(1901) William Hooper Councill’s Letter to the White People of Alabama

 

Most scholars of today imagine Booker T. Washington as the major accommodationist and black political conservative of the era.  There were others including Professor William Hooper Councill, the founder and  first president of the Huntsville Normal School which today is Alabama A.A& M University.  Councill founded the school in 1875, six years before Booker T. Washington established Tuskegee in south central Alabama, and led the school until his death in 1909.  In the public letter below written on November 28, 1901, Councill outlines his views regarding the recently passed Alabama Constitution which effectively denied the vote to its African American citizens.  Couched in the language of deference, Councill, nonetheless, protests the new level of denial of rights to blacks in the state and the language of racial hate that accompanied that denial.

I have served you in slavery and in freedom for over half a century.  I have stood with you for “good government” for a quarter of a century.  As all of past life has been devoted to your service and to the welfare of my race, I believe that you will grant me a hearing now.

I love Alabama.  I have been true to her at home and abroad.  I have never breathed one work against her.  I have all along trusted her white people.  I revere the names of her long lines of noble sons with untarnished honor, who scorned wrong and hate injustice. Their faith in right gave birth to your Confederate monument which stands on Capitol Hill representing what they regarded as truth.  But today, I am alarmed! I tremble for the future of my people in Alabama, unless you come to our rescue.

The recent [political] campaign was one of bitterness and abuse of my people.  Many of the public speakers did not appeal to the highest sentiment in man, but held up the Negro in a manner to make the white masses hostile to him.  With all your best efforts for many years to come, it will be hard to undo the harm which was done to my race by the campaign into which was put so much unkind feeling.  Not that you put a premium on suffrage.  That was right.  Not that the white man became supreme in government.  He was that already.  But in the sentiment manufactured against us.  Was such a campaign necessary?

There could have been but one result—ratification—[even if] the press and speakers had held their peace.  Then why abuse and mortify the men who are trying hard to please you and serve you every hour?

Do not misunderstand me.  For God’s sake do not misrepresent me.   I have never asked for unqualified suffrage.  Since a majority of the better elements of the white people of Alabama wanted the new constitution and promised better things under it, I was not against it.  I am opposed to every phase of social equality so distasteful to us both, and in my opinion, detrimental to Southern society.  There is no necessity for it.  Ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine (99,999) Negroes in every one hundred thousand (100,000) do not seek social equality, and if every Negro in the State sought it, it would not be.  You know all this.  Still we were abused, and the hostility of the lower element of your race aroused against us, while a quarter of a million of us were bowed, uncomplaining, at your cook pots, ironing boards, wash tubs, in your cotton fields, and in all the varied industries, loyal and true to you.  We are in your hands as babes in the hands of giants, making no laws, construing no laws, executing no laws, holding no offices, composing no juries, forming no militia, a weak, powerless people, and still men acted toward us as if we had been Caesar’s Legions in their palmiest days.  If we were the strong and you the weak, would not you be alarmed?  I beg you in the name of your mothers who were cradled in the arms of black women, in the name of your fathers who were loved and served by our fathers, and in the name of the sacred dead in gray, around whose sad hearths we kept faithful vigil, to rise up and checkmate those evil influences which you have set on foot against us.  You do not know the harm you have done.  We know it.  We feel it keenly in a hundred ways.

Do not say that it is only the educated Negro who is disturbed.  God grant that it were so. But the cut has entered the soul of the ignorant Negro whose benighted mind cannot gather light from the philosophy of history and strength from a knowledge of the ultimate triumph of right; but the stolid, sullenly silent man whom you much change into the citizen of hope and obedience, or drive into the stupid, homeless, riotous creature of despair—a best, a constant menace to be cured by the Gatling gun.

The new constitution makes it possible for the darkest wrong to be perpetrated on Negro education and many of the campaign speakers and writers prepared the public to commit this wrong.  You can compel a Negro school to run ten months on one hundred dollars and appropriate one thousand dollars for ten months to a white school under your new constitution. You must surely know that such injustice would not only drive away from you the loyal hearts of your Negro population, but would drive them from Alabama.  Your own Dr. Curry told your Legislature that the Negro was, in certain counties, often defrauded out of his part of school funds under the old constitution.  Who will guarantee that it will not be done to a greater extent under the new constitution?  You got a new constitution, you said, to avoid the necessity of committing fraud in elections. You promised us righteous treatment in educational affairs. Your own statesmen say that the Negro pays taxes and still some men persist in saying that he does not.  If you wish a division of the school funds on racial lines, go to the very bottom of the matter, and see who pulls the tax money from the bosom of the earth, the only original source of wealth.

Your own record shows that the mass of your Negro labor is not only law abiding but industrious.  The proportion of Negro wage earners in the entire Negro population in Alabama is greater than any other Southern state except Louisiana.  Give us our portion in equity and we will not complain.  You promised to do this.  You said that with the political matter settled, all else should be fair. I still have faith in you.  Though you slay me, yet will I trust you.  Present the question fairly to the popular vote of the white people alone.  I believe they would vote for a division of the school fund on the basis of scholastic enumeration, and they would enumerate fairly, too.  Take this matter out of the hands of men who do not like my race. Let it rest on the Golden Rule, then peace, prosperity, and happiness will come to all our people, and your waste places will bloom.  Leave it with men who hate us, who appeal to prejudice, and it will soon take the place of the political question just settled.

It is said that the educated Negro is the criminal Negro.  We are in your fields, in your kitchens, and shops at work.  We cannot answer.  But what are the facts as recorded by you in your books?  Three million (3,000,000) Negroes can read and write.  Only eleven thousand (11,000) Negroes who can read and write are in all the prisons of the country.  Just one Negro in every hundred who can read and write is engaged in teaching, preaching, and other professional work. That is what your records tell.  Does this show that the educated Negro is the criminal Negro, that all educated Negroes go into the professions and that education unfits the Negro for labor?

Two million, nine hundred and fifty thousand (2,950,000) Negroes who can read and write are working every day for you in all grades of labor.  Are not our virtues minimized and our sins magnified by men who do not like us?  I do not hesitate to state as a fact that nine in every ten Negro teachers and preachers are loyal and true to the South, and hold up the best lights before the ignorant masses of the Negroes.  Whether you accept it or not, these Negro teachers and preachers will be the life preservers among your laboring population in less than fifty years.

We are part of your productive population.  Please study us. Please look into what we are doing, and what we are teaching and preaching.  I beg you not to listen to those who use our weakness to arouse prejudices to elevate them to position.  We want only what is right.   The better element of white people do not know what unnecessary insults and hardships are put upon we Negroes.  We bear these things because we know that even a manly and most humble protest is often put down as impudence and arrogance.  Nearly everywhere we turn, in cities, in backwoods—the Negro stands muzzled and manacled, and unkind white men belabor our backs with impunity.  White men of Alabama, for God’s sake look at this picture!  It is not overdrawn.  See the truth as it is before God and angels!  Are you not debauching your own sons by lodging such privileges and unholy power in the pigment of a man’s skin?  Punish the Negro—whip him until the blood runs in streams when he is wrong, but let justice be done him though the heavens fall—justice everywhere.  Truth, Mercy, and Justice will strengthen and adorn your race when it stands before the judgment bar of future intelligence and righteousness.

Mississippi disfranchised the Negro, but she is fair in education.  Mississippi, the home of Jefferson Davis.  Georgia stands up for Negro education.  Georgia, the home of Alexander Stephens [vice president of the confederate states]!  Mississippi welcomes the Negro to her borders.  Texas gives princely support to Negro education and invites him to her territory.   Can you see the signs of the times?  Must your labor element be kept suspicious, treated wrong by the men who take advantage of the color of their skin—men who know the power in white and the weakness in black—or will you protect us and make life profitable and happy to us?
The Jewish people are examples of the triumph of right. Their history shows forth God’s mercies in the life of people.  It is a warning to cruel men.  Every nation which has been cruel to the Jew is dead or dying.  The Jew has served many nations for thousands of years.  He was obedient to the laws of all, and bent his back to the stripes laid on by all. At last God ha brought him to a land here he has peace and where those who once despised him honor him.

I have been loyal and true to you. I would be disloyal and untrue now if I did not speak.  We love you, honor you, and want to serve you.  Encourage us.  We need it.

I have presented conditions that cannot be cured by abuse, or general denial. I have presented conditions which you must strike down, or which will harm us all.  I appeal to you—not to the north—not to Congress.  They are powerless.  You are all-powerful in this matter.  I believe that you have the righteousness to correct these conditions and I trust it is all in your hands.

If your race is in superior condition, then God has placed the races in inferior conditions under your care for kind treatment, and not to be mistreated and crushed.  Will you do the work of god, or must He take it in His own hands as He has always done when men failed?  The weak and unfortunate are His tenderest care.

“Right forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne;
Yet the  scaffold sways the future,
For behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His Own.”

W. H. Councill
Normal, Alabama, November 28th 1901

About the Author

Address by J. Sella Martin, Eulogy of John Brown

While many whites believed that John Brown was a madman, African Americans recognized the slave system as madness and celebrated Brown’s willingness to die for the anti-slavery cause. Brown was rare among white abolitionists in his insistence on full equality between blacks and whites; throughout his adult life he interacted socially with African Americans on an egalitarian basis to a degree unprecedented in antebellum America. On December 2, 1859, the day of Brown’s execution, African Americans and abolitionists observed a "Day of Mourning" to honor his martyrdom. Gathering in churches and meeting halls that night, they used speeches, proclamations, and songs both to commemorate Brown and to call for further action to advance the abolitionist cause. In Boston, nearly four thousand abolitionist supporters, both black and white, gathered in and outside the Tremont Temple. J. Sella Martin, pastor of Joy Street Baptist Church and former pastor (and first African-American pastor) of Tremont Temple, addressed the crowd and defended both Brown’s methods and the caution of the Virginia slaves who refrained from joining his armed stand. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, -Today a solemn question has been asked this nation. The Pilate of Providence has asked America-" Whom will you that I deliver unto you - the Barabbas of Slavery, or the John Brown of Freedom?" And, intimidated by the false majesty of despotic enactments, which have usurped the place of Christianity, corrupted by a false policy, and stung to phrenzy by the insinuations of our political high priests, we have cried out, as a nation-"Release unto us the Barabbas of Slavery, and destroy John Brown." And, true to this horrible, this atrocious request, John Brown has been offered up. Thank God, he said, "I am ready to be offered up." Men say that his life was 'a failure.' I remember the story of one of the world's moral heroes, whose life was just such a "failure." I remember one who, having retired to the deserts of Judea, to wring from the hard, stony life of those deserts the qualifications of a moral hero, by living an ascetic life, had subjugated the lower desires of his nature, and who, with all those qualifications, and with all this purity, was brought into a corrupt and voluptuous court. I remember, too, that in that court, not its favorite, notwithstanding the corruption and luxury of the times, he preserved himself the same stern man, and said to the King-- "It is not lawful for you to live with your brother Philip's wife." These were the stern words of John the Baptist and John Brown -- for John Brown, like John the Baptist, retired into the hard and stony desert of Kansas, and there, by the weapons of heroism, by the principles of freedom, and the undaunted courage of a man, wrung from that bloody soil the highest encorniums of Freedom, and the most base acknowledgements of slavery, that the one was right and the other wrong. (Applause.) I know that John Brown, in thus rebuking our public sin, in thus facing the monarch, has had to bear just what John the Baptist bore. His head to-day, by Virginia, - that guilty maid of a more guilty mother, the American Government, (cheers, mingled with a few hisses, which were at once drowned in an outburst of vehement applause) -has been cut off, and it has been presented to the ferocious and insatiable hunger, the terrible and inhuman appetite, of this corrupt government. To-day, by the telegraph, we have received the intelligence that John Brown has forfeited his life- all this honesty, all this straight-forwardness, all this self-sacrifice, which has been manifested in Harpers Ferry. My friends, his life was just such a "failure" as all great movements have been. The physical failure has been the death of the seed, externally, which has given life to the germ, which has sprung forth to spread its moral boughs all over this corrupt nation. (Applause.) I have not the slightest doubt that this will be the result... John Brown has died, but the life of Freedom, from his death, shall flow forth to this nation. I know that there is some quibbling, some querulousness, some fear, in reference to an out-and-out endorsement of his course. Men of peace principles object to it, in consequence of their religious conviction; politicians in the North object to it, because they are afraid that it will injure their party; pro-slavery men in the South object to it, because it has touched their dearest idol; but I am prepared, my friends, (and permit me to say, this is not the language of rage,) I am prepared, in the light of all human history, to approve of the means; in the light of all Christian principle, to approve of the end. (Applause.) I say this is not the language of rage, because I remember that our Fourth-of-July orators sanction the same thing; because I remember that Concord, and Bunker Hill, and every historic battlefield in this country, and the celebration of those events, all go to approve the means that John has used; the only difference being, that in our battles, in America, means have been used for white men and that John Brown used his means for black men. (Applause.) And I say, that so far as principle is concerned, so far as the sanctions of the Gospel are concerned, I am prepared to endorse his end; and I endorse it because God Almighty has told us that we should feel with them that are in bonds as being bound with them. I endorse his end because every single instinct of our nature rises and tells us that it is right. I find an endorsement of John Brown's course in the large assembly gathered here this evening; I find an endorsement of the principles that governed him in going to Virginia, in the presence of the men and women who have come here to listen to his eulogy, and sympathize with his suffering family. I know that all have not come for that purpose, but I know there are seven thousand still in Israel who have not bowed the knee to the political Baal. (Loud applause.) Now, I bring this question down to the simple test of the Gospel; and, agreeing with those men who say the sword should not be used, agreeing with them in that principle, and recognizing its binding obligation upon us all, yet I believe in that homeopathic principle which operates by mercury when mercury is in the system, and that that which is supported by the sword should be overthrown by the sword. I look at this question as a peace man. I say, in accordance with the principles of peace, that I do not believe the sword should be unsheathed. I do not believe the dagger should be drawn, until there is in the system to be assailed such terrible evidences of its corruption, that it becomes the dernier resort. And my friends, we are not to blame the application of the instrument, we are to blame the disease itself. When a physician cuts out a cancer from my face, I am not to blame the physician for the use of the knife; but the impure blood, the obstructed veins, the disordered system, that have caused the cancer, and rendered the use of the instrument necessary. The physician has but chosen the least of two evils. So John Brown chose the least of two evils. To save the country, he went down to cut off the Virginia cancer. (Applause.) I say, that I am prepared to endorse John Brown's course fully. He has said that he did not intend to shed blood. In my opinion, speaking as a military critic, this was one of the faults of his plan. In not shedding blood, he left the slaves uncertain how to act; so that the North has said that the Negroes there are cowards. They are not cowards, but great diplomats. When they saw their masters in the possession of John Brown, in bonds like themselves, they would have been perfect fools has they demonstrated any willing-ness to join him. They have got sense enough to know that until there is a perfect demonstration that the white man is their friend - a demonstration bathed in blood -it were foolishness to cooperate with them. They have learned this much from the treachery of white men at the North, and the cruelty of the white men at the South, that they cannot trust the white man, even when he comes to deliver them. So it was not their cowardice, nor their craven selfishness, but it was their caution, that prevented them from joining Brown. I say this because I think it is necessary to vindicate the character of the Negro for courage. I know very well that in this country, the white people have said that the Negroes will not fight; but I know also, that when the country's honor has been at stake, and the dire prejudice that excludes the colored man from all positions of honor, and all opportunities for advancement, has not interfered to exclude him from the military, he was gone with the army, and there displayed as much courage as his white brother. To some extent, I sympathize with the suggestions of the Boston Journal, that we should consider the state of excitement among the people of Virginia; for I know what that state of excitement is. I know that if a rat should happen to strike his tail against the lathes, they would all be up, looking through the house--taking good care always to make a Negro go before. (Laughter.) I am ready to say, if he has violated the law, if he has taken an improper course, if he has been the traitor that the South brands him as having been, and the madman that the North says he has been, John Brown is not to be blamed. I say that the system which violates the sacredness of conjugal love, the system that robs the cradle of its innocent treasure -- the system that goes into the temple of manhood, and writes upon the altar its hellish hieroglyphics of slavery -- the system that takes away every God-given right, and tramples religion under foot - I say that that system is responsible for every single crime committed within the borders where it exists. (Applause.) It is the system, my friends. I hold that that is a false logic which talks about good slaveholders. I hold that it is folly on the part of the slaveholder himself when he attempts to keep his slaves by mild means. The more a man learns, the more kindly he is treated, the more he aspires for liberty, the more restive he becomes under the yoke. -- Hence it is not an accident, but a necessity of the system of slavery, that it should be cruel; and all its devilish instrumentality, and enginery, and paraphernalia must be cruel also. It is folly for us to talk about the slaveholders being kind. Cruelty is part and parcel of the system. If slavery is right at all, then all its terrors and horrors, -- the whip, the manacle, the thumbscrew, the paddle, the stake, the gibbet -- are right also; if it is not right, then all these are wrong. The people of the North have said John Brown was a madman -- I suppose mostly because it is on the eve of an election: but if he was mad, his madness not only had a great deal of "method" in it, but a great deal of Philosophy and religion. I say, my friends, that no man ever died in this country as John Brown has died to-day. I say it because John Brown was a praying man. I remember hearing an incident in reference to his praying, from the lips of a man in whose presence and in whose house it occurred, and I loved him the more when I heard it. Coming to Henry Highland Garnet, of New York, some two years ago, he said to him, after unfolding all his plans, "Mr. Garnet, what do you think of it?" Said Mr. Garnet, who is at once a Christian, a gentleman, and a scholar, -- "Sir, the time has not come yet for the success of such a movement. Our people in the South are not sufficiently apprised of their rights, and of the sympathy that exists on the part of the North for them; our people in the North are not prepared to assist in such a movement, in consequence of the prejudice that shuts them out from both the means and the intelligence necessary. The breach between the North and the South has not yet become wide enough." Mr. Brown, looking him in the face as his keen eye was lit up with its peculiar fire, and his soul seemed to come forth with all its intellectual energy to look out and scan, if possible, the whole horizon of Providence, said, "Mr. Garnet, I will ask God about it"; and he got down upon his knees, and there poured out his heart to that God who is peculiarly the God of the bondman. He then showed the depth of his religious feeling -- the intense interest that he had in the emancipation of mankind, and the heroism of his soul. Mr. Garnet says that never in his life has he been so moved by a prayer as he was by that prayer of John Brown's. When such a man as this dies as he has died to-day, with the prayers of five millions of people going up to Heaven in his behalf - for I know that at least that number of Christians have prayed for him - when such a man dies, I am sure that his death under such circumstances affords us a great, an almost demonstrable evidence of the success of the movement that he has inaugurated and of the final accomplishment of the great object of his soul. (Applause.) I say that no man has ever died in this country as John Brown has died. While his soul has gone up to God, and his body has been taken down a lifeless corpse, thank God all over the country, meetings are being held-to-night to give expression to that great feeling of sympathy which is to swell the great tornado. -Let Virginia thank herself for it! In her guilty planting she has sown the wind; let her thank herself if in her terrible harvest she reaps the whirlwind of destruction. (Applause.) Go down to Virginia, and see that firm old man as he comes out from his prison, leaning upon the arm of the sheriff and with his head erect, ascends the dreadful steps of the gibbet. We see as he goes his way to the top, and every step he takes seems to be inspired with that feeling which the poet Longfellow describes as animating the heart of the young man climbing to the top of the mountain -"Excelsior" -until planting himself ready for his martyrdom. Though his body falls, the spirit of slavery and despotism falls with it, while John Brown goes up to heaven. Thank God! Thank God! (Applause.) I have detained you long enough. This is not the time to vindicate his cause. I have made these remarks only because they seem to be suggested here. I close by saying, my friends, that John Brown . . . shall slay more in his death than he ever slew in all his life. It is thought by the slaves-and it is a beautiful conceit, though coming from slaves - that the meteors from the heavens are sparks that . . . strike upon the craters of volcanoes, and that is the cause of their eruption. From the firmament of Providence today, a meteor has fallen. It has fallen upon the volcano of American sympathies, and though, for awhile, it may seem to sleep, yet its igneous power shall communicate … to the slumbering might of the volcano, and it shall burst forth in one general conflagration of revolution that shall bring about universal freedom. (Applause.) I feel, my friends and fellow-citizens, tonight, that courage, the adamantine courage, which has today been blasted by the terrible enginery of slavery will serve as the grit in the grindstone upon which the slave shall sharpen his weapon . . . I believe that every drop of blood shed today will be gathered up by the ever vigilant spirit of freedom . . . by whose resplendent light the darkest hovels of slavery shall be penetrated until the chains shall be melted from every limb, and the slave stand forth "regenerated and disenthalled by the irresistible Genius of Universal Emancipation". (Loud Applause.) Source: The Liberator, December 9, 1859.

BOSTON GLOBE ‘I didn’t have the words’: Genealogists link woman to Elizabeth Freeman, who helped end slavery in Mass.

Genealogists tracked down a descendant of Elizabeth Freeman, the formerly enslaved woman whose freedom case helped end slavery in Massachusetts By Tiana Woodard Globe Staff,Updated August 20, 2024, 5:21 p.m.

A Top U.K. Newspaper Explores Its Ties to Slavery, and Britain’s In a multimedia series, The Guardian becomes the latest British institution to confront — and apologize for — its role in the slave trade.

Gerrit Smith - Biographical Info

Gerrit Smith - Biographical Information - New York History Net

MONSTER OF ALL HE SURVEYED By ROSELLEN BROWN re: James Henry Hammond

MONSTER OF ALL HE SURVEYED By ROSELLEN BROWN; Rosellen Brown is the author of the novel ''Civil Wars'' and a book of poems, ''Cora Fry.'' Published: January 29, 1989 SECRET AND SACRED The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder. Edited by Carol Bleser. 342 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $22.95. ''I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. No, I am not a pleasant man at all. I believe there is something wrong with my liver . . . well, let it damn well hurt - the more it hurts the better.'' The voice is Dostoyevsky, the book ''Notes From Underground.'' Perhaps the type is so common - dyspeptic, angry, self-justifying, passive-aggressive - that it shouldn't be surprising when it crops up in very dissimilar cultures. James Henry Hammond, a South Carolina slaveholder who became both governor of his state and a United States senator before the Civil War, kept diaries he called ''secret and sacred'' in which, despite his public achievements, he tirelessly sounded a note in the same plaintive key: ''sinking of the soul and body . . . has been my companion from my earliest recollection.'' ''My God! What have I done or omitted to do to deserve this fate?'' Only occasionally did he step back from his self-pity and admit that his ''follies [ arose ] mainly from sensibility and passion.'' Follies he certainly committed, and he had passion abounding; his sensibility is more often questionable. In his foreword to ''Secret and Sacred: The Diaries of James Henry Hammond, a Southern Slaveholder,'' Louis D. Rubin Jr., a Southern scholar, calls Hammond ''nothing less than a monster'' and quotes his editor, Carol Bleser, who, in an earlier book on the Hammonds, skewers him for ''a tough-minded son of a bitch.'' Hammond gives one little reason to disagree. He was the son of Elisha Hammond, a New Englander who came south at the beginning of the 19th century. Elisha pinned his financial hopes on the estate of his wife's rich bachelor uncle. Although Uncle John Fox had, in Elisha's words, attempted ''to destroy the chastity'' of one of his daughters, so eager was Elisha to ingratiate himself with the old man that the couple named a child after him. But the uncle would not be cozened and willed his money elsewhere. Perhaps his father's example inspired the young James: he found himself a 17-year old wife who was unattractive and shy, hence exceedingly dependent, and overcame her family's justifiable suspicions that he was after her considerable dowry. Thus Hammond secured the financial independence that had eluded his father - he ultimately became proprietor of 22 square miles, a number of plantation homes and possessor of more than 300 slaves. His holdings also put him in position to seek political office and hence the ''immortality'' he was not too shy to suggest could be his. To perpetuate the family wisdom, he wrote to his son that he expected a large dower for him as well; ''I never could bear poor girls [ even ] when pretty and pure spirited. . . . Even the sweetest pill of that kind should be gilded.'' But, however repugnant, marrying money rather than a particular woman is a familiar kind of connivery. The more rarefied habit James Hammond learned to forgive at his father's knee actually compromised his hard-won political career when it became public. Not content to lust after other women he happened upon casually, he made it his habit to inflict bold ''familiarities'' upon four teen-age nieces. His descriptions of these quite intimate ''dalliances'' over the course of two years are forthright and unembarrassed; he ends by blaming the seductiveness of the ''extremely affectionate'' young women. Then, when the girls' father sacrifices their reputations to make public his salacious behavior, Hammond whimpers that he is suffering in the world's eyes for the ''coarse sensibilities'' of his enemies. (Undoubtedly Hammond saw his outrage justified: none of the four girls ever married.) Finally Hammond jeopardized his own marriage by taking an 18-year-old slave for a mistress; when the only child she seems to have had by anyone besides Hammond turned 12, he took her for his own as well. His long-suffering wife - ''a purer, more high minded and devoted woman never lived'' - left him for a few years, taking their children with her. (Whereupon, not surprisingly, he denounced her for her ''arrogance and violence'' and her family for its insolence: ''they . . . think they [ have ] purchased me.'') Hammond's political life, of course, was preoccupied with an assortment of controversies over the best way to maintain the South's way of life. To Hammond personally, his slaves appeared to have been one more burden to be borne; they were a fragile piece of property, like his mules and horses, whose horrifically high death rate was a perpetual mystery to him, and a bad reflection on his efficiency as reigning master. In 1841 he suffered the 78th death of a slave in less than 10 years. Surely the man from Dostoyevsky's ''Underground'' would have laid the blame on himself more readily than Hammond, who lived in a world of men guilty of ''grossness, malignancy, and poltroonery. . . . candidate [ s ] for nothing but the servile flattery of lick-spittles, bon vivants and jockeys.'' He has scarcely a single associate whom he does not revile, nor a single fault of his own he doesn't forgive by some querulous rationalization. Similarly, his fainting and failing, at which he does as good a job as any of the famous 19th-century female neurasthenics, after a while begins to seem justification for a profound failure of will. Although His political service tends to show up here as a victory over conspiracy or in the kind of testimonial better left to others (''My friends say the 4th July was celebrated this year solely to toast me''), the man had loyal supporters; apparently he also had some political skill. Still, for all his clamoring after immortality, beyond a famous bit of oratory in which he coined the phrase ''Cotton is king,'' and his unheeded warning that the South was not sufficiently cohesive to seek secession, his major accomplishments as statesman seem to have been of the tiniest magnitude. It takes a long time to penetrate, let alone care about, the obsessive details in the manic-depressive landscape of James Hammond's mind, and for its first quarter or so, ''Secret and Sacred'' seems of scholarly interest alone. But the voice of the diarist, especially when it is out of control, scattering impressions the writer clearly did not intend or calculate, will always exert a fascination close to voyeurism. We are forced to ask how much of Hammond's wanton insensitivity, and his bathetic habits of self-exoneration and self-pity, came with the unquestioned power to own and command - slaves, wives, children. How much responsibility should go to his father, whose moral sensibilities seem to have been less than refined? The questions lead us backward down the long, barely lighted corridor in which character and circumstance, generations of it, mysteriously collide. (For the curious, Ms. Bleser's earlier volume of family letters, ''The Hammonds of Redcliffe,'' widened the context to that of an entire plantation family unselfconsciously going about their work, courtship, deaths.) Ultimately, John Hammond's unpitiable yet pathetic monologue is best approached as Dostoyevskian (or perhaps Faulknerian) fiction. By 1861, when we hear him, on his deathbed, instruct his son ''with thrilling earnestness . . . 'if we [ the South ] are subjugated, run a plow over my grave,' '' we see that he is more than emblematic of a class and a time and a particularly embattled place. His voice is his own, and all too real.

Reconstruction - The Atlantic [Fredrick Douglass]

Reconstruction - The Atlantic

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Skeletons on the Sahara

Skeletons on the Sahara

dvd available on Amazon.com

Skeletons on the Sahara - TV - Review - New York Times

Skeletons on the Sahara - TV - Review - New York Times

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South Florida, again