Chapter Sixty-Six
There began a period whose events would not make it into Jessica’s latest diary for over a year. The elegant, red-leather volume of her first recordings had been followed by black-faced utilitarian journals that gave way to commonplace notebooks when they were available. A stack of her musings, impressions, experiences was arranged chronologically on a shelf in her secretary, begun the first months of her marriage to Silas. Her last recording ended in June of 1865. No other entries followed. The final page read:
We have buried Silas. Thomas wished to inter his body at Somerset, at a place only he and Silas knew about. “It overlooks the plantation, Mother, where Papa often went for meditation,” he said to me. “I’d like to visit him there.”
I thought of Joshua, alone in the family plot set aside in the county cemetery where a tombstone in memory of Nanette DuMont is erected and Robert Warwick is buried, but I could not refuse my son his heart’s wish. I did not know of such a place, but then there is so much of Somerset I do not know.
It is truly a beautiful place where my husband lies. A red oak tree shades his grave and a creek flows close by. The wind is gentle there and carries the hum of the spirituals and songs the workers sing in the fields. I suspect Thomas often stops there to confer with his papa. It is a private place just for them, and I feel excluded, but I am glad I did not oppose the choice Silas would have approved. I was his heart, but Somerset was his soul.
Years later Jessica would read “The Bustle in a House,” a poem by Emily Dickinson, that described her activities after Silas’s death and accounted for the long period between her writings. When she finally took pen in hand again, she went back to the blank pages of June of that year and inscribed in her diary the poet’s immortal words:
The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth
The sweeping up the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity
Silas lay in the parlor for the last hour of viewing when a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation was put into Thomas’s hands from the telegraph office. The order was backed by the arrival of union general Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops in Galveston to see that the order was enforced. Thomas read it and, without a word, passed it to the other planters in the room, then he went to his father and pressed a hand to his cold forehead. “It has come, Papa,” he said.
Jessica hoped the memory of the day her son read the proclamation to the slaves never dimmed. From all over the plantation, they gathered for the burial, a sea of black faces, many streaming with tears. The last dirt had been shoveled over Silas’s grave and flowers laid before the headstone. It was a mercifully cool day because of a hilltop breeze and an overcast sun.
“Let there be silence,” Thomas said, raising his hand and lifting his voice to the assembly. “I have something of importance to read to you.”
All tongues ceased and every face turned to fix upon him. He began to recite the contents of General Order No. 3:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
The slaves looked at one another. A ripple of anxiety curled through the gathering. Jasper and his sons had expected the announcement and been alerted to its contents.
“What does this mean?” somebody asked.
“It means youse is free,” Jasper said.
“Mister Thomas ain’t my master no more?”
“He’s your employer if youse stay.”
Most stayed. Thomas availed himself of the contracts the agent at the Freedmen’s Bureau had prepared for former master and slave, and by the end of the month, Somerset had been parceled into fifty-acre units rented to families under a system that came to be known as tenant farming. Once again, a Toliver had led the way in anticipating the inevitable, and the transition for Thomas from master to proprietor and his slaves from bondsmen to paid workers was relatively painless.
But the Toliver family was not without criticism. Most of the planters had not wanted to inform their slaves of their emancipation until the harvest was in, but Thomas’s preemptive disclosure of the freedom act had dashed those hopes. Word spread from cotton field to cotton field, and black workers walked off by the hundreds, leaving their hoes where they dropped them.
“Well, Jessica, you must be happy now,” Lorimer Davis said.
“You would assume that so shortly after Silas’s death?” Jessica said.
“You know perfectly well I’m talking about the abolishment of slavery.”
“I am always happy when justice is done,” Jessica said.
Lorimer’s slaves had left his cotton to dry unpicked in the fields, and no promise of better treatment had lured them back. Without sufficient manpower, the Davis plantation, like many others in the region, stood on the verge of financial ruin.
General Granger’s troops were followed by fifty thousand more that surged into Texas to occupy towns in accordance with the martial law policy imposed by the U.S. Congress upon the “conquered provinces” of the Confederacy. union occupation was the first phase of a period congressional leaders had officially termed “Reconstruction.” Federal officers were to replace civil authorities, protect the freed blacks from oppression, and ensure the safety of the agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a relief organization set up by the U.S. government to help former slaves adjust to freedom. The citizens of Howbutker, furious at the insult when hometown blood had been spilled to defend Texas borders successfully against invasion, held their collective breath over what occupation would mean.
One afternoon in early July as Houston Avenue snoozed in the heat of high summer, a clatter of horses’ hooves striking the brick street broke the somnolent silence. Jessica was upstairs at the heart-rending task of storing away Silas’s clothes in a cotton sack when she heard the commotion. Except for the servants, she was alone in the house. Thomas, as usual, was at the plantation, and her daughter-in-law had taken Vernon to see his other grandmother. Jessica paused in the folding of Silas’s shirt. She knew at once that the feared occupation force had arrived. Word had gone before their advance that they were on the way. Citizens had hidden their valuables when they heard reports from communities already occupied that private homes were being used to quarter the men, and speculation was rampant that the Yankees would bivouac on Houston Avenue and its officers commandeer the mansions.
Within minutes, there was a scurry of feet up the stairs as the doorbell reverberated throughout the house. The door flew open. Petunia had not bothered to knock. “Miss Jessica,” she said, out of breath, “they’s some union soldiers on the porch.”
Calmly, Jessica finished folding Silas’s shirt. “Very good, Petunia, I’ll go see what they’re about.”
She could not calm the accelerated beat of her heart as she descended the stairs. There had come reports of incidences of vicious abuse by the occupation troops. In Gonzales, a group of union soldiers had taken offense at a doctor’s comment and dragged him from his office by his feet, then shot and killed him in the street. Homes and stores had been ransacked, personal treasures stolen, property damaged, and liberties taken with women. Jessica had months ago stored away a pistol in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe.
She could see the crown of a federal officer’s hat through the fanlight and a series of others bobbing behind him. She opened the door. “Good afternoon. May I help you?” she said.
The officer, a tall man who appeared to be in his early thirties, was in the act of brushing dust from the road off his dark blue, gold-piped jacket. But for his uniform, his boyish looks would have been engaging. Jessica was sympathetically drawn to those cursed with her coloring, but in the major’s case, his red-brick hair and fair skin with its sprinkling of freckles were more favorable to a man and further compensated by regular features and white, even teeth. When he saw Jessica, he tipped his hat and bowed slightly.
“Major Andrew Duncan, madam. Forgive the intrusion and my dusty appearance, but may I come in?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I regret not.”
Pointedly, Jessica glanced down at his boots, and the officer grinned and scraped his feet on the porch mat. “Will that do?”
Jessica stepped back from the open door, and the major motioned that his men were to stay outside. He entered, bringing in the smell of a man who’s spent hard days in the saddle. The officer’s eyes swept around the magnificent, mirror-lit foyer reigned over by the portrait of the Duke of Somerset. “Every bit as beautiful as he described,” he said.
Jessica’s gaze narrowed. “As who described?”
“My cousin,” the major said. “Guy Handley. I’m sure you remember him.”