Wicked River_ The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild - Lee Sandlin [44]
He was as prudent in his vices, though, as he was in his virtues. He never risked any substantial amount of money gambling, and his diary never records any disappointment or guilt when he lost—which is fortunate, because he lost consistently. Johnson didn’t see that, or wouldn’t admit to seeing that; it was the one area of his life where he deliberately avoided totaling up his outlays. Like any longtime gambler, he preferred to think of himself as a sharp operator. In the diary he sometimes calls himself, with a kind of secret, self-amused pride, “the old shark.”
He was also a family man with a large and thriving household. His diary records the ceaseless dailiness of his doings with his wife, his children, his apprentices, his servants, and his slaves. He was a loving husband, a strict father, and a stricter employer. He was highly disapproving of his apprentices for consorting socially with his slaves; he frequently notes the occasions when one or another of the apprentices snuck off to attend a darky party, where the slaves and the free people of color would mingle. By his own telling, he wasn’t a particularly kind or indulgent slave owner. He dispassionately writes up the times when he had to flog one of his slaves for disobedience or drunkenness or theft. But he could also be secretly fond of the most difficult of them: the closest he comes to naked emotion in his diary is when he regretfully sells off a favorite slave on account of his perpetual troublemaking.
He didn’t aspire to be accepted by white society. He was always careful to be courteous with well-to-do whites—particularly those to whom he lent money. He had a brisk sideline in making small private loans at interest, and he cultivated a reputation as a trustworthy lender who’d never try to gouge a customer or violate his confidence. But none of this was to gain their friendship. It was a practical necessity: he needed to be able to call on the best people to pay back a favor by discreetly applying pressure to other debtors who’d fallen behind. Other than that, he never socialized with his customers. He certainly never recorded any feeling of envy, any resentment that he was permanently excluded from their world. His attitude can be best seen in the odd mocking pseudonyms he sometimes used in his diary for his prestigious customers: “Mr. Thermometer,” “Colonel Troublesome,” “Little Low Man.”
He had his own circle. Mostly he associated with the other free men of color in Natchez who were as successful and respectable as he was. One of these was a farmer and landowner named Baylor Winn. Johnson and Winn never became close friends, but for many years they were civil enough. In 1848 they had a bet going on the outcome of the presidential election; Johnson untypically won. Johnson did note in his diary some unpleasant gossip about Winn, how he was known around town to have had bitter fights with his children over what they considered to be his tyrannical ways. But Johnson himself doesn’t seem to have been much troubled by any of that. He took for granted that a man’s family affairs were his own business. It certainly never prevented him from passing an hour or two with Winn in leisurely conversation whenever they met—a form of socializing known in Natchez as “stopping to light a cigar.” (Cigars were notorious for being difficult to light; getting one to draw was always a time-consuming process.)
Johnson even took Winn’s advice about property. In the late 1840s, at Winn’s urging, Johnson bought land in the marshy terrain south of town along the river—an area known unimaginatively as the Swamp. He then hired crews to clear it and cultivate it as farmland. After a few seasons, he began hearing from these men about a problem. Winn happened to own the adjoining property, which he was also having cleared, and his crews were taking the lumber downriver to the market in New Orleans. According to Johnson’s men, Winn’s crews were trespassing onto Johnson’s land