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American Negro Slavery
Chapter XV Plantation Labor
by Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell
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While produced only in America, the plantation slave was a product of
old-world forces. His nature was an African's profoundly modified but
hardly transformed by the requirements of European civilization. The wrench
from Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting his
ancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperament
than upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee, Ebo or Angola,
he became instead the American negro. The Caucasian was also changed by the
contact in a far from negligible degree; but the negro's conversion
was much the more thorough, partly because the process in his case was
coercive, partly because his genius was imitative.
The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit reservation
as to limits, that a negro was what a white man made him. The molding,
however, was accomplished more by groups than by individuals. The purposes
and policies of the masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence the
negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the
predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagerness
for society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person,
dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness
toward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to
superstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for
praise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, a
healthy human repugnance toward overwork. "It don't do no good to hurry,"
was a negro saying, "'caze you're liable to run by mo'n you overtake."
Likewise painstaking was reckoned painful; and tomorrow was always waiting
for today's work, while today was ready for tomorrow's share of play. On
the other hand it was a satisfaction to work sturdily for a hard boss, and
so be able to say in an interchange of amenities: "Go long, half-priced
nigger! You wouldn't fotch fifty dollars, an' I'm wuth a thousand!"[1]
[Footnote 1: Daily Tropic (New Orleans), May 18, 1846.]
Contrasts were abundant. John B. Lamar, on the one hand, wrote: "My man Ned
the carpenter is idle or nearly so at the plantation. He is fixing gates
and, like the idle groom in Pickwick, trying to fool himself into the
belief that he is doing something.... He is an eye servant. If I was with
him I could have the work done soon and cheap; but I am afraid to trust him
off where there is no one he fears."[2] On the other hand, M.W. Philips
inscribed a page of his plantation diary as follows:[3]
[Footnote 2: Plantation and Frontier, II, 38.]
[Footnote 3: Mississippi Historical Society Publications, X, 444.]
Sunday
July 10, 1853
Peyton is no more
Aged 42
Though he was a bad man in many respects
yet he was a most excellent field
hand, always at his
post.
On this place for 21 years.
Except the measles and its sequence, the
injury rec'd by the mule last Nov'r and its sequence,
he has not lost 15 days' work, I verily believe, in the
remaining 19 years. I wish we could hope for his
eternal state.
Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the old-fashioned prime
negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch the
roustabouts at work--those chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging,
lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of New
Orleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made.[4] Ready
at every touching of the shore day and night, resting and sleeping only
between landings, they carry their loads almost at running speed, and when
returning for fresh burdens they "coonjine" by flinging their feet in
semi-circles at every step, or cutting other capers in rhythm to show their
fellows and the gallery that the strain of the cotton bales, the grain
sacks, the oil barrels and the timbers merely loosen their muscles and
lighten their spirits.
[Footnote 4: Captain L.V. Cooley, Address Before the Tulane Society of
Economics, New Orleans, April 11th, 1911, on River Transportation and Its
Relation to New Orleans, Past, Present and Future. [New Orleans, 1911.]]
Such an exhibit would have been the despair of the average ante-bellum
planter, for instead of choosing among hundreds of applicants and rejecting
or discharging those who fell short of a high standard, he had to make
shift with such laborers as the slave traders chanced to bring or as his
women chanced to rear. His common problem was to get such income and
comfort as he might from a parcel of the general run; and the creation
of roustabout energy among them would require such vigor and such iron
resolution on his own part as was forthcoming in extremely few cases.
Theoretically the master might be expected perhaps to expend the minimum
possible to keep his slaves in strength, to discard the weaklings and the
aged, to drive his gang early and late, to scourge the laggards hourly, to
secure the whole with fetters by day and with bolts by night, and to keep
them in perpetual terror of his wrath. But Olmsted, who seems to have gone
South with the thought of finding some such theory in application, wrote:
"I saw much more of what I had not anticipated and less of what I had in
the slave states than, with a somewhat extended travelling experience, in
any other country I ever visited";[5] and Nehemiah Adams, who went from
Boston to Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himself
laughing with the laughing ones instead.[6]
[Footnote 5: Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 179.]
[Footnote 6: Nehemiah Adams. A Southside View of Slavery, or Three Months
in the South in 1854 (Boston, 1854), chap. 2.]
The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was as strange to
the bulk of the planters as the doctrine and practice of moderation was to
those who viewed the régime from afar and with the mind's eye. A planter
in explaining his mildness might well have said it was due to his being
neither a knave nor a fool He refrained from the use of fetters not so much
because they would have hampered the slaves in their work as because the
general use of them never crossed his mind. And since chains and bolts were
out of the question, the whole system of control must be moderate; slaves
must be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might be by
loyalty, pride and the prospect of reward.
Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional degree. A
certain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked success even when his whole
force was of fresh Africans. In a pamphlet of the late eighteen-twenties
he told of his method as follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settled
a plantation on St. John's River in Florida with about fifty new negroes,
many of whom I brought from the Coast myself. They were mostly fine young
men and women, and nearly in equal numbers. I never interfered in their
connubial concerns nor domestic affairs, but let them regulate these after
their own manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and what I
thought would add to their physical and moral happiness. I encouraged as
much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon
and night and Sunday morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] was
usually employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for the
week. Both men and women were very industrious. Many of them made twenty
bushels of corn to sell, and they vied with each other in dress and
dancing.... They were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared perfectly
happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had
to apply other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, the
punishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing their work
well. My object was to excite their ambition and attachment by kindness,
not to depress their spirits by fear and punishment.... Perfect confidence,
friendship and good understanding reigned between us." During the War of
1812 most of these negroes were killed or carried off in a Seminole raid.
When peace returned and Kingsley attempted to restore his Eden with a
mixture of African and American negroes, a serpent entered in the guise of
a negro preacher who taught the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sunday
and eating the catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves
"became poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was only to
do justice--to take what belonged to them, because I kept them in unjust
bondage." They came to believe "that all pastime or pleasure in this
iniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of sorrow and
repentance, and the sooner they were out of it the better; that they would
then go to a good country where they would experience no want of anything,
and have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful and would
pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and ask
forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to the
church, etc.... Finally myself and the overseer became completely divested
of all authority over the negroes.... Severity had no effect; it only made
it worse."[7]
[Footnote 7: [Z. Kingsley] A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society
as It exists ... under the Name of Slavery. By an inhabitant of Florida.
Fourth edition (1834), pp. 21, 22. (Copy in the Library of Congress.)]
This experience left Kingsley undaunted in his belief that liberalism
and profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the plantation régime.
To support this contention further he cited an experiment by a South
Carolinian who established four or five plantations in a group on Broad
River, with a slave foreman on each and a single overseer with very limited
functions over the whole. The cotton crop was the master's, while the hogs,
corn and other produce belonged to the slaves for their sustenance and the
sale of any surplus. The output proved large, "and the owner had no further
trouble nor expense than furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying the
overseer's wages, so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that he
could realize his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without paying
the customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on the operation
of his slaves." In Kingsley's opinion the system "answered extremely well,
and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivating
utility, local attachment and moral improvement among the slaves."[8]
[Footnote 8: [Z. Kingsley] Treatise, p. 22.]
The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government by slaves
is probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on their
plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi. There
the slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in every
way they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts
composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to be
inflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with his
power of pardon. The régime was maintained for a number of years in full
effect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9]
[Footnote 9: W.L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro
Problem," in the Sewanee Review (October, 1908).]
These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend to
counterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme.
In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, the
relation of planter and slave was largely shaped by a sense of propriety,
proportion and cooperation.
As to food, clothing and shelter, a few concrete items will reinforce the
indications in the preceding chapters that crude comfort was the rule.
Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776 that a Georgia slaveholder with
whom he stopped sold no dairy products from his forty cows in milk. The
proprietor explained this by saying: "I have a considerable family of black
people who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for Those I have
were either chosen for their good qualities or born in the family; and I
find from long experience and observation that the better they are fed,
clothed and treated, the more service and profit we may expect to derive
from their labour. In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or any
article of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best advantage
amongst my family and slaves." At another place Bartram noted the arrival
at a plantation of horse loads of wild pigeons taken by torchlight from
their roosts in a neighboring swamp.[10]
[Footnote 10: William Bartram, Travels (London, 1792), pp. 307-310, 467,
468.]
On Charles Cotesworth Pinckney's two plantations on the South Carolina
coast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a detail of four slaves was
shifted from the field work each week for a useful holiday in angling
for the huge drumfish which abounded in those waters; and their catches
augmented the fare of the white and black families alike.[11] Game and
fish, however, were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combined
the virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness. On
Fowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands numbered a little less
than half a hundred, the pork harvest throughout the eighteen-fifties,
except for a single year of hog cholera, yielded from eleven to
twenty-three hundred pounds; and when the yield was less than the normal,
northwestern bacon or barreled pork made up the deficit.[12]
In the matter of clothing, James Habersham sent an order to London in 1764
on behalf of himself and two neighbors for 120 men's jackets and breeches
and 80 women's gowns to be made in assorted sizes from strong and heavy
cloth. The purpose was to clothe their slaves "a little better than common"
and to save the trouble of making the garments at home.[13] In January,
1835, the overseer of one of the Telfair plantations reported that the
woolen weaving had nearly supplied the full needs of the place at the rate
of six or six and a half yards for each adult and proportionately for the
children.[14] In 1847, in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrote
from Paris to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroes
and see how many jackets and trousers you want for the men at Gowrie, ...
and then write to Messrs. Matthiessen and Co. of Charleston to send them to
you, together with the same quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and a
large woolen Scotch cap for each man and youth on the place.... Send back
anything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs. Habersham and
Son the twilled wool and cotton, called by some 'Hazzard's cloth,' for all
the women and children, and get two or three dozen handkerchiefs so as to
give each woman and girl one.... The shoes you will procure as usual from
Mr. Habersham by sending down the measures in time."[15] Finally, the
register of A.L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont contains
record of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a steady schedule. Every
spring each man drew two cotton shirts and two pair of homespun woolen
trousers, each woman a frock and chemises, and each child clothing or cloth
in proportion; and every fall the men drew shirts, trousers and coats, the
women shifts, petticoats, frocks and sacks, the children again on a similar
scale, and the several families blankets as needed.[16]
[Footnote 11: Plantation and Frontier, I, 203-208.]
[Footnote 12: MS. records in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall,
Miss.]
[Footnote 13: Plantation and Frontier, I, 293, 294.]
[Footnote 14: Ibid., 192, 193.]
[Footnote 15: MS. copy in Manigault's letter book.]
[Footnote 16: MS. in the possession of Mrs. J.F. Minis, Savannah, Ga.]
As for housing, the vestiges of the old slave quarters, some of which
have stood abandoned for half a century, denote in many cases a sounder
construction and greater comfort than most of the negroes in freedom have
since been able to command.
With physical comforts provided, the birth-rate would take care of itself.
The pickaninnies were winsome, and their parents, free of expense and
anxiety for their sustenance, could hardly have more of them than they
wanted. A Virginian told Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fast
as they did on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and in
Georgia, Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits."[18] In Mississippi
M.W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when at the age of
thirty she was married by her master to a new husband, and had eight more
thereafter, including a set of triplets.[19] But the culminating instance
is the following as reported by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERY
REMARKABLE. There is now living in the vicinity of Campbell a negro
woman belonging to a gentleman by the name of Todd; this woman is in her
forty-second year and has had forty-one children and at this time is
pregnant with her forty-second child, and possibly with her forty-third, as
she has frequently had doublets."[20] Had childbearing been regulated
in the interest of the masters, Todd's woman would have had less than
forty-one and Amy less than her nineteen, for such excesses impaired the
vitality of the children. Most of Amy's, for example, died a few hours or
days after birth.
[Footnote 17: Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 57.]
[Footnote 18: Plantation and Frontier, I, 179.]
[Footnote 19: Mississippi Historical Society Publications, X, 439, 443,
447, 480.]
[Footnote 20: Louisiana Gazette (New Orleans), June 11, 1822, quoting the
Lynchburg Press.]
A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie." Virtually
all of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and wives except Caroline
who in twenty years bore ten children. Her husband was presumably the slave
of some other master. Tom and Milly had nine children in eighteen years;
Harry and Jainy had seven in twenty-two years; Fanny had five in seventeen
years with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa likewise had
five in nineteen years with Bob as the father of all but the first; and
Hector and Mary had five in seven years. On the other hand, two old couples
and one in their thirties had had no children, while eight young pairs had
from one to four each.[21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisiana
plantation called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole. The
slaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards comprised
thirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre des naissances"
showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859 distributed among
twenty-three women, two of whom were still in their teens when the record
ended. Rhodé bore six children between her seventeenth and thirty-fourth
years; Henriette bore six between twenty-one and forty; Esther six between
twenty-one and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two;
Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore from one
to three children each, including Celestine who had her first baby when
fifteen and her second two years after. None of the matings or paternities
appear in the record, though the christenings and the slave godparents are
registered.[22]
[Footnote 21: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.]
[Footnote 22: MS. in the Howard Memorial Library, New Orleans.]
The death rate was a subject of more active solicitude. This may be
illustrated from the journal for 1859-1860 of the Magnolia plantation,
forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its record of rations to 138
hands, and of the occasional births, deaths, runaways and recaptures, and
of the purchase of a man slave for $2300, it contains the following summary
under date of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen months
over 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping cough, and then
the diphtheria, all of which we have gone through with but little loss save
in the whooping cough when we lost some twelve children." This entry was in
the spirit of rejoicing at escape from disasters. But on December 18 there
were two items of another tone. One of these was entered by an overseer
named Kellett: "[I] shot the negro boy Frank for attempting to cut at me
and three boys with his cane knife with intent to kill." The other, in a
different handwriting, recorded tersely: "J.A. Randall commenst buisnass
this mornung. J. Kellett discharged this morning." The owner could not
afford to keep an overseer who killed negroes even though it might be in
self defence.[23]
[Footnote 23: MS. preserved on the plantation, owned by ex-Governor H.C.
War-moth.]
Of epidemics, yellow fever was of minor concern as regards the slaves, for
negroes were largely immune to it; but cholera sometimes threatened to
exterminate the slaves and bankrupt their masters. After a visitation of
this in and about New Orleans in 1832, John McDonogh wrote to a friend:
"All that you have seen of yellow fever was nothing in comparison. It is
supposed that five or six thousand souls, black and white, were carried off
in fourteen days."[24] The pecuniary loss in Louisiana from slave deaths
in that epidemic was estimated at four million dollars.[25] Two years
afterward it raged in the Savannah neighborhood. On Mr. Wightman's
plantation, ten miles above the city, there were in the first week of
September fifty-three cases and eighteen deaths. The overseer then checked
the spread by isolating the afflicted ones in the church, the barn and the
mill. The neighboring planters awaited only the first appearance of the
disease on their places to abandon their crops and hurry their slaves to
lodges in the wilderness.[26] Plagues of smallpox were sometimes of similar
dimensions.
[Footnote 24: William Allen, Life of John McDonogh (Baltimore, 1886), p.
54.]
[Footnote 25: Niles' Register, XLV, 84]
[Footnote 26: Federal Union (Milledgeville, Ga.), Sept. 14 and 17 and
Oct. 22, 1834.]
Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin. A series
of them drove M.W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation journal: "Oh! my
losses almost make me crazy. God alone can help." In short, planters must
guard their slaves' health and life as among the most vital of their own
interests; for while crops were merely income, slaves were capital. The
tendency appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrant
labor when available for such work as would involve strain and exposure.
The documents bearing on this theme are scattering but convincing. Thus
E.J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields,
said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantation
ditches;[27] T.B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippi
in 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planter
when describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were
hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usual
routine.[29] Olmsted noted on the Virginia seaboard that "Mr. W.... had an
Irish gang draining for him by contract." Olmsted asked, "why he should
employ Irishmen in preference to doing the work with his own hands. 'It's
dangerous work,' the planter replied, 'and a negro's life is too valuable
to be risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss you
know,'"[30] On a Louisiana plantation W.H. Russell wrote in 1860: "The
labor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands and hewing down the
forests is generally done by Irish laborers 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 do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they
died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment,'" Russell
added on his own score: "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."
On another plantation the same traveller was shown the débris left by the
last Irish gang and was regaled by an account of the methods by which their
contractor made them work.[31] Robert Russell made a similar observation on
a plantation near New Orleans, and was told that even at high wages Irish
laborers were advisable for the work because they would do twice as
much ditching as would an equal number of negroes in the same time.[32]
Furthermore, A. de Puy Van Buren, noted as a common sight in the Yazoo
district, "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,'
straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chief
element among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.[33]
Likewise Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his boat with
cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at
the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the
wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division
of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise
confirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggers
are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard,
or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chance
observations it may be added that many newspaper items and canal and
railroad company reports from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that the
construction gangs were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attracted
those whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor was
their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the lives
of their slaves.
[Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, The Agricultural Productions of
Louisiana (New Orleans, 1845).]
[Footnote 28: Harper's Magazine, VII, 755.]
[Footnote 29: DeBoufs Review, XI, 401.]
[Footnote 30: Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 90, 91.]
[Footnote 31: W.H. Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston, 1863), pp
272, 273, 278.]
[Footnote 32: Robert Russell, North America, Its Agriculture and Chwate
(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 272.]
[Footnote 33: A. de Puy Van Buren, Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the
South (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 84, 318.]
[Footnote 34: Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 550, 551.]
Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease, disability
and death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better than
a slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on the
plantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely
took vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened
punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape from
bondage altogether.
Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a protest against
severities. An episode of this sort was recounted in a letter of a Georgia
overseer to his absent employer: "Sir: I write you a few lines in order to
let you know that six of your hands has left the plantation--every man but
Jack. They displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a few
lashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were missing. I think
they are lying out until they can see you or your uncle Jack, as he is
expected daily. They may be gone off, or they may be lying round in this
neighbourhood, but I don't know. I blame Tom for the whole. I don't think
the rest would of left the plantation if Tom had not of persuaded them of
for some design. I give Tom but a few licks, but if I ever get him in my
power I will have satisfaction. There was a part of them had no cause for
leaving, only they thought if they would all go it would injure me moore.
They are as independent a set for running of as I have ever seen, and I
think the cause is they have been treated too well. They want more whipping
and no protecter; but if our country is so that negroes can quit their
homes and run of when they please without being taken they will have the
advantage of us. If they should come in I will write to you immediately and
let you know." [35]
[Footnote 35: Letter of I.E.H. Harvey, Jefferson County, Georgia, April 16,
1837, to H.C. Flournoy, Athens, Ga. MS. in private possession. Punctuation
and capitals, which are conspicuously absent in the original, have here
been supplied for the sake of clarity.]
Such a case is analogous to that of wage-earning laborers on strike for
better conditions of work. The slaves could not negotiate directly at such
a time, but while they lay in the woods they might make overtures to the
overseer through slaves on a neighboring plantation as to terms upon which
they would return to work, or they might await their master's posthaste
arrival and appeal to him for a redress of grievances. Humble as their
demeanor might be, their power of renewing the pressure by repeating their
flight could not be ignored. A happy ending for all concerned might be
reached by mutual concessions and pledges. That the conclusion might be
tragic is illustrated in a Louisiana instance where the plantation was in
charge of a negro foreman. Eight slaves after lying out for some weeks
because of his cruelty and finding their hardships in the swamp intolerable
returned home together and proposed to go to work again if granted amnesty.
When the foreman promised a multitude of lashes instead, they killed him
with their clubs. The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia,
told what they had done, and surrendered themselves. The coroner went to
the plantation and found the foreman dead according to specifications.[36]
The further history of the eight is unknown.
[Footnote 36: Daily Delta (New Orleans), April 17, 1849.]
Most of the runaways went singly, but some of them went often. Such chronic
offenders were likely to be given exemplary punishment when recaptured. In
the earlier decades branding and shackling were fairly frequent. Some of
the punishments were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflicted
upon talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quite
as fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period the more common
resorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale. The menace of this last
was shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell
on earth of any district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise.
"They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave
refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the
slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for they
recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turn
blackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiable
purpose of keeping their own slaves content.
Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered more
or less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper advertisements for
fugitives reinforces the impression that the need of deterrence was vital.
Whippings, instead of proving a cure, might bring revenge in the form of
sabotage, arson or murder. Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter might
prove of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical. The
preventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and festivities to
create lightness of heart; overtime and overtask payments to promote zeal
and satisfaction; kindliness and care to call forth loyalty in return;
and the special device of crop patches to give every hand a stake in the
plantation. This last raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaves
were allowed to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might be
stimulated more than industry and punishments become more necessary
than before. In the cotton belt a solution was found at last in nankeen
cotton.[37] This variety had been widely grown for domestic use as early as
the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was left largely in neglect
until when in the thirties it was hit upon for negro crops. While the
prices it brought were about the same as those of the standard upland
staple, its distinctive brown color prevented the admixture of the
planter's own white variety without certain detection when it reached
the gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations is
indicated by the proceeds of $1,969.65 in 1859 from the nankeen of the
negroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in Taylor County, Georgia.[38] Such
returns might be distributed in cash; but planters generally preferred for
the sake of sobriety that money should not be freely handled by the slaves.
Earnings as well as gifts were therefore likely to be issued in the form of
tickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed the following
to the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg in the Christmas season of
1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let the bearer George have ten dollars value in
anything he chooses"; and the merchants entered a memorandum that George
chose two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a pair
of hose, and six shillings in cash.[39]
[Footnote 37: John Drayton, View of South Carolina (Charleston, 1802), p.
128.]
[Footnote 38: Macon, Ga., Telegraph, Feb. 3, 1859, quoted in DeBow's
Review, XXIX, 362, note.]
[Footnote 39: MS. among the Allen and Ellis papers in the Library of
Congress.]
In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to avoid the
occasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too heavy, the simplest
recourse was to reduce the schedule. If jobs were slackly done,
acquiescence was easier than correction. The easy-going and plausible
disposition of the blacks conspired with the heat of the climate to soften
the resolution of the whites and make them patient. Severe and unyielding
requirements would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied with
geniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization would make
plantation life not only tolerable but charming.
In the actual régime severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness the
rule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote in 1820: "After travelling
through three slave states I am obliged to go back to theory to raise any
abhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an instance of
cruel treatment nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in
'the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and appear at
least as independent as their masters; in animal spirits they have greatly
the advantage."[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828: "I have no wish, God knows!
to defend slavery in the abstract; ... but ... nothing during my recent
journey gave me more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I was
gradually brought that the planters of the Southern states of America,
generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage their estates with
the least possible severity. I do not say that undue severity is nowhere
exercised; but the discipline, taken upon the average, as far as I could
learn, is not more strict than is necessary for the maintenance of a proper
degree of authority, without which the whole framework of society in that
quarter would be blown to atoms."[41] And Olmsted wrote: "The only whipping
of slaves that I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazy
children as they are being broke in to work."[42]
[Footnote 40: Adlard Welby, Visit to North America (London, 1821 )
reprinted in Thwaites ed., Early Western Travels, XII, 289]
[Footnote 41: Basil Hall, Travels in the United States, III, 227, 228.]
[Footnote 42: Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 146.]
As to the rate and character of the work, Hall said that in contrast with
the hustle prevailing on the Northern farms, "in Carolina all mankind
appeared comparatively idle."[43] Olmsted, when citing a Virginian's remark
that his negroes never worked enough to tire themselves, said on his own
account: "This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at
work--they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength
into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night,
perhaps."[44] And Solon Robinson reported tersely from a rice plantation
that the negroes plied their hoes "at so slow a rate, the motion would have
given a quick-working Yankee convulsions."[45]
[Footnote 43: Basil Hall, III, 117.]
[Footnote 44: Seaboard Slave States, p. 91.]
[Footnote 45: American Agriculturist, IX, 93.]
There was clearly no general prevalence of severity and strain in the
régime. There was, furthermore, little of that curse of impersonality
and indifference which too commonly prevails in the factories of the
present-day world where power-driven machinery sets the pace, where the
employers have no relations with the employed outside of work hours, where
the proprietors indeed are scattered to the four winds, where the directors
confine their attention to finance, and where the one duty of the
superintendent is to procure a maximum output at a minimum cost. No, the
planters were commonly in residence, their slaves were their chief property
to be conserved, and the slaves themselves would not permit indifference
even if the masters were so disposed. The generality of the negroes
insisted upon possessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectful
intimacy. While by no means every plantation was an Arcadia there were many
on which the industrial and racial relations deserved almost as glowing
accounts as that which the Englishman William Faux wrote in 1819 of the
"goodly plantation" of the venerable Mr. Mickle in the uplands of South
Carolina.[46] "This gentleman," said he, "appears to me to be a rare
example of pure and undefiled religion, kind and gentle in manners....
Seeing a swarm, or rather herd, of young negroes creeping and dancing
about the door and yard of his mansion, all appearing healthy, happy and
frolicsome and withal fat and decently clothed, both young and old, I felt
induced to praise the economy under which they lived. 'Aye,' said he, 'I
have many black people, but I have never bought nor sold any in my life.
All that you see came to me with my estate by virtue of my father's will.
They are all, old and young, true and faithful to my interests. They need
no taskmaster, no overseer. They will do all and more than I expect them
to do, and I can trust them with untold gold. All the adults are well
instructed, and all are members of Christian churches in the neighbourhood;
and their conduct is becoming their professions. I respect them as my
children, and they look on me as their friend and father. Were they to be
taken from me it would be the most unhappy event of their lives,' This
conversation induced me to view more attentively the faces of the adult
slaves; and I was astonished at the free, easy, sober, intelligent and
thoughtful impression which such an economy as Mr. Mickle's had indelibly
made on their countenances."
[Footnote 46: William Faux, Memorable Days in America (London, 1823), p.
68, reprinted in Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, XI, 87.]
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