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Slave owners living in white-columned mansions liked to "show off" and therefore strived to make their manors a country showplace. The property of the more beautiful mansions boasted an ancient Roman or Greek style main house, many outhouses, two stone mills, a distillery, and a school for the White children.
Many of the "big houses" were three-storied, made of brick and with porticos (a porch or walkway with a roof supported by columns leading to the entrance) and Dorie columns (ancient Greek style). The "big house" characteristically faced a massive formal garden and its inside housed luxurious items. Walnut tables, beds, chairs, a "parcel of old books", and desks -- all located in spacious high-ceilinged rooms upstairs and down. As a general rule, plantation owners placed their lighter-skinned slaves in the "big house" and almost routinely established clandestine and forced sexual relations with their female house slaves.
Those offspring who established connections with their White father occasionally received greater benefits and a more comfortable lifestyle. The master's favorite slaves, ranging from six to fifteen, were the "Elite" because they occupied the most privileged positions on the plantation. Their job was to create no problems; to report all brewing slave problems; make easier the slave master's personal life (e.g. valets); and cause to magically happen the plantation's genteel social diversions.
In elaborating on these elite slaves who ensured leisurely living, Fredrick Douglass (My Bondage, p. 82) said: "Behind the tall-backed and elaborately wrought chairs, stand the servants, men and maidens -- fifteen in number -- discriminately selected, not only with a view to their industry and faithfulness, but with special regard to their personal appearance, their graceful agility and captivating address. Some of these are armed with fans, and are fanning revising breezes toward the over-heated brows of the alabaster ladies; others watch with eager eye, and with fawn-like step anticipate and supply wants before they are sufficiently formed to be announced by word or sign . . .. They resembled the field hands in nothing except in color, and in this they held the advantage of a velvet-like glossiness, rich and beautiful.
The delicate colored maid rustled in the scarcely worn silk of her young mistress, while the servant men were equally well attired from the overflowing wardrobe of their young masters; so that, in dress, as well as in form and feature, in manner and speech, in tastes and habits, the distance between these favored few, and the sorrow and hunger-smitten multitudes of the quarter and the field, was immense; and this is seldom passed over."
Travelers sought and often received invitations to tarry for a visit. The objective was for them to witness gracious living in a cultured environment. Such elite slaves as coachmen would drive the guests and/or master around in horse or carriage. Others served mint juleps to guests on the broad piazza prior to dinner at four. Meanwhile, guests strolled over the spacious yard or down the avenue of trees--both lined with statuary imported from France or Italy--as they led from the mansion to the road. For recreation the slave owner was into racing horses, fox-hunting, and sailing. The sloop hands (elite slaves tending the sailboats) on board sailing vessels represented the plantation abroad. Thus, they were generally treated with some degree of friendliness and usually the master would not allow them to be whipped by the overseer.
Elite slaves were also jockeys for the plantation-vs.-plantation match races, each carrying his plantation's colors aboard the horses (and often into the boxing ring). They competed throughout the USA and Europe under such names as "Pompay," "Scipto," and "Cato." This made Black jockeys the first American professional athletes (Brady, A Certain Blindness, p.261).
website: jablifeskills.com
Joseph A. Bailey, II, M.D.
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