THE EXCEPTIONAL LARGE PLANTERS.
_Feliciana._[12]—A deep notch of sadness marks in my memory the morning
of the May day on which I rode out of the chattering little town of
Bayou Sara, and I recollect little of its immediate suburbs but the
sympathetic cloud-shadows slowly going before me over the hill of St.
Francis. At the top is an old French hamlet.
One from among the gloomy, staring loungers at the door of the tavern,
as I pass, throws himself upon a horse, and overtaking me, checks his
pace to keep by my side. I turn towards him, and being full of aversion
for the companionship of a stranger, nod, in such a manner as to say,
“Your equaility is acknowledged; go on.” Not a nod; not the slightest
deflection of a single line in the austere countenance; not a ripple of
radiance in the sullen eyes, which wander slowly over, and, at distinct
intervals, examine my horse, my saddle-bags, my spurs, lariat, gloves,
finally my face, with such stern deliberation that, at last, I should
not be sorry if he would speak. But he does not; does not make the
smallest response to the further turning of my head, which acknowledges
the reflex interest in my own mind; his eyes rest as fixedly upon me as
if they were a dead man’s. I can, at length, no longer endure this in
silence, so I ask, in a voice attuned to his apparent humour—
“How far to Woodville?”
The only reply is a slight grunt, with an elevation of the chin.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Never been there.”
“No.”
“I can ride there before night, I suppose?”
No reply.
“ood walker, your horse?”
Not a nod.
“I thought mine pretty good.”
Not a sneer, or a gleam of vanity, and Belshazzar and I warmed up
together. Scott’s man of leather occurred to my mind, and I felt sure
that I could guess my man’s chord. Cotton! I touched it, and in a
moment he became animated, civil; hospitable even. I was immediately
informed that this was a famous cotton region: “when it was first
settled up by ’Mericans, used to be reckoned the gardying of the world.
The almightiest rich sile God Almighty ever shuck down. All on’t owned
by big-bugs.” Finally he confided to me that he was an overseer for
one of them, “one of the biggest sort.” This greatest of the local
hemipteras was not now on his plantation, but had “gone North to Paris
or Saratogy, or some of them places.”
Wearing no waistcoat, the overseer carried a pistol, without a thought
of concealment, in the fob of his trousers. The distance to Woodville,
which, after he had exhausted his subject of cotton, I tried again
to ascertain, he did not know, and would not attempt to guess. The
ignorance of the more brutalized slaves is often described by saying
of them that they cannot count above twenty. I find many of the whites
but little more intelligent. At all events, it is rarely that you
meet, in the plantation districts, a man, whether white or black, who
can give you any clear information about the roads, or the distances
between places in his own vicinity. While in or near Bayou Sara and St.
Francisville, I asked, at different times, ten men, black and white,
the distance to Woodville (the next town to the northward on the map).
None answered with any appearance of certainty, and those who ventured
to give an opinion, differed in their estimates as much as ten miles.
I found the actual distance to be, I think, about twenty-four miles.
After riding by my side for a mile or two the overseer suddenly turned
off at a fork in the road, with hardly more ceremony than he had used
in joining me.
For some miles about St. Francisville the landscape has an open,
suburban character, with residences indicative of rapidly accumulating
wealth, and advancement in luxury, or careless expenditure, among the
proprietors. For twenty miles to the north of the town, there is on
both sides a succession of large sugar and cotton plantations. Much
land still remains uncultivated, however. The roadside fences are
generally hedges of roses—Cherokee and sweet brier. These are planted
first by the side of a common rail fence, which, while they are young,
supports them in the manner of a trellis; as they grow older they fall
each way, and mat together, finally forming a confused, sprawling,
slovenly thicket, often ten feet in breadth and four to six feet high.
Trumpet creepers, grape-vines, green-briers, and in very rich soil,
cane, grow up through the mat of roses, and add to its strength. It
is not as pretty as a more upright hedge, yet very agreeable, and, at
one or two points, where the road was narrow, deep, and lane like,
delightful memories of England were brought to mind.
There were frequent groves of magnolia grandiflora, large trees, and
every one in the glory of full blossom. The magnolia does not, however,
mass well, and the road-side woods were much finer, where the beech,
elm, and liquid amber formed the body, and the magnolias stood out
against them, magnificent chandeliers of fragrance. The large-leaved
magnolia, very beautiful at this season, was more rarely seen.
The soil seems generally rich, though much washed off the higher
ground. The ploughing is directed with some care not to favour this
process. Young pine trees, however, and other indications of rapid
impoverishment, are seen on many plantations.
The soil is a sandy loam, so friable that the negroes always working
in large gangs, superintended by a driver with a whip, continued their
hoeing in the midst of quite smart showers, and when the road had
become a poaching mud.
Only once did I see a gang which had been allowed to discontinue its
work on account of the rain. This was after a heavy thunder shower, and
the appearance of the negroes whom I met crossing the road in returning
to the field, from the gin-house to which they had retreated, was
remarkable. First came, led by an old driver carrying a whip, forty of
the largest and strongest women I ever saw together; they were all in
a simple uniform dress of a bluish check stuff, the skirts reaching
little below the knee; their legs and feet were bare; they carried
themselves loftily, each having a hoe over the shoulder, and walking
with a free, powerful swing. Behind them came the cavalry, thirty
strong, mostly men, but a few of them women, two of whom rode astride
on the plough mules. A lean and vigilant white overseer, on a brisk
pony, brought up the rear. The men wore small blue Scotch bonnets; many
of the women, handkerchiefs, turban fashion, and a few nothing at all
on their heads. They were evidently a picked lot. I thought that every
one would pass for a “prime” cotton hand.
The slaves generally of this district appear uncommonly well—doubtless,
chiefly, because the large incomes of their owners enables them to
select the best from the yearly exportations of Virginia and Kentucky,
but also because they are systematically well fed.
The plantation residences were of a cottage class, sometimes, but not
usually, with extensive and tasteful grounds about them.
An old gentleman, sensible, polite, and communicative, who rode
a short distance with me, said that many of the proprietors were
absentees—some of the plantations had dwellings only for the negroes
and the overseer. He called my attention to a field of cotton which,
he said, had been ruined by his overseer’s neglect. The negroes had
been allowed at a critical time to be careless in their hoeing, and it
would now be impossible to recover the ground then lost. Grass grew so
rampantly in this black soil, that if it once got a good start ahead,
you could never overtake it. That was the devil of a rainy season.
Cotton could stand drouth better than it could grass.[13]
The inclosures are not often of less area than a hundred acres. Fewer
than fifty negroes are seldom found on a plantation; many muster by the
hundred. In general the fields are remarkably free from weeds and well
tilled.
I arrived shortly after dusk at Woodville, a well-built and pleasant
court-town, with a small but pretentious hotel. Court was in
session, I fancy, for the house was filled with guests of somewhat
remarkable character. The landlord was inattentive, and, when followed
up, inclined to be uncivil. At the ordinary—supper and breakfast
alike—there were twelve men beside myself, all of them wearing black
cloth coats, black cravats, and satin or embroidered waistcoats; all,
too, sleek as if just from a hairdresser’s, and redolent of perfumes,
which really had the best of it with the exhalations of the kitchen.
Perhaps it was because I was not in the regulation dress that I found
no one ready to converse with me, and could obtain not the slightest
information about my road, even from the landlord.
I might have left Woodville with more respect for this decorum if I
had not, when shown by a servant to my room, found two beds in it,
each of which proved to be furnished with soiled sheets and greasy
pillows, nor was it without reiterated demands and liberal cash in hand
to the servant, that I succeeded in getting them changed on the one I
selected. A gentleman of embroidered waistcoat took the other bed as
it was, with no apparent reluctance, soon after I had effected my own
arrangements. One wash-bowl, and a towel which had already been used,
was expected to answer for both of us, and would have done so but that
I carried a private towel in my saddle-bags. Another requirement of a
civilized household was wanting, and its only substitute unavailable
with decency.
The bill was excessive, and the black ostler, who had left the mud of
yesterday hanging all along the inside of Belshazzar’s legs, and who
had put the saddle on so awkwardly that I resaddled him myself after he
had brought him to the door, grumbled, in presence of the landlord, at
the smallness of the gratuity which I saw fit to give him.
* * * * *
The country, for some distance north of Woodville, is the most
uneven, for a non-mountainous region, I ever saw. The road seems well
engineered, yet you are nearly all the time mounting or descending
the sides of protuberances or basins, ribs or dykes. In one place it
follows along the top of a crooked ridge, as steep-sided and regular
for nearly a quarter of a mile, as a high railroad embankment. A man
might jump off anywhere and land thirty feet below. The ground being
too rough here for cultivation, the dense native forest remains intact.
This ridge, a man told me, had been a famous place for robberies. It is
not far from the Mississippi bottoms.
“Thar couldn’t be,” said he, “a better location for a feller that
wanted to foller that business. There was one chap there a spell ago,
who built himself a cabin t’other side the river. He used to come over
in a dug-out. He could paddle his dug-out up the swamp, you see, to
within two mile of the ridge; then, when he stopped a man, he’d run
through the woods to his dug-out, and before the man could get help,
he’d be t’other side the Mississippi, a sittin’ in his housen as honest
as you be.”
The same man had another story of the ridge:-
“Mr. Allen up here caught a runaway once, and started to take him down
to Woodville to the jail. He put him in irons and carried him along in
his waggin. The nigger was peaceable and submissive till they got along
onto that yer ridge place. When they got thar, all of a sudden he gin
a whop like, and over he went twenty foot plum down the side of the
ridge. ’Fore Allen could stop his hoss he’d tumbled and rolled himself
’way out of sight. He started right away arter him, but he never
cotched a sight on him again.”
Not far north of the ridge, plantations are found again, though the
character of the surface changes but little. The hill-sides are
carefully ploughed so that each furrow forms a contour line. After the
first ploughing the same lines are followed in subsequent cultivation,
year in and year out, as long as enough soil remains to grow cotton
upon with profit. On the hills recently brought into cultivation,
broad, serpentine ditches, having a fall of from two to four inches
in a rod, have been frequently constructed: these are intended to
prevent the formation of gullies leading more directly down the hill
during heavy rains. But all these precautions are not fully successful,
the cultivated hills, in spite of them, losing soil every year in a
melancholy manner.
I passed during the day four or five large plantations, the hill-sides
worn, cleft, and channelled like icebergs; stables and negro quarters
all abandoned, and everything given up to nature and decay.
In its natural state the virgin soil appears the richest I have ever
seen, the growth upon it from weeds to trees being invariably rank and
rich in colour. At first it is expected to bear a bale and a half of
cotton to the acre, making eight or ten bales for each able field-hand.
But from the cause described its productiveness rapidly decreases.
Originally, much of this country was covered by a natural growth of
cane, and by various nutritious grasses. A good northern farmer would
deem it a crying shame and sin to attempt to grow any crops upon such
steep slopes, except grasses or shrubs which do not require tillage.
The waste of soil which attends the practice is much greater than it
would be at the North, and, notwithstanding the unappeasable demand
of the world for cotton, its bad economy, considering the subject
nationally, cannot be doubted.
If these slopes were thrown into permanent terraces, with turfed or
stone-faced escarpments, the fertility of the soil might be preserved,
even with constant tillage. In this way the hills would continue for
ages to produce annual crops of greater value than those which are
at present obtained from them at such destructive expense—from ten
to twenty crops of cotton rendering them absolute deserts. But with
negroes at fourteen hundred dollars a head, and fresh land in Texas
at half a dollar an acre, nothing of this sort can be thought of. The
time will probably come when the soil now washing into the adjoining
swamps will be brought back by our descendants, perhaps on their heads,
in pots and baskets, in the manner Huc describes in China,—and which
may be seen also in the Rhenish vineyards,—to be relaid on these sunny
slopes, to grow the luxurious cotton in.
The plantations are all large, but, except in their size and rather
unusually good tillage, display few signs of wealthy proprietorship.
The greater number have but small and mean residences upon them. No
poor white people live upon the road, nor in all this country of rich
soils are they seen, except _en voyage_. In a distance of seventy-five
miles I saw no houses without negro-cabins attached, and I calculated
that there were fifty slaves, on an average, to every white family
resident in the country under my view. (There is a small sandy region
about Woodville, which I passed through after nightfall, and which, of
course, my note does not include.)
I called in the afternoon, at a house, almost the only one I had seen
during the day which did not appear to be the residence of a planter or
overseer, to obtain lodging. No one was at home but a negro woman and
children. The woman said that her master never took in strangers; there
was a man a few miles further on who did; it was the only place she
knew at which I was likely to “get in.”
I found the place: probably the proprietor was the poorest white man
whose house I had passed during the day, but he had several slaves; one
of them, at least, a very superior man, worth fully $2,000.
Just before me, another traveller, a Mr. S., from beyond Natchez, had
arrived. Learning that I was from Texas, he immediately addressed me
with volubility.
“Ah! then you can tell us something about it, and I would be obliged
to you if you would. Been out west about Antonio? Ranchering’s a good
business, eh, out west there? Isn’t it? Make thirty per cent. by it,
eh? I hear so. Should think that would be a good business. How much
capital ought a man to have to go into ranchering, good, eh? So as to
make it a good business?”
He was a middle-aged, well-dressed man, devouring tobacco prodigiously;
nervous and wavering in his manner; asking questions, a dozen at a
breath, and paying no heed to the answers. He owned a plantation in the
bottoms, and another on the upland; the latter was getting worn out, it
was too unhealthy for him to live in the bottoms, and so, as he said,
he had had “a good notion to go into ranchering. Just for ease and
pleasure.”
“Fact is, though, I’ve got a family, and this is no country for
children to be raised in. All the children get such foolish notions.
I don’t want my children to be brought up here. Ruins everybody. Does
sir, sure. Spoils ’em. Too bad. ’Tis so. Too bad. Can’t make anything
of children here, sir. Can’t sir. Fact.”
He had been nearly persuaded to purchase a large tract of land at
a point upon a certain creek where, he had been told, was a large
court-house, an excellent school, etc. The waters of the creek he
named are brackish, the neighbouring country is a desert, and the
only inhabitants, savages. Some knavish speculator had nearly got a
customer, but could not quite prevail on him to purchase until he
examined the country personally, which it was his intention soon to do.
He gave me no time to tell him how false was the account he had had,
but went on, after describing its beauties and advantages—
“But negro property isn’t very secure there, I’m told. How is’t? Know?”
“Not at all secure, sir; if it is disposed to go, it will go: the only
way you could keep it would be to make it always contented to remain.
The road would always be open to Mexico; it would go when it liked.”
“So I hear. Only way is, to have young ones there and keep their
mothers here, eh? Negroes have such attachments, you know. Don’t you
think that would fix ’em, eh? No? No, I suppose not. If they got mad at
anything, they’d forget their mothers, eh? Yes, I suppose they would.
Can’t depend on niggers. But I reckon they’d come back. Only to be
worse off in Mexico—eh?”
“Nothing but——”
“Being free, eh? Get tired of that, I should think. Nobody to take
care of them. No, I suppose not. Learn to take care of themselves.”
Then he turned to our host and began to ask him about his neighbours,
many of whom he had known when he was a boy, and been at school with.
A sorry account he got of most. Generally they had run through their
property; their lands had passed into new hands; their negroes had
been disposed of; two were now, he thought, “strikers” for gamblers in
Natchez.
“What is a striker?” I asked the landlord at the first opportunity.
“Oh! to rope in fat fellows for the gamblers; they don’t do that
themselves, but get somebody else. I don’t know as it is so; all I
know is, they don’t have no business, not till late at night; they
never stir out till late at night, and nobody knows how they live, and
that’s what I expect they do. Fellows that come into town flush, you
know—sold out their cotton and are flush—they always think they must
see everything, and try their hands at everything—they get hold of ’em
and bring ’em in to the gamblers, and get ’em tight for ’em, you know.”
“How’s —— got along since his father died?” asked Mr. S.
“Well, ——’s been unfortunate. Got mad with his overseer; thought he was
lazy and packed him off; then he undertook to oversee for himself, and
he was unfortunate. Had two bad crops. Finally the sheriff took about
half his niggers. He tried to work the plantation with the rest, but
they was old, used-up hands, and he got mad that they would not work
more, and tired o’ seein’ ’em, and ’fore the end of the year he sold
’em all.”
Another young man, whom he inquired about, had had his property
managed for him by a relative till he came of age, and had been sent
North to college. When he returned and got into his own hands, the
first year he ran it in debt $16,000. The income from it being greatly
reduced under his management, he had put it back in the care of his
relative, but continued to live upon it. “I see,” continued our host,
“every time any of their teams pass from town they fetch a barrel or
a demijohn. There is a parcel of fellows, who, when they can’t liquor
anywhere else, always go to him.”
“But how did he manage to spend so much,” I inquired, “the first year
after his return, as you said,—in gambling?”
“Well, he gambled some, and run horses. He don’t know anything about a
horse, and, of course, he thinks he knows everything. Those fellows up
at Natchez would sell him any kind of a tacky for four or five hundred
dollars, and then after he’d had him a month, they’d ride out another
and make a bet of five or six hundred dollars they’d beat him. Then
he’d run with ’em, and of course he’d lose it.”
“But sixteen thousand dollars is a large sum of money to be worked off
even in that way in a year,” I observed.
“Oh, he had plenty of other ways. He’d go into a bar-room, and get
tight and commence to break things. They’d let him go on, and the next
morning hand him a bill for a hundred dollars. He thinks that’s a smart
thing, and just laughs and pays it, and then treats all around again.”
By one and the other, many stories were then told of similar follies of
young men. Among the rest, this:—
A certain man had, as was said to be the custom when running for
office, given an order at a grocery for all to be “treated” who applied
in his name. The grocer, after the election, which resulted in the
defeat of the treater, presented what was thought an exorbitant bill.
He refused to pay it, and a lawsuit ensued. A gentleman in the witness
box being asked if he thought it possible for the whole number of
people taking part in the election to have consumed the quantity of
liquor alleged, answered—
“Moy Goad! Judge!” (reproachfully): “Yes, sir! Why, I’ve been charged
for a hundred and fifty drinks _’fore breakfast_, when I’ve stood
treat, and I never thought ’o disputin’ it.”
At supper, Mr. S., looking at the daughter of our host, said—
“What a pretty girl that is. My dear, do you find any schools to go to,
out here—eh? I reckon not. This isn’t the country for schools. There’ll
not be a school in Mississippi ’fore long, I reckon. Nothing but
Institutes, eh? Ha! ha! ha! Institutes, humph! Don’t believe there’s a
school between this and Natchez, is there?”
“No, sir.”
“Of course there isn’t.”[14]
“What sort of a country is it, then, between here and Natchez?” I
asked. “I should suppose it would be well settled.”
“Big plantations, sir. Nothing else. Aristocrats. Swell-heads, I
call them, sir. Nothing but swell-heads, and you can’t get a night’s
lodging, sir. Beyond the ferry, I’ll be bound, a man might die on
the road ’fore he’d get a lodging with one of them. Eh, Mr. N.? So,
isn’t it? ‘Take a stranger in, and I’ll clear you out!’ That’s the
rule. That’s what they tell their overseers, eh? Yes, sir; just so
inhospitable as that. Swell-heads! Swell-heads, sir. Every plantation.
Can’t get a meal of victuals or a night’s lodging from one of them, I
don’t suppose, not if your life depended on it. Can you, Mr. N.?”
“Well, I believe Mr. ——, his place is right on the road, and it’s half
way to the ferry, and I believe he tells his overseer if a man comes
and wants something to eat, he must give it to him, but he must not
take any pay for it, because strangers must have something to eat. They
start out of Natchez, thinking it’s as ’tis in other countries; that
there’s houses along, where they can get a meal, and so they don’t
provide for themselves, and when they get along about there, they are
sometimes desperate hungry. Had to be something done.”
“Do the planters not live themselves on their plantations?”
“Why, a good many of them has two or three plantations, but they don’t
often live on any of them.”
“Must have ice for their wine, you see,” said Mr. S., “or they’d die.
So they have to live in Natchez or New Orleans. A heap of them live in
New Orleans.”
“And in summer they go up into Kentucky, do they not? I’ve seen
country houses there which were said to belong to cotton-planters from
Mississippi.”
“No, sir. They go North. To New York, and Newport, and Saratoga, and
Cape May, and Seneca Lake. Somewhere that they can display themselves
more than they do here. Kentucky is no place for that. That’s the
sort of people, sir, all the way from here to Natchez. And all round
Natchez, too. And in all this section of country where there’s good
land. Good God! I wouldn’t have my children educated, sir, among them,
not to have them as rich as Dr. ——, every one of them. You can know
their children as far off as you can see them. Young swell-heads!
You’ll take note of ’em in Natchez. You can tell them by their walk. I
noticed it yesterday at the Mansion House. They sort o’ throw out their
legs as if they hadn’t got strength enough to lift ’em and put them
down in any particular place. They do want so bad to look as if they
weren’t made of the same clay as the rest of God’s creation.”
Some allowance is of course to be made for the splenetic temperament of
this gentleman, but facts evidently afford some justification of his
sarcasms. This is easily accounted for. The farce of the vulgar-rich
has its foundation in Mississippi, as in New York and in Manchester, in
the rapidity with which certain values have advanced, especially that
of cotton, and, simultaneously, that of cotton lands and negroes.[15]
Of course, there are men of refinement and cultivation among the rich
planters of Mississippi, and many highly estimable and intelligent
persons outside of the wealthy class, but the number of such is smaller
in proportion to that of the immoral, vulgar, and ignorant newly-rich,
than in any other part of the United States. And herein is a radical
difference between the social condition of this region and that of the
sea-board slave States, where there are fewer wealthy families, but
where among the few people of wealth, refinement and education are more
general.
I asked how rich the sort of men were of whom he spoke.
“Why, sir, from a hundred thousand to ten million.”
“Do you mean that between here and Natchez there are none worth less
than a hundred thousand dollars?”
“No, sir, not beyond the ferry. Why, any sort of a plantation is worth
a hundred thousand dollars. The niggers would sell for that.”
“How many negroes are there on these plantations?”
“From fifty to a hundred.”
“Never over one hundred?”
“No; when they’ve increased to a hundred they always divide them; stock
another plantation. There are sometimes three or four plantations
adjoining one another, with an overseer for each, belonging to the same
man. But that isn’t general. In general, they have to strike off for
new land.”
“How many acres will a hand tend here?”
“About fifteen—ten of cotton, and five of corn; some pretend to make
them tend twenty.”
“And what is the usual crop?”
“A bale and a half to the acre on fresh land and in the bottom. From
four to eight bales to a hand they generally get: sometimes ten and
better, when they are lucky.”
“A bale and a half on fresh land? How much on old?”
“Well, you can’t tell. Depends on how much it’s worn and what the
season is so much. Old land, after a while, isn’t worth bothering with.”
“Do most of these large planters who live so freely, anticipate their
crops as the sugar planters are said to—spend the money, I mean, before
the crop is sold?”
“Yes, sir, and three and four crops ahead generally.”
“Are most of them the sons of rich men? are they old estates?”
“No, sir; lots of them were overseers once.”
“Have you noticed whether it is a fact that these large properties
seldom continue long in the same family? Do the grandsons of wealthy
planters often become poor men?”
“Generally the sons do. Almost always their sons are fools, and soon go
through with it.”
“If they don’t kill themselves before their fathers die,” said the
other.
“Yes. They drink hard and gamble, and of course that brings them into
fights.”
This was while they were smoking on the gallery after supper. I walked
to the stable to see how my horse was provided for, and took my notes
of the conversation. When I returned they were talking of negroes who
had died of yellow fever while confined in the jail at Natchez. Two of
them were spoken of as having been thus “happily released,” being under
sentence of death, and unjustly so, in their opinion.
A man living in this vicinity having taken a runaway while the fever
was raging in the jail at Natchez, a physician advised him not to send
him there. He did not, and the negro escaped; was some time afterward
recaptured, and the owner having learned from him that he had been once
before taken and not detained according to law, he made a journey to
inquire into the matter, and was very angry. He said, “Whenever you
catch a nigger again, you send him to jail, no matter what’s to be
feared. If he dies in the jail, you are not responsible. You’ve done
your duty, and you can leave the rest to Providence.”
“That was right, too,” said Mr. P. “Yes, he ought to a’ minded the law.
Then if he’d died in jail, he’d know ’twasn’t his fault.”
Next morning, near the ferry house, I noticed a set of stocks, having
holes for the head as well as the ankles; they stood unsheltered and
unshaded in the open road.
I asked an old negro what it was.
“Dat ting, massa?” grinning; “well, sah, we calls dat a ting to put
black people, niggers, in, when dey misbehaves bad, and to put runaways
in, sah. Heaps o’ runaways, dis country, sah. Yes, sah, heaps on ’em
round here.”[16]
Mr. S. and I slept in the same room. I went to bed some time before
him; he sat up late, to smoke, he said. He woke me when he came
in, by his efforts to barricade the door with our rather limited
furniture. The room being small, and without a window, I expostulated.
He acknowledged it would probably make us rather too warm, but he
shouldn’t feel safe if the door were left open. “You don’t know,” said
he; “there may be runaways around.”
He then drew two small revolvers, hitherto concealed under his
clothing, and began to examine the caps. He was certainly a nervous
man, perhaps a madman. I suppose he saw some expression of this thought
in my face, for he said, placing them so they could be easily taken up
as he lay in bed, “Sometimes a man has a use for them when he least
expects it. There was a gentleman on this road a few days ago. He was
going to Natchez. He overtook a runaway, and he says to him, ‘Bad
company’s better’n none, boy, and I reckon I’ll keep you along with me
into Natchez.’ The nigger appeared to be pleased to have company, and
went along, talking with him, very well, till they came to a thicket
place, about six miles from Natchez. Then he told him he reckoned he
would not go any further with him. ‘What! you black rascal,’ says he;
‘you mean you won’t go in with me? You step out and go straight ahead,
and if you turn your face till you get into Natchez, I’ll shoot you.’
‘Aha! massa,’ says the nigger, mighty good-natured, ‘I reckon you ’aint
got no shootin’ irons;’ and he bolted off into the thicket, and got
away from him.”
At breakfast, Mr. S. came late. He bowed his head as he took his seat,
and closed his eyes for a second or two; then, withdrawing his quid of
tobacco and throwing it in the fireplace, he looked round with a smile,
and said:—
“I always think it a good plan to thank the Lord for His mercies. I’m
afraid some people’ll think I’m a member of the church. I aint, and
never was. Wish I was. I am a Son, though [of Temperance?] Give me
some water, girl. Coffee first. Never too soon for coffee. And never
too late, I say. Wait for anything but coffee. These swell-heads drink
their coffee after they’ve eaten all their dinner. I want it with
dinner, eh? Don’t nothing taste good without coffee, I reckon.”
Before he left, he invited me to visit his plantations, giving me
careful directions to find them, and saying that if he should not have
returned before I reached them, his wife and his overseer would give
me every attention if I would tell them he told me to visit them. He
said again, and in this connection, that he believed this was the
most inhospitable country in the world, and asked, “as I had been a
good deal of a traveller, didn’t I think so myself?” I answered that
my experience was much too small to permit me to form an opinion so
contrary to that generally held.
If they had a reputation for hospitality, he said, it could only be
among their own sort. They made great swell-head parties; and when they
were on their plantation places, they made it a point to have a great
deal of company; they would not have anything to do if they didn’t. But
they were all swell-heads, I might be sure; they’d never ask anybody
but a regular swell-head to see them.
His own family, however, seemed not to be excluded from the swell-head
society.
Among numerous anecdotes illustrative of the folly of his neighbours,
or his own prejudices and jealousy, I remember none which it would be
proper to publish but the following:-
“Do you remember a place you passed?” [describing the locality].
“Yes,” said I; “a pretty cottage with a large garden, with some statues
or vases in it.”
“I think it likely. Got a foreign gardener, I expect. That’s all the
fashion with them. A nigger isn’t good enough for them. Well, that
belongs to Mr. A. J. Clayborn.[?] He’s got to be a very rich man. I
suppose he’s got as many as five hundred people on all his places. He
went out to Europe a few years ago, and sometime after he came back,
he came up to Natchez. I was there with my wife at the same time, and
as she and Mrs. Clayborn came from the same section of country, and
used to know each other when they were girls, she thought she must
go and see her. Mrs. Clayborn could not talk about anything but the
great people they had seen in Europe. She was telling of some great
nobleman’s castle they went to, and the splendid park there was to it,
and how grandly they lived. For her part, she admired it so much, and
they made so many friends among the people of quality, she said, she
didn’t care if they always stayed there. In fact, she really wanted Mr.
Clayborn to buy one of the castles, and be a nobleman himself. ‘But he
wouldn’t,’ says she; ‘he’s such a strong Democrat, you know.’ Ha! ha!
ha! I wonder what old Tom Jeff. would have said to these swell-head
Democrats.”
I asked him if there were no poor people in this country. I could see
no houses which seemed to belong to poor people.
“Of course not, sir. Every inch of the land bought up by the
swell-heads on purpose to keep them away. But you go back on to the
pine ridge. Good Lord! I’ve heard a heap about the poor folks at the
North; but if you ever saw any poorer people than them, I should like
to know what they live on. Must be a miracle if they live at all. I
don’t see how these people live, and I’ve wondered how they do a great
many times. Don’t raise corn enough, great many of them, to keep a
shoat alive through the winter. There’s no way they can live, ’less
they steal.”
At the ferry of the Homochitto I fell in with a German, originally
from Dusseldorf, whence he came seventeen years ago, first to New
York; afterward he had resided successively in Baltimore, Cincinnati,
New Orleans, Pensacola, Mobile, and Natchez. By the time he reached
the last place he had lost all his money. Going to work as a labourer
in the town, he soon earned enough again to set him up as a trinket
peddler; and a few months afterward he was able to buy “a leetle
coach-dray.” Then, he said, he made money fast; for he would go back
into the country, among the poor people, and sell them trinkets, and
calico, and handkerchiefs, and patent medicines. They never had any
money. “All poor folks,” he said; “dam poor; got no money; oh no; but
I say, ’dat too bad, I don’t like to balk you, my frind; may be so,
you got some egg, some fedder, some cheeken, some rag, some sass, or
some skin vot you kill.’ I takes dem dings vot they’s got, and ven I
gets my load I cums to Natchez back and sells dem, alvays dwo or dree
times so much as dey coss me; and den I buys some more goots. Not bad
beesnes—no. Oh, dese poor people dey deenk me is von fool ven I buy
some dime deir rag vat dey bin vear; dey calls me de ole Dutch cuss.
But dey don’t know nottin’ vot it is vorth. I deenk dey neever see no
money; may be so dey geev all de cheeken vot they been got for a leetle
breaspin vot cost me not so much as von beet. Sometime dey be dam crazy
fool; dey know not how do make de count at all. Yees, I makes some
money, a heap.”
* * * * *
From the Homochitto to the suburbs of Natchez, a good half-day’s ride,
I found the country beautiful; fewer hills than before, the soil very
rich, and the land almost all inclosed in plantations, the roadside
boundaries of which are old rose-hedges. The road is well constructed,
and often, in passing through the hills, with high banks on each
side, coped with thick and dark, but free and sportive hedges, out of
which grow bending trees, brooding angle-like over the traveller, the
sentiment of the most charming Herefordshire lanes is reproduced. There
are also frequent oak-woods, the trees often of great height. Sometimes
these have been inclosed with neat palings, and slightly and tastefully
thinned out, so as to form noble grounds around the residences of
the planters, which are always very simple and unostentatious wooden
houses. Near two of these are unusually good ranges of negro-houses.
On many of the plantations, perhaps most, no residence is visible from
the road, and the negro quarters, when seen, are the usual comfortless
log-huts.
Within three miles of the town the country is entirely occupied by
houses and grounds of a villa character; the grounds usually paltry
with miniature terraces, and trees and shrubs planted and trimmed with
no regard to architectural or landscape considerations. There is,
however, an abundance of good trees, much beautiful shrubbery, and
the best hedges and screens of evergreen shrubs that I have seen in
America. The houses are cheap and shabby.
I was amused to recognize specimens of the “swell-head” fraternity,
described by my nervous friend, as soon as I got into the villa
district. First came two boys in a skeleton waggon, pitching along with
a racking pony, which ran over Jude; she yelped, I wheeled round, and
they pulled up and looked apologetic. She was only slightly hurt, but
thereafter gave a quicker and broader sheer to approaching vehicles
than her Texas experience had taught her to do.
Then came four youthful riders, and two old, roué-looking men, all upon
a match-trot; the young fellows screaming, breaking up, and swearing.
After them cantered a mulatto groom, white-gloved and neatly dressed,
who, I noticed, bowed politely, lifting his hat and smiling to a very
aged and ragged negro with a wheelbarrow and shovel, on the foot path.
Next came—and it was a swelteringly hot afternoon—an open carriage
with two ladies taking an airing. Mr. S. had said that the swell-heads
had “got to think that their old maumy niggers were not good enough
for their young ones;” and here, on the front seat of the carriage,
was a white and veritable French bonne, holding a richly-belaced baby.
The ladies sat back, good-looking women enough, prettily dressed, and
excessively demure. But the dignity of the turn-out chiefly reposed
in the coachman, an obese old black man, who had, by some means, been
set high up in the sun’s face, on the bed-like cushion of the box, to
display a great livery top-coat, with the wonted capes and velvet,
buttoned brightly and tightly to the chin, and crowned by the proper
emblazoned narrow-brimmed hat; his elbows squared, the reins and whip
in his hands, the sweat in globules all over his ruefully-decorous
face, and his eyes fast closed in sleep.
The houses and shops within the town itself are generally small, and
always inelegant. A majority of the names on the signs are German; the
hotel is unusually clean, and the servants attentive; and the stable at
which I left Belshazzar is excellent, and contains several fine horses.
Indeed, I never saw such a large number of fine horses as there is
here, in any other town of the size. At the stable and the hotel there
is a remarkable number of young men, extraordinarily dressed, like
shop-boys on a Sunday excursion, all lounging or sauntering, and often
calling at the bar; all smoking, all twisting lithe walking-sticks, all
“talking horse.”
But the grand feature of Natchez is the bluff, terminating in an
abrupt precipitous bank over the river, with the public garden upon
it. Of this I never had heard; and when, after seeing my horse dried
off and eating his oats with great satisfaction—the first time he has
ever tasted oats, I suppose, and I had not seen them before for many
months—I strolled off to see the town, I came upon it by surprise. I
entered a gate and walked up a slope, supposing that I was approaching
the ridge or summit of a hill, and expecting to see beyond it a
corresponding slope and the town again, continuing in terraced streets
to the river. I suddenly found myself on the very edge of a great
cliff, and before me an indescribably vast expanse of forest, extending
on every hand to a hazy horizon, in which, directly in front of me,
swung the round, red, setting sun. Through the otherwise unbroken
forest, the Father of Waters had opened a passage for himself, forming
a perfect arc, the hither shore of the middle of the curve being
hidden under the crest of the cliff, and the two ends lost in the
vast obscurity of the Great West. Overlooked from such an eminence,
the size of the Mississippi can be realized—which is difficult under
ordinary circumstances; but though the fret of a swelling torrent is
not wanting, it is perceptible only as the most delicate chasing upon
the broad, gleaming expanse of polished steel, which at once shamed all
my previous conceptions of the appearance of the greatest of rivers.
Coming closer to the edge and looking downward, you see the lower town,
of Natchez, its roofs with water flowing all around them, and its pigmy
people wading, and labouring to carry upward their goods and furniture,
in danger from a rising movement of the great water. Poor people,
“emigrants and niggers” only.
I laid down, and would have reposed my mind in the infinite vision
westward, but was presently disturbed by a hog which came grunting
near me, rooting in the poor turf of this wonderful garden. I rose
and walked its length. Little more has been done than to inclose a
space along the edge, which it would have been dangerous to build
upon, to cut out some curving alleys now recaptured by the grass and
weeds, and to plant a few succulent trees. A road to the lower town,
cutting through it, is crossed by slight wooden foot-bridges, and
there are some rough plank benches, adorned with stencilled “medical”
advertisements. Some shrubs are planted on the crumbling face of the
cliff, so near the top that the swine can obtain access to them. A man,
bearded and smoking, and a woman with him, sitting at the extreme end,
were the only visitors except myself and the swine.
* * * * *
As I am writing there is a bustle in the street. A young man is being
lifted up and carried into the bar-room. He is insensible. A beautiful
mare, from which he has evidently been thrown, is led back from around
the corner, quivering with excitement.
* * * * *
I could find no reading-room; no recent newspapers except _The Natchez
Free Trader_, which has nothing but cotton and river news and steamboat
puffs; no magazines but aged Harpers; and no recent publications of any
sort are for sale or to be seen at the booksellers’; so, after supper,
I went to the bluff again, and found it most solemnly beautiful; the
young moon shining through rents in the clouds: the great gleaming
crescent of water; the dim, ungapped horizon; the earth sensibly a mere
swinging globe.
Of all the town, only five Germans, sitting together, but smoking in
silence, had gathered for this evening worship.
As I returned up the main street, I stopped opposite a house from which
there came the sound of excellent music—a violin and piano. I had heard
no music since I was in Western Texas, and I leaned upon a lamp-post
for an hour, listening. Many stopped near me for a few minutes, and
went on. At length, a man who had remained some time, addressed me,
speaking in a foreign tongue. “Can’t you speak English?” said I.
“You are not an American?”
“Yes.”
“I should tzink it not.”
“I am; I am a New Yorker.”
“So?—O yes, perhaps, but not zis country.”
“What are you?”
“Italian.”
“Do you live here?”
“Yes.”
“Are there many Italians in Natchez?”
“Yes—some many—seven. All big dam rascaal. Yes. Ha! ha! ha! True. Dam
rascaal all of us.”
“What do you do for a living here?”
“For me it is a cigar-store; fruit; confectionary.”
“And the rest?”
“Oh, everytzing. I don’t expect dem be here so much long now.”
“Why—what will they do?”
“Dey all go to Cuba. Be vawr zair soon now. All go. All dam rascaal go,
can go, ven ze vawr is. Good ting dat for Natchez, eh? Yes, I tzink.”
He told me the names of the players; the violinist, an Italian,
he asserted to be the best in America. He resided in Natchez, I
understood, as a teacher; and, I presume, the town has metropolitan
advantages for instruction in all fashionable accomplishments. Yet,
with a population of 18,601, the number of children registered for the
public schools and academies, or “Institutes,” of the county seat, is
but 1,015; and among these must be included many sent from other parts
of the State, and from Arkansas and Louisiana; the public libraries
contain but 2,000 volumes, and the churches seat but 7,700.[17]
Franklin, the next county in the rear of the county in which Natchez
is situated (Adams), has a population of 6,000, and but 132 children
attending school.
Mr. Russell (_North America: its Agriculture and Climate_, page 258)
states that he had been led to believe that “as refined society was to
be found at Natchez as in any other part of the United States;” but
_his personal observation_ is, that “the chief frequenters of the best
hotel are low, drunken fellows.” I find a crowd of big, silly boys,
not drunk, but drinking, smoking, chewing, and betting, and a few men
who look like dissolute fourth-rate comedians, who have succeeded in
swindling a swell-mob tailor.
* * * * *
The first night after leaving Natchez I found lodging with a German,
who, when I inquired if he could accommodate me, at once said, “Yes,
sir, I make it _a business_ to lodge travellers.”
He had a little farm, and owned four strong negro men and a woman with
several children. All his men, however, he hired out as porters or
servants in Natchez, employing a white man, a native of the country, to
work with him on his farm.
To explain the economy of this arrangement, he said that one of his
men earned in Natchez $30 a month clear of all expenses, and the others
much more than he could ever make their labour worth to him. A negro
of moderate intelligence would hire, as a house-servant, for $200 a
year and his board, which was worth $8 a month; whereas he hired this
white fellow, who was strong and able, for $10 a month; and he believed
he got as much work out of him as he could out of a negro. If labour
were worth so much as he got for that of his negroes, why did the white
man not demand more? Well—he kept him in whisky and tobacco beside
his wages, and he was content. Most folks here did not like white
labourers. They had only been used to have niggers do their work, and
they did not know how to manage with white labourers; but he had no
difficulty.
I asked if eight dollars would cover the cost of a man’s board? He
supposed it might cost him rather more than that to keep the white man;
eight dollars was what it was generally reckoned in town to cost to
keep a negro; niggers living in town or near it were expected to have
“extras;” out on the plantations, where they did not get anything but
bacon and meal, of course it did not cost so much. Did he know what it
cost to keep a negro generally upon the plantations? It was generally
reckoned, he said, that a nigger ought to have a peck of meal and three
pounds of bacon a week; some didn’t give so much meat, but he thought
it would be better to give them more.
“You are getting rich,” I said. “Are the Germans generally, hereabouts,
doing well? I see there are a good many in Natchez.”
“Oh yes; anybody who is not too proud to work can get rich here.”
The next day, having ridden thirty tedious miles through a sombre
country, with a few large plantations, about six o’clock I called at
the first house standing upon or near the road which I have seen for
some time, and solicited a lodging. It was refused, by a woman. How
far was it to the next house? I asked her. Two miles and a half. So I
found it to be, but it was a deserted house, falling to decay, on an
abandoned plantation. I rode several miles further, and it was growing
dark, and threatening rain, before I came in sight of another. It
was a short distance off the road, and approached by a private lane,
from which it was separated by a grass plat. A well dressed man stood
between the gate and the house. I stopped and bowed to him, but he
turned his back upon me and walked to the house. I opened a gate and
rode in. Two men were upon the gallery, but as they paid no attention
to my presence when I stopped near them, I doubted if either were the
master of the house. I asked, “Could I obtain a lodging here to-night,
gentlemen?” One of them answered, surlily, “No.” I paused a moment that
they might observe me—evidently a stranger benighted, with a fatigued
horse, and then asked, “Can you tell me, sir, how far it is to a
public-house?” “I don’t know,” replied the same man. I again remained
silent a moment. “No public-houses in this section of the country, I
reckon, sir,” said the other. “Do you know how far it is to the next
house on the road, north of this?” “No,” answered one. “You’ll find one
about two miles, or two miles and a half from here,” said the other.
“Is it a house in which I shall be likely to get a lodging, do you
know?” “I don’t know, I’m sure.”
“Good night, gentlemen; you’ll excuse me for troubling you. I am
entirely a stranger in this region.”
A grunt, or inarticulate monosyllable, from one of them, was the only
reply, and I rode away, glad that I had not been fated to spend an
evening in such company.
Soon afterward I came to a house and stables close upon the road.
There was a man on the gallery playing the fiddle. I asked, “Could you
accommodate me here to-night, sir?” He stopped fiddling, and turned his
head toward an open door, asking, “Wants to know if you can accommodate
him?” “Accommodate him with what?” demanded a harsh-toned woman’s
voice. “With a bed of course—what do you s’pose—ho! ho! ho!” and he
went on fiddling again. I had, during this conversation, observed
ranges of negro huts behind the stables, and perceived that it must
be the overseer’s house of the plantation at which I had previously
called. “Like master, like man,” I thought, and rode on, my inquiry not
having been even answered.
I met a negro boy on the road, who told me it was about two miles
to the next house, but he did not reckon that I would get in there.
“How far to the next house beyond that?” “About four miles, sir, and
I reckon you can get in there, master; I’ve heerd they did take in
travellers to that place.”
Soon after this it began to rain and grow dark; so dark that I could
not keep the road, for soon finding Belshazzar in difficulty, I got off
and discovered that we were following up the dry bed of a small stream.
In trying to get back I probably crossed the road, as I did not find
it again, and wandered cautiously among trees for nearly an hour, at
length coming to open country and a fence. Keeping this in sight, I
rode on until I found a gate, entering at which, I followed a nearly
straight and tolerable good road full an hour, as it seemed to me, at
last coming to a large negro “settlement.”
I passed through it to the end of the rows, where was a cabin larger
than the rest, facing on the space between the two lines of huts. A
shout brought out the overseer. I begged for a night’s lodging; he was
silent; I said that I had travelled far, was much fatigued and hungry;
my horse was nearly knocked up, and I was a stranger in the country; I
had lost my road, and only by good fortune had found my way here. At
length, as I continued urging my need, he said—
“Well, I suppose you must stop. Ho, Byron! Here, Byron, take this man’s
horse, and put him in _my_ stable. ’Light, sir, and come in.”
Within I found his wife, a young woman, showily dressed—a caricature
of the fashions of the day. Apparently, they had both been making a
visit to neighbours, and but just come home. I was not received kindly,
but at the request of her husband she brought out and set before me
some cold corn-bread and fat bacon.
Before I had finished eating my supper, however, they both quite
changed their manner, and the woman apologized for not having made
coffee. The cook had gone to bed and the fire was out, she said. She
presently ordered Byron, as he brought my saddle in, to get some
“light-wood” and make a fire; said she was afraid I had made a poor
supper, and set a chair by the fire-place for me as I drew away from
the table.
I plied the man with inquiries about his business, got him interested
in points of difference between Northern and Southern agriculture, and
soon had him in quite a sociable and communicative humour. He gave me
much overseer’s lore about cotton culture, nigger and cattle maladies,
the right way to keep sweet potatoes, etc.; and when I proposed to ride
over the plantation with him in the morning, he said he “would be very
thankful for my company.”
I think they gave up their own bed to me, for it was double, and
had been slept in since the sheets were last changed; the room was
garnished with pistols and other arms and ammunition, rolls of
negro-cloth, shoes and hats, handcuffs, a large medicine chest, and
several books on medical and surgical subjects and farriery; while
articles of both men’s and women’s wearing apparel hung against the
walls, which were also decorated with some large patent-medicine
posters. One of them is characteristic of the place and the times.[18]
We had a good breakfast in the morning, and immediately afterward
mounted and rode to a very large cotton-field, where the whole
field-force of the plantation was engaged.
It was a first-rate plantation. On the highest ground stood a large and
handsome mansion, but it had not been occupied for several years, and
it was more than two years since the overseer had seen the owner. He
lived several hundred miles away, and the overseer would not believe
that I did not know him, for he was a rich man and an honourable, and
had several times been where I came from—New York.
The whole plantation, including the swamp land around it, and owned
with it, covered several square miles. It was four miles from the
settlement to the nearest neighbour’s house. There were between
thirteen and fourteen hundred acres under cultivation with cotton,
corn, and other hoed crops, and two hundred hogs running at large in
the swamp. It was the intention that corn and pork enough should be
raised to keep the slaves and cattle. This year, however, it has been
found necessary to purchase largely, and such was probably usually the
case,[19] though the overseer intimated the owner had been displeased,
and he “did not mean to be caught so bad again.”
There were 135 slaves, big and little, of which 67 went to field
regularly—equal, the overseer thought, to fully 60 prime hands. Besides
these, there were 3 mechanics (blacksmith, carpenter, and wheelwright),
2 seamstresses, 1 cook, 1 stable servant, 1 cattle-tender, 1
hog-tender, 1 teamster, 1 house servant (overseer’s cook), and one
midwife and nurse. These were all first-class hands; most of them would
be worth more, if they were for sale, the overseer said, than the best
field-hands. There was also a driver of the hoe-gang who did not labour
personally, and a foreman of the plough-gang. These two acted as petty
officers in the field, and alternately in the quarters.
There was a nursery for sucklings at the quarters, and twenty women
at this time who left their work four times each day, for half an
hour, to nurse their young ones. These women, the overseer counted
as half-hands—that is, expected to do half the day’s work of a prime
field-hand in ordinary condition.
He had just sold a bad runaway to go to Texas, he happened to remark.
He was whipping the fellow, when he turned and tried to stab him—then
broke from him and ran away. He had him caught almost immediately with
the dogs. After catching him, he kept him in irons till he had a chance
to sell him. His niggers did not very often run away, he said, because
they had found that he was almost sure to catch them. As soon as he saw
that one was gone he put the dogs on, and if rain had not just fallen,
they would soon find him. Sometimes they did manage to outwit the dogs,
but then they almost always kept in the neighbourhood, because they did
not like to go where they could not sometimes get back and see their
families, and he would soon get wind of where they had been; they would
come round their quarters to see their families and to get food, and
as soon as he knew it, he would find their tracks and put the dogs on
again. Two months was the longest time any of them ever kept out. He
had dogs trained on purpose to run after niggers, and never let out for
anything else.
We found in the field thirty ploughs, moving together, turning the
earth from the cotton plants, and from thirty to forty hoers, the
latter mainly women, with a black driver walking about among them with
a whip, which he often cracked at them, sometimes allowing the lash to
fall lightly upon their shoulders. He was constantly urging them also
with his voice. All worked very steadily, and though the presence of a
stranger on the plantation must have been a most unusual occurrence,
I saw none raise or turn their heads to look at me. Each gang was
attended by a “water-toter,” that of the hoe-gang being a straight,
sprightly, plump little black girl, whose picture, as she stood
balancing the bucket upon her head, shading her bright eyes with one
hand, and holding out a calabash with the other to maintain her poise,
would have been a worthy study for Murillo.
I asked at what time they began to work in the morning. “Well,” said
the overseer, “I do better by my niggers than most. I keep ’em right
smart at their work while they do work, but I generally knock ’em off
at 8 o’clock in the morning, Saturdays, and give ’em all the rest of
the day to themselves, and I always gives ’em Sundays, the whole day.
Pickin’ time, and when the crap’s bad in grass, I sometimes keep ’em to
it till about sunset, Saturdays, but I never work ’em Sundays.”
“How early do you start them out in the morning, usually?”
“Well, I don’t never start my niggers ’fore daylight, ’less ’tis in
pickin’ time, then maybe I get ’em out a quarter of an hour before. But
I keep ’em right smart to work through the day.” He showed an evident
pride in the vigilance of his driver, and called my attention to the
large area of ground already hoed over that morning; well hoed, too, as
he said.
“At what time do they eat?” I asked. They ate “their snacks” in their
cabins, he said, before they came out in the morning (that is before
daylight—the sun rising at this time at a little before five, and the
day dawning, probably, an hour earlier); then at 12 o’clock their
dinner was brought to them in a cart—one cart for the plough-gang and
one for the hoe-gang. The hoe-gang ate its dinner in the field, and
only stopped work long enough to eat it. The plough-gang drove its
teams to the “weather houses”—open sheds erected for the purpose in
different parts of the plantation, under which were cisterns filled
with rain water, from which the water-toters carried drink to those at
work. The mules were fed with as much oats (in straw), corn and fodder
as they would eat in two hours; this forage having been brought to the
weather houses by another cart. The ploughmen had nothing to do but eat
their dinner in all this time. All worked as late as they could see to
work well, and had no more food nor rest until they returned to their
cabins.[20] At half-past nine o’clock the drivers, each on an alternate
night, blew a horn, and at ten visited every cabin to see that its
occupants were at rest, and not lurking about and spending their
strength in fooleries, and that the fires were safe—a very unusual
precaution; the negroes are generally at liberty after their day’s work
is done till they are called in the morning. When washing and patching
were done, wood hauled and cut for the fires, corn ground, etc., I did
not learn: probably all chores not of daily necessity were reserved for
Saturday. Custom varies in this respect. In general, with regard to
fuel for the cabins, the negroes are left to look out for themselves,
and they often have to go to “the swamp” for it, or at least, if it has
been hauled, to cut it to a convenient size, after their day’s work is
done. The allowance of food was a peck of corn and four pounds of pork
per week, each. When they could not get “greens” (any vegetables) he
generally gave them five pounds of pork. They had gardens, and raised
a good deal for themselves; they also had fowls, and usually plenty of
eggs. He added, “the man who owns this plantation does more for his
niggers than any other man I know. Every Christmas he sends me up a
thousand or fifteen hundred dollars’ [equal to eight or ten dollars
each] worth of molasses and coffee, and tobacco, and calico, and Sunday
tricks for ’em. Every family on this plantation gets a barrel of
molasses at Christmas.”[21]
Beside which, the overseer added, they are able, if they choose, to
buy certain comforts for themselves—tobacco for instance—with money
earned by Saturday and Sunday work. Some of them went into the swamps
on Sunday, and made boards (which means slabs worked out with no other
instrument than an axe). One man sold last year as much as fifty
dollars’ worth.
Finding myself nearer the outer gate than the “quarters,” when at
length my curiosity was satisfied, I did not return to the house.
After getting a clear direction how to find my way back to the road
I had been upon the previous day, I said to the overseer, with some
hesitation, “You will allow me to pay you for the trouble I have given
you?” He looked a little disconcerted by my putting the question in
this way, but answered in a matter-of-course tone, “It will be a dollar
and a quarter, sir.”
This was the only large plantation I had an opportunity of seeing at
all closely, over which I was not chiefly conducted by an educated
gentleman and slave owner, by whose habitual impressions and sentiments
my own were probably somewhat influenced. From what I saw in passing,
and from what I heard by chance of others, I suppose it to have been a
very favourable specimen of those plantations on which the owners do
not reside. A merchant of the vicinity recently in New York tells me
that he supposes it to be a fair enough example of plantations of its
class. There is nothing remarkable in its management, so far as he had
heard. When I asked about the molasses and Christmas presents, he said
he reckoned the overseer must have rather stretched that part of his
story, but the owner was a very good man. A magistrate of the district,
who had often been on the plantation, said in answer to an inquiry from
me, that the negroes were very well treated upon it, though he did not
think they were extraordinarily so. His comparison was with plantations
in general.[22] He also spoke well of the overseer. He had been a long
time on this plantation—I think he said ever since it had begun to be
cultivated. This is very rare; it was the only case I met with in which
an overseer had kept the same place ten years, and it was a strong
evidence of his comparative excellence, that his employer had been so
long satisfied with him. Perhaps it was a stronger evidence that the
owner of the negroes was a man of good temper, systematic and thorough
in the management of his property.[23]
The condition of the fences, of the mules and tools, and tillage, which
would have been considered admirable in the best farming district of
New York—the dress of the negroes and the neatness and spaciousness of
their “quarters,” which were superior to those of most of the better
class of plantations on which the owners reside, all bore testimony to
a very unusually prudent and provident policy.
I made no special inquiries about the advantages for education or
means of religious instruction provided for the slaves. As there
seems to be much public desire for definite information upon that
point, I regret that I did not. I did not need to put questions to
the overseer to satisfy my own mind, however. It was obvious that all
natural incitements to self-advancement had been studiously removed
or obstructed, in subordination to the general purpose of making the
plantation profitable. Regarding only the balance-sheet of the owner’s
ledger, it was admirable management. I am sorry to have to confess to
an impression that it is rare, where this is the uppermost object of
the cotton-planter, that an equally frugal economy is maintained; and
as the general character of the district along the Mississippi, which
is especially noticeable for the number of large and very productive
plantations which it contains, has now been sufficiently illustrated,
I will here present certain observations which I wish to make upon
the peculiar aspect of slavery in that and other districts where its
profits to the owners of slaves are most apparent.