THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI.
We were nearly all night at Natchez loading cotton. The next day, I
noticed that the men worked languidly, and that the mate was plying them
with whiskey. I took an opportunity to talk with him about them. He
said,—
“We have a hundred and eighty hands aboard, all told. Thar’s sixty
deck-hands. That a’n’t enough. We ought to have reliefs, when we’re
shipping freight day and night as we are now.”
I remarked: “A gentleman who came up to Vicksburg in the ‘Fashion,’
stated, as an excuse for the long trip she made, that the niggers
wouldn’t work,—that the mates couldn’t make them work.”
He replied: “I reckon the hands on board the ‘Fashion’ are about in the
condition these are. These men are used up. They ha’n’t had no sleep for
four days and nights. I’ve seen a man go to sleep many a time, standing
up, with a box on his shoulder. We pay sixty dollars a month,—more’n
almost any other boat, the work is so hard. But we get rid of paying a
heap of ’em. When a man gets so used up he can’t stand no more, he
quits. He don’t dare to ask for wages, for he knows he’ll get none,
without he sticks by to the end of the trip.”
While we were talking, a young fellow, not more than twenty years old,
came up, looking very much exhausted, and told the mate he was sick.
“Ye a’n’t sick neither!” roared the mate at him, fiercely. “You’re lazy!
If you won’t work, go ashore.”
The fellow limped away again, and went ashore at the next landing.
“Is he sick or lazy?” I asked.
“Neither. He’s used up. He was as smart a hand as I had when he came
aboard. But they can’t stand it.”
“Was it always so?”
“No; before the war we had men trained for this work. We had some
niggers, but more white men. We couldn’t git all the niggers we wanted;
a fifteen hundred dollar man wore out too quick.”
“The whites were the best, I suppose.”
“The niggers was the best. They was more active getting down bales. They
liked the fun. They stand it better than white men. Business stopped,
and that set of hands all dropped off,—went into the war, the most of
’em. Now we have to take raw hands. These are all plantation niggers.
Not one of ’m’ll ship for another trip; they’ve had enough of it. Thar’s
no compellin’ ’em. You can’t hit a nigger now, but these d——d Yankee
sons of b——s have you up and make you pay for it.”
I told him if that was the case, I didn’t think I should hit one.
“They’ve never had me up,” he resumed. “When I tackle a nigger, it’ll be
whar thar an’t no witnesses, and it’ll be the last of him. That’s what
ought to be done with ’em,—kill ’em all off. I like a nigger in his
place, and that’s a servant, if thar’s any truth in the Bible.”
This allusion to Scripture, from lips hot with words of wrath and wrong,
was especially edifying.
The “Quitman” was a fine boat, and passengers, if not deck-hands, fared
sumptuously on board of her. The table was equal to that of the best
hotels. An excellent quality of claret wine was furnished, as a part of
the regular dinner fare, after the French fashion, which appears to have
been introduced into this country by the Creoles, and which is to be met
with, I believe, only on the steamboats of the Lower Mississippi.
On the “Quitman,” as on the boat from Memphis to Vicksburg, I made the
acquaintance of all sorts of Southern people. The conversation of some
of them is worth recording.
One, a Mississippi planter, learning that I was a Northern man, took me
aside, and with much emotion, asked if I thought there was “any chance
of the government paying us for our niggers.”
“What niggers?”
“The niggers you’ve set free by this abolition war.”
“This abolition war you brought upon yourselves; and paying you for your
slaves would be like paying a burglar for a pistol lost on your
premises. No, my friend, believe me, you will never get the first cent,
as long as this government lasts.”
He looked deeply anxious. But he still cherished a hope. “I’ve been told
by a heap of our people that we shall get our pay. Some are talking
about buying nigger claims. They expect, when our representatives get
into Congress, there’ll be an appropriation made.”
He went on: “I did one mighty bad thing. To save my niggers, I run ’em
off into Texas. It cost me a heap of money. I came back without a
dollar, and found the Yankees had taken all my stock, and everything,
and my niggers was free, after all.”
Jim B——, from Warren County, ten miles from Vicksburg, was a Mississippi
planter of a different type,—jovial, generous, extravagant in his
speech, and, in his habits of living, fast. “My niggers are all with me
yet, and you can’t get ’em to leave me. The other day my boy Dan drove
me into town; when we got thar, I says to him, ‘Dan, ye want any money?’
‘Yes, master, I’d like a little?’ I took out a ten-dollar bill and give
him. Another nigger says to him, ‘Dan, what did that man give you money
for?’ ‘That man?’ says Dan; ‘I belongs to him.’ ‘No, you don’t belong to
nobody now; you’re free.’ ‘Well,’ says Dan, ‘he provides for me, and
gives me money, and he’s my master, any way.’ I give my boys a heap more
money than I should if I just hired ’em. We go right on like we always
did, and I pole ’em if they don’t do right. This year I says to ’em,
‘Boys, I’m going to make a bargain with you. I’ll roll out the ploughs
and the mules and the feed, and you shall do the work; we’ll make a crop
of cotton, and you shall have half. I’ll provide for ye, give ye
quarters, treat ye well, and when ye won’t work, pole ye like I always
have. They agreed to it, and I put it into the contract that I was to
whoop ’em when I pleased.”
Jim was very enthusiastic about a girl that belonged to him. “She’s a
perfect mountain-spout of a woman!” (if anybody knows what that is.)
“When the Yankees took me prisoner, she froze to a trunk of mine, and
got it out of the way with fifty thousand dollars Confederate money in
it.”
He never wearied of praising her fine qualities. “She’s black outside,
but she’s white inside, shore!” And he spoke of a son of hers, then
twelve years old, with an interest and affection which led me to inquire
about the child’s father. “Well,” said Jim, with a smile, “he’s a
perfect little image of me, only a shade blacker.”
An Arkansas planter said: “I’ve a large plantation near Pine Bluff. I
furnish everything but clothes, and give my freedmen one third of the
crop they make. On twenty plantations around me, there are ten different
styles of contracts. Niggers are working well; but you can’t get only
about two thirds as much out of ’em now as you could when they were
slaves” (which I suppose is about all that ought to be got out of them).
“The nigger is fated: he can’t live with the white race, now he’s free.
I don’t know one I’d trust with fifty dollars, or to manage a crop and
control the proceeds. It will be generations before we can feel friendly
towards the Northern people.”
I remarked: “I have travelled months in the South, and expressed my
sentiments freely, and met with better treatment than I could have
expected five years ago.”
“That’s true; if you had expressed abolition sentiments then, you’d have
woke up some morning and found yourself hanging from some limb.”
Of the war he said: “Slavery was really what we were fighting for,
although the leaders didn’t talk that to the people. They saw the slave
interest was losing power in the Union, and trying to straighten it up,
they tipped it over.”
A Louisiana planter, from Lake Providence,—and a very intelligent,
well-bred gentleman,—said: “Negroes do best when they have a share of
the crop; the idea of working for themselves stimulates them. Planters
are afraid to trust them to manage; but it’s a great mistake. I know an
old negro who, with three children, made twenty-five bales of cotton
this year on abandoned land. Another, with two women and a blind mule,
made twenty-seven bales. A gang of fifty made three hundred bales,—all
without any advice or assistance from white men. I was always in favor
of educating and elevating the black race. The laws were against it, but
I taught all my slaves to read the Bible. Each race has its
peculiarities: the negro has his, and it remains to be seen what can be
done with him. Men talk about his stealing: no doubt he’ll steal: but
circumstances have cultivated that habit. Some of my neighbors couldn’t
have a pig, but their niggers would steal it. But mine never stole from
me, because they had enough without stealing. Giving them the elective
franchise just now is absurd; but when they are prepared for it, and
they will be some day, I shall advocate it.”
Another Louisianian, agent of the Hope Estate, near Water-Proof, in
Tensas Parish, said: “I manage five thousand acres,—fourteen hundred
under cultivation. I always fed my niggers well, and rarely found one
that would steal. My neighbors’ niggers, half-fed, hard-worked, they’d
steal, and I never blamed ’em. Nearly all mine stay with me. They’ve
done about two thirds the work this year they used to, for one seventh
of the crops. Heap of niggers around me have never received anything;
they’re only just beginning to learn that they’re free. Many planters
keep stores for niggers, and sell ’em flour, prints, jewelry and
trinkets, and charge two or three prices for everything. I think God
intended the niggers to be slaves; we have the Bible for that:” always
the Bible. “Now since man has deranged God’s plan, I think the best we
can do is to keep ’em as near a state of bondage as possible. I don’t
believe in educating ’em.”
“Why not?”
“One reason, schooling would enable them to compete with white
mechanics.”
“And why not?”
“It would be a _disadvantage_ to the whites,” he replied,—as if that was
the only thing to be considered by men with the Bible in their mouths!
“In Mississippi, opposite Water-Proof, there’s a minister collecting
money to buy plantations in a white man’s name, to be divided in little
farms of ten and fifteen acres for the niggers. He couldn’t do that
thing in my parish: he’d soon be dangling from some tree. There isn’t a
freedman taught in our parish; not a school; it wouldn’t be allowed.”
He admitted that the war was brought on by the Southern leaders, but
thought the North “ought to be lenient and give them all their rights.”
Adding: “What we want chiefly is to legislate for the freedmen. Another
thing: the Confederate debt ought to be assumed by the government. We
shall try hard for that. If we can’t get it, if the North continues to
treat us as a subjugated people, the thing will have to be tried over
again,”—meaning the war. “We must be left to manage the nigger. He can’t
be made to work without force.” (He had just said his niggers did two
thirds as much work as formerly.) “My theory is, feed ’em well, clothe
’em well, and then, if they won’t work, d—n ’em, whip ’em well!”
I did not neglect the deck-passengers. These were all negroes, except a
family of white refugees from Arkansas, who had been burnt out twice
during the war, once near Little Rock, and again in Tennessee, near
Memphis. With the little remnant of their possessions they were now
going to seek their fortunes elsewhere,—ill-clad, starved-looking,
sleeping on deck in the rain, coiled around the smoke-pipe, and covered
with ragged bedclothes.
The talk of the negroes was always entertaining. Here is a sample, from
the lips of a stout old black woman:—
“De best ting de Yankees done was to break de slavery chain. I shouldn’t
be here to-day if dey hadn’t. I’m going to see my mother.”
“Your mother must be very old.”
“You may know she’s dat, for I’m one of her baby chil’n, and I’s got
’leven of my own. I’ve a heap better time now ’n I had when I was in
bondage. I had to nus’ my chil’n four times a day and pick two hundred
pounds cotton besides. My third husband went off to de Yankees. My first
was sold away from me. Now I have my second husband again; I was sold
away from him, but I found him again, after I’d lived with my third
husband thirteen years.”
I asked if he was willing to take her back.
“He was willing to have me again _on any terms_”—emphatically—“for he
knowed I was Number One!”
Several native French inhabitants took passage at various points along
the river, below the Mississippi line. All spoke very good French, and a
few conversed well in English. One, from Point Coupée Parish, said:
“Before the war, there were over seventeen thousand inhabitants in our
parish.” (In Louisiana a county is called a parish.) “Nearly thirteen
thousand were slaves. Many of the free inhabitants were colored; so that
there were about four colored persons to one white. We made yearly
between eight and nine thousand hogsheads of sugar, and fifteen hundred
bales of cotton. The war has left us only three thousand inhabitants. We
sent fifteen hundred men into the Confederate army. All the French
population were in favor of secession. The white inhabitants of these
parishes are mostly French Creoles. We treated our slaves better than
the Americans treated theirs. We didn’t work them so hard; and there was
more familiarity and kindly feeling between us and our servants. The
children were raised together; and a white child learned the negroes’
_patois_ before he learned French. The patois is curious: a negro says
‘_Moi pas connais_’ for ‘_Je ne sais pas_’ (I do not know); and they use
a great many African words which you would not understand. Our slaves
were never sold except to settle an estate. Besides these two classes
there was a third, quite separate, which did not associate with either
of the others. They were the free colored, of French-African descent,
some almost or quite white, with many large property holders and
slave-owners among them; a very respectable class, forming a society of
their own.”
The villages and plantation dwellings along here, with their low roofs
and sunny verandas, on the level river bank, had a peculiarly foreign
and tropical appearance.
The levees of Louisiana form a much more extensive and complete system
than those of Mississippi. In the latter State there is much hilly land
that does not need their protection, and much swamp land not worth
protecting; and there is, I believe, no law regarding them. In the low
and level State of Louisiana, however, a large and fertile part of which
lies considerably below the level of high water, there is very strict
legislation on the subject, compelling every land-owner on the river to
keep up his levees. This year the State itself had undertaken to repair
them, issuing eight per cent. bonds to the amount of a million dollars
for the purpose,—the expense of the work to be defrayed eventually by
the planters.
For a long distance the Lower Mississippi, at high water, appears to be
flowing upon a ridge. The river has built up its own banks higher than
the country which lies back of them; and the levees have raised them
still higher. Behind this fertile strip there are extensive swamps,
containing a soil of unsurpassed depth and richness, but unavailable for
want of drainage. Three methods are proposed for bringing them under
cultivation. First, to surround them by levees, ditch them, and pump the
water out by steam. Second, to cut a canal through them to the Gulf.
Third, to turn the Mississippi into them, and fill them with its
alluvial deposit. This last method is no doubt the one Nature intended
to employ; and it is the opinion of many that man, confining the flow of
the stream within artificial limits, attempted the settlement of this
country several centuries too soon.
A remarkable feature of Louisiana scenery is its forests of
cypress-trees growing out of the water, heavy, sombre, and shaggy with
moss.
The complexion of the river water is a light mud-color, which it derives
from the turbid Missouri,—the Upper Mississippi being a clear stream.
Pour off a glass of it after it has been standing a short time, and a
sediment of dark mud appears at the bottom. Notwithstanding this
unpleasant peculiarity, it is used altogether for cooking and drinking
purposes on board the steamboats, and I found New Orleans supplied with
it.
A curious fact has been suggested with regard to this wonderful
river,—that it _runs up hill_. Its mouth is said to be two and a half
miles higher—or farther from the earth’s centre—than its source. When we
consider that the earth is a spheroid, with an axis shorter by
twenty-six miles than its equatorial diameter; and that the same
centrifugal motion which has caused the equatorial protuberance tends
still to heap up the waters of the globe where that motion is greatest;
the seeming impossibility appears possible,—just as we see a revolving
grindstone send the water on its surface to the rim. Stop the
grindstone, and the water flows down its sides. Stop the earth’s
revolution, and immediately you will see the Mississippi River turn and
flow the other way.
Some years ago I made a voyage of several days on the Upper Mississippi,
to the head of navigation. It was difficult to realize that this was the
same stream on which I was now sailing day after day in an opposite
direction,—six days in all, from Memphis to New Orleans. From St.
Anthony’s Falls to the Gulf, the Mississippi is navigable twenty-two
hundred miles. Its entire length is three thousand miles. Its great
tributary, the Missouri, is alone three thousand miles in length:
measured from its head-waters to the Gulf, it is four thousand five
hundred miles. Consider also the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Red River, and
the hundred lesser streams that fall into it, and well may we call it by
its Indian name, Michi-Sepe, the Father of Waters.