Battle Slave Fantasia Special Edition Part 2
Hercules Montero
In 2020, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a landmark bill retiring the last state flag bearing the Confederate battle emblem. Boston's arts commission voted unanimously to remove a statue depicting a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln's feet.
Katish was a character whose fame was known far andwide through the little town. She was a strapping bigwoman who weighed over two hundred pounds, but asactive as a young girl. She had been my mother's maidbefore my mother was married and afterwards had nursedand bossed all of her children. I being the youngest was,of course, her special pet. She ran the establishment tosuit my father's and mother's comfort and convenience andruled the children and the slaves to suit herself; but we allloved her, and no other hand could soothe a fevered child'spillow as could the black hand of Katish. When we wereill she never seemed to sleep, but sat by our bedsides untilwe were well. The nastiest medicine (and there were nastymedicines in those days) lost much of its terrors whenadministered by Katish.
On yesterday Jimmie's warrant as midshipman arrived, atwhich he is highly delighted, especially as Captain Huger on yesterday,before the arrival of the mail, requested me to telegraphthe Department that there was room for him on the McRae andthat he desired to have him. The little scamp seems to take thefancy of all the officers he falls in with; those on the McRae seemto be very clever, and the midshipmen are all acquaintances ofhis . . . .
Shortly before we left Bahia a coasting steamer enteredport, bringing the news that the United States shipsNiagara and Mohican were either at Pernambuco, a shortrun to the north, or else on their way south, in searchof us. Whether this information had any influence on ourmovements or not, of course a midshipman could not beexpected to know; but all the same we got ready to depart.The Niagara carried twelve eleven-inch pivot guns,which enabled her to fight them all on either side. She wasdesigned by Steers on the lines of the famed yacht America,of which also he was the designer; and the Niagara, althougha steamer, had shown marvelous speed under sail. She hadaccompanied the British fleet across the Atlantic when thefirst Atlantic cable had been laid, and it was of her thatAdmiral Milne spoke when he wrote to the British Admiraltyfrom on board his seventy-two-gun line-of-battle shipthat he was in company with a sloop-of-war which carriedonly twelve guns, but could outrun his line-of-battle shipand whip her when caught. Consequently there was nodoubt on the part of any of us that the Niagara could clearthe South Atlantic Ocean of Alabamas and Georgias.
With Commander Kell I went from Southampton toLiverpool, where we were joined by several other officerswho were going to make the attempt to run the blockade.Among them was Lieutenant R. T. Chapman, who had beenexecutive officer of the Georgia when she was first placedin commission. Mr. Chapman was now entrusted with aspecial mission to take the great seal of the ConfederateStates, which had recently been completed in London, toRichmond. Lieutenant Evans, who had been the last commanderof the Georgia, Lieutenant Campbell, who had takenthe Rappahannock out of the Thames, Lieutenants Ingrahamand King, and Passed Midshipman Walker were alsoin the party.
After the battle a surgeon pressed me into serviceand made me hold a soldier's shattered leg while he amputated it.I would have preferred to be shot myself.Medicines were scarce in the South and that particularsurgeon had neither choloroform nor ether in his medical kit.
It was ten o'clock before our wheezy and feeble locomotivegave a screech and a jerk which started us on ourjourney. Colonel Harrison precipitately left his chief andjumped on board the moving train while the Presidentwaved a second farewell to his loved ones. We proceededat a snail's pace for about twelve miles when suddenlywe came to a standstill. Our ramshackle locomotive hadbalked; no amount of persuasion on the part of the engineercould induce it to haul us over a slight up-grade, andwe remained where we were for the rest of the night.It was the afternoon of the next day when we arrived atBurkesville Junction, where Colonel Harrison receivedthe news of the battle between Generals Pickett andSheridan and telegraphed the information at once to PresidentDavis.
There had once been stately colonial mansions on theseplantations along the banks of the Ashley River, many ofthem built with brick brought from England, but only DraytonHall remained standing at the time I was there. When Charlestonfell, gunboats came up the river and wantonly knocked downone after the other of these splendid residences. When theDrayton family heard the cannon they were at dinner and rushedout of the house, thinking that it would soon be tumbling on theirheads. None of them returned to it for six months or more.When the gunboat stopped in front of Drayton Hall, the oldnegro butler, a man whose first name was Jack, and who hadalways been a slave of the Draytons, got into a log canoe andpaddled out to the warship and implored the captain not todestroy Admiral Drayton's house; and the officer, not wishing toget into trouble with an admiral, spared it. Jack knew as muchabout the Drayton genealogy as did any member of the family;and he knew perfectly well that Admiral Drayton, althoughbelonging to the same family, did not own a brick in the building.This Admiral Drayton was with the United States fleet at thebattle of Port Royal where his brother General Draytoncommanded the Southern forts.
The eunuch is as a rule faithful and devoted to his master, andthe master indulges the creature in every way.Many of these things are very wealthy, and strange to say, theybuy beautiful slaves to wait upon them in their own privatehomes, and their conversation is almost entirely restricted to thesubject of women and their perfections. Of course there aresome disloyal scoundrels among the eunuchs, at least there weresaid to be. I remember one in particular who was nearly sevenfeet in height and as slender as a flagstaff. I do not know that hewas unfaithful, but at all events he made a very good income bymaking gullible young men believe that he was. His method wasvery simple; he would hang around Shepheard's Hotel and pickout some rich young tourist and tell him that a wonderfullybeautiful inmate of his master's harem had seen him and fallen inlove with him, and as she was his (the eunuch's) favorite, he hadconsented to assist her in her love affair, and that if the proposedvictim would make an appointment with him, as his master wasout of the city, he, the eunuch, would facilitate their meeting, etc.He would then accompany his dupe through dark and narrowstreets to the rear of the garden wall surrounding his master'spalace, unlock a small door and lead him into the grounds, andwhen he had got him some distance inside he would turn uponhim and demand a large sum of money, threatening to give thealarm if it was not instantly forthcoming. Sefar Pasha, the brute'smaster, and an apostate Austrian who had amassed great wealthand also stood high in the esteem of both the Sultan and theKhedive, used to get great merriment out of the facetiousness ofhis confidential slave. He used to say that doubtless moreLeanders boasted of having invaded the sacred precincts of hisharem than that of any other pasha or bey, but he doubted if anyof them ever boasted of the amount it cost them simply to passthe garden gate. Sefar undoubtedly was in the confidence of therascal. When Arabi Bey raised his rebellion in Egypt the inmatesof Sefar Pasha's harem, in common with many others, wereturned outon to the streets of Cairo to prevent their starving inside of theirgilded cages.
We had not been very long in Egypt before some fortythousand men of all branches of the service were gatheredaround Cairo to take part in a grand sham battle. I wastemporarily assigned to General Stone's staff for the occasion.General Stone was to command one army and Lieutenant-GeneralRatib Pasha, commander-in-chief of the EgyptianArmy, was to command the other.
When the commissioners reached Melbourne, all business men,having private axes to grind, they proceeded to business at onceand held a meeting, to which I was not invited, and decided thatthey would divide the appropriation into as many parts as therewere commissioners, and that each one should take charge of aspecial department, and be responsible for his share of themoney. That being settled, they called on me with a demand thatI turn the funds over to them. I never saw a madder set of menthan they were when I told them that I had nothing to do with themoney, and that it was not only not in my keeping, but in that of anaval officer, who, acting under the orders of the Secretary ofState, would attend to the decoration of the hall and arrangementof the exhibit as well as the disbursement of all funds, and savethem all trouble in that respect. But the result was that, for thefirst time in the history of American commissions to world fairs,every bill was paid and a large balance returned to the UnitedStates Treasury!
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