Advisory: this post contains mentions of rape and racist language and ideology
When I read history books, both trade and academic press, I often can tell how the author feels about their subjects. Usually there's fondness--it's hard to spend years reading and touching the intimate thoughts of people long-dead and not feel a sort of intimacy. This fondness can become a problem if it skews the author's interpretation, exonerating the subject of their sins. This will never be a problem for me. My subjects make me want to tear my hair out, and this blog post serves as a catharsis for my most upsetting subject--Keziah Hopkins Brevard.
Professionally, the diary left behind by Brevard is a gold-mine for me. I don't know if my dissertation would exist without her. I owe her, and her terrible thoughts, everything. This doesn't make her any less vile.
Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard was born in 1803. She lived on the outskirts of Columbia, South Carolina. She owned a town home in the city and multiple plantation properties outside, one of which, Alwehav, is still standing. After being widowed, Brevard became one of the wealthiest slaveowners in the state, with 209 enslaved people listed as her legal property. And oh, how she hated them.
Brevard's thoughts on slavery are incredibly convoluted. Her diary entries are short, emotionless details about her day until suddenly...they aren't. Her defenses of slavery are long, rambling, and at many points contradict themselves. Within these entries are almost every excuse for slavery a white Southerner could make. That they come from a woman shows, as many historians have more elegantly conveyed, that white women were equally invested and complicit in slavery as Southern men.
Though elite white women were subjugated by their fathers, brothers, and husbands in this time period (Keziah's husband was abusive), this did not mean they felt a kinship with enslaved black women. There is no such thing as Universal Womanhood. If anything, white women hated black women even more--helpless to stop and/or confront their spouses from raping black women, these "plantation mistresses" instead took their anger, aggression, and blame upon enslaved women. For more on this topic, Thavolia Glymph is required reading.
Though her husband was long-dead, Keziah harbored a specific hatred for black women. "I own many slaves & many of the females are of the lowest cast--making miserable their own fellow servants by medling with the husbands of others," she wrote. Brevard often accused black women of infidelity, claiming that "I know a family in five miles of me where there are six women who have & have had children for thirty years back & not one of them but have [been] bastards & only one ever had a husband." IT seems like the harmful stereotypes of single black mothers had a very early origin. Though she did not "excuse" enslaved men of bad behavior, she wrote "in the world they are not so degraded by such conduct as the females--but I do hope & pray that every one will be made to suffer here on this earth, who mars the peace of another."
It seems Brevard had constant issues with a woman named Sylvia, directly addressing her in her diary saying that "nothing on this earth can change your heart--is is a bad one. Sylvia hates a white face." Sylvia was not afraid to speak up to Brevard, and worked deliberately slowly when sewing--she and Mary "do about one fourth of what one person should do--those who have negroes to manage are Jobs are should be." Job, from the Bible, was made to suffer on Earth. Keziah saw kinship with this Biblical figure.
Present throughout these condemnations of black women is a self-professed spiritual righteousness on behalf of Brevard. She constantly wrote of her desire to be the best Christian possible, refusing to acknowledge the hypocrisy of being a Christian slaveowner. These thoughts were common among Southerners.
"Would I not be better in heart if I had no slaves?" She wrote. "This is hard to answer--God has given them to us."
Brevard even evoked the story of Moses and the Jews leaving Israel to defend her reluctance to immediately free her slaves. "Did God set the children of Israel to cutting their masters' throats to [free] them from bondage?" She asked, perhaps thinking of John Brown's recent raid that ended in bloodshed, or what would happen should her own slaves be freed. "No," she answered herself. "he brought them out of Egypt in his own particular way & he can send Africa's sons & daughters back when he knows they are ready for their exode." Their time would come, she believed. Just not when she had to deal with it.
Much like an earlier entry comparing herself to Job, Brevard asked "Oh my God help me to bear all of these crosses with more patience" when the dinner prepared for her was not up to standard. "what is the use of so much property when I can't get one thing cooked fit to eat?" she exclaimed angrily. This service, apparently, was her cross to bear.
Brevard wrote often of the troubles she faced when attempting to control the enslaved: "I wish to be kind to my negroes--but I receive little but impudence...at my death it is my solemn desire that Tama--Sylvia--Mack--Maria and Rosanna be sold--I cannot think of imposing such servants on any one of my heirs." The ideal punishment, for Keziah, was selling these women and separating them from their families.
What Brevard wrote of as "impudence" historians today see as resistance among enslaved populations. These actions, when recorded in Brevard's diary, prompted Brevard to air her true feelings about African Americans. They were "prone as human nature ever is to do evil--& instead of striving against it--yield to it," she wrote. Elsewhere, she called her enslaved people "very mean & unprincipled."
This misbehavior warranted punishment, and Brevard writes that she had several women whipped in order to "change their behaviors," but defended herself and Southern slaveowners in general: "I have no doubt we have some brute masters--but you know not what we have to bear from a bad negro...I have a few terrible spirits to keep in order--some we manage by kindness, some nothing but the fear of punishment will retrain in the least."
Like many Southerners, Brevard claimed to "hate slavery." This, of course, was not enough to make them relinquish their slaves. Brevard even asks to send her slaves "Back to Africa," as if history could simply be undone. "I wish every vessel that would go to Africa to bring slaves here--could sink before they reached her soil. I would give up every ct. [cent] I own on earth if I could stop the slave trade."
She was far from an abolitionist, however. She wished to be rid of slaves, yet "they are not prepared for freedom, many of them set no higher value on themselves than the beast of the field do." It was apparently not her fault that Brevard had slaves--"there are no doubts but thousands would have prefered being born in this beautiful country without the encumbrance [of slaves]--but they have been transmitted down to us & what can we do with them?--free such a multitude of half barbarians in our midst--no--no--we must sooner give up our lives than submit to such a degradation."
Keziah Brevard voiced her fears that "we may be hacked to death in the most cruel manner" by her slaves, but her true fear in setting the enslaved free was the idea of living among free people of color. She abhorred racial mixing--"I thank the Heavenly Father I have never had a son to mix my blood with negro blood--Oh such a sin." In perhaps the most forthright statement of her position, right before South Carolina's secession, she declared:
"we all lay down our lives sooner than free our slaves in our midst--no soul on this earth is more willing for justice than I am, but the idea of being mixed up with free blacks is horrid!"
Thus, while she declared that she did not want slaves, she cowardly and selfishly refused to free them. The only solution, she found, was an impossible removal. It would be Civil War, then.
Keziah Hopkins Brevard is far from unique in her fears and prejudices concerning the people she enslaved. I write this while thinking of Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers' forthcoming study: They Were Her Property: White Women as Slaveowners in the American South. Jones-Rogers shows that "slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men." I wonder if she uses Brevard as an example. I can't wait to read it.
You can read Brevard's words for yourself here, as her diary is transcribed and published. Share my pain.
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