The Sugar and Rice Culture in Louisiana—Profits and Obstacles.
A New Orleans friend of mine had recently purchased a fine sugar
plantation, twenty-seven miles up the river from the city. He was going
up to see how the season’s work was beginning, and I accepted his
invitation to spend a day or too looking into the details of sugar
culture.
Steaming up the lower Mississippi is about the dreariest form of
traveling. Within is the same round of novel-reading, card-playing,
eating ill-cooked meals, and swilling bad liquors at the bar, under
penalty of offending every chance acquaintance who insists upon
extending the hospitalities of the occasion. Without, you catch
glimpses, occasionally, of the roofs of old Creole houses peering above
the levees. These, and the stretches of reclaimed swamps on either hand,
running back to the cypress brakes which invariably shut in the view,
constitute the scenery.
But we left New Orleans at nearly sunset, and the night was brilliant
with starlight. Word had been sent up the day before of our intended
visit. As we approached the plantation, a great fire was seen on the
levee, built to guide the pilot in making the landing. Grouped about it
were two or three negroes and a couple of white men; the light from the
burning logs casting its fantastic shadows over them. The boat’s bow
struck the bank, we leaped off and a couple of negroes caught our
traveling-bags. The boat rebounded by its own elasticity, the off-wheel
gave a backward revolution, the captain shouted, “Good night,” to us
from the hurricane-deck, and the vessel was already under headway, again
up the stream, as we turned to receive the greetings of the old Creole
overseer and the new proprietor’s agent.
From the landing, a wagon-road led across the levee and behind it up the
river for a few yards, till we entered an old-fashioned garden, laid out
in the stiff Dutch flower-bed style, and stood in front of the
“mansion.” It was a fine old country house, built in the French style,
with only dining-room, pantry, ice-closets and the like, back of the row
of round brick-stuccoed columns below. Stair-cases ascended at the
diagonal corners from the pavement to the second story gallery, which
encircled the building, and from which glass doors opened into the
parlors and bed-chambers. The floors, posts, and in fact nearly all
parts of the wood-work were constructed of the best red cypress, and
looked as if they might yet last for half-a-dozen generations. The lower
story had a tesselated marble pavement; and outside the lower gallery a
pavement of brick extended for a yard or two out from the house on all
sides. Even with these precautions, the lower story was damp, and to
live in it (or to live in the lower story of any house on the coast[66])
would, in the estimation of the inhabitants, be almost certain death.
“Once it vas very fine house,” said the French overseer, with a shrug of
his shoulders; “but des soldats; dey vas so had as you see nevare. Dey
pasture deir horses on our flowers and stable dem on dis marble
pavement. I am désolée,” he continued, “to have not ze power to
entertain you as I should like, but dey took all our liqueurs, and drank
our champagnes—sacre—as if dey tought is vas lager beer. Dey broke all
our dishes; and Monsieur Paine, he buried ze silver to save it, and
found it again nevare.”
Still, the old place disclosed unexpected treasures of claret, which it
gladdened the heart of the Creole to see us taste; and the house
servants succeeded in making the spacious but half-furnished
bed-chambers comparatively comfortable.
Next morning, while the new proprietor was looking into the arrangements
made in accordance with his orders, for stocking the place and beginning
operations, I busied myself with explorations. From the front gallery,
into which the glass-door of my bed-room opened, I looked out upon a
broad, brick pavement, running through the garden to the public road
which, here, as for hundreds of miles up the Mississippi, everywhere,
skirts the levee. In the middle of it was a brick column, three or four
feet high, serving as a pedestal for a leaden sun-dial, which had
formerly been set with accurate care in mortar on its top. During the
military occupation, the soldiers had amused themselves by firing from
the gallery at this dial, and one too good shot had struck it fairly in
the center leaving its deep indentation, and breaking the whole dial
loose from its bed in the mortar.
The garden had evidently taken much of the time and no small share of
the profits of the former proprietor. Even yet, notwithstanding the
destruction by the troops and the neglect during the war, many of the
rarest shrubs and flowers were in luxuriant growth. It was still
January. I had left Washington in the midst of a heavy snow storm, and
the telegraph brought accounts of continued cold weather; but in this
deserted garden we plucked bouquets of rare flowers, growing in the open
air, which scarcely a green-house in Washington could have equalled. Fig
and banana trees were of course abundant. Oranges had been served at
breakfast which had been plucked from the trees last fall; and, in the
edge of the garden, we now found others on which the oranges were still
hanging in spite of the winter’s frosts. Most of these were wild; but
several trees, bearing fruit that after all its exposure was still
pleasant to the taste, had escaped the gathering of the soldiers and the
after-gleaning of the negroes. China trees, filled with mocking birds,
formed a short avenue in front of the house; and in a corner of the
garden was one of the rarities, which the Creole overseer delighted to
exhibit, a cork tree, already quite large, which in a few years might
furnish all the corks they wanted for bottling their own wines from the
wood. The green-house was in utter ruin. The soldiers had amused
themselves by shattering its glass-roof; and the shelves, on which the
potted plants had been placed, were rotted away and broken down.
* * * * *
“Jim,” the sugar-maker, called me from the flowers to see the
sugar-house. He was a middle-aged, shrewd looking negro, who had been
sold here by one of the Virginia patriarchs at a very early day. He
could remember learning a trade in Virginia; “but I’s been heah so long
I dunno much ’bout de ole place. I’d like to go back to see it, for
pears like it was mity fine place to live; but I wouldn’t stay dare now.
Dis is my home.”
To the right of the house stood the “quarters,” a double row of
dilapidated frame cabins, each containing two rooms, with a porch in
front, covered by the projecting roof. Each room was supposed to furnish
accommodations for five adults. If they were all in one family, very
well; if not, two or three families must go together. For these five
persons there was, in the single room, space for a couple of bedsteads,
a little table, two or three chests, and as many chairs. Each had a
fire-place, a door and a hole in the wall opposite, closed by a wooden
shutter, which they called a window. “These quarters ought to be
whitewashed,” said the proprietor. “Wait till the niggers all get back
and they’ll do it themselves, and we’ll save that expense,” replied the
agent.
Beyond the quarters, in a large field well-set in Bermuda grass, stood
the sugar-house. Everything about it seemed damp and soggy. We
approached it over ground yielding to our tread from the moisture, and
ascended to the door by a wooden stair case, covered with a slimy growth
of fungus, and half-rotted away.
Within stood a fine engine, which “Jim” exhibited with pride.
“Eberything dar, sah. Dem brasses you see gone, I done locked up to keep
de niggers from stealing ’em. De pipes and de valves, all locked up
safe, sah. I ken set her a runnin in a day, sah, and you don’t need to
send to Orleans once for nuffin.” Near the engine were the boiling pans,
and in a long “L” of the building was the wide trough into which the
fluid was run off for cooling and crystallization. Everything here
seemed scrupulously neat, although the fact that the negroes had worked
the place by themselves, last year would not generally have been taken
as a guaranty for cleanliness.
“Jim” was greatly disgusted with his last year’s effort to make the
niggers work. “I sposed, now we’s all free, dey’d jump into de work
keen, to make all de money dey could. But it was juss no work at all. I
got so ’scouraged sometimes I’s ready to gib it all up, and tell ’em to
starve if dey wanted to. Why, sah, after I’d ring de bell in the mornin’
’twould be hour, or hour ’n half ’fore a man’d get into de fiel’. Den
dey’d work along maybe an hour, maybe half hour more; and den dey’d say
Jim, aint it time to quit? I say, ‘No, you lazy dog, taint ten o’clock,’
Den dey’d say, ‘Jim, I’s mighty tired,’ and next thing I’d know, dey’d
be pokin’ off to de quarters. When I scold and swear at ’em, dey say,
‘we’s free now, and we’s not work unless we pleases.’ Sah, I got so sick
of deir wuflessness dat I sometimes almost wished it was old slavery
times again.”
“How did they live, Jim? If they wouldn’t work, I don’t see what they
had to live on.”
“Well, the trufe is, sah, dey stole eberyting dey could lay deir han’s
on.”
It ought to be added that the negroes all complained that “Jim” was a
hard task-master, and that he was “harder on them than white folks.” His
old master, Mr. Payne, on the other hand, pronounced him invaluable;
said he was one of the most intelligent and skillful slaves he ever saw,
and declared his determination, if he ever went to planting again, to
hunt “Jim” up and hire him.
There were not more than half-a-dozen negro families on the plantation
at the time of our visit. The agent of the new proprietor had been
attempting, through the past week, to hire them, but they had refused to
enter into any contract which he thought admissible. They all wanted
special privileges of one sort or another. Many wanted considerable
tracts of land set off to them on the plantation, which they could
cultivate on their own account. Some thought they ought to have two or
three acres to plant in cotton. Nearly all wanted to grow corn. “Let ’em
have an acre of either,” said the agent (and the Creole overseer fully
agreed with him), “and they would pick more than you would get from any
half-dozen acres you’ve got. Give them the slightest opening for growing
the same crops you grow, and you’ve opened the flood-gates of unlimited
stealing. You have no sort of check on them.”
One fellow wanted permission to keep on the plantation two horses, a
mule, and a cow, besides hogs, chickens, and goats innumerable. “How
could he feed them?” innocently asked the proprietor. “Feed them? Out of
your corn-crib, of course. You couldn’t put a lock on it he wouldn’t
pick the first dark night. He would steal the corn you fed your mules
with at dinner, out of the very trough from which the mules were eating
it. Haven’t I caught them at such tricks, again and again?”
The agent had accordingly set his face as a flint against all these
special claims preferred by the negroes. He would give them the wages
then customary along the Coast (ten dollars a month, with clothing,
lodging, food and medical attendance), would give them Saturday
afternoons and Sundays for themselves, would give plenty of land for
gardens, and mules and plows to cultivate it; and that was all he would
give. The negroes might enter into contract on these terms or leave.
They didn’t want to do either. They wouldn’t contract, but they made
themselves comfortable in the houses and evidently considered themselves
at home, contract or no contract. Thereupon the agent brought matters to
a crisis by telling them that he gave them till Saturday morning to
contract, if by that time they had made no engagement they must shift
for themselves. Saturday morning came; and not more than half-a-dozen
besides the two drivers had signed the contract.
“They thought, by standing out, they could force me to terms about their
mules and cotton. But I soon undeceived them. I rigged up the carts,
packed their traps into them, and sent them bag and baggage off the
place. They went down to a sort of free-nigger settlement a few miles
below. Now they’re sneaking back every day and asking leave to enter
into contract.”[67]
The Creole thought they worked so badly last year that it didn’t make
much difference whether they returned or not.
“But dey’ll do better, sah, wid you. Dey wants a white man to gib
orders. Dey wouldn’t min’ me las’ yeah, ’cause I’s nigger like
demselves. I tink dey do better dis yeah.” Such was “Jim’s” view of the
case.
“Jim” spoke English—such as it was. This he owed to his Virginia birth.
All the rest of the negroes spoke French exclusively. They had been
quite as successful in forming an unintelligible _patois_ from that, as
other plantation negroes have been with their English. Some of our party
spoke French fluently, but they could make nothing out of the talk of
the negroes. The Creole overseer gave his laughing explanation. “It’s
nigger French, zey speak, sare; of course you can not it understand.”
And with that he broke into a volley of gibberish, the words coming like
chain-shot, in couples, to which the negroes at once responded. “Jim,”
in addressing them, made use of the same mongrel French; he had learned
it from his long residence among them. Now and then one could catch a
pure French word; and the general sound was similar to the French; but
it had been so distorted, the overseer told us, as to constitute a
distinct dialect, which must be learned by all who undertake the control
of the Coast negroes.
Exaggerate four-fold the peremptory style in which military officers
generally think it necessary to deliver their commands, and project the
words with a rapidity which nobody but a Frenchman could conceive, and
you have the manner in which our Creole constantly spoke to the negroes.
The words came from his lips with a rasping, spasmodic sort of energy,
that really seemed to infuse a little life in the slow-motioned
creatures; though I observed that most of the energy inspired by his
tones seemed to be expended in the quaint patois of the replies.
Directions to hitch up an enormous, broad-tired, inconceivably clumsy
sugar cart, required an amount of shouting that would have sufficed for
a western barn-raising; and I feel sure that fully an hour was spent by
two able-bodied negroes in the process of harnessing the mules to the
shafts, tandem-fashion. A similar storm of “nigger French,” brought us,
in the process of time, a number of horses sufficient for the party;
and, under the guidance of an old head-negro, pleasantly named “Voisin,”
we set out for a ride over the plantation.
* * * * *
Voisin was the plow-driver. Over every foot of the twelve hundred acres
he had maneuvered his gang of plows, as a military officer would
maneuver his battalion, and he was ready to pour into the ear of the
proprietor all the traditions of the plantation; that this land was too
wet for cane and ought to be left in grass; that all on this side of the
leading ditch had been used for corn from time immemorial; that the
finest cane always grew on this side of that levee by the cross-ditch;
that that back-land was too stiff for anything, and he’d better not
attempt to plow it if he didn’t want to kill off his mules; that cotton
ought not to be grown at all; but, if it must be, this land nearest the
front levee was the best for it; and so on interminably.
When we rode out of the inclosures around the quarters, sugar-house, and
stables, we were in the one field which comprised the entire plantation.
From the levee by the river bank it stretched in an unbroken flatness,
gradually descending, back to the cypress swamp that bounded the arable
land in the rear, and shut in the view. The field was cut by two deep
leading ditches, one running down the middle to the swamp, and the other
leading from side to side of the place, intersecting the first about
midway between the river and the swamp. Into each of these smaller ones
emptied, at distances of thirty to sixty yards, and the entire field was
thus intersected by a network of open ditches; the water from all of
which flowed back to the swamp until it met the obstruction of the back
levee.
To understand the object of this, and the nature of the difficulties
which the Louisiana sugar-planter has encountered, it must be remembered
that all this land bordering on the river was originally a swamp.
Successive overflows naturally deposited the most of their sediment near
the river banks. Thus the land became highest at the river, and the
drainage, instead of inclining in the natural direction, went backward
to the swamp. Thenceforward there was a double trouble confronting the
adventurous planter who sought to utilize this amazingly fertile soil.
The river in his front was dangerous; but the swamp behind him was
worse. His levees might protect him from the Mississippi itself; but
crevasses, hundreds of miles above, might overflow the back country, or
the back streams themselves might do it; and presently, while he was
watching the flood at his door, the water from the swamp behind him was
creeping up over his land and ruining his prospects for the year.
There was no resource save to fight the water on all sides. Each
plantation was therefore protected by front and back levees, and
resembled in shape a huge dish; which, but for the energy of its owners,
would become a lake. A fresh difficulty was then encountered. The land,
being below the surface of the water on both sides of it, was kept
constantly soaked by infiltration. Ditches might drain this water back
to the swamp, but here the levee met them. A pumping machine thus became
necessary; and during the wet season the water was to be fought with
levees, before and behind, and that which filtered in was to be pumped
out into the swamp.
We found the back levee cut open, and water from the ditches was flowing
out through the gap. Voisin explained that as soon as the water in the
swamp began to rise, the levee must be closed again, and the pump put in
operation.
To Northern eyes, the “swamp” began far enough inside of the swamp
levee. Voisin assured us that in old times there was no better land on
the plantation; but, riding along the beaten road by the main ditch,
over which all the wood used for the engine and at the house was drawn,
and along which the cattle were daily driven, our horses sank over their
knees in the alluvial mud. On either hand the water stood in small pools
over the entire surface of the “back cuts.” A New Englander would have
declared it fit for nothing but cranberries. Some of the planters
insisted that such land was _then_ in the very best condition for
plowing—“it turned over so much easier when it had water standing on
it!”
The supply of cypress in the swamp was inexhaustible. Nothing prevented
it from being far more profitable than the sugar grown under such
difficulties, except the expense of hauling it out, to the river.
Sugar-planters generally make little or no account of their swamp land.
They reckon their “leveed” land, fronting on the river, and give little
attention to the depth back into the swamp the surveyors may have given
them. Probably not half of them have ever seen their back lines.
This plantation, only twenty-seven miles from New Orleans, considered
among the best on the west side of the river, with its sugar-house and
the expensive machinery attached in a condition to be used, with
residence comparatively uninjured, quarters for all the hands, good
levees, and some cane, sold at auction on terms which represented a cash
investment of about fifty-five thousand dollars! I know cotton
plantations, further up, which _rented_, acre for acre, for over
two-thirds of this sum! The title was perfect, and there was nothing to
prevent the plantation from making as high an average yield as it ever
did, as soon as the cane should be reset, unless the free labor system
should fail. Other places along the river have since sold at higher
figures; but I believe that any one who is willing to devote two or
three months to watching for an opportunity, may make equally favorable
purchases any time within the next two years.
Extravagant living left nearly every planter enormously in debt when the
war came. Since then their affairs have gone from bad to worse. Many are
now making desperate efforts to retrieve themselves, and some will
succeed. The sheriff will close out the rest, and bargains await the
watchful capitalists. “By gare,” said the Creole, “le proprietuer of zis
place, before Monsieur Payne, lived as you vould nevare beleive. He had
over seexty slaves for house servants. Seex carriages stood tere in ze
carriage house, for ze use of ze family, beside buggies, saddles horses,
et tout cela! He had four demoiselles; every one moost have tree slaves
to vait on her! And ze dinnares, and ze trips to New Orleans! Den, sare,
let me explain to you; ze jardin himself cost ovare seexty tousand
dollare.”
This family, of course, had gone to the insolvent’s court. The next
proprietor was caught by the war; and now Mr. A. C. Graham was trying to
revive the neglected culture. He had bought a quantity of plant-cane
from the Dick Taylor place, lying immediately below; had secured mules,
by sharp bargaining, at a hundred and sixty-two dollars a head; and, if
he could only be sure of laborers, had a fair prospect for a hundred and
fifty hogsheads of sugar and twice as many barrels of molasses in the
fall. Some cotton had to be planted, although there was small hope, in
this heavy sugar soil, of its doing much more than paying expenses; and
corn and hay enough would be grown to make the plantation
self-sustaining for next year’s operations.
We rode over to the Dick Taylor place to look at the plant-cane. This
was cane which had been cut from last year’s crop, and instead of being
ground for sugar, had been buried in “mattresses” for planting in the
spring.[68] We could see only a confused mass of dry blades, not unlike
the blades of Indian corn. Voisin dug into the mattress and brought out
fine large canes, fresh and moist. They had been buried thus,
overlapping each other, with the ends of each layer in the ground, and
had been preserved through the winter without injury from the frost.
Plows were already starting to prepare the land. As soon as possible,
these canes would be laid in the furrows, two or three side by side,
across the whole field, and buried with the fresh earth. When the young
canes are sprouted up from the joints, they would be seen stretching
across the plantation like rows of Indian corn. Then would begin the
battle with the grass and weeds, to last without a day’s intermission
until June or July. In mid-summer the cane would be “laid by,” and a
three month’s interval would follow, corresponding to the winter’s
leisure of the Northern farmer. During this time cypress would be cut
and hauled for the engines, the fences would be repaired, and every
preparation for sugar-boiling made in advance. Meantime the luxuriant
cane, arching from row to row, would by its own shadow keep down all
weeds and leave the furrows clean to act as ditches in carrying off the
flooding summer rains.
Early in October an army of cutters would attack the field, armed with a
broad-hooked knife, with which they would sever each stalk, close to the
ground, strip it of its blades, and cut off its top at the uppermost
joint. Some day Yankees will invent machinery to do all this; but now,
the unequal length of the stalks and the necessity for cutting each one
at the upper joint to exclude the injurious juices of the top, are
supposed to require this slow labor-consuming process. Great
“broad-tread” carts, with a stout mule hitched in the shafts and a pair
of lighter ones in front, are used to haul the cane to the mill. There
the fires never go out, and the mill never stops, day or night, for the
ensuing three months. The negroes are arranged in sections to relieve
each other; and every man on the plantation is expected to do eighteen
hours of work daily. Abundant rations of whisky, presents of tobacco,
free draughts of the sweet syrup, and extra pay, carry them through. The
expressed juice is boiled in vacuum-pans till nearly all the water is
driven off; then, when it is run out to cool, the sugar crystallizes,
(with the aid of lime and bone-black to purify it) and the residuum is
drawn off in the shape of crude molasses.
The machinery for all this is expensive. Sugar-mills, with all the
appurtenances, cost from twenty up to one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars; and the more costly ones are by far the more economical. This
statement at once discloses the great difficulty of adapting the
free-labor system to the culture of sugar. A freeman naturally looks
forward to the time when he can own the soil he cultivates. But for a
negro, or for a Northern farmer without capital, to attempt the sugar
culture on a small scale, would, as matters now stand, be utter folly.
Perhaps, in time, we shall have large sugar-mills erected here as
flour-mills are at the North; every man’s growth of cane to be
manufactured for a fixed toll, or sold to the miller at current rates;
but till then, the growth of cane for sugar must be left to men of
capital.
* * * * *
Two hundred miles further north, the owners of these amazingly fertile
swamps may yet find more formidable rivals than the Cubans. Every
cotton-planter requires large quantities of molasses for the use of his
negroes. Yankees will not grow cotton long till they begin growing the
sorghum to manufacture their own molasses. And Yankees will not continue
many years manufacturing the base of sugar, without forcing the secret
of sorghum, and finding how to crystallize its syrup into sugar. Already
the negroes, who have once tasted the sorghum molasses, insist on being
furnished with it in preference to that made from cane. Demand will not
long exist here, among the new elements of this changing population,
without creating a supply.
Meantime the sugar-culture along the coast must, at any rate, revive
slowly. Even if the capital were all ready to be invested, so complete
has been the neglect of the plantations, that a full crop can not be
made short of three to four years. The crop of 1861 was four hundred and
forty-seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight hogsheads, from
twenty-four parishes of Louisiana. In 1865 it had dwindled to six
thousand seven hundred fifty-five hogsheads. In 1861 there were one
thousand two hundred and ninety-one sugar-plantations under cultivation
in these parishes. There are now one hundred and seventy-five. These
figures tell their own story.
* * * * *
On the Payne plantation, the negroes about the quarters were pounding
out rice in a little wooden mortar. Large stacks of rice stood near the
stables. A little mill was pointed out as having been formerly used to
hull rice sufficient for the use of the hands; and back toward the
swamp, we were told, were excellent rice lands; on which, in old times,
fine crops had always been made.
While the place was being slowly reset in cane, it would doubtless be
profitable to grow rice; but the negroes were unwilling to undertake it.
Here, as in the rice lands of South Carolina and Georgia, there was
every prospect that free labor would prove absolutely fatal to the
culture. Men _would_ not work in rice swamps except under compulsion.
There is a species of rice, which grows like wheat, on uplands; but it
only yields about one-fourth of a crop. On good rice lands the yield per
acre varies from thirty-five to fifty bushels. Exceptional crops have
run up as high as ninety bushels. With good cultivation on good soil,
one might reasonably hope for an average of forty bushels, or eighteen
hundred pounds per acre—worth (with rice ranging from nine and a half to
twelve cents per pound) about one hundred and eighty dollars. This is
much more lucrative than cotton at twenty-five cents a pound; nearly as
much so as cotton at fifty cents.
It is a golden opening—but the free laborers decline to step into it.
Five years ago the rice crop of the United States was about a quarter of
a million casks. Last year it was seven thousand!
-----
Footnote 66:
The narrow belt of bottom land, reclaimed from the swamps on either
side of the Mississippi for sugar plantations, is called “the Coast.”
Above New Orleans, to the northern limit of sugar culture, is the
Upper Coast. Between New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi is
the Lower Coast.
Footnote 67:
About half of them, I believe, returned before the spring work had
been fairly begun. The rest sought new homes, and in general fared no
better than those who returned.
Footnote 68:
The sugar-cane is propagated from the stalks; the stalks from one acre
being enough to plant four. They will then remain productive for three
years; after which they must be replanted. In the warmer climate and
dryer soil of Cuba, they last for ten years. Hence the advantage Cuban
planters have in the sugar-culture. In Louisiana it is only an exotic,
and but for the protection of a high tariff, would perish.