Letters from a Planter's Daughter: Understanding Freedom and ...

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Letters from a Planter’s Daughter
a shrewd, determined girl standing in the doorway of Wesley’s rented little
house, babies squalling in the background, Susanna smiling or scowling
at her teacher until the man acquiesced. It was the same fierceness with
which she wrote Cabaniss in the next year, saying i am capable of taking
cair of that much money my self for i am large enough to not let any body
cheat me out of it. 80 Like as not, she would cheat them right back.
Despite all the hardships of the early 1860s, Susanna Townsend remained
committed to continuing her education—a goal integral to her
hopes for future independence and self-sufficiency. 81 Her tone, at times,
is desperate: Mr Cabaniss i am still in hopes that i will get to go to school
next month by you aiding assistance … if i dont get my learning now while
i am young when i get old it will be to late … mr cabaniss i dont want
to grow up ignorant without and education or a trade. 82 Susanna clearly
believed that education was the key to building an independent future for
herself, away from an unbearable home life with Wesley, who quarrels
with me like i was a dog. 83 Wesley’s rheumatism periodically kept him
from working, and Adelaide was no longer teaching—making Susanna,
at times, the sole income in a household of five. And she, too, was sick;
in 1866 Susanna began to complain of scrofula—a form of tuberculosis—
which plagued her until her death. 84 Susanna’s education did not rank high
on the list of immediate priorities, but the young woman, hardly more than
a girl, was tenacious. 85
For Susanna, the desire to be educated ran deeper than a belief that
knowledge and literacy could improve her living circumstances—although
this certainly was a factor. When Susanna wrote that she did not wish to
grow up ignorant, she hinted at both desire and fear. She did not write that
she feared to grow up poor; her anxiety came from a vision of a future self
she could not bear to imagine. Susanna had tied the pursuit of knowledge
80 Susanna Townsend to S.D. Cabaniss, letter dated 1 January 1866.
81 Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom
in South Carolina. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 152.
82 Susanna Townsend to S.D. Cabaniss, letter dated 8 August 1866.
83 Susanna Townsend to S.D. Cabaniss, letter dated 28 March 1866.
84 Susanna Townsend to S.D. Cabaniss, letter dated 1 January 1866.
85 It would be anachronistic to place Susanna within either the political movement of Booker
T. Washington or his ideology of improving the black community through assimilation of
white norms, or W.E.B. DuBois’s ideas of civil rights. However, Susanna’s desire for selfimprovement
as well as resistance to discrimination hints at the developing black political
ideologies of the time, as well as their absorption by ordinary individuals such as Susanna
and her half-siblings. Thomas Townsend, in particular, represents a Washington-esque
strain of thought.