White people in Augusta rarely discussed slavery openly and for the most part only did so under provocation when they hoped to defend their institution.

Newspapers in Augusta, both Democratic and Whig, told their readers about free blacks who reenslaved themselves, committed petty crimes, and ran off with white women. Slaves mutilated themselves rather than be sold and were on rare occasions whipped to death. Just as rarely, paternalistic whites publicly venerated aged blacks as beloved and admired.

In one of its defenses of slavery during the political crisis, the Spectator bragged on the ability of hard-working enslaved people to earn extra money--often hundreds of dollars a year--by working overtime. Such payments, the paper proudly noted, are "practiced more or less all over the State. We know it is not uncommon in this region." Indeed, such slaves "like millions in the Southern States, are not only plentifully provided for in every way, but they are saving money to use as they may find best in coming years--and withal they seem as happy as lords." This exaggerated and romanticized scene held an element of truth: slaveowners were indeed turning toward hiring out and other kinds of payment to slaves as the 1860s began, adapting slavery to changing constraints and opportunities.

Slavery's adaptability did nothing to lessen the harsh terms by which masters held enslaved persons. Yet, slaveholders could turn virtually any episode into evidence of their beneficence. In one especially unlikely train of logic, the Spectator drew a comforting moral from the brutal murder of an enslaved person in another county: "On the morning of the 4th of July last, at 8 o'clock, one of the hottest days of the past Summer, Hudson stripped the woman, naked as she came into the world, tied her to a persimmon tree, and whipped her for three consecutive hours, with occasional intermissions of a few minutes, until he had worn out to stump fifty-two switches, and until the bark of the body of the tree was rubbed smooth and greasy by the attrition of the body of the victim. The ground around the tree for seven or eight feet, though it had been freshly plowed, was trodden hard." Neighbors had heard both the switch and the screams as the master beat the woman to death, but the fellow whites had done nothing. "The poor creature was buried the same afternoon only some ten inches beneath the ground, in a rough box, without any shroud." The jury found Hudson guilty of murder and sentenced him to eighteen years, the maximum sentence and one he was not likely to live out since he was 68 years old.

Then came the moral, as the judge delivered a rebuke biblical in its phrasing and weight: "You have thus committed a great crime against both human and divine law. You have outraged the feelings of the community among whom you lived." The judge named an additional crime Hudson had committed against the white community of the South: "You have enabled their enemies to fan the flame of fanaticism, by charging against them the enormity and cruelty of your hard and unfeeling heart, although that community cordially loathe and condemn cruelty and oppression towards black or white." To the Spectator, the moral seemed clear: "it is one of those cases which thoroughly vindicate the Southern character against the aspersions cast upon us by our enemies at the North. It develops what is as true of us as of any other people on the civilized globe, that we utterly detest and abhor cruelty and barbarity, whether to whites or blacks." Whites ignored the fact that their legal order tolerated virtually any barbarity by a slaveholder that did not end in death.

Augusta whites had few misgivings about even the most brutal displays of violence, which they thought a rarity; instead, they considered slavery so benevolent and positive that blacks actually appreciated the institution. They eagerly read of "Departure of Emancipated Negroes--Don't Want to Leave." The article told of "a crowd of not less than one thousand negroes assembled on the basin to take leave of the negroes" belonging to an estate in Lynchburg that had freed them. "The whole number set free was forty-four men women and children, but only thirty-seven left, the balance preferring to remain in servitude in Old Virginia rather than enjoy their freedom elsewhere." Another way to put this, of course, was that former slaves were being driven away from their families and loved ones and that, despite their loss, only seven stayed. But the article dwelt on what it wanted to emphasize: "when the boats started from their wharves, the freed negroes struck up 'Carry me back to Old Virginny,' which was joined in by one and all, and in a tone which indicated plainly that if left to their own free will, they would gladly spend the remainder of their days in servitude in the home of their birth."

J. Beck, J. Beck to John H. McCue, February 8, 1858

Jonathan G. Coleman, Jonathan G. Coleman to John H. McCue, May 29, 1859

William S. Eskridge, William S. Eskridge to John H. McCue, May 21, 1858

W. W. Gibbs, W. W. Gibbs to John H. McCue, December 18, 1858

John G. Imboden, John G. Imboden to John H. McCue, November 13, 1859

Maria Perkins, Maria Perkins to Richard Perkins, October 8, 1852

C. T. Wills, C. T. Wills to John H. McCue, December 7, 1853

E. H. Wills, E. H. Wills to John H. McCue, March 25, 1857

Staunton Spectator, Export of Slaves from Virginia, October 11, 1859

Staunton Vindicator, Departure of Emancipated Negroes--Don't Want to Leave, October 14, 1859

Staunton Vindicator, Desperate Negro Woman, January 11, 1861

Staunton Spectator, A Sensible Negro, September 25, 1860

Staunton Spectator, The Late Slave Murder Case, October 16, 1860

Related Historiography

Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001).

William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854, Volume 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

J. Morgan Kousser, "The Irrepressible Repressible Conflict,"Reviews in American History 21 (1993): 207-212.

John W. Quist, Restless Visionaries: The Social Roots of Antebellum Reform in Alabama and Michigan (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998).