Jubilee

Vyry walks home with her children, Grimes, and his men. She knows that she will be whipped. She wonders if Marse John will stop her from being beaten. Then, she remembers that he’s never home when these things happen, and he’s already been gone for three days. Grimes takes Jim and Minna from Vyry’s arms and takes her “to the whipping post” (199). The guards tie her wrists and feet together. She is stripped “naked to the waist” (201). Grimes assigns one of the guards to beat her. At the first strike, the “raw-hide coach-whip” wraps around her body and “[cuts] neatly into her breast and across her back all at the same time” (201). It feels like a razor cutting her twice on two sides. Vyry passes out. Someone cuts her down from the post. She notices that her “flesh [looks] black” (202). The hot, prickly feeling on her back makes her realize that someone threw salt onto her back.

The house servants take her into her cabin where Caline and May Liza “[pour] warm oil on her back and [wash] it free of salt” (202). Vyry is still out of her senses and feverish. She barely recognizes her children when they come to see her. In one instance, she thought that she saw Marse John standing over her, but this seemed like a dream. After three days, she overcomes her fever but is “too weak to speak above a whisper” (202). When she checks her body for damage, she notices that “one of the lashes had left a loose flap of flesh over her breast like a tuck in a dress” (202). Her skin healed, showing that strange mark.

John Morris Dutton is now 57 and has been serving in the Georgia House of Representatives for 15 years. He is fervent in his belief that Georgia should assert its state’s right to maintain slavery. He is also happy that his son, Johnny, is succeeding at West Point and that Lillian is happily married and has given him two grandchildren, Robert, whom they call Bob, and little Susan. She and her husband, Kevin, live in the state’s capital, Milledgeville, permitting Marse John to see them often.

One day, he rides home from Montgomery, Alabama. This was his third visit out of Georgia in six months. On January 19, 1861, all Southern states, except for Maryland and Kentucky, formed the Confederate States of America. Marse John looks at the sky. Rain is steadily falling and turning to sleet. Suddenly, his horses stumble in the road. He looks out of his carriage and sees them rearing. The carriage falls to its side and his coachman, Sam, is thrown out of his seat. Marse John falls out of the carriage and is briefly knocked out. When he becomes conscious again, he feels a sharp pain in his right leg, which is twisted underneath him. He calls out to Sam, who is “lying still on the icy road” (208), but Sam doesn’t answer.

The horses make their way back to the plantation on their own, alerting Missy Salina that something is wrong. She sends Jim, the houseboy, and Grimes to get Old Doc. She also orders for another wagon and carriage to rescue her husband. The search party finds Sam dead, with a broken neck, but Marse John is still conscious and with his leg “broken in two places” (209). They rest him in his study. Vyry takes the supper that she’s kept warm to Marse John. He stares at her while she serves him. He points to a painting of his grandfather, bracketed by paintings of his parents. He says that, each time he looks at the paintings, he thinks of “the honor of [the Dutton] house” (210). Vyry thinks that Marse John is probably a little drunk from all the brandy he’s consumed to ease his pain. She then hears Missy Salina coming down the hall, alerting her to return to the kitchen.

The United States elect Abraham Lincoln president on March 4, 1861, on the same day that the secessionists unfurl the Confederate flag on the steps of the Capitol of the Confederacy in Montgomery, Alabama. Marse John complains about having to be idle. Worse, his pain isn’t subsiding. Miss Lillian arrives with Bob and Susan and tries to get her father to eat. Instead, he drinks more alcohol, which worsens his temper. His family leaves him in the care of the slaves. When Old Doc tells Marse John that he’ll likely need to have his leg amputated, the latter refuses. When seven fellow state representatives come to visit, they, too, fail to lift his spirits. Still, John thinks of politics, particularly his hatred for Lincoln. He thinks of how “the northern radicals” couldn’t possibly understand “his nigra slaves the way he did” (214). The Bible and the Constitution defend the South’s right to slavery. He’s also certain that the Confederacy could easily beat the North in a war. As the days go by, Marse John’s condition worsens, and he becomes too ill to pay attention when Missy Salina reads him the newspapers.