 The Road to Frogmore
has several other couples whose lives and relationships are interesting and sometimes puzzling. Take, for instance Austa and Mansfield
French, leaders of the original band of “Gideonites,” missionaries, preachers,
and teachers who went to South Carolina in March 1862 to work with the
newly-liberated slaves. Mansfield was an evangelical Methodist minister whose
ministry was often directed at revival preaching and with founding and
financing educational institutions. In
Ohio he worked with Ohio Wesleyan University annd Xenia Female College. He also helped establish Wilberforce
University, the oldest African-American private university. During his time in South Carolina, his ministerial efforts
extended to improving the living condiions of former slaves and encouraging the
creation of African-American military regiments. At one point he was accused of embezzlement
and brought back to Washington DC to stand trial. He was eventually exonerated of all charges,
on the grounds that he was simply too busy “doing good,” to keep track of the
money he spent doing so.  His wife Austa was a much more formidable lady than her
picture would suggest. She was the
mother of seven children and her husband’s ever-helpful right hand. Yet she found time to pursue a career as an
opera singer and as a writer. In South
Carolina she kept busy writing a book that detailed every awful aspect of
slavery. She was known for stopping black
women on the street, addressing them as “Oh, My Sister!” and encouraging them
to tell her how terribly they had been treated. If she saw a black woman with a
light-skinned child, her first greeting was, “He raped you, didn’t he? Tell me
all about it!” The resulting book, Slavery in South Carolina and the Ex-Slaves,
is available on the internet. For its
time, it was almost considered to be pornographic in its sexual detail. |
