Chapter III: Economics of Slavery in Tennessee

I. SLAVERY AN EXPRESSION OF THE SOIL.

Someone has said, “The rocks determine our politics.” The rocks make the soil, which in turn determines the agricultural products that a section can produce with profit, and, hence, the labor system. Slavery nowhere in the United States reflected physiographic features more distinctly than in Tennessee. The three sections of the state have always differed very largely in their agriculture, in their sympathy with various sections of the country, and in their politics. In fact, there are almost three peoples and three civilizations in Tennessee. Physiography has been the biggest factor in the differentiation. The human response to the soil is very clearly shown. The differences in the sections of the state on the subject of slavery were due mainly to geography, since differences in climate were not sufficiently marked to promote or create any special attitude of mind toward slavery.

East Tennessee remained throughout the slavery regime mainly a section of small farmers. It was only the river valleys of the French Broad, the Watauga, the Holston, and the Tennessee that yielded with advantage to agriculture. These valleys were mostly of limestone formation, and produced a loamy soil that was very fertile.

The counties[1] in these river valleys produced considerable quantities of wheat and corn, but very little cotton. In 1850 East Tennessee produced one bale of cotton, ten hogsheads of tobacco, 1,813,338 bushels of wheat, and 10,998,654 bushels of corn.[2] In 1840, the counties containing the largest number of slaves were Knox, numbering 1934; Hawkins, 1499; Jefferson, 1282; and McMinn, 1241. There were six counties with slightly over one thousand each, six in the six hundred column, and the others ranged from 150 to 450 each. In 1860 there were four counties in East Tennessee with 2000 slaves in each. In the same year, there were 27,560 slaves in East Tennessee.[3]

In 1856 there were only 28 farms in East Tennessee containing one thousand acres or more. There were 164 containing from 500 to 1000 acres, 1,173 having from 100 to 500 acres, 7,117 having 50 to 100 acres, and 6,920 containing less than fifty acres. There were only 192 farms which contained more than 500 acres. It is seen from these figures that East Tennessee was populated essentially by small farmers who raised wheat and corn and live stock.[4]

In 1840 there were 19,915 slaves in East Tennessee, valued at $10,813,845.[5] In 1850 there were 22,187 valued at $11,248,809; and in 1860 there were 27,560 slaves valued at $23,536,240.[6] There were in 1856 only 4,784 slaveholders in East Tennessee. Of these, one held between 200 and 300 slaves, 3 between 70 and 100, 4 between 50 and 70, 12 between 40 and 50, and only 718 owned more than ten slaves, and 1207 owned only one; 719 owned two slaves. Practically half the slaveholders of East Tennessee owned either one or two slaves. The average price of land per acre in East Tennessee was $4.62, slightly more than half of what it was for middle and West Tennessee.[7] The value of the slave in 1859 ranged from $563 in Johnson County, which is in the northeastern part of the state, in the mountains, to $953 in Blount County, which is bordered by the Tennessee River and is traversed by some of its branches.

Middle Tennessee was more adapted to the slavery system than East Tennessee. It contained the rich Central Basin, traversed by the Cumberland River, and also portions of the valley of the Tennessee. Slavery was profitable in Middle Tennessee, especially for the cultivation of tobacco and cotton. Middle Tennessee in 1856 raised 19,621 bales of cotton and 4,511 hogsheads of tobacco. It produced 1,825,423 bushels of wheat and 21,968,114 bushels of corn.[8] The big cotton counties were Lincoln, producing 2,558 bales; Williamson, 3,167 bales; Maury, 4,623 bales; and Rutherford, 4,623 bales. All these counties are in the Central Basin. The big tobacco counties were Robertson, producing 1083 hogsheads, Smith, 1050 hogsheads, and Williamson, 1179 hogsheads.

There were 74 farms in Middle Tennessee, containing more than one thousand acres each and 299 farms having between 500 and 1000 acres each. The counties having plantations of more than 500 acres were Wilson, with 24, Davidson, 27, Bedford, 33, Montgomery, 23, Williamson, 49, Lincoln, 50, Rutherford, 52, and Giles, 60. Most of these counties are located in the Central Basin, and have a rich, loamy soil. The response was the big plantation and a dense slave population.

The slave population of Middle Tennessee, increased from 106,640 in 1840, to 131,666 in 1850 and to 148,028 by 1860. Land was very valuable in the cotton and tobacco counties, ranging in value from $13.54 in Giles County to $18.84 per acre in Williamson. The slave in Giles County was worth $797 while in Williamson County he was valued at $855. Both of these counties were rural and produced cotton. The average value of land for this section was only $8.82 per acre while the average value of slaves was $838. The total value of slaves in Middle Tennessee in 1860 was $126,488,926.

There were 18,524 slaveholders in Middle Tennessee in 1856; of this number, 14,145 held less than ten slaves; only one owned more than 300 slaves; about four thousand held only one slave. There were practically no large slaveholders in Middle Tennessee.

West Tennessee along the Mississippi River was a part of the Black Belt, and was more suitable for the production of cotton than either of the other two divisions of the state. There were 13,536 slaveholders in West Tennessee in 1856.[9] West Tennessee had larger slaveholders in proportion to the total number than either of the other divisions of the state. In East Tennessee those who owned one slave were one-fourth of the total number of slaveholders; in Middle Tennessee about the same proportion prevailed; and in West Tennessee this ratio was reduced to 1:5. In East Tennessee there was only one person owning more than one hundred slaves; in Middle Tennessee there were twenty-five; in West Tennessee there were eighty-five.

The plantations in West Tennessee were larger and more numerous, in spite of the fact that West Tennessee was not settled before 1820. Fayette County had 74 plantations containing between 500 and 1000 acres each, and 15 containing more than 1000 acres each. Fayette County in 1860 contained 15,473 slaves, all of whom had been acquired since 1830.[10] Shelby had a slave population of 16,953, which had been acquired since 1830. Some of the most productive parts of the Black Belt in West Tennessee, such as Lake County, were not in cultivation by 1860. The counties along the divide between the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers were very poor, and therefore not suitable for the production of cotton in large quantities. Counties like Hardin, Henderson, McNairy, Chester, Decatur, Carroll, Weakley, and Gibson were cultivated by small farmers, many of whom owned no slaves at all, while others owned only one or two slaves. In these counties, farmers worked their crops by themselves, or by the side of their slaves.

The leading crops of West Tennessee were cotton, corn, wheat, and tobacco. Cotton was the chief crop, and tobacco was raised in only the poorer counties, like Benton, Carroll, Weakley, Gibson, Haywood, and Lauderdale. Fayette and Shelby were the big cotton counties. West Tennessee produced in 1856 four times as much cotton as Middle Tennessee, and 3,144 hogsheads of tobacco against 4,511 produced by Middle Tennessee.[11]

Taking the state as a whole, it was never more than a state of small farmers. The plantation system as it existed in Mississippi or South Carolina never prevailed in Tennessee. The soils of Tennessee were not sufficiently productive to make slavery profitable on a large scale. It was more profitable to own from one to half a dozen slaves and work with them than to have an overseer. Of the 33,864 slaveholders in the state in 1850, 26,512 owned less than ten slaves each, and 18,198 owned less than five each. There were only 22 persons in the state who owned more than one hundred slaves. By 1856 this number had increased to one hundred and six.

The distribution of the slaves over the state was determined by the crops raised. In East Tennessee the ratio of slaves to whites was about 1 to 12; in Middle Tennessee, 1 to 3; and in West Tennessee, 3 to 5. In no county in East Tennessee was the ratio greater than 1 to 6, while in several counties it was 1 to 60, and in two-thirds of them it ranged from 1 to 20, to 1 to 60.[12] This, of course, was a matter of the soil. These factors reflected themselves in social life, education, religion, and politics. Slavery produced aristocracy and classes of society wherever it appeared. It made for the private school in education, Whiggery in politics, and the southern division among the Protestant churches that split. East Tennessee in Andrew Jackson’s time was the democratic part of the state. West Tennessee, the seat of the Black Belt, was the home of the Whig aristocracy. When the Whigs became Democrats in the decade between 1850 and 1860, the free farmers and small slaveholders, Democrats of East Tennessee, became Unionists and later Republicans. This same formula worked out over the entire state. There are Republican islands in Democratic sections, and Democratic islands in Republican sections. East Tennessee remained loyal to the Methodist Church, and West Tennessee went into the Methodist Church, South. These divisions were not peculiar alone to the three grand divisions of the state, but are found in the various counties.

For instance, in the Presidential elections of 1844 between Clay and Polk, Tennessee went for Clay. The big Democratic counties of today were Whig then. Fayette’s vote was 1217 to 1060 in favor of Clay; Shelby’s, 1828 to 1607 in favor of Clay; Madison’s, 1562 to 737 in favor of Clay; Gibson’s, 1423 to 688 in favor of Clay. These counties are now the big Democratic counties of West Tennessee. They stood the same way in 1848 on the election between Taylor and Cass. They voted overwhelmingly for the Whig candidate for Governor in 1847.[13]

Present Republican counties of East Tennessee went Democratic. Washington, 1225 to 881 in favor of Polk; Sullivan, 1533 to 350 in favor of Polk; Greene, 1701 to 1031 in favor of Polk. The same line-up expressed itself in 1847 and in the Presidential election of 1848.[14]

There are certain counties in West Tennessee today that are quite as overwhelmingly Republican as any in East Tennessee. These counties are in full sympathy with the point of view of the North in politics and toward life generally. The northern branches of the churches, together with their schools, are found in these counties. They prefer school teachers from the North and send their children to northern colleges. The human response to the soil that determined their attitude toward slavery is mainly responsible for these results. It was this force that made poor whites out of some and slaveholders out of others.

II. THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PLANTATION.

Plantation life in Tennessee was more humane than is generally supposed. Great care was taken in establishing the negro quarters. There were several reasons for this, not especially peculiar to Tennessee. Health is an indispensable factor in the life of an efficient laborer. It saved or reduced the expense of medical attention. Sanitary quarters for the negroes produced contentment and thus lessened the problem of government. They prevented the spread of disease, and a consequent heavy death rate. They diminished crime among the slaves and on the whole made a good reputation for the master. Respect for the master was no inconsiderable force in the proper functioning of a plantation. The slaveholders discussed these subjects in the agricultural fairs and read papers on how to build proper slave quarters.

In an issue of the Practical Farmer and Mechanic, published at Somerville, Tennessee, the county seat of the most densely slave-populated county in the state, are given the following instructions relative to the establishment of the plantation buildings:

In the selection of his farm, he (the master) should have an
eye to health, convenience of water, and a soil with such a
substratum as to retain manures. His home should be neat but
not costly—erected on an elevated situation—with a sufficient
number of shade trees to impart health and comfort to its
inmates. His negro quarters should be placed a convenient
distance from his dwelling on a dry, airy ridge—raised two
feet from the ground—so they can be thoroughly ventilated
underneath, and placed at distances apart of at least fifty
yards to ensure health. In this construction, they should be
sufficiently spacious so as not to crowd the family intended to
occupy them—with brick chimneys and large fire-places to impart
warmth to every part of the room. More diseases and loss of
time on plantations are engendered from crowded negro cabins
than from almost any other cause. The successful planter should
therefore have an especial eye to the comfort of his negroes,
in not permitting them to be overcrowded in their sleeping
quarters.[15]

This was an ideal that was regarded as a model. There was pride among masters as to the character and appearance of their plantations. In a description of a plantation in Haywood County, the following elaborate set of buildings is given: dwelling-house, kitchen, washhouse, storehouse, office, smokehouse, servants’ houses about the dwelling of the master, weaving, ice, and poultry houses, gin house, grist mill, flouring mill, wheat granary, stables, corn crib, overseer’s house, seven double negro cabins, thirty-six feet by fourteen, with large brick chimneys, closets, and other conveniences, all of which buildings are annually whitewashed.[16] If one family was to occupy the cabin, it was usually about 16 feet by 20 feet in its dimensions.[17] An effort was made to locate cabins among shade trees. If this condition was not met, trees were planted. Comfortable housing of the slaves was one of the real problems of slave management, and it seems that an honest effort in most cases was made to solve it. Proper bedding with plenty of blankets was furnished in the winter, and close attention was given to the food of the slaves. Weekly allowances were usually made, yet some fed in common. Five pounds of good, clean bacon, one quart of molasses, a sufficiency of bread and coffee with sugar were usually distributed to each slave on some designated night each week. Family rations were put together. Single hands received their rations separately, and then united in squads and masses. Some woman was detailed to cook their meat or make their coffee. The bread was cooked in the bakery for the entire plantation.

Two suits of cotton for spring and summer; two suits of woolen for winter; four pairs of shoes, and three hats made up the clothing allowance. The slave was encouraged to be neat in his dress.

The slaves were supposed to go to work by sunrise. They rested from one to two hours at noon and then worked until night. In summer, the plan frequently was to work from sunrise to 8:00 o’clock a.m., then breakfast, work until 12:00 o’clock at noon, rest two hours, and then work until night. They always quit work at noon on Saturday to prepare for Sunday.

Various plans were used to stimulate the slaves to work. One of the most effective was “task week.” The negroes varied among themselves considerably as to the rapidity with which they could perform their labor. It was this very fact that constituted the basis of the “task” system. According to this system, a slave could work for himself or play when he had finished his assigned task. Some masters permitted the slaves to cultivate a few acres for themselves.

Prompt attention in case of sickness was a vastly important matter among slaves. Masters, mistresses, and overseers usually knew a great many home remedies which, if given in time, would suffice for a large number of complaints. A good amount of red pepper was used in the vegetables. This was supposed to stimulate the system, prevent sore throat, and render the system less liable to chills and fevers.

Good plantation management contained a number of additional interesting features. A weekly dance was an event to be looked forward to. For the master and mistress to chaperon these occasions made a strong impression on the slaves. Family prayers in which the slaves participated had a bracing effect on the negro’s character. It was wise to have an employed preacher for the slaves. Religion appealed to the negro’s character, and it was a psychological factor in his control.

One of the most interesting features of plantation life was the raising of poultry by the old slaves who were incapacitated for hard work. An old negro man, giving most zealous attention to his brood, his negro assistants careful to please him in every detail, and the “happy family,” consisting of everything from a bob white and turkey gobbler to a mockingbird, made one of the most beautiful pictures of plantation life.[18]

The duties of the master was a subject that was kept before the community even if economic interests were not sufficient to control such matters. J. P. Williams, in a prize essay on plantations and their management, urged that the master should give his personal attention to his negroes. He thought that such supervision would not only pay in financial returns but would largely solve the problem of discontent and insubordination frequently due to mistreatment of slaves by an overseer.[19]

The master’s relation to the overseer was an important factor in the management of the plantation. It was a good policy to pay any overseer well. This gave the master the right to demand his entire time, and usually ended in efficiency and satisfactory relations of overseer to both master and slaves.

“An employer,” said Jas. C. Lusby, in a paper read before the Agricultural and Mechanical Society of Fayette County, September 2, 1855, “should never ask a negro any questions whatever about the business of the plantation, or the condition of the crops; nor say anything in the presence of the negroes about the overseer, for they are always ready to catch any word that may be dropped, and use it if possible to cause a disturbance between the master and the overseer.”[20] It seems that there was a common practice among masters to have one or two trusties among the negroes to act as spies upon the overseer. “Negroes,” said Lusby, “in two-thirds of the cases, are the cause of employers and overseers falling out.”[21] The successful planter was one who gave sufficient time and thought to the management of his farm to enable him to be his own judge as to the character and efficiency of his overseer.

The overseer was the most important factor in the management of the large plantation. His indifference toward the interests of either master or slaves broke down the system, because there was perfect unity of interests inherent in the system, and the successful overseer recognized this ideal. It was the business of the overseer to be present at the beginning of every important work, not merely because he was paid to do so, but because the negroes always took advantage of his absence. It was his business to ring a bell or blow a horn in the morning for breakfast, because it was unsafe to entrust this duty to a negro driver for the reason that it was almost impossible to find a negro sufficiently regular in his habits to be reliable. If the breakfast hour was a failure, the entire day’s work was seriously damaged.

The overseer had to see that the negroes were up by four o’clock in the winter and about half past three in the spring and summer. This gave time to prepare victuals, arrange clothes and shoes, to see that horses and mules were properly fed, that crib doors were shut, that fires were built for the children, and that everybody was ready to go to work by daylight.[22]

The overseer accompanied the slaves to the field and saw that the day’s work was properly begun. He could then return to his house for breakfast. Following breakfast, he was free to make a general inspection of the plantation. He inspected the cabins to see that they were neatly kept, that the clothes of the negroes were washed, that the negro nurses were properly looking after the children, that the common bakery, boot-and-shoe shop, carpenters, mechanics, and tailors were efficiently functioning.

He inspected fences, ditches, gates, and stock occasionally. He visited the cabins two or three times a week at night to see that the negroes were at home and that no strange negroes were on the premises. The nature of the negro was to gad about, and to keep improper hours. It was the duty of the overseer to prevent this. He had to look after the farming implements, and, after the crops were harvested, to gather up the tools of the plantation and have them repaired and properly housed during the winter.

The overseer had constantly to plan work two or three weeks in advance to have the greatest success. He had to keep in close touch with the master, especially concerning work after the crops were finished. “I consider it to be the duty of the overseer,” said Lusby, “to do anything that the employer wishes him to do, right or wrong.”

Lusby advocated that an overseer should be a model of personal appearance. He should keep himself close-shaven, wear good clothes, “hold his head up equal to his employer, ride a good, sprightly horse, and have one of the hands to attend to him, and saddle him in the morning.”[23] An overseer was rated by the slaves very largely according to the manner in which he conducted himself. His personal conduct was a determining factor in the degree of control that he was able to exercise. This factor either made or undid all his efforts.

An overseer who was a success in the employment of a master was usually able to buy land and negroes for himself in a few years. In an address given at an agricultural fair in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1855, an account is given of a planter in Haywood County, who had had only four overseers from 1838 to 1855. One of these in six years, with a large family, accumulated nineteen hundred dollars which he invested in lands and negroes in Texas, and was soon doing well. Another accumulated in seven years more than two thousand dollars, and was ready to go to Arkansas and invest his capital in lands and negroes. The other two had similar success.[24]

The slaves in Tennessee undoubtedly were, on the whole, humanely treated. Rev. Arthur Howard says in his history of the Episcopal Church in Tennessee that “it is impossible to deny that the negroes of the South were happier, and better cared for, physically and morally, under the system of slavery existing in the South, than they have been at any time since they obtained their freedom and were suddenly, without any training, endowed with the right of citizenship.”[25]

Rev. J. N. Pendleton, of the Baptist Church, said:

I take great pleasure in testifying that slavery in Kentucky
and Tennessee, and I was not acquainted with it elsewhere, was
of the mild type. When I went North, nothing surprised me more
than to see laborers at work in the rain and snow. In such
weather, slaves in Kentucky and Tennessee would have been under
shelter.[26]

III. WAS SLAVERY PROFITABLE IN TENNESSEE?

There is a great deal of evidence that slavery was profitable, and some that it was not. Slavery increased very rapidly in the first two decades of the history of the state. From 1790 to 1800 there was an increase of 297.54 per cent, and from 1800 to 1810 an increase of 229.31 per cent.[27] Slave population increased only 79.06 per cent in the next decade, and only 244.19 per cent from 1820 to 1860. This decrease in percentage from 1820 to 1860 is in face of the fact that West Tennessee, the Black Belt part of the state, was settled and populated during this period. This evidently means that slavery was not making much progress in East and Middle Tennessee.

Slaves increased in value very rapidly in Tennessee from 1790 to about 1836. They were worth only $100 each in 1790, but by 1836 they were valued at $584.[28] They decreased in value to $413.72 by 1846. They reached the 1836 mark again in 1854, and by 1860 were valued, for purposes of taxation, at $900.[29] This valuation was largely controlled by the price of cotton. The average price of cotton for the decade ending 1830 was 13.3 cents per pound; for the decade ending 1840, 12.4 cents; for the decade ending 1850, 8.2 cents; and for the five years ending 1855, 9.6 cents.[30] The values and prices of Tennessee slaves and cotton only roughly corresponded to those of the United States at the same time. In 1792, the average value of a slave in the United States was $300, and in 1835 it was $900, and $600 in 1844.[31] Upland cotton was worth 17½ cents per pound in New York City in 1835 and 7½ cents in 1844. It was generally held that a difference of one cent a pound in the price of cotton made a difference of $100 in the price of slaves, but this could not apply to the above prices.

Slavery was undoubtedly very profitable in Middle and West Tennessee. F. A. Michaux in travelling from Nashville to Knoxville in 1802 says: “Between Nashville and Fort Blount (above Nashville on the Cumberland River about sixty miles) the plantations, although isolated in the woods always, are nevertheless, upon the road, within two or three miles of each other. The inhabitants live in comfortable log houses; the major part keep negroes, and appear to live happy and in abundance.”[32] He says West Tennessee (Cumberland), now Middle Tennessee, produced a very fine grade of cotton and that manufacture was encouraged by the legislature.[33] “Emigrants to Tennessee,” he continues, “by at least the third year have gone over to the cotton crop.” He says that a man and his wife could, aside from raising sufficient Indian corn for sustenance “cultivate four acres (of cotton) with the greatest ease.” This would yield a net produce of two hundred and twelve dollars. “This light sketch,” he says, “demonstrates with what facility a poor family may acquire speedily, in West Tennessee, a certain degree of independence, particularly after having been settled five or six years, as they procure the means of purchasing one or two negroes, and of annually increasing this number.”[34]

Lilly Buttrick, travelling in Tennessee from 1812 to 1819, speaks of stopping with an Indian slave owner by the name of Talbot, who lived on the bank of the Tennessee. “This man,” he says, “was said to be very rich, in land, cattle, and negro slaves, and also to have large sums of money in the bank.”[35]

The culture of cotton was profitable from the very beginning of the state down to 1860. As early as July, 1797, Mr. Miller of the firm of Miller and Whitney, proposed to his partner that they send an agent to Knoxville, “where we were informed that cotton was valuable,” and to Nashville and the Cumberland settlements to gather information concerning the culture of cotton in those parts and the mode of cleaning it.[36] As soon as the people of these frontier settlements learned that the cotton gin was a success, they held public meetings and petitioned the legislature of Tennessee to buy the patent rights of Miller and Whitney to the saw-gin within the limits of Tennessee. Andrew Jackson presided at some of these meetings.[37] In accordance with the wishes of the people, the legislature purchased the patent rights for the gin within the limits of Tennessee in 1803, and the state began to encourage the growth of cotton. “Cotton production in this state,” says Hammond, “with the exception of a few years in the 40’s, continued to increase at a uniform rate until the outbreak of the Civil War.”[38]

A. D. Murphrey, a North Carolinian, travelling through West Tennessee in 1822, and writing to his friend, Thomas Ruffin, left the following account of the soil and the profits in farming in West Tennessee: “Since I wrote you last I have been through nearly one-half of the Chickashaw Purchase, and if I was disappointed as to old Tennessee, I was still more as to the Purchase; but my disappointment was of another kind. I have never seen such a beautiful country before, nor one where industry can be so well rewarded. It is very much like Mecklenburg and Cararrus were, I expect, a hundred years ago, in their appearance; but there is a fertility in its poorest soil that I have seen nowhere else. Except the swamp, there is really no poor land, if we are to judge from its production; for on the poorest ridges that I have seen, six and eight barrels of corn, or 1000 pounds of cotton is the ordinary crop. What is there called good land brings upon an average 10 barrels of corn or 1300 pounds of cotton to the acre; and one hand will tend more land than two in any part of North Carolina west of Raleigh. I have just left the house of a Mr. Morgan on Sandy River, who is now working his second crop and works four hands. He has prepared 80 acres of this ground since Xmas, 1821 (this was July, 1822), and his crop of corn, without severe disaster, will be 1000 barrels.... The soil is rich, black land, varying in depth from four to ten inches; then comes a good clay—not a stone or pebble to be seen.”[39]

The Nashville Banner in 1833, in a discussion on the prosperity of Tennessee, boasted that “the profits alone” on the crop of cotton, in the present year, “will pay the whole aggregate debt of Tennessee and leave a large balance in favor of the country.”[40]

In the reports made to the Comptroller, and inventories given in the proceedings of the county and district fairs, there are numerous examples of individuals who, with a few slaves, purchased lands, cleared and stocked them, and made big money in farming. The following is a detailed account of what a Middle Tennessee planter did, who in 1838 had twenty-two negroes, only fifteen of whom were field hands: “He cleared nine hundred acres of land ... made all his improvements, consisting of a dwelling house, kitchen, washhouse, storehouse, office, smokehouse, the necessary negro houses for servants’ houses about his dwelling, weaving, ice and poultry houses, a gin house forty by sixty feet, a building forty feet square with driving power attached,” from which was propelled the following machinery: a flouring mill which ground and bolted from seventy to eighty bushels of wheat per day, a corn mill which ground from ninety to one hundred bushels of corn per day, a knife that cut food for his stock, a corn sheller, a wheat thresher, with a 300-bushel capacity per day for wheat and 200 bushels for rye, a saw mill that cut from one to two thousand feet of lumber per day; “barns, stables, cribs, overseer’s home, negro cabins, and outhouses.”[41] This planter furnished the flour for his family and negroes and sold a surplus to cotton planters sufficient to pay the cost of his machinery and the salary of his overseer. He raised all the live stock that the plantation needed, and sold immense quantities of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and swine.

His capital increased at the rate of 169 per cent per annum, yet “he never made a speculation of any kind whatever during all this time of prosperity, to buy and sell again. He lived generously, while some of his friends charged him with extravagance in many things. His farming interest did it all, under its own progression, and is entitled as a pursuit or business, after the support of himself and family, which under the peculiar visitations of Providence, added necessarily to his expenses, to all the credit.”[42]

This planter was active in politics, and acted as administrator of the estates of several of his friends. He managed his plantation so successfully that he never gave cause for a change of overseers, nor did he have any trouble with his slaves. He was a type of the Middle Tennessee planters.

This planter was Mark C. Cockrill. He was famous for the grade of wool that he grew. He exhibited a wool at the World’s Fair in London that for its texture, quality, and fineness excelled the wool from Saxony, from which the best English broadcloths have been made. He returned with the premium, certificates, and medals to be still further rewarded by the legislature of his own state with a gold medal for his enterprise and the prosperity he had brought to the wool-growers of the state.[43]

There were equally famous public-spirited cotton planters of West Tennessee, Pope, Holmes, Poynor, and Bond, planters of Fayette County and Shelby County, at this same World’s Fair, who changed the classification and commercial character of American cottons. They were able to place Tennessee cotton next to the Georgia Sea Island, giving it the highest grade of upland cotton. This meant considerable wealth to Tennessee. Both Pope and Holmes received medals at the fair. These planters, in coöperation with David Park, a cotton factor of Memphis, distributed among several factories of the East a large amount of Tennessee cotton to be experimented with, in order to test its superior grade. This gave Tennessee cotton a great reputation, and made Memphis a joint distributing-point for the sale of cotton. Cotton began to come up the Mississippi to Memphis to be distributed over the entire world. This was the beginning of the movement that has finally made Memphis the greatest inland cotton market in the world.

Comparing these cotton planters with the Middle Tennessee planter referred to above, James C. Coggesball, the author of this paper, says, “I must certainly be permitted to speak as to the circumstances of several whose success surpasses his in a four-fold extent.” “And just here,” he says, “permit me to add as my opinion that there is not to be found a location in the United States where a farming community, taking them as a body, is as independent and intelligent as they are in the western district. The public days at the county seats exhibit but few scenes of impropriety emanating from them, while the sheriff’s and constable’s advertisements seldom have reference to their estates.”[44]

The planters of Tennessee realized that slavery was profitable, and were jealous of all forces that threatened its existence. They knew that the cotton system depended on slave labor. The slaveholding sections of the state were the strong supporters of colonization societies, not in the sense of anti-slavery, but as a protection to slavery. “The existence of colored freedom in the midst of a slave population,” said their petitions, “has a tendency to impair the value and utility of that description.” It will cause “those who might have considered bondage as one of the decrees of Fate, or provisions of superior power, imposed upon their sable race, where all were placed in a like condition ... to view with jealousy and discontent the elevation of some of their own family to a grade so far above their reach.”[45] This memorial suggested the expediency of abolishing colored freedom, which was actually attempted in the later fifties.

“The farmer should remember,” said Coggesball, “that he has not merely farmers’ duties to attend to, but that, as a slaveholder, and as a member of society, he has personal and political rights to watch over and protect. Will he look at the assembled combinations that are against him; at the encroachments upon his homestead, who are advancing with torch in hand and fanatic cry of freedom, even at the price of extermination of the white race of slaveholders? And see that they are headed by the pulpit, composed of its three thousand clergy, with the anti-Christ motive of a Judas Iscariot marked upon their physiognomy, and instigated by the price of thirty shekels of silver, from England’s commercial schemers, swearing in their fanatical zeal that the Bible itself is not the Word of God, they recognize in the establishment and the sustaining of this relation, and reading their homilies on the other side of Mason and Dixon’s line, to the mob collections from the purlieus of their cities, who, like themselves aspire to the distinction given to the Beecher family, by some way, who lately discovered that in this world there were three distinct classes of people, to-wit: the saint, the sinner, and the Beecher family.”

As the pressure became more intense, the planters became more intolerant of any discussion on the slavery question. The conclusion of Coggesball’s discussion gives the frame of mind that most of the slaveholders had acquired by 1860. “For myself,” he said, “my relation to slavery is one that I allow no man, even my neighbor, who is a non-slaveholder, to counsel me respecting. So sinister and heartless has the northern public become, they but elucidate the fact that there is no tyranny like that of the full-blooded fanatic. I have no missionary ground in my heart for them to reach; my duty is a responsible one. God and my country recognize it, and I care not what others think of me respecting it. I believe that slavery is a blessing to the slave in the largest extent, produced by the wisdom of God, and retained as such by his overruling providence, and that the Christian slaveholder is the true friend of the black man.”[46]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Knox, Bledsoe, Bradley, Granger, Greene, Hawkins, McMinn, Monroe, Roane, and Hamilton were counties noted for their production of corn and wheat.

[2] Comptroller’s Report for 1850, p. 44.

[3] Census of 1850, Population I, p. 63.

[4] Comptroller’s Report for 1856, p. 44.

[5] Comptroller’s Report for 1857-8, p. 165.

[6] Comptroller’s Report for 1859-60, p. 22.

[7] Comptroller’s Report for 1859, p. 30.

[8] Comptroller’s Report for 1856, p. 44.

[9] Comptroller’s Report for 1856, p. 44.

[10] Tenth Census, I, Population, p. 63.

[11] Comptroller’s Report for 1856, p. 44.

[12] Martin, A. E., Tennessee Historical Magazine, I, No. 4, p. 279.

[13] Whig Almanac for 1844.

[14] Whig Almanac for 1848.

[15] The Practical Farmer and Mechanic, October 6, 1857.

[16] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 431.

[17] De Bow’s Review, XVII, 423.

[18] The following is a description of “a master in Haywood County, who, having the Shanghai mania, raised one year over eight hundred of them, under the careful attention and supervision of an old man, who had numbered his three score years, and was very infirm, but who, after proper preparation in the several coops and houses, with suitable places as depositories for their food, took great pleasure in his charge, and, with the negroes assisting him, it was pleasing to see the delight he manifested in the care of his brood, and with what pride he would discourse on their good qualities to his respective visitors. Upwards of one hundred pair were given away, and from the sales of others at five dollars the pair, the old negro’s labor contributed to the income of the farm more than two hundred dollars. To suppress the romantic suggestions that his rural pursuits in his retirement might lead to, he would exhibit his ‘happy family’ uncaged to his visitors, when he pointed to the fowl, the duck, the turkey, the pea-fowl, the pigeon, the partridge, the dove, the jaybird, the squirrel, the rabbit, the red bird, the woodpecker, the humming and mocking bird, as they occupied their respective places in the forest before his dwelling, and frequently several of them might be seen eating together, feeling instinctively conscious, from habit long indulged, that they had a protector over them, that prevented their being wantonly destroyed.”

Comptroller’s Report 1855-6, p. 432.

[19] “He should see,” said Williams, “that their cabins are kept clean and free from all kinds of filth, and that their hours of retiring should be regular and at an early period of the night. Their food should be nourishing and well cooked, with plenty of vegetables in heat of summer.

“He should have his negroes comfortably clad, winter and summer, and see that their persons as well as their clothing are kept clean and nice, and that they are not driven out in unsuitable weather (which is too often the case by over-bearing overseers), if he expects them to enjoy health or live to an age to be profitable to their masters. He should attend to their morals and instruct them himself, or employ others to do so, as regards their duties and obligations to their master and their Creator—so they may thoroughly understand the full nature of vice and crime, and their consequent punishment here and hereafter. These instructions will make them better servants by teaching them their true and relative positions, and prevent cases of insubordination which so often arise from ignorance and neglect. Let their treatment be mild and humane, at the same time stern and uncompromising in the punishment of offenses.”—The Practical Farmer and Mechanic, October 6, 1857.

[20] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 525.

[21] Ibid., p. 526.

[22] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 527.

[23] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 527.

[24] Ibid., p. 431.

[25] Howard, Rev. Arthur, History of the Church in the Diocese of Tennessee, p. 177.

[26] Pendleton, J. N., Reminiscences of a Long Life, p. 127.

[27] Statistical Abstract of U. S., 1906, p. 32.

[28] Comptroller’s Report for 1857-8, p. 165.

[29] Comptroller’s Report for 1859-60, p. 22.

[30] Stirling, James, Letters from the Slave States, p. 305.

[31] Political Science Quarterly, XX, p. 267.

[32] Thwaites, III, 257.

[33] Ibid., 277.

[34] Ibid., 278.

[35] Thwaites, VIII, 73.

[36] American Historical Review, October, 1897 (Letter of Phineas Miller to Eli Whitney, July 21, 1797).

[37] Aurora and General Advertiser, September 3, 1802.

[38] Hammond, M. B., The Cotton Industry, p. 70.

[39] Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, I, p. 245.

[40] Nashville Banner, November 16, 1833.

[41] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 432.

[42] Ibid., p. 433.

[43] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 434.

[44] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 435.

[45] Memorial from the Colonization Society of Tennessee, 1832 (State Archives).

[46] Comptroller’s Report for 1855-6, p. 439.