Chapter Fifty-Five
The 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.