The View from a Drawbridge

This story is a short one. But it requires a long setup, and then afterwards I provide extra details if you’re interested.  So, bear with me.

The Setup

Once upon a time (about a year and a half before I started writing this blog and looking at all unique experiences as potential blog fodder), I had an unexpected opportunity to spend the summer in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, operating the Ben Sawyer Bridge. From there you could see Charleston, so whenever I had the day off, I would explore that gorgeous old city.

That summer was a strange one for me. I have never thrived in blistering heat, for starters. In addition, I had no idea where my life was going. I had lost a lot of money in a bad investment. My finances were circling the drain. And I didn’t know it at the time, but I was being cheated on. All I knew was that something wasn’t right.

To add to my inner turmoil, I have very mixed emotions about Charleston. It’s one of the prettiest cities in America in my opinion, but it has a very dark history. It was the largest slave port in the United States by far, and it is close to historic plantations that should actually have been called forced labor camps, where slaves could expect to experience brutality on an incomprehensible scale.

Throughout the l800’s, the majority of the population of Charleston (and in fact the majority of the population of the entire state of South Carolina) was black. If you live in a place where the bulk of the population is experiencing extreme abuse, that makes for a very tense atmosphere. And the abusers themselves would not have escaped that tension, either (although I have no pity for them).

Slave owners and whites in general would have had to operate under a crushing amount of cognitive dissonance to live like that, so it’s safe to assume that those in power were mentally warped. (Most of us have had the luxury of living in blissful ignorance of that feeling until 2016 rose up and slapped us in the face, yet I’m sure we have only gotten a mere sliver of a taste of what South Carolina felt like in the 1800’s.) That feeling that the inmates are running the asylum, too, makes for a tense atmosphere.

As an autistic person, my spidey-sense for tension is, unfortunately, always turned up to full blast. Whether you believe in that stuff or not, I’m convinced that historical tensions have left a residue on Charleston. It coats all the beautiful architecture with a taint that can never be fully washed away.

So, on the day in question, I was already experiencing inner and outer turmoil. It felt as though my nerves were on the surface of my skin. Now that you have a sense of my mindset, here’s. . .

The Story

I decided to visit the historic Aiken-Rhett House, a beautiful antebellum home that was built in 1820 and owned mainly by a former Governor of South Carolina, William Aiken Jr. It is historically significant because it’s one of the few homes in Charleston in which the outbuildings, mainly the domain of slaves, are intact.

The interior of the house itself has been preserved in an “as found” state. In other words, it hasn’t been restored. You’re looking at what’s left of the actual paint and wallpaper and light fixtures and furnishings from the 1850’s. That was disconcerting in and of itself, because most historic homes that I’ve toured have been restored and beautifully appointed. But in this house, there’s no separation between you and what’s real and original, albeit deteriorated. Somehow that makes it more real. While the passage of time is quite obvious, you can tell that the Aikens lived in grand style, indeed. They even took a grand tour of Europe at one point and brought back many pieces of art that are still on display.

To maintain this opulent lifestyle, the Aikens, at the height of their slave ownership, housed 19 slaves in the outbuildings out back. While those slaves probably lived under much better conditions than Aikens’ 839 field slaves did, they still experienced far from enviable conditions.

I got to look at their housing. Each family, regardless of how many members, was allotted one windowless room that must have been stiflingly hot in the summer and cold and damp in the winter. These rooms were in a row, almost like horse stalls. Each room let out into the hallway, which, at least, did have windows.

These slaves most likely worked 18 hour days and had to be on call 24 hours a day to respond to their owner’s slightest whim. And let’s not forget that they lived in tension-filled Charleston, where it was common practice to “rent out” your slaves to others. In exchange, all the money they earned would go to you.

So, yeah. Not good. That was all on my mind while I took this tour.

When I entered the warming kitchen, where the slaves had to toil in order to keep the Aikens fed, the hair stood up on my neck. I mean, it was a really, really bad feeling place. The walls were crumbling, the place was dark and had low ceilings and they had to keep the ovens on constantly, even in the midst of the blistering Charleston summers. I could feel the stress, the urgency, and the despair of seeing decent food that you’d never get to eat yourself.

It’s hard to explain, but in that room I felt the entire system. The evil. The pain. The helplessness. The fear. The anger. The greed. All of it felt like one huge, hot, heavy, condensed ball of enslavement closing in on me. This was worse than feeling as if the place were haunted by spirits with unfinished business. (That old trope.) It was more like being force-fed a situational awareness that was straight out of hell. That room was imbued with negativity.

I had to get out of there. I practically ran into the courtyard and tried to gather myself. My heart was pounding.

Before leaving, I took this courtyard picture. When I got back to my extended stay hotel, I looked at the image and nearly deleted it, because of the tourist who had blundered into the shot from the right. (She, too, seemed to want to get out of that warming kitchen in a hurry.)

Then I looked closer at the photo. That figure in the center window must be a fellow tourist. Right? Right?

The Extra Details

William Aiken Jr is a bit of an enigma. Not only did he serve as governor of South Carolina 20 years before the Civil War, but he also served in the US House of Representatives for seven years while the slavery debate that would spark that war was at its height. He owned the historic house in Charleston, but he also had a plantation, Jehossee Island, which was one of the largest rice plantations in the state. He had 853 slaves total, and was one of the 5 biggest slaveholders in American History.

How did he treat his slaves? It’s hard to know, but based on the living conditions of the house slaves, I can’t imagine the horrors the field slaves faced.

I did come across an interesting article about a study that was done of pre-Civil War medical journals, which indicates that slaves were subjected to cruel medical experiments much more often than we have been led to believe. In it was the following paragraph:

“The physician and slave owner William Aiken of Winnsboro, North Carolina, reported an 1852 experiment on a slave named Lucinda, who suffered from a bony growth around her right eye. Aiken and other doctors disfigured her by boring holes in her head — without chloroform, a gas that was used at the time for anesthesia — to remove the growth.”

I asked the Historic Charleston Foundation if this was “our man”, and they replied that it was not. However, this torturer was Governor Aiken’s nephew and namesake. It’s not a stretch to think that if that family tree could produce such twisted fruit, the Governor could have shared that total, horrific disdain for his slaves as well.

We do know that one of “our” Mr. Aiken’s house slaves, Dorcas, had her first child at age 11. That’s horrific. But she was educated enough to run the Col. Shaw Colored Orphan Asylum after emancipation, and could sign her name, so Aiken either was oblivious to her illegal education or chose to look the other way. (It sounds like quite a bit of looking the other way was going on if Dorcas was impregnated at such a tender age. I suspect a DNA test of Dorcas’ descendants might prove very embarrassing to the Aiken family.)

I also stumbled upon a very interesting article entitled, First Families of Hilton Head: The Aikens. It is a very large family that descends from South Carolina slaves, and since many slaves took the last names of their masters, well… it’s a safe bet that they have ties to William Aiken Jr., like it or not. For generations, they lived as proud Gullahs on the island. They even have one story of an ancestor, Joseph Aiken, who escaped to Hilton Head, so he’s one of the founding fathers. I’m sure William was furious about this escape, but Joseph went on to produce what looks to be a very large, successful family that values education, so good on him, I say.

But here’s where things get more confusing. William Aiken Jr was a loyal Unionist during the civil war. He never believed that South Carolina should secede from the union. This from a slaveholder who did not share the same political party as Abraham Lincoln.

But define “loyal unionist.” To quote this article:

“Although opposed to both nullification and secession, Aiken gave financial support to the Confederacy during the Civil War. On the defeat of the Confederacy, he was arrested and briefly detained in Washington.”

As much history as we glean from documents, we’ll never truly know what was going on in the minds of Aiken or his slaves. They have left us a rather fraught legacy in the form of Charleston, though. The slaves built it, the slaveholders bankrolled it and profited from it, and we are left to stand in its wake and wonder how things really were. A lot of people would prefer that we never know, but I believe the truth is the only way we can learn from our horrible mistakes and move on. That’s why I believe that the whitewashing that is going on in our public schools does a disservice to all of us.

As this National Geographic article attests, the echoes of slavery still remain in Charleston, right down to the children’s fingerprints in many of the handmade bricks. Sweetgrass baskets, which are still made by the descendants of slaves to this very day, are now considered the South Carolina state craft. I blogged about mine long before they got that designation. The baskets I purchased still hold pride of place on my bedroom wall. I try not to focus on the fact that these baskets would not even exist if slavery hadn’t existed.

Having said that, it is wonderful to hear that Charleston is starting to more firmly embrace their very necessary role of preservation, education and advocacy regarding their dark history. There’s even a brand new International African American Museum in town that looks quite impressive. I hope to visit it someday. Whether I do or not, though, the voices of Charleston’s past will continue to speak, and they deserve to be heard and validated by all of us.

Are you wondering what to bring to Thanksgiving dinner? How about my book, Notes on Gratitude? Place your orders now! (Or any other time, since we’re on the subject.) And… thanks!