Southern Republic (The Downriver Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  She gave them time to log onto their computers, and waited until all eyes were directed her way before beginning to speak. Collecting her thoughts on a lecture she had given for at least 18 years and practically knew by heart, Chloe took in the measure of the students who would one day rule the S.R. Each of her students were F.F.C., indeed, only F.F.C. were allowed in the Southern Republic School System, every other white citizen—the urban workers or the protectorate assistants—went through aptitude testing and vocational schools.

  Knowing her task today was the formal beginning of a lesson that started nearly at the cradle, and continued throughout the university and post-graduate studies most of these students would undergo, Chloe summoned her most pedagogical demeanor.

  “Today we will talk about the birth of our great nation.” She drawled in that lilting cadence of the high-born Southerner. “What factors shaped its origin, and most important, what laws our forefathers instituted to ensure the continuation of the fundamental freedoms for which our ancestors fought and died.

  “Now, you all know the most basic of those laws, but we’re going to talk today about the reasons those laws were written. Who can tell me what everybody in this room has in common?”

  Several hands shot up and waved frantically. Miss Sutcliffe did not abide by rowdiness of any kind in her classroom, and once the students remembered that, the friskiness subsided. She pointed to a red-haired boy sitting in the back left side of the room.

  “Yes, Bramlett.” Miss Sutcliffe cooed in the whispery tones she had been taught to speak in.

  “We are all white and we’re all F.F.C…. First Families of the Confederacy, I mean.”

  “Very good, Bramlett. That’s exactly right. And who can tell me how we got to be F.F.C.?” Miss Sutcliffe asked, while pausing to look around for the next volunteer.

  “Your ancestors had to fight in the Great War.” A girl who was wriggling around in her seat as if to punctuate every word, replied.

  “Well, Sue Beth, our ancestors didn’t actually have to fight in the Great War, but they had to be a member of the aristocracy—one of the First Families—at the time of the Great War in order for us to qualify as F.F.C.” Miss Sutcliffe answered.

  “You see, the reason why our ancestors fought the Civil War against the Yankees was because the Yanks wanted to change their way of life. They wanted to take away all the advantages our ancestors had worked so hard to build up, so they would be dependant on the North for everything.

  “The North wanted to take away our slaves, take away our right to rule ourselves as we saw fit, and basically make us into slaves for them. So each family that was a land-owning member of the upper class at the time of the Great War has won the right to maintain the great legacy of the Confederacy up to this day.

  “In our great Southern Republic, everybody has his or her place. Our place, as F.F.C., is to guide the country into the future and uphold the laws and principles that our ancestors established.

  “Now, how do we prove that we are F.F.C.?” Miss Sutcliffe asked.

  “By our Hall of Ancestors,” a boy with ice-blue eyes yelled out.

  “Andrew, you know the rules. You must raise your hand and behave like a gentleman if you wish to be heard in this classroom.” Miss Sutcliffe tartly admonished.

  Andrew sheepishly ducked his head, then straightened up and tried again.

  “We prove our worthiness to be F.F.C. by our Hall of Ancestors, Miss Sutcliffe.”

  “That’s right, Andrew. Every family home of every member of F.F.C. must contain proof that they can trace their lineage back to an original aristocrat from the time of the Great War.

  “Whether this is done through birth certificates, commendations, land deeds, personal mementos, pictures, newspaper clippings or other historical documents; if called forward to give proof of lineage, each member of F.F.C. must produce a chain of evidence linking themselves to one of the First Families.

  “I’d like someone to tell the class what our rights as members of F.F.C. are … Leah, what do you think?

  A gangly girl who looked uncomfortable in her own skin fidgeted a bit, then said in a small voice, “F.F.C. members are the only ones with the right to v-vote in elections, hold office or … own pr-pr-property.” Leah stuttered.

  “Well, that’s right, sugar,” Miss Sutcliffe tried to reassure the girl, and wondered what kind of career Leah would be found suitable for. Probably something with no contact with the public and certainly no public speaking.

  “And in addition,” Miss Sutcliffe picked up the thread of the thought, “Only F.F.C. are able to have professional careers, like doctors, lawyers, dentists, diplomats, bankers, professors … and even teachers.” The class giggled at Miss Sutcliffe’s rare display of humor.

  “You must remember, though, children,” Miss Sutcliffe cut off the giggles before they could completely take hold of the student’s attention, “with these rights come the responsibility to lead our great nation in all things. Members of the F.F.C. bear the constant challenge of upholding and improving on our ancestors’ vision.

  “As leaders of the S.R., we are required to keep the economy running smoothly and productively, to make laws that serve our people’s best interest … to control trade and diplomatic relations with other countries. All these things will fall to you someday, and you must earnestly prepare to meet that awesome challenge.” Miss Sutcliffe stood and fixed her serious gaze on the faces upturned before her, catching and making eye contact with each of her 15 charges, to impress upon them the burdens as well as the delights that came with leadership.

  “Can anybody tell us what our primary exports are in the S.R. … what we sell to other countries to make money?” Miss Sutcliffe inquired.

  “Cotton and tobacco!” Little Merle Fonteneau answered triumphantly, miming the smoking of a cigarette as he leaned back in his seat.

  “Yes Merle,” Miss Sutcliffe said with a disapproving squint, “We grow cotton that is used all over the world in clothing and textiles; and we grow tobacco, which makes cigarettes, by far our most profitable industry.

  “How many of you children have lived on a Protectorate.” Miss Sutcliffe asked the children, as several hands were raised even before the question was finished.

  “And what is the purpose of Protectorates, Sheila?”

  “Um .. well .. my Uncle Gerald is the Protector of the Cobb County Protectorate in Georgia, Miss Sutcliffe?” The child ended each statement with a raised inflection so that everything she said sounded like a question. “And I went to visit him and my cousins last summer? That’s where they grow the cotton, ma’am; but I don’t think they grow tobacco there.”

  “Some Protectorates grow cotton, others tobacco; and a few do both, Sheila. We have a total of 65 Protectorates in our 12 states of the S.R., and between those 65 Protectorates, we produce all our cotton and tobacco, as well as some sugar, corn, rice, wheat, and a few other staples for our own use and export.

  “Now, children, somebody tell the class the four components of our population here in the S.R.” Blank faces greeted her question, and Miss Sutcliffe realized she had used a word that might not have been taught them in vocabulary just yet. “I’ll give you a hint … if the F.F.C. provides the leadership, who do we lead?”

  “Ooh –ooh, I know Miss Sutcliffe,” Danetta Fulsom virtually jumped out of her seat with enthusiasm.

  “Alright, Danetta, calm down. As a budding member of the F.F.C., you must learn to comport yourself with honor and dignity at all times. Now control yourself, child, and tell the class the answer.”

  “There’s the F.F.C., the Protector’s Assistants, the urban workers and the slaves.”

  “Very good, Danetta. All of our white citizens are either F.F.C., protectorate assistants or urban workers. The urban workers and the protectorate assistants are the citizens who do not descend from aristocracy, and tend to be more limited in their understanding and intelligence. The urban workers run the factories, processing plants, are th
e sales clerks, food service and maintenance workers; they operate our tech systems, our utilities like electricity and water, and generally provide the country with the services necessary to run on a daily basis. And of course, the Protector’s Assistants are the managers on the Protectorates.”

  Evan raised his hand, and it was such a rarity that he participated in class discussions, that Miss Sutcliffe immediately pointed his way.

  “Yes, Evan,” Miss Sutcliffe said.

  “My daddy says that the slaves built the South, and if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be rich like we are.” Evan, having finished his pronouncement, slouched back in his seat, folded his arms and gave Miss Sutcliffe his most insolent stare.

  Not about to be baited by so transparent a ploy, Miss Sutcliffe agreed. “Your daddy’s right, Evan, the slaves’ labor did help build our great nation. It wasn’t right the way the traders stole them out of Africa. But once they were here, why, they became our responsibility. Now we have the obligation to feed them, clothe them, make sure they have livable housing and access to medical care. You see, the slaves have been bred to be our servants—they’re just not good for anything else anymore, and it would be cruel to expect them to behave differently than they have for the last 325 years. They are happy and content to do what they have been genetically programmed to do.

  “Do any of you have dogs, children?” Miss Sutcliffe asked. Several of the children’s hands were raised.

  “Well, you know dogs descended from wolves, don’t you? But now, after many, many years of being trained and bred as our companions, it would be cruel to place, say, a miniature poodle, out in the wilderness, wouldn’t it? That little poodle wouldn’t stand a chance, because it’s lost all of its natural abilities to defend itself, to hunt for food or avoid danger.

  “Slaves are the same way, children. They may have originally been smart, self-sufficient creatures, but over the hundreds of years of breeding, conditioning and training, they’ve lost their ability to fend for themselves, too. Would it be the right thing to do—the Christian thing to do—to thrust those slaves out into the world without any chance of survival?”

  Miss Sutcliffe took in the effect her words were having on the children, and gauged that each was imagining their poor Fluffy being menaced by wildcats or hunters, limping around aimlessly, pitifully whining with hunger, begging for their master.

  “So you see, children, the slaves are doing what they do best—working for us and being cared for in exchange. And it is our duty as members of the F.F.C. to make sure that they are always given the means to live as their color and condition dictates.”

  As if timed to coincide with the end of her poignant lesson, the bell sounded just as Miss Sutcliffe finished her sentence. The somber-faced students filed out of the classroom slowly, stealing glances back over their shoulders to Miss Sutcliffe’s serious countenance, faces as open and expressive as only a child’s face can be; pondering all they had heard this morning and puzzling out their places in this grand scheme.

  Chloe sat back after the last child had left the room, satisfied with the way Lesson 1 had unfolded. The seeds of these children’s great destiny had been planted; as had their understanding that with great power comes great responsibility. She had found it best to start with the lofty goals for the younger students, then, by the time their places as leaders had been firmly entrenched in their minds, move on to some of the more mundane aspects of the rules governing their society.

  Although Chloe had taught fourth and fifth graders for several years, she had also taught the ninth through twelfth grades in Civic Responsibility. And that experience told her that right now, her young charges were somewhat bedazzled by the prospect of being born to lead such a highly complex society. But they don’t have the stomach yet for hearing the details of how the slaves are managed, bred, disciplined or put down.

  Chloe remembered her own childhood on the Pachoula County Protectorate in Mississippi. How she had learned about the breeding programs to produce half-breeds, quarter-breeds and eighth-breeds from full stock. How all the slaves start out in the nursery minded by old slaves waiting to go to their Final Rest; playing pretty much like normal children until the age of 6, when they were race-graded and assigned their positions.

  All half-breeds and quarter-breeds were automatically given domestic assignments; full stock generally worked the fields (with the strongest men later assigned to the chain gangs); and the “lucky” women got to weave cloth and do the finishing handwork on beading, lace making and embroidery on fine linen goods as garment workers. And at the eighth-breed, the slaves were reassigned to breed with full stock to avoid the possibility of them “passing” for white.

  Later, Chloe had learned that the reason all half-breeds ands quarter-breeds were domestics was to create a buffer between the F.F.C. and the rest of the slaves, in the event of an uprising.

  In fact, even the layout of the Protectorate Compounds was calculated to serve the same purpose. The compounds were arranged in concentric circles with the Protectorate House set in the center—usually the ancestral home of the Protector’s family.

  Surrounding the Protectorate House, but set back far enough for decorum’s sake, are the cookhouse, stables, carpenter’s hut, metal worker studio, candle maker shop, vintner and all the services necessary for the comfort and maintenance of the F.F.C. in the Protectorate House.

  The next circle was comprised of the compound staff’s cottages, where the half-breeds and quarter-breeds lived who did not have rooms in the servant’s quarters within the Protectorate House.

  Finally, the last circle contained the nursery buildings where all the slave children on the Protectorate spent their lives until the age of 6.

  Outside the compound at various distances away were the work sites. There were the garment workers compounds with quarters and on-site factories. There were field houses that served as dormitories and staging centers for the field workers and the chain gangs.

  This configuration was designed to require any rioting field workers, by far the largest segment of the slave population on any Protectorate, to have to travel a distance to get to the compound, then go through their own children, and the mixed race compound workers to get to the occupants of the Protectorate House. Of course, it was assumed that the mixed race slaves would fight to protect what was theirs—their status and their master’s favor.

  Apparently, although they were never taught in the schoolbooks, there had been quite a few slave revolts many years ago, both before and since the Great War. The Rules for the Management of Slaves, a primer written in 1902 and adhered to like the Bible ever since, though, had mandated the use of certain tools to prevent such insurgences in the last century or so.

  Well, there were The Rules, and there was also extensive use of selective breeding techniques. Any tendencies toward unacceptable levels of aggression or violence were weeded out through systematic sterilization, or, in some cases, by putting the slave down. But of course, the genetic engineering was, in itself, mostly a product of The Rules as they’d been amended over the years, so in that sense, the overall success at avoiding most slave uprisings was simply a result of adhering to The Rules.

  One of these rules required that no domestic slave could stay as a member of the household staff in the Protectorate House longer than 10 years, so as to avoid untoward bonds from forming between the F.F.C. and the slaves.

  She thought back to her own favorite nurse, Callie, and could still feel tears sting her eyes recalling the time she learned Callie had to be reassigned and sold away from the Protectorate Chloe grew up on because Callie had lived in the Big House for 10 years. It was several years later when she learned another cruel aspect of that forceful departure—Callie had been her older sister, and she hadn’t even known it.

  Chloe found it so much easier to teach about these rules, than to remember their sometimes callous, though always necessary, application. And so, they treated the slaves like cattle, yet gave them titles
of affection, like Servant of the Protectorate, for the domestics, or S.P.; and Servants of the Field, S.F.; or Chloe’s favorite phrase, Precision Garment Workers (P.G.W.) for those women whose fingers bled every night from the toils of each day’s labor.

  One of the hardest parts about life on the Protectorate, though, Chloe recalled, was not the treatment of the slaves, but the absence of all things tech. You see, as the Rules had been updated, they were amended to take into account advances in technology. One of the cardinal rules became, therefore, that no slave shall be allowed to use technology in their work. Thus, although the Protectorates had electricity, running water and heat, the slaves were only permitted the luxuries of lighting and running water in their work, if S.P. or P.G.W.; and not even that if they were S.F.

  There was only one room in any Protectorate Compound, by law, containing tech devices such as cell phones, computers, satellite uplinks, video monitors and the like—and that was the sole province of the Protector himself, kept at all times under lock and key.

  Chloe knew from her own studies that there had been a fierce debate throughout the Confederacy centered in the legislature’s rules committee about the wisdom of limiting slaves’ use of tech. Concerns about maintaining their competitive advantage against then-newly developed automated agribusiness methods eventually gave way to the fear that tech in the hands of the slaves would render their control an impossibility.

  So as inconvenient as it sometimes was being cut off from tech when on the Protectorates, it was just one more necessary evil of maintaining a system she truly believed was for the benefit of all.

  Her job was to guide the children through the sometimes thorny questions of morality that came with the responsibilities of leadership. She believed no one was better suited than herself to do just that.