The Known World

Chapter 2 focuses on John Skiffington and how he became sheriff of Manchester, Virginia. John used to live in North Carolina on a plantation where his father was the overseer. But when John’s mother died, his father had a dream: “God told him he did not want him and his son having dominion over slaves, and two days later the man and his son left North Carolina, carrying the dead woman in a pine box in a wagon the cousin bestowed on them” (30). They move to Virginia, where John eventually gets a job as the sheriff’s deputy. The sheriff at the time is Gilly Patterson. John meets Patterson’s niece, Winifred Patterson, who is visiting from Philadelphia, and they eventually get married. 

At John and Winifred’s wedding, John’s cousin from North Carolina, Counsel Skiffington, and his wife, Belle, give John and Winifred a nine-year-old slave girl as a wedding present. As they present their “gift,” there are different reactions from the wedding guests. “All the people from Philadelphia were quiet, along with John Skiffington and his father, and the people from Virginia, especially those who knew the cost of good slave flesh, smiled” (31-32). In the morning, Winifred and John discuss what to do about the slave girl, Minerva. They do not want to own a slave, but they see no other option. They fear selling Minerva could put her life in greater danger, depending on what kind of person the new owner is. When John leaves for work, Winifred weeps, and Minerva comes to her room and comforts her. 

Manchester landowners, led by William Robbins, begin to complain to Sheriff Patterson about slaves who have been escaping, accusing the sheriff of doing little to deal with the problem. The sheriff promises them that he and John can control the situation. “My job is to protect everybody, to make sure everybody can sleep right every night in a peaceful way, and if that ain’t happenin, then I’ll make it happen” (39). But by 1843, the number of escaping slaves has increased. The slave Rita is among them. Rita cared for Henry as a second mother while Henry was still enslaved and his parents were free. She begs for help from Augustus and Mildred, who reluctantly help. They know how dangerous it is to help a slave escape, and they put their freedom and lives in danger to help her. They box her up in a crate with the walking sticks that Augustus is shipping to New York, and 41 hours later, she is in New York.

Following Rita’s disappearance from William’s plantation, the landowners have little confidence in Sheriff Patterson’s ability to handle the runaway slave situation, and he resigns. John becomes sheriff. He immediately sets up 12 slave patrollers to reassure the slaveowners. The slave patrollers are poor whites except for one, who is Cherokee. Because of his job as sheriff, John realizes he must uphold the institution of slavery, but he does not feel that he has compromised his values because “even God himself had sanctioned [the institution of slavery] throughout the Bible” (43).  

The story returns to the present with the consequences of Henry’s death. Loretta, one of Henry’s house slaves, tells Moses, the overseer, that Henry has died. As word spreads to the rest of the slaves, there is fear and anxiety over what will happen to the slaves in the wake of Henry’s death. When the master od a nearby plantation died, the master’s wife, who had promised the slaves that nothing would change, ended up selling all of them; none of the slaves, even family members, were able to stay together. Loretta tells Moses to make sure there is no trouble with the slaves before Henry’s funeral. They worry about the slave Stamford, who might cause trouble. He was once told that he would “die a horrible death in slavery” if he didn’t have a young woman with him (57). Stamford is determined to pursue a young woman named Gloria, even though she no longer wants to be with him. 

Moses gathers all the slaves, and Caldonia comes out to speak to them. She tells the slaves not to worry because everything will stay as it was when Henry was alive. When Henry’s father, Augustus, hears Caldonia’s words, he realizes she will not free the slaves as he had hoped she might. 

William Robbins arrives with his black son, Louis, and his black daughter, Dora, to pay his respects. As he enters the house, he suffers a seizure and becomes confused, but then he remembers why he is at Henry’s house: because “a man he had cared about was dead. Henry, good Henry, was dead” (65). Calvin, Caldonia’s twin brother, and Maude, Caldonia’s mother, also arrive. Calvin believes that his mother poisoned his father because the father had considered freeing their slaves and she wanted to prevent him from doing so. Maude urges Caldonia to preserve her “legacy,” meaning her slaves and her land (74). Calvin, Louis, Augustus, Moses, Elias, and Stamford all help to dig Henry’s grave in the cemetery, which is next to the slave cemetery. Few are buried in the slave cemetery since Henry did not own slaves for very long. One of those buried there was 12-year-old Luke, “a gangly boy of a sweet nature, dead of hard work on a farm to which he had been rented for $2 a week” (71).

The second half of the chapter focuses on Elias. When Elias first arrived at Henry’s plantation in 1847, he immediately wanted to escape. He finally did escape but, because of a previous illness, he was unable to get far. William Robbins was able to capture him, bringing him back to Henry. Henry is angry, repeatedly asking Elias, “What I’m gonna do with you? What in the hell I’m gonna do with you? If you want a hard life, I will oblige” (84). Henry has Elias chained in the barn, where Luke, the slave boy mentioned earlier, brings him water and food. Henry hires Oden Peoples to cut off part of Elias’s ear in punishment. 

Elias gradually takes an interest in Celeste, a crippled woman who saw him staring at her once. She becomes resentful, assuming Elias was staring at her in mockery, and begins to treat him with scorn. He finally confronts her about her harsh treatment of him: “Why you all the time treatin me bad when all I wanna do is treat you good?” (99). His admission shocks her, and she soon becomes receptive when he brings her a gift he made, a poorly carved comb, which causes her to cry. Elias loses his desire to escape the plantation and instead asks Henry for permission to marry Celeste. Henry realizes “what was happening was better than chains. He had them together, bound one strong man to a woman with a twisted leg, and there was not a chain in sight. He could not wait to tell William Robbins” (102). After Elias and Celeste marry, they bring Luke to live with them. However, Luke dies when he is rented out to another field during harvest and worked to death.