The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

by Erik Larson

On Inauguration Day, while making her rounds in Montgomery, Mary encountered a scene that occurred routinely in the city and throughout the South but that left her feeling heart-sunk and unnerved, so much so that she had to sit down on a stool in a nearby shop. “I saw today a sale of Negroes,” she wrote. She had come across a slave auction in progress. A mulatto woman stood on a raised platform high enough to be seen above the crowd. “Mulatto women in silk dresses—one girl was on the stand. Nice looking—like my Nancy”—this a reference to her own enslaved maid. In a later much-modified version of her journal meant for publication, she added detail: “She was magnificently got up in silks and satins. She seemed delighted with it all—sometimes ogling the bidders, sometimes looking quite coy and modest, but her mouth never relaxed from its expanded grin of excitement.” Something about the moment caved Mary’s spirits. “South Carolina slave holder as I am my very soul sickened,” she wrote. “It is too dreadful. I tried to reason—this is not worse than the willing sale most women make of themselves in marriage—nor can the consequences be worse. The Bible authorizes marriage and slavery—poor women! poor slaves!”