If America's Richest Man...

(This is the first in a four part series)    

    If America's richest man married the most beautiful and talented actress in the English speaking world--and then she went to work in his warehouse or auto factory for four months and wrote a blistering report about conditions under which workers labored...

    Well, that's happened before.

    Pearce Mease Butler had it all—and then some.  Handsome, well educated, charming, and very, very, very rich.  

Pearce Mease Butler

    His grandfather and namesake had been a British Officer who resigned his commission and settled in South Carolina in 1771 and soon built a fortune by the time of the Revolution.  Major Butler joined the Patriot cause.  An able soldier and distinguished politician, he was one of South Carolina’s representatives to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence and later wrote Article Four of the Constitution which required escaped slaves be returned to their owners (But, of course, if you are a strict constructionist conservative, you would already know about article four.) After the war, Major Butler (as he preferred to be addressed, though he had held the rank of general) became Senator Butler.  Senator Butler continued building his fortune buying more plantations and more slaves. After service in Congress, Major Butler settled in Philadelphia.  A bitter falling out with his only surviving son enraged the old senator so he  left his fortune to his two grandsons by one of his daughters on the condition they take his last name, Butler.

Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble as Juliet

    Frances Anne “Fanny” Kemble did not have it all—but she started with a fair amount.  Born into one of England’s well known theater families, she had been sent to France to a girls' boarding school where she was proud to say she had learned practical skills such as pattern making, sewing, general house cleaning and management as well as writing, drawing, history and French.  On her return at age 16, Fanny, was a sensation when she debuted in the role of Juliet.  Her father’s theater was deeply in debt and Fanny’s performances drew crowds that kept the place afloat but not by much.  Even though she wrote a hit play, Francis the First, at age 18, it was not quite enough to pull the family fortunes free of debt. 

    Fanny suggested a tour of America to her father as a way to raise more money. Her father agreed and, in 1832, accompanied her to America.  Fanny was a beautiful young woman with a first rate intellect, natural curiosity and riveting talent. She was a hit!

    She raised a lot of money, but touring wasn’t cheap.

    Then. There was this guy.

    He showed up at all her performances, said and did all the right things, even played the flute in some of her performances. Not only was he not the kind of guy to take 'no' for an answer, Pearce was the kind of guy a girl didn’t want to say 'no' to. 

    So.

     At age 24 in 1834 Fanny became Mrs. Pearce M. Butler and retired from the stage.  Her father certainly did not worry about theater finance after that.  The Butlers settled into Pearce’s enormous mansion in Philadelphia and Fanny promptly bore two daughters three years apart.

    Their marriage would be unhappy, but influential in two areas.  Fanny would go on to write a detailed account of slave life on her husband's plantations which still remains a major source for historians of antebellum slavery.  

    Her grandson, Owen Wister, would write the first modern Western novel in 1902, The Virginian, giving America, and Texas in particular, a myth of itself. 

Mrs. Pearce M. Butler

    There was a problem, though. Fanny was an abolitionist.  

    It evidently never crossed Fanny’s mind why Pearce and the Butler family had so much money.  In England, a rich man would have land holdings and tenants and she may have assumed the same about Pearce.  Of course, she knew slavery was legal in the Southern US, but they lived and socialized in Pennsylvania, a free state, and had paid, white (Irish) servants.  It did not sit well with her when she found out her husband owned more slaves than anybody else in America. 

    His references to “the hired help” had been to the white overseers, not the hundreds of slaves. Every winter, Pearce left for four months to go to Butler Island off the Georgia Coast to supervise and inspect one of his rice plantations and then to St Simon's Island to inspect his cotton plantation.  He was, he insisted, an exceptionally kind and benevolent master.  He had not ever sold off slaves who had worked for his grandfather and was careful not to break up families. He did not turn out slaves when they were too old to work like in the North, he even allowed slaves to have their own businesses to make money on the side when their work was done.

    Fanny wanted to see for herself.  She badgered him relentlessly until he agreed she and the girls, along with their Irish nanny, could come with him when he went to Butler’s Island the winter of 1838-1839. Pearce pointed out they’d be crowded into a four room house the plantation overseer normally used.  It would be quite a comedown from the mansion. Fanny didn’t care.  She wanted to see the plantation for herself. 

Butler's Island in the upper left area of the map Fanny drew to accompany her pamphlet. 

    Pearce was furious when he read his wife's account of their stay.  He threatened divorce if she published or even circulated it.  The marriage went downhill from there.  There were no more children.  Pearce sued her for divorce in 1845 alleging all sorts of misdeeds.  She countersued and they were finally divorced in 1847.  As was customary at the time, custody of children went to the father, not the mother.  Fanny was allowed to see her children several times a year--generous for the period, but they could not freely communicate  with their mother until they reached age 21.   

A notice in one of the Washington DC newspapers.

I suspect the Theodore Sedgewick referred to be a Massachusetts politician. Fanny later bought a house in Lennox, MA before leaving to live her final years in England.

    While Fanny's account circulated in American abolitionist circles it was not officially published until 1863.  Deeply concerned the English would side with the Confederate government, Fanny had her journal published in England and it appeared nearly at the same time in the United States.  It has since become considered one of the primary source materials for antebellum historians of slavery.  

You can read the entire book at this link Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-39

    Once you get past the ornate and puffy introduction in the style of the times, her journal is very readable.  She was appalled at the filth and utter lack of facilities for the slaves.  She was outraged so many of the slaves bore striking resemblance to the overseer Mr. Roswell and to his white son, Roswell, Jr..  Roswell later had a falling out with Pearce Butler over wages and left to found a town in New Mexico that still bears his name. 

    She found the slaves were indeed not sold to other owners, but they were often rented out and separated from their families.  

    In common with the view of most white Americans of the time, she did not consider Negroes equal in all aspects to Caucasians but she detested the idea they could be property and treated with brutal indifference.

Next blog entry is Major Butler's head slave overseer wrote a short article for the December 1828 Alabama Agricultural Journal about proper slave management on the plantations Fanny would visit ten years later.