In A Plantation Birth Room, An Enslaved Woman Held The Power To Create Life Or End A Dynasty’s Future Secretly
My hands were covered in blood when I realized I held the power to end a dynasty.
The screams from the birthing chamber had been echoing through the Beaumont mansion for 18 hours, and I, Hagar, had delivered enough babies in my 50 years to know when death was stalking a birthing room.
But as I looked down at the pale writhing form of Mistress Isabel Beaumont, her golden hair matted with sweat, and her blue eyes wild with pain, I saw something else entirely, an opportunity 20 years in the making.
Music. “Save her.” Master Beaumont’s voice cracked like a whip from the doorway, though he dared not enter the birthing chamber where women’s mysteries unfolded beyond his understanding.
“Save my wife and my heir, Hagar, or I swear by God I’ll have you flayed alive and fed to the hogs.”
I had heard those words before, or variations of them, every time one of his precious bloodline faced danger.
Music. But never had I heard them while holding in my other hand a small vial of liquid that could grant me the sweetest revenge I had ever imagined.
The glass was warm against my palm, its contents clear as water, but deadly as a serpent’s bite to the future of the Beaumont line.
The night was October 15th, 1855, and the Mississippi Delta stretched endlessly beyond the mansion’s windows.
Its cotton fields white with the harvest that had built this empire of human misery.
The air was thick with the scent of magnolia blossoms and the distant smoke from the slave quarters, where my people huddled in their cabins, knowing that another white child was being born to inherit their lives.
I had been born on this plantation 50 years ago, had learned the art of midwifery from my grandmother, who had learned it from hers, carrying forward the ancient knowledge of African women who understood the mysteries of birth and death, healing and harm.
My grandmother Casey had been stolen from her village in what the white men called the Gold Coast, brought to America in the belly of a slave ship when she was barely 16 years old.
“Knowledge is power,” she had whispered to me as a child.
Her gnarled hands showing me which plants could ease pain and which could cause it, which roots could bring life and which could take it away.
“And sometimes, child, power is the only justice we’ll ever see in this world of chains and sorrow.”
For 32 years, I had brought life into this world with these same hands.
I had delivered white babies who would grow up to own my children and black babies who would grow up to be owned.
I had eased the pain of plantation wives and slave women alike, though only one group ever thanked me for my service, and only one group ever paid me for my skill.
But tonight was different. Tonight, as Mistress Isabel’s body convulsed with another contraction that seemed to tear through her like lightning.
Music. I remembered the last time I had seen my youngest son Samuel.
The memory was so vivid it might have happened yesterday instead of 2 years ago.
His name was Samuel, and he was 14 when they sold him.
14 years old, tall for his age, with intelligent eyes that reminded me of his father, a field hand named Moses, who had been sold away to a sugar plantation in Louisiana before Samuel could walk.
I had managed to keep Samuel close to the house, training him to help with my midwifery work, teaching him to read herbs and understand the healing arts, hoping that his usefulness might protect him from the auction block that had already claimed his three older siblings.
I was wrong. I was always wrong when I believed that loyalty might be rewarded with mercy.
“Hagar,” Mistress Isabel had said that morning in September 1853, her voice sweet as poisoned honey.
“I found a buyer for your boy. A cotton plantation in Alabama needs young men with strong backs and quick minds.
The price is quite good, enough to pay for my new dress from Paris, and perhaps a matching hat.”
I had fallen to my knees in the parlor, my dignity crumbling like sand as I begged, pleaded, offered to work without food, without rest, without anything if she would just let me keep my last child.
I offered to give up my small garden, to sleep on the kitchen floor instead of in my cabin.
Music. To work 20 hours a day if necessary, but she had laughed, that tinkling laugh that sounded like breaking glass and felt like ice in my veins.
“Your time of breeding is over, Hagar. You’re 50 years old, too old to be thinking about children.
Now you serve my bloodline, my legacy. Music. That’s your purpose, your only purpose.”
I watched them load Samuel onto the wagon, his eyes searching for mine as the chains rattled around his wrists like the sound of my heart breaking.
He didn’t cry. I had taught him never to cry where they could see, but I saw the terror in his face, the desperate hope that somehow his mother would save him, would find a way to keep him safe.
I couldn’t. I was property just like him. I could only stand there and watch as they drove away my heart, my future, my reason for living.
That was 2 years ago. 2 years of carrying that image in my mind, of waking every morning to the knowledge that my son was somewhere in Alabama, probably dead by now from the brutal work of the cotton fields.
2 years of serving the woman who had sold him for the price of a dress and a hat, of maintaining the facade of loyal service while my soul withered with grief and rage.
And now, as another contraction racked Mistress Isabel’s body, I felt the weight of the small vial in my apron pocket.
Inside was a tincture I had prepared from plants my grandmother had taught.
Music meter recognize. Gossypium herbaceum and Aristolochia serpentaria. Cotton root and Virginia snakeroot combined with other herbs in proportions that had been passed down through generations of enslaved women who understood that sometimes survival required terrible choices.
The mixture would stop bleeding, yes, but it would also do something else, something that no white doctor in 1855 would ever be able to detect or reverse.
It would ensure that Mistress Isabel Beaumont would never bear another child, that the dynasty built on the backs of my people would end with whatever emerged from her womb tonight.
“The baby’s coming,” cried Mercy, my young assistant, a 22-year-old girl whose own infant son slept in the slave quarters while she helped me bring white babies into the world.
“I can see the head. It’s coming fast now.” I moved into position, my hands steady.
Music. Despite the magnitude of what I was contemplating. This was the moment, the chaos of birth, when blood and pain and fear created the perfect cover for what I needed to do.
The room was filled with the sounds of Mistress Isabel’s labored breathing, the crackle of the fire in the hearth, and the distant rumble of thunder from a storm approaching across the Delta.
The baby emerged in a rush of fluid and blood, a boy pale and small, but breathing.
I cleared his airway with practiced efficiency, listening to his first cries echo through the chamber like a proclamation of his arrival into a world that would bow to his every whim, Master Beaumont’s heir, the child who would inherit 3,000 acres and 200 enslaved souls.
But as I worked to deliver the afterbirth, as Mistress Isabel’s body shuddered with the final stages of labor, I made my choice.
With one hand, I pressed against her belly to encourage the bleeding to stop naturally.
Music. With the other, I reached for the vial in my pocket, my fingers closing around the glass that contained 20 years of accumulated rage.
“Mistress Isabel,” I said, my voice calm and professional despite the storm raging in my heart.
“I need to give you something to stop the bleeding, a special tonic that will save your life and ensure your recovery.”
She nodded weakly, too exhausted to question, too relieved that her ordeal was nearly over to think about what I might be giving her.
I mixed the contents of the vial into a cup of water.
The liquid, music, clear and tasteless, indistinguishable from the legitimate herbal remedies music I had been giving her throughout the labor.
“Drink this,” I commanded. Music. And she obeyed without hesitation, trusting the woman who had just delivered her son safely into the world, never suspecting that the same hands that had saved her life were now ensuring that this child would be her last.
As the liquid disappeared down her throat, I felt something shift inside my chest.
A weight I had carried for 20 years beginning to lift.
This was not just medicine I was administering. This was justice served in a cup, administered by the hands of a woman who had lost everything.
Music. To the greed and cruelty of the people she was forced to serve.
“Is she music all right?” Master Beaumont’s voice came from the doorway, anxious and demanding, his face pale with the fear that had gripped him throughout the long night.
“She’s fine, Master,” I replied, beginning to clean up the birthing chamber with the same methodical care I had shown for three decades.
“The bleeding has stopped. She’ll recover completely.” But even as I spoke the words, I knew they were only half true.
Mistress Isabel would recover from the birth, would regain her strength, would hold her son, and believe herself blessed by God.
What she would never know was that the woman she had tormented for 20 years had just ensured that this child would be her last, that the Beaumont dynasty would end with this pale, music, crying infant.
The Beaumont dynasty built on the backs of enslaved people, sustained by the sale of children torn from their mothers’ arms, would end with this pale crying infant.
There would be no more heirs, no more expansion of their empire, no more generations to carry on their legacy of cruelty.
As I wrapped the baby in clean linens, music, and placed him in his mother’s arms, I felt my grandmother’s spirit watching over me, approving of the choice I had made.
The knowledge she had passed down through generations of enslaved women had finally found its purpose, had finally been used to strike back against the system that had destroyed so many lives.
“What will you name him?” I asked, my voice betraying nothing of the satisfaction burning in my chest like a slow fire.
“Charles,” Mistress Isabel whispered, her voice weak, but filled with triumph.
“Charles Beaumont, heir to everything we’ve built.” Heir to nothing, I thought.
But I only smiled and nodded. “A fine name, Mistress.
A fine name for your son.” As dawn broke over the Mississippi Delta, painting the sky the color of blood and gold, I gathered my supplies and prepared to return to the slave quarters.
Master Beaumont pressed a silver dollar into my hand, payment for saving his wife and delivering his heir.
And I accepted it with the same humble gratitude I had shown for 30 years.
But inside, I was no longer the broken woman who had watched her children sold away.
I was something new, something dangerous, music, something that the Beaumonts would never see coming.
I was the woman who had just planted the seeds of their destruction, and I would live to see them grow into a forest of ruin that would consume everything they had built.
The morning after young Master Charles’s birth, I sat in my cabin grinding herbs by candlelight, my hands moving with the automatic precision of decades, while my mind traveled back through 20 years of accumulated grief.
Each child I had lost felt like a physical wound that had never properly healed.
And now, with the taste of revenge still sweet on my tongue, those wounds seemed to throb with renewed pain and purpose.
The cabin where I lived was small and sparse, furnished only with the bare necessities that Master Beaumont provided for his more valuable slaves.
A rough wooden table, a single chair, a narrow bed with a straw mattress, and shelves lined with jars and bottles containing the herbs and roots that made me indispensable to the plantation’s medical needs.
The walls were thin, and I could hear the sounds of the other slaves beginning their day, the shuffle of feet on dirt floors, the quiet murmur of voices preparing for another day of unpaid labor.
My first son, Joshua, there was taken when he was 10 years old.
I remember the morning clearly. It was spring of 1835, and the dogwood trees were blooming white as cotton across the plantation grounds.
The air was sweet with the scent of new growth, and I had allowed myself to hope that perhaps this year would be different, that perhaps my children would be safe.
Mistress Isabel had been married to Master Beaumont for only 2 years then, still young and beautiful at 22, still drunk on the power that came with being the wife of one of Mississippi’s wealthiest planters.
She had not yet learned the full extent of her cruelty, had not yet discovered how much pleasure she could derive from the pain of others.
“Hagar,” she had called to me as I tended her flower garden, my hands deep in the rich Delta soil that seemed to grow everything with abundance except hope for my people.
“I need to speak with you about Joshua.” Even then, I should have known.
There was something in her voice, a particular tone she used when she was about to cause pain and wanted to savor the moment.
But I was younger then, still foolish enough to hope that my skill as a midwife and healer might protect my family from the worst cruelties of slavery.
“Yes, Mistress, he’s getting too old to be running around the house.
Too old to be playing with the white children. It’s time he learned his place.”
She paused, watching my face for the fear she knew would come, feeding on my terror like a vampire feeds on blood.
“I’ve arranged for him to be sold to a sugar plantation in Louisiana.
The work will be good for him, teach him discipline and proper respect for his betters.”
Sugar plantations, everyone knew what that meant. Sugar was the most brutal crop in the South, more deadly than cotton, more merciless than tobacco.
Men died in the sugar fields, worked to death in the crushing mills and boiling houses, music, where the heat could kill a man in hours.
Children lasted months, not years. Their small bodies unable to withstand the relentless demands of sugar production.
I had fallen to my knees then, just as I would fall to my knees three more times over the next 15 years.
I had begged, pleaded, offered to work extra hours, to give up my small garden, to sleep on the kitchen floor instead of in my cabin.
I had offered to take Joshua’s place, to go to Louisiana myself if she would just let my son stay.
But Mistress Isabel had already made up her mind, and my pleas only seemed to amuse her, like a cat playing with a mouse before delivering the killing blow.
“The buyer is offering $300,” she said, examining her fingernails with studied indifference.
“That’s enough to pay for the new piano I’ve ordered from New Orleans.
Music is so important for a lady’s education, don’t you think?
A woman must have accomplishments beyond the merely domestic.” $300, the price of a piano, the price of my son’s life.
I watched them load Joshua onto the wagon, his small hands chained to prevent him from running, his eyes wide with confusion and terror.
He looked back at me once as the wagon pulled away, and I saw in that look the death of something inside myself.
The part of me that had believed in mercy, in the possibility that kindness might be rewarded with kindness, died that morning with the sound of wagon wheels carrying my child away to his death.
Two years later, it was Rebecca, my only daughter, 12 years old, beautiful like her grandmother, with skin the color of honey, and eyes that sparkled with intelligence and curiosity.
She had been helping me with my midwifery work, learning the healing arts that had been passed down through generations of women in our family.
Mistress Isabel sold her to a brothel in New Orleans, claiming she needed the money for a new wardrobe for the social season.
“She’s getting too pretty,” Mistress Isabel had explained, as if discussing the weather or the price of cotton.
“Pretty slave girls cause trouble on plantations. They give the men ideas, make them forget their place.
Better to get rid of her now while she’s still worth good money and before she causes problems.”
I never saw Rebecca again, but I heard stories from other slaves who had been to New Orleans, stories that haunted my dreams and turned my sleep into music, a nightly torture.
Stories about what happened to young girls in those houses, about the diseases that consumed them, about the violence that broke their spirits long before it broke their bodies.
I tried not to think about those stories, but they crept into my mind in the quiet hours before dawn, painting pictures of my daughter’s suffering that no mother should ever have to imagine.
Then came Marcus, sold at 8 years old to pay for Mistress Isabel’s gambling debts.
She had developed a taste for cards during her visits to Natchez, and her losses had mounted until Master Beaumont threatened to cut off her allowance.
Rather than give up her games, she had simply sold my son.
“He’s small, but he’s smart,” she had told the buyer.
A man whose breath smelled of whiskey and whose eyes held no trace of human warmth.
“He’ll learn quickly. And if he doesn’t?” She had shrugged, the gesture saying everything about how little my child’s life meant to her.
Marcus had cried when they took him, the only one of my children to break down completely.
He was too young to understand what was happening, too innocent to hide his terror behind a mask of stoic acceptance.
His sobs echoed in my ears for months afterward, a sound that seemed to follow me wherever I went.
Finally, there was Samuel, my youngest, my last hope. I had tried so hard to protect him, to make him useful enough that they would want to keep him.
I taught him to read by listening at windows, to write by practicing with sticks in the dirt, to understand herbs and healing so that he might become valuable as a healer.
But even that had not been enough. When Mistress Isabel decided she wanted a new dress from Paris, Samuel became the means to pay for it.
“Your time of breeding is over, Hagar,” she had said, those words that still echoed in my mind 2 years later.
“Now you serve my bloodline, my legacy.” As I sat in my cabin that morning after Charles’s birth, grinding the same herbs I had used to ensure Mistress Isabel would never bear another child, I thought about the bitter irony of those words.
She had been right about one thing, my time of breeding was over, but she had been wrong about everything else.
I would never serve her bloodline. Instead, I had just ensured that her bloodline would end with the pale, sickly infant sleeping in the big house.
The dynasty that had consumed my children would die with her son, and there would be no more generations to carry on their legacy of cruelty.
The knowledge my grandmother had passed down to me was more than just healing, it was power.
The power to give life, yes, but also the power to take it away, or in this case, to prevent it from ever beginning.
The herbs I had given Mistress Isabel would work slowly, invisibly, causing scar tissue to form in ways that would make conception impossible, while leaving no trace that any white doctor could detect.
She would spend months, perhaps years, trying to conceive another child.
She would consult doctors, try various treatments, pray to her Christian God for another heir.
But nothing would work because I had made sure it wouldn’t work.
Music. And the beautiful part, the part that made my grandmother’s spirit sing with approval, was that she would never know why.
She would blame herself, blame God, blame fate, but she would never suspect the slave woman who had delivered her son and saved her life.
As the sun rose higher, casting long shadows across the slave quarters, I heard footsteps approaching my cabin.
Mercy appeared in the doorway, music, her young face troubled by something she couldn’t quite name.
“Miss Hagar,” she said quietly, “Mistress Isabel is asking for you.
She wants music to thank you for saving her life.”
I looked at this young woman who had assisted me through the night, who had seen me administer the tincture, but who didn’t understand its true purpose.
Mercy was smart, observant, and loyal, qualities that could be dangerous if she ever began to suspect what I had really done.
“Tell her I’ll be there directly,” I said, rising from my chair and smoothing my apron.
“And Mercy, “Yes, Miss Hagar.” “What happened in that birthing chamber last night?
The herbs I used, the treatments I gave, that’s between us.
Midwifery is women’s work, and men don’t need to know the details.”
She nodded, understanding the unspoken message. In the world of enslaved women, secrets were currency, and the ability to keep them was a matter of survival.
As I walked toward the big house, I felt the weight of 20 years of grief beginning to transform into something else, not healing exactly, but a kind of grim satisfaction.
I had lost four children to the greed and cruelty of the Beaumont family, but I had just ensured that their line would end with the generation that had destroyed mine.
The morning air was crisp with the promise of autumn, and the cotton fields stretched endlessly toward the horizon, white with the harvest that had built this empire of suffering.
But empires rise and fall, and I had just planted the seeds of this one’s destruction.
As I climbed the steps to the big house, I thought of my children, Joshua, Rebecca, Marcus, and Samuel, and I whispered a promise to their memory.
Your deaths will not be forgotten. Your mother has found a way to make them count.
The Beaumont dynasty had 20 years left, though they didn’t know it yet.
20 years for me to watch it crumble, to see their dreams of legacy turn to dust, to witness the slow death of everything they had built on the backs of my people.
It would be enough. It would have to be enough.
But as I reached for the door handle, I felt something else stirring in my chest, a cold satisfaction that went beyond mere revenge.
I had not just struck back at my oppressors, I had used their own trust against them.
Had turned their dependence on my skills into the instrument of their destruction.
For 30 years I had been the perfect slave, obedient, skilled, invisible.
But that invisibility had music given me power they never suspected, access they never questioned, knowledge they never imagined could be turned against them.
Music, the midwife they trusted to bring life into their world had just ensured that their world would die with them.
Three years had passed since that October night when I had delivered Charles Beaumont into the world and simultaneously sealed his family’s fate.
The boy was now walking and talking. Music, but even I, who had wished for his family’s downfall, felt a pang of sympathy when I looked at him.
He was pale and thin. Music, prone to fevers and coughing fits that kept the household in constant anxiety.
Mistress Isabelle had become obsessed with protecting him, forbidding anyone but herself and Master Beaumont from handling the child.
“No one touches my son,” she had declared after a particularly severe bout of illness when Charles was 2 years old.
“No one but family. These slaves carry disease. I won’t have them contaminating my air.”
The irony was not lost on me. In her desperate attempt to protect the child I had ensured would be her only one, she was slowly suffocating him with her paranoia.
Charles was not allowed to play with other children, slave or free.
Music. He was not permitted to venture outside without layers of clothing and constant supervision.
He lived in a world of cotton, wool, and fear, growing weaker and more dependent with each passing month.
I watched this unfold from my position in the household, still serving as the plantation’s midwife and healer, still trusted despite the growing suspicion I sometimes caught in Mistress Isabelle’s eyes.
She had been trying to conceive another child for 3 years now, and with each failed month, her desperation grew more pronounced, her behavior more erratic.
The plantation itself was changing, too. Master Beaumont had invested heavily in new land and equipment, counting on having multiple sons to help manage his expanding empire.
With only one sickly heir, those investments were beginning to look like dangerous gambles.
I could see the strain in his face during the evening meals I served, could hear the tension in his voice when he spoke with his overseer about the mounting debts.
“Why can’t I have another baby?” Mistress Isabelle had asked me one morning in 1858, her voice breaking with frustration as I helped her dress for the day.
“The doctor in Natchez says there’s music nothing wrong with me.
He says I should be able to conceive, but nothing happens.
Nothing.” I had maintained my expression of sympathetic concern, offering the same useless remedies that every other healer suggested, specialties, music, dietary changes, prayers to the Christian God, who seemed to have abandoned her cause.
But inside I felt the deep satisfaction of watching my revenge unfold.
Music, exactly as I had planned. The herbs I had given her that night had done their work perfectly.
Scar tissue had formed in ways that made conception music impossible, but so subtly that no doctor of the era could detect it.
To any examination, she appeared perfectly healthy, perfectly capable of bearing children.
The failure was invisible, inexplicable, and therefore all the more maddening.
Meanwhile, young Charles continued to disappoint his parents’ expectations. At 3 years old, he should have been running and playing, showing the robust health that would mark him as a worthy heir to the Beaumont empire.
Instead, he clung to his mother’s skirts, music, spoke in whispers, and cried at the slightest provocation.
“He needs to be toughened up.” Music, Master Beaumont complained one evening as I served dinner in the main house.
“A boy his age should be learning to ride, learning to command respect from the slaves.
Instead, he hides behind his mother like a scared rabbit.”
“He’s delicate,” Mistress Isabelle replied, her voice sharp with defensive anger.
“He needs protection, not roughening. He’s the only heir we have.
We can’t risk losing him.” The only heir they would ever have, though she didn’t know it yet.
It was during this period that I began to notice changes in Mercy, my young assistant.
She had grown more observant over the years, more questioning about the herbs I used and the treatments I administered.
Sometimes I caught her watching me with a thoughtful expression that made me uneasy, as if she were trying to solve a puzzle whose pieces didn’t quite fit together.
Mercy had her own troubles to worry about. Her son Thomas was now 4 years old, a bright, energetic boy who reminded me painfully of my own children at that age.
She lived in constant fear that he would be sold, that Master Beaumont’s financial troubles would force him to liquidate some of his human property to pay his debts.
One evening in late 1858, as we were returning from delivering a baby in the slave quarters, she finally voiced what I had been dreading to hear.
“Miss Hagar,” she said quietly, her voice barely audible over the sound of our footsteps on the dirt path.
“That night when Master Charles was born, the tonic you gave Mistress Isabelle, what was really in it?”
I felt my heart skip a beat, but my voice remained steady.
“Herbs to stop the bleeding. Cotton root, snake, music, root, other things my grandmother taught me.”
“I know about cotton root,” Mercy said, her voice still quiet but persistent.
“My grandmother taught me, too. Cotton root doesn’t just stop bleeding, does it?”
The question hung in the air between us like a loaded gun.
Mercy knew. Somehow, despite my caution, despite my years of careful secrecy, this young woman had figured out what I had done.
“I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” I said. Music. But even as I spoke the words, I knew they sounded hollow.
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Mercy replied. “I’m just saying that my grandmother told me stories about cotton root, about how the old women used it when they didn’t want to bear children for masters who would just sell them away.”
We walked in silence for several minutes, the weight of her knowledge settling between us like a stone.
Finally, I stopped walking and turned to face her. “What do you want, Mercy?”
“I want to know that if something happens to my son, if they try to sell him, you’ll help me.”
Her voice was steady, but I could see the fear in her eyes.
“I want to know that the woman who could do what you did has the power to help other mothers protect their children.”
I looked at this young woman, barely older than my Rebecca would have been if music she had lived, and saw myself 20 years ago, desperate, frightened, willing to do anything to protect her child from the machinery of slavery that consumed families without thought or mercy.
“If the time comes,” I said quietly, “I’ll help you, but you must never speak of what you think you know, not to anyone, not ever.”
She nodded, understanding the gravity of the secret she now shared.
Music. From that moment forward, we were bound together by knowledge that could destroy us both if it ever came to light.
As 1858 turned to 1859, the Beaumont household grew increasingly tense.
Mistress Isabelle’s failure to conceive another child had become a source of constant anxiety, while young Charles’s continued frailty, music, made it clear that the family’s future rested on increasingly shaky ground.
I began to hear whispers among the house slaves about financial troubles.
Master Beaumont had been borrowing money against future cotton crops, using the plantation as collateral for loans that were becoming harder to service.
The price of cotton was falling and the cost of maintaining such a large operation was rising.
“He’s been meeting with bankers from Natchez,” I overheard the cook telling the head housemaid.
“They say he owes more money than the plantation is worth if something happens to that boy.”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. We all understood what would happen if Charles died without producing heirs of his own.
The Beaumont empire would collapse, the slaves would be sold to pay debts, and the dynasty that had consumed my children would die with them.
But I didn’t want Charles to die. Not yet. Music, anyway.
I wanted him to live long enough to disappoint his parents completely, to grow into the weak, ineffectual man his mother’s overprotective was creating.
I wanted the Beaumonts to watch their dreams of dynasty crumble slowly, to understand that their empire was ending, not with dramatic tragedy, but with pathetic failure.
During this time, I also began to cultivate relationships with people who could help me, music, when the time came to assist Mercy and her son.
There was a network of abolitionists and freed slaves who operated in secret throughout the Mississippi Delta, helping runaway slaves escape to freedom in the north.
I made contact with them gradually, carefully, using my position as a midwife to travel between plantations and establish connections.
One of my most important contacts was a freed slave named Moses, who ran a safe house near Vicksburg.
He had purchased his own freedom years earlier and now used his legitimate business as a blacksmith to cover his work with the Underground Railroad.
Through him, I learned about routes north, about safe houses and sympathetic conductors who could guide runaways to freedom.
“The work is dangerous,” Moses told me during one of our clandestine meetings.
“But it’s necessary. Every child we save is a victory against the system that would destroy them.”
I began saving money, hoarding every coin I could earn from my midwifery work, preparing for the day when Mercy would need my help.
It was slow work. Slaves were rarely paid in cash, and what little money I could earn came from grateful mothers who could spare a few pennies for my services.
As I prepared my herbs that evening, grinding music roots and leaves by candlelight in my cabin, I thought about the long game I was playing.
Revenge was not just about the moment of striking back.
It was about watching the consequences unfold over years, about seeing justice served in ways that the oppressors could never understand or prevent.
The Beaumont family had stolen 20 years of my life, had torn my children from my arms and sold them for the price of luxuries.
Now I was stealing their future one day at a music time, one failed conception at a time, one sickly heir at a time.
And the most beautiful part was that they would never know who had done it to them.
They would blame God, blame fate, blame their own bodies.
But they would never suspect the slave woman who had delivered their son and saved their lives.
The knowledge my grandmother had passed down through generations of enslaved women was finally bearing its intended fruit, the power to give life and the power to prevent it.
Used not for healing, but for justice, not for mercy, but for revenge.
As I extinguished the candle and prepared for sleep, I whispered a prayer to my children’s spirits.
Your mother is patient. Your mother is thorough. Your mother will see this through to the end.
The Beaumont dynasty was dying slowly but surely, and I would live to see its last breath.
But even as I settled into my narrow bed, I knew that the most dangerous part of my plan was yet to come.
Mercy’s knowledge made her both an ally and a threat, and I would need to be more careful than ever to protect the secret that could destroy us both.
The game was far from over, but I was winning, and that knowledge was sweeter than any revenge I could have imagined.
By 1862, the world was changing faster than anyone on the Beaumont plantation could have imagined.
The war between the states had been raging for over a year, and even in the isolated Mississippi Delta, we could feel the tremors of a society tearing itself apart.
Union gunboats patrolled the Mississippi River. Confederate soldiers marched through our county, requisitioning supplies, and rumors of slave uprisings, music, spread like wildfire through the white community.
But inside the big house, a different kind of war was being fought, a war between hope and despair, between the desperate desire for an heir and the growing realization that none would come.
Mistress Isabelle had become a shadow of her former self, her beauty withered by 7 years of failed attempts to conceive another child.
At 42, she was still physically attractive, but it was a brittle beauty, like porcelain that had been cracked and poorly mended.
Her obsession with conceiving another child had consumed her, driving her to consult doctors as far away as New Orleans and Atlanta to try remedies that ranged from the merely useless to the actively dangerous.
“There must be something wrong,” she said to me one morning as I helped her dress, her hands shaking as she spoke.
I could see the dark circles under her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights spent praying to a God who seemed to have turned his face away from her.
“Seven years, Hagar. Seven years since Charles was born, and nothing.
The doctors say I’m healthy. But how can I be healthy if I can’t do the one thing a woman is supposed to do?”
I maintained my expression of sympathetic concern, while inwardly marveling at the completeness of my revenge.
The herbs I had given her that night in 1855 had done their work so thoroughly that even she was beginning to doubt her own body, to question the very essence of her womanhood.
“Perhaps,” I suggested gently, “you should focus on the blessing you have.
Master Charles is a fine boy, growing stronger every day.”
But even as I spoke the words, we both knew they were lies.
Charles, now 7 years old, was anything but strong. His mother’s overprotective coddling had created exactly what I had hoped it would, a weak, sickly child who bore no resemblance to the robust heir Master Beaumont had dreamed of.
The boy spent most of his days indoors reading books that were far too advanced for his age, while avoiding any activity that might be considered physically demanding.
He was intelligent, I had to admit, but it was the intelligence of a hothouse flower, delicate, pale, and utterly unsuited for the harsh realities of plantation life.
“He needs fresh air,” Master Beaumont had argued just the week before, his voice rising with frustration as he paced the parlor like a caged animal.
“He needs to learn to ride, to hunt, to command respect from the slaves.
How is he supposed to run this plantation if he can’t even look a field hand in the eye?”
“He’s too delicate for such rough activities,” Mistress Isabelle had replied, her voice sharp with the defensive anger that had become her default response to any criticism of her son.
“He could be injured or catch a fever or worse.
He’s the only heir we have. We can’t risk losing him.
He’s already caught every fever known to man.” Master Beaumont had exploded, his face red with rage and frustration.
“He’s weak because you’ve made him weak. Music, fair boy his age should be running wild, not hiding behind his mother’s skirts like a frightened girl.”
The argument had ended, as they all did, with Mistress Isabelle retreating to her room in tears, and Master Beaumont storming off to drink himself into a stupor.
Meanwhile, Charles had hidden in the library, his pale face pressed against the window as he watched the slave children playing in the quarters, children who were forbidden from interacting with them, children who represented the robust health and vitality that he would never possess.
It was during this period of growing tension that Mercy came to me with the request I had been dreading for 4 years.
“They’re going to sell my boy,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, music, as we worked together in the herb garden behind my cabin.
The morning was cool and misty, and I could hear the distant sound of the overseer’s horn calling the field hands to work.
Master Beaumont needs money for the war effort, and he’s selling off the younger slaves to raise funds.”
I felt my heart sink. Mercy’s son, Thomas, was now 6 years old, exactly the age when slave children became valuable commodities, old enough to work, but young enough to be trained to their new master’s preferences.
“Are you certain?” I asked, though I knew Mercy wouldn’t have come to me with rumors.
“I heard Master Beaumont talking to the overseer yesterday, music evening.
They’re making a list of slaves to be sold next month.
Thomas is on it.” Her voice broke slightly, and I saw in her face the same desperate terror I had felt when my own children were taken from me.
“What do you want me to do?” “You know what I want,” she said, her eyes meeting mine with a directness that was dangerous for a slave woman.
You have knowledge, Miss Hagar, knowledge that can help people disappear when they need to.”
She was asking me to help her escape through the Underground Railroad, to use the connections I had carefully cultivated over the years with abolitionists and freed slaves who could guide runaways to safety in the north.
It was dangerous, more dangerous than anything I had ever done, including poisoning Mistress Isabelle’s fertility.
But I also knew that Mercy held my secret, and if I refused to help her, she might be desperate enough to use that knowledge as a weapon.
“It will cost money,” I said finally. Music, money I’ve been saving for years.
And if we’re caught, I know the risks,” Mercy replied.
“But I also know what happens to children who get sold to the cotton plantations.
I won’t let my son die in those fields the way yours did.”
Her words hit me like a physical blow, but I recognized the truth in them.
I had failed to save my own children, but perhaps I could save hers.
Over the next 2 weeks, I made the arrangements with trembling hands and a racing heart.
I contacted Moses, the freed slave who ran a safe house near Vicksburg, and paid him with silver coins I had been hoarding for over a decade.
We planned a route that would take Mercy and Thomas north through Tennessee and Kentucky, following the network of safe houses and sympathetic conductors that made up the Underground Railroad.
The plan was simple but dangerous. Mercy and Thomas would slip away from the plantation on a moonless night, making their way to a predetermined meeting point where Moses would be waiting with a wagon.
From there, they would travel by night and hide by day, moving from safe house to safe house until they reached the Ohio River and freedom.
“Once you cross that river,” I told Mercy as we made our final preparations, “you’ll be free, but you can never come back.
Never contact anyone here. Never let anyone know where you’ve gone.”
“I understand,” she said, her voice steady despite the fear in her eyes.
“And Miss Hagar, thank you. I know what this cost you, and I know why you’re doing it.”
The night they left, I stood in the doorway of my cabin and watched them disappear into the darkness, carrying with them not just their own hopes for freedom, but also the knowledge of what I had done to the Beaumont family.
I would never see them again, but I knew that somewhere in the north, Thomas would grow up free.
Music would never know the terror of the auction block or the brutality of the cotton fields.
As 1862 turned to 1863, the war began to affect even our isolated plantation more directly.
Master Beaumont was forced to sell more slaves to fund his contributions to the Confederate cause, and the remaining workforce struggled to maintain the cotton production that had once made the family wealthy.
The financial pressure was enormous. Cotton prices had collapsed due to the Union blockade, while the cost of everything else, food, clothing, medicine, had skyrocketed.
Master Beaumont had borrowed heavily against future crops that might never be harvested, and his creditors were growing impatient.
Meanwhile, Mistress Isabelle’s mental state continued to deteriorate. She had begun to fixate on the idea that someone had deliberately caused her infertility, though she had no evidence to support her suspicions.
“It’s not natural,” as I heard her telling Master Beaumont one evening as I served their dinner.
“Eight years without conceiving when I had Charles so easily.
Someone has done this to me. Someone has cursed me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Master mr. replied, but I could hear the uncertainty in his voice.
Who would do such a thing and how? “That midwife,” Mistress Isabel said, her voice dropping to a whisper that I had to strain to hear.
“Hagar.” “She was the only one with me that night.
She gave me something. Said it was to stop the bleeding.
But what if it was something else? What if she did something to me?”
My blood ran cold as I realized how close she was coming to the truth.
But Master Beaumont’s response reassured me. “Hagar has served this family faithfully for over 30 years,” he said firmly.
“She delivered Charles safely, saved your life in the process.
The idea that she would deliberately harm you is absurd.”
But I could see that the seed of suspicion had been planted, and I knew it would only grow stronger as her desperation increased.
I would have to be more careful than ever, would have to maintain the facade of loyal service, while watching for any sign that my secret was in danger of being exposed.
As I cleared the dinner dishes that night, I thought about how perfectly my revenge was unfolding.
The Beaumont family was destroying itself from within, torn apart by the very obsessions and weaknesses that had made them cruel masters.
Mistress Isabel’s paranoia was driving her toward madness. Master Beaumont’s financial troubles were forcing him to sell off the foundation of his wealth, and young Charles was growing into exactly the kind of weak, music ineffectual heir who would be incapable of maintaining the family empire.
All of this had been set in motion by a few drops of herbal tincture administered during the chaos of childbirth.
The knowledge my grandmother had passed down through generations of enslaved women was proving more powerful than any weapon, more destructive than any army.
The Beaumont dynasty was collapsing slowly but surely, and I was there to witness every moment of its downfall.
But even as I savored my victory, I knew that the most dangerous time was yet to come.
Mistress Isabel’s suspicions were growing stronger, and if she ever found proof of what I had done, the consequences would be swift and, music, terrible.
I would have to be more careful than ever, more cunning, more patient.
The game was not over yet, and one mistake could destroy everything I had worked for, but I was ready.
I had been preparing for this moment for 8 years, and I would not let my children’s sacrifice be in vain.
The Beaumont dynasty would fall, and I would be there to watch it burn.
The year 1865 brought liberation to the Mississippi Delta. But for me, freedom came with the bittersweet taste of a revenge finally completed.
As Union soldiers marched through the plantation gates and declared us all free, I stood in the doorway of my cabin and watched the Beaumont empire crumble into dust, knowing that I had been the architect of its destruction.
The war had accelerated the family’s downfall in ways I could never have anticipated.
Master Beaumont had invested everything in Confederate bonds and currency that became worthless overnight.
The slaves who had once represented his wealth were now free, and the land that had once produced cotton was now scarred by war and neglect.
But even before the war ended, the Beaumont dynasty had been dying from within, poisoned by the very obsessions and weaknesses that had made them cruel masters.
Mistress Isabel had not lived to see emancipation. She died in the winter of 1864, found in her bedroom one morning with an empty bottle of laudanum beside her bed.
Whether it was suicide or accidental overdose, no one could say for certain, but I knew the truth.
She had been consumed by her own paranoia, driven mad by the certainty that someone had cursed her womb and the inability to prove who had done it.
In her final months, she had become completely obsessed with me, music, watching my every move, questioning my treatments, demanding that Master Beaumont dismiss me from the household.
But he had refused, partly out of loyalty to my years of service, and partly because he needed every experienced hand he could keep as the plantation struggled to survive the war.
“She keeps saying you poisoned her,” he had told me one afternoon in 1864, his voice weary with the weight of his wife’s accusations.
“She says you gave her something that night Charles was born.
Something that made her barren. It’s madness, of course, but she won’t let it go.”
“I saved her life that night,” music, I had replied, my voice steady despite the hammering of my heart.
“I delivered her son safely and stopped the bleeding that could have killed her.
If that’s poison, then I don’t understand the word.” He had nodded, accepting my explanation as he always had, never suspecting that the woman who had served his family faithfully for over 30 years was capable of such sophisticated revenge.
But Mistress Isabel had known somehow in her final weeks.
She would stare at me with wild eyes and whisper, “You did this to me.
You destroyed my womb. You killed my future.” And she was right, though she could never prove it.
The irony was that her obsession with my supposed betrayal, music, had blinded her to the real destruction I had wrought.
She focused on her inability to conceive another child, never realizing that the child she had already born was growing into exactly the kind of weak, ineffectual heir who would be incapable of maintaining the family empire.
Master Beaumont himself lasted only a year longer, dying of a heart attack in the spring of 1865 as Union troops occupied the plantation.
The stress of losing his wife, his fortune, and his way of life had broken him completely.
He died clutching a letter from a creditor demanding payment on loans he could no longer service.
His dreams of dynasty reduced to a pile of unpayable debts.
Young Charles, now 10 years old, survived the war, but emerged from it as the weak, sickly heir I had always intended him to become.
His mother’s overprotection had created exactly what I had hoped for, a boy utterly unsuited for the harsh realities of rebuilding a shattered plantation.
He was intelligent but frail, educated but impractical, gentle but completely lacking in the ruthless determination that had built his family’s fortune.
The plantation was sold at auction in 1866 to pay the family’s debts.
Charles inherited nothing but his name and a small trust fund that would support him modestly, music, but would never allow him to rebuild the Beaumont empire.
He moved to New Orleans, where he lived quietly as a clerk in a law office, never marrying, never having children, the last of his line.
As for me, I chose to remain in Mississippi, settling in a community of freed slaves near Vicksburg.
I continued to work as a midwife, but now I served only my own people, helping to bring new life into a world where black children would be born free.
It was satisfying work, a kind of healing after so many years of carrying the weight of revenge.
The community where I settled was small but vibrant, filled with former slaves who were learning to navigate the complexities of freedom.
There were challenges, of course, poverty, discrimination, music, the constant threat of violence from whites who resented our liberation.
But there was also hope, a sense that we were building something new and better from the ashes of slavery.
I established myself as the community’s primary midwife and healer, using the knowledge my grandmother had passed down to me, music, to help my people survive and thrive.
I delivered babies who would grow up free, treated illnesses without fear of being sold away from my patients, and taught younger women the healing arts that had sustained our people through centuries of bondage.
Sometimes young mothers would ask me about the old days, about life on the plantation, about the white families I had served.
I would tell them stories of resilience and survival, of the knowledge passed down through generations of enslaved women, of the power that came from understanding the mysteries of life and death.
But I never told them about the night I had delivered Charles Beaumont into the world and simultaneously destroyed his family’s future.
That secret remained locked in my heart, a private satisfaction that belonged to me alone.
In 1873, I received word that Charles had died of tuberculosis in New Orleans.
So music, he was only 18 years old, and with his death, the Beaumont line ended forever.
The empire that had consumed my children, that had torn families apart for the sake of profit, that had built its wealth on the backs of enslaved people, was finally extinct.
I felt no sadness at the news. Charles had been an innocent child, but he had also been the symbol of everything I had fought against.
His death meant that the last trace of the Beaumont dynasty had been erased from the earth.
That the land his family had owned for three generations would never again echo with the sound of slave children being torn from their mothers’ arms.
The knowledge my grandmother had passed down to me, the understanding of which plants could heal and which could harm, which herbs could bring life and which could prevent it, music, had proven more powerful than any weapon in the Confederate arsenal.
With a few drops of carefully prepared tincture, I had accomplished what armies could not, the complete destruction of a slave-owning dynasty.
As I sit here now in 1882, writing these words by candlelight in my small cabin, music, I can feel my own time drawing to a close.
I am 77 years old, and my hands shake as I write, but my mind remains clear, clear enough to remember every detail of that October night in 1855 when I held the power to end a dynasty in my hands and chose to use it.
I have lived to see slavery abolished, to see my people walk free, to see the children of former slaves learning to read and write in schools built on the ruins of plantations.
I have lived to see justice served, not through the courts or the ballot box, but through the ancient knowledge of women who understood that sometimes the only way to fight oppression is from within, using the very trust that oppressors place in their victims as a weapon against them.
The Beaumont plantation is now divided among small farmers, many of them former slaves who work their own land and raise their own children in freedom.
The big house stands empty, its windows broken, its columns cracked, its grandeur faded into memory.
Sometimes I walk past, music, it and remember the woman I was when I first entered those doors as an 18-year-old girl, pregnant with my first child, believing that faithful service might earn me some measure of protection.
I was wrong about many things in those days, but I was right about one.
Knowledge is power, and sometimes power is the only justice we will music ever see.
When I die, this secret will die with me. But the effects of what I did will live on in the freedom of my people, in the knowledge that even the most powerless among us can find ways to strike back against oppression, in the understanding music that justice delayed is not always just is denied.
The midwife who sterilized the plantation lady has lived to see the empire fall.
It is enough. It is more than enough. But as I prepare to close this account, I find myself thinking not just about revenge, but about the cost of that revenge.
I’ve carried this secret for 27 years, and it has been both my burden and my strength.
The knowledge that I destroyed the Beaumont dynasty has sustained me through the darkest moments of my life, but it has also isolated me in ways I never anticipated.
Music. I could never share my triumph with anyone, could never speak of the satisfaction I felt when Mistress Isabelle died mad and childless.
Could never celebrate when Charles breathed his last in that New Orleans boarding house.
My victory was complete, but it was also solitary, a private war that I fought and won in the shadows of history.
There were times, especially in the early years after emancipation, when I wondered if I had done the right thing.
Charles was innocent of his parents’ crimes, and his death at 18 seemed almost cruel, even to me.
But then I would remember my own children. Joshua sold to the sugar fields at 10.
Rebecca, music, sold to a brothel at 12. Marcus sold to pay gambling debts at 8.
Samuel sold for the price of a dress at 14, and my doubts would disappear.
The Beaumont family had shown no mercy to my children, had treated them as commodities to be bought and sold at will.
Why should I have shown mercy to theirs? The knowledge my grandmother passed down to me was not just about healing.
It was about survival, about finding ways to fight back when open resistance meant death.
She had learned these lessons in the slave ships that brought her from Africa, had refined them in the rice fields of South Carolina, had perfected them in the birthing chambers where she helped bring both free and enslaved children into the world.
“Sometimes,” she had told me when I was young, “the only way to kill a snake is to let it bite you first, then use its own venom against it.”
So, that was what I had done to the Beaumont family.
I had let them trust me, depend on me, believe that I was their faithful servant.
And then, music. I had used that trust to destroy them from within, slowly and completely, in ways they could never understand or prevent.
The irony was perfect. The family that had built its wealth on the forced labor of enslaved people was ultimately destroyed by the knowledge of those same people, by the wisdom passed down through generations of women who had learned to survive in a world that sought to destroy them.
As I write these final words, I can hear the sounds of the community around me.
Children playing in the yards, women singing as they work, men discussing the day’s labor.
These are the sounds of freedom, the sounds of a people who have survived slavery and are building new lives on the foundation of their own strength and determination.
My contribution to that freedom was small but significant. I did not lead armies or make speeches or write laws.
I simply used the knowledge my grandmother gave me to ensure that one family of slave owners would never again tear children from their mothers’ arms, would never again build their wealth on human suffering.
It was enough. It had to be enough. The candle is burning low now, and my hand grows tired from writing.
Soon I will extinguish the flame and lie down to sleep, perhaps for the last time.
But I’m not afraid. I have lived long enough to see justice done, to see my people free, to see the empire that consumed my children reduced to ruins and memory.
The midwife who sterilized the plantation lady dies knowing that her work is complete.
The dynasty is ended. The empire is fallen, and the children of slaves are free to build their own futures.
In the end, that is the only revenge that matters, not the destruction of our enemies, but the liberation of our people.
Not the death of their dreams, but the birth of ours.
The knowledge lives on, passed down through new generations of free women who will use it to heal rather than harm, to build rather than destroy.
But they will also know, as I have known, that sometimes the greatest act of healing is to prevent the birth of evil, to ensure that cruelty dies with those who practice it.
My grandmother’s spirit watches over me as I close this account.
Her approval warming me like a fire on a cold night.
The knowledge she gave me has served its purpose, has struck the blow for justice that she could never strike herself.
The work is finished. The debt is paid. The children are free.
This was the story of Hagar. She died peacefully in her sleep on December 3rd, 1882, at the age of 77.
She was buried in the Freedman’s Cemetery near Vicksburg, her grave marked by a simple wooden cross that bore only her name and the dates of her birth and death.
The community of former slaves who attended her funeral knew her as a skilled midwife and healer who had helped bring dozens of free children into the world.
But none of them suspected the role she had played in destroying one of Mississippi’s most powerful slave-owning dynasties.
Charles Beaumont had indeed died of tuberculosis in New Orleans in 1873, ending the family line forever.
The plantation was eventually divided among several small farmers, including three families of former Beaumont slaves who purchased their plots with money saved from sharecropping and wage labor.
The big house was demolished in 1889, its materials used to build a school for black children.
A fitting end for a structure that had once symbolized the oppression of an entire people.
Mercy and her son Thomas successfully escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad and settled in Toronto, where Thomas grew up to become a teacher and civil rights activist.
Mercy lived until 1901 and took Hagar’s secret to her own grave, never revealing what she had witnessed in the birthing chamber that October night in 1855.
Thomas became a prominent figure in the Canadian abolitionist movement and helped establish several schools for escaped slaves, though he never knew the full story of how his mother had obtained the money for their escape.
The herbal knowledge that Hagar had inherited from her grandmother continued to be passed down through generations of African-American midwives and healers, though the specific techniques she had used were never again employed for such purposes.
The plants she had cultivated, cotton root and Virginia snakeroot, still grow wild throughout the Mississippi Delta, silent witnesses to one woman’s patient and devastating revenge.
Moses, the freed slave who had helped Mercy and Thomas escape, continued his work with the Underground Railroad until the end of the Civil War, helping over 200 enslaved people reach freedom.
He later established a school for freed slaves in Vicksburg and lived to see many of his former passengers return to Mississippi as educated, successful citizens.
The Beaumont family name disappeared from Mississippi records after Charles’s music death, though genealogical research in the 1920s revealed that the family had once owned over 3,000 acres and 200 enslaved people.
Local historians noted the family’s rapid decline after the Civil War, but attributed it to the economic disruption of emancipation rather than any deliberate sabotage.
Hagar’s cabin still stands on what was once the Beaumont plantation, now owned by the descendants of former slaves who purchased the land during Reconstruction.
The current owners, unaware of the cabin’s history, use it as a storage shed for farm equipment.
But sometimes, on quiet nights, when the wind blows through the Delta, local residents claim they can hear the sound of a woman grinding herbs, preparing medicines that could heal or harm depending on the need.
The echoes of Hagar’s calculated vengeance reverberate through time, a testament to the power of knowledge, patience, and the unbreakable spirit of those who refuse to accept oppression as their fate.
Her story reveals how the most devastating resistance sometimes comes not from open rebellion, but from the quiet application of ancient wisdom by those who appear most powerless.
The midwife who ended a dynasty with herbs and determination reminds us that justice can take many forms, and that the knowledge passed down through generations of oppressed people can become the most powerful weapon of all.
Her tale also speaks to the complex moral landscape of resistance under slavery, where the line between justice and revenge often blurred beyond recognition.
KGA’s actions were both deeply personal and broadly political, striking back at individual oppressors while simultaneously undermining the system that enabled their cruelty.
In destroying the Beaumont dynasty, she not only avenged her own children, but prevented future generations of enslaved people from suffering under that family’s rule.
The knowledge that Hagar wielded, passed down through generations of African women who had learned to survive in hostile environments, represents a form of resistance that has often been overlooked by historians.
While we celebrate the courage of those who fought openly against slavery, we must also remember those who fought in secret, using their intimate knowledge of their oppressors’ vulnerabilities to strike devastating blows against the system that enslaved them.
