The Giant of Mississippi — The 7 Foot 8 Enslaved Man Who Made Masters Flee in Fear – Part 2

Word spread through the plantation before Bel Fontaine had even finished signing the papers. The enslaved community had networks of information that moved faster than any official announcement. By afternoon, Josiah knew he was being sold. By evening, he knew the date. 12 days had become 11. There was a man who could have stopped everything before it began.

 And his silence deserves its own terrible accounting. Father Matthew Robisho had served as the parish priest for 17 years, ministering to the white families who owned the sugar plantations and occasionally when schedules permitted, offering abbreviated services to the enslaved populations. He was 62 years old, educated at a seminary in Mobile, and generally regarded as a kind man who kept his sermons short and his judgments private.

He’d baptized Etienne Belf Fontaine as an infant, presided over Claude Belffontain’s marriage, and said last rights over the master’s father when yellow fever took him in 1821. Father Robisho visited Bel Fontaine Plantation every other Sunday to hold mass in the main houses parlor. On December 9th, 1827, he arrived for his usual visit and was invited to stay for dinner.

 During the meal, Claude Bel Fontaine mentioned the sale of Josiah to Samuel Hendris, describing it as a fortunate business opportunity that would benefit everyone involved. The museum in Philadelphia is quite reputable, Bel Fontaine said, carving slices from a roasted duck that had been prepared by an enslaved woman named Hannah.

Josiah will be treated well. Better than fieldwork, certainly. Father Robisho set down his fork. You’re selling him to be put on display like an animal. Like a natural wonder. There’s a difference, is there? The temperature in the room dropped several degrees. Belffontaine’s wife, Marie, looked between the two men with the practiced anxiety of someone who’d spent years preventing social disasters.

Etienne, still nursing a grudge about the Ruth incident, watched with barely concealed interest. Father, Bel Fontaine said carefully, I respect your spiritual guidance, but surely you understand that managing a plantation requires practical decisions. Josiah is my property, legally purchased and registered. What I choose to do with him is my right.

Legal rights and moral rights are not always the same thing. Are you suggesting I’ve acted immorally? Father Robisho could have said yes. He could have cited scripture, invoked the dignity of man created in God’s image, refused to offer mass at Bel Fontaine again until the sale was cancelled. He could have made it a scandal, could have preached about it to the parish’s wealthiest families, could have created social pressure that might have changed Claude Belontaine’s calculations.

Instead, he looked at his plate, at the roasted duck and the imported wine and the crystal that caught the candle light, and he made a choice that men like him had been making for centuries. I’m suggesting, Father Robisho said quietly, that you consider whether the monetary gain is worth the spiritual cost, but the decision is yours, of course.

 Of course, Bel Fontaine said, and the conversation moved on. Father Robisho finished his meal. He drank the wine. He thanked Marie for her hospitality. He left with a promise to return in two weeks for his next visit. And he never spoke to Josiah. Never asked the man what he wanted. Never considered that silence was its own form of violence.

What would you do if you had the power to stop something monstrous and chose comfort instead? The question isn’t hypothetical. People make that choice every day in small ways and large. Trading justice for convenience, trading others suffering for their own peace. Father Robisho would live another 14 years.

 He would perform hundreds more baptisms and funerals and marriages. He would be remembered fondly by the families he served. and he would never speak of Josiah again, never acknowledged the choice he’d made over roasted duck and imported wine. Some sins are committed through action, others through a silence so complete it becomes complicity.

December in Louisiana didn’t bring snow or the crisp cold of northern winters. Instead, it brought gray skies and a dampness that seeped into everything. clothing, timber, skin, hope. The cane fields stood harvested and stubbled, looking like the scalp of someone who’d been shorn bald. The grinding season was winding down, and the exhausted enslaved population moved through their final weeks of 18-hour days with the mechanical efficiency of people who’d learned to separate their bodies from their minds.

Josiah continued working as if nothing had changed. He hauled the cane carts. He lifted the loads that would have required machinery elsewhere. He slept curled in his shed while the December damp worked its way into his joints. But beneath the performance of normaly, he was moving with purpose. The first thing he did was accelerate his gathering.

Every night after dark, he made trips into the swamp, following roots he’d memorized during daylight hours. He added to his cash more dried fish, more cornmeal, a flint striker he’d found near the cooper, a tattered blanket someone had thrown away. He tested his rope hanging from cypress branches to ensure it would hold not just his weight, but the weight of multiple people crossing water simultaneously.

The second thing he did was begin recruiting in earnest. He couldn’t tell people about the sale news that explosive would spread beyond control, but he could speak in hypotheticals, in possibilities, in the language of coded suggestion that enslaved communities had developed for survival. to Thomas at the sugar mill.

 If something happened to the machinery, how long before it could be repaired? Thomas, understanding without needing elaboration. If someone broke the drive chain and scattered the parts, maybe three days, maybe five, if they really knew what they were doing. To Sarah in the kitchen. If someone needed to get into the storage rooms at night, which doors could be opened without keys? Sarah, her hands never stopping their work.

 The root seller has a window with a broken latch. The smokehouse door doesn’t close all the way if you lift while you pull to a fieldand named Marcus. How many people would follow if someone led them into the swamp? Marcus, his voice barely above a whisper. Depends on who was leading. Josiah counted. Not everyone would come. Some people were too old, too sick, too broken by years of bondage to believe escape was possible.

 Some had children too young to make the journey. Some simply couldn’t overcome the fear that had been beaten into them bone deep since childhood. But he estimated that perhaps 25 people might be willing to risk everything for a chance at freedom. Ruth helped by talking to the women who worked in the weaving house, the kitchen, the main house.

 She asked careful questions, listened to careful answers, and slowly assembled a mental map of who could be trusted and who might turn informant to curry favor with the overseers. On December 14th, 6 days before the scheduled sale, Josiah made his decision. They would go on the night of December 19th. The moon would be new, providing maximum darkness.

The grinding season would be officially finished, meaning the sugar mill would be shut down and less tightly guarded. Most importantly, it would be the night before Hrix arrived to claim his purchase, giving them maximum time to put distance between themselves and pursuit. He told Thomas first, then Sarah, then Marcus.

Each of them told two others, and those two told more until 23 people knew that something was happening on the 19th, though most didn’t know exactly what. The uncertainty was intentional. What people didn’t know, they couldn’t reveal under interrogation. On December 17th, Virgil Cass noticed something was off.

 The overseer couldn’t have identified exactly what had changed, but he’d spent enough years managing enslaved populations to develop an instinct for trouble. People were too quiet, too focused on their work, avoiding eye contact even more than usual. The normal background noise of conversation and complaint had diminished to near silence.

Cass mentioned it to Bel Fontaine that evening. Something’s brewing. Can’t say what, but I can feel it. Bel Fontaine, distracted by preparations for a dinner party he was hosting the following week, waved the concern away. It’s December. Everyone’s tired. Give them Christmas off this year. That’ll settle things.

 If you say so, Cass said, but he increased patrols around the quarters that night, and he made sure his pistol was loaded. Two days remained. On the afternoon of December 18th, Josiah was sent to repair a section of fencing near the northern edge of the plantation property. The task required him to haul heavy cypress posts nearly a quarter mile from the timber yard to the fence line.

 Work that would have taken three men most of a day. Josiah did it in 4 hours, working with methodical efficiency while the winter sun traced its shallow arc across the gray sky. What the overseer who assigned the task didn’t know was that the fence line ran within 300 yards of the swamp access point Josiah had been preparing for months.

While loading the posts onto his cart, Josiah had also loaded a canvas sack containing the last of his gathered supplies. dried fish, a wet stone, strips of cloth that could be used as bandages, and a small tin of black powder he’d stolen from the main house two weeks earlier when Sarah had left the supply room briefly unlocked.

He cashed the sack in the hollow Cyprus alongside the rope and food he’d already hidden. Then he returned to the plantation, pulled his cart back to the timber yard, and went about his evening duties as if nothing unusual had happened. That night, he met with the core group, who would lead different sections of the escape.

 Thomas would disable the sugar mill to create confusion and delay pursuit. Sarah would gather anyone sheltering in the main house quarters and lead them to the first rendevous point. Marcus would be responsible for releasing the plantation’s horses from their paddock and driving them south away from the actual escape route to send pursuers in the wrong direction.

Ruth would stay with Josiah, helping coordinate the movement of people who needed assistance, the elderly, the injured, those whose fear made them hesitate. They met in the Cooper’s shed after midnight. Seven people hunched in darkness that smelled of wood shavings and dried oak. Josiah spoke in a whisper that somehow carried perfect authority.

Tomorrow night, after the bell rings for sleep, you wait 1 hour, then you move. Sarah takes her group north through the main yard. Marcus goes to the paddic. Thomas goes to the mill. Everyone else waits at the big oak by the south field. When you hear the mill machinery break, you start moving toward the swamp.

Follow the white rags I tied to trees this afternoon. You’ll be able to see them even in the dark if you know to look. Once you reach the cypress grove, you wait. I’ll come last with Ruth and anyone who’s slow. We cross the first channel together. Then we split into three groups to make tracking harder. Questions? What if they catch us before we reach the swamp? Someone asked. They won’t.

The confusion at the mill will pull attention there. By the time they realize what’s happening, we’ll be deep enough into the swamp that they won’t follow in the dark. What if they do follow? Josiah was quiet for a long moment. Then I’ll handle it. The certainty in those three words needed no elaboration. Everyone in that shed knew what Josiah could do with his hands.

 Knew the strength that allowed him to pull loads that should have been impossible. The implication was clear. Anyone who followed them into the swamp would not be returning. They dispersed separately, filtering back to their cabins at intervals to avoid suspicion. Josiah walked to his shed and lay down on the rough boards that served as his bed. He didn’t sleep.

Instead, he stared at the darkness above him and thought about the ways this could fail, the ways people could die, the weight of responsibility that came with leading others toward freedom or death. 23 people, 23 lives depending on decisions he’d make in the next 24 hours. At dawn on December 19th, Josiah rose and went to work as usual.

 He hauled cane residue from the mill to the compost heaps. He repaired a broken cart axle. He moved through the day with the same steady competence he always showed, drawing no attention, creating no suspicion. But inside his chest, his heart was counting down the hours. That evening, Claude Bel Fontaine hosted a small dinner for three neighboring plantation owners and their wives.

The purpose was partly social. The sugar season’s end was traditionally celebrated with gatherings among the parish’s wealthier families and partly practical. Bel Fontaine wanted witnesses to his good fortune. People who would see Hrix arrive tomorrow and take possession of the Louisiana giant.

 People who would spread the story and cement Bel Fontaine’s reputation as a man who turned a curiosity into a windfall. The meal was served by Hannah and two other enslaved women who’d been trained to move silently through the dining room, refilling glasses and clearing plates while rendering themselves invisible to the white people whose conversation flowed around them like water around stones.

The main course was venison shot on Bel Fontaine’s property served with rice pilaf and collared greens cooked with pork fat. The wine was French, the silverware was imported, and the conversation was the usual mixture of politics, gossip, and complaints about labor costs. “It’s a shame you’re selling the giant,” one of the guests said.

 “A man named Dearray, who owned a plantation 5 miles up river. I’d been hoping to borrow him for some levy work next spring.” Business is business, Bel Fontaine replied, cutting into his venison with satisfaction. And Hrix made an offer I couldn’t refuse. Still, it seems wasteful. A man that strong could be breeding stock.

 Think of the laborers you could produce. I considered it, but the museum money is guaranteed. Breeding is speculation. The women at the table shifted uncomfortably, steering the conversation towards safer topics. The upcoming social season in New Orleans, plans for Marty GR, the quality of this year’s sugar crop. The enslaved women serving the meal heard every word, filed every comment away, and said nothing.

Hannah refilling wine glasses with hands that had learned not to shake no matter what was said in her presence, thought about Josiah sleeping in his shed. She thought about the whispers that had moved through the quarters all day, the sense that something was building like a storm just beyond the horizon. She’d been invited to join the escape, but had declined.

She had an elderly mother in one of the cabins and a son who was only 3 years old. Running meant leaving them or risking their deaths in the swamp. So she’d chosen to stay to serve wine to men discussing human breeding while her heart broke quietly in her chest. But she also made a choice that night, a small act of rebellion that would matter more than she could know.

At 11:00, when the dinner guests had finally departed and the Bell Fontaine family had retired upstairs, Hannah was cleaning the dining room when she noticed that Claude Bel Fontaine had left his pipe and tobacco pouch on the sideboard. She picked them up, intending to deliver them to his bedroom, as she’d been trained to do.

 But as she climbed the stairs, she passed the door to his study and noticed it was slightly a jar, lamplight spilling through the gap. She shouldn’t have looked. Looking was dangerous, but she looked anyway. Inside the study, spread across Bel Fontaine’s desk were papers related to the sale of Josiah, the contract with Hrix, a letter from the Philadelphia Museum describing the exhibition plans, and most damning, a map showing the route Hrix planned to take from Bel Fontaine to the Riverport, where a steamboat would be waiting to carry Josiah north.

Hannah stared at those papers for perhaps 10 seconds. Then she memorized what she could, left the pipe and tobacco outside Belf Fontaine’s bedroom door, and descended the stairs to finish her work. An hour later, she was back in her own cabin, whispering what she’d seen to her cabin mate. A woman named Esther, who was one of the 23 planning to escape.

They’re taking him by river. The boat dock is 3 miles south. If something goes wrong tomorrow, if they catch people heading for the swamp, they might send riders to the dock to cut off escape. Esther absorbed this information silently. Then I’ll tell the others. Knowledge as weapon. Meanwhile, in his shed, Josiah lay awake and listened to the plantation settle into night.

 dogs barking in the distance, the creek of settling timbers, the wind moving through the bare cane fields with a sound like whispered warnings. In six hours, he would either be leading 23 people to freedom, or he would be leading them to their deaths. He thought about Ruth, asleep in her cabin with her back still healing from Cass’s whip.

 He thought about Thomas, who’d lost his fingers to machinery and would lose his life if they were caught. He thought about all the people who’d placed their trust in him simply because he was tall, strong, and willing to try. The weight of it should have been crushing. Instead, it felt clarifying. This was the moment his entire life had been building toward.

 Everything else, the hauling, the exhibiting, the sleeping, curled like a child, had been preparation for this. At 4 in the morning, with 2 hours until dawn, Josiah rose from his bed. He stretched to his full height, his head nearly touching the shed’s low ceiling. He rolled his shoulders, tested his muscles, confirmed that his body was ready for what was coming.