Enslaved Project
By the summer of 1860, African slavery had existed in the British colonies, and then the United States, for roughly 250 years. Legislation created on local, state, and national levels defined and protected the institution, including three provisions in the U. S. Constitution. While several Northern states implemented gradual emancipation, and others – those of the Northwest Territory, for example – entered the Union free from the taint of slavery, the economy of the South progressively fixed the chains tighter and tighter. There was nowhere you could travel in the South without being confronted with its presence. Carnton was no exception.
The work of the farm began before sunrise. Enslaved workers carried out an endless array of tasks. They drew water from the spring and carried it up the hill for cooking and washing. The cook laid a fire and commenced the ceaseless task of food preparation. Clothes and household linens had to be scrubbed and rinsed and hung out to dry. Chamber pots were emptied, cleaned, and replaced. The felling of trees and splitting of wood was a constant chore year-round, but especially in winter. The cold months also furnished an opportunity to build and repair fences and paint structures.
Spring brought the scent of newly turned earth as plows sliced the earth and seeds were dropped into furrows. Sheep were shorn, and their wool spun into thread and woven into cloth. In summer, the gardens and orchards yielded vegetables and fruit to be gathered and preserved. Autumn brought the harvest and countless bushels of corn and grain were the results of hours of cutting, cradling, binding, and shucking. Mid-autumn was when hogs were slaughtered, followed by salting and smoking. But that was not all. Apples were pressed into cider, grapes into wine, and hundreds of bushels of potatoes were packed away for winter.
Black bodies of all ages dotted the landscape at Carnton as the labor of enslaved Africans provided wealth and comfort for five McGavock family members.
In the darkness of summer nights, and longer winter evenings, the enslaved men, women, and children built their own community, their own culture, their own music, their own food, and their own religion. John W. Blassingame, in his groundbreaking book The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, which was published in 1972, wrote:
“The family, while it had no legal existence in slavery, was in actuality one of the most important survival mechanisms for the slave.”
A former slave once described what were known as praise meetings, which often occurred in enslaved dwellings on Saturday or Sunday evenings:
“The way in which we worshipped is almost indescribable. The singing was accompanied by a certain ecstasy of motion, clapping of hands, tossing of heads, which would continue without cessation about half an hour…”
The slave community that Blassingame wrote of endured generations of oppression and yet carved out a piece of the American story as important as any other.
Visit Carnton today and you are surrounded by a great many visual reminders of the McGavock family. Their portraits line the walls. Books they once held in their hands, the dining table where they shared meals, even a child’s cradle, provide vivid connections to the family and make their stories come alive.
One of the tragic legacies of slavery, and the enslaved, is impermanence. Thus, physical reminders of their lives are precious few. We want to change that.
We are preparing to launch a project to make visible these human souls who were once very much part of farms like Carnton, Carter House, and Rippa Villa and across the antebellum South. The project will be implemented in phases. We will begin by installing five life-sized silhouettes of individuals at Carnton. They will be positioned inside and outside the house – an integral, but not static – part of the landscape. At the same time, we will commission bronze busts of Mariah Reddick and Ann Chandler. Mariah, who was owned by Carrie McGavock, was a prominent presence in the household at Carnton and a respected member of the community in the post-war years. Ann, a former McKissack slave, lived and worked at Rippa Villa for years after the war and has a significant Maury County legacy. In the longer term, we hope to visually represent all forty-four enslaved persons who lived at Carnton in 1860, as well as seventy-five who lived at Rippa Villa at the same time. Eventually we hope to also represent the twenty-eight enslaved souls who lived at Carter House in 1860.
A final and significant element of the project involves an enslaved memorial to be located at Carnton. Reflection benches of stone, perhaps marble, will combine with running water to provide guests with a space to contemplate Carnton as a microcosm of African slavery across the American South. The forty-four enslaved men, women, and children who lived, worked, and died at this one place - this very important place - are emblematic of more than 12,000 enslaved people in Williamson County in 1860, over 275,000 in Tennessee, and the nearly four million who existed in fifteen states plus the District of Columbia.
Committed to preserving this way of life, eleven of those fifteen states attempted to break apart the United States in 1860 and 1861. Ownership of millions was not sufficient. Legal protections were not sufficient. A minority movement to secede swept through the slave states in response to the election of Abraham Lincoln, who stood at the head of the anti-slavery Republican Party. This movement was intended to build a slave republic and protect slavery indefinitely. The aim was to never consider abolition, orfreedom, or liberty, or equality for millions simply because of the color of their skin.
We must not forget. What we propose is groundbreaking, and the cost is not insignificant. But we believe it is terribly important to continue to make visible these stories that have been invisible for far too long.