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Staring up at the Kenmore House’s masterful plaster ceiling, it’s hard to reconcile its astounding beauty and craftsmanship with the 160 enslaved people who subsidized its creation.
I got the same uneasy feeling marveling at the chocolate box-perfect houses and commercial buildings decorating historic downtown Fredericksburg. Easily one of America's most charming, livable, walkable cities.
There is soul-sustaining minimalist purity to the austere Colonial homes. A Lady and the Tramp elegance and languor to the Victorian retreats, complete with shaded porches, carefully judged scale and judicious embellishment.
Walking down a commercial street now devoted to restaurants, bars, hippie shit and tourist trash, once home to shoemakers, dressmakers and banks, I could just about forget that legacy, and surrender myself to an aesthetic that embodies my desire to do more with less.
And I did. Looking at a plaster rendition of the Aesop fable of The Fox and The Crow, I lost myself in the glamor of a time when artisans relied on their hands rather than a 3D printer.
Until I didn't, surveying a small stretch of the Rappahannock River.
George Washington Slept Here
Cruising through town with Fritz, stopping to read historical markers, I found myself surviving back-wetting humidity at the exact spot where 18th century slave traders unloaded men, woman and children off boats into and up a narrow, stone-sided alleyway.
Humans headed for sale to the highest bidder.
Directly across the river: Ferry Farm. George Washington's childhood home. Where young George had a perfect view of Fredericksburg's human trafficking.
Not that the trade bothered Washington. At the start of the American Revolution, our country's founding father, military leader and eventual President owned around 200 slaves.
Workers under the yoke of a man with a violent temper, whose overseer was proficient in the abominable art of restraining and whipping his fellow human beings. Not that either man saw them as such.
Ironically, the bit of the river I surveyed was also the launching point for one of the deadliest Civil War battles.
The Forgotten Man
There’s an entire industry devoted to the analysis of Civil War battles in general, The Battle of Fredericksburg in particular.
Both the city and Uncle Sam have taken great pains to preserve the battlefield and provide tourists and history buffs with strategic analysis and first-person accounts of those terrible days in December 1862.
When internecine conflict claimed the lives of 1,892 soldiers and wounded 13,716 more. Leading General Robert E. Lee to declare "It is well war is so terrible; we would grow too fond of it." A maxim he forgot to apply to slavery.
There's something missing from Fredericksburg's many memorializations...
I found it on Princess Anne Street, outside the Farmer's Bank. A historical marker standing guard in front of the stately brick edifice, built in 1819, now a swanky cafe. Here's the part that struck a chord...
John M. Washington was the first among 10,000 refugees enslaved in the surrounding counties who escaped to Union lines and freedom over the next four months [beginning April 18, 1862].
These acts of self-emancipation accelerated a shift in federal policy that ultimate led to the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that ended chattel slavery in the United States.
A seismic shift that gets short shrift.
The Thing Is...
At the beginning of the Civil War, Union soldiers were, as the name suggests, fighting to preserve the Union.
Sure, slavery was a central point of divergence. But if was the divergence itself against which they fought.
As the war progressed, Union soldiers encountered slavery, up-close-and-personal. Men, women and children grateful beyond measure for their release from enslavement.
Take a second to appreciate the scope of this "Exodus From Bondage."
It's worth repeating that the historical marker above reveals that ten thousand slaves escaped from the Fredericksburg area alone.
According to the 1860 census, enslaved people accounted for a third of the South's population. Some four million people. A “demographic” twice the size of the Union Army. Whose soldiers encountered freed slaves wherever they went, throughout their entire campaign.
As the Civil War progressed, a war of unification became a war of liberation.
Like so many such wars, including America's involvement in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Union's victory was limited. The forces of racism that created, enabled and perpetuated America's original sin were bloodied but unbowed.
Aye There's the Rub
Time has moved on. Belatedly. Finally. Thank God for the courageous Americans who fought for civil rights in our recent past.
But you wouldn’t know it in Fredericksburg. “America’s Most Historic City” seems frozen in amber.
What’s missing from the Kenmore manse, pictures postcard neighborhoods and carefully curated battlefield relics and testimonials: a sense of evolution.
In 2020, after years of debate and consultation, Fredericksburg's town fathers removed the 800-pound slave auction block from the city center and relocated it to the Fredericksburg Area Museum.
In its place: a small, easily-missed plaque justifying the decision to move the block, with relatively little text explaining its significance.
I understand the motivation: residents didn't want to attract racist assholes or bring bad vibes to a vibrant commercial district.
But you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going nowhere. Ask me how I know.
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American slavery was terrible, but so was the slavery of the Jewish people by the Egyptians. Also, many whites fought and died to eliminate American slavery. In my own family, my great, great great grandmother worked for the underground railroad, taking freed slaves to the north. Her husband fought for the north in the Civil War. And my great grandfather was a teacher at Hampton Institute, one of the first black colleges. So I have no interest in paying reparations since my family has already paid for the education and freedom of blacks, both in actions, words, and blood. As far as taking down statues and eliminating slave blocks: destroying history is what totalitarian nations like to do. One of…
Per your closing remarks, it is always worth noting that Africans were slaves in the States because they, or their ancestors, were slaves in Africa, sold by their conquering tribe for rum or something. Many have absurd notions of evil whitey tip-toeing around and clubbing natives on the head and stuffing them in a sack or some other slave-hunter fantasy. In reality, slaves were already chattel in bondage by their neighbors before any ship docked.
Similarly foolish is the media stereotype of the cruelly abusive slave-master just needlessly torturing and killing slaves because so evil and racist! The enslaved were property but they were valuable property which had been paid for as a means of production. To diminish or destroy…