Last week I introduced the letters of Reuben and Orrin, the enslaved father and son who helped Amanda Beardsley Trulock run her husband's plantation in Jefferson County from his death in 1849 until the early 1860s.
The joint efforts of Reuben and Amanda's sister Marcia Beardsley produced the first letter, addressed to members of the Beardsley family in Bridgeport, Conn. It captures something of Reuben's character and concerns, but Marcia's finishing-school education comes through in the letter's language.
During the 1850s, as cotton prices rose and Reuben established regular cycles of production on the Trulocks' land, Amanda grew more and more prosperous and was able to leave the plantation in the early summer to visit her family in Bridgeport; she usually headed back to Arkansas in the fall and arrived around Thanksgiving.
She would take at least one of her five children with her, and over the decade left all of them there because in Arkansas, as she remarked soon after her arrival here, "there is not that attention paid to schools there is in many places." She would also bring female relatives back to Arkansas to spend the winter and spring in her "two-penned log cabin," a dog trot that she improved over the years.
Amanda is the person most likely to have taught Orrin to read and write. Because Orrin wrote three letters for Reuben, I do not know whether or not Reuben could read and write. It is possible that he could but preferred to have Orrin act as his secretary.
I don't know if Amanda taught any other slaves to read and write. I don't know when she taught Orrin, or what purpose she had in mind. Orrin was born around 1833, so he was about 20 when he wrote the first surviving letter on Nov. 4, 1853. He took dictation for Reuben, then added his own note. Please remember that standardized spelling was still a new idea in the 1850s, so "incorrect" spellings are no mark against the quality of Orrin's writing, which is superb.
Reuben addressed Amanda's father Nichols Beardsley as Master Nichols: "I feels disposed to write you a few lines concirnning my Bussiness matters. So far I feel very well Satisfied with my years Crop. I expect to beat my Neighbors again this year. Crops of Corn and Cotton will be short in our Neighbourhood this year. My Mistress has now 172 bales out, and I hope to get 300 ... and also I think that I will sell 2,500 bushels of corn. There was a gentleman spoke to me for 300 bushels of corn today."
In Arkansas as elsewhere on the "old" southwestern frontier (areas undergoing rapid settlement from 1820-1860), farmers tended to put greater and greater emphasis on growing the premier cash crop (cotton) the longer they farmed an area.
Devoting acreage and labor to growing cotton diminished the acreage and labor devoted to subsistence, that is, growing food for people and animals. The idea of paying for food that could be grown offended Amanda's sense of economy. Having corn to sell, rather than having to buy corn, pleased both of them, and Reuben shrewdly directed agricultural production on the Trulock plantation toward subsistence as well as cash.
"We have now 71 head of meet hogs. I think that we shall have a plenty of pork and Lard this year, and that is not common among the planters in Jefferson," Reuben wrote to Nichols Beardsley. Draft animals were doing well too: "We have 14 head of fine Mules and they are worth from 120 to 130 dollars a head. They are at this time much better than Horses for us, they are not apt to take ... a disease of any kind."
Reuben was an operator. Though enslaved, he considered all of the plantation's business to be his business, and commented on business matters beyond the plantation; still addressing Nichols Beardsley, he wrote, "I hope that you will be fortunatly enough to get that money from Mr. Thomas Hines. It would afford me much pleasure to see you at this time to make Calculations about my gin works."
To Amanda's brother Bronson Beardsley, Reuben wrote, "I am really astonished to hear that you was a going to get married, particular to one that is worth so much. Why I say so [is] we has talked over these things. I think that you told me that you never would get married again. I thought that you told me that your share of property would go to Mistress['s] childring."
Here Reuben takes up, not in jest, not only Amanda's material interests, but those of her children against those of her brother's prospective wife and any future heirs. That's bold.
None of the above is to be taken as a cheerful portrayal of slavery, or even of Reuben's extremely unusual experience as a slave. In fact, as Amanda's letters and his own make clear, he was often anxious and depressed.
Nor is any of the above to be used to reinforce the terrible myth of contented slaves who remained loyal to their masters after emancipation. As soon as he had the opportunity, Reuben walked away. Amanda's language on hearing a report of Reuben after Union occupation of Pine Bluff would suggest that they did not part on good terms.
During the last decade or so of his enslavement, Reuben's interests merged almost entirely with those of his enslaver; but in the end, he was his own man.