Celia, a Slave Read online

  These congressional debates over slavery in Missouri rocked the nation. Representative James Tallmadge of New York had joined the issue with a resolution amending legislation to grant Missouri statehood by requiring that Missouri prohibit the further introduction of slavery and free all slave children born within the state upon their twenty-fifth birthday. The Tallmadge amendment touched off a furor in the halls of Congress, especially as northern Congressmen now began to question the morality of slavery. Southerners, among them Senator William Smith of South Carolina, responded by beginning to develop a positive defense of what was their own peculiar institution. For more than a year the debate raged, in state legislatures, in party caucuses, in the partisan newspapers, in the House and Senate. Thoughtful men, North and South, Jeffersonian Republican and Federalist alike, immediately sensed the gravity of the debates and feared for the future of the nation. An alarmed John Quincy Adams saw the debates as “a mere preamble—a title page to a great tragic volume.” In the South, an aging Thomas Jefferson wrote that the Missouri controversy “like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the death knell of the Union.” Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Morril, William Hunter, and others searched anxiously for a workable compromise in this emotionally charged atmosphere of Congress.1

  Missourians who had emigrated from southeastern slave states, bringing their human chattels with them, were appalled that congressional action threatened to deprive them of a form of property perfectly legal in half the states of the Union. The newspapers of the territory spoke with one voice: Congress should not place restrictions upon Missouri’s right to enter the Union. Even some in Missouri, especially in the St. Louis area, who saw slavery as an evil that could be gradually eliminated, opposed congressional efforts to force Missouri to accept gradual abolition as a condition of gaining admission to the Union. Throughout 1819, Missourians condemned the Tallmadge amendment at mass meetings, public dinners, and even at religious gatherings. Thomas Hart Benton increased his popularity with fiery denouncements of the restrictionists, and Missouri’s citizens drank toasts urging the next Congress to welcome Tallmadge’s supporters with “a dark room, a straight waistcoat and a thin water gruel diet.” A few opponents of slavery in the St. Louis area braved prevailing sentiments, holding a public meeting to endorse the Tallmadge amendment, but most who held such sentiments kept them to themselves.2

  In this national crisis the desire to preserve the Union proved stronger than the sectional differences over slavery, and a compromise was negotiated. In 1821 Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and slavery’s expansion into the Louisiana Territory was limited to that area south of Missouri. In a controversy that had rehearsed practically every aspect of future debates over slavery, northern congressmen had bowed to the South’s demands and therefore made compromise possible. Not only had the South gained additional territory for the expansion of slavery, it had also acquired federal recognition of the legitimacy of the institution. Perhaps more significantly, the compromise and the defeat of the Tallmadge amendment gave notice of the South’s commitment to the permanence of slavery. Slavery, the compromise asserted, was not merely a necessary evil, an institution that could be eliminated within a generation or two, or whose fate could be determined by a congressional majority. Rather, slavery was an institution fundamental to the existence of southern society, a permanent part of the southern way of life.3

  The people of Missouri, adamantly opposed to congressional efforts to force them to abolish slavery, cheered the passage of the compromise. It is very likely that Robert Newsom and his neighbors in Callaway County were among the celebrants. They may not have fully understood the significance of the Missouri debates, or the complex legal and political concepts advanced by the constitutional theorists on both sides, but they certainly would have understood that the compromise enabled them to pursue their dreams of economic prosperity—dreams that had been formulated in the slaveholding states of the southeast, dreams that included the acquiring of human chattels. And so, with Missouri safely in the Union and the immediate future of the institution of slavery assured, Robert Newsom and his fellow residents of Callaway County set out to act upon their dreams.

  They were remarkably successful. The agricultural prosperity achieved by residents of Callaway County and by the Robert Newsom family, despite the fact that none of the southern cash crops were grown in large quantities, depended heavily on slave labor. Flourishing as a result of the hard work and driving ambition of its residents, Callaway quickly became one of the new state’s leading slave-holding counties. By 1850 slaveholding was widespread, and slaves made up approximately 40 percent of the county’s population. By the end of the next decade, Callaway ranked fourth among Missouri’s counties in the number of slaves held. The actual pattern of slave ownership reflected the nature of an agricultural economy dominated by farmers, rather than planters, which was typical of Missouri, although the state had some large plantations. Although over half the county’s white families in 1850 held slaves, relatively few individuals held large numbers of slaves. Of the county’s 809 slaveowners in 1850, 706 held fewer than ten slaves; 489 owners, or more than half, held four slaves or less. Only 102 slaveowners held ten or more slaves. Although slaves were also engaged in a variety of nonagricultural tasks, and some were owned by individuals in nonfarm occupations, the majority of Callaway’s slaves were owned by farmers. Slaves frequently worked alongside their masters in the fields, from which they produced much of the county’s rich agricultural harvest. Quite clearly, slave ownership was economically advantageous for the farmers of Callaway, for census data demonstrate that each adult slave owned increased the output of the family farm.4

  Thus it is hardly surprising that Robert Newsom, like many of Callaway County’s farmers, invested some of his newly acquired capital in human chattels. It was a logical investment, since a Callaway farmer could readily deduce from the experience of his neighbors that the purchase of slaves held the potential both to increase the production of his farm and to enhance his social standing within the community. By the time the census taker arrived at his farm in 1850, Newsom had acquired five slaves: four adult males and a five-year-old boy.5 Sometime soon afterward, probably within the same year, Newsom would decide to purchase his sixth slave. It would prove a momentous decision.

  Although slave ownership would definitely have tended to increase his social status, economic gain appears the motive for Newsom’s slave purchases before 1850. Except for the five-year-old boy, all of the slaves Newsom held at the time of that year’s census were unquestionably purchased to increase the farm’s productivity. They were prime hands: young men ranging in age from eighteen to thirty-one years. The presence of the five-year-old boy is more difficult to explain. Young slave children usually resided with their mothers who were primarily responsible for their care. Neither adult male slaves nor white slaveowning families would have ordinarily been engaged in caring for a slave child of this age, although it is possible the child was the son of one of the male slaves. From Newsom’s perspective, however, the child’s potential value would have been offset by the cost of his care until his labor could be used productively, or until he could be sold for a price based upon his ability as a laborer. The ownership of so young a slave would not have contributed significantly to Newsom’s social status.

  Such was not the case with his next purchase, a teenage girl named Celia, whom Newsom purchased in neighboring Audrain County. How Newsom came to know she was for sale we do not know—perhaps through an ad in the Fulton Telegraph, perhaps from a flyer posted in Fulton or at a crossroads store, perhaps by word of mouth. What is certain is that Newsom’s reasons for acquiring Celia were different from those that motivated his previous slave purchases. Newsom was not seeking a field hand or a domestic servant to aid his daughters with the drudgery of daily household operations. Rather, subsequent events reveal that he had set out to purchase a re
placement for his wife, dead now for nearly a year.

  Prosperity, some standing in the community, and the support of his children, who were now grown and living either with him or nearby, did not satisfy Newsom. Virginia, his oldest daughter, had probably assumed the duties of mistress of the house upon her mother’s death, a task she very likely shared with her younger sister, Mary. However successful they were in assuming the responsibilities of running the Newsom household, Newsom still lacked a wife. A healthy sixty years of age, Newsom needed more than a hostess and manager of household affairs; he required a sexual partner. Newsom seems to have deliberately chosen to purchase a young slave girl to fulfill this role, a choice made the more convenient by the ability to present the girl as a domestic servant purchased for the benefit of his daughters. The population demographics of Callaway County indicate that Newsom should have been able to obtain a bride from among the white female residents. Although Callaway County’s white population in 1850 included slightly more males than females, the differential was so slight that it seems unlikely a prosperous farmer and respected community member such as Newsom would have encountered difficulty in finding a second wife.6 It would not have been unusual for Newsom to select a bride from a less affluent family, and neither would it have been unusual for the chosen woman’s family to give their subsequent blessing to such a union. As to whether Newsom’s reasons for failing to remarry were social, economic, or purely personal, we can only guess. What is known is that from the moment he purchased Celia, Newsom regarded her as both his property and his concubine.

  In that same year, perhaps indeed at the very time that Robert Newsom set out on his trip to purchase Celia, the nation and the state of Missouri were once again embroiled in a bitter debate over slavery. Precisely as had been the case thirty years earlier, when Newsom was struggling to carve a farm from Callaway’s virgin forests, the nation was bitterly divided over the issue of slavery in the territories. Northern congressmen again sought to prevent the spread of slavery into territories gained as a result of the Mexican War, and to assure the admission of California into the Union as a free state. Led by John C. Calhoun, southern radicals prepared to dissolve the Union rather than see slavery prohibited in the western territories, for which soldiers from the South, most of them volunteers, had fought and died. Throughout the spring and summer the debate would rage in the House and Senate, until Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Stephen Douglas, Howell Cobb, and others could hammer out a compromise.

  Once again the people of Missouri were caught up in a national debate over slavery. Although this time they were not at the center of the debate, Missouri and its people were more deeply divided over the issue than they had been thirty years earlier. In St. Louis especially, there was little interest in the further expansion of slavery, whereas representatives of the large slaveholding counties along the Missouri River strongly opposed any effort to restrain the spread of the institution. A bitter fight erupted within the ranks of the state’s Democratic party, as proslavery David Atchinson opposed his fellow Senator Thomas Hart Benton. The grand old man of Missouri’s Democratic party and an ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson throughout his career, Benton had fought all efforts to disrupt the Union. He was opposed to the further expansion of slavery into the western territories, but his staunch support of the Union made him receptive to compromise. The rift in Democratic ranks would cost Benton his senate seat, secure Atchinson’s position as spokesman for the state’s proslavery Democrats, and create a permanent division within the party.7

  When Robert Newsom set out on his journey to Audrain County to purchase Celia, he was probably aware of the debate over the expansion of slavery into the Mexican cession then tearing asunder the state’s Democratic party. Such an awareness was practically guaranteed by the attention focused on the issue by local newspapers, by practicing politicians, and by those members of the general public who enjoyed following a rousing political debate in which they had some stake. As a prosperous slaveholder in a predominantly agricultural county, it is also likely that he favored Atchinson’s uncompromising proslavery position over that of Benton. It is unlikely, though, that Newsom saw the political debates over slavery in the territories as having any practical bearing on his plans to purchase a female slave. He probably made the trip by wagon, as he had to travel a relatively long distance. Audrain County bordered Callaway to the north, and, since Newsom lived in southern Callaway, the journey would have covered approximately forty miles and required at least a day’s ride each way.

  The reasons Celia’s former owner decided to put her up for sale are unknown, as is the owner’s identity. All that is certain is that sometime in 1850 Newsom purchased Celia, who was at the time approximately fourteen years of age. Perhaps she had been born and reared on the estate of her previous owner, perhaps she was torn from her family or from another community to which she had belonged. Of the details of Celia’s life before she was purchased by Newsom, we know nothing. Whatever her circumstances, she might well have faced her transfer to a new master with fear and foreboding. If so, her worst fears were soon confirmed.

  On his return to Callaway County, Newsom raped Celia, and by that act at once established and defined the nature of the relationship between the master and his newly acquired slave. The emotional response of the master and his slave to this violent act lie outside the methods of historical inquiry. Nevertheless, the historical record can be used to draw some reasonable conclusions. It is possible, even probable, that Newsom felt no remorse for his act. We know that his rape of Celia was no isolated incident, the act of a demented individual, an event which, had it been immediately discovered, would have raised a storm of moral outrage among white southerners, including the residents of Callaway County. Rather, recent historical scholarship has confirmed abolitionist charges that slave women were frequently abused by white men. One historian writing on the significance of rape by whites as a determinant of black female behavior has observed that “virtually every known ninteenth-century female slave narrative contains a reference to, at some juncture, the ever present threat and reality of rape.” Others have shown not only that female slaves were frequently raped by masters, but that white southerners were aware that the sexual abuse of female slaves was widespread. Indeed, the practice of white male slaveholders using female slaves for their sexual gratification had its defenders, though the practice was never condoned by public opinion.8 Thus while it is impossible to know the thoughts of Robert Newsom at the time he raped his newly purchased slave, it is entirely possible that he felt that his ownership of the young Celia entitled him to use her for his sexual pleasure. Whatever Newsom’s thoughts about the matter, the sexual nature of the relationship between master and slave, once established, would never change.

  Celia’s probable emotional response to Newsom’s attack upon her is suggested both by research carried out with modern victims of rape and by recent historical scholarship. The historical record indicates that this was very likely Celia’s initial sexual experience. For a number of reasons, including the slaves’ own standards of morality, sexual activity among female slaves under fifteen years of age was uncommon.9 Regardless of her previous sexual experience, however, Celia’s rape by her new master would have been a psychologically devastating experience, one which would have had a profound effect upon her. Modern research indicates that rape victims experience a variety of responses: fear, rage, an overpowering sense of violation, sometimes helplessness, and a loss of self-esteem. The evidence suggests that while the victim’s response is determined by her unique circumstances, most victims go through several stages before coming to terms with the fact of the rape and restructuring their lives.10Celia, however, had no opportunity to come to terms with a single incidence of rape, or to restructure her life. Life for Celia would entail continual sexual exploitation by her master.

  The introduction of Celia into the Newsom household and the nature of her relationship to Robert, which continued throughout the five year
s she remained on the farm and would have been difficult to conceal, must have provoked reactions from other members of the family. It is possible that Newsom managed to conceal his relationship with Celia from the family. Or, family members might have chosen to ignore the relationship, to convince themselves that it did not exist. However, given the physical immediacy of life on a farm and the long-term nature of the relationship, neither of these possibilities is very likely. Virginia presumably experienced strong reactions to Celia’s presence, as did the younger, unmarried Mary. Unfortunately, there exists no record of their reaction to the intrusion of this young woman into their father’s household, or to her obvious role as his sexual partner. Recent scholarship, however, indicates that the response of Newsom’s daughters to Celia was probably expressed in one of two forms. Anger and resentment was a characteristic response of white women in slaveholding households when faced with the possibility of a relationship between a male in the household and a female slave. Frequently, however, southern white women were powerless to prevent the actions of male family members, a circumstance that sometimes led them to vent their anger at white males upon the slave. Certainly neither Mary nor Virginia was in a position to change her father’s conduct toward his slave, even had she so desired. Mary was still an adolescent herself, totally dependent upon her father, and Virginia had three children of her own to consider. She had little choice but to remain on her father’s farm, regardless of her feelings about his behavior. On the other hand, the daughters may have seen their father as victim, Celia’s unwitting conquest, since many southerners viewed black women as naturally sensual and promiscuous. Understandably, this view was more frequently expressed by white males, though it was also held by at least some white females and black males.11