Popular culture has long played out the war between the states from reenactments to movies to even political speeches. Nearly every angle has been covered in the more than 150 years since the first shots were fired. One aspect that still remains a highly contentious topic is the importance of and implications of chattel slavery in the Civil War. Although the 13th Amendment transformed its existence in 1865, the after effects of the institution still reverberate within America whether it’s in online discussions or when the origins of familiar places or institutions are discovered. The two sides have been at odds for decades, pushing and pulling at each other – a glass half full on one side and one completely empty on the other – and the debates almost always descend into the morality, motivations, intentions of the slaveholding class.

One side argues that attributing anything positive to former masters and mistresses is out of the question based on the face that they had the gall to claim ownership over another human being. In contrast, the other side will debate that the system could not have survived if the worst was always enacted against the enslaved by the slaveholding class. Historical nuance has never been a comfortable concept for Americans to own. In this vein, Hugh Short’s morality, motivations, and intentions challenge even the most ardent person on either side of the slavery debate.

Hugh Short became the sole slaveholder of King Sr. and family following the death of Short’s mother-in-law Nancy Caffery Jenkins in 1858. He was a lawyer by trade but did not shy away from the peculiar institution; he was slaveholder of four other enslaved people by the time he became slaveholder to the Atlas family.

Short was born about 1814 in Pennsylvania. An 1832 graduate of Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana, he was classmates with John Jenkins, Jr. and became his brother law after his September 20, 1835 nuptials to Nancy Rachel Jenkins in Claiborne County, Mississippi.

Stints as the district attorney for Warren County, Mississippi along with several leadership roles within the Democratic Party of the same were followed by a relocation across the river to Carroll Parish, Louisiana in 1847. This was shortly after his uncle-in-law, John Caffery, Jr. died. Short soon amassed several landholdings within the parish including one he called Bellfont Plantation, which is now the Economy Inn located at 9634 US-65, Lake Providence, LA 71254.

Short was known as a great orator and often gave speeches with contemporaries like Jefferson Davis, who would become president of the Confederate States of America. One of his more well known speeches, given on June 8, 1844, called out the Native American Party (also known as the Know Nothing Party) regarding their xenophobic platform, and and made it seem as if he simultaneously called into question the current immigration debate of the 21st century, long ago in the 19th century.

“Mr. Short spoke of the miscalled Native American party as the organization of the whigs to proscribe foreign born citizens whose only crime consists in voting the Democratic Ticket when they become naturalized; he also showed what is true and native policy, the policy of Jefferson – namely receiving the the exile as a brother. He alluded to the constitution and to the rights and guarntees of civil and religious freedom – spoke of the early settlers of this country fleeing from persecution and of the injustice of their descendants inflicting on exiles now, the same evils which their fathers left their native homes & crossed the stormy ocean to avoid.” Vicksburg Weekly Sentinel (Vicksburg, Mississippi), Tuesday, June 11, 1844, page 3. Source: Newspapers.com

Yet, however honorable, thoughtful, and wise his words were, Short was truly arguing against himself. He suffered from his own form of xenophobia that defended the rights of voluntary immigrants yet denied the humanity of those who were forcibly migrated, and however hypocritical it appeared, his attitude was reinforced by the law he practiced.

Perhaps he was never conflicted about what he believed in and was able to separate human emotion from business. One such example was the terms of payment that secured his role as sole slaveholder of King Sr., Rachel, Henry, John, King Jr., William, Andrew, and Mary. The terms served two purposes: they conferred ownership of human beings, while the other created generational upward mobility for his family through payment for the law education of his nephew Donelson Jenkins and the education of his niece Octavia McCarroll. Money he made in his primary profession could have financed this; he was not a large scale slaveholder. On the other hand, he still generated profit from the use of free labor, no matter how small the amount.

Short remained sole slaveholder until his untimely death on August 19, 1862. The country was in the throes of Civil War and some accounts relay that he argued himself to death due to his opposition to southern secession. His will, dated September 29, 1861, adds more fuel to the fire of his contradictory life.