The Plantation Paradox

The Middleton Place.

Today was one of my favorite days of the trip so far. Maybe my most favorite.

Last night, for really the first time since I started, I was actually a bit stressed thinking about today, because the forecast was for rain. I had wanted to visit a plantation, but that wouldn’t have been possible if it rained and I had no alternate plans. So I went to sleep and decided to deal with it in the morning. In the morning, amazingly, it… wasn’t raining. It had gone from a 80% chance of rain (according to the Weather app) down to 30%, and even that was optimistic. It didn’t rain.

See? Once again God smiles upon me. I packed up and drove to Middleton Place, down long winding southern-type back roads lined with trees.

Middleton Place was a once-massive plantation first settled in the late 17th century (I am copying this straight out of the brochure) by the Middleton family, whose men loomed large in American history: one scion was president of the First Continental Congress; another signed the Declaration of Independence; and yet another signed the Ordinance of Secession. I wonder how his ancestors would have felt about that last one.

William ruined it for everyone.

Primarily, the plantation grew rice, which I have learned since arriving in South Carolina was apparently a prize crop here in its heyday. That tidbit is for everyone who thought the south was all about tobacco and cotton. With a flourishing slave population that at one point reached 800 members, the Middletons were massively rich and powerful people in the colonial and pre-war South. They owned not just one but dozens of plantations in the region.

A smile began to twitch onto my face as soon as I drove into the welcome gate, down a wooded road and into a parking lot lined with trees. I could already tell I was going to love this. I purchased a general ticket, which didn’t include entrance to the house (an extra $15! Bite me) but included access to everywhere else on the property and several free tours. I arrived just in time for “Beyond the Fields: Slavery at Middleton Place”. As I passed the reflecting pool, opened a garden gate and hurried across the Greensward (an open park-like space) to reach the tour’s starting point, a flock of sheep wandered past. Small, colonial structures dotted the landscape. But all of that was really just dressing for the estate itself.

Sheep crossing on the Greensward.

Massive, ancient oak trees stretching out huge limbs, lazily dangling long boughs of Spanish moss. Long, secret garden paths, overhung with oak and camelia branches. Hidden enclosures filled with little gems - fountains, statues, stone benches. Geometrically carved-out classical gardens, hedges, flowers. Quiet ponds traversed by wooden bridges. Gentle terracing. Views of the slow-moving river. Romantic, beautiful, lush, green grounds bursting with treasures which made you want to wander forever. Everywhere animals roaming: sheep, peacocks, horses, swans, chickens, alligators, turtles.

I feel like I could stop here. There’s nothing I could say that could really describe it. It was a place I felt that I had dreamed of - a paradise that spoke to my soul. While I was there, as I wandered down endless, sculpted garden paths, through wild green alleys, discovering one mystery after another, losing myself among the oaks, gazing and exploring and drinking it in, I didn’t need to analyze anything. I didn’t have to understand why this made me so happy, what about it fulfilled which part of me. I had that fleeting thought, and I remember having it - that I didn’t need to force myself to be in the moment, I didn’t have to understand anything. I just had to be there. And then the thought was gone.

I spent four hours there. The tour took up one; the other three I was on my own. I traced my way through the self-guided tour, visiting all of the gardens and major points of interest. Every moment was whole. I wished my family were there, but not because I felt I wanted companionship - only because I knew they would love it. I didn’t feel lonely. I was grateful to be alone - happy to be free to wander whence I list, to stop and run my hands over the branch of an oak, to disappear down a quiet path, to thread my way through the gardens at my own pace, to pause and take pictures, to double back, to sit in silence, to pet the sheep, to chase a peacock. I was free to do whatever my heart desired.

The plantation was nearly empty of other visitors; I rarely came upon anyone, and was rarely disturbed in my rich solitude. The oaks . . . that Spanish moss, floating down towards the ground . . . it was what you picture, or what I picture, when I think of the south: those spreading trees, that sense of indolent, glutted ease, of nature at its most luxuriant, gracefully drooping to the ground, offering protection, or rather, guardianship.

Like I said, I don’t think I have the right words. The atmosphere of the place, the - beyond bucolic scenery - the greenness, the openness, the simpleness, the elegance . . . it caught me completely. It was so unbelievably beautiful. I felt as though I belonged there in some way. I sat on a root of the Middleton Oak - thought to be over 1,000 years old - and I thought of its history. According to the guidebook, the tree marked an Indian trail long before Europeans came to the Carolinas. Eventually, the English arrived, and cleared away much of the forest, but some of it remained. The tree became part of a southern plantation, the ultimate symbol of colonialism, oppression, ruthless exploitation.

I wondered if, during the centuries this place was owned and worked, a young privileged woman in a pretty, frothy dress and petticoats, carrying a parasol and maybe a book, had ever sat in this nook and looked out from beneath its enormous, sprawling limbs onto the river beneath, or if some young couple had had some kind of rendezvous here, begun or ended a love affair. And then I realized that the oak tree seat directly overlooked what would have been, in those days, the rice fields where the slaves worked.

"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me..."

The plantation - or, rather, the foundation that now runs it as a visitor center - makes no efforts to hide or sugarcoat its past of slavery. In fact, this was something I had remarked upon the previous day in Charleston as well: not just that the fact of slavery was acknowledged or admitted, but that it was fully recognized as a fixed, immovable, significant part of the state’s history. The tour guides and exhibits were neither reticent about the subject of slavery nor awkwardly apologetic. In every instance - at least, so it seemed to me - and I am a white woman, or at least, a Jewish woman who passes for white, so I may not have any right whatsoever to say any of this - it seemed to me that the city had, in some sense, come to peace with its history, or at least had reached a place where it was able to acknowledge, to condemn, to recognize, and to understand the part slavery had played in the beginnings of America without whitewashing it or making excuses.

I hope I’m expressing myself properly. I have no doubt that the experience of exploring Charleston - where 40 percent of all American slaves made port - is very different for a person whose life, family or heritage was touched by slavery. From my perspective as an outsider, and as an observer, I was impressed by how Charleston had absorbed this aspect of its history into its consciousness. That Charleston’s founders owned, bought, and traded slaves in one of the most unspeakably callous and profoundly disturbing perversions of moral judgment in the history of humankind is an unalterable fact, and no one seeks to deny it. Slavery’s role in the building of the town, and in its outrageous success and wealth, is everywhere described and acknowledged. For a town with a past as complicated as Charleston’s, I think that’s a healthy place to have settled.

Middleton Place has the difficult task of preserving a valuable but emotionally charged piece of American history. Think about what a plantation is, and what it means (at least to us Northerners), and you might wonder how such a place can be ethically viable as a tourist destination. Without the institution of slavery, these plantations wouldn’t have existed; they were built on its back. Isn’t there something repugnant about now opening them to guests as pleasure gardens? But that’s exactly where that contradictory moment which Charleston has conquered enters the equation.

These plantations are a part of American history. But not just because of slavery. I suppose one could make the argument that they are about nothing other than slavery, and make it well. But in my (innocent, white, privileged) opinion (on the other hand, I am an enlightened and educated woman whose people have been oppressed since time immemorial, so maybe I shouldn’t be discounting my own opinion so quickly. I honestly don’t even know anymore), to put all the weight on the aspect of slavery is to ignore the full picture. Yes, the plantations couldn’t have existed without slavery, but if you remove everything else, you are only left with half of the story in a historical sense, and you’re not learning much.

The other half, while not as emotionally compelling or upsetting, is just as true as the slavery half. Economic, political and national pressures converged to form a slavery-based society of monstrously wealthy landowners who became founding members of the country and then, later, took it back. Both variables are needed to form the equation.

I guess what the plantation does/tries to do is to show something closer to a fuller picture. Slavery existed to support the lifestyles and wealth of a few white men, and this is how those men lived. You’re seeing the balance and counterbalance, the way these two vital, instrumental American institutions existed in twisted harmony. I think you need both.

I don’t know. Middleton had a tour dedicated to exploring its history of slavery, and it produced a book on the subject as well. It doesn’t have slave quarters - those burned down at some point - but it has a freedman’s house, built by post-war Middletons for several former slaves who had returned as employees, with an exhibit about the family’s slave-holding past, including a list of every slave owned by each Middleton across their many plantations.

But on the other hand, the exhibit didn’t talk about how the slaves were treated, or discuss whether or not they had half-white babies fathered on them, or the factors which caused some slaves to run away, or how they were welcomed back when they were returned. The guide spoke about how working in a rice field was less taxing than a tobacco or cotton field, essentially indicating that the Middleton slaves were treated better than most, but is that really a scale we want to be using?

Does the exhibit absolve the Middletons of anything? Absolutely not. Does it help give a fuller picture? Yes, it does. Do I feel like an asshole trying to justify how much I liked the plantation? Yes, I do.

I think I should probably stop talking about slavery now. It’s not what I meant to talk about. But you can’t really talk about a plantation without talking about slavery, and I guess that’s the point.

The truth is, I was in love with the plantation. Maybe because it seemed straight out of a book, though not any book about the American south; I’m really referring to the English estates upon which the design of Middleton was based, and which are generally the settings of some of my very favorite books (for anyone who doesn’t know, my pet period of English literature is Regency/Victorian). Most of Anthony Trollope’s novels, for example, are set on pastoral estates. Also, it reminded me of Truly Scrumptious’s (?) house from the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, when she sings “Lovely, Lovely Man” while wandering through the grounds of her father’s enormous property, running over bridges, winding through trees, sitting on swings.

She's truly, truly scrumptious.

I just . . . I loved it. That’s all. Existential musings and controversial statements on slavery aside. I loved the animals, too, and there were so many of them. I mentioned the sheep; they were just wandering around everywhere all day, and some of them were really friendly, would let you pet them (though they weren’t that cool with standing still for pictures). During the tour, we saw a TON of alligators sunning themselves on the edges of the various lakes and ponds - I think I saw at least five. None of them were very big, and one was an actual baby, which was very cute. They were just sitting there - literally didn’t move an inch, even as I got closer and closer (for a picture, since they clearly weren’t going anywhere and the sheep were being uncooperative).

This guy's name was Mud. Literally.

The only picture of me from the entire day. See the baby gator in the middle?

The estate also has seven horses, I learned from guy who worked at the stable. We scratched the noses of Jesse and Jim, the estate’s two newest draft horses (they pull the carriage for tours) and hands down the HUGEST equines I have ever seen. They were brothers, and very friendly, and enormous. Apparently, they are half Belgian and half Clydesdale, and measure nineteen hands each. (An average horse measures about fifteen hands tall. A hand = about 4”. So we’re talking horses that are at least a foot and a half taller than any horse you’ve seen lately, buddy.)

Jesse and Jim were two horses of the gigantic persuasion.

After my visit to the stables I encountered the peacock in full flower. He was presenting the hell out of himself to a bunch of hens, but to no avail, since unfortunately they were the wrong species. Another volunteer told me that a while back he had gone for weeks without presenting (flouncing out his feathers) because he was saving himself for the cow. So clearly he’s a bit confused. But SO gorgeous. I took about 50 pictures of him; it was like a photo shoot. Me: “You’re so beautiful. Look at me. Yes, turn this way. Oh man are you gorgeous! Where are you going?” Actually he was really patient with me. I think he liked the attention. I got a bunch of great shots.

Good luck, buddy.

My favorites were at the end though, when, perched upon a wall, he cocked his head at me with the MOST self-satisfied look I have ever seen on an animal.

I mean, come on.

But really, HOW gorgeous is he?!

There were also a bunch of swans, and I am pretty sure I saw some egrets - young eagles - circling above. I found a goat who really loved to be scratched behind the horns, and of course I got in a quick cuddle with the barn cat. So yes, you might say I washed my hands very thoroughly before leaving.

In short, top-notch day. Happiness + Musing = perfect mixture of sweet and savory. 12/10 would relive for eternity Groundhog Day-style.