A granddaughter of Colonel Tayloe’s, who spent much of her youth at the Octagon, affirms that this stone was used by the postilions in mounting. Yet to the frenzied fancy of more than one chronicler of local history, this was the “slave block,” from which were auctioned some of those five hundred slaves ascribed to John Tayloe, and is referred to in pompous and melodramatic phrase as “doing satanic duty through the years.” Opposed to this is the well authenticated fact that Colonel Tayloe never sold any of his dusky retinue, and his wife’s reply when questioned as to the number of her husband’s slaves: “He has five hundred servants, but only one slave. I am slave to them all,” is fraught with much historic truth which is pretty generally overlooked in the portrayal of ante-bellum types of Southern women.
Other pious visitors to the Octagon kitchen, looking through the same lens as the discoverers of the “slave block,” beheld in the long iron “spits,” used for roasting meats, unique instruments of torture for the hapless slaves!
These stories indicate that other imaginations besides the inventors of ghostly legends, have been busy with the long-suffering Octagon; these encrustations of false over the true cannot, however, detract from the real interest of the history of this dignified old mansion.
FATE’S IRONY
He fought against his weakness; weary,
Heartsick, he, amid his failures, died.
Then one who knew him, knew how near he
Came to conq’ring with the hurts he bore;
Knew the reachings of his nature,
And the sweetness of his heart at core;