Slavery, and in particular, the experiences of enslaved women. Weve already had a chance to look at the case of Harriet Jacobs, one of the best remembered of the slave narratives. There, jacobs introduced us, if you will, to that dimension of slavery that is exemplified, and we might say central to the experience of slave women, and that is sexual violence. We will come back a little bit to talk about jacobs in comparison to our case today, that of celia. We also talked about wpa narratives, and one of the things we noticed about those their lives, as you will recall, is the extent to which some issues, including sexual violence, violence generally, but sexual violence, in particular, was rather muted in the slave narratives. And so here, we have with the we have an opportunity with the celia case the opportunity to take another pass at this question, to try to see this dimension of slavery through the experience of celia. So, why do i say try to see this dimension of slavery . As you have all begun to see in your readings for today, there are many ways in which the record and the evidence upon which we rely to discover, explore, and understand the case of celia is a challenging record to make use of. So part of our work today will be to talk about the evidence in the celia case, how it is we recover from what is in essence the record of a trial a rather fragmentary, carefully, but idiosyncratically assembled group of testimonies, written and oral, arguments of lawyers and conclusions of judges. That, mixed with newspaper reportage, some demographic material like census returns, how we take this fragmentary evidence and try to think in thoroughgoing ways about celias experience, but also how we have to continue to think critically about the evidence that we use, what it can tell us and perhaps what it cannot tell us about celias story. You all have read melton mclaurins book and that is the popular historical booklength treatment of celias story, but i want to sketch out that narrative for the group as his for the purposes of our discussion today. Again, this comes as a fragmentary narrative, one that is very driven by the court record, the legal artifacts in the case. The first thing we know is there is very little for us to say about celias young life. We dont meet her in a formal sense in the historical record until she is how old . Do you remember how old she is when she comes into this story . Anybody . 14 years old, right . She is 14 years old when she first appears to us. She is, as we come to understand it, a young enslaved woman in central missouri, and she is purchased by robert newsom, a small farmer in the county of callaway, the town of fulton in missouri. He travels and purchases celia, and almost from the very moment of that encounter, our story is framed because we learn celia is very soon sexually assaulted by newsom, some say even in the journey back to fulton, but certainly very quickly after they arrived at his farm. What is this place to which celia has come . We know that newsom is a recent widower. In his household are his children, who are now adults. His daughters, as well as a grandson. Coffee, wayne scott, newsom is a small farmer. This is not a plantation setting. This is not a largescale enterprise. At most in 1850, he owned five enslaved people in addition to celia. By 1860, he will own just celia and one other enslaved person, a man named george whom we will meet later. He is a small slaveholder, typical of central missouri. He makes his way as a subsistence farmer, growing crops and foodstuffs for his family, but also raising livestock. There is also some suggestion in the evidence that he is also a producer of whiskey. But celia arise not to do agricultural work, not to do farm labor, but she comes to do some household Domestic Labor within this house, but part of what we know is that over the next five years she will become regularly and frequently the target of newsoms Sexual Assaults. Newsom will build a small cabin for celia 60 paces from his home. 60 paces. Far away, but not too far away, as we will learn, for him to visit regularly. She will come to live there in these years herself with then one and then another child that she will bear, likely the children of newsom himself. Children we come to know as vine and as jane later on in the story a, and celia, by 1855, is again pregnant for the third time. As the record explains, celia tells people she is sick. She is pregnant again. Whether sick is a metaphor for pregnancy or, in fact, she is having a difficult pregnancy, it is clear that celia does not want to abide or accommodate or acquiesce again Going Forward to newsoms sexual advances. The first thing she appears to do is to speak to newsoms daughters. She asks the women in his household to intervene on her behalf, to in some way speak to their father and see if he wont desist, right, from assaulting her, but they have no success, it seems. And then celia has her own confrontation with newsom, and here for our purposes, the core of the story. She seems to advise him, do not come to see me. I will not accommodate your advances. I do not want to have sexual relations with you. I will not have sexual relations with you. Still, on a june night in 1865, 1855, newsom will come those 60 steps from his own parlor to celias cabin, he will confront her, speak to her, approach her in what is, in celias mind, a suggestion he will sexually assault her, and we know that celia defends herself. She picks up a stick, a club. Its variously described. She strikes him once, again, and perhaps many times until he falls, is unconscious and dead in her cabin. What do you do if you are celia . What do you do . Well, part of what we know is retellshe retails the story, for a while, she is stunned. She has not anticipated, has not intended to kill newsom. She has intended to protect herself to fend him off. But now, she realizes he is dead. The question now becomes, how should she deal with that fact . We know that she attempts to conceal the evidence of what has transpired. She will take newsoms body, push it into the fireplace of her cabin. She will stoke the fire, and over the next six hours, she will attempt to dispose of the evidence of what transpired. So much so that by morning, very little is left. Some ashes, some bone fragments, but celia is confident enough that she has concealed her act that as morning breaks, she continues about the ordinary routine of the household. She makes her way to the kitchen to begin to prepare breakfast for the newsom family. Newsoms children awake. Their father is missing, and a search begins for newsom. It takes two major phases. Initially, newsoms children searched the farm itself. Has he wandered off . Has he had an accident . But there is no sign for him. Neighbors joined the search, and the questioning begins. This interrogation, this informal but very important interrogation of people on the farm, one of whom is newsoms grandson, who relates he helped celia distribute the ashes of her fire along the path leading to the stable on the newsom farm. And there is george, the enslaved man owned by newsom. George relates we will come back to his testimony relates that perhaps they want to search in the vicinity of celias cabin. Celia herself, as we know, progressively tells a story. Initially, she denies any understanding of newsoms whereabouts, what might have happened to him. She then begins to piecemeal tell a story. And we understand in a sense why that might have been. The consequences for her act are grave, as we know. And she begins to tell a story, first about having about newsom having put his head through the window and having struck him, his disappearing into the night, but eventually, it seems, particularly under duress, that is under the threat that, in fact, she may be separated from her children, celia reveals to these neighbors, local farmers who have come to investigate the whereabouts of newsom, she reveals to them out of earshot of the newsom children, she reveals that she, in fact, struck newsom dead and disposed of his body in the fireplace. We can follow the story then as it makes its way through now the legal frame. There is an inquest. These local neighbors who have been at the fore of the investigation, newsoms children, and celia herself will all give testimony before a local grand jury, leading to the formal indictment of celia for newsoms murder. There will be a trial. Again, many of these parties will come forward, we tell their stories, with one exception. Do you remember who does not testify at the trial . Who does not testify . Celia herself does not testify at the trial, because pursuant to missouri law, as is typical in the United States in the mid19th century, no defendant is given the opportunity to give testimony at trial. A defendant in 19thcentury legal culture is deemed to be too self interested to give testimony. Celia does not testify. Many parties we have become familiar with do testify, and they retell, in a sense, celias story, celias version of events. And one of the things that becomes clear in the trial, and while there are facts in dispute, and we will come back to a couple of them, the core of celias story is never in dispute. There never is a question about her relationship to newsom, the longstanding sexual abuse to which she has been subjected, and even how with her third child, she has become sick and has tried to avoid and to fend off newsoms sexual advances, even before striking him with the club. This story, this is celias own story, is one we see in parts adopted by the local farmers who investigated the case, by the members of the newsoms family, and ultimately by the court. This core narrative is one on which everyone comes to agree. Celia is ultimately found guilty by a local jury. We will come back to the jury dynamics in our discussion. She is sentenced to death by hanging. There is a curious interlude that i think we know too little about still. Celia is secreted out of the jail and avoids the initial hanging date because she has been secreted out of the jail and taken to a hiding place. Who is responsible for that and how that comes about is, i think, one of the mysteries of celias case, but we know that, ultimately, she is returned to the jail. A new execution date is set. The state court of appeals hears preliminarily the possibility of celias appeal. Celias lawyers ask if the high court will stay or postpone her execution temporarily until there is a formal review of the Legal Proceedings in the trial court, and the answer is no. The high court sees no legal merit, no likelihood that celia will prevail on appeal. They permit her execution to go forward, and on december 21, 1855, she is hanged in fulton, missouri. So i want to come back with you today to revisit this case through some of the themes we have been developing over the course of the last weeks, come back to celia, as its own story, but also a window into the experience of enslaved women, the role of Sexual Assault in the context of slavery, but also to look at the ways in which law, the ways in which legal culture plays a Critical Role here in 1850s missouri. Judges, lawyers, grand juries, local jurors, investigators, witnesses, all playing a Critical Role in determining, if you will, in framing how we might interpret celias story, how we might come to conclude whether celia was justified. Right . You remember, the case turns on was celia entitled to assert selfdefense when she acted to put off newsom, right, to resist his Sexual Assault . Was she entitled to that sort of selfdefense in the face of the imminent harm that newsom was surely going to force upon her as he had before, or as an enslaved woman, was celia without recourse . Not in life, because we know in life, she had recourse, and she seized it, but before the law, did she have recourse . So those will be our questions Going Forward today. So three sorts of questions. The first i want to use for us to come back to Harriet Jacobs, who we visited a couple of weeks ago. Jacobs is, of course, perhaps the best remembered of enslaved women. She is so well remembered in part because she pens an extraordinary narrative, the book we come to know as incidents in the life of a slave girl, published under the pseudonym linda brent. But when we talked about jacobs, we talked about incidents, and we saw that, if you will, as a form of testimony, complicated testimony, filtered through jacobss own concerns about her reputation and her standing as a free black woman when she publishes this narrative, filtered through antislavery politics. But we read, you will recall, very carefully to try and discern the way which still with this narrative, jacobs allows us to glimpse something of the persistence, the presence of Sexual Assault, the threat of Sexual Assault in enslaved womens lives. Remember in her story, dr. Flint, the pseudonym for the father of jacobss owner, the way in which this man in his household in edenton, north carolina, over the course of years, threatens, confronts, promises almost promises, right . To ultimately have access to jacobss body, to have sexual relations with her. She lives under this threat. It is so present in her life that we know in the Broad Strokes that she will ultimately secret herself away for a traumatic seven years in the attic of her grandmothers home until she is finally able to make her way north into freedom. But how would we compare these two stories . Jacobs on one hand and celia on the other . What sort of in what ways should we compare them . In what ways are these stories similar stories for you, and in what way are they contrasting stories . Just hands. Yeah, katie. Katie the differences in the support systems that jacobs and celia had. At least jacobs had her grandmother and other family members. And was in sort of this not so isolated area where her grandmother had the ability to protect her and she could appeal to her white lover to protect her, and celia did not have that. She had george maybe. But not as much of a support system. She had celia didnt really have any role models to look up to and to take care of and given the fact that she was so much more isolated in her environment, she was so on her own. Prof. Jones good. What about other folks . How would you compare these two women . These artifacts i put up not by accident. On the left you have the title page from jacobss book. On the right, we have a justice of the peaces writing of celias testimony. But i think maybe i have no, that was not it. But here, down on the right, you can see the x. Other differences . Yeah, andrea . Andrea what jacobs did, but celia couldnt. That comes into play as to whether or not she would have had a different outcome for her trial or not. Prof. Jones good. Yes . Harriet jacobs was obviously written by herself, so her story we kind of know. Celias story is what we know from court cases and testimonies, which can be kind of questionable. Prof. Jones this is great, this question of literacy. I will come back to the question of isolation. I think literacy and isolation may be two ways in which we can think about dramatically the ways in which not only the way these stories unfold but how the capacity to tell or remember them are shaped. Yes, jacobs is literate, even if she is an enslaved woman in north carolina. We remember this becomes part of the drama between her and dr. Flint, precisely because part of his terror is to pass her notes. Yeah, siobhan . Siobhan i saw a similarity between them. Prof. Jones good. Siobhan one thing i noticed, i feel like they really did not have anything to lose except when it came to their children. Jacobs, she could have stayed in that attic for seven years, if it was not for the safety of her children. And for celia, it was not until the interrogator was threatening her children that she kind of felt she had to cave in, so i honestly believe if it were not for them having children, they would have done anything to get out of the situation. Prof. Jones very good. We have two notes of difference and one important piece of singularity. We will come back to that. Coming back to the literacy question, we know that jacobs to have the capacity to read and write and this plays a role, perhaps we would say in her capacity to have a critical consciousness, whether it is her own ability to read the notes of dr. Flint or to read the bible and to develop a critical critique of slavery and the conditions under which she lives. Jacobs is someone for whom literacy played a key role in her lifetime, and for us as historians, we know that her literacy is of extraordinary consequence, because we not only have her narrative, incidents in the life of a slave girl, but we have her correspondence over many years. So we are able to uncover, in a sense, a kind of nuance for Harriet Jacobs that eludes us in celias case. In part because celia is at extraordinary distance. Even here in what is said to be her testimony, or her confession, we realize that this text has come through some very complex channels before it comes to us, right . Celia narrates the story. A justice of the peace listens to the story, writes his own interpretation, if you will, of her words. And then celia signs with an x, but we are right to be skeptical about this sort of artifact, precisely because we know celia herself could not read and review the document, even though the x suggests she somehow assented to its content. So i think literacy is an important piece. A number of you mentioned isolation. And here, isolation in celias story takes a number of forms, doesnt it . On the one hand, we could contrast her experience with that of jacobs, who lives in a small town, where she has regular access we will come back to her family, but even in the intercourse of her daytoday life, with free africanamericans, with other white people in edenton, jacobs has a kind of world that becomes critical to understanding how she resists the doctor and ultimately how she escapes. It is that proximity to other people. Celia, by contrast, you are absolutely right. What her life was like in audrain county, we cant say. Right . We do not know. But certainly we know that when she makes that brief migration, if you will, from audrain and to fulton and to the farm, she is clearly without family, without acquaintances, and the isolation of that farm, many miles from small, downtown fulton means she does not have the access to allies, to information, to resources that jacobs herself had. That is most vividly underscored by the question of family. Isnt it . We know the role that family plays, the powerful role that family plays for Harriet Jacobs, her grandmother and her uncle early on, who not only provide her psychological support, but they are a sort of moral compass, if you will, that buttresses for jacobss critique of her own condition. Right . That she has this kind of family, interlocutors, who are critical to her developing critique and her resistance to dr. Flint over time. Again, celia, unclear. Five slaves in that household in 1850. Only two adult slaves, celia and george, by the time newsom is killed. What sort of community might that have been for celia . A modest one. Perhaps one that was profoundly transient. Right . We see enslaved people there and then disappear. Right . Are they sold . Did they run away . We cant know. But we know there is a transience to this. We can see the relationship with george and how that was immodest and perhaps a somewhat impoverished context related to jacobs. Siobhan pointed to the context that they are both mothers. Motherhood is a theme we have come back to again and again. We see two women who clearly on one hand, jacobs, who very secretly secrets herself, looking not only to secure her own liberty away from north carolina, but thinking very strategically about how to secure her own liberty away from north carolina, looking not only to secure her own liberty away from north carolina, but thinking very strategically about how to secure the liberty of her children, which, eventually, she will achieve. Celia, on the other hand, with two small children, and there is that moment when it seems to be the case, right, that she gives herself up in a futile, but still powerful attempt to deflect the threat that if she wont tell the story, she will be separated from her children. So motherhood, right, and the fate of ones children, the fate of ones relationship to ones children i think is that, siobhan, what you were getting at . Siobhan yes. Prof. Jones this is a powerful similarity. Here, on one hand, we might think about celia and Harriet Jacobs as two very powerful narratives, both of which speak to the pervasiveness, the terrible duress that is that Sexual Assault disproportionally visits on enslaved women. These are two powerful examples. But as we have also said across the semester, our work is partly not to collapse or reduce all enslaved women, all black women, to one experience, and we can appreciate through this comparison the ways in which time and place and circumstances are essential to explaining how it is that for jacobs, freedom, right, liberation comes by way of hiding, by way of fugitive status, by way of writing, and for celia, liberty, in a sense, comes through force, that club, that violent confrontation. Two responses to what one might say at the core is a shared experience, and at the same time, an experience framed very differently and has, as we know, vastly different outcomes. So i want to shift now, because part of the way we have been talking about celias case, particularly as we compare her experience to that of Harriet Jacobss, it allows us to talk about the social world and a very ambitious and openended way. Here, i want to shift to underscore the way that once celias story, once celias case, enters the legal culture, the frame shifts and becomes much more narrow, more focused, more specialized, more determined by the strictures or the questions of investigators, of judges, of lawyers than by the whole of celias experience, so while there are things we may know about celias case, i want to talk a little bit about how we approach the evidence, if you will, and how legal culture thinks about the evidence. Were going to look at the transcriptions of some of the material from celias trial record. I want to pause at this juncture to give appreciation to a former u of m undergraduate, alison gorsuch. She was a senior here in the program of american culture. She wrote a senior thesis, an excellent senior thesis, on the history of the memory of the celia case. Allison transcribed the trial record, the manuscript material, and it is her transcriptions that we will take a look at over the next few minutes. You all will appreciate alison, i know, since we ourselves wrestled with transcribing the letters of sarah douglas. Allison spent a year, first transcribing and then analyzing these materials, and she continues today to work on the celia case, as a jd phd student at yale. I am really glad we have a chance to look at her early work on the celia case. So here, what we have in the record are sworn testimonies, part of the trial, as part of the inquest, some of the figures, local farmers, who have come to the newsom farm, have talked with the family, have talked to celia, have talked to george. They have provided sworn statements to the inquest body as they determine whether or not celia should be indicted for murder. So, here, william powell, who we know is a local farmer, tells us something of what we know about this, i think, important, but again, hard to figure out figure, and that is george. Right . I do not know about you, but after i read celias case for the first time, george was one of the most intriguing, important, but difficult to situate figures. And you have read some of historian melton mclaurins interpretation of george, but today, we will back up a little bit and come back to the evidence, and i want to ask you how you think we should understand the role of george in the story based upon the testimony that we have. So here, william powell, a local farmer, he is relating his confrontation with george the day after newsom had disappeared. I asked his negro boy george where he thought he was. That is, where newsom was. He stated that he did not believe it was worthwhile to hunt for him anywhere except close around the house. For he had reasons to believe he was not far off. I told him he had better go and show us the old man, if he knew where he was. He stated he believed the last walking yet done was along this path. That is the path between newsoms home and celias cabin. From the statement of george, i believe that he had been destroyed or killed in the grow cabin, in celias cabin. So here, we have powell. George has not given a formal statement at this point in the preceding. We hear georges words filtered through powells ideas, but we have the suggestion that what . That george has somehow if not implicated celia, he has certainly implicated celias cabin, right . As the site of newsoms demise, and as we know, this will lead powell to more closely scrutinize the area around celias cabin but also to more closely scrutinize celia herself. This is what precedes the confrontation with celia. Powell also testifies at the trial, and in the record we have a transcription of his oral testimony. And here, on crossexamination, which is to say as he is being examined by the attorneys for celia, he again speaks of george. I went into the cookhouse where celia was. I told her she knew where her master was, that george had said enough to make me believe she knew where he was. She denied it. So now, george is even more deeply implicated, isnt he . Even more deeply implicated. Powell is now relating again his interpretation, his memory, of his first confrontation with celia in the kitchen. He says, i told her she knew where her master was, that george and set enough to make me believe she knew where he was. Well, not exactly what he told us just prior that george said. George had said something about the vicinity of celias cabin, but you can see how powell and others who were investigating this case begin to discern that between celia and george might be a space in which they can insert some doubt, insert some confusion that might net them more evidence, might even net them a confession. Right . So powell beginning to play celia and george off one another in a sense and embellishing, perhaps, even what george has said to him. But celia at this juncture remains resolute that she had nothing to do with this. Finally, Jefferson Jones, and Jefferson Jones, you will remember, is a neighboring farmer, a large farmer, in fulton. His farm is adjacent to that of the newsom family. Jefferson jones is one of the first people outside of the newsom family itself on the scene and his testimony plays Important Role both in the indictment of celia and ultimately in her conviction. Jones is also a slaveholder in fulton. At trial, he testified, said he was standing in the middle of the room when she struck him. This is celia. I asked her whether she had told anyone that she intended to kill the old man. Jones has a theory that perhaps there is a modest conspiracy afoot. Right . Perhaps celia was premeditated in her plan. I asked her if she had intended to kill anyone, the old man. She said that she never had. I told her that george had run off, and that she might as well tell if he had anything to do with killing the old man. She said that george need not have run off, for he knew nothing about it. I asked her if george had advised her to kill the old man. Another theory. Right . Not only that she had premeditated but, in fact, it was george who told her to kill newsom. She said she never had, said that george had told her that he would have nothing more to do with her if she did not quit the old man. Said that george had been staying with her. So, yes . More details, and i kind of feel like he i feel like he pressured her into, like, have no other option but to kill the master, due to the fact that he would have nothing else to do with her if she did not do anything, because it is the first kid by the master, and the second kid, she was unsure, she was unsure, right . George . Prof. Jones we are probably most unsure about celias third child. She is pregnant at this moment, and there is an open question about whether that child was father by newsom or by george. There is a strong suggestion there is an intimate relationship between george and celia. George stays with her. This notion that george has urged celia that she should avoid newsom. It is possible that there is a more filial kind of relationship, that they are friends like brother and sister, and george is looking out for celias best interests, but it seems to be more likely, right, that he had been staying with her, that they had an intimate relationship of a sort, and there is no question now, when we get to the testimony of jones, that celia herself is reinforcing the theory that certainly george played a role in this story, though she is quite resolute still, even here in her confrontations with jones, that george has not advised her to harm newsom, did not conspire with her to kill newsom, did not have a physical hand either in harming newsom or disposing of the body. These are all the kinds of questions that we have, but it is clear there is a role. He goes on. She said, struck with the right hand on the right side of his head. I asked her if she knew she could not have struck him as she said and asked her if george had not struck the old man from behind. She said that he did not, knew nothing about it, and was not there at the time. Again, jones has pressed this theory that george has a role, and celia remains consistent throughout many opportunities to tell her story, she remains resolute that george did not have a role. So when i look back on this testimony, and i ask myself, why do i have why do i still have questions about george . I think there is no fact more for me and you will tell me if it is true for you there is no fact that is more provocative than that one in which we learn that jones tells celia that george has run off. Did you have a reaction to this notion that george has, apparently, according to jones, run off . How should we, or how might we, interpret george running off at this juncture . And why does that why do you think that shapes my initial impression of george . Yeah . For me, i dont know. It just made it seem like he did have something to do with it or he was guilty of something, and for me, i felt like it was kind of messed up if him and celia are together, why would he point out that mr. Newsom was at her cabin . You know, i dont know, if it was me, i would probably be like, i dont know. Either that or i have no idea, or maybe he was over with the chickens or something. I would not point her out like that. So i just felt very weird about george. I mean prof. Jones what can you point to something . I know what you have got. Is there something in this testimony or other of the testimony that leads you, despite that celia tells you over and over again that she did not why do you think that . He ran away when the master died. That is pointing out that you are guilty. He did not run away when the master was there, but he dies and, oh, george left. Like, she could be Strong Enough, actually, to kill, but i feel like she would need help from a man, because i feel like slaves back then, i guarantee that she feared her master, so i she would not want to do it by herself, so i think george helped her out. Prof. Jones all right, i see a lot of hands. Im going to work my way across the room. Go ahead. Helped put him in the fire or some type of help for the killing. And any man, like any man in slavery, i would think this man is sexually abusing my girl, and, like, hey, you cant do anything about it, but when i have the opportunity, im pretty sure like somebody will react to it, so, obviously, he is dead now, and no one wants to get caught, so i am going to try to help my girl, whatever they were at the time, it read of his yet rid of the body, so in trouble. Prof. Jones good. Siobhan. I am coming this way. Siobhan. Then i will come across this way. Siobhan i think everyone was to wants to believe that a woman is not Strong Enough to have the power to kill him. I think what the court is trying to do, i think they have already established the threat of a black man, of how strong and aggressive they assume he is, but for a black woman to have that power to kill a master would just be a whole other issue. So i think what the court is trying to do is kind of justify the situation, saying it was a strong, aggressive, black man, black slave man, who did it versus a slave woman that did it. I think with george he already threw her under the bus anyway. But at that point when she was in the court, she had a chance to get revenge on him it she wanted to, so i felt the way maybe she felt, if they had said anything about her children, she might say anything to get out of the situation, so at that point, he really was at the mercy of celia. So i feel like for selfpreservation, he did the best thing for himself by running away. Prof. Jones ok. Lets come to molly. Molly it doesnt make sense, and he was covering for her by not saying that she did it. And i guess he was covering for her. It does seem to me like i guess celia was about my age. I do not think i could pull the dead body of an old man. I do not think i am Strong Enough, so i do not see how she could have done it herself, especially if shes pregnant. Prof. Jones yeah . They were so strong, so i dont know. I think you would be capable of pulling a dead body if you had to. But in terms of george, i feel that maybe celia felt like she needed him out of the case. Because she was very attached to her children, and like we said, there were only two adults, two black adults come at this family farm, so if he was convicted, too, there would be no one to watch her children. I cant imagine what she would feel like if they told her that he ran, because where would the children go . And i do not really feel like that was ever fully discussed. Prof. Jones yes . Since they were the only to adult slaves we do not know if they had a relationship, but if they did, he would be the only family she had and i think she wouldve done anything to protect him even if he had been involved, and he had run away. Yes, i think that i mean, like, yes, if he did run away, he like left her, but at the same time, i do not think that implies guilt necessarily because there are only two slaves on this farm. And, like, i do not think that they would have like just the way the system of slavery works, i do not think they would have seen george innocent in any way, so i think like he could have run away to save himself, and that does not necessarily imply guilt. I think that is still really prevalent today in that a lot of people who like dont really have, like, the means to fairly represent themselves in court, like, tend to do things, because they feel they have no other option. It makes them look way worse, but it does not necessarily mean they are guilty. And also, like you could see how a lot of times, when they are investigated, they kind of say things that are not necessarily true to get responses they want, so this could have been something that Jefferson Jones was like saying, to be like, look, george ran away. It is all on you. Tell us everything you know, because you are the only one left, and we are going to pin it on you. It could be just a device to get a confession out of her. Prof. Jones good. A couple more . Everyone has different ideas, but i just question that she it took her, like, six hours to get everything clean. And to do everything, like, where was george in that time . Where could he possibly have been . Do not see anything that have happened . So for him to have run away, even if he had something to do with that, he could have know that she did it, so it made him afraid, so he left. He did not want to have anything to do with it. Prof. Jones good. Lindsay, one more . Lindsay talking about evidence, i am curious why would there have been a fire in her cabin in june . I dont know, im just kind of like prof. Jones the fire in the cabin . Cooking, first and foremost. Not unusual for them to have a fire, although the quantity of ashes turns out to be a little suspicious. Im going to move on. But this is good. Im glad to know that you all by reading this share some of my initial sort of unsettledness about the role of george. And lets remember that all we have in terms of evidence are the testimonies of those neighboring farmers, right, who narrate for us what they say george said, what they say celia said. And so, it would be a mistake, i think, right, to rest too much confidence in this testimony. We have this sense, even from this little testimony, the ways in which these investigators are twisting, embellishing, emphasizing some facts in an effort to extract confessions, here in an effort to secure a conviction. So i think as readers come right, as researchers, as historians, we read this with caution, right . Just because jones tells us that george had run off look at what he said. I told her that george had run off. He doesnt say, george had run off. I told her that george had run off. And we are not surprised, right, that in the telling of that, true or false, is an effort to break celia down, right, and to encourage her to implicate george, just for the reasons you suggest, right . It could be read as george having abandoned celia in this extraordinary moment. So how do we deal with this as historians . That is to say, it is powerful testimony. It is provocative testimony. It certainly shapes our ideas, our perceptions, our understanding of what transpires in this case and the role that george played, and as we have done in other examples, we have to think critically, and one way to do that is to look for new evidence, to look for alternative evidence that might help us fill in some of the blanks, right . Piece together the puzzle of george. So you all know that last weekend last it was not even last weekend, it was last wednesday. I spent the day with the celia project working group working on the history of the celia case, and we visited fulton, missouri. And one of the places we visited was the kingdom of callaway historical society, where they do not have the trial record. We already had the trial record from the court archives, but they had the estate records of robert newsom. Why was this interesting . Well, after newsom dies, and we all know he was killed in june of 1855, but it would be necessary for his heirs and the legal representatives of his estate to take an inventory to accumulate all his assets and all of his debts and to distribute his estate to his various heirs, his children, his grandchildren, and the like. And the records of that legal proceeding, which is in a sense a companion outside of the prosecution of celia for murder, those Court Records have also survived. The originals are there in the kingdom of callaway inventory. Estate records. And while i know you cannot see it here, toward the bottom is the inventory of the slaves in the household, and there is one negro man, george, valued at 900. So george had not disappeared at all. And when it comes time to inventory this state, there is george, and if we continue through the record, what we find is that george, himself, would be sold. He was sold to a slaveholder in nearby celine county for more than his value, for 1190. He had not, in fact, disappeared at all. Right . So here, for me, this changes a lot how i read the testimony that comes from the local farmers. They might have said george ran off, but it appears george had not disappeared at all, and george is ultimately as caught up in his own way in the aftermath of newsoms killing as is celia. Right . He is not charged or convicted of newsoms murder, but he is subject to what we have come to understand is another of slaverys most harsh practices. He is sold away. Right . He is sold away from the community he knows, from the household that he knows, from the people whom he knew best. George is now sold away, and i think it changes, right . It changes how we read that testimony, and it helps us appreciate how fraught that evidence of the trial record is. People have layers of stories up on stories. Unraveling the mystery of the celia case requires us to reach beyond the trial record and read it alongside these other materials as a way of, perhaps, to me, suggesting about the ways in which celia and george in their own ways were caught in the vice of this household, of newsoms abuses, and this household they are both caught up in the story in harsh ways. I will point out, and i will come back to this, and in the inventory, below george, there are the other two slaves in this household, and they are children. Celias children. A girl named jane, who is three years old, and a girl named viny, three years old, and jane, oneyearold, both valued at 150 each. And i can tell you that when george is sold, when we account the record of georges sale alongside is the sale of celias daughters out of the newsom household as well. So new evidence allows us to add new layers and think with important nuance about this case
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