Nottoway

The South lost another cultural jewel.

On May 15, Nottoway, the largest antebellum plantation home in the South, burned to the ground. The fire reportedly started in one of the second story bedrooms, but the cause of the blaze is still under investigation.

And while it appears to be an accidental electrical fire, in our current political climate, arson can never be immediately ruled out.

Nottoway was the last of the grand antebellum Mississippi River sugar plantations. When completed in 1859, it was rivaled only by “Belle Grove” and “Constancia” in the same region. Both were bulldozed in the twentieth century after they fell into disrepair.

Nottoway has ties to one of the oldest families in American history, the Randolphs of Virginia.

John Hampden Randolph built the home in 1859, the largest and last of his extensive sugar plantation network. His father, Peter Randolph, moved the family to Mississippi in 1820 when John was only six or seven. James Monroe later appointed Peter to be the U.S. District Judge for Mississippi, a position he held until his death in 1832. In the meantime, John Randolph received a classical education and was tutored by Lucy Bakewell Audubon, the wife of the famed naturalist John James Audubon.

Like other wealthy Southerners, Randolph invested in land and slaves and initially planted cotton, but he was an innovator. He realized that sugar was highly profitable and in the 1840s built one of the first sugar mills in the South. His fortune soared, and with it came a desire to showcase his substantial wealth.

Randolph commissioned Irishman Henry Howard to design Nottoway. Howard moved to Louisiana in 1837, and for the next several decades would be the most sought after architect in the South. He designed nearly three hundred buildings during his lifetime, and during the War served in the Confederate Navy and at the Confederate Naval Yard in Columbus, Georgia.

Howard’s design incorporated new technologies with antebellum charm. Nottoway had indoor plumbing, including hot and cold running water along with gas lighting. A unique bell system allowed the Randolph family to call for service to any room in the home. Similar systems would be installed in the grand Georgian English estates. The home covered nearly an acre of ground and had 365 doors and windows, one for every day of the year. It was a symbol of high antebellum Southern prosperity and culture, and it was fitting that one of the oldest families in the United States owned the property. The home was named after Nottoway, Virginia, Randolph’s ancestral home.

Randolph imported the finest materials to construct the home and relied on skilled slave artisans to finish the work. This included carpenters, masons, and plumbers. But Nottoway was not just a home, it was an estate designed to turn a profit. Randolph eventually had nearly 200 slaves living and working at Nottoway. He built a hospital to care for the sick and injured with a doctor permanently on staff. He believed strongly in personal hygiene and had a bathhouse built for his slaves. They were allowed to use it any time they chose, with many bathing once a day, an almost unheard of practice in the nineteenth century. He also built a meeting house that doubled as a nursery during the week and a church on Sunday for the slave community. Randolph took seriously his role as a Christian “paternalistic” slave owner. He also had a schoolhouse, stable, sugar mill, and other necessary buildings constructed, making Nottoway a self-sufficient manor.

Randolph opposed secession in the 1850s. He believed that a predominantly agricultural South stood no chance against an industrial North, and like many wealthy Southern planters, Randolph had strong economic ties with Northern merchants. War would disrupt business. When war came in 1861, he took around 200 laves with him to Texas so that he could capitalize on better communication and transportation. His wife, a beautiful petite blonde spitfire named Emily Jane Liddell, stayed behind with their smaller children (the couple had eleven) in an effort to keep the Union from destroying the home. It worked. Her charm and resolve kept the torches away, and while the army plundered the grounds, they never touch the house. Three of his sons joined the Confederate army–one died at Vicksburg–and Randolph financially supported the war effort.

When the war ended, Randolph personally freed all of his slaves before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Nearly fifty contracted with him to continue to work in various agricultural pursuits. All followed him back to Nottoway years later, and many of the former slaves continued to work on the estate as freed people. Randolph saw his fortune quickly diminish during Reconstruction, and after he died in 1883, his wife was forced to sell the home for $50,000. This was a substantial sum of money, but she divided it up among her living children. On the day the sale closed, Mrs. Randolph wore a black dress and closed each individual door and window in a sign of mourning. Many of her children had grown up there, her husband died there, and it was the last home her sons knew before marching off to war in 1861.

The home passed through several owners and at times fell into a state of disrepair before being converted to an event and wedding center in the last half of the twentieth century. Nottoway was one of the most photographed and visited homes in the United States.

While it was burning to the ground, the social media barbarians seized on the opportunity to criticize both the history of the plantation and the current owners. Good they said. The place deserved it, after all, because in their mind it was a home of genocide and torture, even if the history of the property does not fit that narrative.

Establishment historians also cheered the home’s destruction by whining that tours did not adequately tell the story of Nottoway “enslavement.” One wrote for MSNBC:

“I’ve been privileged to cook at Whitney Plantation, which is staffed by brilliant Black interpreters. Nottoway also could have been more like Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina, where my elder and teacher Joseph McGill raises awareness about chattel slavery. It could have been more like Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, where, as a consultant and scholar in residence, I learned from generations of people behind the site’s African American programming.”

The high school history teacher and black history denier Kevin Levin wrote this on his Substack after he said he initially found all of the cheering about its destruction concerning (and I have a bridge to sell in New York):

“But after discovering the website for the home, I couldn’t find a single reference to the history of enslavement at Nottoway. Click on the “history” tab in the top navigation menu and the only subject referenced is the plantation’s impressive oak trees. The page devoted tours offers no information other than time and a recommendation that visitors should call ahead for confirmation.

There is, however, plenty of information about weddings, guest rooms, portraits, and fine dining. I guess that is why they refer to the site as “Nottoway Resort.”

You will certainly have no trouble finding plenty of photographs of white people enjoying themselves.

OK, I am beginning to appreciate why some people are cheering.”

The horror! White people having fun at a beautiful place for a wedding! And no left wing drivel on their website! This reminds me of the true definition of a Yankee: a self-righteous person who worries that someone is living their life or having fun in a place they disapprove without their permission. That’s Levin. He is from Massachusetts.

These “historians” miss something very important at Nottoway. In contrast to places like Monticello or the aforementioned Williamsburg which have seen rapidly declining visitation the last twenty years (Williamsburg’s numbers have been cut in half since 1999), Nottoway increased its annual visitation numbers since 2001. Why? No one is hectored or badgered with guilt for wanting to enjoy an architectural jewel of the Old South. People know that Nottoway used slaves. They don’t want to be consistently reminded of it during a visit or told historical fantasies without verifiable evidence, including the Jefferson-Hemings myth, a fact that drives the establishment into near fits of rage.

The current owners have decided to rebuild, but not the original home or even a replica. They have bent a knee to the barbarians. It will be a place of inclusion and complexity that reflects the modern age. In other words, Nottoway is gone with the wind.

Fitting. Real Southern history has already been burned to the ground. Its tangible artifacts don’t stand a chance with our modern “education” system in place.

And Eugene Genovese rolls in his grave.

Brion McClanahan

Brion McClanahan is the author or co-author of six books, How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America (Regnery History, 2017), 9 Presidents Who Screwed Up America and Four Who Tried to Save Her (Regnery History, 2016), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, (Regnery, 2009), The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), Forgotten Conservatives in American History (Pelican, 2012), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes, (Regnery, 2012). He received a B.A. in History from Salisbury University in 1997 and an M.A. in History from the University of South Carolina in 1999. He finished his Ph.D. in History at the University of South Carolina in 2006, and had the privilege of being Clyde Wilson’s last doctoral student. He lives in Alabama with his wife and three daughters.

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