Plus Ça Change – July 28, 2026
You’re a rich white man in antebellum New Orleans. How do you kill your accountant? RESEARCH! Yes, that might kill the accountant, but we’re talking about weapons here. Because the federal government is after your corrupt ass, and they’re about to bring in the guy who knows where all the money came from. It’s the one weak spot in all your schemes.
So how do you do it? You don’t. You get your slave to do it for you. That’s a whole other set of problems, but you can control a slave one hell of a lot better than you can your accountant.
Problem. It’s the 1850s. A man of color (your slave, personal bodyguard, and valet) cannot go walking down the street with a visible weapon. It’s against the law. There is a deep-seated fear of slave rebellion, no second-amendment for Black people.
The usual murder weapons in antebellum New Orleans are knives, axes, cudgels, and guns. All visible, all illegal. I considered a pistol, they were available. You can conceal it. But NOISE! So, i consider a blade.
Very popular, a sword disguised as a cane or walking stick: a cane-sword, or stick-sword. We aren’t talking broadsword or saber.The cane is scabbard to a very thin blade: a rapier, or perhaps a dagger. Think fencing épée. There might be a little latch, push the button, and voila, you have a weapon in your hand. But anyone can walk down the street with a walking stick.
In theory, for writing, I’m good. Nah, not me. I have trained with straight swords and sabers, but the principles are the same. What kind of wood did they use? What did it look like? Because there are swords, and then there are swords.
There are three problems with this as a weapon. Unless there’s something heavy hiding in the hook, there is no pommel. A pommel is a weight at the back of the handle to shift the center of balance into the grip. The bigger the sword, the bigger the pommel. Second problem, there is no grip! The grip must be in line with the blade, a sword is not a pistol. If your hand is on the curve, it’s dowsing rod time. After you draw the blade and shift your grip to the straight part, the crook is quite likely to get in the way of using the sword. But I’ve never used anything like this, so what do I know.
Here’s a dagger of sorts. The metal handle is likely heavy enough to serve as pommel, it might even be too heavy. But where the hell do you grip this thing? If your hand is where it should be, it’s digging into your palm and that pistol-grip thing is sticking out below or between your fingers. If your hand is on the pistol grip, it’s dowsing rod time again. It’s pretty, but useless. So, one more…
This is an antique walking stick-sword, a lovely piece of work. Here the pommel is subtle, but it’s brass (a weighty metal). There is a clear grip, well ridged and in line with the blade as it should be. There is no crook. to interfere with free movement. When you remove the weapon your hand is already on the grip. And once gripped, you have a rapier in hand.
Sword-sticks were very popular with upper-crust gentlemen in the 1800s. It was declassé to actually wear a sword, but self defense was a good thing. With this, you could walk the street, armed and dangerous, and look like any dandy foppishly wandering down the boulevard. Which is precisely why a valet, a well dressed “upper crust” house slave, can carry such a thing unnoticed through the crowd.
I’m thirty chapters and months away from actually writing that scene, but here it is: the murder weapon. The process of thinking this all through says my story needs a valet, he needs a fencing background, and a reason to be willing to kill for his slave master.
