, and once out from under threat of the whip, there was no guarantee the tenant would work the hours required to make the land pay. The call of the North—the promise of jobs, easier living and working conditions, greater respect to members of the black race—no doubt would lure many away. Bad years might discourage the worker from staying. He could walk off at any time, leaving cotton in the field to rot.

But if Somerset could hang on until the nation and markets were stable once more and profits reasonably good, the plantation would flourish again. In time, inventions of labor-saving farm implements would relieve the problem of unreliable workers and manpower shortages, and—if lady luck smiled—they might have the money to buy up neighboring plantations Silas foresaw as headed for bankruptcy the minute their slaves were freed.

But they were concerns and hopes for the future. To prepare for the inevitable to come, Silas told Thomas, he had decided to increase the number of slave families to whom he offered plots to grow their own cotton. To his favorites who had already proven themselves, he would assign more acres. By the time the war was over, he hoped to have in place a labor force of freed slaves who would prefer to accept the conditions of land tenancy in a place and under a trusted landlord they knew than to take off for a territory and an employer they did not.

“But they're not to know what you have in mind for them until the proper time, is that it?” Thomas asked.

“That's right. I want them to have a taste of what it's like to be paid for their labor rather than see all the profits go to the landlord. It will be good groundwork for the time they're offered the opportunity to rent the land they worked as slaves.”

“So when do you intend to put your plan in place?”

“Right now, today,” Silas said. He unfurled a rolled drawing and showed it to Thomas. It was a map of Somerset divided into tracts on which names had been inscribed. “Look this over and tell me if you agree with the division of plots and the families I've selected as the best choice for the plan.”

Thomas studied the drawing and nodded approvingly. “They're the ones I would have picked. I see you've allotted Jasper's sons an acre apiece.”

“We'll need to keep them with us when the time comes, and I know Jasper will prefer his boys to stay at home. We'll go by his place first and tell him the good news. So what do you say to the plan, son?”

“That it's brilliant and the
only
chance for Somerset's survival if what you predict happens.” Thomas rerolled the map and handed it to Silas. “I have just one question, Papa. Would the tenants ever be allowed to
buy
the land they rent?”

“Not in my lifetime,” Silas said, “and I hope not in yours. At contract signing, I will make clear in writing that the agreement does not offer that option. When he can afford them, the tenant will have the right to buy his own animals and equipment and any other item he needs to run his place, rather than lease them from me, but not the land he's renting. Not as long as I live will anyone but a Toliver ever own a single acre of Somerset.”

“Not as long as I live either, Papa,” Thomas declared. “You have my word on that.”

Silas's stomach clenched at the phrase coming from his son's lips. “Let's go make our rounds, then.”

Jasper was thrilled when Silas asked him if he'd like a few more acres to call his own to put under cotton.

“To call my own?”

“By that I mean, to cultivate
as
your own for more money in your pocket,” Silas explained.

Jasper broke into a wide smile. By his own calculation, he was approximately forty-two years old, the father of two boys and one girl. Petunia was the oldest of his children and a continued favorite of Jessica. At seventeen, Petunia had given birth to a daughter named Amy, who was now four years old. Her husband had drowned when his boat had overturned in a nearby lake as he was fishing.

“Why, Mister Silas, what could I say but yes,” Jasper said. “Other than that, I be at a loss what else to say 'cept thank you, suh. You be the most generous master there ever wuz.”

“And one other thing,” Silas said. “Talk it over with your wife, but if you all agree and Petunia is willing, Miss Jessica and I would like for her and her daughter to come live with us. As you know, Maddie recently died, and Miss Jessica believes Petunia would make a fine housekeeper, and we'd all enjoy her little one in the house.”

“She goin' be thrilled when I tell her, Mister Silas. I declare, you is so good to us.”

Silas and Thomas mounted their horses to ride to the other “top hands” to relay the news of their increased acreages. From the saddle, Silas looked down at Jasper. How many years since Jessica, his stout-hearted little wife, had stood up to her father and rescued Jasper from the fate he would surely have known. He had repaid her bravery with loyalty, devotion, and steadfastness of duty to her family. Jasper would have died for her. He had been a caring friend to Joshua, a guide to Thomas, a wise mediator between Silas and his slaves. He was a good man who deserved his freedom, but under the new plan, Jasper would live out his life with hardly a noticeable change in his station but for one glaring difference Silas hoped the man would never see. Unlike before, slave and master would be shackled together, equal partners in the preservation of Somerset.