ALABAMA PLANTERS.
The Alabama River steamers resemble those of the Mississippi, although
inferior in size and style. But one meets a very different class of
passengers on board of them. The Alabamians are a plain, rough set of
men, not so fast as the Mississippi-Valley planters, but more sober,
more solid, more loyal. They like their glass of grog, however, and some
of them are very sincere in their hatred of the government. I found the
most contradictory characters among them, which I cannot better
illustrate than by giving some specimens of their conversation.
Here is one of the despairing class. “The country is ruined; not only
the Southern country, but the Northern country too. The prosperity of
our people passed away with the institution of slavery. I shall never
try to make another fortune. I made one, and lost it in a minute. I had
a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in niggers. I am now sixty years
old. I’ll bet a suit of clothes against a dime, there’ll be no cotton
crop raised this year. If there’s a crop grown, the hands that raise it
won’t pick it. Some few niggers go on, and do well, just as before; but
they’re mighty scarce. They never will be as well off again as they have
been, and some of ’em see it. A nigger drayman came to me the other day
and asked me to buy him. He said, ‘I want a master. When I had a master,
I had nothing to do but to eat and drink and sleep, besides my work. Now
I have to work and think too.’ When I said the law wouldn’t allow me to
buy him, he looked very much discouraged.”
I heard of a few such cases as this drayman’s, but they were far less
common than one would have expected. Poor fellow, he did not know that
if he was ever to be anything but an animal, a beast of burden, it was
necessary for him to begin to think.
Mr. J——, of Marengo County, also an old man, talked in a different
spirit.
“The trouble with the freedmen is, they have not yet learned that living
is expensive. They never before had any idea where their clothes came
from, except that ‘Master gave ’em to me.’ In my county, I find them
generally better disposed than the whites. I don’t know of a case where
they have been treated kindly and justly, and have deserted their
masters. A few restless ones are exceptions. I noticed one of my boys
that I had asked to make a contract for the coming year, packing up his
things; and I said to him, ‘Warren, what are you doing?’ He replied,
‘Master, they say if we make contracts now, we’ll be branded, and made
slaves again.’ I had always treated him well. I don’t remember that I
ever struck him, but he says I did strike him once, and he’s a truthful
boy. Another old man that I was raised with, said, ‘Master, all the
contract I want with you is that you shall bury me, or I’ll bury you.’
He said he would go on and work for me like he always had; and he’ll do
it, for he’s an honest man.”
Mr. J—— related the case of one of his neighbors who contracted with his
freedmen to furnish their supplies and give them one fifth of the crop.
He gave them provisions for a year at the start; and deducted a dollar a
day for lost time. “He raised the largest crop of corn he ever did; but
when he came to harvest it, he owed them nothing, though he had kept his
contract. He was honest, but he had managed badly. I give my hands a
share of the crop,” added Mr. J——. “But I do not give them provisions
any faster than they need them, for if I did they would call in their
friends, make a great feast, and eat up everything,—they are so generous
and improvident. I deduct a dollar a day for lost time, but instead of
putting it into my own pocket, I give the lazy man’s dollar to those who
do the lazy man’s work. I find that encourages them, and the consequence
is, there are few lost days.”
This genial old gentleman, whom I found to be well known and highly
esteemed throughout the country, justified the North in its course
during the war, and expressed confidence in the future of the South
under the free-labor system.
Mr. G——, one of the bitterest Yankee-haters I met, became nevertheless
one of my most intimate steamboat acquaintances. I cull the following
from many talks I had with him.
“I owned a cotton factory in Dallas County, above Selma. I had two
plantations besides, and an interest in a tan-yard. Wilson’s Thieves
came in, and just stripped me of everything. They burned eight hundred
bales of cotton for me. That was because I happened to be running my
mill for the Confederate government. I was making Osnaburgs for the
government for a dollar a yard, when citizens would have paid me four
dollars a yard; and do you imagine I’d have done that except under
compulsion? But the Yankee rascals didn’t stop to consider that fact.
They skipped my neighbors’ cotton and burned mine.
“In other respects they treated them as bad as they did me. They robbed
our houses of everything they could find and carry away. I shouldn’t
have had a thing left, if it hadn’t been for my niggers. Some of ’em run
off my mules and saved ’em. I gave all my gold and silver to an old
woman who kept it hid from the raiders. On one of my plantations a
colored carpenter and his wife barrelled up three barrels of fine table
crockery and buried it. One of the Yankee officers rode up and said to
this woman, ‘Where’s your husband?’ ‘There’s my husband,’ she said,
pointing to the mulatto. ‘You’re a sight whiter’n he is,’ he said,—for
she is white as anybody, and he had taken her for the lady of the house.
An old negro saved the tannery by pleading with the vandals, and lying
to ’em a little bit.
“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold wouldn’t cover my
losses. I never can feel towards this government like I once did. I got
started to leave the country; I swore I wouldn’t live under a government
that had treated me in this way. I made up my mind to go to Brazil. I
got as far as Mobile, and changed my mind. Now I’ve concluded to remain
here, like any alien. I’m a foreigner. I scorn to be called a citizen of
the United States. I shall take no oath, so help me God! Unless,” he
added immediately, “it is to enable me to vote. I want to vote to give
the suffrage to the negro.”
As I expressed my surprise at this extraordinary wish, he went on:
“Because I think that will finish the job. I think then we’ll have
enough of the nigger, North and South, and all will combine to put him
out of the country.”
“It seems to me,” I said, “you are a little ungrateful after all you say
your negroes have done for you.”
“There are a few faithful ones among them,” he replied. “If all were
like some of mine I wouldn’t say anything. They’re as intelligent and
well behaved as anybody. But I can’t stand free niggers, any how!”
“I notice,” said I, “that every man who curses the black race, and prays
for its removal or extermination, makes exceptions in favor of negroes
he has raised or owned, until I am beginning to think these exceptions
compose a majority of the colored population.”
G—— made no reply to the remark, but resumed,—
“I want this country filled up with white men. I want the large
plantations cut up, and manufactories established. We never had any
manufactories for this reason: Southern capitalists all jammed their
money into niggers and land. As their capital increased, it was a few
more niggers, a little more land. The few factories we had were
consequently one-horse concerns, that couldn’t compete with those at the
North. They were patronized by men who wanted to buy on credit. If a man
had cash, he went to the North to buy goods; if he was short, he bought
here. Consequently, to carry on a business of a hundred thousand
dollars, a capital of three hundred thousand dollars was necessary. Two
thirds of it was sunk; below the water, like the guards of this boat.
“Now I want the old system played out. But,” continued G——, “if the
Freedmen’s Bureau is withdrawn, things will work back again into their
old grooves. The nigger is going to be made a serf, sure as you live. It
won’t need any law for that. Planters will have an understanding among
themselves: ‘You won’t hire my niggers, and I won’t hire yours;’ then
what’s left for them? They’re attached to the soil, and we’re as much
their masters as ever. I’ll stake my life, this is the way it will work.
The country will be no better off than it ever was. To make a farming
and manufacturing country, like you have at the North, we must put the
nigger out of the way. For this reason, I hope the cotton crop this year
will be a failure. And I not only hope, but I know it will. There a’n’t
labor enough in the country; the planters are going to bid against each
other, and make contracts they won’t be able to keep, and that’s going
to put the Old Harry into the freedmen.”
I remarked that, as long as the demand for labor exceeded the supply,
planters would continue to bid against each other, and that the plan he
had suggested, by which the freedman was to be made a serf without the
aid of legislation, would thus be defeated.
“Let the Bureau be taken away,” he replied, “and planters will come into
the arrangement. That is, all honorable ones will; and if a man hasn’t
honor enough to come in, he’ll be scared in. If he hires my niggers, or
yours, he’ll be mobbed.”
Mr. H——, of Lowndes County, often joined in our conversation. “I don’t
believe my friend G—— here believes half he says. I am sure the South is
going to make this year a million bales,—probably much more. One thing
planters have got to learn: the old system is gone up, and we must begin
new. It won’t do to employ the old overseers; they can’t learn to treat
the freedmen like human beings. I told my overseer the old style
wouldn’t do,—the niggers wouldn’t stand it,—and he promised better
fashions; but it wasn’t two days before he fell from grace, and went to
whipping again. That just raised the Old Scratch with them; and I don’t
blame ’em.”
H—— went on to say that it was necessary now to treat the negroes like
men. “We must deal justly with them;” he had a great deal to say about
justice. “We must reason with them,—for they are reasonable beings;” and
he repeated some of the excellent homilies with which he had enlightened
their consciences and understandings.
“’Formerly,’ I said to them, ‘you were my slaves; you worked for me, and
I provided for you. You had no thought of the morrow, for I thought of
that for you. If you were sick, I had the doctor come to you. When you
needed clothes, clothes were forthcoming; and you never went hungry for
lack of meal and pork. You had little more responsibility than my mules.
“’But now all that is changed. Being free men, you assume the
responsibilities of free men. You sell me your labor, I pay you money,
and with that money you provide for yourselves. You must look out for
your own clothes and food, and the wants of your children. If I advance
these things for you, I shall charge them to you, for I cannot give them
like I once did, now I pay you wages. Once if you were ugly or lazy, I
had you whipped, and that was the end of it. Now if you are ugly and
lazy, your wages will be paid to others, and you will be turned off, to
go about the country with bundles on your backs, like the miserable
low-down niggers you see that nobody will hire. But if you are
well-behaved and industrious, you will be prosperous and respected and
happy.”
“They all understood this talk,” added H——, “and liked it, and went to
work like men on the strength of it. If every planter would begin that
way with his freedmen, there’d be no trouble. There’s everything in
knowing how to manage them.”
“If anybody knows how to manage them, you do,” said G——. Then turning to
me: “H—— is the shrewdest manager in this country. There’s a good story
about his managing a nigger and a horse;—shall I tell it, H——?”
“Go ahead,” said H——, laughing.
“An old nigger of his picked up a horse the Yankee raiders had turned
loose in the country, and brought him home to H——’s plantation. The old
nigger gave the horse to his son Sip, and died. The horse had been used
up, but he turned out to be a mighty good one,—just such an animal as
H—— wanted; so he laid claim to him, and Sip had to go to the Freedmen’s
Bureau for an order to compel my friend here to give him up. He told his
story, got the order, and brought it home, and showed it to H——, who
looked at it, then looked at Sip, and said, ‘Do you know what this paper
says?’ ‘It says I’m to have de hoss; dat’s what dey told me.’ ‘I’ll tell
you what it says,’ and H—— pretended to read the order: ‘_If this boy
troubles you any more about that horse, give him a sound thrashing!_’
‘’Fore God,’ says Sip, ‘I done went to de wrong man!’”
I looked to see H——, the just man, who treated his freed people like
rational beings, deny the truth of this story.
“G—— has told something near the fact; but there’s one thing he has left
out. _I just put my Spencer to Sip’s head, and told him if he pestered
me any more about that horse, I’d kill him._ He knew I was a man of my
word, and he never pestered me any more.”
I thought G—— must have intended the story as a hard hit at H——’s
honesty; but I now saw that he really meant it as a compliment to his
“shrewd management,” and that as such H—— received it with satisfaction.
“But,” said I, “as you relate the circumstance, it seems to me the horse
belonged to Sip.”
“A nigger has no use for a horse like that,” replied H——.
“He had been brought on to the plantation and fed there at H——’s
expense,” explained G——.
“Hadn’t he done work enough to pay for his keeping?”
“Yes, and ten times over,” said H——, frankly. “I foresaw in the
beginning there was going to be trouble about the ownership of that
horse. So I told my driver to kill him,—with hard work, I mean. He tried
his best to do it; but he was such a tough beast, he did the work and
grew fat all the time.”
I was still unable to see why the horse did not belong rightfully to
Sip, instead of his master. But one thing I did see, more and more
plainly: that it was impossible for the most honorable men who had been
bred up under the institution of slavery to deal at all times and
altogether honorably with those they had all their lives regarded as
chattels. Mr. H—— was one of the fairest and most sensible men in his
speech whom I chanced to meet; and I believe that he was sincere,—or at
least meant to be sincere. I made inquiries concerning him of his
neighbors fifty miles around,—for every large planter knows every other,
at least by reputation, within a circuit of several counties,—and all
spoke of him as a just and upright man. No doubt if I had had dealings
with him I should have found him so. He meant to give the freedmen their
rights, but he was only beginning dimly to perceive that they had any
rights; and when it came to treating a black man with absolute justice,
he did not know the meaning of the word.
Mr. B——, of Monroe County, was a good sample of the hopeful class.
“We’re brushed out, and must begin new. I’ve lost as much as any other
man, but it’s foolish to sit down and complain of that. I believe if
Southern men will only take courage, and do their best, in five years
the country will be more prosperous than ever. When you hear it said the
country is ruined, and the niggers won’t work, the trouble is in them
that make the complaint, and not in the niggers. My niggers say to me,
‘Massa Joe, we ought to work mo’e ’n we ever did befo’e; for once, we
just worked for our victuals and clothes, and now we’re getting wages
besides.’ And they’ll do it,—they _are_ doing it. If you want a freedman
to do what he promises, you’ve only to set him the example, and do by
him just what you promise. I’ve a negro foreman on my plantation that
has been with me twenty years; and I can trust him to manage just as far
as I can trust myself.
“Talk about the country being ruined!” B—— went on: “I’m sick of such
nonsense. Just look at it. I hire my freedmen by the year; I give four
and five dollars a month to women, and seven and eight to men. A woman
will do about two thirds as much work ploughing, hoeing, and picking as
a man. For two months now I shall keep my women spinning and making
clothes, and my men cutting and hauling wood to the steamboats, for
which I get four dollars a cord. That will pay their wages and more.
Then what have we got to do the rest of the year? Make a crop of cotton.
If we don’t make more than a quarter of a crop, it will pay handsomely,
at present prices; but it’s my opinion we shall make a good crop. I used
to find it profitable to pay a hundred and fifty dollars a year for
slaves, with cotton at ten cents a pound; and if I can’t make money now,
I’m a fool.”
A Mobile merchant, overhearing this talk, remarked: “You are the most
hopeful man, Mr. B——, I ever saw. I don’t know but what you say is true;
but it won’t do to talk it very loud, so they’ll hear it on the other
side of the water. It’s our policy to talk the other way, and keep the
prices up.”
B—— assured me that the majority of the planters in Monroe County were
of his way of thinking. They had formed an Agricultural Association, the
object of which was “to protect and preserve the colored population, by
furnishing them employment and ministering to their wants and
necessities.” The constitution adopted by this association breathes such
a different spirit from the serf-codes of Mississippi, Louisiana, and
South Carolina, that it is refreshing and encouraging to refer to it. I
quote some of its provisions:—
“ARTICLE 6th. It shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to
look after the welfare of the freedmen, in their respective beats,
to inspect and sanction each and every contract made between the
freedmen and their employers, and to see that said freedmen are not
deceived or overreached in any contract made with the employer....
And when any contract, as aforesaid, shall be fairly and
understandingly made, it shall be the law between the parties
thereto, and when any difficulty arises between any freedman and his
white employer, relative to the construction or performance of any
contract, said committeeman may act as arbitrator between the
parties, and his decision shall be final, unless one or both of the
parties desire an appeal.
“ART. 8th. It shall be the duty of all the officers of this
Association, to see that the freedman shall receive from his
employer his wages or earnings, and in case such employer refuses to
pay promptly such wages and earnings, to aid the freedman by their
full power in the collection of the same.
“ART. 9th. It shall also be the duty of this Association, and
particularly the officers thereof, to see that the freedman shall
comply with his contracts with his employer unless he can show some
good or reasonable excuse for the non-performance.
“ART. 13th. It shall be the duty of the said Association to provide
a home for the aged and helpless freedmen of the county, and for
such others as are unable to make an honest support, and to see that
they are provided with the necessaries of life,—to devise ways and
means for their permanent relief and support.
“ART. 15th. It shall be the duty of this Association, and all the
officers thereof, to favor, as much as possible, the education and
schooling of the colored children in said county, and to aid in
devising ways and means, and making arrangements for having said
children properly taught and their general morals taken care of.”
The association taxed itself for the purpose of carrying out the
provisions of its constitution. Every planter in Monroe County had
joined it. General Swayne, Assistant-Commissioner of the Freedmen’s
Bureau for Alabama, had approved its action, and appointed its president
superintendent of freedmen for that county. “The thing is working
admirably,” said B——. “The planters are encouraged, and the freedmen are
contented and at work.”
I said to him: “If all the members of the association are as sincere as
yourself, and will perform what they promise; if all the counties in the
State will follow the example of Monroe; and if other States will follow
the example of Alabama, there will be no longer any trouble about
reconstruction: the great problem of the country will be solved.”
He said he believed so, and was sure the association would act in good
faith. And I heard afterwards that Conecuh County had already followed
the example of Monroe.