“Nothing but Deception in Them”

Thavolia Glymph

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511812491.005

4 - “Nothing but Deception in Them”

The War Within

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Thavolia Glymph

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Thavolia Glymph: Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina

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Summary

To the credit of the colored people be it said that during the Civil War, when on plantation after plantation the mansions were occupied only by wives and daughters, not a disloyal act or word ever occurred.

Mary Norcott Bryan, ex-mistress

Liddy has run off to the Yankees.

Sarah Morgan, mistress

…it has been my constant desire to make my negroes happy & I am every now and then awakened to the fact that they hate me…it is nothing on earth but that I am white & own slaves.

Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, mistress

The Negro women marched off in their mistresses' dresses.

Kate Stone, mistress

In 1861, Betsey Witherspoon of Society Hill, South Carolina, was murdered “by her own people. Her negroes.” The news of Witherspoon's death left her “neighborhood in a ferment,” in a state of shock that this woman, “a saint on this earth,” “so good – so kind,” a mistress who had “indulged and spoiled” her household slaves “until they were like spoiled children,” had come to such an end. This they said even as they simultaneously noted that Witherspoon's “pampered” slaves were “indolent and “insubordinate.” Her cousin, Mary Boykin Chesnut, began to consider whether she herself should be afraid, though she had “never thought of being afraid of negroes” before. Chesnut turned first to proslavery ideology. After all, “I had never injured any of them,” she wrote in her journal, so “Why should they want to hurt me?” But she quickly reconsidered that position.

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Type: Chapter
Information: Out of the House of Bondage
The Transformation of the Plantation Household
, pp. 97 - 136

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812491.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2003

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