BOUND AND BRANDED

1858-1879

Slavery was the rule in beautiful La Grange, a small town, among the red-clay hills of Georgia. Dr. Robert Ridley, a physician, tall and gray and stern, was master of cotton-fields and human souls. Guardian magnolias stood watch over his colonial dwelling, which, offset by an escarpment of white rocks, was strikingly contrasted to the dilapidated habitations of slave men treading their mournful way from the cradle to the grave. A gulley worn by the weeping of high heaven for a fettered race, and meandering gently from yonder hill, served the purposes of drainage and walk to the mud-chinked cabins along "slave row," where the household of "Fisher " lived. The hut was of two rooms, bedecked without with trellised primroses and within with whitewash. Its only aperture was a door of logs, cut in halves, swung on leather hinges, which served also as chimney and window. In such a place seventeen children and their parents lived. Elijah John was next to the youngest of eight boys. He was born August 2, 1858.

His mother, Charlotte, was a typical slave parent, giving birth to twenty-one children. She was a large brown woman, fully six feet tall, and was formerly

owned by Balton Amos, a young master, who, when his wife died, gave her as property to his friend, Doctor Ridley. Her eyes were small, deep set, overshadowed by narrow eyebrows, arched and black; her cheekbones were high and prominent, and her mouth was characteristic of her posterity. She could neither read nor write, but knew instinctively happy truths. She I walked with God" hourly, and at any religious service she would shout, "I'm pure gold tried in the fire." She worked incessantly in the field, humming, singing, or shouting a melody, only stopping intermittently to croon the plaintive lullaby to her accompanying young: Going to tell Aunt Tabby, Going to tell Aunt Tabby, Old gray goose is dead.

Her mate, Miles, was also the property of Doctor Ridley through purchase from Mr. Fisher, of Virginia. He had been purchased for his skill as a carpenter and was generally considered a good workman. He was a stately, broad, smooth black, a complement to her character. He, however, was a sort of lay preacher and had named most of his family after Bible characters about whom he had heard or read time and again. He was kind, earnest, and faithful, the spokesman for the slaves and a "trusty" on the plantation.

There is no reliable knowledge of other forebears beyond perhaps the grandparents. The cause of this

is well known. Many slaveholders kept the ancestral records of certain breeds of live stock but never that of slaves, primarily because the worth of a slave depended less upon the blood of his forebears than did the price of stock upon the animal's pedigree.

Nevertheless, Mr. Fisher delighted to trace his ancestry to a tribe of Zulus in Africa over which one of his kin was chieftain. We may be sure, however, of his parentage while a member of Doctor Ridley's household. Charlotte's father, Markus, married Nancy "Amos" (the master's name), the daughter of Hannah whose father was a Creek Indian with African blood.

According to the customs of slavery Miles got the consent of Doctor Ridley to marry Charlotte. His acquiescence was equivalent to license and ceremony. True enough, such a union was not a creation of law, but it served its purpose in those days better than wedding-bells and statutory enactments do in most cases today. However, Miles believed in ceremony, so he and Charlotte "jumped" several times back and forth over a broom repeating, "I marry you."

Thus they were married. For over a score of years they lived in the hut beside the gully of tears, lightening each other's sorrows. Strivings, hopes, and prayers were their consolation. Children were born. Should they, too, forever be slaves? God forbid!

At this very time, contention and protestation by such persons as Garrison, Lundy, Lovejoy, and

Phillips against a system which was gnawing at the vitals of home and society was at its height. In the halls of Congress, Charles Sumner made the air electric with anti-slavery sentiment. Greatly influenced by the preaching of Henry Ward Beecher, religious organizations throughout the world were never more zealous than in the crusade against the pernicious bargaining for human flesh. Long before his presidency, this evil had come to the attention of the great Lincoln. The exigencies of civil strife, brought to a climax by the defeat of General Lee at Antietam, broke the spell of the devil-nurtured system of slavery. Abraham Lincoln spoke, and the subject of this sketch was one among the four millions of a race which was forever thereafter to be recognized as human.

The story of freedom became a sweet memory in the life of Elijah. The Northern soldiers came through the South, plundering and pillaging the plantations of the slaveholders and announcing to the slaves their freedom. To ward off plundering, the owner of the plantation would hang up a white sign (usually a sheet), signifying that his intention toward the slave was good and that the announcement of freedom could be made at any time.

It was the summer of 1863 when the Yankees reached the plantation of Doctor Ridley. The day was still and hot. There was not a cloud to obstruct the vision of the azure heavens. The leaves on the trees stood motionless. Zephyrus was asleep. The