Frado's Return from the War

©by Jackson Ragsdale (This is an excerpt from Jack's Civil War novel "Stough Beers has no Father"

“…every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her own.” Mary Boykin Chestnut

It was almost dark on a chilly March afternoon when a nearly frozen man stumbled up the road toward Miss Adelaide Delafosse’s boarding house. He might have been war-injured but Belltown was much too far from military action. An injured soldier returning home? Not likely, for this man was black—black indeed, notwithstanding the light color of his skin. He came around the side of the house and laboriously climbed the stairs to the back porch and knocked at the door. Unexpected at that quarter as day turned into night, he immediately possessed the attention of the household. Adelaide and Dosie took him by the arm, supporting him inside to a chair in the kitchen. Their reception was warm but full of concern. “Frado!, Frado!” they called out nervously. They sat him down to discover the source of his suffering.

“Major Randolph is dead,” he said, still breathless. “He died months ago. I brought his sword but the white men snatched it from me the first time I was stopped. I was crossed at every town. A black man cain’t walk the roads in Georgia.”

Frado had gone off to war not as a soldier; but as Major Randolph Beers’ personal servant. His black family and the Major’s white family—except for themselves—were wiped out in the epidemic of 1853 when Frado was only twelve years old. The major had raised the boy with affection and it was generally understood in Belltown that he was Frado’s father. The boy had never lived among slaves. Due to the close friendship between Major Beers and Major Delafosse, Frado’s only childhood companions had been Adelaide and Dosie. His situation was not unique, nor was that of the two girls who were well informed of their origins. In the South it was impossible for a black woman to refuse ANY demand made upon her by her owner.

After Major Delafosse’s death in 1858, when both Adelaide and Dosie turned nineteen, to make a living, they opened Miss Addie’s boarding house. Among their first guests were the Byron Charlesworths, an English couple traveling with their daughter Cecilia. Mr. Charlesworth was an antiquarian who had come to visit the sites of Georgia’s Cherokee villages, their burying grounds and such artifacts as had been discovered. In their month’s stay, Adelaide, Dosie and Miss Cecilia had bonded in a beautiful friendship even as she and her mother shared an intense curiosity about their racially divergent hosts, who were enmeshed in such an intimately compatible relationship.

When the time for their departure came, Miss Cecilia told her American friends “I do so hate leaving. I’m sick of traveling. You are the first friends my age I’ve met on this whole trip, and I’ve come to love you both. I wish I could stay here with you.”

In sentimental gratitude for a happy friendship, Miss Cecilia lavished gifts on her hosts. Among them was a copy of Fanny Kemble’s Journal in which the English actress spoke at length of slavery in the years of her residence in Georgia. Adelaide and Dosie spent many hours going over the tales Miss Kemble told of forced sex between slaves and masters. In grim irony they bantered and laughed à propos their own origins.

"Don’t put on airs with me,” said Dosie to Adelaide in mocking jest. “I am also Miss Delafosse though nobody bothers to call me by that name. You are a little whiter than I, but my skin is prettier,” she declared. “Even so,” Addie replied at her most indelicate, “we are both nothing more than a moment of pleasure for the handsome Mr. León Delafosse,” pronouncing their father’s name in sardonic seriousness.

The girls’ origins were little different from that of Renty, of whom Miss Kemble wrote: “Poor Renty had Mr. King’s features because he had "borrowed" slave Betty,” Renty's mother.

The Negro’s acceptance of slavery, and its diabolical consequences has to be viewed from the prospective of his being captured in violence in Africa, imprisoned and kept on board ship for months under unspeakable conditions. Chained, beaten and humiliated, he saw his ill or uncooperative companions thrown overboard. Fortunate enough to have survived a voyage on which one third usually died, he arrived to be sold and taken away in chains. Forced under the whip to work unbearable hours under appalling conditions, he was destined to live the rest of his life in a windowless hovel, despised, and without the human comfort of those who controlled his life.

In Fanny Kemble’s six thousand word letter to the Times rebutting the London newspaper’s critique of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Miss Kemble told of a white overseer who compelled the wife of a “most excellent and exemplary” slave to live with him. She also describes how the wife of another overseer, in a jealous rage at her own husband’s conduct, had three of his slave forced-sex partners flogged. In her depiction of life on a plantation Miss Kemble was not kind. She described the state of affairs as filled with “gross sensuality, brutal ignorance, and despotic cruelty.” She found the Times article totally at odds with the true conditions of slaves in Georgia her own experience had revealed.

As Frado sat in his chair, the two females ministered to his ills. Food and hot drinks were served him; unguents were applied to his bruises and scratches and a pan of hot water was placed by his chair for his sore feet. All the while he was plied with questions. He told how his owner, Major Randolph Beers, had fought a short battle with a small Yankee force at Griswoldville, Georgia, near Macon. With more than three thousand raw recruits, his commander, Georgia militia Brigadier General Pleasant J. Phillips charged a force of one thousand of Sherman’s seasoned veterans armed with the newly issued, much-improved Spencer repeating rifle.

“It was a slaughter,” Frado said of the fifteen year old farm boys and graybeards, who charged the smaller Yankee force under General Walcutt. “It happened in an open field on a sunny afternoon last fall. The war for those boys of tender age lasted only an hour,” he recalled of that ghastly experience.

The date was November 22, 1864. Historical documents state that Georgia militia General Phillips’ orders were not to challenge any Union force he met, but the temptation to gain a victory off easy prey was too enticing for the inexperienced commander. The ugly rumor among grieving wives and mothers was that the general had gone into battle under the influence of alcohol.

That was the beginning of Frado’s troubles. He took the Major’s sword from his still warm body but in the first town, whites he met accused him of robbing a battlefield, abused him severely and took the sword. He never saw it again. It had cost him months to return to Belltown and he was fortunate, just to have escaped with his life.

The Saga of the Three Condoms

© by Jackson Ragsdale

We had six missionary passengers. The others who boarded the Chincha at Capetown in late November, 1935, were Miss Stuart, a young lady coming to America to get married, a paunchy Armenian businessman, twenty-eight year-old David Windly, rubber-stamp wielding clerk in the American consulate in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, his mother Thelma, and lastly, a Mrs. Jones, about thirty from Queens in New York City, accompanied by her five year-old son. The boy gained some fame on board for he had approached one of the crew sitting in a card game and peed on the man’s leg.

Thelma Windly, whose vinegary face unmasked the creepy hypocrite behind the pious façade, immediately installed herself as the Chincha’s moral arbiter-in-chief for the thirty-day trip back to the States.

Occasionally, a passenger might stop a crewmember to ask a question or make a comment, but only seldom would they engage in extended conversation. Usage opposed it. My fellow cadet and roommate, Bill Fellows and Mrs. Jones broke that rule. Fairly early out of Capetown, he and the lady talked and exchanged smiles whenever they met.

The “master” of a ship holds that title with good reason. Captain Arthur Lee immediately took on the duty of entertaining the young bride to be. They often sat in intimate tête á tête in beach chairs on the captain’s private deck sipping lemonade or something stronger. Actually, they made a handsome couple, he, aged sixty but unwrinkled, silky haired and youthful, she, smiling, svelte and blonde, no more than twenty-five.

The watch plan at sea is four hours on duty and eight hours off. Fellows had the eight to twelve watch. Mornings he worked on deck criss-crossing the small passenger area, seeing and being seen by Mrs. Jones. At night he and his watch mates alternated in their several tasks. At midnight when Bill came off duty as the watch changed, he found Mrs. Jones taking the air or having a last smoke before bed. While it was not scandalous for Bill and Mrs. Jones to meet “accidentally” at such a late hour, the constancy of their rendezvous, lent credence to the accusation that their meetings were in fact trysts. It was a delightful story and excellent grist for the ship’s gossip mill, due to the otherwise stultifying dullness of shipboard life.

The forecastle riff-raff was dying to know more of the captivating details of the friendship between Bill and Mrs. Jones and during meals there was no shortage of unwelcome suggestions as to how our young swain might effectively advance his sexual success with the lady. Bill declined those offers of advice, remaining silent to all references to their friendship.

The direct avenue to first hand information having been effectively closed off, the unrequited mob descended on me as roommate, for information they felt certain I had.

I have neglected to emphasize the friendly relations that existed from the beginning between Bill and me. From our first meeting we exchanged confidences and told each other some details about our lives. In an early interview he showed me some condoms he carried in his wallet. He had three as I remember. He praised their high quality and extreme thinness. In effect, he was telling me: “I am a man of the world” and “Women, go for me!” All told, I found Bill Fellows a pretty cool guy. He stood out in his indifference to and his absolute independence from the mob.

At meals, Bill bore the burden of intrusive comments with relative ease. He laughed with the rest of us and made no attempt to choke off the ribald repartee that involved him. While no one had any evidence to state a definite fact, everyone was sure to a certainty that a serious affair was going on.

Keeping the details so close to his breast was a heavy burden on Bill and he soon found himself in need of someone on whom to shift some of that heavy weight. That person happened to be me, and that confidence—sweet as it was, became an anchor around my neck. I lied that I was not Bill’s confidant but everyone assumed that I knew. It was simply not believed that someone could be so burdened with so rich a fortune in scuttlebutt and contain it within his own soul when there were many empty vessels at hand anxious to share the burden.

Actually my entry into that sacred realm of knowledge had come about by accident. Bill had only three condoms. As we know, love may advance slowly in its first stages, but once the flame is lit, it flares into a roaring inferno. In no time, Bill would have exhausted his supply of condoms even as the flame of love burned ever more brightly.

One day, I entered our room when the door was closed. There was Bill sitting on his bunk over his bucket, washing a used condom in soap and water. His sputtering explanation revealed the dilemma: his fountain of pleasure was in danger of being cut off for the lack of an accessory. When the washing was completed, the cleansed condom was rolled down over a broomstick and placed in the remotest corner out of sight to dry.

The saloon at this time had become divided in two warring camps. Mounted on her high horse, Thelma Windly imperially snubbed Mrs. Jones, the young bride to be, and our majestic captain. She made clear to all her disapproval of the disgraceful goings on.

It was not until we got into cold weather that I learned we were going first to Halifax and not directly to New York. In the Nova Scotia city, passengers were put up in a hotel and were to be sent on to New York at company expense, probably because we were to call at Boston which would have meant a delay of almost another week.

We arrived in Halifax on a Sunday morning and Mrs. Jones invited both Bill and me to visit her in the hotel. It was the dead of winter and I was happy to have such an opportunity to get away from the ship into a warm hotel room in such pleasant company. The city’s landscape was bleak and encrusted in frost. Furthermore, when we arrived at the noon hour, Mrs. Jones ordered food for all and we had a feast. Warmly welcomed by her and the child who knew us well, having played amongst us for a month, our meal became a gala farewell party.

In the middle of our little fiesta there was a knock at the door and when Mrs. Jones answered, in walked the Marine Superintendent of the American South African Line, the man who had hired me. He seemed embarrassed and immediately sought refuge in chitchat, asking Mrs. Jones how she had enjoyed the trip. She replied that it had been just fine. I heard later through Sparks, the radio operator, that Mrs. Windly had radioed her complaints to the company. Why he came snooping was a mystery. Was he surprised when he found us with our clothes on? Did he come to rescue innocent Bill Fellows from this conquering siren?

Bill left the ship in Boston. I continued with the Chincha up and down the coast and made the next trip back to Africa with the same captain, Arthur Lee. That next trip was dull as hell!