Each generation of blacks vied with the other in extolling the virtues of their particular mistress and master and “their times;” but notwithstanding this mournful contrast between the past and present, their reminiscences had a certain charm. Often by their cabin firesides would we listen to the tales of the olden days about our forefathers, of whom they could tell much, having belonged to our family since the landing of the African fathers on the English slave ships, from which their ancestors had been bought by ours. Among these traditions none pleased us so much as that an unkind mistress or master had never been known among our ancestors, which we have always considered a cause for greater pride than the armorial bearings left on their tombstones.
We often listened with pleasure to the recollections of an old blind man—the former faithful attendant of our grand-father—whose mind was filled with vivid pictures of the past. He repeated verbatim conversations and speeches heard sixty years before—from Mr. Madison, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Clay, and other statesmen, his master’s special friends.
“Yes,” he used to say, “I staid with your grandpa ten years in Congress, and all the time he was Secretary for President Jefferson. He nuver give me a cross word, and I nuver saw your grandma the least out of temper neither, but once, and that was at a dinner party ‘we’ give in Washington, when the French Minister said something disrespectful about the United States.”
Often did he tell us: “The greatest pleasure I expect in heaven, is seeing my old master.” And sometimes, “I dream about my master and mistress when I am sleep, and talk with them and see them so plain it makes me so happy that I laugh out right loud.”
This man was true and honest—a good Christian. Important trusts had been confided to him. He frequently carried the carriage and horses to Washington and Baltimore—a journey of two weeks—and sometimes sent to carry a large sum of money to a distant county.
His wife, who had accompanied him in her youth to Washington, also entertained us with gossip about the people of that day, and could tell exactly the size and color of Mrs. Madison’s slippers, how she was dressed on certain occasions, “what beautiful manners she had,” how Mr. Jefferson received master and mistress when “we” drove up to Monticello, what room they occupied, &c.
Although my grand-father’s death occurred thirty years before, the negroes still remembered it with sorrow; and one of them, speaking of it, said to me, “Ah, little mistess, ’twas a sorrowful day when de news come from Washington dat our good, kind master was dead. A mighty wail went up from dis plantation, for we know’d we had loss our bes friend.”
The only negro on the place who did not evince an interest in the white family was a man ninety years old, who, forty years before, announced his intention of not working any longer—although still strong and athletic—because, he said, “the estate had done come down so he hadn’t no heart to work no longer.” He remembered, he said, “when thar was three and four hundred black folks, but sence de British debt had to be paid over by his old master, and de Macklenbug estate had to be sold, he hadn’t had no heart to do nothin’ sence.” And “he hadn’t seen no real fine white folks—what he called real fine white folks—sence he come from Macklenbug.” All his interest in life having expired with an anterior generation; we were in his eyes but a poor set, and he refused to have anything to do with us. Not being compelled to work, he passed his life principally in the woods, wore a rabbit-skin cap and a leather apron. Having lost interest in, and connection with the white family, he gradually relapsed into a state of barbarism, refusing towards the end of his life to sleep in his bed, preferring a hard bench in his cabin, upon which he died.
Another very old man remembered something of his father, who had come from Africa; and when we asked him to tell us what he remembered of his father’s narrations, would say: