The Known World

Smallpox devastates Counsel Skiffington’s plantation, named “A Child’s Dream” by Counsel’s wife. One of Counsel’s creditors, Manfred Carlyle, brought the disease to the plantation when he came to visit. Carlyle, unaware that he had the disease since he didn’t suffer from any symptoms, unleashed the disease on Counsel’s land with devastating effects. Everyone dies except for Counsel. Rather than bury the bodies of his family and his slaves, Counsel burns them, along with the mansion and all of its structures, in a massive fire. The only things left standing after the fire are the slave homes because they had very little in them to contribute to the fire. Ironically, after the devastation, the crops on the farm thrive after three years of failure, but there is no one left to them. 

Full of sorrow, Counsel leaves North Carolina, heading west. He stops in Estill, South Carolina, and a terrible cold makes him think that he, too, will die of smallpox. But he recovers and moves on. He works at a farm in Georgia, where he gets sick again, and again he thinks he will die. However, he recovers. “‘Make up your mind,’ he said to God. ‘I don’t mind dying. I just want you to make up your mind’” (228).