Finally the ones who had stayed back sent Young T. and Lummie’s boy Polk after the men, and within two hours they were back. The trick didn’t take long to figure out — not for Tom T. Justus, who took pride in his understanding of the Negro mind. He had been a little too trusting this time, that’s all. There had been no Yankee gunboats at all in the river. And everybody said well where did that idea come from in the first place? Tom ticked through the actors in the drama, and recalled that Barrow had been the one who brought it into the house. But where had Barrow gotten it from? Why, he said, from Cass and Orestes and Joe Boy.
It didn’t matter. Even if gunboats hadn’t come upriver this time, they’d be at Tom’s back door sooner or later. He knew the time had finally come. All his coastal properties were in harm’s way and it was time to leave. He planned it out. Veatch and Sump would manage a drove to Baldwin County in the interior. They’d have 7 or 8 helpers, and they would take the most valuable 200 or so slaves from the other plantations. They would leave in a week.
“Got to spring it on em quick,” Venable said later. “Give em a month to think about it and you’re asking for trouble. We rode down Nigger Street and told em get out there and Tom T. explained matters. And there was the wailing and all and one old gal went crazy and jumped up on Tom. I’d of whipped her bloody right there. Tom just put his arm around her and said Mammy don’t cry.”
They had given the slaves two days to prepare for the journey. Yes, it would cause hardship. No, everyone couldn’t go. There would be family problems. Three or four marriages would be disrupted.
Venable recalled the two weddings he had gone to. He said they were the funniest thing. “They’d get all dressed up and you had to too, and you’d try not to laugh and Reverend Beard would lead em through vows and then everybody got punch.”
Tom Justus encouraged Christian marriage among his slaves. One time Young T had laughed during a slave wedding and got a day in the low rice for it.
The next day they left for Middle Georgia, 300 miles away. Some rode horses, some rode wagons, but most of them walked. It was not a bad drove, according to Venable. Once they got away from the quarters and all the wailing it had gone smoothly. He’d been on worse.
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