I try not to be maudlin in these occasional meanderings of my mind (really, I do), but Terri and I just returned from Charleston SC after a week of touring and getting some much needed sunshine. We left in a snow squall in Buffalo and the weather was a welcome respite. Charleston is, as many old southern cities a beautiful place with an abundance of history. Not too long ago we had made a similar trip to Savannah, a town with the same pedigree and prominence in the antebellum South.
What caused me to consider my mixed emotions about both trips is that in the midst of beautiful and historical buildings, old churches, and fine dining is the dark history of human bondage. The Old Slave Mart Museum above is a very rich cultural center that actually moved me to tears. The excellent and well documented history on the first floor gives an accurate and compelling story of the inhumanity of the slave trade. The second floor has more artifacts, history, and a wonderful docent named Christine who told the story of the slave mart in a well organized and well researched presentation. The story of "man's inhumanity to man" is incredible and filled with paradox. While "the enslaved people" were considered as chattel and less than full human beings, their bodies were sold to medical schools of the time and dissected as instruction for physicians of the time. They were not human enough to be treated as such, but they were human enough to be desecrated and carved up in the interest of medicine. Terri purchased the book, "The Price for a pound of their flesh" which documents this atrocity.
We saw lists of slaves for sale including details of their work skills and possible uses. This included some notes such as "imbecile" or "dropsy" as though used cars were being sold with "some defects detected." That and the history of splitting families and the separation of native speakers of certain African languages kept people in a constant state of dislocation and despair.
I felt as though I was imposing my "enlightened Northern values" on the history only to find that many Northern banks profited from the slave trade by making "mortgages" of a sort when owners lacked sufficient funds to purchase their human chattel. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia banks, located in non-slave states benefited from the institution through finance.
I had to step outside to compose myself, so taken was I with emotion. I don't offer this as a self congratulatory note on my perspective, but feel compelled to share it as an indication that all that is beautiful is not without its own dark history. Beautiful homes, ornate and massive churches, intricate ironwork so much a part of Charleston and Savannah history and culture was built on the backs of enslaved people.
It may be the current state of the world and the dehumanization taking place in Ukraine that has heightened my awareness of just how evil, we can be, but I was moved nonetheless. Even Fort Sumter, the site of the beginning of the Civil War was built with over a million slave made bricks, many if not all from Boone Hall plantation which we also visited. It actually hurt my heart to see this. As I said, I had to step outside to compose myself.
Will we ever evolve enough to see the barbarity and brutality of which we are capable?
