Chapter V (1)

SLAVERY IN ITS PROPERTY ASPECT—MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF THE SLAVES, ETC.

In a hilly part of Alabama, fifty miles north of the principal cotton-growing districts of that State, I happened to have a tradesman of the vicinity for a travelling companion, when, in passing an unusually large cluster of negro cabins, he called my attention to a rugged range of hills behind them which, he said, was a favourite lurking-ground for runaway negroes. It afforded them numerous coverts for concealment during the day, and at night the slaves of the plantation we were passing would help them to find the necessaries of existence. He had seen folks who had come here to look after niggers from plantations two hundred miles to the south, ward. “I suppose,” said he, “’t would seem kind o’ barbarous to you to see a pack of hounds after a human being?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Some fellows take as much delight in it as in runnin’ a fox. Always seemed to me a kind o’ barbarous sport.” [A pause.] “It’s necessary, though.”

“I suppose it is. Slavery is a custom of society which has come to us from a barbarous people, and, naturally, barbarous practices have to be employed to maintain it.”

“Yes, I s’pose that’s so. But niggers is generally pretty well treated, considering. Some people work their niggers too hard, that’s a fact. I know a man at ——; he’s a merchant there, and I have had dealings with him; he’s got three plantations, and he puts the hardest overseers he can get on them. He’s all the time a’ buying niggers, and they say around there he works ’em to death. On these small plantations, niggers ain’t very often whipped bad; but on them big plantations, they’ve got to use ’em hard to keep any sort of control over ’em. The overseers have to always go about armed; their life wouldn’t be safe, if they didn’t. As ’tis, they very often get cut pretty bad.” (Cutting is knifing; it may be stabbing, in south-western parlance).

He went on to describe what he had seen on some large plantations which he had visited for business purposes—indications, as he thought, in the appearance of “the people,” that they were being “worked to death.” “These rich men,” he said, “are always bidding for the overseer who will make the most cotton; and a great many of the overseers didn’t care for anything but to be able to say they’ve made so many bales in a year. If they make plenty of cotton, the owners never ask how many niggers they kill.”

I suggested that this did not seem quite credible; a negro was a valuable piece of property. It would be foolish to use him in such a way.

“Seems they don’t think so,” he answered. “They are always bragging—you must have heard them—how many bales their overseer has made, or how many their plantation has made to a hand. They never think of anything else. You see, if a man did like to have his niggers taken care of, he couldn’t bear to be always hearing that all the plantations round had beat his. He’d think the fault was in his overseer. The fellow who can make the most cotton always gets paid the best.”

Overseers’ wages were ordinarily from $200 to $600, but a real driving overseer would very often get $1,000. Sometimes they’d get $1,200 or $1,500. He heard of $2,000 being paid one fellow. A determined and perfectly relentless man—I can’t recall his exact words, which were very expressive—a real devil of an overseer, would get almost any wages he’d ask; because, when it was told round that such a man had made so many bales to the hand, everybody would be trying to get him.

The man who talked in this way was a native Alabamian, ignorant, but apparently of more than ordinarily reflective habits, and he had been so situated as to have unusually good opportunities for observation. In character, if not in detail, I must say that his information was entirely in accordance with the opinions I should have been led to form from the conversations I heard by chance, from time to time, in the richest cotton districts. That his statements as to the bad management of large plantations, in respect to the waste of negro property, were not much exaggerated, I find frequent evidence in southern agricultural journals. The following is an extract from one of a series of essays published in _The Cotton Planter_, the chief object of which is to persuade planters that they are under no necessity to employ slaves exclusively in the production of cotton. The writer, Mr. M. W. Phillips, is a well-known, intelligent, and benevolent planter, who resides constantly on his estate, near Jackson, Mississippi:—

“I have known many in the rich planting portion of Mississippi
especially, and others elsewhere, who, acting on the policy of
the boy in the fable, who ‘killed the goose for the golden egg,’
accumulated property, yet among those who have relied solely on
their product in land and negroes, I doubt if this be the true
policy of plantation economy. With the former everything has to
bend, give way to large crops of cotton, land has to be cultivated
wet or dry, negroes to work, cold or hot. Large crops planted, and
they must be cultivated, or done so after a manner. When disease
comes about, as, for instance, cholera, pneumonia, flux, and
other violent diseases, these are more subject, it seemeth to me,
than others, or even if not, there is less vitality to work on,
and, therefore, in like situations and similar in severity, they
must sink with more certainty; or even should the animal economy
rally under all these trials, the neglect consequent upon this
‘cut and cover’ policy must result in greater mortality. Another
objection, not one-fourth of the children born are raised, and
perhaps not over two-thirds are born on the place, which, under a
different policy, might be expected. And this is not all: hands,
and teams, and land must wear out sooner; admitting this to be
only one year sooner in twenty years, or that lands and negroes
are less productive at forty than at forty-two, we see a heavy
loss. Is this not so? I am told of negroes not over thirty-five
to forty-five, who look older than others at forty-five to
fifty-five. I know a man now, not short of sixty, who might
readily be taken for forty-five; another on the same place full
fifty (for I have known both for twenty-eight years, and the last
one for thirty-two years), who could be sold for thirty-five,
and these negroes are very leniently dealt with. Others, many
others, I know and have known twenty-five to thirty years, of whom
I can speak of as above. As to rearing children, I can point to
equally as strong cases; ay, men who are, ‘as it were,’ of one
family, differing as much as four and eight bales in cropping, and
equally as much in raising young negroes. The one scarcely paying
expenses by his crop, yet in the past twenty-five years raising
over seventy-five to a hundred negroes, the other buying more than
raised, and yet not as many as the first.

“I regard the ‘just medium’ to be the correct point. Labour is
conducive to health; a healthy woman will rear most children. I
favour good and fair work, yet not overworked so as to tax the
animal economy, that the woman cannot rear healthy children, nor
should the father be over-wrought, that his vital powers be at all
infringed upon.

“If the policy be adopted, to make an improvement in land visible,
to raise the greatest number of healthy children, to make an
abundance of provision, to rear a portion at least of work horses,
rely on it we will soon find by our tax list that our country is
improving. * * *

“Brethren of the South, we must change our policy. _Overseers are
not interested in raising children, or meat, in improving land, or
improving productive qualities of seed, or animals. Many of them
do not care whether property has depreciated or improved, so they
have made a crop [of cotton] to boast of._

“As to myself, I care not who has the credit of making crops at
Log Hall; and I would prefer that an overseer, who has been one
of my family for a year or two, or more, should be benefited;
but this thing is to be known and well understood. I plant such
fields in such crops as I see fit; I plant acres in corn, cotton,
oats, potatoes, etc., as I select, and the general policy of
rest, cultivation, etc., must be preserved which I lay down. A
self-willed overseer may fraudulently change somewhat in the
latter, by not carrying out orders—that I cannot help. What I have
written, I have written, and think I can substantiate.”

From the _Southern Agriculturist_, vol. iv., page 317:—

“OVERSEERS.

* * * “When they seek a place, they rest their claims entirely
on the number of bags they have heretofore made to the hand, and
generally the employer unfortunately recognizes the justice of
such claims.

“No wonder, then, that the overseer desires to have entire control
of the plantation. No wonder he opposes all experiments, or, if
they are persisted in, neglects them; _presses everything at the
end of the lash; pays no attention to the sick, except to keep
them in the field as long as possible; and drives them out again
at the first moment, and forces sucklers and breeders to the
utmost. He has no other interest than to make a big cotton crop._
And if this does not please you, and induce you to increase his
wages, he knows men it will please, and secure him a situation
with.”

From the Columbia _South Carolinian_:—

* * * “Planters may be divided into two great classes, viz., those
who attend to their business, and those who do not. And this
creates corresponding classes of overseers. The planter who does
not manage his own business must, of course, surrender everything
into the hands of his overseer. Such a planter usually rates the
merits of the overseer exactly in proportion to the number of bags
of cotton he makes, and of course the overseer cares for nothing
but to make a large crop. To him it is of no consequence that
the old hands are worked down, or the young ones overstrained;
that the breeding women miscarry, and the sucklers lose their
children; that the mules are broken down, the plantation tools
destroyed, the stock neglected, and the lands ruined: _so that
he has the requisite number of cotton bags, all is overlooked_;
he is re-employed at an advanced salary, and his reputation
increased. Everybody knows that by such a course, a crop may be
increased by the most inferior overseer, in any given year, unless
his predecessors have so entirely exhausted the resources of the
plantation, that there is no part of the capital left which can
be wrought up into current income. * * * Having once had the
sole management of a plantation, and imbibed the idea that the
only test of good planting is to make a large crop of cotton, an
overseer becomes worthless. He will no longer obey orders; he
will not stoop to details; he scorns all improvements, and _will
not_ adopt any other plan of planting than simply to work lands,
negroes, and mules to the top of their bent, which necessarily
proves fatal to every employer who will allow it.

“It seems scarcely credible, that any man owning a plantation
will so abandon it and his people on it entirely to a hireling, no
matter what his confidence in him is. Yet there are numbers who
do it habitually; and I have even known overseers to stipulate
that their employers should not give any order, nor interfere
in any way with their management of the plantation. There are
also some proprietors of considerable property and pretension to
being planters, who give their overseer a proportion of the crop
for his wages; thus bribing him by the strongest inducements of
self-interest, to overstrain and work down everything committed to
his charge.

“No planter, who attends to his own business, can dispense with
agents and sub-agents. It is impossible, on a plantation of any
size, for the proprietor to attend to all the details, many of
which are irksome and laborious, and he requires more intelligence
to assist him than slaves usually possess. To him, therefore, a
good overseer is a blessing. But an overseer who would answer the
views of such a planter is most difficult to find. The men engaged
in that occupation who combine the most intelligence, industry,
and character, are allured into the service of those who place all
power in their hands, and are ultimately spoiled.”

An English traveller writes to the London _Daily News_ from Mississippi (1857):—

“On crossing the Big Block river, I left the sandhills and began
to find myself in the rich loam of the valley of the Mississippi.
The plantations became larger, the clearings more numerous and
extensive, and the roads less hilly, but worse. Along the Yazoo
river one meets with some of the richest soil in the world, and
some of the largest crops of cotton in the Union. My first night
in that region was passed at the house of a planter who worked
but few hands, was a fast friend of slavery, and yet drew for my
benefit one of the most mournful pictures of a slave’s life I have
ever met with. He said, and I believe truly, that the negroes of
small planters are, on the whole, well treated, or at least as
well as the owners can afford to treat them. Their master not
unfrequently works side by side with them in the fields. * * *
But on the large plantations, where the business is carried on by
an overseer, and everything is conducted with military strictness
and discipline, he described matters as being widely different.
_The future of the overseer depends altogether on the quantity of
cotton he is able to make up for the market._ Whether the owner be
resident or non-resident, if the plantation be large, and a great
number of hands be employed upon it, the overseer gets credit
for a large crop, and blame for a small one. His professional
reputation depends in a great measure upon the number of bales or
hogsheads he is able to produce, and neither his education nor
his habits are such as to render it likely that he would allow
any consideration for the negroes to stand in the way of his
advancing it. His interest is to get as much work out of them as
they can possibly perform. His skill consists in knowing exactly
how hard they may be driven without incapacitating them for future
exertion. The larger the plantation the less chance there is, of
course, of the owner’s softening the rigour of the overseer, or
the sternness of discipline by personal interference. So, as Mr.
H—— said, a vast mass of the slaves pass their lives, from the
moment they are able to go afield in the picking season till they
drop worn out into the grave, in incessant labour, in all sorts
of weather, at all seasons of the year, without any other change
or relaxation than is furnished by sickness, without the smallest
hope of any improvement either in their condition, in their food,
or in their clothing, which are of the plainest and coarsest
kind, and indebted solely to the forbearance or good temper of
the overseer for exemption from terrible physical suffering. They
are rung to bed at nine o’clock, almost immediately after bolting
the food which they often have to cook after coming home from
their day’s labour, and are rung out of bed at four or five in the
morning. The interval is one long round of toil. Life has no sunny
spots for them. Their only refuge or consolation in this world is
in their own stupidity and grossness. The nearer they are to the
beast, the happier they are likely to be. Any mental or moral rise
is nearly sure to bring unhappiness with it.”

The same gentleman writes from Columbus:—

“One gets better glimpses of the real condition of the negroes
from conversations one happens to overhear than from what is told
to one’s-self—above all, when one is known to be a stranger, and
particularly an Englishman. The cool way in which you hear the
hanging of niggers, the shooting of niggers, and the necessity for
severe discipline among niggers talked of in bar-rooms, speaks
volumes as to the exact state of the case. A negro was shot when
running away, near Greensboro’, a small town on my road, the day
before I passed through, by a man who had received instructions
from the owner to take him alive, and shoot him if he resisted. I
heard the subject discussed by some ‘loafers’ in the bar, while
getting my horse fed, and I found, to my no small—I do not know
whether to say horror or amusement—that the point in dispute
was not the degree of moral guilt incurred by the murderer, but
the degree of loss and damage for which he had rendered himself
liable to the owner of the slave in departing from the letter of
his commission. One of the group summed up the arguments on both
sides, by exclaiming, ‘Well, this shootin’ of niggers should be
put a stop to, that’s a fact.’ The obvious inference to be deduced
from this observation was, that ‘nigger shootin’’ was a slight
contravention of police regulations—a little of which might be
winked at, but which, in this locality, had been carried to such
an extent as to call for the interference of the law.”

I do not think that I have ever seen the sudden death of a negro noticed in a Southern newspaper, or heard it referred to in conversation, that the loss of property, rather than the extinction of life, was not the evident occasion of interest. Turning over several Southern papers at this moment, I fall at once upon these examples:—

“We are informed that a negro man, the property of Mr. William
Mays, of this city, was killed last Thursday by a youth, the son
of Mr. William Payne, of Campbell county. The following are the
circumstances, as we have received them. Two sons of Mr. Payne
were shooting pigeons on the plantation of Mr. Mays, about twenty
miles from this place, and went to the tobacco-house, where the
overseer and hands were housing tobacco; one of the boys had a
string of pigeons and the other had none. On reaching the house,
the negro who was killed asked the boy who had no pigeons, ‘where
his were.’ He replied that he killed none, but could kill him (the
negro), and raised his gun and fired. The load took effect in the
head, and caused death in a few hours. _The negro was a valuable
one. Mr. Mays had refused $1,200 for him._”—_Lynchburg Virginian._

“_A valuable negro boy, the property of_ W. A. Phipps, living in
the upper end of this county, was accidentally drowned in the
Holston river a few days ago.”—_Rogersville Times._

“Mr. Tilghman Cobb’s barn at Bedford, Va., was set fire to by
lightning on Friday, the 11th, and consumed. Two negroes and three
horses perished in the flames.”—_New Orleans Daily Crescent._

I have repeated these accounts, not to convey to the reader’s mind the impression that slaves are frequently shot by their masters, which would be, no doubt, a mistaken inference, but to show in what manner I was made to feel, as I was very strongly in my journey, that what we call the sacredness of human life, together with a great range of kindred instincts, scarcely attaches at all, with most white men, to the slaves, and also in order to justify the following observation:—that I found the lives and the comfort of negroes, in the rich cotton-planting districts especially, habitually regarded, by all classes, much more from a purely pecuniary point of view than I had ever before supposed they could be; and yet that, as property, negro life and negro vigour were generally much less carefully economized than I had always before imagined them to be.

As I became familiar with the circumstances, I saw reasons for this, which, in looking from a distance, or through the eyes of travellers, I had not been able adequately to appreciate. I will endeavour to state them:—

It is difficult to handle simply as property, a creature possessing human passions and human feelings, however debased and torpid the condition of that creature may be; while, on the other hand, the absolute necessity of dealing with property as a thing, greatly embarrassed a man in any attempt to treat it as a person. And it is the natural result of this complicated state of things, that the system of slave-management is irregular, ambiguous, and contradictory; that it is never either consistently humane or consistently economical.

As a general rule, the larger the body of negroes on a plantation or estate, the more completely are they treated as mere property, and in accordance with a policy calculated to insure the largest pecuniary returns. Hence, in part, the greater proportionate profit of such plantations, and the tendency which everywhere prevails in the planting districts to the absorption of small, and the augmentation of large estates. It may be true, that among the wealthier slave-owners there is oftener a humane disposition, a better judgment, and a greater ability to deal with their dependents indulgently and bountifully, but the effects of this disposition are chiefly felt, even on those plantations where the proprietor resides permanently, among the slaves employed about the house and stables, and perhaps a few old favourites in the quarters. It is more than balanced by the difficulty of acquiring a personal interest in the units of a large body of slaves, and an acquaintance with the individual characteristics of each. The treatment of the mass must be reduced to a system, the ruling idea of which will be, to enable one man to force into the same channel of labour the muscles of a large number of men of various and often conflicting wills.

The chief difficulty is to overcome their great aversion to labour. They have no objection to eating, drinking, and resting, when necessary, and no general disinclination to receive instruction. If a man own many slaves, therefore, the faculty which he values highest, and pays most for, in an overseer, is that of making them work. Any fool could see that they were properly supplied with food, clothing, rest, and religious instruction.

The labourers we see in towns, at work on railroads and steamboats, about stations and landings; the menials of our houses and hotels, are less respectable, moral, and intelligent than the great majority of the whole labouring class of the North. The traveller at the South has to learn that there the reverse is the case to a degree which can hardly be sufficiently estimated. I have been obliged to think that many amiable travellers who have received impressions with regard to the condition of the slaves very different from mine, have failed to make a sufficient allowance for this. The rank-and-file plantation negroes are not to be readily made acquaintance with by chance or through letters of introduction.

I have described in detail, in former chapters, two large plantations, which were much the best in respect to the happiness of the negroes, of all that I saw in the South. I am now about to describe what I judged to be the most profitable estate that I visited. In saying this I do not compare it with others noticed in this chapter, my observations of which were too superficial to warrant a comparison. It was situated upon a tributary of the Mississippi, and accessible only by occasional steamboats; even this mode of communication being frequently interrupted at low stages of the rivers. The slaves upon it formed about one twentieth of the whole population of the county, in which the blacks considerably outnumber the whites. At the time of my visit, the owner was sojourning upon it, with his family and several invited guests, but his usual residence was upon a small plantation, of little productive value, situated in a neighbourhood somewhat noted for the luxury and hospitality of its citizens, and having a daily mail, and direct railroad and telegraphic communication with New York. This was, if I am not mistaken, his second visit in five years.

The property consisted of four adjoining plantations, each with its own negro-cabins, stables, and overseer, and each worked to a great extent independently of the others, but all contributing their crop to one gin-house and warehouse, and all under the general superintendence of a bailiff or manager, who constantly resided upon the estate, and in the absence of the owner, had vice-regal power over the overseers, controlling, so far as he thought fit, the economy of all the plantations.

The manager was himself a gentleman of good education, generous and poetic in temperament, and possessing a capacity for the enjoyment of nature and a happiness in the bucolic life, unfortunately rare with Americans. I found him a delightful companion, and I have known no man with whose natural tastes and feelings I have felt, on so short acquaintance, a more hearty sympathy. The gang of toiling negroes to him, however, was as essential an element of the poetry of nature as flocks of peaceful sheep and herds of lowing kine, and he would no more appreciate the aspect in which an Abolitionist would see them, than would Virgil have honoured the feelings of a vegetarian, sighing at the sight of flocks and herds destined to feed the depraved appetite of the carnivorous savage of modern civilization. The overseers were superior to most of their class, and, with one exception, frank, honest, temperate, and industrious, but their feelings toward negroes were such as naturally result from their occupation. They were all married, and lived with their families, each in a cabin or cottage, in the hamlet of the slaves of which he had especial charge. Their wages varied from $500 to $1,000 a year each.

These five men, each living more than a mile distant from either of the others, were the only white men on the estate, and the only others within several miles of them were a few skulking vagabonds. Of course, to secure their own personal safety and to efficiently direct the labour of such a large number of ignorant, indolent, and vicious negroes, rules, or rather habits and customs, of discipline, were necessary, which would in particular cases be liable to operate unjustly and cruelly. It is apparent, also, that, as the testimony of negroes against them would not be received as evidence in court, that there was very little probability that any excessive severity would be restrained by fear of the law. A provision of the law intended to secure a certain privilege to slaves, was indeed disregarded under my own observation, and such infraction of the law was confessedly customary with one of the overseers, and was permitted by the manager, for the reason that it seemed to him to be, in a certain degree, justifiable and expedient under the circumstances, and because he did not like to interfere unnecessarily in such matters.

In the main, the negroes appeared to be well taken care of and abundantly supplied with the necessaries of vigorous physical existence. A large part of them lived in commodious and well-built cottages, with broad galleries in front, so that each family of five had two rooms on the lower floor, and a loft. The remainder lived in log huts, small and mean in appearance, but those of their overseers were little better, and preparations were being made to replace all of these by neat boarded cottages. Each family had a fowl-house and hog-sty (constructed by the negroes themselves), and kept fowls and swine, feeding the latter during the summer on weeds and fattening them in the autumn on corn, _stolen_ (this was mentioned to me by the overseers as if it were a matter of course) from their master’s corn-fields. I several times saw gangs of them eating the dinner which they had brought, each man for himself, to the field, and observed that they generally had plenty, often more than they could eat, of bacon, corn-bread, and molasses. The allowance of food is weighed and measured under the eye of the manager by the drivers, and distributed to the head of each family weekly: consisting of—for each person, 3 pounds of pork, 1 peck of meal; and from January to July, 1 quart of molasses. Monthly, in addition, 1 pound tobacco, and 4 pints salt. No drink is ever served but water, except after unusual exposure, or to ditchers working in water, who get a glass of whisky at night. All hands cook for themselves after work at night, or whenever they please between nightfall and daybreak, each family in its own cabin. Each family has a garden, the products of which, together with eggs, fowls, and bacon, they frequently sell, or use in addition to their regular allowance of food. Most of the families buy a barrel of flour every year. The manager endeavours to encourage this practice; and that they may spend their money for flour instead of liquor, he furnishes it to them at rather less than what it costs him at wholesale. There are many poor whites within a few miles who will always sell liquor to the negroes, and encourage them to steal, to obtain the means to buy it of them. These poor whites are always spoken of with anger by the overseers, and they each have a standing offer of much more than the intrinsic value of their land, from the manager, to induce them to move away.

The negroes also obtain a good deal of game. They set traps for raccoons, rabbits, and turkeys; and I once heard the stock-tender complaining that he had detected one of the vagabond whites stealing a turkey which had been caught in his pen. I several times partook of game, while on the plantation, that had been purchased of the negroes. The stock-tender, an old negro, whose business it was to ride about in the woods and keep an eye on the stock cattle that were pastured in them, and who was thus likely to know where the deer ran, had an ingenious way of supplying himself with venison. He lashed a scythe blade or butcher’s knife to the end of a pole so that it formed a lance; this he set near a fence or fallen tree which obstructed a path in which the deer habitually ran, and the deer in leaping over the obstacle would leap directly on the knife. In this manner he had killed two deer the week before my visit.

The manager sent to him for some of this venison for his own use, and justified himself to me for not paying for it on the ground that the stock-tender had undoubtedly taken time which really belonged to his owner to set his spear. Game taken by the field-hands was not looked upon in the same light, because it must have been got at night when they were excused from labour for their owner.

The first morning I was on the estate, while at breakfast with the manager, an old negro woman came into the room and said to him, “Dat gal’s bin bleedin’ agin’ dis mornin’.”

“How much did she bleed?”

“About a pint, sir.”

“Very well; I’ll call and see her after breakfast.”

“I come up for some sugar of lead, masser; I gin her some powdered alum ’fore I come away.”

“Very well; you can have some.”

After breakfast the manager invited me to ride with him on his usual daily round of inspection through the plantations.

On reaching the nearest “quarters,” we stopped at a house, a little larger than the ordinary cabins, which was called the loom-house, in which a dozen negroes were at work making shoes, and manufacturing coarse cotton stuff for negro clothing. One of the hands so employed was insane, and most of the others were cripples, invalids with chronic complaints, or unfitted by age, or some infirmity, for field-work.

From this we went to one of the cabins, where we found the sick woman who had been bleeding at the lungs, with the old nurse in attendance upon her. The manager examined and prescribed for her in a kind manner. When we came out he asked the nurse if any one else was sick.

“Oney dat woman Carline.”

“What do you think is the matter with her?”

“Well, I don’t tink dere’s anyting de matter wid her, masser; I mus’ answer you for true, I don’t tink anyting de matter wid her, oney she’s a little sore from dat whippin’ she got.”

We went to another cabin and entered a room where a woman lay on a bed, groaning. It was a dingy, comfortless room, but a musquito bar, much patched and very dirty, covered the bed. The manager asked the woman several times what was the matter, but could get no distinct reply. She appeared to be suffering great pain. The manager felt her pulse and looked at her tongue, and after making a few more inquiries, to which no intelligible reply was given, told her he did not believe she was ill at all. At this the woman’s groans redoubled. “I have heard of your tricks,” continued the manager; “you had a chill when I came to see you yesterday morning; you had a chill when the mistress came here, and you had a chill when the master came. I never knew a chill to last the whole day. So you’ll just get up now and go to the field, and if you don’t work smart, you’ll get a dressing; do you hear?”

We then left. The manager said that he rarely—almost never—had occasion to employ a physician for the people. Never for accouchements; the women, from their labour in the field, were not subject to the difficulty, danger, and pain which attended women of the better classes in giving birth to their offspring. (I do not suppose that there was a physician within a day’s journey of the plantations.)

Near the first quarters we visited there was a large blacksmith’s and wheelwright’s shop, in which a number of mechanics were at work. Most of them, as we rode up, were eating their breakfast, which they warmed at their fires. Within and around the shop there were some fifty ploughs which they were putting in order. The manager inspected the work, found some of it faulty, sharply reprimanded the workmen for not getting on faster, and threatened one of them with a whipping for not paying closer attention to the directions which had been given him.

The overseer of this plantation rode up while we were at the shop, and in a free and easy style, reported to the manager how all his hands were employed. There were so many at this and so many at that, and they had done so much since yesterday. “There’s that girl, Caroline,” said the manager; “she’s not sick, and I told her she must go to work; put her to the hoeing; there’s nothing the matter with her, except she’s sore with the whipping she got. You must go and get her out.” A woman passing at the time, the manager told her to go and tell Caroline she must get up and go to work, or the overseer would come and start her. She returned in a few minutes, and reported that Caroline said she could not get up. The overseer and manager rode toward the cabin, but before they reached it, the girl, who had probably been watching us from the window, came out and went to the field with her hoe. They then returned to me and continued their conversation. Just before we left the overseer, he said, “I think that girl who ran away last week was in her cabin last night.” The manager told me, as we rode on, that the people often ran away after they have been whipped, or something else had happened to make them angry. They hide in the swamp, and come in to the cabins at night to get food. They seldom remain away more than a fortnight, and when they come in they are whipped. The woman, Caroline, he said, had been delivered of a dead child about six weeks before, and had been complaining and getting rid of work ever since. She was the laziest woman on the estate. This shamming illness gave him the most disagreeable duty he had to perform. Negroes were famous for it. “If it was not for her bad character,” he continued, “I should fear to make her go to work to-day; but her pulse is steady, and her tongue perfectly smooth. We have to be sharp with them; if we were not, every negro on the estate would be a-bed.”

We rode on to where the different gangs of labourers were at work, and inspected them one after another. I observed, as we were looking at one of the gangs, that they were very dirty. “Negroes are the filthiest people in the world,” said the manager; “there are some of them who would not keep clean twenty-four hours at a time if you gave them thirty suits a year.” I asked him if there were any rules to maintain cleanliness. There were not, but sometimes the negroes were told at night that any one who came into the field the next morning without being clean would be whipped. This gave no trouble to those who were habitually clean, while it was in itself a punishment to those who were not, as they were obliged to spend the night in washing.

They were furnished with two suits of summer, and one of winter clothing each year. Besides which, most of them got presents of holiday finery (calico dresses, handkerchiefs, etc.), and purchased more for themselves, at Christmas. One of the drivers now in the field had on a uniform coat of an officer of artillery. After the Mexican war, a great deal of military clothing was sold at auction in New Orleans, and much of it was bought by the planters at a low price, and given to their negroes, who were greatly pleased with it.

Each overseer regulated the hours of work on his own plantation. I saw the negroes at work before sunrise and after sunset. At about eight o’clock they were allowed to stop for breakfast, and again about noon, to dine. The length of these rests was at the discretion of the overseer or drivers, usually, I should say, from half an hour to an hour. There was no rule.

The number of hands directed by each overseer was considerably over one hundred. The manager thought it would be better economy to have a white man over every fifty hands, but the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy overseers prevented it. Three of those he then had were the best he had ever known. He described the great majority as being passionate, careless, inefficient men, generally intemperate, and totally unfitted for the duties of the position. The best overseers ordinarily, are young men, the sons of small planters, who take up the business temporarily, as a means of acquiring a little capital with which to purchase negroes for themselves.

The ploughs at work, both with single and double mule teams, were generally held by women, and very well held, too. I watched with some interest for any indication that their sex unfitted them for the occupation. Twenty of them were ploughing together, with double teams and heavy ploughs. They were superintended by a negro man who carried a whip, which he frequently cracked at them, permitting no dawdling or delay at the turning; and they twitched their ploughs around on the head-land, jerking their reins, and yelling to their mules, with apparent ease, energy, and rapidity. Throughout the South-west the negroes, as a rule, appear to be worked much harder than in the Eastern and Northern Slave States. I do not think they accomplish as much in the same time as agricultural labourers at the North usually do, but they certainly labour much harder, and more unremittingly. They are constantly and steadily driven up to their work, and the stupid, plodding, machine-like manner in which they labour, is painful to witness. This was especially the case with the hoe-gangs. One of them numbered nearly two hundred hands (for the force of two plantations was working together), moving across the field in parallel lines, with a considerable degree of precision. I repeatedly rode through the lines at a canter, with other horsemen, often coming upon them suddenly, without producing the smallest change or interruption in the dogged action of the labourers, or causing one of them, so far as I could see, to lift an eye from the ground. I had noticed the same thing with smaller numbers before, but here, considering that I was a stranger, and that strangers could but very rarely visit the plantation, it amazed me very much. I think it told a more painful story than any I had ever heard, of the cruelty of slavery. It was emphasized by a tall and powerful negro who walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently cracking his whip, and calling out in the surliest manner, to one and another, “Shove your hoe, there! shove your hoe!” But I never saw him strike any one with the whip.

The whip was evidently in constant use, however. There were no rules on the subject, that I learned; the overseers and drivers punished the negroes whenever they deemed it necessary, and in such manner, and with such severity, as they thought fit. “If you don’t work faster,” or “If you don’t work better,” or “If you don’t recollect what I tell you, I will have you flogged,” I often heard. I said to one of the overseers, “It must be disagreeable to have to punish them as much as you do?” “Yes, it would be to those who are not used to it—but it’s my business, and I think nothing of it. Why, sir, I wouldn’t mind killing a nigger more than I would a dog.” I asked if he had ever killed a negro? “Not quite that,” he said, but overseers were often obliged to. Some negroes are determined never to let a white man whip them, and will resist you, when you attempt it; of course you must kill them in that case.[24] Once a negro, whom he was about to whip in the field, struck at his head with a hoe. He parried the blow with his whip, and, drawing a pistol, tried to shoot him; but the pistol missing fire, he rushed in and knocked him down with the butt of it. At another time, a negro whom he was punishing insulted and threatened him. He went to the house for his gun, and as he was returning, the negro, thinking he would be afraid of spoiling so valuable a piece of property by firing, broke for the woods. He fired at once, and put six buck-shot into his hips. He always carried a bowie-knife, but not a pistol unless he anticipated some unusual act of insubordination. He always kept a pair of pistols ready loaded over the mantel-piece, however, in case they should be needed. It was only when he first came upon a plantation that he ever had much trouble. A great many overseers were unfit for their business, and too easy and slack with the negroes. When he succeeded such a man, he had hard work for a time to break the negroes in; but it did not take long to teach them their place. His conversation on the subject was exactly like what I have heard said, again and again, by northern shipmasters and officers, with regard to seamen.

I happened to see the severest corporeal punishment of a negro that I witnessed at the South while visiting this estate. I suppose, however, that punishment equally severe is common; in fact, it must be necessary to the maintenance of adequate discipline on every large plantation. It is much more necessary than on shipboard, because the opportunities of hiding away and shirking labour, and of wasting and injuring the owner’s property without danger to themselves, are far greater in the case of the slaves than in that of the sailors, but, above all, because there is no real moral obligation on the part of the negro to do what is demanded of him. The sailor performs his duty in obedience to a voluntary contract; the slave is in an involuntary servitude. The manner of the overseer who inflicted the punishment, and his subsequent conversation with me about it, indicated that it was by no means unusual in severity. I had accidentally encountered him, and he was showing me his plantation. In going from one side of it to the other, we had twice crossed a deep gully, at the bottom of which was a thick covert of brushwood. We were crossing it a third time, and had nearly passed through the brush, when the overseer suddenly stopped his horse exclaiming, “What’s that? Hallo! who are you, there?”

It was a girl lying at full length on the ground at the bottom of the gully, evidently intending to hide herself from us in the bushes.

“Who are you, there?”

“Sam’s Sall, sir.”

“What are you skulking there for?”

The girl half rose, but gave no answer.

“Have you been here all day?”

“No, sir.”

“How did you get here?”

The girl made no reply.

“Where have you been all day?”

The answer was unintelligible.

After some further questioning, she said her father accidentally locked her in, when he went out in the morning.

“How did you manage to get out?”

“Pushed a plank off, sir, and crawled out.”

The overseer was silent for a moment, looking at the girl, and then said, “That won’t do; come out here.” The girl arose at once, and walked towards him. She was about eighteen years of age. A bunch of keys hung at her waist, which the overseer espied, and he said, “Your father locked you in; but you have got the keys.” After a little hesitation, she replied that these were the keys of some other locks; her father had the door-key.

Whether her story were true or false, could have been ascertained in two minutes by riding on to the gang with which her father was at work, but the overseer had made up his mind.

“That won’t do;” said he, “get down.” The girl knelt on the ground; he got off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across the shoulders with his tough, flexible, “raw-hide” whip (a terrible instrument for the purpose). They were well laid on, at arm’s length, but with no appearance of angry excitement on the part of the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed, “Yes, sir!” or “Ah, sir!” or “Please, sir!” not groaning or screaming. At length he stopped and said, “Now tell me the truth.” The girl repeated the same story. “You have not got enough yet,” said he; “pull up your clothes—lie down.” The girl without any hesitation, without a word or look of remonstrance or entreaty, drew closely all her garments under her shoulders, and lay down upon the ground with her face toward the overseer, who continued to flog her with the raw hide, across her naked loins and thighs, with as much strength as before. She now shrunk away from him, not rising, but writhing, grovelling, and screaming, “Oh, don’t sir! oh, please stop, master! please, sir! please, sir! oh, that’s enough, master! oh, Lord! oh, master, master! oh, God master, do stop! oh, God, master! oh, God, master!”

A young gentleman of fifteen was with us; he had ridden in front, and now, turning on his horse, looked back with an expression only of impatience at the delay. It was the first time I had ever seen a woman flogged. I had seen a man cudgelled and beaten, in the heat of passion, before, but never flogged with a hundredth part of the severity used in this case. I glanced again at the perfectly passionless but rather grim business-like face of the overseer, and again at the young gentleman, who had turned away; if not indifferent he had evidently not the faintest sympathy with my emotion. Only my horse chafed. I gave him rein and spur and we plunged into the bushes and scrambled fiercely up the steep acclivity. The screaming yells and the whip strokes had ceased when I reached the top of the bank. Choking, sobbing, spasmodic groans only were heard. I rode on to where the road, coming diagonally up the ravine, ran out upon the cotton-field. My young companion met me there, and immediately afterward the overseer. He laughed as he joined us, and said:

“She meant to cheat me out of a day’s work, and she has done it, too.”

“Did you succeed in getting another story from her?” I asked, as soon as I could trust myself to speak.

“No; she stuck to it.”

“Was it not perhaps true?”

“Oh no, sir; she slipped out of the gang when they were going to work, and she’s been dodging about all day, going from one place to another as she saw me coming. She saw us crossing there a little while ago, and thought we had gone to the quarters, but we turned back so quick, we came into the gully before she knew it, and she could do nothing but lie down in the bushes.”

“I suppose they often slip off so.”

“No, sir; I never had one do so before—not like this; they often run away to the woods, and are gone some time, but I never had a dodge-off like this before.”

“Was it necessary to punish her so severely?”

“Oh yes, sir,” (laughing again.) “If I hadn’t, she would have done the same thing again to-morrow, and half the people on the plantation would have followed her example. Oh, you’ve no idea how lazy these niggers are; you Northern people don’t know anything about it. They’d never do any work at all if they were not afraid of being whipped.”

We soon afterward met an old man, who, on being closely questioned, said that he had seen the girl leave the gang as they went to work after dinner. It appeared that she had been at work during the forenoon, but at dinner-time the gang was moved, and as it passed through the gully she slipped out. The driver had not missed her. The overseer said that when he first took charge of this plantation, the negroes ran away a great deal—they disliked him so much. They used to say, ’twas hell to be on his place; but after a few months they got used to his ways, and liked him better than any of the rest. He had not had any run away now for some time. When they ran away they would generally return within a fortnight. If many of them went off, or if they stayed out long, he would make the rest of the force work Sundays, or deprive them of some of their usual privileges until the runaways returned. The negroes on the plantation could always bring them in if they chose to do so. They depended on them for their food, and they had only to stop the supplies to oblige them to surrender.

* * * * *

Accepting the position of the overseer, I knew that his method was right, but it was a red-hot experience to me, and has ever since been a fearful thing in my memory. Strangely so, I sometimes think, but I suppose the fact that the delicate and ingenuous lad who was with me, betrayed not even the slightest flush of shame, and that I constrained myself from the least expression of feeling of any kind, made the impression in my brain the more intense and lasting.

Sitting near a gang with an overseer and the manager, the former would occasionally call out to one and another by name, in directing or urging their labour. I asked if he knew them all by name. He did, but I found that the manager did not know one in five of them. The overseer said he generally could call most of the negroes on a plantation by their names in two weeks after he came to it, but it was rather difficult to learn them on account of there being so many of the same name, distinguished from each other by a prefix. “There’s a Big Jim here, and a Little Jim, and Eliza’s Jim, and there’s Jim Bob, and Jim Clarisy.”

“What’s Jim Clarisy?—how does he get that name?”