LWH144 1

Charleston, South Carolina is a city with deep history and rich culture. It is a complicated

balance between old and new, remorse and pride. An important aspect of Charleston is the role it

played in American slavery, which is presented in various ways at different historical and

cultural sites in and around the city. This learning experience is different from learning in a

classroom setting, and the comparisons and differences of these methods of study are worth

discussing. In this essay, I wish to assess the presentation of slavery at Middleton Place, the

McLeod Plantation, the Nathaniel Russell House, and the Aiken-Rhett House in light of our

classroom learning in UHON 3510, Slavery in the Land of Liberty. While we visited other

historical sites, I would like to examine these four in order to draw comparisons, contrasts, and

conclusions among them.

On the first full day of the Honors College trip to Charleston, our class visited Middleton

Place outside of the city. Sitting on over 100 acres, this property was mainly the showpiece of all

the holdings of the Middleton family.1 It has a geometrically-minded garden, man-made ponds,

and rice fields. This was not the main rice-producing property that the Middleton family owned.

Different tours are offered here, and our class experienced three: the house tour, “Beyond the

Fields,” and the garden tour. Interesting facts about slavery were given on the house tour, such as

the note that the Middleton family probably never touched their silver platters—those were only

handled by their enslaved. Most information about slavery on this plantation consisted of notes

like this; household slaves were not discussed or explained at length. The average visitor would

receive some facts on slavery, but nothing that was detailed or did not pertain to the Middleton

family. The tour called “Beyond the Fields” was led by a former theater professor from New

York. This consisted of dramatic storytelling on the slaves who lived and worked here while

1
Mary Vick, Middleton Place, Charleston, South Carolina, March 11, 2018.
 LWH144 2

walking around some original and reconstructed worksites.2 This tour contained a lot more

information on slavery, but it was heavily romanticized and more entertaining than informative.

A tourist walking away from “Beyond the Fields” would remember the culture of the enslaved

but perhaps not receive the impression that they were truly captured and owned with virtually no

way out. Finally, we took a tour of the gardens with our first guide.3 While the scenery was

breathtaking and the weather was pleasant, the only connection made to slavery was the fact that

all of the landscape maintenance and original groundbreaking was performed by slaves. The tour

mostly focused on the geometry of the design, the plants, and the statues. It was intended to be

impressive over 200 years ago, and it still is today. However, a tourist that only purchases a

ticket for the gardens will not learn anything about slavery—they can totally forget that they are

standing in a plantation, where enslaved Africans and African-Americans were owned and killed.

In the house tour and “Beyond the Fields,” any visitor would hear about slavery, possibly even

more than they expected, but to a college student who has studied American slavery deeply for a

semester, the information presented seemed artificial and inadequate.

On the same day, March 11th, we participated in a tour of the McLeod Plantation on

James Island. This was a sea island cotton plantation and had about 75-100 slaves around the

time of the Civil War.4 The beginning of this tour was about the McLeod family and the main

house, but this took up less than half of the tour. Our guide’s main focus was on the enslaved

who lived, worked, and died here as well as the people who came after. One of the jarring

statements she made was that people rented the slave cabins on the property to live in or house

nonprofits until 1990. These were one or two room buildings with no running water. Any visitor

who hears that would probably be shocked. Still, many tourists just wanted to see the main house

2
Ty Collins, Middleton Place, Charleston, South Carolina, March 11, 2018.
3
Vick, Middleton Place.
4
Ashley, McLeod Plantation, Charleston, South Carolina, March 11, 2018.
 LWH144 3

and were disappointed that there was not a tour of it. In addition, this guide noted that the

McLeod guides are permitted to write their own tours. She said that another guide focuses more

on enslaved women. Her tour may align with some of Deborah Gray White’s arguments in her

book, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, such as “female bondage was not better or worse, or more or less

severe, than male bondage, but it was different.”5 Because of this script freedom for guides, not

every tour at the McLeod Plantation is the same. If I ever go back to Charleston, I would like to

take a tour from a different guide so I could learn more and hear a new perspective on the same

property.

As the two plantations of the trip, comparisons and contrasts quickly arose in my mind.

At Middleton Place, our tour guide for the family home was an older Caucasian lady. At the

McLeod Plantation, we were led by a young Caucasian woman. This seemed to make a

significant difference in the content we received concerning slavery. The guide from Middleton

Place focused most of her tour on the Middleton family. The picture she drew of the relationship

between the family and their enslaved was fairly amicable. As she described how one slave,

Caesar, shaved Henry Middleton’s face and neck, she noted the trust between the two of them

that was required for a task that could end Mr. Middleton’s life with a slip of a razor.6 However,

our class discussion following the trip brought up that this situation was not a matter of choice; it

was about survival. If Caesar killed his master, he would have likely been killed himself. In

addition, his family (if he had one) could also be threatened and punished. There was really no

benefit to harming Mr. Middleton, but our guide did not focus on this in her tour. Caesar was

freed when Mr. Middleton died, but it is not known whether he had a family or not. After some

questioning from our group, the tour guide admitted that Caesar was the only slave ever freed

5
Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman? (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 89.
6
Vick, Middleton Place.
 LWH144 4

here, and if he had a family, it is unlikely that they were also freed. To a non-critical listener, the

story of Caesar may seem pleasant and inspiring, but the details and his “happy ending” are

somewhat surface level. This is true of most of what the guide said concerning slavery. On the

other hand, the younger lady at the McLeod Plantation seemed to be as honest about slavery on

this property as she could. While she also stated that the family’s treatment of their slaves was

unknown, she did say that people today are shocked when they hear about slavery at a

plantation.7 Indeed, our guide gave us much more information about the enslaved on this

property and the tenant farmers and renters who lived here after the Civil War than our first

guide at Middleton. There, information on the enslaved was scattered throughout the latter part

of the house tour, but at the McLeod Plantation, around the last two-thirds of the tour was

completely about slavery. The focus at Middleton was the family; the focus at McLeod was

slavery. Our guide at Middleton Place was older and likely remembered times of segregation.

Other generations see race differently than ours, and this could affect how she gives her tours.

The guide at the McLeod Plantation was closer to our age and explained the dependency on

slavery here much more clearly. She drew connections to the tenant farmers and renters who

lived here later. This is more representative of the liberal, 21st century perspective on slavery.

The differences could also be due to who runs the sites. Middleton Place is operated by the

Middleton Place Foundation, so control on every aspect of the site is tightly held.8 The McLeod

Plantation is run by Charleston County Parks, which is in charge of multiple sites and does not

have direct ties to the McLeod family.9 Therefore, it seems like there is less rigidity on what is

presented here. Overall, Middleton Place and McLeod Plantation are two very different sites

with diverse purposes.

7
Ashley, McLeod Plantation.
8
“About,” Middleton Place, https://www.middletonplace.org/about/, (2018).
9
“About Us,” Charleston County Parks, https://ccprc.com/3/About-Us, (2018).
 LWH144 5

Next, our class visited the Nathaniel Russell House. The first two floors have been fully

restored to what they looked like in their prime years. The original owner and builder of this was

a trader and owned two slave ships.10 Naturally, he also owned slaves, and our guide noted that

some of them were “loaned out.” In urban environments, slaves sometimes were permitted to

keep some of their wages when they worked for someone else,11 but the guide did not know if

this was the case with the Russells or not.12 She referred to the enslaved by their job descriptions,

such as “butler” or “gardener,” until I asked if these were paid positions or if these tasks were

performed by slaves. She replied the latter, and after a few more questions about slavery from

others in the class, she offered more information on the subject. She was very knowledgeable

about the slaves at the Nathaniel Russell House and answered questions with “We are not sure”

instead of “I do not know,” which seemed like she was actually telling us all that was known at

the time. It became clear to us, however, that the additional knowledge on slavery was not

usually shared on her tours. Most of her comments were on aspects of the house like the

mahogany, the detailed carpets, or the expensive paint on the walls. The majority of visitors on

this tour would probably hear very little about slavery and much more about the splendor of the

house. This decision can be problematic for some and comfortable for others.

On the following afternoon, we toured the Aiken-Rhett House in what used to be the

outskirts of Charleston. This property is large, and the outside is magnificent, but the inside has

been left untouched. As much of the original paint, flooring, and furniture remains as possible.13

The family never updated the house and lived in it this way until 1975. The unrestored condition

of the house resonated the theme of the transiency of humankind in power, status, and wealth. It

10
Mary Ann, Nathaniel Russell House, Charleston, South Carolina, March 12, 2018.
11
Michael D. Thompson, “Two. ‘This very troublesome business’: Actions, Reactions, and the Pursuit of Mastery,”
in Working on the Dock of the Bay (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2015), 30-61.
12
Mary Ann, Nathaniel Russell House.
13
Leigh Moring, Aiken-Rhett House, Charleston, South Carolina, March 13, 2018.
 LWH144 6

was quite disarming after witnessing the grandeur of the Nathaniel Russell House. It was also

especially reminding of the presence of slaves there. The signs of slavery are inescapable in the

back of the house where quarters are still standing. They can actually be walked through in

addition to the stables, kitchen, and laundry room where many labored day after day. The

quarters likely had curtains and were painted. The guide explained that this was not because their

master loved them, but because he was so rich that he could show off his wealth even in the

quarters of the enslaved. This goes along with the idea of paternalism, which was a common

mindset of slaveholders in some eras of slavery in the United States. “It became unfashionable to

boast of cruelty to one’s slaves. Instead, many slave owners began to talk about how they cared

for them.”14 The family owned around 800 slaves across all of their properties, and 20-30 lived at

this house at a time.15 Our tour was not the typical tourist experience—most people walk around

the property with a headset and a program that is fifteen years old. We were led by a guide who

mostly does tours for elementary school groups. I would have also liked to experience the audio

tour in order to know what the average visitor learns, but our guide was still very informative. In

a similar fashion to Middleton Place, she did not discuss as much about the enslaved here until

later in the tour, once the evidence in the backyard was undeniable. Again, it makes me wonder

what most tourists experience, and if I return to Charleston, I will try to participate in the audio

tour.

Now I would like to compare and contrast the two houses we visited because they were

our urban examples of household slavery. As was the case with the plantations, the tour guide at

the Nathaniel Russell House was an older Caucasian woman, and the Aiken-Rhett House tour

guide was a younger Caucasian lady. Again, I believe the ages of our tour guides affected the

14
Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 59.
15
Moring, Aiken-Rhett House.
 LWH144 7

way they presented slavery. At the Nathaniel Russell House, our guide initially only offered the

information that Russell had slave ships and that the slaves lived upstairs in the house, which

was not part of the tour.16 Most of the time, she referred to the slaves as “they” or ignored their

duties altogether in what could have been an implication that the family did things such as fold

clothes or empty the chamber pots. This guide gave plenty of details on the architecture and

restoration of the house. The focus of her tour was the grandness of the house. This could be in

part because of her generation, which looks back fondly at the way everything once was. With

this mindset, glaring problems can appear obsolete. In contrast, the young guide at the Aiken-

Rhett House offered much more explanation on slavery with this property. She actually said that

the slaves here were probably beaten based on the information about slave treatment during this

time period and in this area.17 They were on call 24/7 and were very likely to be abused because

they were so close to the family all the time. As one of the last sites of our trip, this was very

different to hear. The focus of the Aiken-Rhett tour was mostly slavery. This guide was older

than our guide at the McLeod Plantation, but she was still much younger than the ones from

Middleton Place and the Nathaniel Russell House. I think her age made her more upfront about

the probable reality for the slaves here rather than maintain the reputation of the family. The

houses are run by the same group, the Historic Charleston Foundation, which is very interesting

when considering their different conditions.18 One has been fully restored, and the other has been

left in its original state. This leads to two different purposes. The purpose of the Nathaniel

Russell House leans toward entertainment while the Aiken-Rhett House is more academic.

In conclusion, the subject of slavery is difficult to present properly, and this is no

different in Charleston, South Carolina. Certainly faults are found in every historical site,

16
Mary Ann, Nathaniel Russell House.
17
Moring, Aiken-Rhett House.
18
“About,” Historic Charleston Foundation, https://www.historiccharleston.org/about/, (2018).
 LWH144 8

including the ones discussed in this essay (Middleton Place, the McLeod Plantation, the

Nathaniel Russell House, and the Aiken-Rhett House) and those not mentioned. What is

important to remember is the progress being made. No site will be perfect in their presentation of

slavery because they are operated and maintained by humans, who are all imperfect. This can be

a source of understandable frustration. The choice now is whether to let that frustration fester

into resentment, or to allow it to inspire change for the better.

 LWH144 9

Works Cited

“About.” Historic Charleston Foundation. 2018. https://www.historiccharleston.org/about/.

“About.” Middleton Place. 2018. https://www.middletonplace.org/about/.

“About Us.” Charleston County Parks. 2018. https://ccprc.com/3/About-Us.

Ashley. McLeod Plantation, Charleston, South Carolina, March 11, 2018.

Collins, Ty. Middleton Place, Charleston, South Carolina, March 11, 2018.

Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery: 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.

Mary Ann. Nathaniel Russell House, Charleston, South Carolina, March 12, 2018.

Moring, Leigh. Aiken-Rhett House, Charleston, South Carolina, March 13, 2018.

Thompson, Michael D. Working on the Dock of the Bay. Columbia: University of South Carolina

Press, 2015.

Vick, Mary. Middleton Place, Charleston, South Carolina, March 11, 2018.

White, Deborah Gray. Ar’n’t I a Woman?. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.