Episode 55: An Insurrection Was Hourly Expected

Kathryn Gehred  00:00

This episode of Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is supported by the Dr. Scholl Foundation.

Kathryn Gehred  00:11

Hello and welcome to Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant, this is a women's history podcast where we feature 18th and early 19th century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host. Kathryn Gehred. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Ramin Ganeshram. Ramin is the executive director of the Westport Museum for History and Culture in Westport, Connecticut. She's an award winning journalist and historian, and she specializes in addressing how public history can truthfully and faithfully address American history around race and identity. She also has a background in writing about food history and food ways. Welcome to the show. Ramin, thank you so much.

Ramin Ganeshram  00:51

I'm so happy to be here.

Kathryn Gehred  00:53

Can you tell me a little bit about 18th century recipes and bring in your own experience as a chef?

Ramin Ganeshram  01:00

Oh sure. So I am a trained chef, and one of the things I really have learned being a chef and a journalist and a historian is that everyone loves to talk about food when the topic is difficult or sort of fraught. Food is a great access point to get people to talk about it, because, again, everyone loves to talk about food. For example, at Westport museum last year, we did a whole exhibit on chocolate in the American colonies, about how chocolate was grown, processed and imported to the American colonies in the 17th and 18th century, people loved it. We did a lot of programming, but it was really an exhibit about the Atlantic trade, about enslavement in the American colonies, particularly in New England, where the story of slavery is often under told, if told at all, but that sweet tastes of chocolate allowed us to talk about a very bitter history, in a way, I hate to say this, but stealthily getting people into the topic while they're enjoying a little taste of something.

Kathryn Gehred  02:09

That's fascinating, you bring up ways to talk about slavery in a public history setting. We're going to be talking about a document that deals with slavery quite a bit. Can you tell me a little bit about what we're going to be looking at today and how you how you found it?

Ramin Ganeshram  02:24

Yeah, absolutely, in fact, the way I found this document was doing food history research, or a book that I'm completing about how Caribbean food waste and heritage really impacted food history and history at large in what later became the United States. And so looking for primary resources to talk about 18th century cuisine and ingredients in the Caribbean and how it ties back into the American colonies, I found this journal that was actually a compilation of letters written to some unknown person back in Scotland by a woman named Janet Shaw. And Janet Shaw was Scottish. She traveled to the British colonies in the Caribbean and, of course, North America. Between these two years, 1774 and 1776 in the company of three young people who were the children of a local landowner from where she was from, in Scotland. And I found her material because she wrote a lot about the food of the Caribbean in great detail. It was an incredibly useful resource. So in writing these letters in this journal form to this unknown person. She describes everything around her for my purposes at the time, including food. But what was super interesting to me was she wrote firsthand accounts to the lead up to the American Revolution when she arrived in North Carolina.

Kathryn Gehred  03:58

That's an interesting time to come visit. So do you know much about Janet Shwa? It's interesting that she was keeping a diary and writing letters in that format.

Ramin Ganeshram  04:07

It is and not much is really known about her. She was from a middle to upper middle class family in Scotland. She was either 36 or 46 there's like the 10 year gap in trying to understand how old she was when she made this trip. She wasn't married at the time, so there's some speculation because of the language she uses about how happy she and the other person the recipient are going to be when they get to see each other again. Then it might have been love interest, rather than simply a friend, and more is known about her brother, who was doing business in the West Indies had come to do business in the North American colonies, and they really were associated with other loyalists when they finally arrived, that split had just happened. So. So prior, she was visiting other British colonies or areas of the realm, and now suddenly she finds herself kind of lumped in with a group of people, this separation the loyalist versus the patriot, but that and the fact that after her travel, she returned to Scotland, kind of took up her place to get her most prominent family. At one point, met George III and Queen Charlotte. They were reviewing the battery in the town where she was from. That's not much known about her. She's a very precise and careful correspondent, and that's so useful, of course, to us as historians.

Kathryn Gehred  05:42

Her letters were published as The Journal of a lady of quality, being a narrative of a journey from Scotland to the west. Indies from 1774 to 1776 the version that I found online was published in 1921 so there's a little bit of just like, Oh, it's a woman. That's all the work we need to do to find out who it is. She's a lady of quality, but she seems really interesting, and it is, you're right, when you start looking into these letters, it's such a valuable document, like I can see why it was published so early, but in that kind of interesting way that women's documents sometimes are treated as, what a curiosity.

Ramin Ganeshram  06:21

Yes, what I understand the documents themselves were just, there was a, I think, three extant copies, two of which were kept within the family and just passed down. Was a curiosity, as you say, the whole idea of the lady of quality is really interesting to me because that language was a signifier that she could be trusted, that she had some level of education, that she wasn't just gallivanting around the world on her own. She was traveling in the company of her brother and these three young people who she was shepherding, which might have been presumably why she was there. There's not a discussion about why she undertook this journey, but it seems very likely that that was why, that there had to be sort of a female chaperone. One of the children was a young woman at the age of 18. She was the person referred to as Fanny throughout the narrative.

Kathryn Gehred  07:14

Yeah. That is really interesting.

Ramin Ganeshram  07:15

It is. It is almost signifiers, yeah.

Kathryn Gehred  07:18

Yeah, so she did write several copies. We don't really know who she's writing to. There's some discussion of whether it was possibly a potential partner or something like that. Do you think when she was writing it, from your work with this, that she meant to keep it as sort of a private journal, or did you think she might even have thought about potentially publishing it, because sometimes these early women's journals were published, and particularly epistole letter format was one of the ways that women at this time period could write and could get some recognition for writing.

Ramin Ganeshram  07:51

I think when you read the detail of this narrative, that's very possible. There is a lot of self aggrandizement, which is very common, and these sort of to be published journals. You know, it's difficult to say only in as much as it doesn't deviate wildly from the accepted language of the day, but, but shorthand is not often used. There is, in my reading of it, less assumption of knowledge of the people involved than one would have writing to someone who knew you personally. So I think it is very, very possible. Plus travelogs In this period of time were wildly popular, you know, not just from men, but from women as well. Was an incredibly flourishing format. I mean, the amount of travel logs you could find for this period of time are really quite astounding and published. I think, yes, I think it is very possible that somewhere in the back of her mind she was potentially harboring those hopes.

Kathryn Gehred  08:59

This just occurred to me this second. But you talk about how she writes about the food in great detail, it's kind of like going on a trip and making Instagram accounts about what you're eating in places. But this was the sort of version of that of my friends back home. This is what's different about where I'm traveling to.

Ramin Ganeshram  09:15

Yes, I agree with you 100% and I think you know now that we're talking about this, thinking about the format where she kind of must have kept a letter book or a journal book, writing these letters out, versus writing them and sending because there's no other copies. Right? Obviously, people use letter books to fashion their thoughts and then copy out a letter, and that letter would be sent. You know, there isn't one, and her family and the people she associated with and refers to are significant enough to have archival material out in the world. These letters are not extant. That doesn't mean anything, but it does not seem to have come out of a letter book. And I bring that up to say, therefore, she had plenty of time. To go back and amend and edit and add more detail for the public gaze in this kind of manner of, you know, being an Instagram or wanting to be sure that everybody gets every single detail. It's not really an as an easily editable format, but it's that public gaze. I think you're right. The more we talk about this, I think it was probably intended for publication.

Kathryn Gehred  10:25

I think that's pretty good setup of what we're talking about. So to dig into the specific we're going to talk about an excerpt from a specific letter, and just to set up the context, where is she at the time of this? What's going on in her life?

Ramin Ganeshram  10:38

In the period of this particular letter, she has been traveling for about a year. She has left Antigua in the West Indies, and now she's in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is still with the three children she's traveling with, and is staying a variety of friends. Her brother is with her for Alexander for a period of time, and then seems to be traveling to Boston, which is kind of the hotbed of the revolutionary activity. This is 1775 in addition to writing about food and about the landscape and about all the friends who just are, all she says are like jostling and angling for her to stay with them, which is kind of interesting. She is observing this sort of proto revolutionary activity that is happening in Wilmington.

Kathryn Gehred  11:32

I think the way you said it earlier of she's gone from British colonies to suddenly somewhere where being a loyalist is kind of a dirty word to certain people, is super fascinating, particularly since there's a lot of debate over how many people really were patriots or loyalists in different parts of the country. And it seems like she's been sort of thrown into that, and she's encountering patriots and loyalists and all of this tension.

Ramin Ganeshram  11:56

Yes and she writes about this where she says, and we'll get into this in the letters, but she basically, in this particular context, says, and, you know, everyone's gonna figure out that we're all on the same side in the end, kind of like this is just a passing madness, if you will. It's kind of the way she talks about it. The people who are in this moment funking of revolt are being hoodwinked, and they don't really quite get it. This point in the revolution, Boston has been blockaded. There's almost like a price on the head of Sam Adams, you know, and John Hancock. It is a serious thing. It's something that has been discussed continually, both in the United Kingdom and its colonies. And it's not as if this is shocking or new information to her, but the pace in which it is progressing this far south, if Boston was already militarized, it was already a city under siege. In a sense, there was martial law declared already in Boston during this time. In fact, while she's there, she discusses a proclamation from the governor of Massachusetts declaring martial law, but the idea that it is trickling down this far is where I think her kind of surprise is that led her to write about it in such great detail.

Kathryn Gehred  13:22

Yeah, that's interesting. Having read this before, I noticed she uses the words wig and Tori a lot when she says wig. Is she basically talking about patriots, or is it the other way? Right?

Ramin Ganeshram  13:33

So that's actually confusing. She's talking about so called. I'm saying so called, right? Because here's the difficulty in her world. A patriot is someone who's loyal, right? Yes, of course, yes, she's referring to people who rebels were Yes, rebels.

Kathryn Gehred  13:50

I work for Encyclopedia Virginia, and we're having to pick our words for the Revolutionary War entries, and there's a lot of confusion sometimes.

Ramin Ganeshram  13:58

Yes, especially because the language around it didn't solidify until well into the conflict, if not later, right?

Kathryn Gehred  14:06

So is there any other information you think would be helpful for somebody to hear before we dig into it?

Ramin Ganeshram  14:11

There's a subtext here that I don't think the reader may know if you are not a student of sort of what I was talking about before, like the links between all the British Western Hemisphere colonies in the Caribbean and in North America, and how much it was a commercial entity, how much it was the ground for wealth, for earning money. That's what her brother is coming over here to do. He's coming over here to work. It was kind of this new place where great amounts of wealth could be had in journals like this. In her journal entries about the West Indies or her letters and of other people, a lot of space is given to the wealth of West India planters. There. Lot of language at the time about being as rich as a West India planter, and also regarding the southern plantations in North America, in the colonies that became the Southern American states. I think that's really important, because she's coming to this with, if not only, an understanding a deep admiration of the value of this commercial prospect, which is run on the engine of the labor of enslaved people. So it's not only accepted as par for the course, it is considered, in a sense, an admirable methodology by smart men to reap profit. I think we have to remember that in the context when we read her letter.

Kathryn Gehred  15:52

That's really well put so the diary of Janet Shaw in 1775,

Janet Shaw  15:59

At present martial law stands thus: An officer or committeeman enters a plantation with his posse. The Alternative is proposed, Agree to join us, and your persons and properties are safe; you have a shilling sterling a day; your duty is no more than once a month appearing under Arms at Wilmingtown, which will prove only a merry-making, where you will have as much grog as you can drink. But if you refuse, we are directly to cut up your corn, shoot your pigs, burn your houses, seize your Negroes and perhaps tar and feather yourself. Not to chuse the first requires more courage than they are possessed of, and I believe this method has seldom failed with the lower sort. No sooner to they appear under arms on the stated day, then they are harangued by their officers with the implacable cruelty of the king of Great Britain, who has resolved to murder and destroy man, wife and child, and that he has sworn before God and his parliament that he will not spare one of them; and this those deluded people believe more firmly than their creed, and who is it that is bold enough to venture to undeceive them. The King’s proclamation they never saw; but are told it was ordering the tories to murder the whigs, and promising every Negro that would murder his Master and family that he should have his Master’s plantation. This last Artifice they may pay for, as the Negroes have got it amongst them and believe it to be true. Tis ten to one they may try the experiment, and in that case friends and foes will be all one.

Kathryn Gehred  17:45

All right, let's talk about that paragraph. First, I don't think we have the specific date of this letter, but it's definitely from 1775 and it's after she's arrived in North Carolina, and she's describing how martial law works in North Carolina, and she's basically making it sound like the anti British colonists are threatening you. They're coming to people's doors and saying we're gonna cut your cord, shoot your pigs, burn your houses if you don't join our side, and that this works. So I don't know if this is accurate from what she's seeing, or if this is sort of from her perspective as a Scottish woman who is very, very loyalist, she wants this to be a call me that she can make money out of. Now that you set that context up, she's sort of hoping that, well, these are people being bullied into something, but eventually this madness will end.

Ramin Ganeshram  18:42

Right. That's the interesting thing, right? Because she doesn't say that she witnessed this. She says this is what she understands from happening, and with the context, based on who she's associating with, and what she's doing is that the people telling her what is happening are plantation owners. She's visiting society people in the town that are saying to one another, this is what's going on. And I read it as hyperbole. Perhaps she didn't know it was hyperbole. And the reason why is that the proclamation she's talking about that no one has ever seen, that they're banding about this King's proclamation is really a proclamation by General Gage, governor of Massachusetts at the time, that says, This is your chance to basically be given amnesty for your uprising. And it's really funny, he's saying everyone but Sam Adams and John Hancock, but everybody else who took up arms against the crowd, who have harassed British soldiers, who have just promoted this madness, we're willing to give amnesty. This is one of those forays into we're willing to take you back into the fold or put this behind us. Stop. Just stop. He doesn't mention the enslaved people. He doesn't mention that this idea, which later does become an actual proclamation from the king at the end of this year, where the king says, This is the famous leave your enslaver and join loyalists, and you'll get freedom, and you will get land and so on. That's not what this refers to at all. And it refers to a document where the enslaved, in fact, are not mentioned whatsoever. So what I think happened, which all got wrapped up into this kind of hyperbole, and this to me, what I'm about to say to my mind, garters, more proof around the idea that this was a lot of gossip whipped up into a statement like this, and it is several months before this proclamation by Gage, on behalf of the crown, as an Acting Governor, colonial governor, received a petition by enslaved people in Massachusetts, petitioning for their Liberty, stating that enslavement is against the laws of man, specifically outlining physical abuse, including sexual abuse and assault of enslaved women. He does not answer the petition. It is ignored by the Massachusetts colonial legislature. Interestingly, these petitions became fairly regular during the course of the revolution, wanting here in Connecticut, there was one later in both in 1739 in New Hampshire, this idea of, okay, you're all proclaiming the rights to liberty. Well, that's what we're talking about now. Let's really talk about it. Gage ignores it. The legislature ignores it. But clearly it was talked about. And to me, all of this sort of gossip and passing of information conflates together with this proclamation into this hyperbolic idea of what you're being told is this is what's going to happen.

Kathryn Gehred  22:00

That's so fascinating, yeah, because I looked at that proclamation as well. And first off, for people who've been listening to the podcast, it is signed by his excellencies command, Thomas Flucker, secretary, who was the father of Lucy Flucker, who we talked about in a previous episode. So a very well hated guy on the revolutionary side when I first read it, as somebody who's from Virginia and does a lot of Virginia history, I immediately thought of Dunmore's Proclamation. And I was like, Oh, she's talking about Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, but that's not yet. That's later. And so it does seem to me, Dunmore is also hearing all of these rumors and gossip and what people are afraid of happening, and the enslaved people are petitioning on their own behalf. They are fighting for this. They're making a very clear point that, hey, you're fighting for liberty. What about us? And it seems like people like Thomas Gage and the Crown aren't really seriously considering it right, because they want to sort of pacify people. But Dunmore hits a point where he's like, No, let's do it. Let's promise enslaved people that if they fight for Britain, that they will earn their freedom.

Ramin Ganeshram  23:05

I think that's really good point on your part. I mean, I think that Dunmore was basically saying, let's call their bluff. Yeah, really go there and then they're finally going to back down. And kind of had to make good on a promise that he probably didn't want to keep? No, I likely did not want to keep.

Kathryn Gehred  23:23

It doesn't seem like Dunmore was a great abolitionist. I think he was thinking in more of like a reactionary knee jerk way, because once he actually had all of these people who were very invested in fighting for their own liberty, he didn't know what to do with them. That's great. This is why I like these little snapshots into a moment in time, because this is all happening before dunmores proclamation, but it really helps sort of talk about what's going on.

Ramin Ganeshram  23:45

And I think it also implies what we know from letters like this and other letters clearly, and newspaper accounts and so on, how much this was discussed by people of the time. Because there's only one way that the gage proclamation and this idea of the enslaved petition, the Massachusetts legislature, the governor, there's only one way that information got around, and that's people writing to each other and saying, this happened. And you know, this is what's going on. So that information spread almost like gossip, like wildfire, and that, to me, is very, very interesting, as well as a portent of what could happen, or as essentially the catalyst to things that happen, like you said, Dunmore's Proclamation.

Kathryn Gehred  24:36

And people talk about gossip like it's not important, but sometimes gossips where the action's happening absolutely All right, so let's go into the next paragraph.

Janet Shaw  24:45

I came to town yesterday with an intention of being at church this day, where I was informed there was to be service performed by a very good clergyman. In this however I was disappointed, for I found the whole town in an uproar, and the moment I landed Mr. Rutherfurd’s negroes were seized and taken into custody till I was ready to return with them. This apparent insult I resented extremely, till going up to Doctor Cobham’s I found my short prophecy in regard to the Negroes was already fulfilled and that an insurrection was hourly expected. There had been a great number of them discovered in the adjoining woods the night before, most of them with arms, and a fellow belonging to Doctor Cobham was actually killed. All parties are now united against the common enemies. Every man is in arms and the patroles going thro’ all the town, and searching every Negro’s house, to see they are all at home by nine at night. But what is most provoking, every mouth male and female is opened against Britain, her King and her abettors- here called the tories- tho’ the poor tories are likely to suffer, at least as much as any of them, and who were as ready to give their assistance to quell them as any independents amongst them. But whatever way this end, it will confirm the report I formerly mentioned to you past all contradiction. 

Kathryn Gehred  26:10

All right, so it seems like people have heard enough about these promises of freedom. There might actually be a insurrection, as she says, of who she calls the negroes, but enslaved people are already organizing to take advantage of this.

Ramin Ganeshram  26:27

So I have a thought about that though,

Kathryn Gehred  26:29

Yes?

Ramin Ganeshram  26:30

And my thought about that is this, were they, I mean, enslaved people had to take whatever opportunities they could, to have community, to meet with one another, to practice traditional religious practices, to simply see a spouse or a child who was enslaved on another plantation. And we don't know for a fact that this was truly an insurrection. It could have been any number of things. You could make an assumption that if it was mostly men, and it seems like it was yes. It could have been very likely. We can't prove that without a shadow of a doubt. Well, one thing is certainly true is that this terror and this fear, which I want to be clear, was a terror and a fear of European colonizers, both in the Caribbean and in the North American colonies, that could reach such extreme levels that the level of barbarism and cruelty over and above, you know, enslavement was astonishing, because they were outnumbered.

Kathryn Gehred  27:32

Yeah, there's this paranoia of the white planter class that they're surrounded by. And Virginia at this point was like 40% enslaved population that people who are on these large plantations are well, well, well, outnumbered by people that they know they are misusing. They know that enslaving somebody is going to lead them to resent you. And there is this absolute paranoia that you read in some of these letters, something like this proclamation seems to be bringing out, right, right? She's seems like she's writing this letter sort of from day to day, and there are updates that sort of take place as she's writing it.

Ramin Ganeshram  28:10

And I want to point out that she's quite self congratulatory. Excerpt this whole letter basically says I told you I was right. Yes, not only that, this would happen, oh, but once the real enemy shows up, you're all going to band together, aren't you, so I read that, like many people at the time, more or less felt like this isn't really going to go anywhere, because ultimately our real interests are the same, and when threatened, we're going to stick together. So that was interesting. So she goes on, and she's referring to this directive for her to take the enslaved people back to the plantation, which she says that she doesn't like. She resents that. And so she says, as

Janet Shaw  28:54

As I was afraid to venture up with only Negroes, I dispatched the boat with them, and a letter to Fanny, begging her to secure all their arms and come herself down to down. She is far from well: her father is as yet at Hunthill. Mr Neilson came down with me and presently went off to the Governor, so she has no white person with her, but our two Abigails. I expect her every moment. I go to sup with my friends on the hill, and return to sleep at the Doctor’s. I change my quarters every time I am in town, to please all my friends. To do the whole justice, they are very hospitable. Good evening to you. I will write again to morrow. I have an excellent apartment, and every body is too much engaged about themselves to mind what I am doing. As I was afraid to venture up with only Negroes, I dispatched the boat with them, and a letter to Fanny, begging her to secure all their arms and come herself down to down. She is far from well: her father is as yet at Hunthill. Mr Neilson came down with me and presently went off to the Governor, so she has no white person with her, but our two Abigails. I expect her every moment. I go to sup with my friends on the hill, and return to sleep at the Doctor’s. I change my quarters every time I am in town, to please all my friends. To do the whole justice, they are very hospitable. Good evening to you. I will write again to morrow. I have an excellent apartment, and every body is too much engaged about themselves to mind what I am doing. 

Kathryn Gehred  29:47

This, I think, is a really interesting section. So this is very much like the writing of a racist white woman at this time period. So she says she's afraid to travel with only enslaved people. Both. And she's writing to who's Fanny again?

Ramin Ganeshram  30:04

The daughter, you know, the three children of Mr. Rutherford, who she is helping to bring back from the United Kingdom to him, where he now lives in North Carolina, at an estate called Hunthill.

Kathryn Gehred  30:16

Okay, okay.

Ramin Ganeshram  30:17

And Fanny is the oldest daughter. So she's basically saying, you know, wherever they're staying is different from where her father is. He's still at the plantation, and she was by herself with her two abigails. The two female servants. Their name is on Abigail. Abigail was just a general term for a lady servant.

Kathryn Gehred  30:36

A lady had actually not heard that before, and that is so interesting.

Ramin Ganeshram  30:39

This, I find so interesting. So Abigail's was a common slang for a lady's maid, you know, an attendant, a maid of all work, not dissimilar to the very racist way Irish female servants were generally referred to as Bridget's in the mid 19th century and early 20th century.

Kathryn Gehred  31:02

Wow! And then just her little bit where she's like, I have an excellent apartment she's talking about. She's by herself. Everybody's too engaged about themselves to worry about me. I'll just sit here and write my little diary. She's all alone in her nice little apartment, visiting people.

Ramin Ganeshram  31:18

Also, this thing that I spoke about before, where she was like, I have to change my quarters every time in town to please all my friends. Everybody wants me to stay with them. And then she says, no one is really engaged in what I'm doing, which I think is so funny, like, which is it, lady?

Kathryn Gehred  31:33

Everybody wants me to stay, but once I'm there, they just leave me All right, so here's the last paragraph,

Janet Shaw  31:42

After a sleepless night, to which the mosquitoes contributed more than my fears of the Negroes, I am sat down by the first peep of day to inform you of what further happened yesterday. I told you I was going to sup at the hill, which is at the other extremity of the town. Here I found the affair of the Negroes justly attributed to the cause I formerly mentioned. Vizt that of falsifying the King’s proclamation, for tho’ neither they nor I had seen it, we were convinced it was in a style the reverse of what was given out. Our time passed so agreeably that it was now too late to venture so far without some male protector, and as all the Negroes were locked up, I therefore waited till the Midnight patrol arrived, the commander of which was a tory, and my particular acquaintance. Under his protection therefore I marched off at the head of the party stopping at the different houses in our way to examine if the Negroes were at home. For God’s sake! Draw a picture of your friend in this situation and see if ‘tis possible to know me. Oh! I shall make a glorious knapsack-bearer. You have formed a very wrong idea of my delicacy; I find I can put it on and off like any piece of dress. But to proceed with my Mid-night march. While the men went into the houses, I stayed without with the commander of the party, who took that opportunity to assure me, he believed the whole was a trick intended in the first place to get those who had not before taken up arms to do it now and form an association for the safety of the town. What further design they had, he could not tell, but made not the least doubt it was for some sinister purpose this farce was carried on. That poor Cobham had lost a valuable slave, and the poor fellow his life without the least reason, he was certain; for that it was a fact well known to almost everybody that he met a Mistress every night in the opposite wood, and that the wench being kept by her Master, was forced to carry on the intrigue with her black lover with great secrecy, which was the reason the fellow was so anxious to conceal himself; that the very man who shot him knew this, and had watched him. My hypothesis is however that the Negroes will revolt. I bade my friend good night and found Mrs Cobham in a terrible huff, from the idea I was not to come back that night. She is so much affected by the fate of her Negro, that she is almost as great a tory as her husband, which was not lately the case. But here comes the Coffee, farewell. If Fanny come down, I will write again from this. 

Kathryn Gehred  34:31

This is just like an incredible paragraph to me. There's so much that's going on here. So she goes from talking about that there was an insurrection that they had found a group of men all armed, that they were forced to shoot somebody to there was one enslaved man who everybody knew would go visit his mistress at night, and that somebody took advantage of this sort of fear about an uprising to shoot and kill him. That's how it comes across to me. And so there actually wasn't an insurrection. Everybody's getting worked up. And even the leader of this group of these sort of the enforcers of this martial law, weren't really afraid of of anything like that, and they knew enough about the situation and the people involved that he calls it a farce to her.

Ramin Ganeshram  35:18

Which also adds another level to this idea of this enslaved man, enslaved by this guy, Cobham, who is known to have had a wife, a partner, very likely elsewhere, and he would go to visit her at night, being effectively lynched, hunted down and killed under the skies of Well, we thought he was potentially one of the instructionists who you've just said is a farce and isn't a real thing, yes. So essentially, if you believe it's a farce and not a real thing, you are stating fully that this is a lynching, essentially.

Kathryn Gehred  35:54

Yeah. And that really struck me, and it sort of occurred to me about how this paranoia that the white people have about the people that they enslave, how there's all this language during the American Revolution, of how the British are repressing and destroying all the rights of white American colonists, whereas meanwhile, this is an incredibly enforced martial Law, with curfews, with patrols going around at midnight, armed patrols going around to people's houses. I mean, this is basically like a reign of terror against the enslaved people in North Carolina, and that's just seen as sort of par for the course. But it's so obvious. The double standard is so obvious that I was just losing my mind reading this paragraph and then the complicity of this white woman traveling around with the enforcers, I think, adds another her sentence where she says, For God's sake, draw a picture of your friend in this situation and see if tis possible to know me. Oh, I shall make a glorious knapsack bearer. So she's making this little joke. Like, haha, little me, this delicate woman is traveling around with these military enforcers, these proto Klansmen, this local like militia terrorizing people, and she's just writing about it literally as a little joke. Like, this is just a little funny scene for her.

Ramin Ganeshram  37:20

And also the disingenuity that gives to everything she's written before. I was terrified. I didn't want to travel with enslaved people. I can't do that. Oh, but you can gallivant around at the head of a patrol, because, let's be clear, what would have happened if something quote, unquote untoward in the eyes of these militia, these patrols went down, there would have been shooting, there would have been violence, there would have been bloodshed, it would have been chaos. And certainly she knew that. So which is it that you're afraid to travel with enslaved people, but you are not afraid to be marching along at the head of a group of armed men, where things could go very wrong very quickly. Disingenuous, right? Disingenuous.

Kathryn Gehred  38:08

She says the mosquitoes contributed more than my fears of the Negroes. What are you talking about?

Ramin Ganeshram  38:14

Yeah, you just you work great to travel with them. It's a very Gone with the Wind moment that's seen in Gone with the Wind, where they're all sewing or whatever they're doing knitting while the men in the family go out to enforce to basically raid a camp of freed people because of an implication that a white woman had been attacked as she wrote through the camp. Yeah, they're all sitting at home waiting while this attack is going on. This scene reminds me of in a lot of ways.

Kathryn Gehred  38:47

This is just such a telling paragraph about what's going on in North Carolina at this time, the power dynamics between patriots, Tories, enslaved people, white women are involved in this weird she gets to be the delicate little princess being escorted at night, but also inflicting terror on the enslaved people in these houses. She's part of it.

Ramin Ganeshram  39:11

A couple of things about this passage that I find so interesting, in terms of both her cognitive dissonance and also, again, the disingenuity, first of all is that she says, poor column has lost a valuable slave, and then as an afterthought, and the poor fellow his life without the least reason. Like that's the afterthought, because it's almost and this goes back to our original discussion. Was she writing this down for posterity, for possible publication? You know, these little passages, these little lines are what further cement my idea as we're talking about it. They're probably yes, because that's kind of the qualifier you use when you don't want to seem completely abhorrent and horrible. Oh yes, and the guy was lost his life for no reason. That's like that. Oh yeah. It's not just about this album. Lost his human property. Poor, poor guy. So that's that's really interesting to me. The other is that when she's talking about, you know, the commander of this militia group, he's basically letting her know, yeah, we all pretty much figure the proclamation was twisted to kind of scare these would be rebels into leaving off their rebellion, to calming down and to giving up. Well, that's interesting, if you know that's the case, why are you hunting people down in the woods who you probably know are meeting for whatever purposes, right? Why are you doing these patrols. Why are you carrying through this premise that there's insurrections about to happen among the enslaved community, and you have to put it down where you have just said, Yeah, we know it was a trick. It was put about to scare the wood.

Kathryn Gehred  40:56

Yes, I'm also super curious about what was actually going on with the man who was enslaved by Cobham was going to visit maybe his wife at night, or something like that, but the fact that they had to do it so secretly, and then she mentions later Mrs. Cobham in a terrible huff and being so much affected by the fate of her Negro I feel like there's more to the story that's going on as to why this man was lynched, that she, as like an outsider, is able to pick up on, but just the little hints that she drops, it sounds like there's more in this relationship that is going on.

Ramin Ganeshram  41:31

The thing that occurred to me, and again, this is just a supposition, but as to why she, Mrs. Cobham, would be so affected, you could see that the destruction of the human property this poor enslaved man of carbons is a message to Cobham on some level that may not be related to potential revolution. It could be some sort of business squabble. It could be a land squabble. It'd be, who knows, but clearly, because in this society, it is Cobham to whom this injurious act was committed, not the poor man who lost his life. It's a message to him in some way, which makes me think this is why she was so affected. It's a threat. It is a continuation of an effort to destroy his business. Whatever it is, it's certainly not because this enslaved man had been killed, in my opinion.

Kathryn Gehred  42:27

Oh yeah, no, I agree. There's something else going on. There's just a little insight into how these societies actually worked. If there was sort of one thing that you want my listeners to take away from this document, what is it?

Ramin Ganeshram  42:39

It's really in line with what we've been talking about, which is that you have to really read this carefully to understand that there's a subtext, I think that there is a desire, and we know this of modern people, to say the things that are stated in these Letters, in these journals, in these documents are simply people of their time stating things of their time. But this is a great document because the fact that she kind of is very clearly disingenuous, that she is self aggrandizing, that there is conflicting stories, and what she's reporting as what she believes, lets us know that it's not simply a person of their time. There is a sense of right doing and wrong doing embedded in this. And so she's making a choice to be on a certain side, and that's what I would like people to really take away. And you might have to read this a few times over to really get that and understand the personality of this individual. I think that's incredibly important. The other thing with a letter like this, and I say this from my work with this document and these letters with respect to understandings for food ways and the commercial aspect of food products in the West, Indies is that these documents are tricky because they do provide valuable information with an extreme bias. And so, for example, with the food work that I do, it seems like how much bias can you embed into stating what was on the table, but you can. So instead of separating out facts and using these documents for what you can get out of them, I think that they're useful documents as abhorrent as they are, in many cases, they're still very useful documents, given that in the people that she's talking about at large, the enslaved community had no opportunity to speak for themselves. Her bias speaking for them is is not great, but it does give us some. Some points to work from. I guess that's the thing I would say, is read these documents, not so much for their accuracy and the assessment of the situation, but for the bread crumbs they give you. Try to find the truth elsewhere.

Kathryn Gehred  45:13

Absolutely, I've been having a lot of conversations about the things that are hidden from the archives and things that live in the archives, and I think that reading documents like this, but with the knowledge and understanding that she's trying to prevent her readers she's not thinking about enslaved people as like full human beings, and she's actively trying to prevent her readers from thinking about them in the same way. But if you read about it from the perspective of the people that she's trying to dehumanize, then you can still get something really valuable out of it. Thank you so much for bringing this diary to my attention. I think this is so fascinating, and now I want to go back and read more of it, and read about the foods she's eating and things like that. But I just thought this was such a rich text, and I had never heard of this before. So thank you so much for sharing it with me.

Ramin Ganeshram  45:57

You're so welcome.

Kathryn Gehred  45:59

For my listeners, feel free to check out the original document, the link to it in the show notes, and I am as ever your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.

Kathryn Gehred  46:15

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I'm Kathryn Gehred the creator and host of this podcast, Jeanette Patrick and Jim Ambuske are the executive producers. Special thanks to Gillian Macdonald for reading today's document. Thanks to Virginia Humanities for allowing me to use the recording studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend and be sure to rate and review the series in your podcast app. For more great history podcasts, head to r2studios.org. Thanks for listening.