FROM LOUISIANA THROUGH TEXAS.
The largest part of the cotton crop of the United States is now
produced in the Mississippi valley, including the lands contiguous
to its great Southern tributary streams, the Red River and others.
The proportion of the whole crop which is produced in this region is
constantly and very rapidly increasing. This increase is chiefly gained
by the forming of new plantations and the transfer of slave-labour
westward. The common planter of this region lives very differently
to those whose plantations I have hitherto described. What a very
different person he is, and what a very different thing his plantation
is from the class usually visited by travellers in the South, I learned
by an extended experience. I presume myself to have been ordinarily
well-informed when I started from home, but up to this point in my
first journey had no correct idea of the condition and character of the
common cotton-planters. I use the word common in reference to the whole
region: there are some small districts in which the common planter
is a rich man—really rich. But over the whole district there are
comparatively few of these, and in this chapter I wish to show what the
many are—as I found them. I shall draw for this purpose upon a record
of experience extending through nearly twelve months, but obtained in
different journeys and in two different years.
My first observation of the common cotton-planters was had on the
steamboat, between Montgomery and Mobile, and has already been
described. My second experience among them was on a steamboat bound up
Red River.
On a certain Saturday morning, when I had determined upon the trip,
I found that two boats, the Swamp Fox and the St. Charles, were
advertised to leave the same evening, for the Red River. I went to
the levee, and, finding the Saint Charles to be the better of the
two, I asked her clerk if I could engage a state-room. There was just
one state-room berth left unengaged; I was requested to place my name
against its number on the passenger-book; and did so, understanding
that it was thus secured for me.
Having taken leave of my friends, I had my luggage brought down, and
went on board at half-past three—the boat being advertised to sail
at four. Four o’clock passed, and freight was still being taken on—a
fire had been made in the furnace, and the boat’s big bell was rung. I
noticed that the Swamp Fox was also firing up, and that her bell rang
whenever ours did—though she was not advertised to sail till five. At
length, when five o’clock came, the clerk told me he thought, perhaps,
they would not be able to get off at all that night—there was so much
freight still to come on board. Six o’clock arrived, and he felt
certain that, if they did get off that night, it would not be till very
late. At half-past six, he said the captain had not come on board yet,
and he was quite sure they would not be able to get off that night.
I prepared to return to the hotel, and asked if they would leave in
the morning. He thought not. He was confident they would not. He was
positive they could not leave now, before Monday—Monday noon. Monday at
twelve o’clock—I might rely upon it.
Monday morning, _The Picayune_ stated, editorially, that the floating
palace, the St. Charles, would leave for Shreveport, at five o’clock,
and if anybody wanted to make a quick and luxurious trip up Red River,
with a jolly good soul, Captain Lickup was in command. It also stated,
in another paragraph, that, if any of its friends had any business up
Red River, Captain Pitchup was a whole-souled veteran in that trade,
and was going up with that remarkably low draft-favourite, the Swamp
Fox, to leave at four o’clock that evening. Both boats were also
announced, in the advertising columns, to leave at four o’clock.
As the clerk had said noon, however, I thought there might have been a
misprint in the newspaper announcements, and so went on board the St.
Charles again before twelve. The clerk informed me that the newspaper
was right—they had finally concluded not to sail till four o’clock.
Before four, I returned again, and the boat again fired up, and rang
her bell. So did the Swamp Fox. Neither, however, was quite ready to
leave at four o’clock. Not quite ready at five. Even at six—not yet
quite ready. At seven, the fires having burned out in the furnace, and
the stevedores having gone away, leaving a quantity of freight yet on
the dock, without advising this time with the clerk, I had my baggage
re-transferred to the hotel.
A similar performance was repeated on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, I found the berth I had engaged occupied by a very
strong man, who was not very polite, when I informed him that I
believed there was some mistake—that the berth he was using had been
engaged to me. I went to the clerk, who said that he was sorry, but
that, as I had not stayed on board at night, and had not paid for the
berth, he had not been sure that I should go, and he had, therefore,
given it to the gentleman who now had it in possession, and whom, he
thought, it would not be best to try to reason out of it. He was very
busy, he observed, because the boat was going to start at four o’clock;
if I would now pay him the price of passage, he would do the best he
could for me. When he had time to examine, he could probably put me
in some other state-room, perhaps quite as good a one as that I had
lost. Meanwhile he kindly offered me the temporary use of his private
state-room. I inquired if it was quite certain that the boat would
get off at four; for I had been asked to dine with a friend, at three
o’clock. There was not the smallest doubt of it—at four they would
leave. They were all ready, at that moment, and only waited till four,
because the agent had advertised that they would—merely a technical
point of honour.
But, by some error of calculation, I suppose, she didn’t go at four.
Nor at five. Nor at six.
At seven o’clock, the Swamp Fox and the St. Charles were both
discharging dense smoke from their chimneys, blowing steam, and ringing
bells. It was obvious that each was making every exertion to get off
before the other. The captains of both boats stood at the break of the
hurricane deck, apparently waiting in great impatience for the mails to
come on board.
The St. Charles was crowded with passengers, and her decks were
piled high with freight. Bumboatmen, about the bows, were offering
shells, and oranges, and bananas; and newsboys, and peddlers, and
tract distributors, were squeezing about with their wares among the
passengers. I had confidence in their instinct; there had been no such
numbers of them the previous evenings, and I made up my mind, although
past seven o’clock, that the St. Charles would not let her fires go
down again.
Among the peddlers there were two of “cheap literature,” and among
their yellow covers, each had two or three copies of the cheap edition
(pamphlet) of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” They did not cry it out as they did
the other books they had, but held it forth among others, so its title
could be seen. One of them told me he carried it because gentlemen
often inquired for it, and he sold a good many; at least three copies
were sold to passengers on the boat. Another young man, who looked
like a beneficiary of the Education Society, endeavouring to pass a
college vacation in a useful and profitable manner, was peddling a
Bible Defence of Slavery, which he made eloquent appeals, in the manner
of a pastoral visit, to us, each personally, to purchase. He said it
was prepared by a clergyman of Kentucky, and every slaveholder ought to
possess it. When he came to me, I told him that I owned no slaves, and
therefore had no occasion for it. He answered that the world was before
me, and I perhaps yet might own many of them. I replied so decidedly
that I should not, that he appeared to be satisfied that my conscience
would not need the book, and turned back again to a man sitting beside
me, who had before refused to look at it. He now urged again that he
should do so, and forced it into his hands, open at the title-page, on
which was a vignette, representing a circle of coloured gentlemen and
ladies, sitting around a fire-place with a white person standing behind
them, like a servant, reading from a book. “Here we see the African
race as it is in America, under the blessed——”
“Now you go to hell! I’ve told you three times I didn’t want your book.
If you bring it here again I’ll throw it overboard. I own niggers; and
I calculate to own more of ’em, if I can get ’em, but I don’t want any
damn’d preachin’ about it.”
That was the last I saw of the book-peddler.
It was twenty minutes after seven when the captain observed—scanning
the levee in every direction, to see if there was another cart or
carriage coming towards us—“No use waiting any longer, I reckon: throw
off, Mr. Heady.” (The Swamp Fox did not leave, I afterwards heard, till
the following Saturday.)
We backed out, winded round head up, and as we began to breast the
current a dozen of the negro boat-hands, standing on the freight, piled
up on the low forecastle, began to sing, waving hats and handkerchiefs,
and shirts lashed to poles, towards the people who stood on the sterns
of the steamboats at the levee. After losing a few lines, I copied
literally into my note-book:
“Ye see dem boat way dah ahead.
CHORUS.—Oahoiohieu.
De San Charles is arter ’em, dey mus go behine.
CHO.—Oahoiohieu,
So stir up dah, my livelies, stir her up; (pointing to the
furnaces).
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.
Dey’s burnin’ not’n but fat and rosum.
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we is gwine up de Red River, oh!
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we mus part from you dah asho’.
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.
Give my lub to Dinah, oh!
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.
For we is gwine up de Red River.
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.
Yes, we is gwine up de Red River.
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.
Oh, we must part from you dah, oh.
CHO.—Oahoiohieu.”
The wit introduced into these songs has, I suspect, been rather over
estimated.
As soon as the song was ended, I went into the cabin to remind the
clerk to obtain a berth for me. I found two brilliant supper-tables
reaching the whole length of the long cabin, and a file of men standing
on each side of both of them, ready to take seats as soon as the signal
was given.
The clerk was in his room, with two other men, and appeared to be more
occupied than ever. His manner was, I thought, now rather cool, not
to say rude; and he very distinctly informed me that every berth was
occupied, and he didn’t know where I was to sleep. He judged I was
able to take care of myself; and if I was not, he was quite sure that
he had too much to do to give all his time to my surveillance. I then
went to the commander, and told him that I thought myself entitled to
a berth. I had paid for one, and should not have taken passage in the
boat, if it had not been promised me. I was not disposed to fight for
it, particularly as the gentleman occupying the berth engaged to me
was a deal bigger fellow than I, and also carried a bigger knife; but
I thought the clerk was accountable to me for a berth, and I begged
that he would inform him so. He replied that the clerk probably knew
his business; he had nothing to do with it; and walked away from me.
I then addressed myself to a second clerk, or sub-officer of some
denomination, who more good-naturedly informed me that half the company
were in the same condition as myself, and I needn’t be alarmed, cots
would be provided for us.
As I saw that the supper-table was likely to be crowded, I asked if
there would be a second table. “Yes, they’ll keep on eatin’ till they
all get through.” I walked the deck till I saw those who had been
first seated at the table coming out; then going in, I found the table
still crowded, while many stood waiting to take seats as fast as any
were vacated. I obtained one for myself at length, and had no sooner
occupied it than two half-intoxicated and garrulous men took the
adjoining stools.
It was near nine o’clock before the tables were cleared away, and
immediately afterwards the waiters began to rig a framework for
sleeping-cots in their place. These cots were simply canvas shelves,
five feet and a half long, two wide, and less than two feet apart,
perpendicularly. A waiter, whose good will I had purchased at the
supper-table, gave me a hint to secure one of them for myself, as soon
as they were erected, by putting my hat in it. I did so, and saw that
others did the same. I chose a cot as near as possible to the midship
doors of the cabin, perceiving that there was not likely to be the best
possible air, after all the passengers were laid up for the night, in
this compact manner.
Nearly as fast as the cots were ready they were occupied. To make sure
that mine was not stolen from me, I also, without much undressing,
laid myself away. A single blanket was the only bed-clothing provided.
I had not lain long, before I was driven, by an exceedingly offensive
smell, to search for a cleaner neighbourhood; but I found all the cots,
fore and aft were either occupied or engaged. I immediately returned,
and that I might have a _dernier ressort_, left my shawl in that I had
first obtained.
In the forward part of the cabin there was a bar, a stove, a table,
and a placard of rules, forbidding smoking, gambling, and swearing in
the cabin, and a close company of drinkers, smokers, card-players, and
constant swearers. I went out, and stepped down to the boiler-deck.
The boat had been provided with very poor wood, and the firemen were
crowding it into the furnaces whenever they could find room for it,
driving smaller sticks between the larger ones at the top, by a
battering-ram method.
Most of the firemen were Irish born; one with whom I conversed was
English. He said they were divided into three watches, each working
four hours at a time, and all hands liable to be called, when wooding,
or landing, or taking on freight, to assist the deck hands. They were
paid now but thirty dollars a month—ordinarily forty, and sometimes
sixty—and board. He was a sailor bred. This boat-life was harder than
seafaring, but the pay was better, and the trips were short. The
regular thing was to make two trips, and then lay up for a spree. It
would be too hard upon a man, he thought, to pursue it regularly;
two trips “on end” was as much as a man could stand. He must then
take a “refreshment.” Working this way for three weeks, and then
refreshing for about one, he did not think it was unhealthy, no more
so than ordinary seafaring. He concluded, by informing me that the
most striking peculiarity of the business was, that it kept a man,
notwithstanding wholesale periodical refreshment, very dry. He was
of opinion that after the information I had obtained, if I gave him
at least the price of a single drink, and some tobacco, it would be
characteristic of a gentleman.
Going round behind the furnace, I found a large quantity of freight:
hogsheads, barrels, cases, bales, boxes, nail-rods, rolls of leather,
ploughs, cotton, bale-rope, and fire-wood, all thrown together in the
most confused manner, with hot steam-pipes, and parts of the engine
crossing through it. As I explored further aft, I found negroes lying
asleep, in all postures, upon the freight. A single group only, of
five or six, appeared to be awake, and as I drew near they commenced
to sing a Methodist hymn, not loudly, as negroes generally do, but,
as it seemed to me, with a good deal of tenderness and feeling; a few
white people—men, women, and children—were lying here and there, among
the negroes. Altogether, I learned we had two hundred of these deck
passengers, black and white. A stove, by which they could fry bacon,
was the only furniture provided for them by the boat. They carried
with them their provisions for the voyage, and had their choice of the
freight for beds.
As I came to the bows again, and was about to ascend to the cabin, two
men came down, one of whom I recognized to have been my cot neighbour.
“Where’s a bucket?” said he. “By thunder! this fellow was so strong
I could not sleep by him, so I stumped him to come down and wash his
feet.” “I am much obliged to you,” said I; and I was, very much; the
man had been lying in the cot beneath mine, to which I now returned and
soon fell asleep.
I awoke about midnight. There was an unusual jar in the boat, and an
evident excitement among people whom I could hear talking on deck. I
rolled out of my cot, and stepped out on the gallery. The steamboat
Kimball was running head-and-head with us, and so close that one might
have jumped easily from our paddle-box on to her guards. A few other
passengers had turned out beside myself, and most of the waiters were
leaning on the rail of the gallery. Occasionally a few words of banter
passed between them and the waiters of the Kimball; below, the firemen
were shouting as they crowded the furnaces, and some one could be heard
cheering them: “Shove her up, boys! Shove her up! Give her hell!”
“She’s got to hold a conversation with us before she gets by, anyhow,”
said one of the negroes. “Ye har that ar’ whistlin’?” said a white man;
“tell ye thar an’t any too much water in her bilers when ye har that.”
I laughed silently, but was not without a slight expectant sensation,
which Burke would perhaps have called sublime. At length the Kimball
slowly drew ahead, crossed our bow, and the contest was given up. “De
ole lady too heavy,” said a waiter; “if I could pitch a few ton of dat
ar freight off her bow, I’d bet de Kimball would be askin’ her to show
de way mighty quick.”
At half-past four o’clock a hand-bell was rung in the cabin, and soon
afterwards I was informed that I must get up, that the servants might
remove the cot arrangement, and clear the cabin for the breakfast-table.
Breakfast was not ready till half-past seven. The passengers, one set
after another, and then the pilots, clerks, mates, and engineers, and
then the free coloured people, and then the waiters, chambermaids, and
passengers’ body servants, having breakfasted, the tables were cleared,
and the cabin swept. The tables were then again laid for dinner.
Thus the greater part of the cabin was constantly occupied, and the
passengers who had no state-rooms were driven to herd in the vicinity
of the card-tables and the bar, the lobby (Social Hall, I believe it
is called), in which most of the passengers’ baggage was deposited,
or to go outside. Every part of the boat, except the bleak hurricane
deck, was crowded; and so large a number of equally uncomfortable and
disagreeable people I think I never saw elsewhere together. We made
very slow progress, landing, it seems to me, after we entered Red
River, at every “bend,” “bottom,” “bayou,” “point,” and “plantation”
that came in sight; often for no other object than to roll out a barrel
of flour, or a keg of nails; sometimes merely to furnish newspapers to
a wealthy planter, who had much cotton to send to market, and whom it
was therefore desirable to please.
I was sitting one day on the forward gallery, watching a pair of
ducks, that were alternately floating on the river, and flying further
ahead as the steamer approached them. A man standing near me drew a
long barrelled and very finely-finished pistol from his coat pocket,
and, resting it against a stanchion, took aim at them. They were, I
judged, full the boat’s own length—not less than two hundred feet—from
us, and were just raising their wings to fly, when he fired. One of
them only rose; the other flapped round and round, and when within ten
yards of the boat, dived. The bullet had broken its wing. So remarkable
a shot excited, of course, not a little admiration and conversation.
Half a dozen other men standing near at once drew pistols or revolvers
from under their clothing, and several were fired at floating chips, or
objects on the shore. I saw no more remarkable shooting, however; and
that the duck should have been hit at such a distance, was generally
considered a piece of luck. A man who had been “in the Rangers” said
that all his company could put a ball into a tree, the size of a mans
body, at sixty paces, at every shot, with Colt’s army revolver, not
taking steady aim, but firing at the jerk of the arm.
This pistol episode was almost the only entertainment in which the
passengers engaged themselves, except eating, drinking, smoking,
conversation, and card-playing. Gambling was constantly going on, day
and night. I don’t think there was an interruption to it of fifteen
minutes in three days. The conversation was almost exclusively confined
to the topics of steamboats, liquors, cards, black-land, red-land,
bottom-land, timber-land, warrants, and locations, sugar, cotton, corn,
and negroes.
After the first night, I preferred to sleep on the trunks in the social
hall, rather than among the cots in the crowded cabin, and several
others did the same. There were, in fact, not cots enough for all the
passengers excluded from the state-rooms. I found that some, and I
presume most of the passengers, by making the clerk believe that they
would otherwise take the Swamp Fox, had obtained their passage at
considerably less price than I had paid.
On the third day, just after the dinner-bell had rung, and most of the
passengers had gone into the cabin, I was sitting alone on the gallery,
reading a pamphlet, when a well-dressed middle-aged man accosted me.
“Is that the book they call Uncle Tom’s Cabin, you are reading, sir?”
“No, sir.”
“I did not know but it was; I see that there are two or three gentlemen
on board that have got it. I suppose I might have got it in New
Orleans: I wish I had. Have you ever seen it, sir?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m told it shows up Slavery in very high colours.”
“Yes, sir, it shows the evils of Slavery very strongly.”
He took a chair near me, and said that, if it represented extreme cases
as if they were general, it was not fair.
Perceiving that he was disposed to discuss the matter, I said that
I was a Northern man, and perhaps not well able to judge; but that
I thought that a certain degree of cruelty was necessary to make
slave-labour generally profitable, and that not many were disposed to
be more severe than they thought necessary. I believed there was little
wanton cruelty. He answered, that Northern men were much mistaken in
supposing that slaves were generally ill-treated. He was a merchant,
but he owned a plantation, and he just wished I could see his negroes.
“Why, sir,” he continued, “my niggers’ children all go regularly
to a Sunday-school, just the same as my own, and learn verses, and
catechism, and hymns. Every one of my grown-up niggers are pious,
every one of them, and members of the church. I’ve got an old man that
can pray——well, sir, I only wish I had as good a gift at praying! I
wish you could just hear him pray. There are cases in which niggers
are badly used; but they are not common. There are brutes everywhere.
You have men, at the North, who whip their wives—and they kill them
sometimes.”
“Certainly, we have, sir; there are plenty of brutes at the North; but
our law, you must remember, does not compel women to submit themselves
to their power. A wife, cruelly treated, can escape from her husband,
and can compel him to give her subsistence, and to cease from doing her
harm. A woman could defend herself against her husband’s cruelty, and
the law would sustain her.”
“It would not be safe to receive negroes’ testimony against white
people; they would be always plotting against their masters, if you
did.”
“Wives are not always plotting against their husbands.”
“Husband and wife is a very different thing from master and slave.”
“Your remark, that a bad man might whip his wife, suggested an analogy,
sir.”
“If the law was to forbid whipping altogether, the authority of the
master would be at an end.”
“And if you allow bad men to own slaves, and allow them to whip them,
and deny the slave the privilege of resisting cruelty, do you not show
that you think it is necessary to permit cruelty, in order to sustain
the authority of masters, in general, over their slaves? That is, you
establish cruelty as a necessity of Slavery—do you not?”
“No more than of marriage, because men may whip their wives cruelly.”
“Excuse me, sir; the law does all it can, to prevent such cruelty
between husband and wife; between master and slave it does not, because
it cannot, without weakening the necessary authority of the master—that
is, without destroying Slavery. It is, therefore, a fair argument
against Slavery, to show how cruelly this necessity, of sustaining the
authority of cruel and passionate men over their slaves, sometimes
operates.”
He asked what it was Uncle Tom “tried to make out.”
I narrated the Red River episode, and asked if such things could not
possibly occur.
“Yes,” replied he, “but very rarely. I don’t know a man, in my parish,
that could do such a thing. There are two men, though, in——, bad enough
to do it, I believe; but it isn’t a likely story, at all. In the first
place, no coloured woman would be likely to offer any resistance, if a
white man should want to seduce her.”
After further conversation, he said, that a planter had been tried for
injuring one of his negroes, at the court in his parish, the preceding
summer. He had had a favourite, among his girls, and suspecting that
she was unduly kind to one of his men, in an anger of jealousy he
mutilated him. There was not sufficient testimony to convict him;
“but,” he said, “everybody believes he was guilty, and ought to have
been punished. Nobody thinks there was any good reason for his being
jealous of the boy.”
I remarked that this story corroborated “Uncle Tom’s Cabin;” it showed
that it was all possible.
“Ah!” he answered, “but then nobody would have any respect for a man
that treated his niggers cruelly.”
I wondered, as I went into dinner, and glanced at the long rows of
surly faces, how many men there were there whose passions would be much
restrained by the fear of losing the respect of their neighbours.[39]
* * * * *
My original purpose had been to go high up Red River at this time,
but the long delay in the boat’s leaving New Orleans, and her slow
passage, obliged me to change my plans. The following year, I returned,
in company with my brother, as narrated in “The Texas Journey.” Some
portion of what follows is taken from that volume.
At a place called Alexandria, our progress was arrested by falls in the
river which cannot be passed by boats at low stages of the water. The
village is every bit a Southern one—all the houses being one story in
height, and having an open verandah before them, like the English towns
in the West Indies. It contains, usually, about 1,000 inhabitants, but
this summer had been entirely depopulated by the yellow fever. Of 300
who remained, 120, we were told, died. Most of the runaway citizens had
returned, when we passed, though the last case of fever was still in
uncertain progress.
It has apparently not the least reputation for morality. At
Nachitoches, the next village above on the river, a couple of men were
waiting for their breakfast at the inn, when one, who looked and spoke
more like a New Englander than a Southerner, said to the other, whom I
presumed to be an Alexandrian—possibly Elder Slocum himself:—
“I had a high old dream, last night.”
“What was it?”
“Dreamt I was in hell.”
“Rough country?”
“Boggy—sulphur bogs. By and by I cum to a great pair of doors.
Something kinder drew me right to ’em, and I had to open ’em, and go
in. As soon as I got in, the doors slammed to, behind me, and there I
see old boss devil lying asleep, on a red-hot sofy. He woke up, and
rubbed his eyes, and when he see me, he says, ‘Halloo! that you?’ ‘Yes,
sir,’ says I. ‘Where’d you come from?’ says he. ‘From Alexandria, sir,’
says I. ‘Thought so,’ says he, and he took down a big book, and wrote
something in to’t with a red-hot spike. ‘Well, sir, what’s going on
now in Alexandria?’ says he. ‘Having a “protracted meeting” there,
sir,’ says I. ‘Look here, my friend,’ says he, ‘you may stop lyin’, now
you’ve got here.’ ‘I aint lyin’, sir,’ says I. ‘Oh!’ says he, ‘I beg
your pardon; I thought it was Alexandria on Red River, you meant.’ ‘So
it was,’ says I, ‘and they are having a protracted meeting there, sure
as you’re alive.’ ‘Hell they are!’ says he, jumpin’ right up; ‘boy,
bring my boots!’ A little black devil fetched him a pair of hot brass
boots, and he began to draw ’em on. ‘Whose doin’ is that?’ says he.
‘Elder Slocum’s, sir,’ says I. ‘Elder Slocum’s! Why in hell couldn’t
you have said so, before?’ says he. ‘Here, boy, take away these boots;’
and he kicked ’em off, and laid down again.”
French blood rather predominates in the population in the vicinity of
Nachitoches, but there is also a considerable amount of the Spanish and
Indian mongrel breed. These are often handsome people, but vagabonds,
almost to a man. Scarcely any of them have any regular occupation,
unless it be that of herding cattle; but they raise a little maize, and
fish a little, and hunt a little, and smoke and lounge a great deal,
and are very regular in their attendance on divine worship, at the
cathedral.
In the public bar-room I heard a person, who I suppose would claim
the appellation of a gentleman, narrating how he had overreached a
political opponent, in securing the “Spanish vote” at an election, and
it appeared from the conversation that it was considered entirely, and
as a matter of course, purchasable by the highest bidder. A man who
would purchase votes at the North, would, at least, be careful not to
mention it so publicly.
We spent several days in Nachitoches, purchasing horses and completing
the preparations for our vagrant life in Texas.
One mild day of our stay we made a trip of some ten or fifteen miles
out and back, at the invitation of a planter, whose acquaintance we
had made at the hotel. We started in good season, but were not long in
losing our way and getting upon obscure roads through the woods. The
planter’s residence we did not find, but one day’s experience is worth
a note.
We rode on from ten o’clock till three, without seeing a house, except
a deserted cabin, or meeting a human being. We then came upon a ferry
across a small stream or “bayou,” near which was a collection of
cabins. We asked the old negro who tended the ferry if we could get
something to eat anywhere in the neighbourhood. He replied that his
master sometimes took in travellers, and we had better call and try if
the mistress wouldn’t let us have some dinner.
The house was a small square log cabin, with a broad open shed or
piazza in front, and a chimney, made of sticks and mud, leaning against
one end. A smaller detached cabin, twenty feet in the rear, was used
for a kitchen. A cistern under a roof, and collecting water from three
roofs, stood between. The water from the bayou was not fit to drink,
nor is the water of the Red River, or of any springs in this region.
The people depend entirely on cisterns for drinking water. It is very
little white folks need, however—milk, whisky, and, with the better
class, Bordeaux wine, being the more common beverages.
About the house was a large yard, in which were two or three China
trees, and two fine Cherokee roses; half a dozen hounds; several negro
babies; turkeys and chickens, and a pet sow, teaching a fine litter of
pigs how to root and wallow. Three hundred yards from the house was
a gin-house and stable, and in the interval between were two rows of
comfortable negro cabins. Between the house and the cabins was a large
post, on which was a bell to call the negroes. A rack for fastening
horses stood near it. On the bell-post and on each of the rack-posts
were nailed the antlers of a buck, as well as on a large oak-tree near
by. On the logs of the kitchen a fresh deer-skin was drying. On the
railing of the piazza lay a saddle. The house had but one door and no
window, nor was there a pane of glass on the plantation.
Entering the house, we found it to contain but a single room, about
twenty feet by sixteen. Of this space one quarter was occupied by a
bed—a great four-poster, with the curtains open, made up in the French
style, with a strong furniture-calico day-coverlid. A smaller camp
bed stood beside it. These two articles of furniture nearly filled
the house on one side the door. At the other end was a great log
fire-place, with a fine fire. The outer door was left constantly open
to admit the light. On one side the fire, next the door, was a table; a
kind of dresser, with crockery, and a bureau stood on the other side,
and there were two deer-skin seated chairs and one (Connecticut made)
rocking chair.
A bold-faced, but otherwise good-enough-looking woman of a youngish
middle age, was ironing a shirt on the table. We stated our
circumstances, and asked if we could get some dinner from her. She
reckoned we could, she said, if we’d wait till she was done ironing. So
we waited, taking seats by the fire, and examining the literature and
knick-knacks on the mantel-piece. These consisted of three Nachitoches
_Chronicles_, a Patent Office Agricultural Report, “Christie’s Galvanic
Almanac,” a Bible, “The Pirate of the Gulf,” a powder-horn, the sheath
of a bowie-knife, a whip-lash, and a tobacco-pipe.
Three of the hounds, a negro child, and a white child, had followed us
to the door of the cabin, three chickens had entered before us, a cat
and kittens were asleep in the corner of the fire-place. By the time
we had finished reading the queer advertisements in French of runaway
negroes in the _Chronicle_ two of the hounds and the black child had
retired, and a tan-coloured hound, very lean, and badly crippled in one
leg, had entered and stood asking permission with his tail to come to
the fire-place. The white child, a frowzy girl of ten, came toward us.
I turned and asked her name. She knitted her brows, but made no verbal
reply. I turned my chair towards her, and asked her to come to me. She
hung her head for an instant, then turned, ran to the hound and struck
him a hard blow in the chops. The hound quailed. She struck him again,
and he turned half around; then she began with her feet, and kicked him
out, taking herself after him.
At length the woman finished her ironing, and went to the kitchen,
whence quickly returning, she placed upon the table a plate of cold,
salt, fat pork; a cup of what to both eye and tongue seemed lard, but
which she termed butter; a plate of very stale, dry, flaky, micaceous
corn-bread; a jug of molasses, and a pitcher of milk.
“Well, now it’s ready, if you’ll eat it,” she said, turning to us.
“Best we’ve got. Sit up. Take some pone;” and she sat down in the
rocker at one end of the table. We took seats at the other end.
“Jupiter! what’s the matter with this child?” A little white child that
had crawled up into the gallery, and now to my side—flushed face, and
wheezing like a high-pressure steamboat.
“Got the croup, I reckon,” answered the woman. “Take some ’lasses.”
The child crawled into the room. With the aid of a hand it stood up and
walked round to its mother.
“How long has it been going on that way?” asked we.
“Well, it’s been going on some days, now, and keeps getting worse.
’Twas right bad last night, in the night. Reckoned I should lose it,
one spell. Take some butter.”
We were quite faint with hunger when we rode up, but didn’t eat much
of the corn-cake and pork. The woman and the high-pressure child sat
still and watched us, and we sat still and did our best, making much of
the milk.
“Have you had a physician to see that child?” asked my brother, drawing
back his chair.
She had not.
“Will you come to me, my dear?”
The child came to him, he felt its pulse and patted its hot forehead,
looked down its throat, and leaned his ear on its chest.
“Are you a doctor, sir?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Got some fever; hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Not nigh so much as’t had last night.”
“Have you done anything for it?”
“Well, thar was a gentleman here; he told me sweet ile and sugar would
be good for’t, and I gave it a good deal of that: made it sick, it did.
I thought, perhaps, that would do it good.”
“Yes. You have had something like this in your family before, haven’t
you? You don’t seem much alarmed.”
“Oh yes, sir; that ar one (pointing to the frowzy girl, whose name was
Angelina) had it two or three times—onst most as bad as this. All my
children have had it. Is she bad, doctor?”
“Yes. I should say this was a very serious thing.”
“Have you any medicine in the house?” he asked, after the woman had
returned from a journey to the kitchen. She opened a drawer of the
bureau, half full of patent medicines and some common drugs. “There’s a
whole heap o’ truck in thar. I don’t know what it all is. Whatever you
want just help yourself. I can’t read writin’; you must pick it out.”
Such as were available were taken out and given to the mother, with
directions about administering them, which she promised to obey. “But
the first and most important thing for you to do is to shut the door,
and make up the fire, and put the child to bed, and try to keep this
wind off her.”
“Lord! sir, you can’t keep _her_ in bed—she’s too wild.”
“Well, you must put some more clothes on her. Wrap her up, and try to
keep her warm. The very best thing you can do for her is to give her a
warm bath. Have you not got a washing tub?”
“Oh! yes, sir, I can do that. She’ll go to bed pretty early; she’s used
to going ’tween sundown and dark.”
“Well, give her the warm bath, then, and if she gets worse send for a
physician immediately. You must be very careful of her, madam.”
We walked to the stable, and as the horses had not finished eating
their corn, I lounged about the quarters, and talked with the negro.
There was not a single soul in the quarters or in sight of the house
except ourselves, the woman and her children, and the old negro. The
negro women must have taken their sucklings with them, if they had any,
to the field where they were at work.
The old man said they had “ten or eleven field-hands, such as they
was,” and his master would sell sixty to seventy bags of cotton:
besides which they made all the corn and pork they wanted, and
something over, and raised some cattle.
We found our way back to the town only late in the evening. We had
ridden most of the day over heavily-timbered, nearly flat, rich bottom
land. It is of very great fertility; but, being subject to overflow, is
not very attractive, in spite of its proximity to a market.
But it must be remembered that they were having the first use of a very
fine alluvial soil, and were subject to floods and fevers. The yellow
fever or cholera another year might kill half their negroes, or a flood
of the Red River (such as occurred August, 1849, and October, 1851)
destroy their whole crop, and so use up several years’ profits.
A slate hung in the piazza, with the names of all the cotton-pickers,
and the quantity picked the last picking day by each, thus: Gorge, 152;
David, 130; Polly, 98; Hanna, 96; Little Gorge, 52, etc. The whole
number of hands noted was fourteen. Probably there were over twenty
slaves, big and little, on the plantation.
When our horses were ready, we paid the negro for taking care of them,
and I went in and asked the woman what I might pay her.
“What!” she asked, looking in my face as if angry.
I feared she was offended by my offering money for her hospitality,
and put the question again as delicately as I could. She continued her
sullen gaze at me for a moment, and then answered as if the words had
been bullied out of her by a Tombs lawyer—
“Dollar, I reckon.”
“What!” thought I, but handed her the silver.
Riding out at the bars let down for us by the old negro, we
wondered if the child would be living twenty-four hours later, and
if it survived, what its moral chances were. Poor, we thought. Five
miles from a neighbour; ten, probably, from a Louisiana[40] school;
hound-pups and negroes for playmates.
_On the Emigrant Road into Texas._—Five minutes’ ride took us deep
into the pines. Nachitoches, and with it all the tumult and bother
of social civilization, had disappeared. Under the pines and beyond
them was a new, calm, free life, upon which we entered with a glow of
enthusiasm, which, however, hardly sufficed to light up a whole day of
pine shadows, and many times afterwards glimmered very dull over days
on days of cold corn-bread and cheerless winter prairies.
For two days, we rode through these pines over a sandy surface, having
little rise and fall, watered here and there by small creeks and ponds,
within reach of whose overflow, present or past, stand deciduous trees,
such as, principally, oaks and cotton-woods, in a firmer and richer
soil. Wherever the road crosses or approaches these spots, there is or
has been usually a plantation.
The road could hardly be called a road. It was only a way where people
had passed along before. Each man had taken such a path as suited
him, turning aside to avoid, on high ground, the sand; on low ground,
the mud. We chose, generally, the untrodden elastic pavement of pine
leaves, at a little distance from the main track.
We overtook, several times in the course of each day, the slow
emigrant trains, for which this road, though less frequented than
years ago, is still a chief thoroughfare. Inexorable destiny it seems
that drags or drives on, always Westward, these toilworn people.
Several families were frequently moving together, coming from the same
district, or chance met and joined, for company, on the long road from
Alabama, Georgia, or the Carolinas. Before you come upon them you hear,
ringing through the woods, the fierce cries and blows with which they
urge on their jaded cattle. Then the stragglers appear, lean dogs or
fainting negroes, ragged and spiritless. An old granny, hauling on,
by the hand, a weak boy—too old to ride and too young to keep up. An
old man, heavily loaded, with a rifle. Then the white covers of the
waggons, jerking up and down as they mount over a root or plunge into
a rut, disappearing, one after another, where the road descends. Then
the active and cheery prime negroes, not yet exhausted, with a joke
and a suggestion about tobacco. Then the black pickininnies, staring,
in a confused heap, out at the back of the waggon, more and more of
their eyes to be made out among the table legs and bedding, as you get
near; behind them, further in, the old people and young mothers, whose
turn it is to ride. As you get by, the white mother and babies, and the
tall, frequently ill-humoured master, on horseback, or walking with his
gun, urging up the black driver and his oxen. As a scout ahead, is a
brother, or an intelligent slave, with the best gun, on the look-out
for a deer or a turkey. We passed in the day perhaps one hundred
persons attached to these trains, probably an unusual number; but the
immigration this year had been retarded and condensed by the fear
of yellow fever, the last case of which, at Nachitoches, had indeed
begun only the night before our arrival. Our chances of danger were
considered small, however, as the hard frosts had already come. One of
these trains was made up of three large waggons, loaded with furniture,
babies, and invalids, two or three light waggons, and a gang of twenty
able field-hands. They travel ten or fifteen miles a day, stopping
wherever night overtakes them. The masters are plainly dressed, often
in home-spun, keeping their eyes about them, noticing the soil,
sometimes making a remark on the crops by the roadside; but generally
dogged, surly, and silent. The women are silent too, frequently
walking, to relieve the teams; and weary, haggard, mud be-draggled,
forlorn, and disconsolate, yet hopeful and careful. The negroes,
mud-incrusted, wrapped in old blankets or gummy-bags, suffering from
cold, plod on, aimless, hopeless, thoughtless, more indifferent,
apparently, than the oxen, to all about them.
We met, in course of the day, numerous cotton waggons, two or three
sometimes together, drawn by three or four pairs of mules or oxen,
going slowly on toward Nachitoches or Grand Ecore, each managed by its
negro-driver. The load is commonly five bales (of 400 lbs. each), and
the cotton comes in this tedious way, over execrable roads, distances
of 100 and even 150 miles. It is usually hauled from the eastern tier
of Texan counties to the Sabine; but this year there had been no rise
of water in the rivers, and from all this region it must be carried to
Red River. The distance from the Sabine is here about fifty miles, and
the cost of this transportation about one cent a pound; the freight
from Grand Ecore to New Orleans from one to one and a quarter cents. If
hauled 150 miles in this way, as we were told, the profit remaining,
after paying the charges of transportation and commission, all
amounting to about five cents, must be exceedingly small in ordinary
years.
At night we met three or four of these teams half-mired in a swamp,
distant some quarter of a mile one from another, and cheering
themselves in the dark with prolonged and musical “Yohoi’s,” sent
ringing through the woods. We got through this with considerable
perplexity ourselves, and were very glad to see the light of the cabin
where we had been recommended to stop.
This was “Mrs. Stokers’,” about half way to the Sabine. We were
received cordially, every house here expecting to do inn-duty, but were
allowed to strip and take care of our own horses, the people by no
means expecting to do landlord’s duty, but taking guests on sufferance.
The house was a double log cabin—two log erections, that is, joined
by one long roof, leaving an open space between. A gallery, extending
across the whole front, serves for a pleasant sitting-room in summer,
and for a toilet-room at all seasons. A bright fire was very welcome.
Supper, consisting of pork, fresh and salt, cold corn-bread, and boiled
sweet potatoes, was served in a little lean-to behind the house. After
disposing of this we were shown to our room, the other cabin, where we
whiled away our evening, studying, by the light of the great fire, a
book of bear stories, and conversing with the young man of the family,
and a third guest. The room was open to the rafters, and had been built
up only as high as the top of the door upon the gallery side, leaving
a huge open triangle to the roof, through which the wind rushed at us
with a fierce swoop, both while we were sitting at the fire and after
we retreated to bed. Owing to this we slept little, and having had a
salt supper, lay very thirsty upon the deep feather bed. About four
o’clock an old negro came in to light the fire. Asking him for water,
we heard him breaking the ice for it outside. When we washed in the
piazza the water was thick with frost, crusty, and half inclined not to
be used as a fluid at all.
After a breakfast, similar in all respects to the supper, we saddled
and rode on again. The horses had had a dozen ears of corn, night
and morning, with an allowance of fodder (maize leaves). For this
the charge was $1 25 each person. This is a fair sample of roadside
stopping-places in Western Louisiana and Texas. The meals are
absolutely invariable, save that fresh pork and sweet potatoes are
frequently wanting. There is always, too, the black decoction of the
South called coffee, than which it is often difficult to imagine any
beverage more revolting. The bread is made of corn-meal, stirred with
water and salt, and baked in a kettle covered with coals. The corn for
breakfast is frequently unhusked at sunrise. A negro, whose business
it is, shells and grinds it in a hand-mill for the cook. Should there
be any of the loaf left after breakfast, it is given to the traveller,
if he wish it, with a bit of pork, for a noon-“snack,” with no further
charge. He is conscious, though, in that case, that he is robbing the
hounds, always eagerly waiting, and should none remain, none can be had
without a new resort to the crib. Wheat bread, if I am not mistaken,
we met with but twice, out of Austin, in our whole journey across the
State.
The country was very similar to that passed over the day before, with
perhaps rather more of the cultivable loam. A good part of the land
had, at some time, been cleared, but much was already turned over to
the “old-field pines,” some of them even fifteen years or more. In
fact, a larger area had been abandoned, we thought, than remained
under cultivation. With the land, many cabins have, of course, also
been deserted, giving the road a desolate air. If you ask, where are
the people that once occupied these, the universal reply is, “Gone to
Texas.”
The plantations occur, perhaps, at an average distance of three
or four miles. Most of the remaining inhabitants live chiefly, to
appearances, by fleecing emigrants. Every shanty sells spirits,
and takes in travellers. We passed through but one village, which
consisted of six dwellings. The families obtained their livelihood by
the following occupations: one by shoeing the horses of emigrants;
one by repairing the wheels of their waggons; one by selling them
groceries. The smallest cabin contained a physician. It was not larger
than a good-sized medicine chest, but had the biggest sign. The others
advertised “corn and fodder.” The prices charged for any article sold,
or service performed, were enormous; full one hundred per cent, over
those of New Orleans.
We met Spaniards once or twice on the road, and the population of this
district is thought to be one half of Spanish origin. They have no
houses on the road, however, but live in little hamlets in the forest,
or in cabins contiguous to each other, about a pond. They make no
progress in acquiring capital of their own, but engage in hunting and
fishing, or in herding cattle for larger proprietors of the land. For
this business they seem to have an hereditary adaptation, far excelling
negroes of equal experience.
The number of cattle raised here is now comparatively small, most of
the old herd proprietors having moved on to pastures new in Western
Texas. The cane, which is a natural growth of most good soils at the
South, is killed if closely fed upon. The blue-joint grass (not the
blue-grass of Kentucky) takes its place, and is also indigenous upon
a poorer class of soils in this region. This is also good food for
cattle, but is killed in turn if closely pastured. The ground then
becomes bare or covered with shrubs, and the “range” is destroyed.
The better class of soils here bear tolerable crops of cotton, but
are by no means of value equal to the Red River bottoms or the new
soils of any part of Texas. The country is, therefore, here in similar
condition to that of the Eastern Slave States. The improvements which
the inhabitants have succeeded in making in the way of clearing the
forest, fencing and tilling the land, building dwellings, barns, and
machinery, making roads and bridges, and introducing the institutions
of civilization, not compensating in value the deterioration in the
productiveness of the soil. The exhausted land reverts to wilderness.
* * * * *
_Eastern Texas._—Shortly after noon rain began to fall from the
chilly clouds that had been threatening us, and sleet and snow were
soon driving in our faces. Our animals were disposed to flinch, but we
were disposed to sleep in Texas, and pushed on across the Sabine. We
found use for all our wraps, and when we reached the ferry-house our
Mackintoshes were like a coat of mail with the stiff ice, and trees and
fields were covered. In the broad river bottom we noticed many aquatic
birds, and the browsing line under the dense mass of trees was almost
as clean cut as that of Bushy Park. The river, at its low stage, was
only three or four rods across. The old negro who ferried us over, told
us he had taken many a man to the other side, before annexation, who
had ridden his horse hard to get beyond the jurisdiction of the States.
If we were unfortunate in this stormy entrance into Texas, we were very
fortunate in the good quarters we lighted upon. The ferry has long been
known as Gaines’s Ferry, but is now the property of Mr. Strather, an
adjacent planter, originally from Mississippi, but a settler of long
standing. His log-house had two stories, and being the first we had
met having glass windows, and the second, I think, with any windows at
all, takes high rank for comfort on the road. At supper we had capital
mallard-ducks from the river, as well as the usual Texan diet.
We were detained by the severity of the weather during the following
day, and were well entertained with huntsman’s stories of snakes,
game, and crack shots. Mr. S. himself is the best shot in the county.
A rival, who had once a match against him for two thousand dollars,
called the day before the trial, and paid five hundred dollars to
withdraw. He brought out his rifle for us, and placed a bullet, at one
hundred and twenty yards, plump in the spot agreed upon. His piece is
an old Kentucky rifle, weighing fourteen pounds, barrel fourty-four
inches in length, and throwing a ball weighing forty-four to the pound.
A guest, who came in, helped us to pass the day by exciting our
anticipations of the West, and by his free and good advice. He
confirmed stories we had heard of the danger to slavery in the West
by the fraternizing of the blacks with the Mexicans. They helped them
in all their bad habits, married them, stole a living from them,
and ran them off every day to Mexico. This man had driven stages or
herded cattle in every state of the Union, and had a notion that he
liked the people and the state of Alabama better than any other. A
man would get on faster, he thought, in Iowa, than anywhere else. He
had been stage-driver in Illinois during the cold winter of 1851-2,
and had driven a whole day when the mercury was at its furthest below
zero, but had never suffered, so much from cold as on his present
trip, during a norther on a Western prairie. He was now returning from
Alexandria, where he had taken a small drove of horses. He cautioned
us, in travelling, always to see our horses fed with our own eyes, and
to “hang around” them till they had made sure of a tolerable allowance,
and never to leave anything portable within sight of a negro. A stray
blanket was a sure loss.
Mr. S. has two plantations, both on upland, but one under the care
of an overseer, some miles from the river. The soil he considers
excellent. He averaged, last year, seven and a half bales to the hand;
this year, four and a half bales. The usual crop of corn here is thirty
bushels (shelled) to the acre.
Hearing him curse the neighbouring poor people for stealing hogs, we
inquired if thieves were as troublesome here as in the older countries.
“If there ever were any hog-thieves anywhere,” said he, “it’s here.” In
fact, no slave country, new or old, is free from this exasperating pest
of poor whites. In his neighbourhood were several who ostensibly had
a little patch of land to attend to, but who really, he said, derived
their whole lazy subsistence from their richer neighbours’ hog droves.
The negro-quarters here, scattered irregularly about the house, were
of the worst description, though as good as local custom requires.
They are but a rough inclosure of logs, ten feet square, without
windows, covered by slabs of hewn wood four feet long. The great chinks
are stopped with whatever has come to hand—a wad of cotton here,
and a corn-shuck there. The suffering from cold within them in such
weather as we experienced, must be great. The day before, we had seen
a young black girl, of twelve or fourteen years, sitting on a pile
of logs before a house we passed, in a driving sleet, having for her
only garment a short chemise. It is impossible to say whether such
_shiftlessness_ was the fault of the master or of the girl. Probably of
both, and a part of the peculiar Southern and South-western system of
“get along,” till it comes better weather.
The storm continuing a third day, we rode through it twenty-five miles
further to San Augustine. For some distance the country remains as in
Louisiana. Then the pines gradually disappear, and a heavy clay soil,
stained by an oxide of iron to a uniform brick red, begins. It makes
most disagreeable roads, sticking close, and giving an indelible stain
to every article that touches it. This tract is known as the Red Lands
of Eastern Texas.
On a plantation not far from the river, we learned they had made eight
bales to the hand. Mentioning it, afterwards, to a man who knew the
place, he said they had planted earlier than their neighbours, and
worked night and day, and, he believed, had lied, besides. They had
sent cotton both by Galveston and by Grand Ecore, and had found the
cost the same, about $8 per bale of 500 lbs.
We called at a plantation offered for sale. It was described in the
hand-bills as having a fine house. We found it a cabin without windows.
The proprietor said he had made ten bales to the hand, and would sell
with all the improvements, a new gin-house, press, etc., for $6 per
acre.
The roadside, though free from the gloom of pines, did not cheer up,
the number of deserted wrecks of plantations not at all diminishing.
The occupied cabins were no better than before. We had entered our
promised land; but the oil and honey of gladness and peace were nowhere
visible. The people we met were the most sturdily inquisitive I ever
saw. Nothing staggered them, and we found our account in making a clean
breast of it as soon as they approached.
We rode through the shire-town, Milam, without noticing it. Its
buildings, all told, are six in number.
We passed several immigrant trains in motion, in spite of the weather.
Their aspect was truly pitiful. Splashed with a new coating of red
mud, dripping, and staggering, beating still the bones of their long
worn-out cattle, they floundered helplessly on.
San Augustine made no very charming impression as we entered, nor did
we find any striking improvement on longer acquaintance. It is a town
of perhaps fifty or sixty houses, and half a dozen shops. Most of the
last front upon a central square acre of neglected mud. The dwellings
are clap-boarded, and of a much higher class than the plantation
dwellings. As to the people, a resident told us there was but one man
in the town that was not in the constant habit of getting drunk, and
that this gentleman relaxed his Puritanic severity during our stay in
view of the fact that Christmas came but once that year.
Late on Christmas eve, we were invited to the window by our landlady,
to see the pleasant local custom of The Christmas Serenade. A band
of pleasant spirits started from the square, blowing tin horns, and
beating tin pans, and visited in succession every house in the village,
kicking in doors, and pulling down fences, until every male member of
the family had appeared, with appropriate instruments, and joined the
merry party. They then marched to the square, and ended the ceremony
with a centupled tin row. In this touching commemoration, as strangers,
we were not urged to participate.
A gentleman of the neighbourhood, addicted, as we knew, to a partiality
towards a Rip Van Winkle, tavern-lounging style of living, told us he
was himself regarded by many of his neighbours with an evil eye, on
account of his “stuck-up” deportment, and his habit of minding too
strictly his own business. He had been candidate for representative,
and had, he thought, probably been defeated on this ground, as he was
sure his politics were right.
Not far from the village stands an edifice, which, having three
stories and sashed windows, at once attracted our attention. On
inquiry, we learned a story, curiously illustrative of Texan and
human life. It appeared that two universities were chartered for San
Augustine, the one under the protection of the Methodists, the other
of the Presbyterians. The country being feebly settled, the supply
of students was short, and great was the consequent rivalry between
the institutions. The neighbouring people took sides upon the subject
so earnestly, that, one fine day, the president of the Presbyterian
University was shot down in the street. After this, both dwindled,
and seeing death by starvation staring them in the face, they made an
arrangement by which both were taken under charge of the fraternity
of Masons. The buildings are now used under the style of “The Masonic
Institute,” the one for boys, the other for girls. The boys occupy only
the third story, and the two lower stories are falling to ludicrous
decay—the boarding dropping off, and the windows on all sides dashed in.
The Mexican habitations of which San Augustine was once composed, have
all disappeared. We could not find even a trace of them.
END OF VOL. I.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I greatly regret, after visiting Washington for this purpose, to
find that the returns of the Census of 1860, are not yet sufficiently
verified and digested to be given to the public. I have therefore had
to fall back upon those of 1850. The rate of increase of the slave
population in the meantime is stated at 25 per cent.
[2] _See_ Appendix, A 2.
[3] Official Census—Compend., p. 94.
[4] Messrs. Neill Brothers, cotton merchants of New Orleans, the most
painstaking collectors of information about the cotton crop in the
country, state, in a recent circular, that many of the Mississippi
cotton plantations last year, after an extraordinary fertilizing flood,
produced sixteen bales to the hand. The slaves on these plantations
being to a large extent picked hands, as I elsewhere show, the
production per head was fully eight bales.
[5] In a careful article in the _Austin State Gazette_, six and a
quarter cents is given as the average net price of cotton in Texas. The
small planters, having no gins or presses of their own, usually have
their cotton prepared for market by large planters, for which service
they of course have to pay.
[6] There have been much larger aggregate crops since, and the price
may be a cent more to the planter, but the number of slaves drawn to
the larger plantations in the meantime has increased in quite equal
proportion.
[7] Census Compend., p. 95.
[8] The average size of plantations in the South-west, including the
farms and “patches” of the non-slaveholders, is 273 acres (p. 170, C.
Compend.). Cotton plantations are not generally of less than 400 acres.
[9] Compendium, p. 176.
[10] Evidence from Virginian witnesses is given in the Appendix, A.
[11] “There is a small settlement of Germans, about three miles from
me, who, a few years since (with little or nothing beyond their
physical abilities to aid them), seated themselves down in a poor,
miserable, old field, and have, by their industry, and means obtained
by working round among the neighbours, effected a change which is
really surprising and pleasing to behold, and who will, I have no
doubt, become wealthy, provided they remain prudent, as they have
hitherto been industrious.”—F. A. CLOPPER (Montgomery Co.), Maryland,
in Patent Of. Rept., 1851.
[12] William Chambers has published the article in a separate form,
with some others, under the title of ‘American Slavery and Colours.’
Mr. Russell, of the _Times_, has given a later case at Montgomery.
[13] A slaveholder writing to me with regard to my cautious statements
on this subject, made in the _Daily Times_, says:—“In the States of
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri,
as much attention is paid to the breeding and growth of negroes as to
that of horses and mules. Further South, we raise them both for use
and for market. Planters command their girls and women (married or
unmarried) to have children; and I have known a great many negro girls
to be sold off, because they did not have children. A breeding woman is
worth from one-sixth to one-fourth more than one that does not breed.”
[14] Mr. Ellison, in his work, ‘Slavery and Secession,’ gives the
annual importation of negroes, for the ten years ending 1860, into
seven of the Southern Slave States, from the Slave-breeding States, as
26·301
[15] Mr. Wise is reported to have stated, in his electioneering tour,
when candidate for Governor, in 1855, that, if slavery were permitted
in California, negroes would sell for $5,000 apiece.
[16] “AN INGENIOUS NEGRO.—In Lafayette, Miss., a few days ago, a
negro, who, with his wife and three children, occupied a hut upon the
plantation of Col. Peques, was very much annoyed by fleas. Believing
that they congregated in great numbers beneath the house, he resolved
to destroy them by fire; and accordingly, one night when his family
were asleep, he raised a plank in the floor of the cabin, and,
procuring an armful of shucks, scattered them on the ground beneath,
and lighted them. The consequence was, that the cabin was consumed, and
the whole family, with the exception of the man who lighted the fire,
was burned to death.”—_Journal of Commerce._
[17] From 1850 to 1860, the rate of increase of the free population
has been 16·44 per cent; of the slave, 3·88. (From a recent official
statement of the Census Office.) A somewhat parallel case to that
of the Virginia slaveholder is that of a breeder of blooded stock.
A Flying Dutchman is used upon occasion as a charger, but under no
pressure of the harvest will you find him put before the cart. I have
more than once heard the phrase used, “Niggers are worth too much” to
be used in such and such work. Instances of this are given hereafter.
[18] See ‘Patent Office Report, 1852.’
[19] Not something to eat but punishment with an instrument like a
ferule.
[20] The _Richmond American_ has a letter from Raleigh, N.C., dated
Sept. 18, which says: “On yesterday morning, a beautiful young lady,
Miss Virginia Frost, daughter of Austin Frost, an engineer on the
Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, and residing in this city, was shot by
a negro girl, and killed instantly. Cause—reproving her for insolent
language.”
[21] In the city of Columbia, S.C., the police are required to prevent
the negroes from running in this way after the military. Any negro
neglecting to leave the vicinity of a parade, when ordered by a
policeman or any military officer, is required, by the ordinance, to be
whipped at the guard-house.
[22] A ship’s officer told me that he had noticed that it took just
about three times as long to have the same repairs made in Norfolk that
it did in New York.
[23] “Old Man” is a common title of address to any middle-aged negro in
Virginia whose name is not known. “Boy” and “Old Man” may be applied
to the same person. Of course, in this case, the slave is not to be
supposed to be beyond his prime of strength.
[24] I have since seen a pack of negro-dogs, chained in couples,
and probably going to the field. They were all of a breed, and in
appearance between a Scotch stag-hound and a fox-hound.
[25] _A South Carolina View of the Subject._ (_Correspondence of
Willis’s Musical World, New York._)—“_Charlestown, Dec. 31._—I take
advantage of the season of compliments (being a subscriber to your
invaluable sheet), to tender you this scrap, as a reply to a piece in
your paper of the 17th ult., with the caption: ‘Intolerance of coloured
persons in New York.’ The piece stated that up-town families (in New
York) objected to hiring coloured persons as servants, in consequence
of ‘conductors and drivers refusing to let them ride in city cars and
omnibuses,’ and coloured boys, at most, may ride on the top. And after
dwelling on this, you say, ‘Shame on such intolerant and outrageous
prejudice and persecution of the coloured race at the North!’ You then
say, ‘Even the slaveholder would cry shame upon us.’ You never made a
truer assertion in your life. For you first stated that they were even
rejected when they had white children in their arms. My dear friend, if
this was the only persecution that your coloured people were compelled
to yield submission to, then I might say nothing. Are they allowed
(if they pay) to sit at the tables of your fashionable hotels? Are
they allowed a seat in the ‘dress circle’ at your operas? Are they not
subject to all kinds of ill-treatment from the whites? Are they not
pointed at, and hooted at, by the whites (natives of the city), when
dressed up a little extra, and if they offer a reply, are immediately
overpowered by gangs of whites? You appear to be a reasonable writer,
which is the reason I put these queries, knowing they can only be
answered in the affirmative.
“We at the South feel proud to allow them to occupy seats in our
omnibuses (public conveyances), while they, with the affection of
mothers, embrace our white children, and take them to ride. And in our
most fashionable carriages, you will see the slave sitting alongside of
_their owner_. You will see the slave clothed in the most comfortable
of wearing apparel. And more. Touch that slave, if you dare, and you
will see the owner’s attachment. And thus, in a very few words, you
have the contrast between the situation of the coloured people at the
North and South. Do teach the _detestable_ Abolitionist of the North
his duty, and open his eyes to the misery and starvation that surround
his own home. _Teach him_ to love his brethren of the South, and teach
him to let Slavery alone in the South, while starvation and destitution
surround him at the North; and oblige,
“BARON.”
[26] The mother of this young man remonstrated with a friend of mine,
for permitting his son to join a company of civil engineers, engaged,
at the time, in surveying a route for a road—he would be subject to
such fatiguing labour, and so much exposure to the elements; and
congratulated herself that her own child was engaged in such an easy
and gentleman-like employment as that of hotel-clerk and bar keeper.
[27] Official Census Report, pp. 309, 299, 317.
[28] Husks of maize.
[29] _From the Southern Cultivator, June, 1855._—“Children are fond
of the company of negroes, not only because the deference shown them
makes them feel perfectly at ease, but the subjects of conversation
are on a level with their capacity; while the simple tales, and the
witch and ghost stories, so common among negroes, excite the young
imagination and enlist the feelings. If, in this association, the child
becomes familiar with indelicate, vulgar, and lascivious manners and
conversation, an impression is made upon the mind and heart, which
lasts for years—perhaps for life. Could we, in all cases, trace effects
to their real causes, I doubt not but many young men and women, of
respectable parentage and bright prospects, who have made shipwreck of
all their earthly hopes, have been led to the fatal step by the seeds
of corruption which, in the days of childhood and youth, were sown in
their hearts by the indelicate and lascivious manners and conversation
of their father’s negroes.”
* * * * *
_From an Address of Chancellor Harper, prepared for and read before
the Society for the Advancement of Learning, of South Carolina._—“I
have said the tendency of our institution is to elevate the female
character, as well as that of the other sex, for similar reasons.
“And, permit me to say, that this elevation of the female character is
no less important and essential to us, than the moral and intellectual
cultivation of the other sex. It would, indeed, be intolerable, if,
when one class of society is necessarily degraded in this respect, no
compensation were made by the superior elevation and purity of the
other. Not only essential purity of conduct, but the utmost purity
of manners. And, I will add, though it may incur the formidable
charge of affectation or prudery, _a greater severity of decorum than
is required elsewhere_, _is necessary among us_. Always should be
strenuously resisted the attempts, which have sometimes been made, to
introduce among us the freedom of foreign European, and, especially,
of continental manners. Let us say: we will not have _the manners_ of
South Carolina changed.”
[30] _From the Charleston Standard, Nov. 23rd, 1854._—“This abominable
practice of trading with slaves is not only taking our produce from us,
but injuring our slave property. It is true the owner of slaves may
lock, watch, and whip, as much as he pleases—the negroes will steal and
trade as long as white persons hold out to them temptations to steal
and bring to them. Three-fourths of the persons who are guilty, you
can get no fine from; and, if they have some property, all they have
to do is to confess a judgment to a friend, go to jail, and swear out.
It is no uncommon thing for a man to be convicted of offences against
the State, and against the persons and property of individuals, and pay
the fines, costs, and damages, by swearing out of jail, and then go
and commit similar offences. The State, or the party injured, has the
cost of all these prosecutions and suits to pay, besides the trouble
of attending Court: the guilty is convicted, the injured prosecutor
punished.”
[31] _From an Address to the people of Georgia, by a Committee of the
State Temperance Society, prior to the election of 1855._—“We propose
to turn the 2,200 _foreign_ grog-shop keepers, in Georgia, out of
office, and ask them to help us. They (the Know-Nothings) reply, ‘We
have no time for that now—we are trying to turn _foreigners_ out of
office;’ and when we call upon the Democratic party for aid, they
excuse themselves, upon the ground that they have work enough to do in
keeping these foreigners in office.”
_From the Penfield (Ga.) Temperance Banner, Sept. 29th, 1855._
“OUR SLAVE POPULATION.
“We take the following from the _Savannah Journal and Courier_, and
would ask every candid reader if the evils referred to ought not to be
corrected. How shall it be done?
“‘By reference to the recent homicide of a negro, in another column,
some facts will be seen suggestive of a state of things, in this part
of our population, which should not exist, and which cannot endure
without danger, both to them and to us. The collision, which terminated
thus fatally, occurred at an hour past midnight—at a time when none but
the evil-disposed are stirring, unless driven by necessity; and yet,
at that hour, those negroes and others, as many as chose, were passing
about the country, with ample opportunity to commit any act which might
happen to enter their heads. In fact, they did engage, in the public
highway, in a broil terminating in homicide. It is not difficult to
imagine that their evil passions might have taken a very different
direction, with as little danger of meeting control or obstacle.
“‘But it is shown, too, that to the impunity thus given them by the
darkness of midnight, was added the incitement to crime drawn from the
abuse of liquor. They had just left one of those resorts where the
negro is supplied with the most villanously-poisonous compounds, fit
only to excite him to deeds of blood and violence. The part that this
had in the slaughter of Saturday night, we are enabled only to imagine;
but experience would teach us that its share was by no means small.
Indeed, we have the declaration of the slayer, that the blow, by which
he was exasperated so as to return it by the fatal stab, was inflicted
by a bottle of brandy! In this fact, we fear, is a clue to the whole
history of the transaction.’
“Here, evidently, are considerations deserving the grave notice of, not
only those who own negroes, but of all others who live in a society
where they are held.”
[32] In Cuba every slave has the privilege of emancipating himself,
by paying a price which does not depend upon the selfish exactions
of the masters; but it is either a fixed price, or else is fixed,
in each case, by disinterested appraisers. The consequence is, that
emancipations are constantly going on, and the free people of colour
are becoming enlightened, cultivated, and wealthy. In no part of the
United States do they occupy the high social position which they enjoy
in Cuba.
[33] Contemptible; from the root Fripper, to wear out.—WEBSTER.
[34] [_From the New Orleans Picayune._]
“FIFTY DOLLARS REWARD.—Ran away from the subscriber, about two months
ago, a bright mulatto girl, named Mary, about twenty-five years of age,
almost white, and reddish hair, front teeth out, a cut on her upper
lip; about five feet five inches high; has a scar on her forehead; she
passes for free; talks _French, Italian, Dutch, English, and Spanish_.
“ANDRE GRASSO.
“Upper side of St. Mary’s Market.”
[35] The private establishments, in which stocks of slaves are kept for
sale in New Orleans, are called jails.
[36] “THE GLOBE BALL ROOM,
_Corner of St. Claude and St. Peter Streets, abreast of the Old
Basin_,
WILL OPEN THIS EVENING, October 16, when a Society Ball will be
given.
No ladies admitted without masks.
Gentlemen, fifty cents—Ladies, gratis.
Doors open at 9½ o’clock. Ball to commence at 10 o’clock.
No person admitted with weapons, by order of the Council.
A superior orchestra has been engaged for the season.
The public may be assured of the most strict order, as there will
be at all times an efficient police in attendance.
Attached to the establishment is a superior Bar, well stocked with
wines and liquors; also, a Restaurant, where may be had all such
delicacies as the market affords.
All ladies are requested to procure free tickets in the Mask Room,
as no lady will be admitted into the ball-room without one.
A. WHITLOCK, Manager.”
[37] A gentleman in an inland Southern town said to me, “I have now but
one servant; if I should marry, I should be obliged to buy three more,
and that alone would withdraw from my capital at least three thousand
dollars.”
[38] It is only on the best plantations that the seed-cane is selected
with this care. On another plantation that I visited during the
planting season I noticed that the best part of the stalk had been cut
off for grinding, and only the less valuable part saved for seed; and
this, I apprehend, is the general practice. The best cuttings probably
produce the most vigorous plants.
[39] John Randolph, of Roanoke, himself a slaveholder, once said, on
the floor of Congress (touching the internal slave-trade): “What are
the trophies of this infernal traffic? The handcuff, the manacles,
the blood-stained cowhide. _What man is worse received in society for
being a hard master? Who denies the hand of sister or daughter to such
monsters?_”
[40] The State Superintendent lately recommended that two out of three
of the Directors of Common Schools in Louisiana should be required to
know how to read and write; and mentioned that in one parish, instead
of the signature the mark of twelve different directors was affixed to
a teacher’s certificate.