Chapter 17: The Hope of the South (2)
TL: Hanguk
Like most of the other Southern states, when Saturday rolled around the towns of Mississippi came alive.
It was Market Day, the day the market came to town, when stalls selling every manner of goods, from farm produce to daily necessities, lined the streets in long, unbroken rows.
And naturally, among those goods were slaves, the most valuable commodity traded anywhere in the South.
The Forks of the Road market on the outskirts of Natchez always played host to the largest slave auction house around, where countless planters and slave brokers came to inspect the quality of the slaves and decide what to buy.
Right after the African slave trade was outlawed in the early nineteenth century, no more slaves were shipped from Africa into America.
So how, then, were such vast numbers of slaves traded on a regular basis?
The answer was that the Upper South (Virginia, Kentucky), which had a relative surplus of labor, bred slaves and sold them down to the Deep South, to places like Mississippi and Louisiana.
Because the Upper South mainly farmed wheat and corn, it had no need for slaves in such enormous quantities, whereas the Deep South was forever plagued by a chronic labor shortage. A win-win arrangement, one might say.
Truly, one cannot help but call it a cycle positively overflowing with love for one's fellow man.
"Master, was there really any need for you to come all this way in person? Something like this, surely you could have just left to an agent or a broker."
"Right. I don't think there'll be any need to come again next time."
It was exactly as I'd seen in James's memories, a sight that made my brow furrow all on its own.
I'd grown fairly used to nineteenth-century standards by now, sure, but wouldn't most twenty-first-century people, raised in a halfway normal environment, feel about the same as I did?
Even my dear friends the Dixies must have understood that this wasn't exactly a sight to recommend, because unless they were real hard cases, planters seldom showed up to the pre-auction inspection grounds themselves.
Most planters wouldn't come out to a place like this; they'd just watch the actual auction show and leave the rest for their agents or brokers to handle.
The only reason I'd come in person was that I figured I ought to see for myself, at least once, just what sort of place this market was.
As I was slowly taking in the whole of the auction house, the broker I'd hired came scrambling over and bowed and scraped at the waist.
"Mr. Sergent, there you are. I've gone ahead and roughly sorted out the worthwhile goods for the inspection."
"Good work. I'll be heading inside, then, so let me know before the auction starts."
"Yes, sir. Just leave it all to me and rest easy."
Between needing to build a new hospital, looking into an agricultural-produce company, and having to spread my investments evenly across the North and the South, I was still short on hands.
On top of that, I had to finish expanding the plantation before heading off to Buchanan's inauguration, so I had no choice but to stock up on as much manpower as I could right now.
"Anyone watching would think this was the Roman era. This is supposed to be the mid-1800s? What an absolutely ridiculous place."
And sure enough, now that I looked, they'd even gone and built the place dripping with that whole ancient-European vibe.
Shaking my head, I walked into the auction house with Leo in tow.
Need labor? Not the temp agency, the slave auction.
It wasn't 185 BC. Nor was it 185 AD.
It was an everyday fact of life, still taken for granted in the 1850s South, a mere half century shy of the dawn of the twentieth century.
***
"Aaall right! Ladies and gentlemen of Mississippi, let's get today's auction underway. And I'm not just blowing smoke here, folks, the stock today is reeeally fine."
The auctioneer's blustering voice bored its way into the ears of the crowd seated before him.
Leo stood half a step behind James, watching it all with an expressionless face.
The heat, the dust, and a smell mingled of terror and resignation.
This was the Southern Saturday he knew.
At first his chest had ached so badly he could scarcely keep his face composed, but with the endless repetition he'd progressed to the point where he could feign indifference.
So this was what they called human adaptability, was it.
"Aaall right! Here's our first item of the day!"
The auctioneer's voice ripped through Leo's reverie as a sturdily built Black man was brought up onto the platform.
The auctioneer stripped off the man's shirt and rattled on, showing off his muscles.
"Now, now, top-grade goods, as you can all see. We'll start the bidding at a thousand dollars!"
James watched in silence, then raised a finger a few times in time with the signals his broker sent.
After a few rounds of bidding back and forth, the hammer came down.
"Sold to Mr. James Sergent for eleven hundred and seventy dollars!"
"Well, well, sold off to the Sergent plantation. That boy's in for a world of hurt now."
"Indeed he is. Tch, tch, the poor wretch."
A fat planter standing nearby clicked his tongue and muttered the words.
There wasn't a fingernail's worth of real pity in it; it was closer to mockery than anything.
Of course, whatever the people around him said, James won bid after bid on the labor he needed, just as he'd planned.
Astonishingly, James's notoriety seemed to have spread to other plantations as well, because the slaves who realized they were being sold to the Sergent family hung their heads and welled up with tears.
'Ah, shit, I can't laugh. This is a whole different kind of struggle to keep a straight face.'
Leo, who along with James was one of only two people here who knew the truth, couldn't bear how badly he wanted to know what faces those slaves would make once they learned the reality.
'Being born Black into this fucked-up world is a damn shame, no doubt, but today the lot of you just spent a whole lifetime's worth of luck.'
That was when it happened. The auctioneer's voice climbed even higher.
"Now then, our next item is a truly precious one! A very healthy, strong young female, just past twenty! She's already given birth before, so she'll do fine work in the fields and pop out healthy babies one after another besides!"
A young woman who looked to be in her early twenties was shoved out onto the platform.
She scanned her surroundings over and over with terrified eyes, while the auctioneer stood a boy of about ten in a spot far away from her.
"And this little one here is that female's whelp, sold separately. Work him to the bone starting now, and in five years he'll make a top-grade laborer."
A pitiful sight, but separating a young mother from her little son and selling them apart was common sense at a slave auction, the standard way of doing things.
The reason being that demand for the two of them rarely overlapped, so buyers willing to take mother and child together seldom turned up.
Put simply, sold separately each one fetched full price, whereas sold together they had to be discounted.
Naturally, anyone with a head on his shoulders had no choice but to split them up.
Faced with this cold reality, the child's mother crumbled.
She clutched at the auctioneer's trouser legs and begged.
"Master, sir, please, please sell me together with my son! I'll do anything! Please!"
The auctioneer shoved her back without a word, as though she were nothing but a nuisance.
"Heh heh heh, stupid bitch."
"Imagine the likes of it having a mother's instinct. The way it apes a human being is so distasteful it actually comes out funny."
There was no sympathy. Everyone merely snickered, as if it were all some amusing spectacle.
Pitiful as it was, this was reality. This was the world.
Eyes gently closed, Leo wiped the woman's screams from his mind.
But then something unexpected happened.
"Sold to Mr. Sergent, nine hundred and fifty dollars!"
"Sold for six hundred and thirty dollars! Well now, Mr. Sergent again?"
James, who hadn't so much as stirred until now, had gone and bought both the woman and her son.
The fat planter sitting beside him struck up a conversation with James, his eyes glinting.
"Mr. Sergent, you of all people must know that buying a pair like that as a set is a losing proposition. What's gotten into you?"
James answered indifferently, without so much as turning to look at him.
"I happen to need a nurse for the hospital. And having bought her, it occurred to me that, thinking of the future, a male nurse on hand wouldn't hurt either. Break him in and train him under his mother from a young age, and just imagine the serviceable piece of goods that'll turn out."
At the cold, pragmatic answer, utterly devoid of warmth, the planter nodded and backed off.
Ahh, that's our Master for you.
This was it. This was the James Sergent he served.
Even the most prominent planters in Natchez, the moment they stood before the Master, would for the most part end up perfectly persuaded and won right over, and this time was no exception.
The Master did everything with reason and efficiency, every single time, so where did some Southern pig get off trying to throw a wrench in the works?
Leo felt his respect and loyalty toward his master well up once more from the very depths of his heart.
And so the eventful auction came to a close, and the slaves that had been bought were moved over to the wagon their new owner had brought.
With a thoroughly arrogant gesture, James jerked his chin at Leo and spoke.
"Leo, see that you teach them the basics. I'll head in ahead of you."
"Yes, sir!"
As Leo approached them, the slaves, who still hadn't grasped their situation, were trembling with the look of pigs being dragged to the slaughterhouse.
Desperately holding back a laugh, Leo asked.
"What's the matter with all of you?"
The muscular Black man who'd been the first up on the block answered, nearly sobbing.
"Back at my old plantation, the master was always saying it. That if we didn't obey, he'd sell us to the Sergent plantation, where we'd do nothing but take the whip our whole lives until we died."
"I heard much the same. That he's a truly heartless man, without a drop of mercy in him."
Leo let out a snort of a laugh and clapped the man on the shoulder.
"Count yourself lucky. If there'd been more people around to hear that, you'd have been a laughingstock for the rest of your life."
"Sorry?"
"Come tomorrow, you'll all find out just how fortunate you are. So for now, I'd recommend you simply be grateful for your good luck and pray to God that, if this is a dream, you never wake from it."
Naturally, none of those present yet understood what Leo meant, and Leo hadn't expected them to.
Just then, the woman who had miraculously been spared separation from her son cautiously spoke up.
Bowing deeply in the direction James had gone, she said:
"It doesn't matter what sort of man my new master is. For the mercy of letting me stay with my son, I'll live grateful for the rest of my life. Thank you, truly, thank you."
Ugh, seriously. This is exactly what I mean, don't go starting this already.
Leo looked at her and shook his head.
"You'll have a whole mountain of things to be thankful for ahead of you, so save the sentiment for later, once you've calmed down a bit. And let me tell you one thing: the Master prefers you work that much harder over any honey-tongued words of thanks."
"S-so... what you're saying, in the end, is that he works his slaves half to death, just like the rumors say?"
Leo wanted to put it kindly, but no matter how much they spoke out of plain ignorance, having to listen to them keep badmouthing James didn't sit well with him.
Especially when the words came out of the mouths of people about to become family.
Without even realizing it himself, Leo spoke in a voice that had gone slightly cold.
"From here on, everything I say you take to heart, no exceptions. Your lives depend on it. There are two rules you absolutely have to keep."
Sensing the gravity in the air, the slaves who had climbed onto the wagon all went rigid with tension and listened closely to the explanation that followed.
"First: never breathe a word outside the plantation about how blessed your lot is. Show even the slightest sign of wanting to brag to an outsider about life here, and it won't be the Master, it'll be us who break your neck first. Mark my words."
"!"
"Second: never speak ill of the Master in front of the other brethren on the plantation. Whatever rumors you've heard, they don't fly here. Newcomer or not, the moment you disgrace him, fists will come flying from every direction, so mark my words. This is all for your own good."
They had to be confused. There was no way they wouldn't be.
Either way, once they set foot in our Eden, they'd come to understand the meaning of what they'd just heard.
The muscular Black man cautiously raised a hand and asked.
"D-don't tell me... the brethren of the Sergent plantation truly respect the Master?"
"Of course they do."
Leo shot back without a moment's hesitation.
"So much so that we've sworn, if anyone ever lays a hand on the Master, we'll be the ones to snuff out his life first."
This was no decision of Leo's alone; it was a thing all seven hundred slaves of the Sergent family had agreed upon, the resolve that lived in every one of their hearts.
***
Around the time James and Leo were heading back to the plantation with the slaves they'd won at auction.
In a public square in Boston, America, a middle-aged man was passionately raising his voice, carrying on with a speech.
"And therefore we must tear this barbaric, inhuman institution of slavery, this disgrace to the very Union itself, out by the roots! So that we may cleanse that land of sin, I implore you, lend us your wholehearted support and backing!"
About eight months ago, this was the man of the hour who had stunned all of America by hacking apart five pro-slavery raiders and slave catchers, the ones behind an attack in Kansas, cutting them down with a broadsword.
John Brown, the radical abolitionist whose every move was watched, for better or worse, by every last politician in both North and South, was as busy as ever today denouncing the evil of slavery.
As John Brown's track record made plain, he was no all-talk member of the anti-slavery faction; he was closer to a one-man warrior race, the sort who actively went looking for a fight, again and again.
But of course, fighting took money, and securing the funds for it meant fundraising.
And so, as he gathered the money to wipe out the pro-slavery camp, a curious piece of news recently reached his ears.
"James Sergent?"
"Yes. They say he's a young one who's only just inherited a plantation in Mississippi, and that even people in Natchez throw up their hands at what a vicious piece of work he is. There must be hundreds of slaves suffering something tremendous on his account."
"A young man, already steeped in the taste of money... what a piece of garbage."
From even that rough account, he could guess well enough what kind of man this was.
A piece of human garbage who mistook the vast fortune inherited from his parents for his own ability, who knew how to do nothing in this world but abuse slaves.
In other words, the sort of vermin whose vanishing from this earth would do the whole country a service.
Honestly, those Southern bastards were out raiding anti-slavery towns and even murdering people every other day, so where was it written that his side couldn't do the very same?
"He's a man of note even in Mississippi, so killing him out in the open would draw no end of controversy. But put a bullet quietly in the back of his head, and everyone will simply assume heaven's judgment caught up with him. And with the inauguration right around the corner, it'll make a fine warning to Buchanan and those Democratic Party scoundrels too."
"Just so. We have to deliver the poor slaves suffering under that wretch!"
A satisfied laugh slipped of its own accord from John Brown's lips.
"Yes. A man like that ought to be made to repent in hell, no question about it. Oh yes, indeed."
The surest way to wipe slavery from the face of this world.
It was to wipe every last slaveholder off the face of it.
So much for the fundraising-cum-intelligence-gathering.
Their next destination was settled: Mississippi.
*****
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