I recently visited North Carolina,
a state with which I have ancestral ties that go back so far as to exist only
by word of mouth, that being the existence of a redheaded, blue-eyed Scotsman
(that would be the Russell side) who came from the “Carolinas.” Ever so often
he returns, my daddy told me as I was growing up. My grandmother Russell had
two redheaded sons (my father wasn’t one of them) and I, too, gave birth to him
twice, but my sons don’t bear the surname Russell; that’s my maiden name.
Though I’d always suspected the “Carolinas” in this case referred to North
Carolina, tentative research strongly indicates the family did indeed travel
from North Carolina into Tennessee, then Georgia, briefly Alabama, and my
branch has been in Mississippi for four generations now—six if I count my non-Russell
offspring and their offspring.
But, let me get back on point. My
visit was to Buncombe County in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains,
Ashville specifically, a lovely, quaint little city favored by artists and
flocked to by tourists and historically by those in need of the healthful
mountain air to relieve whatever ailed them. I went with my daughter’s
mother-in-law to visit old friends she wanted to see there, and they, knowing
my interest in history, made a point of taking us to some of the local
historical sites. What provided fodder for this particular blog were comments
made by a tour guide at the birthplace
of Zebulon Baird
Vance, 37th and 43rd governor of North Carolina. His first term was during the
War for Southern Independence, and he is beloved by the people of North
Carolina for being “War Governor of the South.”
Zebulon Vance was the second son
of David Vance, a veteran of the Continental Army that sent the Loyalists
packing at King’s Mountain. The elder Vance either built or bought the house in
1795. The family ran a wealthy, slave-owning farm. Here is what got my goat.
This young man, our guide, went off on a brief tangent highlighting how slavery
was different in North Carolina, where more valuable skilled slaves were the
norm vice the less valuable field laborers from the more southern states, where
labor was cheap and the slaves were “worked to death” then replaced. He threw
his hands out in front of him and said, “No big deal.”
I beg your pardon? Where did this
double-standard, hypocritical, hogwash come from? Quentin Tarantino? Perhaps it
was Harriet Beecher Stowe, but to believe the latter, I would have to credit
the young man with having made some effort to research the history of slavery.
I, in fact, use those same words—“worked to death”—referring to slaves, in
my most recent novel Camellia Creek,
spoken from the mouth of a hate-filled, bigoted abolitionist witch who didn’t
know what she was talking about. There were plenty of skilled Negro slaves in
the Deep South, and all slaves, skilled or not, certainly were costly, considering
the slave-trade ended in 1808. Even assuming we in the Deep South were
sub-human and cared nothing for human life, working slaves to death would have
been economic suicide. I’m not saying such never happened, but it was not the
norm and would have been as likely to happen in North Carolina as Mississippi.
I was hoping the thoughts espoused
by the tour guide were his own, but subsequent discussion with my host
indicates this “slavery in North Carolina was kinder, gentler” has become a
common thread among those who wish to apologize for slavery’s existence in that
state. Of course, I don’t know that those North Carolinians, whose roots go
back to the beginning, really swallow that “bunk”, pun intended. I hope not. My
host, who is not a Southerner, snickered when he gave me that “kinder and
gentler” line. I can only surmise that such tripe handed out during tours is
the result of federal funding or is an effort by the politically correct crowd
to whitewash something it appears to be ashamed of. To those individuals I say
whitewash it if you feel a need, but do it without defaming your sister states,
whose ancestors were sure the devil no worse than yours, no matter where they hailed
from.
Better yet, I would argue that
when giving a tour of Governor Vance’s birthplace, place emphasis on the man
himself and the time he lived, rather than gloss over it. He was a man who
believed a state was sovereign, vis-à-vis a central government, in all things
except those limited areas where said central government held precedent (a
prominent characteristic of a number of North Carolina statesmen going back
long before the War). Something all state
governors should remember now, something governors in the North should have
remembered then and the dark years following the War--something they all should
have remembered in the 1960s. That
belief is what the people of North Carolina fought for (in numbers that
exceeded all others, I should add, all the while resisting Confederate
conscription policies in the name of those same rights), not slavery. That autonomy as well as the inviolability of the
Constitution are what were lost with the South’s defeat, and as regards the
health of the Republic, those two things alone eclipse the radical and
irresponsible dissolution of an institution doomed to extinction within a relatively
short period of time. For all the right reasons, the South was right, something
Southerners should remember and be proud of instead of hanging their heads in
shame and prevaricating in the face of liberal propaganda and federal
extortion.
