Red, White, and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life

Introduction. Why South Carolina Indigo?

1 in the final stage of dyeing with indigo, a dyer pulls the cloth from an indigo bath, exposing the material to oxygen and setting off a chemical reaction that changes the cloth from yellowish-green to blue. Watching the transformation is not unlike watching time-lapse photography of a flower blossoming: one thing becomes another slowly enough to mesmerize and quickly enough to thrill. In short, it seems magical. To dye something is to stain it, and the effect and affect of a spreading stain can be either troublesome or lovely.The cultivation of indigo has this dual aspect, shaded by a complex and sometimes fraught history in the Americas and especially in South Carolina. Indigo was a plant before it became a dye, and for its role as a dye, it was grown on plantations and farmsteads in huge quantities in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.As such,it was a true commodity—a colorant that became a staple in British and European manufactures and a bankable asset that enriched a few at the expense of many while driving segments of industries, primarily textile based, especially in Britain. Blue was the most popular color of the eighteenth century.1 It symbolized the elite (as in the phrase blue blood) and the everyday person (evident in the practice of workers donning blue aprons). It was also the easiest dye to come by and simplest to use. Blue paper wrapped heavily consumed goods such as sugar, and blue fabric covered windows, curtains, and furniture.2 Blue was especially popular for clothing: on military uniforms, ball gowns, orphans’ coats, American Indian blankets, court costumes, slave garments, and sailor attire. Indeed, blue was everywhere: in flowering indigo shrubs that covered swathes of the Caribbean and the American South and in the homes, the workplaces, introduction S Why South Carolina Indigo? 2 Introduction and the dress of everyone from the most privileged to the least regarded. As a plant that helped determine colonists’ fortunes in the New World, it marched steadily across native land, planted and tended by many enslaved Africans and some enslaved Indians, at times an extension of colonial and racial oppression, at other times an equalizer. As a dye, it stained some fabrics that secured status and others that marked servitude.This book answers the question of why blue colored the lives—in both positive and negative ways—of so many different people in the British imperial orbit. Why Blue? While visiting the Museum of London, I was captivated by a garment that prominently featured blue: a gorgeous eighteenth-century silk brocade dress alive with a rhythmic dance of flowering vines. In particular, my eyes were drawn to the delicate blue blooms scattered amid the profusion of leaves and petals. For a moment, I felt transported to a field of azure blossoms. My momentary transposition from the world of human creation to the world of nature dissolved as I saw a schoolgirl press her nose against the glass case holding the gown and heard her murmur,“A ghost must be wearing that dress.”Thrown into the world of the supernatural by that earnest remark, I looked at the absence the dress enveloped: the display organizers had exhibited the dress without a mannequin—that is, in space, without any visible means of support. This decision was both strangely congruent and at odds with the didactic organization of the display, for the glass case that held the dress contained some period furniture and several text panels that explained who might have worn such a dress and by whom it was likely created. Thus, viewers like me were provided with both the signs and the absence of the life that once animated the dress and moved among the household objects near it.To some extent,this evidence of the past—recovered as well as concealed—satisfied my conviction that we cannot fully flesh out history and make it supremely knowable. But I also felt haunted by the young girl’s observation that the dress was worn by a ghost: I imagined a disembodied presence that wanted to be felt, reaching out to the land of the living from the realm of the dead and trying desperately to say something to those of us on this side of the grave. Why South Carolina Indigo? 3 As I perused items in the museum gift shop,looking for a souvenir to chase away the...