All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2021

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Introduction

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapter 7 and Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary: “The Auction Block”

Charleston was a city with an infrastructure in place that supported and perpetuated the slaveholders sustaining and fueling its growing economy. Enslavers, especially those in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, believed they possessed a measure of gentility in their treatment of those they enslaved. Charleston had a facility, known as “The Work House,” to which enslaved people could be sent, for a fee assessed to their enslavers, to undergo corporeal punishment on their enslaver’s behalf. This “service” provided the opportunity for these enslavers to maintain mythologies about themselves as beneficent paternal heads of household by allowing them to outsource their cruelty. Martin’s Charleston household, despite its architectural beauty and cushy opulence, was a veritable prison.

Robert Martin’s house, like most enslaver homes in Charleston, was a walled fortress. These palatial homes evoking the beauty and grandeur of European elegance often featured broken glass and spikes at the tops of their brick perimeters, discouraging attempts at escape and establishing the privacy required for the continued abuse of enslaved Black people within the walls of these homes.

Ashley was sold to the Midlands region of South Carolina. This can be ascertained because her child and grandchild were living in Columbia, South Carolina, after the Civil War. This is the same region as the Martins’ Milberry Place Plantation, where Ashley was living when Robert Martin died. Ashely was not, as her mother feared, sold far from the region that was familiar to her. Records do not indicate with any substantiative certainty whether Rose herself was also sold. Between 1853 and 1857, a woman named Rose died in a Charleston slave “pen” owned by Thomas Gasden. The Martin family’s familiarity with and prior association with Gasden could mean that Rose was sold to him and that she perished in these inhumane conditions. Miles’s research uncovered the ubiquity of the name Rose among enslaved women in the Lowcountry, so it is equally possible that the Rose on Gasden’s roster was another one of the many women by that name.

In the years before the American Civil War, 2 million people were trafficked through the American slave market. The slave market would have been a terrifying place for anyone subjected to the trauma of the auction block, but even more so for a nine-year-old girl like Ashley. Potential purchasers would have been allowed the right to evaluate enslaved people on offer in any way they saw fit, including the physical examination, manipulation, and abuse of their bodies. Clutching her sack, Ashley would have stood terrified and vulnerable in the boisterous, hostile atmosphere of the outdoor slave market at the Old Exchange Building. Due to the perceived indecency of this outdoor market, sales of enslaved people were later moved to an indoor facility in 1959, long after Ashley was sold.

The accounts of Harriet Jacobs and Louisa Piquet relate in horrifying detail the ubiquitous extent to which Black women and girls were habitually sexually assaulted by their enslavers and other white men whose authority and proximity allowed them access to and power over them. Some enslavers attended the slave market to purchase African American women and children with the primary objective of using them for sexual slavery. In packing the sack, particularly the tattered dress within, Rose may have been hoping to shield her daughter from some of the indignities she feared awaited her.

Chapter 6 Summary: “Ashley’s Seeds”

The three handfuls of pecans Rose included in Ashley’s sack indicate the choice of an item that could serve as food as well as seeds, a resource both symbolic and practical. Pecans are a high-energy food that would have sustained Ashley reasonably well for as long as she could make them last, particularly on a long trek. As a high-protein item, they would have provided Ashley with a great deal of energy even if there were only three handfuls of them.

Pecans were only available in Charleston from a few sources, at a considerable expense. If she worked in the kitchen, particularly if she were the family’s primary cook, Rose would have had access to them there. A family like the Martins would likely have invested in pecans to be featured as a treat in their desserts. The season was also right for pecans at the time of Martin’s death.

The introduction of pecans to South Carolina was successful only because of the efforts of an enslaved man whose grafting experiments established their foothold in South Carolina. In 1846 a man named Antoine of Oak Alley Plantation succeeded in hand grafting 16 pecan trees, which were eventually extended to an orchard of 110. He was responsible for the influx of pecan trees in South Carolina and their dispersal throughout the South. By the time of Robert Martin’s death, Antoine’s yield had not increased enough to have made pecans common in South Carolina. Their high value indicates a third possibility that Rose considered when she included the pecans in Ashley’s sack: trade. With the pecans in her possession, Ashley had a valuable resource that she could potentially swap for necessities.

Rose would have been acutely aware of the food insecurity her daughter could face in her new surroundings. Enslaved children suffered health consequences from poor and insufficient diets. Infant and child mortality rates were high for enslaved children; sickness and death, especially before age 10, were commonplace. Rations were increased at age 10 when the demands of labor also increased.

Under the “task system” of the South Carolina Lowcountry area, enslaved individuals could engage in personal pursuits after their assigned tasks were finished, gardening on their own “provision plots,” or hunting and fishing. Though they harvested edible crops like rice that could have supplemented their diets had they been given a share, enslaved people were regularly denied access to rations of the products of their labor.

In the backcountry of South Carolina, the “gang system” replaced the task system. Labor was consolidated, workdays were longer, and enslaved people were not afforded time to cultivate their own food. Without the benefits of supplementary food, enslaved people’s health suffered even further. Children on plantations operating under either system became accustomed to scavenging for food, often under the threat of punishment. Ashely might accurately be imagined as a small, slight girl, much lighter and frailer than white children her age. Ashley may have been petite enough to fit inside the sack, using it as a kind of sleeping bag or coverlet if she were cold. Perhaps Ruth chose the sack deliberately for its length and width.

Chapters 5-6 Analysis

The delicacy of a dessert made with rare pecans, purchased with money accrued through the labor of enslaved people, juxtaposed against the money collected from the sale of a nine-year-old child highlights the disconnectedness of 18th- and 19th-century enslavers from the reality of the origins and moral consequences of the lifestyles they enjoyed. This highlights the theme of Social Responsibility for Marginalized Experience. When Milberry Martin immediately began putting her deceased husband’s plans in order as his executor, overseeing the inventory, liquidation, and distribution of his estate, the enslaved people who would face the brunt of the ensuing upheaval were thrown into utter chaos. The city of Charleston was emblematic of conditions of slavery in the coastal American South, a community elevated through the influx of wealth accrued through this industry. Like so many of the comforts that white enslavers enjoyed, the enjoyment of pecans in South Carolina was facilitated by the work of an enslaved person, generally Antoine, and more specifically in the Martins’ case, Rose. Imported for the enjoyment and ease of those who could afford them, pecans and enslaved people were similarly trafficked at a cost that white enslavers were willing to bear. When Rose took advantage of her proximity to the Martin kitchen and appropriated the pecans for Ashley’s survival, it was a minor loss to the Martins, but for Ashley, they could have been a crucial bargaining asset or means of sustaining herself until her food situation was more secure.

For Milberry Martin, the sale of Ashley was simply business, a matter of procuring the monetary assets associated with her value so that she could continue conducting his intended business, which included giving their children the wills and parcels of land that had been promised. Ashley’s inheritance from her mother was a far less lavish one, but its value to her is evident in the story of her receipt of it, which she passed down to her granddaughter. At the time of the publication of All That She Carried, the house at 16 Charlotte Street in Charleston still stood, the surrounding walls still standing sentry along with it. It was a law office and was then acquired by a pharmaceutical company. Like many of the beautiful historic homes in Charleston that were the former homes of enslaved people and enslavers alike, it remains intact, unassuming in its attractive façade, its history requiring a dig past the exterior to reveal the complex realities of what occurred within.