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American Negro Slavery
Chapter XIV Plantation Management
by Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell
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Typical planters though facile in conversation seldom resorted to their
pens. Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form of
instructions to their stewards and overseers. These counsels of perfection,
drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much in
detail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions. Their initial topic
was usually the care of the slaves. Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in
1759 for the guidance of his steward: "The care of negroes is the first
thing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wants
that they may be provided with all necessarys. The breeding wenches more
particularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to,
and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that will
be injurious to them, ... and the children to be well looked after, ... and
that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care."
P.C. Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856: "The proprietor, in the first
place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first
object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the
negroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may
proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty,
severity or want of care towards the negroes. For the well being, however,
of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and
discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed,
and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the
one hand or harshness on the other." Charles Manigault likewise required of
his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindness
and consideration in sickness and health." On J.W. Fowler's plantation in
the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter
such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed
in 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline and
obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency
of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being
indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable
dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about
the Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby
establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my
Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all
overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1]
[Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are
printed in Plantation and Frontier, I, 109-129.]
Joseph A.S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of
applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2]
His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the
most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read in
part: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the
maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its
time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for
everything and everything done according to rule. In this way labor becomes
easy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he
himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage
negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of
his temper."
[Footnote 2: They were also printed in DeBow's Review, XXII, 617-620,
XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).]
[Footnote 3: See above, p. 239.]
James H. Hammond's "plantation manual" which is the fullest of such
documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to
subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good crop
means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land,
mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which
must be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not be
merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but
as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value
of the rest of the property.... There should be an increase in number and
improvement in condition of negroes."[4]
[Footnote 4: MS. bound volume, "Plantation Manual," among the Hammond
papers in the Library of Congress.]
For the care of the sick, of course, all these planters were solicitous.
Acklen, Manigault and Weston provided that mild cases be prescribed for by
the overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness a
doctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwife
and general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks and
whites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey is
the doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, when
she thinks she can do no more for the sick, you will employ a physician."
Hammond, however, was such a devotee of homeopathy that in the lack of an
available physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote in
his manual: "No negro will be allowed to remain at his own house when sick,
but must be confined to the hospital. Every reasonable complaint must be
promptly attended to; and with any marked or general symptom of sickness,
however trivial, a negro may lie up a day or so at least.... Each case
has to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain the
disease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination;
... the directions for treatment, diet, etc., most implicitly followed; the
effects and changes cautiously observed.... In cases where there is the
slightest uncertainty, the books must be taken to the bedside and a careful
and thorough examination of the case and comparison of remedies made before
administering them. The overseer must record in the prescription book
every dose of medicine administered." Weston said he would never grudge a
doctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness under
pretence of illness. "Nothing," said he, "is so subversive of discipline,
or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposed
to do the work of the lazy."
Pregnancy, childbirth and the care of children were matters of special
concern. Weston wrote: "The pregnant women are always to do some work up
to the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field and
staying there. If they are sick, they are to go to the hospital and stay
there until it is pretty certain their time is near." "Lying-in women are
to be attended by the midwife as long as is necessary, and by a woman put
to nurse them for a fortnight. They will remain at the negro houses for
four weeks, and then will work two weeks on the highland. In some cases,
however, it is necessary to allow them to lie up longer. The health of many
women has been ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond's rules
were as follows: "Sucklers are not required to leave their homes until
sunrise, when they leave their children at the children's house before
going to field. The period of suckling is twelve months. Their work lies
always within half a mile of the quarter. They are required to be cool
before commencing to suckle--to wait fifteen minutes at least in summer,
after reaching the children's house before nursing. It is the duty of the
nurse to see that none are heated when nursing, as well as of the overseer
and his wife occasionally to do so. They are allowed forty-five minutes at
each nursing to be with their children. They return three times a day until
their children are eight months old--in the middle of the forenoon, at
noon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twice
a day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only...The amount
of work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a full
hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months
are put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required of
them. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances as
full-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in
confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during
delivery. The confined woman lies up one month, and the midwife remains in
constant attendance for seven days. Each woman on confinement has a bundle
given her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of cloth
and rag, and some nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice and flour for the
mother."
The instructions with one accord required that the rations issued to the
negroes be never skimped. Corbin wrote, "They ought to have their belly
full, but care must be taken with this plenty that no waste is committed."
Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, ordered his overseer to "see that
their necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing be good and
sufficient, their houses comfortable; and be kind and attentive to them in
sickness and old age." And further: "There will be stated hours for the
negroes to breakfast and dine [in the field], and those hours must be
regularly observed. The manager will frequently inspect the meals as they
are brought by the cook--see that they have been properly prepared, and
that vegetables be at all times served with the meat and bread." At the
same time he forbade his slaves to use ardent spirits or to have such about
their houses. Weston wrote: "Great care should be taken that the negroes
should never have less than their regular allowance. In all cases of doubt,
it should be given in favor of the largest quantity. The measure should
not be struck, but rather heaped up over. None but provisions of the best
quality should be used." Telfair specified as follows: "The allowance for
every grown negro, however old and good for nothing, and every young one
that works in the field, is a peck of corn each week and a pint of salt,
and a piece of meat, not exceeding fourteen pounds, per month...The
suckling children, and all other small ones who do not work in the field,
draw a half allowance of corn and salt....Feed everything plentifully, but
waste nothing." He added that beeves were to be killed for the negroes in
July, August and September. Hammond's allowance to each working hand was a
heaping peck of meal and three pounds of bacon or pickled pork every week.
In the winter, sweet potatoes were issued when preferred, at the rate of a
bushel of them in lieu of the peck of meal; and fresh beef, mutton or pork,
at increased weights, were to be substituted for the salt pork from time to
time. The ditchers and drivers were to have extra allowances in meat and
molasses. Furthermore, "Each ditcher receives every night, when ditching, a
dram (jigger) consisting of two-thirds whiskey and one-third water, with as
much asafoetida as it will absorb, and several strings of red peppers added
in the barrel. The dram is a large wine-glass full. In cotton picking time
when sickness begins to be prevalent, every field hand gets a dram in the
morning before leaving for the field. After a soaking rain all exposed to
it get a dram before changing their clothes; also those exposed to the
dust from the shelter and fan in corn shelling, on reaching the quarter at
night; or anyone at any time required to keep watch in the night. Drams are
not given as rewards, but only as medicinal. From the second hoeing, or
early in May, every work hand who uses it gets an occasional allowance of
tobacco, about one sixth of a pound, usually after some general operation,
as a hoeing, plowing, etc. This is continued until their crops are
gathered, when they can provide for themselves." The families, furthermore,
shared in the distribution of the plantation's peanut crop every fall. Each
child was allowed one third as much meal and meat as was given to each
field hand, and an abundance of vegetables to be cooked with their meat.
The cooking and feeding was to be done at the day nursery. For breakfast
they were to have hominy and milk and cold corn bread; for dinner,
vegetable soup and dumplings or bread; and cold bread or potatoes were to
be kept on hand for demands between meals. They were also to have molasses
once or twice a week. Each child was provided with a pan and spoon in
charge of the nurse.
Hammond's clothing allowance was for each man in the fall two cotton
shirts, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket, and in the spring two
cotton shirts and two pairs of cotton pants, with privilege of substitution
when desired; for each woman six yards of woolen cloth and six yards of
cotton cloth in the fall, six yards of light and six of heavy cotton cloth
in the spring, with needles, thread and buttons on each occasion. Each
worker was to have a pair of stout shoes in the fall, and a heavy blanket
every third year. Children's cloth allowances were proportionate and their
mothers were required to dress them in clean clothes twice a week.
In the matter of sanitation, Acklen directed the overseer to see that the
negroes kept clean in person, to inspect their houses at least once a week
and especially during the summer, to examine their bedding and see to its
being well aired, to require that their clothes be mended, "and everything
attended to which conduces to their comfort and happiness." In these
regards, as in various others, Fowler incorporated Acklen's rules in his
own, almost verbatim. Hammond scheduled an elaborate cleaning of the houses
every spring and fall. The houses were to be completely emptied and their
contents sunned, the walls and floors were to be scrubbed, the mattresses
to be emptied and stuffed with fresh hay or shucks, the yards swept and the
ground under the houses sprinkled with lime. Furthermore, every house was
to be whitewashed inside and out once a year; and the negroes must appear
once a week in clean clothes, "and every negro habitually uncleanly in
person must be washed and scrubbed by order of the overseer--the driver and
two other negroes officiating."
As to schedules of work, the Carolina and Georgia lowlanders dealt in
tasks; all the rest in hours. Telfair wrote briefly: "The negroes to be
tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work, well
done--the task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength
of the negro." Weston wrote with more elaboration: "A task is as much work
as the meanest full hand can do in nine hours, working industriously....
This task is never to be increased, and no work is to be done over task
except under the most urgent necessity; which over-work is to be reported
to the proprietor, who will pay for it. No negro is to be put into a task
which [he] cannot finish with tolerable ease. It is a bad plan to punish
for not finishing tasks; it is subversive of discipline to leave tasks
unfinished, and contrary to justice to punish for what cannot be done. In
nothing does a good manager so much excel a bad as in being able to discern
what a hand is capable of doing, and in never attempting to make him do
more." In Hammond's schedule the first horn was blown an hour before
daylight as a summons for work-hands to rise and do their cooking and other
preparations for the day. Then at the summons of the plow driver, at first
break of day, the plowmen went to the stables whose doors the overseer
opened. At the second horn, "just at good daylight," the hoe gang set out
for the field. At half past eleven the plowmen carried their mules to a
shelter house in the fields, and at noon the hoe hands laid off for dinner,
to resume work at one o'clock, except that in hot weather the intermission
was extended to a maximum of three and a half hours. The plowmen led the
way home by a quarter of an hour in the evening, and the hoe hands followed
at sunset. "No work," said Hammond, "must ever be required after dark."
Acklen contented himself with specifying that "the negroes must all rise at
the ringing of the first bell in the morning, and retire when the last
bell rings at night, and not leave their houses after that hour unless on
business or called." Fowler's rule was of the same tenor: "All hands should
be required to retire to rest and sleep at a suitable hour and permitted to
remain there until such time as it will be necessary to get out in time to
reach their work by the time they can see well how to work."
Telfair, Fowler and Hammond authorized the assignment of gardens and
patches to such slaves as wanted to cultivate them at leisure times. To
prevent these from becoming a cloak for thefts from the planter's crops,
Telfair and Fowler forbade the growing of cotton in the slaves' private
patches, and Hammond forbade both cotton and corn. Fowler specifically
gave his negroes the privilege of marketing their produce and poultry "at
suitable leisure times." Hammond had a rule permitting each work hand to go
to Augusta on some Sunday after harvest; but for some reason he noted in
pencil below it: "This is objectionable and must be altered." Telfair
and Weston directed that their slaves be given passes on application,
authorizing them to go at proper times to places in the neighborhood. The
negroes, however, were to be at home by the time of the curfew horn about
nine o'clock each night. Mating with slaves on other plantations was
discouraged as giving occasion for too much journeying.
"Marriage is to be encouraged," wrote Hammond, "as it adds to the comfort,
happiness and health of those who enter upon it, besides insuring a greater
increase. Permission must always be obtained from the master before
marriage, but no marriage will be allowed with negroes not belonging to the
master. When sufficient cause can be shewn on either side, a marriage may
be annulled; but the offending party must be severely punished. Where both
are in wrong, both must be punished, and if they insist on separating must
have a hundred lashes apiece. After such a separation, neither can marry
again for three years. For first marriage a bounty of $5.00, to be invested
in household articles, or an equivalent of articles, shall be given. If
either has been married before, the bounty shall be $2.50. A third marriage
shall be not allowed but in extreme cases, and in such cases, or where both
have been married before, no bounty will be given."
"Christianity, humanity and order elevate all, injure none," wrote Fowler,
"whilst infidelity, selfishness and disorder curse some, delude others and
degrade all. I therefore want all of my people encouraged to cultivate
religious feeling and morality, and punished for inhumanity to their
children or stock, for profanity, lying and stealing." And again: "I would
that every human being have the gospel preached to them in its original
purity and simplicity. It therefore devolves upon me to have these
dependants properly instructed in all that pertains to the salvation of
their souls. To this end whenever the services of a suitable person can be
secured, have them instructed in these things. In view of the fanaticism
of the age, it behooves the master or overseer to be present on all
such occasions. They should be instructed on Sundays in the day time if
practicable; if not, then on Sunday night." Acklen wrote in his usual
peremptory tone: "No negro preachers but my own will be permitted to preach
or remain on any of my places. The regularly appointed minister for my
places must preach on Sundays during daylight, or quit. The negroes must
not be suffered to continue their night meetings beyond ten o'clock."
Telfair in his rules merely permitted religious meetings on Saturday nights
and Sunday mornings. Hammond encouraged his negroes to go to church on
Sundays, but permitted no exercises on the plantation beyond singing and
praying. He, and many others, encouraged his negroes to bring him their
complaints against drivers and overseers, and even against their own
ecclesiastical authorities in the matter of interference with recreations.
Fighting among the negroes was a common bane of planters. Telfair
prescribed: "If there is any fighting on the plantation, whip all engaged
in it, for no matter what the cause may have been, all are in the wrong."
Weston wrote: "Fighting, particularly amongst women, and obscene or abusive
language, is to be always rigorously punished."
"Punishment must never be cruel or abusive," wrote Acklen, closely followed
by Fowler, "for it is absolutely mean and unmanly to whip a negro from mere
passion and malice, and any man who can do so is utterly unfit to have
control of negroes; and if ever any of my negroes are cruelly or inhumanly
treated, bruised, maimed or otherwise injured, the overseer will be
promptly discharged and his salary withheld." Weston recommended the lapse
of a day between the discovery of an offense and the punishment, and he
restricted the overseer's power in general to fifteen lashes. He continued:
"Confinement (not in the stocks) is to be preferred to whipping; but the
stoppage of Saturday's allowance, and doing whole task on Saturday, will
suffice to prevent ordinary offenses. Special care must be taken to prevent
any indecency in punishing women. No driver or other negro is to be allowed
to punish any person in any way except by order of the overseer and in his
presence." And again: "Every person should be made perfectly to understand
what they are punished for, and should be made to perceive that they are
not punished in anger or through caprice. All abusive language or violence
of demeanor should be avoided; they reduce the man who uses them to a level
with the negro, and are hardly ever forgotten by those to whom they are
addressed." Hammond directed that the overseer "must never threaten a
negro, but punish offences immediately on knowing them; otherwise he will
soon have runaways." As a schedule he wrote: "The following is the order
in which offences must be estimated and punished: 1st, running away; 2d,
getting drunk or having spirits; 3d, stealing hogs; 4th, stealing; 5th,
leaving plantation without permission; 6th, absence from house after
horn-blow at night; 7th, unclean house or person; 8th, neglect of tools;
9th, neglect of work. The highest punishment must not exceed a hundred
lashes in one day, and to that extent only in extreme cases. The whip lash
must be one inch in width, or a strap of one thickness of leather 1-1/2
inches in width, and never severely administered. In general fifteen to
twenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging. The hands in every case must
be secured by a cord. Punishment must always be given calmly, and never
when angry or excited." Telfair was as usual terse: "No negro to have
more than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime."
Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sent
special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You had
best think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the important
old plantation maxim, viz: 'never to threaten a negro,' or he will do as
you and I would when at school--he will run. But with such a one, ... if
you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and
give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for
three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again.... Mind then and tell
him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels
with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on
himself, for he now sees how easy it is to fix 'a bad disposed nigger.'
Then give my compliments to him and tell him that you wrote me of his
conduct, and say if he don't change for the better I'll sell him to a slave
trader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent several
of the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause." In one
case Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver brought
him up for punishment but allowed him to run before it was administered.[5]
[Footnote 5: Plantation and Frontier, II, 32, 94.]
As to rewards, Hammond was the only one of these writers to prescribe them
definitely. His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driver
three dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each every
Christmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for every
actual increase of two on the place. Further, "for every infant thirteen
months old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, the
mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock."
"The head driver," Hammond wrote, "is the most important negro on the
plantation, and is not required to work like other hands. He is to
be treated with more respect than any other negro by both master and
overseer....He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all
times; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to
punish it with discretion on the spot....He is a confidential servant, and
may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer." Weston,
forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer's
order and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance of
quiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slaves
to the fields each morning, the assignment and supervision of tasks,
and the inspection of "such things as the overseer only generally
superintends." Telfair informed his overseer: "I have no driver. You are to
task the negroes yourself, and each negro is responsible to you for his own
work, and nobody's else."
Of the master's own functions Hammond wrote in another place: "A planter
should have all his work laid out, days, weeks, months, seasons and years
ahead, according to the nature of it. He must go from job to job without
losing a moment in turning round, and he must have all the parts of his
work so arranged that due proportion of attention may be bestowed upon each
at the proper time. More is lost by doing work out of season, and doing it
better or worse than is requisite, than can readily be supposed. Negroes
are harassed by it, too, instead of being indulged; so are mules, and
everything else. A halting, vacillating, undecided course, now idle, now
overstrained, is more fatal on a plantation than in any other kind of
business--ruinous as it is in any."[6]
[Footnote 6: Letter of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 21, 1841,
from Hammond's MS. copy in the Library of Congress.]
In the overseer all the virtues of a master were desired, with a deputy's
obedience added. Corbin enjoined upon his staff that they "attend their
business with diligence, keep the negroes in good order, and enforce
obedience by the example of their own industry, which is a more effectual
method in every respect than hurry and severity. The ways of industry," he
continued, "are constant and regular, not to be in a hurry at one time and
do nothing at another, but to be always usefully and steadily employed.
A man who carries on business in this manner will be prepared for every
incident that happens. He will see what work may be proper at the distance
of some time and be gradually and leisurely preparing for it. By this
foresight he will never be in confusion himself, and his business, instead
of a labor, will be a pleasure to him." Weston wrote: "The proprietor
wishes particularly to impress upon the overseer the criterions by which
he will judge of his usefullness and capacity. First, by the general
well-being of all the negroes; their cleanly appearance, respectful
manners, active and vigorous obedience; their completion of their tasks
well and early; the small amount of punishment; the excess of births over
deaths; the small number of persons in hospital; and the health of the
children. Secondly, the condition and fatness of the cattle and mules; the
good repair of all the fences and buildings, harness, boats, flats and
ploughs; more particularly the good order of the banks and trunks, and the
freedom of the fields from grass and volunteer [rice]. Thirdly, the amount
and quality of the rice and provision crops.... The overseer is expressly
forbidden from three things, viz.: bleeding, giving spirits to any negro
without a doctor's order, and letting any negro on the place have or keep
any gun, powder or shot." One of Acklen's prohibitions upon his overseers
was: "Having connection with any of my female servants will most certainly
be visited with a dismissal from my employment, and no excuse can or will
be taken."
Hammond described the functions as follows: "The overseer will never be
expected to work in the field, but he must always be with the hands when
not otherwise engaged in the employer's business.... The overseer must
never be absent a single night, nor an entire day, without permission
previously obtained. Whenever absent at church or elsewhere he must be on
the plantation by sundown without fail. He must attend every night and
morning at the stables and see that the mules are watered, cleaned and fed,
and the doors locked. He must keep the stable keys at night, and all the
keys, in a safe place, and never allow anyone to unlock a barn, smoke-house
or other depository of plantation stores but himself. He must endeavor,
also, to be with the plough hands always at noon." He must also see that
the negroes are out promptly in the morning, and in their houses after
curfew, and must show no favoritism among the negroes. He must carry on all
experiments as directed by the employer, and use all new implements and
methods which the employer may determine upon; and he must keep a full
plantation diary and make monthly inventories. Finally, "The negroes must
be made to obey and to work, which may be done, by an overseer who attends
regularly to his business, with very little whipping. Much whipping
indicates a bad tempered or inattentive manager, and will not be allowed."
His overseer might quit employment on a month's notice, and might be
discharged without notice. Acklen's dicta were to the same general effect.
As to the relative importance of the several functions of an overseer, all
these planters were in substantial agreement. As Fowler put it: "After
taking proper care of the negroes, stock, etc., the next most important
duty of the overseer is to make, if practicable, a sufficient quantity of
corn, hay, fodder, meat, potatoes and other vegetables for the consumption
of the plantation, and then as much cotton as can be made by requiring good
and reasonable labor of operatives and teams." Likewise Henry Laurens,
himself a prosperous planter of the earlier time as well as a statesman,
wrote to an overseer of whose heavy tasking he had learned: "Submit to
make less rice and keep my negroes at home in some degree of happiness in
preference to large crops acquired by rigour and barbarity to those poor
creatures." And to a new incumbent: "I have now to recommend to you the
care of my negroes in general, but particularly the sick ones. Desire Mrs.
White not to be sparing of red wine for those who have the flux or bad
loosenesses; let them be well attended night and day, and if one wench is
not sufficient add another to nurse them. With the well ones use gentle
means mixed with easy authority first--if that does not succeed, make
choice of the most stubborn one or two and chastise them severely but
properly and with mercy, that they may be convinced that the end of
correction is to be amendment," Again, alluding to one of his slaves
who had been gathering the pennies of his fellows: "Amos has a great
inclination to turn rum merchant. If his confederate comes to that
plantation, I charge you to discipline him with thirty-nine sound lashes
and turn him out of the gate and see that he goes quite off."[7]
[Footnote 7: D.D. Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens, pp. 133, 192.]
The published advice of planters to their fellows was quite in keeping with
these instructions to overseers. About 1809, for example, John Taylor, of
Caroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day,
wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows: "The addition of
comfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for the
advantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by a
ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniary
point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections
throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof
brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty
in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for
pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for
upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole
force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the
thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure
to inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations. "A daily
allowance of cyder," Taylor continued, "will extend the success of this
system for the management of slaves, and particularly its effect of
diminishing corporal punishments. But the reader is warned that a stern
authority, strict discipline and complete subordination must be combined
with it to gain any success at all."[8]
[Footnote 8: John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, Arator, Being
a Series of Agricultural Essays (2d ed., Georgetown, D. C, 1814), pp.
122-125.]
Another Virginian's essay, of 1834, ran as follows: Virginia negroes are
generally better tempered than any other people; they are kindly, grateful,
attached to persons and places, enduring and patient in fatigue and
hardship, contented and cheerful. Their control should be uniform and
consistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity. Punishment for real
faults should be invariable but moderate. "The best evidence of the good
management of slaves is the keeping up of good discipline with little or
no punishment." The treatment should be impartial except for good conduct
which should bring rewards. Praise is often a better cure for laziness than
stripes. The manager should know the temper of each slave. The proud and
high spirited are easily handled: "Your slow and sulky negro, although he
may have an even temper, is the devil to manage. The negro women are all
harder to manage than the men. The only way to get along with them is by
kind words and flattery. If you want to cure a sloven, give her something
nice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she has
on anything tolerably decent." Eschew suspicion, for it breeds dishonesty.
Promote harmony and sound methods among your neighbors. "A good
disciplinarian in the midst of bad managers of slaves cannot do much; and
without discipline there cannot be profit to the master or comfort to the
slaves." Feed and clothe your slaves well. The best preventive of theft is
plenty of pork. Let them have poultry and gardens and fruit trees to attach
them to their houses and promote amenability. "The greatest bar to good
discipline in Virginia is the number of grog shops in every farmer's
neighborhood." There is no severity in the state, and there will be no
occasion for it again if the fanatics will only let us alone.[9]
[Footnote 9: "On the Management of Negroes. Addressed to the Farmers and
Overseers of Virginia," signed "H. C," in the Farmer's Register, I, 564,
565 (February, 1834).]
An essay written after long experience by Robert Collins, of Macon,
Georgia, which was widely circulated in the 'fifties, was in the same tone:
"The best interests of all parties are promoted by a kind and liberal
treatment on the part of the owner, and the requirement of proper
discipline and strict obedience on the part of the slave ... Every attempt
to force the slave beyond the limits of reasonable service by cruelty or
hard treatment, so far from extorting more work, only tends to make him
unprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation and a curse." The quarters should
be well shaded, the houses free of the ground, well ventilated, and large
enough for comfort; the bedding and blankets fully adequate. "In former
years the writer tried many ways and expedients to economize in the
provision of slaves by using more of the vegetable and cheap articles of
diet, and less of the costly and substantial. But time and experience have
fully proven the error of a stinted policy ... The allowance now given per
week to each hand ... is five pounds of good clean bacon and one quart of
molasses, with as much good bread as they require; and in the fall, or
sickly season of the year, or on sickly places, the addition of one pint of
strong coffee, sweetened with sugar, every morning before going to work."
The slaves may well have gardens, but the assignment of patches for market
produce too greatly "encourages a traffic on their own account, and
presents a temptation and opportunity, during the process of gathering, for
an unscrupulous fellow to mix a little of his master's produce with his
own. It is much better to give each hand whose conduct has been such as to
merit it an equivalent in money at the end of the year; it is much less
trouble, and more advantageous to both parties." Collins further advocated
plenty of clothing, moderate hours, work by tasks in cotton picking and
elsewhere when feasible, and firm though kindly discipline. "Slaves," he
said, "have no respect or affection for a master who indulges them over
much.... Negroes are by nature tyrannical in their dispositions, and if
allowed, the stronger will abuse the weaker, husbands will often abuse
their wives and mothers their children, so that it becomes a prominent duty
of owners and overseers to keep peace and prevent quarrelling and disputes
among them; and summary punishment should follow any violation of this
rule. Slaves are also a people that enjoy religious privileges. Many
of them place much value upon it; and to every reasonable extent that
advantage should be allowed them. They are never injured by preaching, but
thousands become wiser and better people and more trustworthy servants
by their attendance at church. Religious services should be provided and
encouraged on every plantation. A zealous and vehement style, both in
doctrine and manner, is best adapted to their temperament. They are good
believers in mysteries and miracles, ready converts, and adhere with much
pertinacity to their opinions when formed."[10] It is clear that Collins
had observed plantation negroes long and well.
[Footnote 10: Robert Collins, "Essay on the Management of Slaves,"
reprinted in DeBow's Review, XVII, 421-426, and partly reprinted in F.L.
Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 692-697.]
Advice very similar to the foregoing examples was also printed in the
form of manuals at the front of blank books for the keeping of plantation
records;[11] and various planters described their own methods in operation
as based on the same principles. One of these living at Chunnennuggee,
Alabama, signing himself "N.B.P.," wrote in 1852 an account of the problems
he had met and the solutions he had applied. Owning some 150 slaves, he had
lived away from his plantation until about a decade prior to this writing;
but in spite of careful selection he could never get an overseer combining
the qualities necessary in a good manager. "They were generally on
extremes; those celebrated for making large crops were often too severe,
and did everything by coercion. Hence turmoil and strife ensued. The
negroes were ill treated and ran away. On the other hand, when he employed
a good-natured man there was a want of proper discipline; the negroes
became unmanageable and, as a natural result, the farm was brought into
debt," The owner then entered residence himself and applied methods which
resulted in contentment, health and prolific increase among the slaves, and
in consistently good crops. The men were supplied with wives at home so far
as was practicable; each family had a dry and airy house to itself, with a
poultry house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly were
three and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, together
with a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nursery
were fed from the master's kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables and
bread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women were
given time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all hands
had to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; and
a clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday. The chief
distinction of this plantation, however, lay in its device for profit
sharing. To each slave was assigned a half-acre plot with the promise that
if he worked with diligence in the master's crop the whole gang would in
turn be set to work his crop. This was useful in preventing night and
Sunday work by the negroes. The proceeds of their crops, ranging from ten
to fifty dollars, were expended by the master at their direction for Sunday
clothing and other supplies.[12] On a sugar plantation visited by Olmsted
a sum of as many dollars as there were hogsheads in the year's crop was
distributed among the slaves every Christmas.[13]
[Footnote 11: Pleasant Suit, Farmer's Accountant and Instructions for
Overseers (Richmond, Va., 1828); Affleck's Cotton Plantation Record and
Account Book, reprinted in DeBow's Review, XVIII, 339-345, and in Thomas
W. Knox, Campfire and Cotton Field (New York, 1865), pp. 358-364. See
also for varied and interesting data as to rules, experience and advice;
Thomas S. Clay (of Bryan County, Georgia), Detail of a Plan for the Moral
Improvement of Negroes on Plantations (1833); and DeBow's Review, XII,
291, 292; XIX, 358-363; XXI, 147-149, 277-279; XXIV, 321-326; XXV, 463;
XXVI, 579, 580; XXIX, 112-115, 357-368.]
[Footnote 12: Southern Quarterly Review, XXI, 215, 216.]
[Footnote 13: Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 660.]
Of overseers in general, the great variety in their functions, their
scales of operation and their personal qualities make sweeping assertions
hazardous. Some were at just one remove from the authority of a great
planter, as is suggested by the following advertisement: "Wanted, a manager
to superintend several rice plantations on the Santee River. As the
business is extensive, a proportionate salary will be made, and one or two
young men of his own selection employed under him.[14] A healthful summer
residence on the seashore is provided for himself and family." Others
were hardly more removed from the status of common field hands. Lawrence
Tompkins, for example, signed with his mark in 1779 a contract to oversee
the four slaves of William Allason, near Alexandria, and to work steadily
with them. He was to receive three barrels of corn and three hundred pounds
of pork as his food allowance, and a fifth share of the tobacco, hemp and
flax crops and a sixth of the corn; but if he neglected his work he might
be dismissed without pay of any sort.[15] Some overseers were former
planters who had lost their property, some were planters' sons working for
a start in life, some were English and German farmers who had brought their
talents to what they hoped might prove the world's best market, but most of
them were of the native yeomanry which abounded in virtually all parts
of the South. Some owned a few slaves whom they put on hire into their
employers' gangs, thereby hastening their own attainment of the means to
become planters on their own score.[16]
[Footnote 14: Southern Patriot (Charleston, S. C), Jan. 9, 1821.]
[Footnote 15: MS. Letter book, 1770-1787, among the Allason papers in the
New York Public Library.]
[Footnote 16: D.D. Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens, pp. 21, 135.]
If the master lived on the plantation, as was most commonly the case, the
overseer's responsibilities were usually confined to the daily execution of
orders in supervising the slaves in the fields and the quarters. But when
the master was an absentee the opportunity for abuses and misunderstandings
increased. Jurisdiction over slaves and the manner of its exercise were the
grounds of most frequent complaint. On the score of authority, for example,
a Virginia overseer in the employ of Robert Carter wrote him in 1787 in
despair at the conduct of a woman named Suckey: "I sent for hir to Come in
the morning to help Secoure the foder, but She Sent me word that She would
not come to worke that Day, and that you had ordered her to wash hir
Cloaiths and goo to Any meeting She pleased any time in the weke without my
leafe, and on monday when I Come to Reken with hir about it She Said it was
your orders and She would do it in Defiance of me.... I hope if Suckey is
aloud that privilige more than the Rest, that she will bee moved to some
other place, and one Come in her Room."[17] On the score of abuses, Stancil
Barwick, an overseer in southwestern Georgia, wrote in 1855 to John B.
Lamar: "I received your letter on yesterday ev'ng. Was vary sorry to hear
that you had heard that I was treating your negroes so cruely. Now, sir, I
do say to you in truth that the report is false. Thear is no truth in it.
No man nor set of men has ever seen me mistreat one of the negroes on the
place." After declaring that miscarriages by two of the women had been due
to no requirement of work, he continued: "The reports that have been sent
must have been carried from this place by negroes. The fact is I have made
the negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, an
is the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found among
the negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, but
not cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on the
place. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed by
no man on earth,"[18]
[Footnote 17: Plantation and Frontier, I, 325.]
[Footnote 18: Ibid., I, 312, 313.]
To diminish the inducement for overdriving, the method of paying the
overseers by crop shares, which commonly prevailed in the colonial period,
was generally replaced in the nineteenth century by that of fixed salaries.
As a surer preventive of embezzlement, a trusty slave was in some cases
given the store-house keys in preference to the overseer; and sometimes
even when the master was an absentee an overseer was wholly dispensed with
and a slave foreman was given full charge. This practice would have been
still more common had not the laws discouraged it.[19] Some planters
refused to leave their slaves in the full charge of deputies of any kind,
even for short periods. For example, Francis Corbin in 1819 explained
to James Madison that he must postpone an intended visit because of the
absence of his son. "Until he arrives," Corbin wrote, "I dare not, in
common prudence, leave my affairs to the sole management of overseers, who
in these days are little respected by our intelligent negroes, many of whom
are far superior in mind, morals and manners to those who are placed in
authority over them."[20]
[Footnote 19: Olmsted, Seaboard States, p. 206.]
[Footnote 20: Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, XLIII, 261.]
Various phases of the problem of management are illustrated in a letter of
A.H. Pemberton of the South Carolina midlands to James H. Hammond at the
end of 1846. The writer described himself as unwilling to sacrifice his
agricultural reading in order to superintend his slaves in person, but as
having too small a force to afford the employment of an overseer pure and
simple. For the preceding year he had had one charged with the double
function of working in person and supervising the slaves' work also; but
this man's excess of manual zeal had impaired his managerial usefulness.
What he himself did was well done, said Pemberton, "and he would do all
and leave the negroes to do virtually nothing; and as they would of course
take advantage of this, what he did was more than counterbalanced by what
they did not." Furthermore, this employee, "who worked harder than any man
I ever saw," used little judgment or foresight. "Withal, he has always been
accustomed to the careless Southern practice generally of doing things
temporarily and in a hurry, just to last for the present, and allowing the
negroes to leave plows and tools of all kinds just where they use them,
no matter where, so that they have to be hunted all over the place when
wanted. And as to stock, he had no idea of any more attention to them than
is common in the ordinarily cruel and neglectful habits of the South."
Pemberton then turned to lamentation at having let slip a recent
opportunity to buy at auction "a remarkably fine looking negro as to size
and strength, very black, about thirty-five or forty, and so intelligent
and trustworthy that he had charge of a separate plantation and eight or
ten hands some ten or twelve miles from home." The procuring of such a
foreman would precisely have solved Pemberton's problem; the failure to
do so left him in his far from hopeful search for a paragon manager and
workman combined.[21]
[Footnote 21: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.]
On the whole, the planters were disposed to berate the overseers as a class
for dishonesty, inattention and self indulgence. The demand for new
and better ones was constant. For example, the editor of the American
Agriculturist, whose office was at New York, announced in 1846: "We are
almost daily beset with applications for properly educated managers
for farms and plantations--we mean for such persons as are up to the
improvements of the age, and have the capacity to carry them into
effect."[22] Youths occasionally offered themselves as apprentices. One of
them, in Louisiana, published the following notice in 1822: "A young man
wishing to acquire knowledge of cotton planting would engage for twelve
months as overseer and keep the accounts of a plantation.... Unquestionable
reference as to character will be given."[23] And a South Carolinian in
1829 proposed that the practice be systematized by the appointment of local
committees to bring intelligent lads into touch with planters willing to
take them as indentured apprentices.[24] The lack of system persisted,
however, both in agricultural education and in the procuring of managers.
In the opinion of Basil Hall and various others the overseers were commonly
better than the reputation of their class,[25] but this is not to say that
they were conspicuous either for expertness or assiduity. On the whole
they had about as much human nature, with its merits and failings, as the
planters or the slaves or anybody else.
[Footnote 22: American Agriculturist, V, 24.]
[Footnote 23: Louisiana Herald (Alexandria, La.), Jan. 12, 1822,
advertisement.]
[Footnote 24: Southern Agriculturist, II, 271.]
[Footnote 25: Basil Hall, Travels in North America, III, 193.]
It is notable that George Washington was one of the least tolerant
employers and masters who put themselves upon record.[26] This was
doubtless due to his own punctiliousness and thorough devotion to system as
well as to his often baffled wish to diversify his crops and upbuild his
fields. When in 1793 he engaged William Pearce as a new steward for the
group of plantations comprising the Mount Vernon estate, he enjoined strict
supervision of his overseers "to keep them from running about and to oblige
them to remain constantly with their people, and moreover to see at what
time they turn out in the morning--for," said he, "I have strong suspicions
that this with some of them is at a late hour, the consequences of which
to the negroes is not difficult to foretell." "To treat them civilly,"
Washington continued, "is no more than what all men are entitled to; but my
advice to you is, keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow upon
familiarity in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not. Pass
by no faults or neglects, particularly at first, for overlooking one only
serves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some of
them, one in particular, will try at first what lengths he may go."
Particularizing as to the members of his staff, Washington described their
several characteristics: Stuart was intelligent and apparently honest and
attentive, but vain and talkative, and usually backward in his schedule;
Crow would be efficient if kept strictly at his duty, but seemed prone to
visiting and receiving visits. "This of course leaves his people too much
to themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side and
flogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfaction
which it creates, has in one or two instances been productive of serious
consequences." McKay was a "sickly, slothful and stupid sort of fellow,"
too much disposed to brutality in the treatment of the slaves in his
charge; Butler seemed to have "no more authority over the negroes ... than
an old woman would have"; and Green, the overseer of the carpenters, was
too much on a level with the slaves for the exertion of control. Davy, the
negro foreman at Muddy Hole, was rated in his master's esteem higher than
some of his white colleagues, though Washington had suspicions concerning
the fate of certain lambs which had vanished while in his care. Indeed the
overseers all and several were suspected from time to time of drunkenness,
waste, theft and miscellaneous rascality. In the last of these categories
Washington seems to have included their efforts to secure higher wages.
[Footnote 26: Voluminous plantation data are preserved in the Washington
MSS. in the Library of Congress. Those here used are drawn from the letters
of Washington published in the Long Island Historical Society Memoirs,
vol. IV; entitled George Washington and Mount Vernon. A map of the Mount
Vernon estate is printed in Washington's Writings (W.C. Ford ed.), XII,
358.]
The slaves in their turn were suspected of ruining horses by riding them at
night, and of embezzling grain issued for planting, as well as of lying and
malingering in general. The carpenters, Washington said, were notorious
piddlers; and not a slave about the mansion house was worthy of trust.
Pretences of illness as excuses for idleness were especially annoying.
"Is there anything particular in the cases of Ruth, Hannah and Pegg,"
he enquired, "that they have been returned as sick for several weeks
together?... If they are not made to do what their age and strength will
enable them, it will be a very bad example to others, none of whom would
work if by pretexts they can avoid it." And again: "By the reports I
perceive that for every day Betty Davis works she is laid up two. If she
is indulged in this idleness she will grow worse and worse, for she has a
disposition to be one of the most idle creatures on earth, and is besides
one of the most deceitful." Pearce seems to have replied that he was at a
loss to tell the false from the true. Washington rejoined: "I never found
so much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in distinguishing between real
and feigned sickness, or when a person is much afflicted with pain. Nobody
can be very sick without having a fever, or any other disorder continue
long upon anyone without reducing them.... But my people, many of them,
will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible change in their
countenance nor the loss of an ounce of flesh is discoverable; and their
allowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them." Runaways were
occasional. Of one of them Washington directed: "Let Abram get his deserts
when taken, by way of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, for
I have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment in
all his corrections." Of another, whom he had previously described as an
idler beyond hope of correction: "Nor is it worth while, except for the
sake of example, ... to be at much trouble, or any expence over a trifle,
to hunt him up." Of a third, who was thought to have escaped in company
with a neighbor's slave: "If Mr. Dulany is disposed to pursue any measure
for the purpose of recovering his man, I will join him in the expence so
far as it may respect Paul; but I would not have my name appear in any
advertisement, or other measure, leading to it." Again, when asking that a
woman of his who had fled to New Hampshire be seized and sent back if it
could be done without exciting a mob: "However well disposed I might be to
gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of
people (if the latter was in itself practicable), at this moment it would
neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature
preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow
serv'ts who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than
herself of favor."[27] Finally: "The running off of my cook has been a most
inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeable
is that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by
purchase. But this resolution I fear I must break. I have endeavored to
hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied." As to provisions, the
slaves were given fish from Washington's Potomac fishery while the supply
lasted, "meat, fat and other things ... now and then," and of meal "as
much as they can eat without waste, and no more." The housing and clothing
appear to have been adequate. The "father of his country" displayed little
tenderness for his slaves. He was doubtless just, so far as a business-like
absentee master could be; but his only generosity to them seems to have
been the provision in his will for their manumission after the death of his
wife.
[Footnote 27: Marion G. McDougall, Fugitive Slaves( Boston, 1891), p.
36.]
Lesser men felt the same stresses in plantation management. An owner of
ninety-six slaves told Olmsted that such was the trouble and annoyance
his negroes caused him, in spite of his having an overseer, and such the
loneliness of his isolated life, that he was torn between a desire to sell
out at once and a temptation to hold on for a while in the expectation of
higher prices. At the home of another Virginian, Olmsted wrote: "During
three hours or more in which I was in company with the proprietor I do
not think there were ten consecutive minutes uninterrupted by some of the
slaves requiring his personal direction or assistance. He was even obliged
three times to leave the dinner table. 'You see,' said he smiling, as he
came in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure,'" A
third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's
cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children,
infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate,
some fractious, and each class required different treatment. With the daily
wants of food, clothing and the like, "the poor man's time and thoughts,
indeed every faculty of mind, must be exercised on behalf of those who have
no minds of their own."[28]
[Footnote 28: F.L. Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 44, 58, 718.]
Harriet Martineau wrote on her tour of the South: "Nothing struck me
more than the patience of slave-owners ... with their slaves ... When I
considered how they love to be called 'fiery Southerners,' I could not but
marvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to which
they are liable in their homes. Persons from New England, France or
England, becoming slaveholders, are found to be the most severe masters
and mistresses, however good their tempers may always have appeared
previously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half an
hour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible
manner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated,
their infants slighted,--themselves deluded by artifices--they cannot, like
the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled."[29] It is clear from
every sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negro
slaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnigh
necessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness and
patience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financial
ruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; the
possession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern not
vital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns were
turned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineau
and most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, wrote after a journey to
Charleston in 1855: "The change to a Northerner in coming South is always
a great one when he steps over the boundary of the free states; and the
farther you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness and
careless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution and
skilful management.... The outside first aspect of slavery has nothing
horrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about looking
unhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips and
chains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in the
free as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone ten
times as far, I dare say, without seeing the first sign of negro misery
or white tyranny."[30] If, indeed, the neatness of aspect be the test of
success, most plantations were failures; if the test of failure be the lack
of harmony and good will, it appears from the available evidence that most
plantations were successful.
[Footnote 29: Harriet Martineau, Society in America (London, 1837), II
315, 316.]
[Footnote 30: Charles Eliot Norton, Letters (Boston, 1913), I, 121.]
The concerns and the character of a high-grade planter may be gathered from
the correspondence of John B. Lamar, who with headquarters in the town of
Macon administered half a dozen plantations belonging to himself and his
kinsmen scattered through central and southwestern Georgia and northern
Florida.[31] The scale of his operations at the middle of the nineteenth
century may be seen from one of his orders for summer cloth, presumably
at the rate of about five yards per slave. This was to be shipped from
Savannah to the several plantations as follows: to Hurricane, the property
of Howell Cobb, Lamar's brother-in-law, 760 yards; to Letohatchee, a trust
estate in Florida belonging to the Lamar family, 500 yards; and to Lamar's
own plantations the following: Swift Creek, 486; Harris Place, 360; Domine,
340; and Spring Branch, 229. Of his course of life Lamar wrote: "I am one
half the year rattling over rough roads with Dr. Physic and Henry, stopping
at farm houses in the country, scolding overseers in half a dozen counties
and two states, Florida and Georgia, and the other half in the largest
cities of the Union, or those of Europe, living on dainties and riding on
rail-cars and steamboats. When I first emerge from Swift Creek into the
hotels and shops on Broadway of a summer, I am the most economical body
that you can imagine. The fine clothes and expensive habits of the people
strike me forcibly.... In a week I become used to everything, and in a
month I forget my humble concern on Swift Creek and feel as much a nabob as
any of them.... At home where everything is plain and comfortable we look
on anything beyond that point as extravagant. When abroad where things are
on a greater scale, our ideas keep pace with them. I always find such to be
my case; and if I live to a hundred I reckon it will always be so."
[Footnote 31: Lamar's MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin,
Athens, Ga. Selections from them are printed in Plantation and Frontier,
I, 167-183, 309-312, II, 38, 41.]
Lamar could command strong words, as when a physician demanded five hundred
dollars for services at Hurricane in 1844, or when overseers were detected
in drunkenness or cruelty; but his most characteristic complaints were of
his own short-comings as a manager and of the crotchets of his relatives.
His letters were always cheery, and his repeated disappointments in
overseers never damped his optimism concerning each new incumbent. His
old lands contented him until he found new and more fertile ones to buy,
whereupon his jubilation was great. When cotton was low he called himself a
toad under the harrow; but rising markets would set him to counting bales
before the seed had more than sprouted and to building new plantations in
the air. In actual practice his log-cabin slave quarters gave place to
frame houses; his mules were kept in full force; his production of corn and
bacon was nearly always ample for the needs of each place; his slaves were
permitted to raise nankeen cotton on their private accounts; and his own
frequent journeys of inspection and stimulus, as he said, kept up an
esprit du corps. When an overseer reported that his slaves were down with
fever by the dozen and his cotton wasting in the fields, Lamar would hasten
thither with a physician and a squad of slaves impressed from another
plantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. He
redistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a better
balancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy as
far as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate the
families. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among his
slaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized them
to find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and good
nature made "Mas John" a favorite recourse.
As to crops and management, Lamar indicated his methods in criticizing
those of a relative: "Uncle Jesse still builds air castles and blinds
himself to his affairs. Last year he tinkered away on tobacco and sugar
cane, things he knew nothing about.... He interferes with the arrangements
of his overseers, and has no judgment of his own.... If he would employ a
competent overseer and move off the plantation with his family he could
make good crops, as he has a good force of hands and good lands.... I have
found that it is unprofitable to undertake anything on a plantation out of
the regular routine. If I had a little place off to itself, and my business
would admit of it, I should delight in agricultural experiments." In his
reliance upon staple routine, as in every other characteristic, Lamar rings
true to the planter type.
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