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May 19th, 1832

Dear Diary,

I really must write and thank Mama properly for this wonderful journal. I know she doesn't want me to go, but the opportunity is too marvelous to pass up. A chance to see my father, even if he is as sick as Mr. Thornton warns, after all these years of hearing Mama's stories. How could I refuse?

It is different for Mama. I can understand how she might be afraid to return to the home where she spent her early life in servitude, but I've never been a ****. All my life I have been as free as the next man or woman, my tan complexion explained away by my Italian family name, and my deportment and style as sound as any family of note. In spite of Mama's fears, I'm not going to be slapped in chains like some fugitive **** who has run away from their masters. Mr. Thornton tells me that there are almost forty slaves in all on my father's plantation, but that I will most likely only interact with a handful of house slaves.

It is just as well as I have such conflicted feelings about my own mixed blood. I recognize of course, the great evil that is the enslavement of one man by another, but when one of the city's dark-skinned porters or coalboys eyes me, I feel an undeniable discomfort - and those negros are freemen, not rough field slaves.

Since arriving here in the Carolinas, I've seen so many black faces that at times I feel outnumbered. The schooner that took passengers to Charleston made good time with the spring winds and docked in a harbor not far from the near empty **** pens. Mr. Thornton explained that a generation ago, as many as a thousand slaves arrived each day in the busy port, but with the ban of imported Africans the pens were populated by only a small fraction of that number.

By that afternoon, we had arrived by hired coach at my estranged father's estate; we were sore, hungry and very glad to get here. The team of four moved well enough, and the cushions were as good as any I was used to at home, but the roads were atrocious - little more than heavily rutted tracks and the coach jolted and rocked with each bump. Roads like this would never be tolerated in the North, and I wonder in what other ways this rural state lags behind what I am used to. All that is forgotten however when I get my first glimpse the plantation house gleaming in the afternoon sunlight surrounded by great oaks.

Havenhall:

The three-story estate sparkles with white columns rows of porches and too many glass windows to count. I had seen other similar plantations as we rode through the acres of tobacco and rice, but I had not dared to believe that my father's home might look like this.

Two stableboys with gleaming teeth and broad shoulders loosely covered in linen shirts sprinted from the back of the building to meet the coach in front of the main door. The pair of slaves held the horses while the coachmen helped me disembark and quickly unloaded my trunks. By the time the trunks are stacked neatly by my side, a delegation was stepping down from the porch to greet me.