152 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865book. Moreland takes Albert on a trip through New England, secure in the knowledge
that Albert is happy in his service and will not try to escape. They visit a village
described as “the very hot-bed of fanaticism,” where Moreland explains to a
sympathetic Northerner that, in the South, “we look upon our slaves as friends.” A
poignant contrast is drawn, during the conversation with the Northerner, by the
sudden appearance in the street where the two men are walking of a destitute young
woman, sick and thrown out of work. Inevitably, Moreland reflects on the difference
between her plight and the secure position of his slaves – and, more generally,
“between the Northern and Southern laborer, when reduced to a state of sickness
and dependence.” He concludes that “the sick and dying negro, retained under his
master’s roof, kindly nursed and ministered unto, with no sad, anxious lookings
forward into the morrow for the supply of nature’s wants, no fears of being cast into
the pauper’s home ... had ... a far happier lot.” The one might have “the nominal
bondage of the slave,” certainly; but the other had “the bondage of poverty, whose
iron chains we heard clanking in every region of God’s earth.” And, as if to underline
the contrast between unhappy hireling and happy slave, Albert then reappears to tell
his master with some amusement about his conversation with a few Northerners,
whose questions to him reveal that, as Albert puts it, “they didn’t know nothing
about us” – or about him, in particular, and his personal contentment. After the
conversation between Albert and Moreland, the novel moves back to Moreland’s
reflections again, as he compares the condition of Southern slaves, not only with the
wage slaves of the North, but with “the groaning serfs of Russia; the starving sons of
Ireland; the squalid operatives of England.” Moreland is now drawn to “the irresistible
conclusion” that “the enslaved children of Africa” are “the happiest subservient race”
to be found “on the face of the globe.” This alternating rhythm of action and
reflection, conversation and polemic, is characteristic, not only of The Planter’s
Northern Bride as a whole, but also of other plantation and pro-slavery romances of
this kind. The narrative illustrates the pro-slavery thesis; the thesis informs and
shapes the narrative. The full story is still to unfold but, even in these opening pages,
Hentz has established the basic structure. And she has also underscored her
fundamental purpose, which is not just to entertain but to instruct: to expose the
abolitionist lies told about the treatment of slaves – “such as being chained,
handcuffed, scourged, flayed, and burned alive,” as Moreland puts it – and to convince
the reader that the peculiar institution of the South is also a humane one.
That, however, was not how Mary Boykin Chesnut saw it. Born in South Carolina,
she married into the wealthy Chesnut family. Her husband was an influential
politician, with close connections to Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy
during the Civil War. And, like many at the time, Chesnut kept a diary in which she
recorded meetings with national figures, news of the progress of the war, and her
everyday experiences and opinions. She then created a book out of the diary and her
memories of the past, but died before it could be published. This composite work
did not appear until 1905, then in a 1949 edition titled A Diary from Dixie; and the
original, more highly personal diary was not published until 1984. There are many
remarkable aspects to the diary, but what perhaps is most remarkable is Chesnut’sGGray_c02.indd 152ray_c 02 .indd 152 8 8/1/2011 7:54:40 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 40 AM