Legacy (8 page)

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slaves, and it was these nineteen that were caus- ing concern:

Hugh, I'm perplexed by the damages the South suffers from its adherence to slavery. It brings us constant criticism from church groups and abolitionists, even though we can morally jus- tify our behaviour, because you and I know that we treat our slaves decently. But dispensing with the system would take a moral burden off our backs. More significant is the fact that some of the wisest men of northern Virginia and those who operate the best plantations and large farms have come to a striking conclusion. Counting the cost of everything we have to pro- vide a slave, clothing, medicine, food and a place to live, we would get a much better deal for ourselves by setting them free and hiring them back for a small cash wage. Think about this, I recommend it, and so do the others.

When Hugh tried to reconcile such a, radical shift with his emotional support of his home state, he was always left with one stubborn idea: Slavery is the way we define the South. Virginia can't turn its back on slavery and remain Virginia, but my brother's right. Change is inescapable. Unable to resolve the dilemma, he could make no sensible reply to his brother's suggestion that the Starrs

rid themselves of their burden: It may make sense economically but not in daily living. He would postpone his decision. But he was also required to adjust his thinking about the North, because four of his fellow offi- cers, 'almost the best of the lot' he decided, came from Vermont, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, and in nightly discussions they

presented such a rational, nonhysterical body of opinion that he had to listen. They were not aboli- tionists and voiced little patience with those who were, nor did they display any animus against the South, but Starr was surprised at how firm they were in their opposition to slavery. The man from Vermont, Captain Benjamin Greer, was a wiry, taciturn fellow, a year or so older than Starr and not given to ranting. So when Greer said one night: 'If the differences between slave states and free continue to widen, the Union could possibly divide, break clean apart,' Starr was appalled that an officer in the United States Army dared to make such a seditious statement. But when the four Northerners pressed him as to what choice he might make in such a situation, he had to confess: 'In my family it's always been Vir- ginia first, the Union second. So I suppose I'd have to follow whatever lead Virginia took.' Greer, seeing Hugh's perplexity, assured him: 'I'm not threatening to shatter the Union, never, never. But as I listen to you Southern men talk, I hear you advocating positions that can only lead to a split between the two halves of our nation.' 'Sad day that would be,' Hugh said, dismissing the possibility, but when he listened closely to what officers from Carolina and Alabama were whispering, he was forced into a gloomy conclu- sion: Yes, I can imagine a mess when Virginians like me might be goaded into forming a union of our own where the traditions of the South would be preserved. And once he conceded this about himself, he saw that responsible Northerners like Ben Greer were edging toward a similar solution: In order to defend what they believe in, they may also decide that they'll have to have a union of

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their own. He was frightened by this collision - or separation - course. His vague reflections were dispelled by the arrival of a bugle-call letter which demanded that he make up his mind, for his brother wrote:

Hugh, I've made the decision for us, and unless you countermand it by an immediate letter, I shall proceed. All of us who occupy the good lands at the bend of the river have decided to manumit our slaves, hire them back for wages, and give each family a plot of our land big enough to sustain themselves. This will not only release us from increasingly difficult moral problems, but will also make our return on our land considerably more profitable ...

The startling letter contained many additional details, most of which Hugh judged to be in the interests of everyone, white owner and black slave alike. Because Ben Greer was interested in such matters, Hugh sought him out, placed the letter before him, and said: 'I want you to see how we Southerners react to the problems you've been discussing.' The social statesmanship of the Vir- ginia letter was so pronounced and the personal integrity of the farmers so clear that Greer summoned his Northern friends and read them the details. 'It's magnificent that your brother can think so clearly,' Greer said. 'I suppose you'll be sending

him your approvalT Yes,' and that night he showed Greer the letter he,had composed:

You have my permission. I turn over to you all my rights in the nineteen Starr slaves with the

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understanding that you will manumit the lot. But regardless of how the details are arranged, I hope you can arrange for my personal slave Hannibal to remain with me, if the cost is not prohibitive.

Hugh's letter was quite long, because he went into detail about each of the family units among the Starr slaves: 'Birdsong and Nelly are too old to work regularly for a salary, and since they can't live much longer ... How old is Birdsong, in his nineties maybe? Arrange for him and Nelly to take their meals with one of the other families and charge it to me.' Quiet word, all of it approving, passed through West Point regarding the extraordinary act of young Starr in freeing his slaves. Even die-hard officers from South Carolina and Georgia stopped by his quarters to voice their reserved sanction. Said one confirmed Southerner with a degree from Oxford: 'Louisiana and Mississippi aren't ready yet to do what you've done. For the present we need our slaves. It's been proved that in those swampy, steamy climates no white man can pos- sibly work outdoors in the sun. So without our slaves we'd have no sugar or rice. But even so, I do believe that if the Northerners leave us alone, we'll probably free all our slaves by the early years of next century, when we'll continue to pro- duce sugar and rice with freed Negro help.' As the young officers at West Point gingerly edged toward a mutual understanding regarding slavery, they were unaware that in Washington the Supreme Court was also belatedly attempting to correct the tragic errors left in the Constitution by the framers seventy years earlier. Now the

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judges would specify how the United States mu handle slavery. These were the tense weeks o February 1857, when Franklin Pierce was his presidency and James Buchanan was about t begin his, and although the Court had decide what its judgement was going to be, the judge realized that it would be inflammatory, so th delayed announcing it until Buchanan had be safely inaugurated. This took place on a frosty fourth of March, two days later the Supreme Court delivered one o its most poisonous decisions, Dred Scot v. Sanford. Facts in the case were simpl and uncontested: Dred Scott, a well-mannere Missouri slave, sixty-two years old, had bee taken by his owner north into free territory. After a prolonged stay there as a free man, Dred of his own free will returned to Missouri, where he was promptly claimed as a slave by his former owner's widow. The problems: Was Dred in any sense of the word a citizen? Had he the right to sue in a federal court? And did return to slave territory automatically reinstall him as a slave? The major opinion was read by the Chief jus- tice, immediate successor to the awesome John Marshall and a jurist almost as revered. He was Roger Brooke Taney, a tall, thin, acidulous legal scholar from Maryland, eighty years old and pas- sionately dedicated to the task of protecting the gallant agrarian South against the grubby indus- trial North. In his crusade he was abetted by five

other members of his nine-man court who also sided with the Southern states; the seventh judge vacillated in his loyalties, while numbers eight and nine were outspokenly Northern in their sympathies.

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it required all the first day for Taney to read his extensive review of slavery in the United States, and when he finished, his audience was stunned by the breadth of his knowledge, the scholarship of his references, and the totality of his support for the South. His decision was an iron-studded gauntlet flung into the teeth of the North. Its con- clusions were so shocking that every one of the other eight judges issued his own decision, but on the big issues the vote was 7 to 2 supporting Taney. His ' conclusions were bold and startling. No slave could ever be a citizen. In fact, no black, slave or not, could ever be a citizen. Slaves were property, just like mules and wagons, and the right to hold property must be protected. Then, in his Southern zeal to settle the slavery question once and for all, Taney threw in several opinions of his own, obiter dicta they were called, inter- esting conclusions but not justified by the data in the case at hand. They were inflammable: the Missouri Compromise of 1820, adjudicating which new states should be free of slavery, was uncon- stitutional; and even though a slave gained tempo- rary freedom by running away to the North, if he ever returned to slave territory, he became once more a slave. These judgments, so alien to the general drift of the nation in 185 7, were harsh enough to arouse the fears of the Northern states, but Taney com- pounded his terrible error by inserting a pro- tracted essay about the genesis of slavery, which did great damage. Taney never said that he believed what he was about to say; he was merely citing what the framers believed when they wrote the Constitution, but the phrases were so brutal

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that thousands of Northerners, upon hearing them, decided then and forever that since these were the opinions of the Court, any further com- promise with the South was impossible:

Negroes were not intended to be included under the word citizens and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges of citizens ... They were considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subju- gated by the dominant race, and whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power might choose to grant them.

They had been regarded as beings of an infe- rior order; and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordi- nary article of merchandise and traffic, when- ever a profit could be made by it.

Another judge added:

The stigma of the black slave, of the deepest degradation, was fixed upon the whole race.

And then it became clear how Taney justified his basic decision: since the Founding Fathers in 1787 believed these things about black people, the judgment was fixed forever; blacks could neither obtain now nor expect in the future any relief in the courts. In 178 7 the framers of the Constitution

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had considered them non-beings devoid of any rights, and so they must continue perpetually. Hugh Starr, having just clarified his own think- ing about slavery, and having freed his own, was appalled that the Supreme Court could issue such a document, for it lagged fifty years behind informed thftiking, and he was not surprised when his fellow officers from the North scorned the Court's opinion. Even level-headed Benjamin Greer said: 'Your Southern judges make it impos- sible for us Northern states to remain in a Union to be governed by such laws,' and for several painful weeks young Starr remained apart from his friends, striving to find even a shred of justifica- tion for the Dred Scott Decision. He found none. just as his grandfather's Consti- tutional Convention had lacked the courage to grapple with the slave problem in its day, so this Supreme Court failed to provide the type of guid- ance necessary to preserve the Union. When his perplexity subsided, he sought out his friends and tried to probe their thinking, but a veil had drop- ped between North and South, and relationships at West Point were strained. Said Starr one night, after trying in vain to talk with his Northerners: 'The Supreme Court agi- tates the nation, and the Army pacifies it. Something's topsy-turvy.' And the confusions deepened. The frenzied presidential campaign of 1860 revealed just how chaotic conditions had become. The animosities of the Dred Scott Decision pro- duced four major contestants for the presidency. Young officers from the Northern States had never heard of Breckenridge and Bell, the favourites of the South, while Hugh and his

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Southerners, although familiar with Senator Douglas, knew little of the lanky former congress- man, this Lincoln. Both groups were astounded when Abraham Lincoln won on a strictly regional vote, and on the night the results were known, a brassy-voiced officer from Georgia shouted warn- ing of what loomed ahead: 'Lincoln got not a single vote from the South! He's not my President!' Now the wonderful camaraderie of the Point evaporated as one Southern officer after another quietly surrendered his commission in what he per- ceived as the Northern army, and slipped home to the Southern state which had always commanded his allegiance. Departing officers confided to their friends: 'If trouble comes, and I don't seehow it can be avoided, I've got to be a South Carolina man.' It would not have been proper for secession to be openly discussed at the Point, but as the date for Lincoln's stormy inauguration approached, worried friends discussed their options in whis- pers, and Starr saw that the Union his ancestors had fought so diligently to create and preserve was destined to fracture along North-South lines. Then came the real problem: But if war comes, what do I do? On the morning after he first dared to voice this question, three of his friends left the Point to return South and offer their services to their state militias, and Hugh narrowed his question: A choice between the Union and Virginia, what then? The problem was made more difficult when the com- mandant summoned him to share good news: 'Cap-

tain Starr, I have here your promotion to major in the United States Army. Congratulations.' Hugh accepted, but in doing so, realized that he was bind- ing himself ever more strongly to the Union. Alone in his quarters, he remembered the advice

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