Table Of ContentCelia, A Slave
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CELIA
A SLAVE
MELTON A. McLATJRIN
The University of Georgia Press Athens and London
To Sandra
in admiration of her
courage and conviction
© 1991 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
All rights reserved
Designed by Barbara Henry
Set in 10 on 12 Caledonia by Tseng Information Systems with hand-set
display provided by Browne & Co., Stationers
Printed digitally in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LCCN Permalink: http://lccn.loc.gov/90023045
McLaurin, Melton Alonza.
Celia, a slave / Melton A. McLaurin.
xi, 148 p. ; 24 cm.
isbn 0-8203-1352-1 (alk. paper)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 137–143) and index.
1. Celia, d. 1855—Trials, litigation, etc. 2. Trials (Murder)—Missouri—
Callaway County. 3. Slavery—Southern States. 4. Southern States—
Moral conditions. I. Title.
kf223.c43m34 1991
345.73'02523
347.3052523 20 90-23045
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Jacket design and illustration by
Barbara Henry, Bowne & Co., Stationers,
South Street Seaport Museum, New York
ISBN for this electronic edition: 978-0-8203-4159-0
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Chapter One 1
BEGINNINGS
Chapter Two 14
THE CRIME
Chapter Three 33
INQUISITION
Chapter Four 53
BACKDROP
Chapter Five 68
THE TRIAL
Chapter Six 88
THE VERDICT
Chapter Seven 104
FINAL DISPOSITION
Chapter Eight 116
CONCLUSIONS
Notes 123
Bibliography 137
Index 145
v
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Acknowledgments
As an academic discipline, history possesses an inherent ten-
sion, one that every historian confronts. On the one hand,
history is the study of the recorded past, of data, of facts.
At times the record is dry and dull, at others, as with the
case examined in this work, the record holds the power to
captivate. History is also the search for the meaning of the
recorded past, an interpretation of data, an exploration of
the significance of facts. It is the effort to interpret, to ex-
plain, that distinguishes the historian from the storyteller.
Yet historians ignore their role as storytellers to their peril,
if they wish to address an audience beyond the academy, to
enter into a meaningful dialogue with the larger society.
This work represents an attempt to resolve that tension,
or at least to bring it to bear upon the effort to know and
to understand a portion of the American past. Several col-
leagues graciously offered advice about how to do this most
effectively. Comments from Robert Hall of Northeastern
University; Jacqueline Goggin of Clark University; Peter
Stead of Swansea College, University of Wales; Gary Kremer
of the Missouri State Archives; and Kathleen Berkeley of the
University of North Carolina at Wilmington were especially
helpful. So, too, were the comments of readers for the Uni-
versity of Georgia Press. For the advice received, and for the
time and energy devoted to reading the work in manuscript,
I am truly grateful.
VII
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Introduction
HE lives of public figures, those whom society comes
I
to regard as great men and women, are often used
by historians and biographers to exemplify or define
an issue or era from the past. In the mid-nineteenth
century, for example, Elizabeth Cady Stanton came
to represent the women's movement; Frederick Douglass
and William Lloyd Garrison the abolitionists; Dorothea Dix
reform in the treatment of the criminal and the insane;
Edmund Ruffin and William Loundes Yancey a fierce south-
ern nationalism based upon the defense and perpetuation
of the institution of slavery. Yet the lives of lesser figures,
men and women who lived and died in virtual anonymity,
often better illustrate certain aspects of the major issues of
a particular period than do the lives of those who, through
significant achievement, the appeal of the orator, or the skill
of the polemicist, achieve national prominence.
Such is the case with the life of Celia, a slave who lived
and died in Callaway County, Missouri. On October 9, 1855,
Celia entered the circuit court of Callaway County, where
she stood accused of murder. Approximately nineteen years
of age and already the mother of two children, the accused
was defended by a team of three lawyers. The most promi-
nent of her defense attorneys was a popular figure in the
county seat of Fulton, a man who had been three times
elected to serve his constituents in the United States Con-
gress. Celia's trial, its causes and consequences, confront us
with the hard daily realities of slavery rather than with the
abstract theories about the workings of that institution so
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