The Lafayette Hotel - The Market House - Liberty Point

    The original Lafayette Hotel, built in the early 1820s, was the site of a grand ball in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette.  After this hotel was destroyed in the great fire of 1831, the Hotel Fayetteville was built across the street, where it stood until it too was destroyed by fire in 1885. When this second hotel burned in 1885, it was rebuilt again and named the Lafayette Hotel, the remains of which also were the victim of a fire just several years ago.

    The second of these buildings had special significance for Chesnutt, because in its bottom floor was a barber shop owned by the Black barber Edwin Perry, whose daughter, Susan, became Chesnutt's wife.. At the Perry's household, Chesnutt heard the tales about conjuring and goophering that provided the basis for the conjure stories that we have already mentioned.

    Two characters in The House Behind the Cedars lodge in the Patesville Hotel, whose fictional location is the same as the real Hotel Fayetteville.. George Tryon calls the hotel "a very comfortable inn;" he is described as visiting the barbershop. (Remember Edwin Perry). More importantly the action of the novel begins with John Warwick (the name he has assumed in South Carolina) leaving the hotel for a walk through downtown Patesville. The description of John's walk fits real places so exactly that a person can easily follow this fictional character's footsteps today.   John Warwick takes the following route on his walk:  

1. From the site of the Lafayette Hotel toward the Market House;
2. Turning left and walking down what is now Green Street;
3. Turning right on Bow Street, where one passes First Presbyterian Church and the site where St. Patrick's Catholic Church stood when Chesnutt lived in Fayetteville;
4. Coming to "Liberty Point."

Click here to see the route of John Warwick's walk.

Here is Chesnutt's description:

..a young man ... came out of the front door of the Patesville Hotel about nine o'clock one fine morning in spring, a few years after the Civil War, and started down Front Street toward the market-house.... Here and there blackened and dismantled walls marked the place where Sherman's march to the sea had left its mark upon the town. [Sherman's forces occupied Fayetteville on March 11, 1865]. The stores were mostly of brick, two stories high, joining one another after the manner of cities. Some of the names on the signs were familiar; others. including a number of Jewish names, were quite unknown to him. A two minutes' walk brought Warwick... to the market-house, the central feature of Patesville, from both the commercial and the picturesque points of view. Standing foursquare in the heart of the town, at the intersection of the two main streets, a 'Jog' at each street corner left around the market-house a little public square, which at this hour was well occupied by carts and wagons from the country and empty drays awaiting hire.

    Please see below for further discussion of Chesnutt's treatment of the Market House, which serves as a dominant image of Chesnutt's vision of the South.  For now, we will follow John Warwick's walk:

Leaving the market-house, Warwick turned to the left, and kept on his course until he reached the next corner. After another turn to the right, a dozen paces brought him in front of a small weather-beaten frame building, from which projected a wooden sign-board bearing the inscription:  ARCHIBALD STRAIGHT, Lawyer.  He turned the knob, but the door was locked.

    Finding Judge Straight's office locked, John retraces his steps and inquires about the lawyer at a nearby undertaker's office; we know from John Oates' History of Fayetteville that in this area (across the street from City Hall) was the office of James R. McNeill (1840-1904) (thanks to Roy Parker; Oates is contradictory about the names of this man; compare 227 and 228), a Black man who, according to John Oates' description (p. 228), "was the leading man in that business in the upper Cape Fear section."

    Though the descriptions are embellished somewhat, it is clear that Chesnutt is recalling First Presbyterian Church, St. Patrick's Catholic Church (which stood at this site before it was relocated to Village Drive), and Liberty Point. 

A few rods farther led him past the old brick Presbyterian church, with its square tower, embowered in a stately grove; past the Catholic church, with its many classes, and a painted wooden figure of St. James in a recess beneath the gable ...The street down which Warwick had come intersected Front Street at a sharp angle in front of the old hotel, forming a sort of flatiron block at the junction, known as Liberty Point -- perhaps because slave auctions were sometimes held there in the good old days.

    Liberty Point is so named because it was here that the Resolves of Liberty were signed in June 1775. Here Chesnutt is not so much giving an accurate historical statement -- there is no evidence that slave auctions were actually held here -- but rather, with his strong sense of irony, is pointing to one of the most troublesome contradictions in American experience. namely. that those who resisted the tyranny of Great Britain condoned the tyranny of slavery.

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