I also began exploring books my father didn’t know were in his library, volumes that previous owners had left behind or that had been accidentally included in lots purchased at estate sales. These included abolitionist literature that was technically illegal in Mississippi. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass published in 1845. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe published in 1852. Essays by William Lloyd Garrison and other Northern abolitionists.
I read these forbidden books late at night when the house was quiet, and they disturbed me profoundly. I’d grown up accepting slavery as natural, as ordained by God, as beneficial to both master and slave. The idea that enslaved people were inferior, childlike, incapable of self-governance—this was what everyone around me believed and taught.
But these books presented a different picture. Frederick Douglass wrote with intelligence and eloquence that matched any white author I’d read. He described the brutality of slavery, the whippings, the family separations, the sexual exploitation, the psychological torture of being treated as property. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, despite being fiction, depicted slavery’s horrors with devastating emotional impact.
I began noticing things I’d previously ignored. The scars on the backs of field hands. The way enslaved people’s expressions went blank and subservient when white people approached. The children who looked suspiciously like my father’s overseers. The women who disappeared from the fields for months, then returned without the babies they’d obviously carried.
But I did nothing with these observations. I was too weak, too dependent, too compromised by my own comfort to challenge the system. I told myself I was different from other slaveholders, that I treated enslaved people with more kindness. But kindness doesn’t make slavery less evil. It just makes the enslaver feel better about participating in it.
In September 1858, my father made another attempt at finding me a bride. He contacted families outside Mississippi—Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia. He lowered his standards, approaching families of lesser wealth and social standing. He offered increasingly generous dowies, guaranteeing that any woman who married me would live in luxury and want for nothing.
The responses were variations on a theme. “Thank you for your generous offer, but Caroline is already promised to another.” “We appreciate your interest, but we don’t feel it would be a suitable match.” “While your son seems a fine young man, we’re looking for a situation with different prospects.”
That last one was particularly cruel. Different prospects was a polite way of saying a husband who can give us grandchildren.
By December 1858, my father had stopped trying. We ate dinner together in silence most nights. The clink of silver on china, the only sound in the massive dining room. Sometimes he’d look at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Disappointment certainly, but also something like desperation.
The explosion came in March 1859. It was late evening and my father had been drinking more than usual. I was in the library reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius when he burst in.
“Thomas, we need to talk.”
I sat down the book. “Yes, father.”
He sat down heavily, bourbon sloshing in his glass. “I’m 58 years old. I could die tomorrow or live another 20 years, but either way, I’ll die eventually. And when I do, what happens to all this?” He gestured vaguely at the room, the house, the plantation beyond.
“The estate will go to our nearest male relative, I suppose. Cousin Robert in Alabama.”
“Cousin Robert,” my father spat, “is an incompetent drunk who’s lost two small plantations to bad debt. He’d sell this place within a year and drink away the profits. Everything I’ve built, everything my father built before me would be gone.”
“I’m sorry, father. I know this isn’t the situation you wanted.”
“Sorry doesn’t solve the problem.” He stood up, began pacing. “For 18 months, I’ve tried everything. 18 months of searching for a wife who’d accept you despite your condition. No one will. No one wants a husband who can’t produce heirs. That’s the reality.”
“I know.”
“So, I’ve had to think creatively—very creatively—about solutions that… that push the boundaries of convention.”
Something in his tone made me uneasy. “What do you mean?”
He stopped pacing, looked directly at me. “I’m giving you to Delilah.”
I stared at him, certain I’d misheard. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Delilah the field hand. I’m giving her to you as your companion. Your wife in practical terms.”
The words made no sense. “Father, you cannot possibly be suggesting—”
“I’m not suggesting. I’m telling you what’s going to happen.” His voice was hard now. The voice he used in court when pronouncing sentence. “No white woman will marry you. That’s established fact. But the Callahan line needs to continue. The plantation needs heirs, even if those heirs are unconventional.”
The full horror of what he was proposing hit me. “You want me to… with a slave woman? Father, that’s—even if I could, which the doctors say I can’t, that’s not how inheritance works. A child from a slave woman wouldn’t be your heir. They’d be property.”
“Unless I free them. Unless I legally adopt them, unless I structure my will very carefully, which as a judge and lawyer, I’m uniquely qualified to do.”
“This is insane.”
“This is necessary.” He sat down again, leaning forward. “Thomas, listen to me. I’ve thought this through from every angle. You can’t produce children. The doctors were unanimous about that. But children can be produced on your behalf. Delilah is strong, healthy, intelligent. I’ll arrange for her to be bred with a suitable male from another plantation. Strong stock, proven fertility, good physical specimens. The children she bears will legally be mine through documentation I’ll create. When I die, I’ll will them to you along with papers freeing them and establishing them as your adopted heirs. They’ll inherit everything.”
“You’re talking about breeding human beings like livestock.”
“I’m talking about ensuring the continuation of this family and this plantation. Is it unconventional? Yes. Is it legally complex? Absolutely. But it’s possible and it solves our problem.”
“It’s not my problem.” I stood up, my hands trembling more than usual. “Father, what you’re describing is evil. You want to use a woman’s body without her consent to produce children who will be manipulated through legal fictions into becoming heirs. You’re treating people like breeding stock, like animals.”
“They are animals in the eyes of the law.” His voice rose to match mine. “Thomas, I understand you’ve been reading those abolitionist books. Yes, I know about them. I’m not blind. You filled your head with sentimental nonsense about the humanity of slaves, but the legal reality is that they are property. I own Delilah the same way I own this house or that chair. And I’m choosing to use her in a way that solves a problem.”
“And what does Delilah think about this?”
“She’ll do what she’s told. She’s property, Thomas. Her opinion is irrelevant.”
Something in me snapped. I’d spent my entire life deferring to my father’s authority, accepting his decisions, trying to make up for being a disappointing son, but this was too much.
“No.”
The word came out quietly but firmly. My father blinked. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘No.’ I won’t be part of this. If you want to implement this obscene breeding scheme, you’ll do it without my participation or cooperation.”
“You ungrateful—” He stood up, his face reddening. “Do you have any idea what I’ve sacrificed for you? The opportunities I’ve lost because I had to focus on finding solutions for my defective son. The social embarrassment of having an heir who can’t perform the one basic function required of him.”
“I didn’t ask to be born this way, and I didn’t ask for a son who’d end the family line.” He threw his glass, which shattered against the fireplace. “I’m trying to find a solution, and you’re throwing it back in my face out of some misguided moral superiority you learned from abolitionist propaganda.”
“It’s not propaganda to say that people shouldn’t be bred like animals. Father, if you can’t see the evil in what you’re proposing—”
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