Negroes--Sugar-cane plantations--The negro and cheap
labour--Mortality of blacks and whites--Irish labour
in Louisiana--A sugar-house--Negro children--Want of
education--Negro diet--Negro hospital--Spirits in the
morning--Breakfast--More slaves--Creole planters.
_June 5th._--The smart negro who waited on me this morning spoke
English. I asked him if he knew how to read and write.--“We must
not do that, sir.” “Where were you born?”--“I were raised on the
plantation, Massa, but I have been to New Orleens;” and then he
added, with an air of pride, “I sp’ose, sir, Massa Burnside not
take less than 1500 dollars for me.” Downstairs to breakfast,
the luxuries of which are fish, prawns, and red meat which has
been sent for to Donaldsonville by boat rowed by an old negro.
Breakfast over, I walked down to the yard, where the horses were
waiting, and proceeded to visit the saccharine principality. Mr.
Seal, the overseer of this portion of the estate, was my guide,
if not philosopher and friend. Our road lay through a lane formed
by a cart-track, between fields of Indian corn just beginning to
flower--as it is called technically, to “tassel”--and sugar-cane.
There were stalks of the former twelve or fifteen feet in height,
with three or four ears each, round which the pea twined in leafy
masses. The maize affords food to the negro, and the husks are
eaten by the horses and mules, which also fatten on the peas in
rolling time.
The wealth of the land is inexhaustible: all the soil requires is
an alternation of maize and cane; and the latter, when cut in the
stalk, called “ratoons,” at the end of the year, produces a fresh
crop, yielding excellent sugar. The cane is grown from stalks
which are laid in pits during the winter till the ground has been
ploughed, when each piece of cane is laid longitudinally on the
ridge and covered with earth, and from each joint of the stalk
springs forth a separate sprout when the crop begins to grow. At
present the sugar-cane is waiting for its full development, but
the negro labour around its stem has ceased. It is planted in long
continuous furrows, and although the palm-like tops have not yet
united in a uniform arch over the six feet which separates row from
row, the stalks are higher than a man. The plantation is pierced
with waggon roads, for the purpose of conveying the cane to the
sugar-mills, and these again are intersected by and run parallel
with drains and ditches, portions of the great system of irrigation
and drainage, in connection with a canal to carry off the surplus
water to a bayou. The extent of these works may be estimated by
the fact that there are thirty miles of road and twenty miles of
open deep drainage through the estate, and that the main canal is
fifteen feet wide, and at present four feet deep; but in the midst
of this waste of plenty and wealth, where are the human beings who
produce both? One must go far to discover them; they are buried in
sugar and in maize, or hidden in negro quarters. In truth, there is
no trace of them, over all this expanse of land, unless one knows
where to seek; no “ploughboy whistles o’er the lea;” no rustic
stands to do his own work, but the gang is moved off in silence
from point to point, like a corps d’armée of some despotic emperor
manœuvring in the battle-field.
Admitting everything that can be said, I am the more persuaded,
from what I see, that the real foundation of slavery in the
Southern States lies in the power of obtaining labour at will
at a rate which cannot be controlled by any combination of the
labourers. Granting the heat and the malaria, it is not for a
moment to be argued that planters could not find white men to
do their work if they would pay them for the risk. A negro, it
is true, bears heat well, and can toil under the blazing sun of
Louisiana, in the stifling air between the thick-set sugar-canes,
but the Irishman who is employed in the stoke-hole of a steamer
is exposed to a higher temperature and physical exertion even
more arduous. The Irish labourer can, however, set a value on his
work; the African slave can only determine the amount of work to
be got from him by the exhaustion of his powers. Again, the indigo
planter in India, out from morn till night amidst his ryots, or the
sportsman toiling under the mid-day sun through swamp and jungle,
proves that the white man can endure the utmost power of the
hottest sun in the world as well as the native. More than that,
the white man seems to be exempt from the inflammatory disease,
pneumonia, and attacks of the mucous membrane and respiratory
organs to which the blacks are subject; and if the statistics of
negro mortality were rigidly examined, I doubt that they would
exhibit as large a proportion of mortality and sickness as would
be found amongst gangs of white men under similar circumstances.
But the slave is subjected to rigid control; he is deprived of
stimulating drinks in which the free white labourer would indulge;
and he is obliged to support life upon an anti-phlogistic diet,
which gives him, however, sufficient strength to execute his daily
task.
It is in the supposed cheapness of slave-labour and its profitable
adaptation in the production of Southern crops, that the whole
gist and essence of the question really lie. The planter can get
from the labour of a slave for whom he has paid 200_l._, a sum of
money which will enable him to use up that slave in comparatively
a few years of his life, whilst he would have to pay to the white
labourer a sum that would be a great apparent diminution of his
profits, for the same amount of work. It is calculated that each
field-hand, as an able-bodied negro is called, yields seven
hogsheads of sugar a year, which, at the rate of fourpence a
pound, at an average of a hogshead an acre, would produce to the
planter 140_l._ for every slave. This is wonderful interest on the
planter’s money; but he sometimes gets two hogsheads an acre, and
even as many as three hogsheads have been produced in good years on
the best lands; in other words, two and a quarter tons of sugar and
refuse stuff, called “bagasse,” have been obtained from an acre of
cane. Not one planter of the many I have asked has ever given an
estimate of the annual cost of a slave’s maintenance; the idea of
calculating it never comes into their heads.
Much depends upon the period at which frost sets in; and if the
planters can escape till January without any cold to nip the juices
and the cane, their crop is increased in value each day; but it
is not till October they can begin to send cane to the mill, in
average seasons; and if the frost does not come till December, they
may count upon the fair average of a hogshead of 1200 pounds of
sugar to every acre.
The labour of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands, and
hewing down the forests is generally done by Irish labourers, who
travel about the country under contractors, or are engaged by
resident gangsmen for the task. Mr. Seal lamented the high prices
of this work; but then, as he said, “It was much better to have
Irish to do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they died,
than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment.” There
is a wonderful mine of truth in this observation. Heaven knows
how many poor Hibernians have been consumed and buried in these
Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshop keeper
and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the planter.
This estate derives its name from an Indian tribe called Houmas;
and when Mr. Burnside purchased it for 300,000_l._ he received in
the first year 63,000_l._ as the clear value of the crops on his
investment.
The first place I visited with the overseer was a new sugar-house,
which negro carpenters and masons were engaged in erecting. It
would have been amusing had not the subject been so grave, to hear
the overseer’s praises of the intelligence and skill of these
workmen, and his boast that they did all the work of skilled
labourers on the estate, and then to listen to him, in a few
minutes, expatiating on the utter helplessness and ignorance of the
black race, their incapacity to do any good, or even to take care
of themselves.
There are four sugar-houses on this portion of Mr. Burnside’s
estate, consisting of grinding-mills, boiling-houses, and
crystallising sheds.
The sugar-house is the capital of the negro quarters, and to each
of them is attached an enclosure, in which there is a double row
of single-storied wooden cottages, divided into two or four rooms.
An avenue of trees runs down the centre of the negro street, and
behind each hut are rude poultry-hutches, which, with geese and
turkeys and a few pigs, form the perquisites of the slaves, and
the sole source from which they derive their acquaintance with
currency. Their terms are strictly cash. An old negro brought up
some ducks to Mr. Burnside last night, and offered the lot of six
for three dollars. “Very well, Louis; if you come to-morrow, I’ll
pay you.” “No, massa; me want de money now.” “But won’t you give me
credit, Louis? Don’t you think I’ll pay the three dollars?” “Oh,
pay some day, massa, sure enough. Massa good to pay de tree dollar;
but this nigger want money now to buy food and things for him
leetle famly. They will trust massa at Donaldsville, but they won’t
trust this nigger.” I was told that a thrifty negro will sometimes
make ten or twelve pounds a year from his corn and poultry; but he
can have no inducement to hoard; for whatever is his, as well as
himself, belongs to his master.
Mr. Seal conducted me to a kind of forcing-house, where the young
negroes are kept in charge of certain old crones too old for work,
whilst their parents are away in the cane and Indian corn. A host
of children of both sexes were seated in the verandah of a large
wooden shed, or playing around it, very happily and noisily. I was
glad to see the boys and girls of nine, ten, and eleven years of
age were at this season, at all events, exempted from the cruel
fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and
manufacturing districts of England. At the sight of the overseer
the little ones came forward in tumultuous glee, babbling out,
“Massa Seal,” and evidently pleased to see him.
As a jolly agriculturist looks at his yearlings or young beeves,
the kindly overseer, lolling in his saddle, pointed with his
whip to the glistening fat ribs and corpulent paunches of his
woolly-headed flock. “There’s not a plantation in the State,”
quoth he, “can show such a lot of young niggers. The way to get
them right is not to work the mothers too hard when they are near
their time; to give them plenty to eat, and not to send them to
the fields too soon.” He told me the increase was about five per
cent. per annum. The children were quite sufficiently clad, ran
about round us, patted the horses, felt our legs, tried to climb up
on the stirrup, and twinkled their black and ochrey eyes at Massa
Seal. Some were exceedingly fair; and Mr. Seal, observing that my
eye followed these, murmured something about the overseers before
Mr. Burnside’s time being rather a bad lot. He talked about their
colour and complexion quite openly; nor did it seem to strike him
that there was any particular turpitude in the white man who had
left his offspring as slaves on the plantation.
A tall, well-built lad of some nine or ten years stood by me,
looking curiously into my face. “What is your name?” said I.
“George,” he replied. “Do you know how to read or write?” He
evidently did not understand the question. “Do you go to church or
chapel?” A dubious shake of the head. “Did you ever hear of our
Saviour?” At this point Mr. Seal interposed, and said, “I think we
had better go on, as the sun is getting hot,” and so we rode gently
through the little ones; and when we had got some distance he said,
rather apologetically, “We don’t think it right to put these things
into their heads so young, it only disturbs their minds, and leads
them astray.”
Now, in this one quarter there were no less than eighty children,
some twelve and some even fourteen years of age. No education--no
God--their whole life--food and play, to strengthen their muscles
and fit them for the work of a slave. “And when they die?” “Well,”
said Mr. Seal, “they are buried in that field there by their own
people, and some of them have a sort of prayers over them, I
believe.” The overseer, it is certain, had no fastidious notions
about slavery; it was to him the right thing in the right place,
and his _summum bonum_ was a high price for sugar, a good crop,
and a healthy plantation. Nay, I am sure I would not wrong him
if I said he could see no impropriety in running a good cargo
of regular black slaves, who might clear the great backwood and
swampy undergrowth, which was now exhausting the energies of his
field-hands, in the absence of Irish navvies.
Each negro gets 5 lbs. of pork a week, and as much Indian corn
bread as he can eat, with a portion of molasses, and occasionally
they have fish for breakfast. All the carpenters and smiths’ work,
the erection of sheds, repairing of carts and ploughs, and the
baking of bricks for the farm buildings, are done on the estate
by the slaves. The machinery comes from the manufacturing cities
of the North; but great efforts are made to procure it from New
Orleans, where factories have been already established. On the
borders of the forest the negroes are allowed to plant corn for
their own use, and sometimes they have an overplus, which they sell
to their masters. Except when there is any harvest pressure on
their hands, they have from noon on Saturday till dawn on Monday
morning to do as they please, but they must not stir off the
plantation on the road, unless with special permit, which is rarely
granted.
There is an hospital on the estate, and even shrewd Mr. Seal did
not perceive the conclusion that was to be drawn from his testimony
to its excellent arrangements. “Once a nigger gets in there, he’d
like to live there for the rest of his life.” But are they not
the happiest, most contented people in the world--at any rate,
when they are in hospital? I declare that to me the more orderly,
methodical, and perfect the arrangements for economising slave
labour--regulating slaves--are, the more hateful and odious does
slavery become. I would much rather be the animated human chattel
of a Turk, Egyptian, Spaniard, or French creole, than the labouring
beast of a Yankee or of a New England capitalist.
When I returned back to the house I found my friends enjoying
a quiet _siesta_, and the rest of the afternoon was devoted to
idleness, not at all disagreeable with a thermometer worthy of
Agra. Even the mocking-birds were roasted into silence, and the
bird which answers to our rook or crow sat on the under branches
of the trees, gaping for air with his bill wide open. It must be
hot indeed when the mocking-bird loses his activity. There is one,
with its nest in a rose-bush trailed along the verandah under my
window, which now sits over its young ones with outspread wings,
as if to protect them from being baked; and it is so courageous and
affectionate, that when I approach quite close, it merely turns
round its head, dilates its beautiful dark eye, and opens its beak,
within which the tiny sharp tongue is saying, I am sure, “Don’t
for goodness sake disturb me, for if you force me to leave, the
children will be burned to death.”
_June 6th._--My chattel Joe, “adscriptus mihi domino,” awoke me to
a bath of Mississippi water with huge lumps of ice in it, to which
he recommended a mint-julep as an adjunct. It was not here that
I was first exposed to an ordeal of mint-julep, for in the early
morning a stranger in a Southern planter’s house may expect the
offer of a glassful of brandy, sugar, and peppermint beneath an
island of ice--an obligatory panacea for all the evils of climate.
After it has been disposed of, Pompey may come up again with glass
number two: “Massa say fever very bad this morning--much dew.”
It is possible that the degenerate Anglo-Saxon stomach has not
the fine tone and temper of that of an Hibernian friend of mine,
who considered the finest thing to counteract the effects of a
little excess was a tumbler of hot whiskey and water the moment
the sufferer opened his eyes in the morning. Therefore, the kindly
offering may be rejected. But on one occasion before breakfast
the negro brought up mint-julep number three, the acceptance of
which he enforced by the emphatic declaration, “Massa says, sir,
you had better take this, because it’ll be the last he make before
breakfast.”
Breakfast is served: there is on the table a profusion of
dishes--grilled fowl, prawns, eggs and ham, fish from New Orleans,
potted salmon from England, preserved meats from France, claret,
iced water, coffee and tea, varieties of hominy, mush, and African
vegetable preparations. Then come the newspapers, which are perused
eagerly with ejaculations, “Do you hear what they are doing
now--infernal villains! that Lincoln must be mad!” and the like. At
one o’clock, in spite of the sun, I rode out with Mr. Lee, along
the road by the Mississippi, to Mr. Burnside’s plantation, called
Orange Grove, from a few trees which still remain in front of the
overseer’s house. We visited an old negro, called “Boatswain,” who
lives with his old wife in a wooden hut close by the margin of the
Mississippi. His business is to go to Donaldsonville for letters,
or meat, or ice for the house--a tough row for the withered old
man. He is an African born, and he just remembers being carried
on board ship and taken to some big city before he came upon the
plantation.
“Do you remember nothing of the country you came from, Boatswain?”
“Yes, sir. Jist remember trees and sweet things my mother gave me,
and much hot sand I put my feet in, and big leaves that we play
with--all us little children--and plenty to eat, and big birds and
shells.” “Would you like to go back, Boatswain?” “What for, sir?
no one know old Boatswain there. My old missus Sally inside.” “Are
you quite happy, Boatswain?” “I’m getting very old, massa. Massa
Burnside very good to Boatswain, but who care for such dam old
nigger? Golla Mighty gave me fourteen children, but he took them
all away again from Sally and me. No budy care much for dam old
nigger like me.”
Further on Mr. Seal salutes us from the verandah of his house, but
we are bound for overseer Gibbs, who meets us, mounted, by the
roadside--a man grim in beard and eye, and silent withal, with
a big whip in his hand and a large knife stuck in his belt. He
leads us through a magnificent area of cane and maize, the latter
towering far above our heads; but I was most anxious to see the
forest primæval which borders the clear land at the back of the
estate, and spreads away over alligator-haunted swamps into distant
bayous. It was not, however, possible to gratify one’s curiosity
very extensively beyond the borders of the cleared land, for rising
round the roots of the cypress, swamp pine, and live oak there
was a barrier of undergrowth and bush twined round the cane brake
which stands some sixteen feet high, so stiff that the united force
of man and horse could not make way against the rigid fibres, and
indeed, as Mr. Gibbs told us, “When the niggers take to the cane
brake they can beat man or dog, and nothing beats them but snakes
and starvation.”
He pointed out some sheds around which were broken bottles where
the last Irish gang had been working, under one “John Loghlin,”
of Donaldsonville, a great contractor, who, he says, made plenty
of money out of his countrymen, whose bones are lying up and down
the Mississippi. “They due work like fire,” he said. “Loghlin
does not give them half the rations we give our negroes, but he
can always manage them with whiskey, and when he wants them to do
a job he gives them plenty of ‘forty rod,’ and they have their
fight out--reglar free fight, I can tell you, while it lasts. Next
morning they will sign anything and go anywhere with him.”
On the Orange Grove Plantation, although the crops were so
fine, the negroes unquestionably seemed less comfortable than
those in the quarters of Houmas, separated from them by a mere
nominal division. Then, again, there were more children with fair
complexions to be seen peeping out of the huts; some of these
were attributed to the former overseer, one Johnson by name, but
Mr. Gibbs, as if to vindicate his memory, told me confidentially
he had paid a large sum of money to the former proprietor of the
estate for one of his children, and had carried it away with him
when he left. “You could not expect him, you know,” said Gibbs, “to
buy them all at the prices that were then going in ’56. All the
children on the estate,” added he, “are healthy, and I can show my
lot against Seal’s over there, though I hear tell he had a great
show of them out to you yesterday.”
The bank of the river below the large plantation was occupied
by a set of small Creole planters, whose poor houses were close
together, indicating very limited farms, which had been subdivided
from time to time, according to the French fashion; so that the
owners have at last approached pauperism; but they are tenacious of
their rights, and will not yield to the tempting price offered by
the large planters. They cling to the soil without enterprise and
without care. The Spanish settlers along the river are open to the
same reproach, and prefer their own ease to the extension of their
race in other lands, or to the aggrandisement of their posterity;
and an Epicurean would aver, they were truer philosophers than the
restless creatures who wear out their lives in toil and labour, to
found empires for the future.
It is among these men that, at times, slavery assumes its harshest
aspect, and that the negroes are exposed to the severest labour;
but it is also true that the slaves have closer relations with the
families of their owners, and live in more intimate connection with
them than they do under the strict police of the large plantations.
These people sometimes get forty bushels of corn to the acre, and
a hogshead and a half of sugar. We saw their children going to
school, whilst the heads of the houses sat in the verandah smoking,
and their mothers were busy with household duties; and the signs of
life, the voices of women and children, and the activity visible on
the little farms, contrasted not unpleasantly with the desert-like
stillness of the larger settlements. Rode back in a thunderstorm.
At dinner in the evening Mr. Burnside entertained a number of
planters in the neighbourhood--M. Bringier, M. Coulon (French
creoles), Mr. Duncan Kenner, a medical gentleman named Cotmann,
and others--the last-named gentleman is an Unionist, and does
not hesitate to defend his opinions; but he has during a visit
to Russia formed high ideas of the necessity and virtues of an
absolute and centralised government.