Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

And so I stood my ground, though it might be better to say I swayed upon it, for my mind was aswirl with such a diversity of passions and worries that I had to clutch at Joey’s hard shoulder to keep from falling.

Mr. Jeff was walking toward the man with the shackles. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. Not two minutes previously, he had been standing beside Joey and me, telling the crowd inside the stable that although he had gotten bids from Georgia farmers, he would not allow “my people” to go to anyone but “good Virginians.” And now here he was, walking toward these grim and unwashed men—“good Virginians” presumably, whose virtue was exemplified by the shackles, guns and whip they carried.

“Welcome!” he said. “Welcome!” And in a voice that couldn’t have been more amiable were he speaking to dearest friends, he told them that the “viewing” wouldn’t begin for another hour but that they should feel free to look around the house, the entire contents of which would be put up for sale in the coming days.

It is happening, I thought as I watched this scene. Nothing can stop it now. And yet, despite these asseverations, I simply could not believe that Mr. Jeff, who had always seemed the quintessence of decency and good cheer, should be a party to this impending monstrosity. As Mr. Jefferson reached the extreme of his old age, he had become far less active in the affairs of his plantation, with the result that his overseers had been exercising more and more control, and many of them had been unable to suppress their intrinsic cruelty. On being installed as steward by his grandfather, Mr. Jeff had dismissed the most abusive overseers and encouraged the remainder to exercise a policy of fairness and restraint. Cruelty was not banished from the plantation. In fact, Mr. Jeff himself had presided over a thrashing, but life definitely became easier for all the slaves. And so when word got around about how deeply Mr. Jefferson was in debt, most people believed that Mr. Jeff would find a way to discharge that debt with minimal pain. I had myself. There was even talk that he had come up with a scheme whereby enough money might be raised through a lottery to enable Mr. Jefferson to free all of his slaves upon his death. But absolutely no one had ever imagined that Monticello would simply cease to exist. So here we all were, staggering in disbelief and terror, and here was our supposed savior in congenial conversation with two men sure to bring misery to any number of us.

After his first glance, Joey had turned his back on Mr. Jeff and the men and was calling out to his wife, who was not visible in the central part of the stable and must have been huddling in one of the stalls to keep warm. Hearing no reply, he called again and again, “Edy! Edy! Edy!” his voice growing ever more worried and shrill.

Joey’s anxiety seemed to awaken the fear in the stable. Children began to cry. A woman called out, “Please, Jesus!”—it was Evelina, who had cared for my Beverly and Harriet when they were babies and who now had three young girls of her own. Her cry of despair was answered by others from around the room: “Help me, Lord!” “Precious Savior!” Slowly people began to emerge from the stalls and get up off of the benches, buckets and heaps of hay where they had been sitting, and crowd toward the fenced door.

“All right!” said Mr. Byrd, who, with Mr. Henderson, was standing guard outside the door — each of them holding a stout staff about five feet long. Mr. Jeff had stationed other overseers carrying firearms around the back and sides of the stable, so as not to “unduly disturb” the people inside with the sight of their weapons. “All right!” Mr. Byrd said again, putting his staff between Joey and the fence, as if to pry him away. “You best be going, Fossett.”

“I’ve got to speak to my wife.”

“You best be going,” said Mr. Byrd. “We ain’t got no time for such carrying-on.”

“I’ve got to speak to her,” said Joey. “Just let me speak to her!”

By now a crowd had gathered at the fence, and from the back of it Edy called, “I’m here, Joe! I’m here!”

Mr. Henderson banged his staff repeatedly against the stable door, waved with his other hand and shouted, “All right, everybody! Just you calm down! There’s no cause for consternation. Just go back to where you was sitting!”

“Edy!” Joey called out.

“I asked you nicely,” said Mr. Byrd, now brandishing his staff like a club.

“Please, Mr. Byrd,” I said. “He only wants to comfort his wife and children.”

“Let him speak!” called a firm male voice from the crowd inside the stable.

Mr. Henderson was now pounding on the door with his staff as if he wanted to break it down. “That’s enough, now!”

“You see?” Mr. Byrd said. “Look at the trouble you started!” He jabbed Joey in the ribs. “You best get away now, or you gonna find yourself on the other side of that fence.”

Joey didn’t utter a sound but looked Mr. Byrd straight in the eyes, trembling with rage.

Mr. Byrd raised his staff high into the air, as if he were going to smash it down on Joey’s head.

Without thinking, I grabbed the raised arm and cried, “Please! No!”

Mr. Byrd shoved me aside and shouted, “Out of my way, Miss Sally!” Then he swung the staff down hard on the frozen ground between Joey and me. “I don’t care what Mr. Jefferson said! Or Mrs. Randolph! Or anybody! You cause trouble here, you gonna find yourself inside that fence!”

Hearing the commotion, a pair of overseers had come around from the right side of the stable — both carrying muskets — and a man with a blunderbuss was standing in front of Mr. Broomfield’s wagon.

I was so filled with fury at that moment that I wanted to grab Mr. Byrd’s staff right out of his hand. There were one hundred and twenty-six people inside that stable and only some ten armed men outside — including the men with the shackles. If all of those inside rushed that makeshift fence, they could have burst right through it. Certainly some of them would have been shot, but they had the white men so grossly outnumbered they could easily have overpowered them, taken their guns and headed off to freedom in the north. In my rage, nothing seemed simpler to me.

As I stood glaring at Mr. Byrd, the crowd quieted and Mr. Henderson stopped banging his staff against the wall. A voice called out from behind me, “I’m sorry, everybody.”

It was Mr. Jeff, walking back from the men with shackles — who had their weapons at the ready and a grim eagerness in their eyes.

“I know how you feel,” said Mr. Jeff, his voice unsteady with emotion. “I, too, wish that this day had never come. Mr. Jefferson and I did everything we could to prevent it, but we were defeated by the banks and by some very bad luck. And now that this terrible day is upon us, all that we can do is try to get through it in the best way possible. I know that nothing I can say will take away your worries and sorrow. And I am sorry about that. I promise you that I will do everything in my power to make sure you go to the very best masters possible. But the only way I’m going to be able to do that is if this auction proceeds in a calm and orderly fashion. If you show yourselves as the good people I know you are, then good people are going to want”—he fell silent a long moment before he finally swallowed and finished his sentence—“to take you home.” He swallowed again. “I am sorry. I wish there was another way.”

I was standing just behind Mr. Jeff, and I wanted to jab my fingernails into his pink neck. He had ceased being anyone I knew, let alone my own nephew and a man I had liked and respected. He was evil incarnate, and I wanted to drag him to the ground and stamp on his face.