Celia, A Slave

“Celia’s trial, its causes and consequences, confront us with the hard daily realities of slavery rather than with the abstract theories about the workings of that institution.”

Even though Celia as an individual is essentially absent from the narrative, her story still has the power to evoke empathy.  Her “hard daily realities” involved rape, for example, and her experience in the legal system involved a similar negation of her agency.  Though McLaurin draws abstract conclusions about the significance of Celia’s story for our understanding of slavery, his analysis is grounded in a horrible reality.

“Celia’s story derives much of its significance, as well as its narrative power, from the nature of the specific issues and moral dilemmas it forced individuals to confront.  Her case starkly reveals the relationships of race, gender, and power in the antebellum South, in addition to illustrating the manner in which the law was employed to assuage the moral anxiety slavery produced.  Finally, because race and gender are issues with which our society continues to grapple, and because both remain major factors in the distribution of power within modern society, the case of Celia, a slave, reminds us that the personal and the political are never totally separate entities.”

This is a nutshell version of the book’s overall purpose and scope.

“In many respects he was the fulfillment of the Jeffersonian dream, the personification of the ideals that had led to the purchase of the territory in which he settled.  He was, as were so many of his fellow Missourians, the self-sufficient yeoman farmer, secure because of the abundance that came from the land he owned, and which he helped to till.”

This passage is a description of Robert Newsom to illustrate just how successful he was as a Missouri settler.  This is not the portrait of a brute, which makes his treatment of Celia that much more an illustration of slavery as a system that creates evils where otherwise there would be none.  It makes a monster out of a “the Jeffersonian dream.”

“The average slaveholder’s farm was valued at $1,720, the average nonslaveholder’s was valued at less than a third of that figure at $500.  The differential between slaveholders and nonslaveholders also is strikingly evident in the productivity of their farms in practically every other category measured.”

McLaurin spends a significant amount of time cataloguing the financial standings of the various men who intersect with Celia’s story in some way—from Newsom to the jurors at Celia’s trial.  This passage in particular, however, illustrates just how lucrative slavery was, which helps account for its status as a profoundly contentious political issue.

“While it is possible that Newsom harbored some moral ambiguity about slave ownership, it is far more likely that he regarded it as a fitting reward for his years of labor, an indication of the social status he had achieved through his own efforts.”

This passage echoes several other moments in the text when McLaurin refers to things that cannot be gleaned from the historical record.  Usually, these things are related to the inner lives of the participants—for example, Celia’s psychological response to her rape, or the likely reason for her attorney’s sympathy for her.  In these moments, McLaurin puts forward the view that seems most likely given the context uncovered by his research.

“Like Robert Newsom, John Jameson seemed to be the ideal family man, a successful, respected citizen, and a pillar of the community.  Of the two men, however, only one was what he seemed.”

This Chapter On passage compares the two major figures in Celia’s life—Robert Newsom, her rapist and owner, and John Jameson, her attorney and failed savior.  The suggestion that one man was not what he seemed refers to Newsom, though given the nature of slaveholding society, it is arguable that Newsom could be Celia’s rapist and also be an “ideal family man, a successful, respected citizen, and an pillar of the community.”  Given the apparent ease with which Celia’s motive was erased from consideration during her trial, it is clear that abuse of a slave was not enough to bring about the social downfall of a white man.

“In a controversy that had rehearsed practically every aspect of future debates over slavery, northern congressmen had bowed to the South’s demands and therefore made compromise possible.  Not only had the South gained additional territory for the expansion of slavery, it had also acquired federal recognition of the legitimacy of the institution.  Perhaps more significantly, the compromise […] gave notice of the South’s commitment to the permanence of slavery.  Slavery, the compromise asserted, was not merely a necessary evil, an institution that could be eliminated within a generation or two, or whose fate could be determined by a congressional majority.  Rather, slavery was an institution fundamental to the existence of southern society, a permanent part of the southern way of life.”

This passage focuses on the Missouri Compromise, an 1820 bill that admitted Missouri into the United States as a slave state and Maine as a free state.  This compromise came after the initial refusal to consider admitting more slave states into the Union.  Balancing Maine with Missouri kept the balance of slave vs. free states in the Senate and reserved the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase territory north and west of Missouri as free and the remainder of it south of Missouri (a considerably smaller portion) as slave territory.  As McLaurin notes, the Missouri Compromise is significant in what it conveys about the legitimacy of slavery as an institution central to Southern culture and society.

“Indeed, the practice of white male slaveholders using female slaves for their sexual gratification had its defenders, though the practice was never condoned by public opinion.  Thus while it is impossible to know the thoughts of Robert Newsom at the time he raped his newly purchased slave, it is entirely possible that he felt that his ownership of the young Celia entitled him to use her for his sexual pleasure.”

This passage speaks to the inevitable hypocrisy of holding two opposing views of the humanity of slaves.  The “practice of white male slaveholders using female slaves for their sexual gratification” cannot be “condoned by public opinion” if the myth of the basic human rights of slaves is to be believed; at the same time, slaveholders’ complete power of their slaves invited exactly this kind of abuse.

“What is certain is that at this point in their lives, both of Newsom’s daughters experienced what Charles Sellers has called ‘the fundamental moral anxiety’ of slavery.  They were forced to confront one of slavery’s oldest and most painful moral dilemmas.  To do nothing meant that Celia would continue to be sexually exploited by their father.  To confront their father would possibly threaten their own livelihood and continued well-being and, in Virginia’s case, the well-being of her children.  Their dilemma was made the more acute by Celia’s threat to hurt the old man ‘if he did not quit forcing her while she was sick.’  Perhaps they escaped their dilemma through a process of rationalization, as a historian of slavery recently has suggested many plantation women did, viewing Celia as the dark sensual temptress who seduced their father.  Perhaps they accepted the power of the patriarch, as their society bid them do, viewing an obedient acceptance of their father’s behavior as an obligation.”

This passage addresses two of the major themes of McLaurin’s analysis: the first is that Southerners, slaveholders or not, could not help but be confronted with a situation caused by slavery that challenged their own individual moral codes, as certainly Newsom’s daughters were with their father’s sexual exploitation of Celia.  The second is the focus on how gender and racial oppression intersect, with Newsom’s daughters unable to advocate for Celia because of their own subjugated positions as white women in nineteenth-century Southern society.

“Stooped over the hearth within the confines of Celia’s small cabin, Coffee Waynescot inevitably would have inhaled the remains of his grandfather, would have breathed his grandfather’s ashes deep into his lungs.  What Celia, a slave, felt at that moment is not recorded, but she would have understood that the boy was inhaling his grandfather’s remains even as he cleared the ashes from the fireplace, a fireplace which Coffee’s grandfather had built for her, and over which she cooked the food she fed her own children, whom Robert Newsom had fathered.”

This passage emphasizes the wrongness of Celia’s asking Coffee to clear out his grandfather’s ashes from her fireplace, an act that McLaurin cites as evidence of Celia’s deep hatred for Newsom and his family.  As he notes here, however, what Celia “felt at that moment is not recorded,” so while it is not a certainty that hatred is what motivated Celia to ask Coffee for his help, this passage does convey the utter wrongness of the situation as a whole.  The boy should not be unknowingly inhaling his murdered grandfather’s ashes; Celia should not be feeding her children food mixed with the dust of their father.  More importantly, Newsom should not have been their father; slavery is the prime mover in the tragedy.

“The manner in which Powell responded to Celia’s gruesome revelation can only be imagined, but her confession was certain to have impressed upon him the dangers of holding human beings in bondage.  If he was himself the master of a young slave girl, and even if Powell treated his slaves decidedly better than did Newsom, Celia’s confession must have at least caused Powell to consider how his female slave regarded him.”

This passage refers to William Powell’s interrogation of Celia, which leads to her confession to the murder of Newsom.  McLaurin highlights the similarities between Powell and Newsom and illustrates another moment when a Southerner is forced to confront the moral ambiguity that slavery creates.

“The fact that papers in Missouri towns as far apart as Boonville, roughly forty miles upriver from Fulton, and St. Louis, approximately a hundred miles east of Fulton, carried reports of the murder indicates the level of the white population’s concern with slave violence, and especially with the murder of a slaveholder by one of his slaves.  The Fulton Telegraph’s emphasis upon the fact that the Newsom family continued to suspect George’s involvement in the murder also indicates the unease with which slaveholders viewed their human property.”

Like McLaurin’s discussion of William Powell’s response to Celia’s confession, this discussion of the newspaper coverage of Celia’s crime shifts the focus to the larger context of white slave owners’ fears of slave violence.  Slave owners are scared of slave revolt, not only because of their knowledge of revolts that have already happened, but also because of the nagging recognition of the essential wrongness of owning human beings as chattels.

“The threat of slave violence and possible insurrection was a specter that constantly haunted the white population of the antebellum South, and the residents of Callaway County were no exception.”

This passage is in part an introduction the lens through which white people in Missouri would have viewed Celia’s murder of Newsom.  McLaurin goes on to review Toussaint L’Ouverture’s leading of the enslaved of Haiti in successful revolt against the French, Nat Turner’s insurrection in Virginia, and the most recent example of an armed attempt at escape of a group of slaves in Missouri.  Though the Haitian revolt is the only one of these examples that was fully successful, they all contribute to a strong sense of “what if…”

“In fact, despite Celia’s insistence that she alone and unaided killed Newsom and disposed of his body, there was considerable circumstantial evidence to the contrary.  George remained the logical suspect as her accomplice, and his escape provided a strong piece of circumstantial evidence implicating him in either the murder or the disposal of the body.  Although Celia never implicated George, the fact that when questioned by William Powell she gave at least two versions of what happened in her cabin on the night Newsom was killed lent weight to suppositions that George had participated in the actual murder.  The physical difficulties of burning a human body in a cabin fireplace within the period of time between approximately midnight and sunrise also supported speculation that Celia had received assistance.”

This passage speaks to more realistic reasons for suspecting Celia did not act alone in killing Newsom.  More so than conspiracy theories, the sheer difficulty of successfully burning Newsom’s body in such a short amount of time suggests strongly that George had more to do with the killing than inciting Celia to desperate action.

“What Harry seems to have wished to accomplish was to make clear that no other family members were involved in the incident, hence his appeal for ‘justice to the family.’  Yet by calling attention to the fact that his father was killed not in his home but in Celia’s cabin, he also raised the issue of why Robert Newsom was in a slave cabin on the night of his murder, an issue that Harry chose to ignore.  Whatever his reasons, Harry Newsom’s response to the Republican, with its emphasis upon facts and its total disregard for motive, anticipated the approach the prosecuting attorney would adopt during Celia’s trial.”

In this passage, McLaurin addresses Harry Newsom’s demand that the St. Louis newspaper, the Missouri Republican, retract its erroneous reporting of the scene of his father’s murder.  He points out that Harry’s demand has the seemingly unintended consequence of highlighting his father’s improper relationship with Celia.  Nevertheless, it also highlights how the courts would also ignore this relationship as irrelevant to the “facts” of the case, reflecting the larger culture’s unwillingness to confront the damage to slave women like Celia.

“Both the convention and the issuance of Shannon’s card had occurred within two weeks after Celia had been indicted and jailed for Robert Newsom’s murder.  It was inevitable, given the local publicity her crime had received, that Celia’s situation would have been on the minds of Callaway citizens even as they contemplated the moral and legal issues raised by the slavery debates.”

This passage comes after McLaurin’s account of the ongoing and fractious debates about slavery engendered by David Atchinson’s unethical campaign for Senate and the continued unrest in the Kansas territory over whether Kansas should be entered into the Union as a free or slave state.  This passage is representative of the ways in which McLaurin repeatedly connects Celia’s individual case with the larger political scene in the antebellum South.

“Thus on the eve of Celia’s trial, the reverberations of an increasingly violent struggle over slavery in Kansas had disrupted the public tranquility in Missouri and threatened with discord the state’s basic political, legal, and social institutions.  Armed vigilantes held sway in many counties, physically intimidating anyone who voiced antislavery opinions.  The state’s leading politicians were locked in a struggle for a United States Senate seat, with Atchinson’s forces determined to use the Kansas issue and an impassioned defense of slavery to retain it.  The state’s proslavery press was filled with intemperate editorials denouncing abolitionists as an immediate threat to the expansion of slavery into Kansas and to the continued existence of slavery in Missouri.  […]  Under such circumstances the slavery debates, which threatened so alarmingly the domestic tranquility of both Missouri and the nation, were inevitably a part of the backdrop to Celia’s trial, scheduled for October 9, 1855.”

This passage addresses the increasing threat of violence in Kansas and its connection to Missouri politics and its effect on Celia’s trial.  In a politically tense historical moment, Celia’s individual act of murder would, in the slave state of Missouri, be even less likely to be received with sympathy for the conditions that drove her to kill Robert Newsom.  Rancorous politics, sensationalistic press, and violence in the streets heightened the already volatile nature of the case.

“Whatever his motives, his performance revealed that, in this case at least, Jameson believed even a slave accused of her master’s murder deserved the best possible defense.  Having presented his arguments to the jury, he next attempted to reconcile the essentially moral nature of the case for the defense with the technical constraints of the law. The manner in which he did so suggests that Jameson believed not only that his client deserved the best possible legal defense but that she was morally innocent.”

In McLaurin’s discussion of John Jameson’s handling of Celia’s defense, he concludes that not only did Jameson perform his duty towards his client, he was able to empathize with Celia and recognize how her motive for violence matters not only to her but also to the larger moral questions that the institution of slavery raises, even though he himself is a slave owner.  To a certain extent, McLaurin invites us to compare Newsom, Powell, and Jameson—all men of similar social and economic standing in the community, all slaveholders—and consider what it means that they can have such different relations to the “hard daily realities of slavery” (ix).

“With its claim that Celia had the legal right to protect her honor, defense counsel raised a multitude of legal questions about ownership of the reproductive capabilities of a female slave.  If, for example, a slave could resist her master’s advances, had she also the right to refuse a male partner her master selected for her? The issue of who controlled sexual access to female slaves held tremendous economic, as well as social, significance, for the reproductive capabilities of female slaves were clearly viewed by slaveholders as an economic asset over which they had control.”

In this passage, McLaurin zeroes in on the underlying issue of Celia’s case and why it could be decided in her favor.  Recognizing the validity of her motive would have shaken the very foundations of chattel slavery by calling into question the absolute power of the white patriarch.

“The defense’s contention that slave women had a legal right to protect their honor, that the term ‘any woman’ in Missouri’s general statues applied to slaves was a truly radical notion, threatening both a fundamental concept of slave law and the everyday operations of slavery.  According to a recent study of slave law in the American South, one of its ‘two primary characteristics’ was ‘the effort, repeated in various forms, to confine the content of slave law to the situation of the slave alone.’  The law was used in an effort to categorize, to divide the society into two components, one slave and black, the other white and free.  It was a system that ultimately failed, not from a lack of effort to enforce it by southern courts, but because of the nature of human property and the additional burden the very existence of a population of free blacks placed upon the system.  Celia’s defense attorneys requested not only that Judge Hall abandon any effort to confine slave law to slaves, but also that he extend the protection of the general statutes to Missouri’s slave population, in effect nullifying the underlying concept of slave codes.”

This passage further expounds on the issue raised in the previous one, further developing our understanding of how the law works to uphold the institution of slavery.  As McLaurin points out, Jameson’s defense of Celia called for a blurring of the carefully drawn lines that separated black from white, a line already blurred because of the existence of black people who were not enslaved.  Any recognition of Celia’s (or any other slave woman’s) basic right to her own body would unsettle the careful scaffolding of white supremacy.  The denial of the right to be considered as a member of the category “any woman” reaffirmed Celia’s status as sub-human.  Even though the system of slavery “ultimately failed,” as McLaurin points out, in Celia’s case it worked quite efficiently and effectively.

“Had it been accepted, not only would it have struck a devastating blow to the authority of slave owners, it also would have challenged one of the fundamental, if unspoken, premises of a patriarchal slaveholding society.  The sexual politics of slavery presented an exact paradigm of the power relationships within the larger society.  Black female slaves were essentially powerless in a slave society, unable to legally protect themselves from the physical assaults of either white or black males.  White males, at the opposite extreme, were all powerful, with practically unlimited access to black females.”

This passage sketches out the intersection of gender and racial oppression, recognizing how black women and white men are diametrically opposed in terms of power.

“The sexual vulnerability of female slaves, however, was not simply a metaphor that forcefully conveyed the power of slaveholding men.  It was a reality of life under slavery, a feature of the routine operations of a system that regarded humans as property to be used for whatever purpose their owners might wish.  It was also a practice that held the potential for economic gain for the master who abused his slave, because the children produced by such unions also became the property of the father.  Nor is it accidental that white women were among the most vocal southern critics of the practice.  White male access to slave women both threatened the stability of the white family and emphasized the fact that in many respects married white women were little more than the property of their husbands.  […]  In fact, one of the essential legal differences between slave and free women was that free women were protected from sexual assault by law.  Although once married white women had no legal recourse against unwanted advances from their husbands, they remained protected from other men.”

This passage begins with a call back to the Introduction’s promise to “confront us with the hard daily realities of slavery rather than with the abstract theories about the workings of that institution” (ix), reminding us that the “sexual vulnerability of female slaves” is more than a metaphor—it was a “routine” reality.  This passage also reminds us that sexual vulnerability was not limited to slave women, and though white women had more power and agency within this context, they were also unprotected by law from their own husbands, dependent on custom and sentiment to control male behavior.

“The law was also used to create the illusion that slaves possessed certain human rights, and thus to assuage the conscience of white society.  Procedurally, Celia’s trial was correct, yet the substantive, gender-related issues of the case could not be addressed, despite the best efforts of her defense counsel.”

This passage captures the substance of one of the overall themes of the book—that the law in slaveholding society was used to maintain a surface propriety.  The law was one of the ways that the moral ambiguity was resolved, because it smoothed out the wrinkles caused by the “hard daily realities” in its simple refusal to recognize them, while also maintaining the proper appearance of justice.