A Cotton Plantation—Work, Workmen, Wages, Expenses and Returns.
A few days afterward I embarked again upon a Mississippi packet, at New
Orleans, to make a visit to some noted cotton plantations near Natchez.
A good steamboat should make the trip in about thirty hours; but the
packets lengthen the time one-half by their frequent stoppages. Every
few miles we ran into shore, the gang-plank was thrown out, and
half-a-dozen barrels of pork, or double as many of flour, or a few bales
of hay were rolled off. So wedded are most of the old residents to their
old ways of doing business, that they see all these supplies steadily
carried past their doors by the “up-river boats,” but wait until they
reach New Orleans, pass through the hands of their old commission
merchant, and thus return with double freights and double commissions,
to be landed at the very places they passed the week before. Ask one why
he does not buy above, and have the goods shipped direct to his
plantation, and he will reply that Mr. So-and-so, in New Orleans, has
sold all his cotton or sugar, and purchased all his supplies for the
last ten or twenty years, and he doesn’t want to be bothered making a
change.
Among the passengers was a short, florid-faced, red-whiskered gentleman,
with an empty coat-sleeve, who seemed a general favorite. “Poor fellow,”
said one, as he passed near, “the war pretty much broke him, I guess.”
“Broke _him_! well, now, you just go below and look at the seventy-five
mules he’s got on board, bought in New Orleans for his plantations, at
two hundred dollars a head, cash, and see whether you think he’s broke.”
“I’m mighty glad he’s got his property back,” said another. “He owns
three of the finest plantations in Louisiana; and one good crop will put
him all right again, and let him go into politics if he wants to.”
All shared in the expressions of good will, and it was evident that the
red-faced, one-armed little gentleman was a popular favorite. It was
General Yorke, late of the Rebel army, scarred with three wounds, and
back among those for whom he had unsuccessfully fought. At Monocacy he
led the final charge which swept back Lew Wallace’s forces and opened
the way for Ewell and Breckinridge to the Capital. At Spottsylvania a
bullet struck him in the head; in another Virginia battle he was wounded
in the shoulder; from several he came out with clothes riddled with
bullets and all his horses shot under him; at last, in the Wilderness,
his arm was carried away.
It was common at the North to regard such men as the leading criminals
of the rebellion, but I would rather trust General Yorke in Congress,
unpardoned Rebel as he is, than a single one of the pardoned Congressmen
elect from Mississippi or Louisiana.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he exclaimed, impetuously,
to some one who was haranguing against the tyranny and cruelty of the
government; “I tell you, sir, you have got and I have got the most
merciful government in the world. What’s the use of our trying to
disguise the facts? We attempted to destroy the government and failed;
any other would have hung me for my share in the matter; and would have
had a perfect right to do it. I consider myself a standing proof of the
mercy of my government. It confiscated my property, while I was gone,
fighting against it. I don’t complain; it did perfectly right. Since
then I’ve got my property back; a thing I had no right to expect; and
I’m very grateful for it. I only want a chance to prove my gratitude. If
we get into a war about this Mexican business, I’ll try to show the
government how I appreciate its generosity to me.”
Very few of his hearers seemed to like the General’s views—much as they
all admired him personally. To them it seemed a very great outrage that
while he was losing his arm under Lee, in the Wilderness, government
lessees should have been cultivating his splendid cotton plantations,
within the national lines, at Natchez. What business had government to
be interfering with the rights of property?
Some one said the war wasn’t over yet. “Isn’t it?” said the General.
“Well, may be _you_ havn’t had enough of it. But I tell you, the men
that did the fighting have. What’s more, they are satisfied to quit and
to take things as they can get them. More still, I don’t know of anybody
that isn’t satisfied to quit, except the stay-at-home sneaks that have
never yet made a beginning. You’re very full of fight now, all of a
sudden, when it isn’t needed. Why didn’t you show some of it when we
wanted you in the trenches at Richmond?”
Yet the General was as firm a believer in the right of secession as
ever: “I have my own views as to the constitutionality and rightfulness
of our course; I thought our cause just, and I did all I could to make
it successful. But we were beaten, badly beaten. Some of those fellows
that have been hanging around Natchez, or making money out of army
contracts, may not be subjugated, but I am. And now, having submitted, I
do it in good faith. What difference does it make now about our beliefs
and our arguments in favor of secession? All that has been settled
against us in the court to which we appealed; we have submitted to the
verdict; and, as honorable men, we have no right to revive the
controversy.”
The General assured me that his negroes were working well; and that he
had not experienced the slightest difficulty in getting all the labor he
wanted. “My people all knew well enough that I had been a kind master to
them before the war; and you couldn’t have hired any considerable number
of them to leave me. Why, when I came back here to White-Hall,[69] from
the army, it was a perfect jubilee. They picked me up and carried me
into the house on their shoulders, and God-blessed me, and tanked de
Lo’d for me, till I thought they were never going to get through.”
All this, as I had subsequent occasion to learn from numerous sources,
was but a moderate statement of the facts. His old slaves had unlimited
faith in him; his plantations had all the labor they needed; and the
work on them was as well advanced as on any along the river.
* * * * *
At last our boat reached Natchez, having consumed over forty-eight hours
in traveling the two-hundred and seventy-five miles from New Orleans.
High bluffs rose above us, and perched upon them could be seen the roofs
and steeples of an important little inland town. Between the river and
bluff was crowded the most miserable, straggling, shabby-looking village
imaginable. This was what is left of Natchez-under-the-hill. Once fine
rows of brick warehouses lined the banks; but the steady encroachments
of the river undermined their foundations, and one after another
disappeared. Thirty or forty feet from the water’s edge a large deserted
building still stood, with one corner of the wall washed away by the
“last high water,” and the rest of it tottering, to fall with the next.
Negroes filled the nasty little shops, where tobacco, whisky, sardines,
calicoes, and head-handkerchiefs were displayed. The street was full of
dirty idlers, and the whole appearance of the place was unprepossessing
in the extreme. Up the river a saw-mill and lumber-yard shut in the
view.
Altogether, it was about the most unlikely place imaginable in which to
look for any display of art or appreciation of natural beauties. But,
the day after my arrival, a citizen, to whom I had brought letters of
introduction, taught me how to find a rare gem in this shabbiest of
settings. Driving past the saw-mill, we approached the residence of the
sawyer, nestled close, as it seemed, under the bluff, which, a few yards
further up, jutted out against the river. Passing from the lumber-yard
and the whisky shops, we entered, as my enthusiastic companion said,
“the garden of Eden.” Hedges of the most beautiful flowering shrubs led
up to the airy, many-galleried house. Graveled walks led off on either
hand to pleasant summer-houses, covered with vines, and bordered with
the rarest exotics. Great mounds, covered with shrubs and flowers, stood
sentry on either side the gate. The air was heavy with perfumes, and
vocal with the music of the full-throated little songsters that flitted
about among the branches. Citizens of Natchez boast that the sawyer’s
garden is the finest in the South. They might enlarge their boast, by a
little modification, and safely pronounce it the most surprising one on
the continent.
Natchez-on-the-hill, (to which passengers from the boats ascend by a
long carriage-way, cut out of the perpendicular face of the bluff,)
would be called, at the North, a flourishing county-town; dusty, and by
no means specially attractive. But it is the aristocratic center of the
lower Mississippi Valley cotton-planting interests. Before the war, it
was regarded as a most desirable residence, and wealthy Southerners
sought plantations within a range of thirty or forty miles up or down
the river, in order to be able to fix their own residences at Natchez.
Few resided on their plantations; many owned several—in some cases as
high as eight or nine—the smallest rarely, if ever, falling below a
thousand acres in extent. These lands were all of the richest alluvial
soil; and, before the war, were worth, after being cleared, from sixty
to a hundred dollars per acre. Recent sales had been made at about forty
dollars, but the leases were all disproportionately high. I heard of
cases in which thirty thousand dollars had been paid in cash, and in
advance, for one year’s lease of fourteen hundred acres. This, however,
was probably the highest lease paid along the river. Fifteen thousand
dollars seemed a common rent for a thousand acres of good land, with the
use of agricultural implements, gin, and saw and grist-mills. It was
always, however, an important consideration that the former slaves
should all be on the plantation. Here, as elsewhere, labor was the great
desideratum. That secured, speculators were ready to pay almost any
price for the use of the land.
Around Natchez is a beautiful rolling country, abounding in park-like
scenery. Showy, and, in some cases, elegant residences crown the little
knolls; and the country, for several miles back into Mississippi, wears
an air of wealth and comfort. On the opposite side of the river are “the
swamps.” But the swamps are the gold mines; it is only those who draw
their support from the rich, low lands of the neighboring parishes of
Louisiana who can afford the display that crowns the hills about
Natchez.
* * * * *
Buildings in Natchez, which the Government had seized, were being
restored to their former owners. Business had revived. Northern men had
established themselves as commission merchants and dealers in plantation
supplies, and were infusing new energy into the town. They said they had
all the business they could do, made no complaints of hostility from the
people, and said they believed it would be better for all parties if the
troops were removed. So far as they were themselves concerned, at any
rate, they professed that they would not have the slightest
apprehension.
Many of the small planters in the interior (hill country) of
Mississippi, who used Natchez as their base of supplies, were anxious
for assistance from capital, from whatever source it might come. Some
had supplies enough to carry them through till their cotton should be
half made. Then they wanted to borrow money enough to last till they
could begin to receive returns from their crops, and were willing to pay
such extravagant rates as two and even two and a half per cent. per
month for it.
“Cotton square” was crowded with ox-teams from these hill plantations.
Each brought in two or three bales of cotton, and returned with pork,
meal, and molasses to support the negroes. The planters themselves,
rough, hairy, wild-looking men, wearing homespun, bargained in the
shops, where they sold their cotton, for Calhoun plows, harness, drills,
and denims for the “niggers,” and an occasional article for themselves.
The whole scene was primitive, and rude in the extreme; yet these
tobacco-chewing, muddy-footed men from the hills were among the best
customers the Natchez merchants had. They were nearly all small
planters, working from six to thirty, or even forty hands, raising from
fifty to three hundred bales of cotton, and handling more money in a
year than half-a-dozen Northern farmers, each of whom would have his
daily newspaper, a piano in the house, daughters at the nearest “Female
Seminary,” and sons at college.
* * * * *
A steam ferry-boat sets passengers, once an hour, across the
Mississippi, from Natchez-under-the-hill. A pleasant drive for a few
miles down the levee, (passing but two plantations on the way—one to a
mile of river front is a small allowance here,) brought me to the
plantations I had come to visit. They lay beside each other, and
belonged to the same man; but each had its separate set of quarters and
gang of negroes, and the work on each had always been kept distinct. The
levee formed the boundary of their arable land. Outside this were two or
three hundred acres, thickly set in Bermuda grass,[70] and fringed with
a dense growth of young willows. This was covered with water when the
Mississippi rose to its highest point, but at all other seasons it
furnished pasturage for the mules and other stock of the plantations. A
negro on each, enjoying the title and dignity of “stock-minder,” was
charged with the duty of “carrying out,” daily, all the stock not in
use, and herding it on this open common.
A lane led down between an old gin-house on one hand, and an old stable
on the other, to the broad-porched, many-windowed, one-story “mansion.”
China and pecan trees surrounded it. On one hand was a garden, several
acres in extent, to which the labors of two negroes were steadily
devoted; and on the other were the quarters—a double-row of frame,
one-story houses, fronting each other, each with two rooms, and a
projecting roof, with posts, shutting in an earthen porch floor. Down
the middle of the street were two or three brick cisterns; at the foot
of it stood the church. Back of each cabin was a little garden,
jealously fenced off from all the rest with the roughest of cypress
pickets, and carefully fastened with an enormous padlock. “Niggers never
trust one another about their gardens or hen-houses,” explained the
overseer.
Back of the house and quarters stretched a broad expanse of level land,
gently sloping down to the cypress swamp, which, a mile and a half in
the rear, shut in the view. Not a stump, tree, or fence broke the smooth
monotony of the surface; but half-a-dozen wide, open ditches led
straight to the swamp; and were crossed at no less than seven places by
back levees, each a little higher than the one beyond it. The lands were
entirely above overflow from the Mississippi in their front; but the
back-water from the swamp, when swelled by the overflows from crevasses
above, almost every year crept up on the land nearest the swamp—coming
sometimes before the planting had begun; sometimes not till the first of
June. Then began the “fight with the water,” as the planters quaintly
called it. An effort was made to “catch it at the back levee.” Failing
in this, the negro forces retreated to the next levee, a hundred and
fifty yards further up; closed the leading ditches, and went to work
trying to raise this levee to a hight sufficient to check the sluggish,
scarcely moving, muddy sheet of water that, inch by inch, and day by
day, crept nearer to it. The year before they had failed here, and at
every levee till they came to the one nearest the river. On the two
plantations, out of twelve or fourteen hundred acres of cotton land,
they saved less than three hundred. The rest was planted in the ooze, as
the waters receded, late in June; the negroes following close behind,
men and women knee-deep in the alluvial mud, drilling in the
cotton-seed, and covering it by rubbing along the row the flat sides of
their hoes. “Ten or twelve barrels of whisky got it done,” the overseer
explained. But the crop, like all late ones in this region, was attacked
by the worms; the grass got ahead of the plows, and less than a quarter
of a bale to the acre was realized on lands that had been made to
produce a bale and a half.
Along the inner levee, at which the water had been finally “caught,” led
a fine, beaten wagon-road down to the quarters on the other plantation.
These differed in no way from those already described, except that they
were less regularly arranged. Instead of a “mansion,” there was at the
front only a double cabin, which in old times served as the overseer’s
house. Now both plantations were managed by the same overseer; and at
this lower place were eighty-five field negroes, besides children and
old people, without a white man nearer to them than at the house on the
upper place, a mile off. “They get along nearly as well as if they were
watched,” said the overseer. “We have about as much trouble at the upper
place as here.”
By the inner levee were, at points about three-quarters of a mile apart,
the ruins of the two steams-gins that had once been the pride of the
plantations. The boilers were still in their places; and fragments of
the engines and machinery strewed the ground for many yards in each
direction. One was lost by the carelessness of an unaccustomed negro
engineer; the other had been destroyed by the guerrillas. From this
point, for a distance of thirty miles down the river, nearly all the
steam-gins were burnt. The guerrillas were determined, they said, that
the Yankees, or men that would stay at home and be friendly with the
Yankees, shouldn’t make money out of them. A few had been rebuilt; but,
in most cases, the planters were relying upon clumsy horse-power
arrangements for ginning out the next crop.
* * * * *
We rode out to see the negroes at work. They were back half-way between
the river and the swamp. Two gangs made up the working force on each
plantation; and each was under its own negro-driver, who rode about on
his horse and occasionally gave sharp, abrupt directions.
The plow-gang, containing fifteen plows, each drawn by a pair of scrawny
mules, with corn-husk collars, gunny-bag back-bands, and bed-cord
plow-lines, was moving across the land, after a fashion which would have
broken the heart of a Northern farmer, at the rate of about eighteen
acres a day. They had been at work since the middle of January, and
would continue plowing, without interruption, till the first of April,
by which time they hoped to reach the swamp. The land was plowed in
beds; each occupying about five feet. Each plowman started down, what
had been the “middle,” between last year’s cotton rows; returning, he
threw another furrow up to meet the one he had turned going down. Two
more furrows were then thrown on each side, and the bed was completed,
ready for planting. On one of the plantations, however, they were only
“four-furrowing” the land; i. e., throwing up two furrows on each side,
but leaving the middles still unbroken. “If we done gits behine, we’s
plant on dem beds, and knock de middles out afterwards;” so the
plow-driver answered my question about his object for leaving part of
the work undone. Two or three women were plowing, and were said to be
among the best hands in the gang.
A quarter of a mile ahead of the plows a picturesque sight presented
itself. Fifty women and children, with only a few weakly men among them,
were scattered along the old cotton rows, chopping up weeds, gathering
together the trash that covered the land, firing little heaps of it,
singing an occasional snatch of some camp-meeting hymn, and keeping up
an incessant chatter. “Gib me some ’backey please;” was the first
salutation as the overseer rode among them. These were the “trash-gang.”
After the cotton is planted, they become the hoe-gang, following the
plows, thinning out the cotton, and cutting down the grass and weeds
which the plows can not reach. Most of them were dressed in a stout blue
cottonade; the skirts drawn up till they scarcely reached below the
knee, and reefed in a loose bunch about the waist; heavy brogans of
incredible sizes on their feet, and gay-checkered handkerchiefs wound
about their heads. As evening approached the work moved more slowly, and
the sharp remonstrances of the energetic driver grew more frequent and
personal. The moment the sun disappeared every hoe was shouldered. Some
took up from the levee, where they had been lying through the heat of
the day, army blouses or stout men’s overcoats and drew them on;[71]
others gathered fragments of bark or dry lightwood to kindle their
evening fires and balanced them nicely on their heads. In a moment the
whole noisy row was filing across the field toward the quarters, joining
the plow-gang, pleading for rides on the mules, and looking as much like
a caravan crossing the desert as a party of weary farm-laborers.
The drivers were all comparatively intelligent men, and they occupied
positions of considerable responsibility. Each plow-driver had charge of
about thirty-five mules, was required to see that these were properly
fed, to prescribe for them when sick, and to decide when they were too
tired to work and must be replaced by fresh ones. It was his duty to
have his plowmen out by sunrise, keep them steadily at work, to change
them from part to part of the land to find that in the best condition
for plowing at that particular time; to have broken plows repaired at
the plantation blacksmith shop; and, in general, to get as much plowing
done and in as good style as possible. The “hoe-drivers” had larger
numbers under their command and more troublesome material to deal with.
“Dem women done been a squabblin’ ’mong deirselves dis afternoon, so I’s
harly git any wuck at all out ob ’em.” “Dem sucklers ain’t jus wuf
nuffin at all. ’Bout eight o’clock dey goes off to de quarters, to deir
babies, an’ I don’ nebber see nuffin mo’ ob ’em till ’bout eleben. Den
de same way in afternoon, till I’s sick ob de hull lot.” “De ’moody
(Bermuda) mighty tough ’long heah, an’ I couldn’t make dem women put in
deir hoes to suit me.” “Fanny an’ Milly done got sick to-day; an’
Sallie’s heerd dat her husban’s mustered out ob de army, an’ she gone up
to Natchez to fine him.”
* * * * *
On each plantation, as soon as the people reached the quarters, the
hoe-drivers began giving out their tickets. Each hand received a white
ticket for a full day’s work, or a red one for half a day. These they
preserved till the end of the month, when they were paid only for the
number presented. Under this arrangement the overseer said he had very
few sick people on the plantations. Sometimes in fact they went to the
fields when really too sick to work, lest they should lose their wages
for the day. In unpleasant weather too, when the ground was a little
muddy, or when a fine mist was falling, they were far less anxious to
quit work than formerly.
The tickets distributed, the women were soon busy in the quarters
getting supper. Meantime the plow-gang had gathered about the entrance
to the overseer’s part of the house. He’d done promised dem a drink o’
whisky, if dey’d finish dat cut, an’ dey’d done it. The whisky was soon
forthcoming, well-watered. The most drank it down at a gulp, from the
glass into which the overseer poured it; others, as their turns came,
passed up tin cups to receive their allowance, and went off boasting
about “de splennid toddy we’s hab to-night.” Then came a little trade at
the store. Some wanted a pound or two of sugar; others a paper of
needles or a bar of soap, or “two bits worth o’ candy.” Some had money;
other offered in payment their tickets, just received; which were taken
at their face value. In an hour the trade was all over and the quarters
were as silent as a church-yard.
* * * * *
Next morning at four o’clock I was waked by the shrill “Driber’s Horn.”
In a couple of hours it was blown again; and looking from the window,
just as the first rays of the sun came across the level field, I saw the
women filing out, and the plowmen slowly strolling down to the stables,
each with his harness in his hand.[72] At twelve the horn blew again,
and they came in; at half-past one again, and from then until sunset
they were in the field.
The overseer said he “couldn’t get as many hours of work out of ’em” as
in old times; nor was he quite sure that they worked as well during the
shorter time they were at it. Still he had never heard of gangs of white
laborers of equal size, in which better or more cheerful work was done.
On the whole, he was perfectly satisfied with the free-labor system;
and, if the water only kept away, was sure of making a hundred thousand
dollars net profit this year for the proprietors.
* * * * *
On the two plantations there were one hundred and seventy-six laborers
on the pay-roll. The first-class men were paid fifteen dollars per
month, first-class women ten dollars, and drivers forty dollars. The
wages for the entire number averaged between ten and eleven dollars per
month. They were furnished a weekly ration, for each laborer, consisting
of
4 pounds mess pork.
1 peck corn-meal, or
8 pounds flour.
1 pint molasses.
2 ounces salt.
Each family, in addition, had its garden and poultry; and they were
always paid for Saturday afternoons, but were given the time for their
own work.
The expenses on these plantations for the year could be quite accurately
calculated. The items would stand nearly or quite as follows:
60 mules @ (average) $180 $10,800
175 hands @ $10. pr. month,[73] wages 21,000
SUPPLIES.
Pork, 182 bbls. @ $29 $5,278
Meal,[74] 442 bbls. @ $5 2,210
Molasses, 1,137 gallons @ 70c 790 8,284
Corn for mules, 5,400 bushels @ $1 5,400
Hay for mules, 100 tons @ $30 3,000
Incidentals 3,000
———————
$51,484
Economical management and the personal supervision of an interested
party might undoubtedly reduce these expenses at least ten per cent.,
but under the loose expenditures of overseers the calculation was none
too large. The amount would still be swelled by at least twenty thousand
dollars for rent, and two thousand as wages of the overseer, so that the
expenses of conducting the plantations for a year might be pretty
accurately set down in round numbers at seventy thousand dollars.
With a good season and without overflow, the yield ought to be twelve
hundred bales of cotton, worth, say, a hundred dollars per bale. Taking
all the risks, therefore, and using this heavy capital, the proprietors
were likely, under the most favorable circumstances, to have, at the end
of the year, fifty thousand dollars and sixty mules, as their net
profit. On other plantations, where they paid less exorbitant rents,
they anticipated, of course, larger returns.
-----
Footnote 69:
The name of one of his plantations, only three miles from Natchez,
fronting on the Mississippi. It contains seventeen hundred acres of
open land, besides a pecan grove and an enormous tract of cypress.
Footnote 70:
An admirable pasture grass, flourishing only in warm climates and free
from shade. It was first introduced into Louisiana as a protection for
the levees, its thick mat of roots preventing the high water from
washing away the base of the levee; but it spread rapidly over the
adjacent cotton lands, and thus became one of the greatest pests to
the planters, who find it almost impossible to exterminate it.
Footnote 71:
Nearly all the women on plantations have a great fancy for thus
arraying themselves in their husband’s coats. Not a few also adopt the
pantaloons, half concealing them with the scant cotton skirt.
Footnote 72:
They even steal one another’s corn-husk collars; and so every plowman
carries home his harness at night and locks it up in his cabin.
Footnote 73:
The lost time would more than bring it down to this average.
Footnote 74:
They mostly took meal, of choice, and to simplify the calculation it
alone is counted.