Category Archives: slavery

Slavery and the Will Rees Mysteries

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When I first began writing the Will Rees mysteries, I made a conscious decision to avoid jumping into that messy part of our history. Not because I didn’t think it was important, I did, but I didn’t think I was ready to navigate this serious subject. I allude to it in several books. In Death of a Dyer, for example, I mention the two people stolen from the village street by slave takers. This becomes important later.

Many books later, I wanted to set a mystery in the Great Dismal Swamp. Even now, although much smaller than it was 300 years ago, is still a pretty hostile environment. I’ve posted before about that previously. Anyway, fugitives from neighboring plantations, the escapees were called Maroons, set up small communities in the swamp. Tobias, the man stolen in Death of a Dyer, escapes and asks Rees to help recover his wife, now living in the swamp. Rees and Lydia travel to Virginia to do that and, of course, run smack into a murder.

Death in the Great Dismal forced me to confront slavery head on with characters who were so desperate for freedom they fled to the dangerous and forbidding swamp.

I continue the story in Murder on Principle. In the previous book, Rees and Lydia have rescued a couple of the enslaved people.

In Murder on Principle, the owner comes looking for them, bringing a grudge and smallpox that sweeps through the village. When he is found murdered, suspicion falls on the people Rees has brought north. I posed several ethical questions. One, if the slave owner intended to recover the people he thought of as his property, would they be guilty of murdering him or was it self-defense? How far does loyalty and friendship go in a case of murder? Are Tobias and Ruth justified in their anger at Rees for suspecting them? And finally, should Rees turn the murderer over to the constable or, considering the circumstances, let him go free? And what about the escaped slave who has lived in the north for years and is suddenly confronted with the prospect of recapture?

In Murder, Sweet Murder, I send the family to Boston. Lydia’s father has been accused of murder. Lydia, who has been estranged from her father for years, is reluctant to go and we soon learn why. He is a slave trader – despite the fact that Boston was the center of the Abolition movement.

Even though I do not address the issue of slavery in The Long Shadow of Murder directly, I feature the ripple effect of some of the actions taken during Murder on Principle. It is not just war that leaves people with PTSD but previous decisions and consequences from those decisions.

Rum and Slaves

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Rum was the lubricant and the fuel for the engine of commerce leading up to the American Revolution and a bit beyond. It was a favorite drink of the slavers, the slaves, and pretty much everyone else. Called Nelson’s blood (as well as a number of less flattering names), rum made up part of the British sailors’ pay.

In fact, one source I read said that the outrage over the Boston Tea Party had more to do with the dumping of rum than tea.

What is rum? Rum is distilled from the molasses left over from sugarcane. The cane has particular requirement and cannot be grown in the temperate lands. It must be grown with lots of sun and water. It also needs intensive labor to cut, cart and process the cane under the tropical sun. A clear and distinct link between the growing demand for sugar and slavery can be drawn because, as plantations were turned over to cane, the needs of a large work force demanded more workers – Slaves. The Good Hope Plantation, at its height, owned approximately 3000 slaves to do with work.

The slaves needed to be fed. New England ships brought dried cod, picked up the molasses for transport to the distilleries in New England. The resulting drink (called among other things, screech, kill-devil, demon water) was put in casks and sent to Africa to purchase more slaves and also to Great Britain. This was the previously discussed Triangle Trade.

Once slavery was abolished and the plantations no longer had this labor pool, the importance of sugar and sugar cane fell, first in Jamaica and then in the United States. (Now machinery performs most of the duties required in farming and harvesting sugarcane.)

Ironically, the long trips over the ocean, stored in casks, made the rum more drinkable.

Although rum was still consumed after the War for Independence, as mentioned in Murder, Sweet Murder, it was falling out of favor as the new country’s beverage. Whiskey, from rye grown in Western Pennsylvania, and distilled in the country, was considered more patriotic and as such became the drink of choice.

Sugar, Molasses and Rum

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Before rum, there was sugar – from sugarcane. Sugar is present in many fruits and vegetables. Sugar beets, for example, have more sugar than an apple. There are also many types of sugar: glucose, fructose, lactose, with slight differences in their chemical structures. 

The sweetest of all is sugarcane.

Sugarcane is a picky plant, requiring heat, sunshine and water. It must be grown in a frost free environment. Discovered millennia ago, it grew first in New Guinea and from there spread to India and the Indian subcontinent. It did not reach Europe until many centuries later, during the Middle Ages, and it was rare and expensive. A description of a banquet in 1457 mentions sugar sculptures. As sugar was planted in Madeira and the Canary Islands, the demand for sugar increased tenfold.

Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the New World and the first sugar plantation was set up in Hispaniola. Slaves were imported to work the plantations and the desire for sugar continued to increase. With the plantations in the West Indies, sugar became cheap enough for most households to afford. From a few pounds consumed per capita in the colonies in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the amount rose to eighty pounds by the end.

Sugarcane is a grass. The crop is chopped into lengths, crushed and boiled. (Now much of this is done by machines but during the time of Will Rees, it was all done by hand.) The sugar we know and love is the crystallized result from the sugarcane syrup. Raw sugar is brown and has a higher molasses content. Slave accounts allude to the difficult and dangerous work connected to the production of sugar, from the chopping of cane to the boiling of the syrup. Slaves in the more northern states did not want to be sold down south: to the cotton or cane fields.

Molasses is a byproduct of this process. Once, it was discarded but the demand for molasses grew exponentially when it was discovered it could be fermented into an alcoholic drink. The fermentation of sugarcane juice is mentioned in Sanskrit texts. By the time of the sugar plantations in the West Indies, the enslaved were fermenting the molasses into ‘Rumbullion”, ‘kill-devil,’ and ‘screech’ – all forms of (probably undrinkable) rum. It rapidly gained in popularity, however, and was used as currency in Africa and was exported to Great Britain.

Sugarcane is a heavy feeder and requires about 660 gallons of water for every 2.2 pounds of sugar. So, not great for the environment as well as its role in obesity, tooth decay, diabetes, and other health risks.

Demon Rum – and sugar

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There is no rum without sugar (this is true for any alcoholic drink). Prior to the Revolutionary War most people drank rum or hard cider. Sailors were paid partly in rum. The early settlers, however, drank it in a punch or toddy. Early on, rum was distilled in the Caribbean where sugar was grown. Then it made sense for the rum to be distilled where the prime market was – New England. By the mid-1700s, though, most rum was made, and made more cheaply too, in New England. Many fortunes were made by this rum and I’ve read that one of those fortunes was made by. the Kennedy family.

But I digress.

What were some of the consequences of this cheap and easily obtainable rum?

Well, sugar is very labor intensive so the cultivation of sugar resulted in a tremendous need for slaves and was one of the big drivers of the slave trade.

Second, sugar exhausts the soil quickly so planters had to keep finding new land. This was certainly a big reason for the push for plantations and slavery westward.

Third, Americans drank more than ever. ‘Demon Rum’ became one of the many names for rum, leading to the temperance movement and to Prohibition with all of its associated crime and other problems.

And yes, although many New Englanders were abolitionists, New England profited hugely from the trade. New England ships brought slaves to the New World. New England ships brought sugar north. And New England ships brought codfish south for the slaves to eat.

Rum drinking declined after the Revolutionary War since rye was grown in the frontier – then around Pittsburgh – and distilled into whiskey. Of course, that came with its own set of problems.

Sugar is still grown in Louisiana and Domino has a big presence there. (Their factory looks abandoned – broken windows and shabby exterior.) In Louisiana there are two plantings a year.

How much sugar do we consume now? Well, in the early 1700s, a few pounds or less might be ingested by the average person per year. In 1999, the peak of sugar consumption, it was 111 grams a day, just about half a pound a day.  In 2016, that dropped to 94 grams a day. Soda is one culprit but actually sugar and high fructose corn syrup is in just about everything.

And what about rum? Well, by Prohibition, although rum was castigated as the ‘demon’, most people were drinking whiskey. Rum’s big day had already passed. And in a weird twist, New Englanders again made fortunes by becoming ‘rumrunners’, making available alcohol during Prohibition.

And it all started with sugar.