WHERE THE WILD ROSE BLOOMS
South Carolina, during the 1800's. Summer was over; the cool days of autumn were here at last, and everyone here on The Simpson Plantation were now enjoying a bit of relief from the scorching days of summer past. Martha, a slave girl, had climbed out of bed before dawn, in anticipation of taking the first trip she'd ever taken in her life. She was to ride into town today with her father on a wagonload of freshly picked cotton, and because it would be the first time she had been to town, or even seen inside a store, she was very excited. She was born on this plantation, and had never been off of it even once for any reason.
The quietness of dawn was disrupted by the noise of mule-drawn wagons, as they rumbled along on the road that led by the rundown shacks where the slaves were housed. This was the time of year when the cotton was being picked and hauled into town and sold, and wagons were lined up for at least a mile along the road. As soon as the cotton had been ginned and baled, it would be taken across town to an auction, where buyers would make their bids to buy the bales of cotton, and then ship them to Europe. The South sold very few products to the North; or the West, for the South did very little to help support the Union.
Negro slaves exclusively operated this plantation, as well as other farms in the South. Not all Southerners agreed when it came to making slaves of other humans, and the majority of Northerners frowned on such practice, however, it was a real way of life for Southern farmers. With the many thousands of acres of farmland, farmers in the South soon learned that the use of Negroes as slaves was the answer to their labor problems. Farmers in the North were not happy because slavery was working so well for the South, but the North didn't have enough large farms to accommodate such vast groups of laborers. All it cost Southern farmers were the few bites of food their slaves ate, the shabby clothes they wore, and the rundown shacks in which they slept at night, following a long hard days work in the fields.
As soon as the wagon started rolling along, Martha turned to wave goodbye to her mother, who was now standing out in the yard. Martha felt like she was headed for some faraway land, or a place in some dream that she didn't think she would ever visit. As they continued along, she felt compelled to let her father know that she was really enjoying this trip.
"Pappy, I's feel the bes' today, I's ever felt in my lif'," she smiled, and told him. "I's ain't never seed no town - ain't been in no sto' to look 'round at thangs - never is had no new frock befo', neither. The tuther gals is gon'a stick their eyeballs out at me, when they see me walking 'round in a new frock. Yep, that sho' is gon'a be sump'um fer 'em to look at."
For some reason beyond anyone's imagination, Nate Simpson, who owned this plantation, had told Bill to let his daughter ride into town with him today on the wagonload of cotton, and to let her go to the General Store and pick out a piece of cloth, so Liza could make a dress for her and Martha. This sure did seem rather strange to Bill, as well as to everyone else, for farmers seldom ever bought anything new for their slaves. The clothes that slaves wore had been handed down to them by white folks, or were what the slaves had crudely made themselves from pieces of scrap cloth, or feed sacks. They worked in the fields from daylight 'til after the sun went down, and had no need of fancy clothes. Even though Bill didn't understand why Nate was doing something he'd never done before, as a slave, he had no right to question anything that his master did.
As she looked back at her own life she understood why he had made such a statement, for she'd never been able to say or do things the way she felt in her own heart. She had been forced to work from daylight until dark every day of the week for as long as she could remember, with hardly enough food to keep her alive, or sufficient clothes to cover her body. Even when she felt bad a few days each month, she was forced to go on and work as though nothing was wrong. The life of a slave was a difficult one at best.
Nathaniel Simpson, or "Nate" as he was better known, owned a plantation consisting of hundreds of acres of farmland, and he owned several dozen slaves who operated the farm for him. Most of his slaves had been around for several years, and were once owned by his late-father Bill Simpson, while others had been here only a few months. Farmers were always buying new slaves, in order to keep up their young and healthy workforce, and they sold older slaves to farmers who had less strenous work for them to do. Like prisoners, those who had been here only a short time still wore shackles around their ankles, and the shackles would stay there until Simpson was fully convinced that they would not try to escape.
Slavery was all that Martha's family had ever known. Nate Simpson's father at a slave auction in Charleston had purchased her father before he died and his son Nate took over the plantation, and her mother was purchased at a slave auction in Savannah, when she was just a young girl. Martha and her two brothers were born on this plantation, as were most all the other younger slaves whom Nate Simpson owned.
Slavery wasn't only physical punishment for the Negroes, but moral punishment as well, for slaves were forced to obey white men unconditionally, and without question. Though the slaves provided a livelihood for white men they were not considered as being human, and in a manner of speaking, were treated far worse than farm animals. No matter how loyal they were, or how well they worked, they were still hated because they were "black".
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