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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:37:04 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:37:04 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11490-0.txt b/11490-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..114c5ff --- /dev/null +++ b/11490-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19508 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11490 *** + +ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS + + +AMERICAN + +NEGRO SLAVERY + +A Survey of the Supply, +Employment and Control +Of Negro Labor +As Determined by the Plantation Regime + +TO + +MY WIFE + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + I. THE EARLY EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA + II. THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE + III. THE SUGAR ISLANDS + IV. THE TOBACCO COLONIES + V. THE RICE COAST + VI. THE NORTHERN COLONIES + VII. REVOLUTION AND REACTION + VIII. THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE + IX. THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR + X. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT + XI. THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE + XII. THE COTTON RÉGIME + XIII. TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS + XIV. PLANTATION MANAGEMENT + XV. PLANTATION LABOR + XVI. PLANTATION LIFE + XVII. PLANTATION TENDENCIES +XVIII. ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE + LITERATURE + XIX. BUSINESS ASPECTS OF SLAVERY + XX. TOWN SLAVES + XXI. FREE NEGROES + XXII. SLAVE CRIME +XXIII. THE FORCE OF THE LAW +INDEX + + + + +AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA + + +The Portuguese began exploring the west coast of Africa shortly before +Christopher Columbus was born; and no sooner did they encounter negroes +than they began to seize and carry them in captivity to Lisbon. The court +chronicler Azurara set himself in 1452, at the command of Prince Henry, to +record the valiant exploits of the negro-catchers. Reflecting the spirit +of the time, he praised them as crusaders bringing savage heathen for +conversion to civilization and christianity. He gently lamented the +massacre and sufferings involved, but thought them infinitely outweighed by +the salvation of souls. This cheerful spirit of solace was destined long to +prevail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the colored +races. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observed +of the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, less +than a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they never +more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot all about their own country," +that "they were very loyal and obedient servants, without malice"; and that +"after they began to use clothing they were for the most part very fond of +display, so that they took great delight in robes of showy colors, and such +was their love of finery that they picked up the rags that fell from the +coats of other people of the country and sewed them on their own garments, +taking great pleasure in these, as though it were matter of some greater +perfection."[1] These few broad strokes would portray with equally happy +precision a myriad other black servants born centuries after the writer's +death and dwelling in a continent of whose existence he never dreamed. +Azurara wrote further that while some of the captives were not able to +endure the change and died happily as Christians, the others, dispersed +among Portuguese households, so ingratiated themselves that many were +set free and some were married to men and women of the land and acquired +comfortable estates. This may have been an earnest of future conditions in +Brazil and the Spanish Indies; but in the British settlements it fell out +far otherwise. + +[Footnote 1: Gomez Eannes de Azurara _Chronicle of the Discovery and +Conquest of Guinea_, translated by C.R. Beazley and E.P. Prestage, in the +Hakluyt Society _Publications_, XCV, 85.] + +As the fifteenth century wore on and fleets explored more of the African +coast with the double purpose of finding a passage to India and exploiting +any incidental opportunities for gain, more and more human cargoes were +brought from Guinea to Portugal and Spain. But as the novelty of the blacks +wore off they were held in smaller esteem and treated with less liberality. +Gangs of them were set to work in fields from which the Moorish occupants +had recently been expelled. The labor demand was not great, however, and +when early in the sixteenth century West Indian settlers wanted negroes +for their sugar fields, Spain willingly parted with some of hers. Thus did +Europe begin the coercion of African assistance in the conquest of the +American wilderness. + +Guinea comprises an expanse about a thousand miles wide lying behind +three undulating stretches of coast, the first reaching from Cape Verde +southeastward nine hundred miles to Cape Palmas in four degrees north +latitude, the second running thence almost parallel to the equator a +thousand miles to Old Calabar at the head of "the terrible bight of +Biafra," the third turning abruptly south and extending some fourteen +hundred miles to a short distance below Benguela where the southern desert +begins. The country is commonly divided into Upper Guinea or the Sudan, +lying north and west of the great angle of the coast, and Lower Guinea, +the land of the Bantu, to the southward. Separate zones may also be +distinguished as having different systems of economy: in the jungle belt +along the equator bananas are the staple diet; in the belts bordering this +on the north and south the growing of millet and manioc respectively, in +small clearings, are the characteristic industries; while beyond the edges +of the continental forest cattle contribute much of the food supply. The +banana, millet and manioc zones, and especially their swampy coastal +plains, were of course the chief sources of slaves for the transatlantic +trade. + +Of all regions of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst. The +climate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of each year +is excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoes +play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasional +blasts from the desert so dry and burning that all nature droops and is +grateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat stimulates +vegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany trees, and +multiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they mosquitoes, elephants +or boa constrictors. There would be abundant food but for the superabundant +creatures that struggle for it and prey upon one another. For mankind life +is at once easy and hard. Food of a sort may often be had for the plucking, +and raiment is needless; but aside from the menace of the elements human +life is endangered by beasts and reptiles in the forest, crocodiles and +hippopotami in the rivers, and sharks in the sea, and existence is made a +burden to all but the happy-hearted by plagues of insects and parasites. In +many districts tse-tse flies exterminate the cattle and spread the fatal +sleeping-sickness among men; everywhere swarms of locusts occasionally +destroy the crops; white ants eat timbers and any other useful thing, short +of metal, which may come in their way; giant cockroaches and dwarf +brown ants and other pests in great variety swarm in the dwellings +continuously--except just after a village has been raided by the great +black ants which are appropriately known as "drivers." These drivers march +in solid columns miles on miles until, when they reach food resources to +their fancy, they deploy for action and take things with a rush. To stay +among them is to die; but no human being stays. A cry of "Drivers!" will +depopulate a village instantly, and a missionary who at one moment has been +combing brown ants from his hair will in the next find himself standing +safely in the creek or the water barrel, to stay until the drivers have +taken their leave. Among less spectacular things, mosquitoes fly in crowds +and leave fevers in their wake, gnats and flies are always on hand, chigoes +bore and breed under toe-nails, hook-worms hang themselves to the walls of +the intestines, and other threadlike worms enter the eyeballs and the flesh +of the body. Endurance through generations has given the people large +immunity from the effects of hook-worm and malaria, but not from the +indigenous diseases, kraw-kraw, yaws and elephantiasis, nor of course from +dysentery and smallpox which the Europeans introduced. Yet robust health is +fairly common, and where health prevails there is generally happiness, for +the negroes have that within their nature. They could not thrive in Guinea +without their temperament. + +It is probable that no people ever became resident on or near the west +coast except under compulsion. From the more favored easterly regions +successive hordes have been driven after defeat in war. The Fangs on the +Ogowe are an example in the recent past. Thus the inhabitants of Guinea, +and of the coast lands especially, have survived by retreating and +adapting themselves to conditions in which no others wished to dwell. The +requirements of adaptation were peculiar. To live where nature supplies +Turkish baths without the asking necessitates relaxation. But since undue +physical indolence would unfit people for resistance to parasites and +hostile neighbors, the languid would perish. Relaxation of mind, however, +brought no penalties. The climate in fact not only discourages but +prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroes +have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless +generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of +nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some +of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others +calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the +dignitaries.[2] + +[Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African régime is J.A. +Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I. A fuller survey +is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of the +sources. Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularly +notable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture of +coast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincing +discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A.B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe- +and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along the +Gold Coast.] + +No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans the +forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive. To invest them +with spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was perhaps +an obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate system of +superstition. Not only did the wind and the rain have their gods but each +river and precipice, and each tribe and family and person, a tutelary +spirit. These might be kept benevolent by appropriate fetish ceremonies; +they might be used for evil by persons having specially great powers over +them. The proper course for common-place persons at ordinary times was to +follow routine fetish observances; but when beset by witch-work the only +escape lay in the services of witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices were +called for, and on the greatest occasions nothing short of human sacrifice +was acceptable. + +As to diet, vegetable food was generally abundant, but the negroes were not +willingly complete vegetarians. In the jungle game animals were scarce, and +everywhere the men were ill equipped for hunting. In lieu of better they +were often fain to satisfy their craving for flesh by eating locusts and +larvae, as tribes in the interior still do. In such conditions cannibalism +was fairly common. Especially prized was an enemy slain in war, for not +only would his body feed the hungry but fetish taught that his bravery +would pass to those who shared the feast. + +In African economy nearly all routine work, including agriculture, was +classed as domestic service and assigned to the women for performance. The +wife, bought with a price at the time of marriage, was virtually a slave; +her husband her master. Now one woman might keep her husband and children +in but moderate comfort. Two or more could perform the family tasks much +better. Thus a man who could pay the customary price would be inclined to +add a second wife, whom the first would probably welcome as a lightener of +her burdens. Polygamy prevailed almost everywhere. + +Slavery, too, was generally prevalent except among the few tribes who +gained their chief sustenance from hunting. Along with polygamy, it perhaps +originated, if it ever had a distinct beginning, from the desire to lighten +and improve the domestic service. [3] Persons became slaves through +capture, debt or malfeasance, or through the inheritance of the status. +While the ownership was absolute in the eyes of the law and captives +were often treated with great cruelty, slaves born in the locality were +generally regarded as members of their owner's family and were shown much +consideration. In the millet zone where there was much work to be done the +slaveholdings were in many cases very large and the control relatively +stringent; but in the banana districts an easy-going schedule prevailed for +all. One of the chief hardships of the slaves was the liability of being +put to death at their master's funeral in order that their spirits might +continue in his service. In such case it was customary on the Gold Coast +to give the victim notice of his approaching death by suddenly thrusting a +knife through each cheek with the blades crossing in his mouth so that he +might not curse his master before he died. With his hands tied behind him +he would then be led to the ceremonial slaughter. The Africans were in +general eager traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before the +time when the transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raiding +and trading, transformed the native economy and deranged the social order. + +[Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples has +been elaborately discussed by H.J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial +System: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900).] + +Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in Guinea +was wholly on a village basis, each community dwelling in its own clearing +and having very slight intercourse with its neighbors. Politically each +village was governed by its chief and its elders, oftentimes in complete +independence. In occasional instances, however, considerable states of +loose organization were under the rule of central authorities. Such states +were likely to be the creation of invaders from the eastward, the Dahomans +and Ashantees for example; but the kingdom of Benin appears to have arisen +indigenously. In many cases the subordination of conquered villages merely +resulted in their paying annual tribute. As to language, Lower Guinea spoke +multitudinous dialects of the one Bantu tongue, but in Upper Guinea there +were many dialects of many separate languages. + +Land was so abundant and so little used industrially that as a rule it +was not owned in severalty; and even the villages and tribes had little +occasion to mark the limits of their domains. For travel by land there were +nothing but narrow, rough and tortuous foot-paths, with makeshift bridges +across the smaller streams. The rivers were highly advantageous both as +avenues and as sources of food, for the negroes were expert at canoeing and +fishing. + +Intertribal wars were occasional, but a crude comity lessened their +frequency. Thus if a man of one village murdered one of another, the +aggrieved village if too weak to procure direct redress might save its +face by killing someone in a third village, whereupon the third must by +intertribal convention make common cause with the second at once, or else +coerce a fourth into the punitive alliance by applying the same sort of +persuasion that it had just felt. These later killings in the series were +not regarded as murders but as diplomatic overtures. The system was hard +upon those who were sacrificed in its operation, but it kept a check upon +outlawry. + +A skin stretched over the section of a hollow tree, and usually so +constructed as to have two tones, made an instrument of extraordinary use +in communication as well as in music. By a system long anticipating the +Morse code the Africans employed this "telegraph drum" in sending +messages from village to village for long distances and with great speed. +Differences of speech were no bar, for the tom tom code was interlingual. +The official drummer could explain by the high and low alternations of his +taps that a deed of violence just done was not a crime but a _pourparler_ +for the forming of a league. Every week for three months in 1800 the +tom toms doubtless carried the news throughout Ashantee land that King +Quamina's funeral had just been repeated and two hundred more slaves slain +to do him honor. In 1806 they perhaps reported the ending of Mungo Park's +travels by his death on the Niger at the hands of the Boussa people. Again +and again drummers hired as trading auxiliaries would send word along the +coast and into the country that white men's vessels lying at Lagos, Bonny, +Loango or Benguela as the case might be were paying the best rates in +calico, rum or Yankee notions for all slaves that might be brought. + +In music the monotony of the tom tom's tone spurred the drummers to +elaborate variations in rhythm. The stroke of the skilled performer could +make it mourn a funeral dirge, voice the nuptial joy, throb the pageant's +march, and roar the ambush alarm. Vocal music might be punctuated by tom +toms and primitive wind or stringed instruments, or might swell in solo +or chorus without accompaniment. Singing, however, appears not so +characteristic of Africans at home as of the negroes in America. On the +other hand garrulous conversation, interspersed with boisterous laughter, +lasted well-nigh the livelong day. Daily life, indeed, was far from dull, +for small things were esteemed great, and every episode was entertaining. +It can hardly be maintained that savage life is idyllic. Yet the question +remains, and may long remain, whether the manner in which the negroes were +brought into touch with civilization resulted in the greater blessing or +the greater curse. That manner was determined in part at least by the +nature of the typical negroes themselves. Impulsive and inconstant, +sociable and amorous, voluble, dilatory, and negligent, but robust, +amiable, obedient and contented, they have been the world's premium slaves. +Prehistoric Pharaohs, mediaeval Pashas and the grandees of Elizabethan +England esteemed them as such; and so great a connoisseur in household +service as the Czar Alexander added to his palace corps in 1810 two free +negroes, one a steward on an American merchant ship and the other a +body-servant whom John Quincy Adams, the American minister, had brought +from Massachusetts to St. Petersburg.[4] + +[Footnote 4: _Writings of John Quincy Adams_, Ford ed., III, 471, 472 (New +York, 1914).] + +The impulse for the enslavement of negroes by other peoples came from the +Arabs who spread over northern Africa in the eighth century, conquering and +converting as they went, and stimulating the trade across the Sahara until +it attained large dimensions. The northbound caravans carried the peculiar +variety of pepper called "grains of paradise" from the region later known +as Liberia, gold from the Dahomey district, palm oil from the lower Niger, +and ivory and slaves from far and wide. A small quantity of these various +goods was distributed in southern Europe and the Levant. And in the same +general period Arab dhows began to take slave cargoes from the east coast +of Africa as far south as Mozambique, for distribution in Arabia, Persia +and western India. On these northern and eastern flanks of Guinea where the +Mohammedans operated and where the most vigorous of the African peoples +dwelt, the natives lent ready assistance in catching and buying slaves in +the interior and driving them in coffles to within reach of the Moorish and +Arab traders. Their activities, reaching at length the very center of the +continent, constituted without doubt the most cruel of all branches of the +slave-trade. The routes across the burning Sahara sands in particular came +to be strewn with negro skeletons.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Jerome Dowd, "The African Slave Trade," in the _Journal of +Negro History_, II (1917), 1-20.] + +This overland trade was as costly as it was tedious. Dealers in Timbuctoo +and other centers of supply must be paid their price; camels must be +procured, many of which died on the journey; guards must be hired to +prevent escapes in the early marches and to repel predatory Bedouins in the +later ones; food supplies must be bought; and allowance must be made for +heavy mortality among the slaves on their terrible trudge over the burning +sands and the chilling mountains. But wherever Mohammedanism prevailed, +which gave particular sanction to slavery as well as to polygamy, the +virtues of the negroes as laborers and as eunuch harem guards were so +highly esteemed that the trade was maintained on a heavy scale almost if +not quite to the present day. The demand of the Turks in the Levant and the +Moors in Spain was met by exportations from the various Barbary ports. Part +of this Mediterranean trade was conducted in Turkish and Moorish vessels, +and part of it in the ships of the Italian cities and Marseilles and +Barcelona. Venice for example had treaties with certain Saracen rulers at +the beginning of the fourteenth century authorizing her merchants not only +to frequent the African ports, but to go in caravans to interior points and +stay at will. The principal commodities procured were ivory, gold, honey +and negro slaves.[6] + +[Footnote 6: The leading authority upon slavery and the slave-trade in the +Mediterranean countries of Europe is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud +desde los Tiempas mas remotas hasta nuestros Dias_ (Barcelona, 1877), vol. +III.] + +The states of Christian Europe, though little acquainted with negroes, +had still some trace of slavery as an inheritance from imperial Rome +and barbaric Teutondom. The chattel form of bondage, however, had quite +generally given place to serfdom; and even serfdom was disappearing in +many districts by reason of the growth of towns and the increase of rural +population to the point at which abundant labor could be had at wages +little above the cost of sustaining life. On the other hand so long as +petty wars persisted the enslavement of captives continued to be at least +sporadic, particularly in the south and east of Europe, and a considerable +traffic in white slaves was maintained from east to west on the +Mediterranean. The Venetians for instance, in spite of ecclesiastical +prohibitions, imported frequent cargoes of young girls from the countries +about the Black Sea, most of whom were doomed to concubinage and +prostitution, and the rest to menial service.[7] The occurrence of the +Crusades led to the enslavement of Saracen captives in Christendom as well +as of Christian captives in Islam. + +[Footnote 7: W.C. Hazlitt, _The Venetian Republic_(London, 1900), pp. 81, +82.] + +The waning of the Crusades ended the supply of Saracen slaves, and the +Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 destroyed the Italian trade on +the Black Sea. No source of supply now remained, except a trickle from +Africa, to sustain the moribund institution of slavery in any part of +Christian Europe east of the Pyrenees. But in mountain-locked Roussillon +and Asturias remnants of slavery persisted from Visigothic times to the +seventeenth century; and in other parts of the peninsula the intermittent +wars against the Moors of Granada supplied captives and to some extent +reinvigorated slavery among the Christian states from Aragon to Portugal. +Furthermore the conquest of the Canaries at the end of the fourteenth +century and of Teneriffe and other islands in the fifteenth led to the +bringing of many of their natives as slaves to Castille and the neighboring +kingdoms. + +Occasional documents of this period contain mention of negro slaves at +various places in the Spanish peninsula, but the number was clearly small +and it must have continued so, particularly as long as the supply was drawn +through Moorish channels. The source whence the negroes came was known to +be a region below the Sahara which from its yield of gold and ivory was +called by the Moors the land of wealth, "Bilad Ghana," a name which on the +tongues of European sailors was converted into "Guinea." To open a direct +trade thither was a natural effort when the age of maritime exploration +began. The French are said to have made voyages to the Gold Coast in the +fourteenth century, though apparently without trading in slaves. But in +the absence of records of their activities authentic history must confine +itself to the achievements of the Portuguese. + +In 1415 John II of Portugal, partly to give his five sons opportunity to +win knighthood in battle, attacked and captured the Moorish stronghold of +Ceuta, facing Gibraltar across the strait. For several years thereafter the +town was left in charge of the youngest of these princes, Henry, who there +acquired an enduring desire to gain for Portugal and Christianity the +regions whence the northbound caravans were coming. Returning home, he +fixed his residence at the promontory of Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, +and made his main interest for forty years the promotion of maritime +exploration southward.[8] His perseverance won him fame as "Prince +Henry the Navigator," though he was not himself an active sailor; and +furthermore, after many disappointments, it resulted in exploration as far +as the Gold Coast in his lifetime and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope +twenty-five years after his death. The first decade of his endeavor brought +little result, for the Sahara shore was forbidding and the sailors timid. +Then in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador and found its dangers +imaginary. Subsequent voyages added to the extent of coast skirted until +the desert began to give place to inhabited country. The Prince was now +eager for captives to be taken who might inform him of the country, and in +1441 Antam Gonsalvez brought several Moors from the southern edge of the +desert, who, while useful as informants, advanced a new theme of interest +by offering to ransom themselves by delivering on the coast a larger number +of non-Mohammedan negroes, whom the Moors held as slaves. Partly for the +sake of profit, though the chronicler says more largely to increase the +number of souls to be saved, this exchange was effected in the following +year in the case of two of the Moors, while a third took his liberty +without delivering his ransom. After the arrival in Portugal of these +exchanged negroes, ten in number, and several more small parcels of +captives, a company organized at Lagos under the direction of Prince Henry +sent forth a fleet of six caravels in 1444 which promptly returned with 225 +captives, the disposal of whom has been recounted at the beginning of this +chapter. + +[Footnote 8: The chief source for the early Portuguese voyages is Azurara's +_Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_, already cited.] + +In the next year the Lagos Company sent a great expedition of twenty-six +vessels which discovered the Senegal River and brought back many natives +taken in raids thereabout; and by 1448 nearly a thousand captives had been +carried to Portugal. Some of these were Moorish Berbers, some negroes, +but most were probably Jolofs from the Senegal, a warlike people of mixed +ancestry. Raiding in the Jolof country proved so hazardous that from about +1454 the Portuguese began to supplement their original methods by planting +"factories" on the coast where slaves from the interior were bought from +their native captors and owners who had brought them down in caravans +and canoes. Thus not only was missionary zeal eclipsed but the desire of +conquest likewise, and the spirit of exploration erelong partly subdued, by +commercial greed. By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460 Portugal was +importing seven or eight hundred negro slaves each year. From this time +forward the traffic was conducted by a succession of companies and +individual grantees, to whom the government gave the exclusive right for +short terms of years in consideration of money payments and pledges of +adding specified measures of exploration. As new coasts were reached +additional facilities were established for trade in pepper, ivory and gold +as well as in slaves. When the route round Africa to India was opened at +the end of the century the Guinea trade fell to secondary importance, but +it was by no means discontinued. + +Of the negroes carried to Portugal in the fifteenth century a large +proportion were set to work as slaves on great estates in the southern +provinces recently vacated by the Moors, and others were employed as +domestic servants in Lisbon and other towns. Some were sold into Spain +where they were similarly employed, and where their numbers were recruited +by a Guinea trade in Spanish vessels in spite of Portugal's claim of +monopoly rights, even though Isabella had recognized these in a treaty of +1479. In short, at the time of the discovery of America Spain as well as +Portugal had quite appreciable numbers of negroes in her population and +both were maintaining a system of slavery for their control. + +When Columbus returned from his first voyage in the spring of 1493 and +announced his great landfall, Spain promptly entered upon her career +of American conquest and colonization. So great was the expectation of +adventure and achievement that the problem of the government was not how +to enlist participants but how to restrain a great exodus. Under heavy +penalties emigration was restricted by royal decrees to those who procured +permission to go. In the autumn of the same year fifteen hundred men, +soldiers, courtiers, priests and laborers, accompanied the discoverer +on his second voyage, in radiant hopes. But instead of wealth and high +adventure these Argonauts met hard labor and sickness. Instead of the rich +cities of Japan and China sought for, there were found squalid villages of +Caribs and Lucayans. Of gold there was little, of spices none. + +Columbus, when planting his colony at Isabella, on the northern coast +of Hispaniola (Hayti), promptly found need of draught animals and other +equipment. He wrote to his sovereigns in January, 1494, asking for the +supplies needed; and he offered, pending the discovery of more precious +things, to defray expenses by shipping to Spain some of the island natives, +"who are a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned and very +intelligent, and who when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which +they have been accustomed will be better than any other kind of slaves."[9] +Though this project was discouraged by the crown, Columbus actually took a +cargo of Indians for sale in Spain on his return from his third voyage; +but Isabella stopped the sale and ordered the captives taken home and +liberated. Columbus, like most of his generation, regarded the Indians +as infidel foreigners to be exploited at will. But Isabella, and to some +extent her successors, considered them Spanish subjects whose helplessness +called for special protection. Between the benevolence of the distant +monarchs and the rapacity of the present conquerors, however, the fate of +the natives was in little doubt. The crown's officials in the Indies were +the very conquerors themselves, who bent their soft instructions to fit +their own hard wills. A native rebellion in Hispaniola in 1495 was crushed +with such slaughter that within three years the population is said to have +been reduced by two thirds. As terms of peace Columbus required annual +tribute in gold so great that no amount of labor in washing the sands could +furnish it. As a commutation of tribute and as a means of promoting the +conversion of the Indians there was soon inaugurated the encomienda system +which afterward spread throughout Spanish America. To each Spaniard +selected as an encomendero was allotted a certain quota of Indians bound to +cultivate land for his benefit and entitled to receive from him tutelage +in civilization and Christianity. The grantees, however, were not assigned +specified Indians but merely specified numbers of them, with power to seize +new ones to replace any who might die or run away. Thus the encomendero was +given little economic interest in preserving the lives and welfare of his +workmen. + +[Footnote 9: R.H. Major, _Select Letters of Columbus_, 2d. ed., 1890, p. +88.] + +In the first phase of the system the Indians were secured in the right of +dwelling in their own villages under their own chiefs. But the encomenderos +complained that the aloofness of the natives hampered the work of +conversion and asked that a fuller and more intimate control be authorized. +This was promptly granted and as promptly abused. Such limitations as the +law still imposed upon encomendero power were made of no effect by the lack +of machinery for enforcement. The relationship in short, which the law +declared to be one of guardian and ward, became harsher than if it had been +that of master and slave. Most of the island natives were submissive in +disposition and weak in physique, and they were terribly driven at their +work in the fields, on the roads, and at the mines. With smallpox and other +pestilences added to their hardships, they died so fast that before 1510 +Hispaniola was confronted with the prospect of the complete disappearance +of its laboring population.[10] Meanwhile the same régime was being carried +to Porto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba with similar consequences in its train. + +[Footnote 10: E. g. Bourne, _Spain in America_ (New York, 1904); Wilhelm +Roscher, _The Spanish Colonial System_, Bourne ed. (New York, 1904); Konrad +Habler, "The Spanish Colonial Empire," in Helmolt, _History of the World_, +vol I.] + +As long as mining remained the chief industry the islands failed to +prosper; and the reports of adversity so strongly checked the Spanish +impulse for adventure that special inducements by the government were +required to sustain any flow of emigration. But in 1512-1515 the +introduction of sugar-cane culture brought the beginning of a change in +the industrial situation. The few surviving gangs of Indians began to be +shifted from the mines to the fields, and a demand for a new labor supply +arose which could be met only from across the sea. + +Apparently no negroes were brought to the islands before 1501. In that +year, however, a royal decree, while excluding Jews and Moors, authorized +the transportation of negroes born in Christian lands; and some of these +were doubtless carried to Hispaniola in the great fleet of Ovando, the new +governor, in 1502. Ovando's reports of this experiment were conflicting. +In the year following his arrival he advised that no more negroes be sent, +because of their propensity to run away and band with and corrupt the +Indians. But after another year had elapsed he requested that more negroes +be sent. In this interim the humane Isabella died and the more callous +Ferdinand acceded to full control. In consequence a prohibition of the +negro trade in 1504 was rescinded in 1505 and replaced by orders that the +bureau in charge of colonial trade promote the sending of negroes from +Spain in large parcels. For the next twelve years this policy was +maintained--the sending of Christian negroes was encouraged, while the +direct slave trade from Africa to America was prohibited. The number of +negroes who reached the islands under this régime is not ascertainable. It +was clearly almost negligible in comparison with the increasing demand.[11] + +[Footnote 11: The chief authority upon the origin and growth of negro +slavery in the Spanish colonies is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud +de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los Paises +Americo-Hispanos_. (Barcelona, 1879.) This book supplements the same +author's _Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempos remotos_ previously +cited.] + +The policy of excluding negroes fresh from Africa--"bozal negroes" the +Spaniards called them--was of course a product of the characteristic +resolution to keep the colonies free from all influences hostile to +Catholic orthodoxy. But whereas Jews, Mohammedans and Christian heretics +were considered as champions of rival faiths, the pagan blacks came +increasingly to be reckoned as having no religion and therefore as a mere +passive element ready for christianization. As early as 1510, in fact, the +Spanish crown relaxed its discrimination against pagans by ordering the +purchase of above a hundred negro slaves in the Lisbon market for dispatch +to Hispaniola. To quiet its religious scruples the government hit upon +the device of requiring the baptism of all pagan slaves upon their +disembarkation in the colonial ports. + +The crown was clearly not prepared to withstand a campaign for supplies +direct from Africa, especially after the accession of the youth Charles I +in 1517. At that very time a clamor from the islands reached its climax. +Not only did many civil officials, voicing public opinion in their island +communities, urge that the supply of negro slaves be greatly increased as +a means of preventing industrial collapse, but a delegation of Jeronimite +friars and the famous Bartholomeo de las Casas, who had formerly been a +Cuban encomendero and was now a Dominican priest, appeared in Spain to +press the same or kindred causes. The Jeronimites, themselves concerned in +industrial enterprises, were mostly interested in the labor supply. But the +well-born and highly talented Las Casas, earnest and full of the milk +of human kindness, was moved entirely by humanitarian and religious +considerations. He pleaded primarily for the abolition of the encomienda +system and the establishment of a great Indian reservation under missionary +control, and he favored the increased transfer of Christian negroes from +Spain as a means of relieving the Indians from their terrible sufferings. +The lay spokesmen and the Jeronimites asked that provision be made for the +sending of thousands of negro slaves, preferably bozal negroes for the sake +of cheapness and plenty; and the supporters of this policy were able to +turn to their use the favorable impression which Las Casas was making, even +though his programme and theirs were different.[12] The outcome was that +while the settling of the encomienda problem was indefinitely postponed, +authorization was promptly given for a supply of bozal negroes. + +[Footnote 12: Las Casas, _Historio de las Indias_ (Madrid, 1875, 1876); +Arthur Helps, _Life of Las Casas_ (London, 1873); Saco, _op. cit_., pp. +62-104.] + +The crown here had an opportunity to get large revenues, of which it was in +much need, by letting the slave trade under contract or by levying taxes +upon it. The young king, however, freshly arrived from the Netherlands with +a crowd of Flemish favorites in his train, proceeded to issue gratuitously +a license for the trade to one of the Flemings at court, Laurent de +Gouvenot, known in Spain as Garrevod, the governor of Breza. This license +empowered the grantee and his assigns to ship from Guinea to the Spanish +islands four thousand slaves. All the historians until recently have placed +this grant in the year 1517 and have called it a contract (asiento); but +Georges Scelle has now discovered and printed the document itself which +bears the date August 18, 1518, and is clearly a license of grace bearing +none of the distinctive asiento features.[13] Garrevod, who wanted ready +cash rather than a trading privilege, at once divided his license into two +and sold them for 25,000 ducats to certain Genoese merchants domiciled at +Seville, who in turn split them up again and put them on the market where +they became an object of active speculation at rapidly rising prices. The +result was that when slaves finally reached the islands under Garrevod's +grant the prices demanded for them were so exorbitant that the purposes +of the original petitioners were in large measure defeated. Meanwhile the +king, in spite of the nominally exclusive character of the Garrevod grant, +issued various other licenses on a scale ranging from ten to four hundred +slaves each. For a decade the importations were small, however, and the +island clamor increased. + +[Footnote 13: Georges Scelle, _Histoire Politique de la Traité Négrière aux +Indes de Castille: Contrats et Traités d'AsÃento_ (Paris, 1906), I, 755. +Book I, chapter 2 of the same volume is an elaborate discussion of the +Garrevod grant.] + +In 1528 a new exclusive grant was issued to two German courtiers at +Seville, Eynger and Sayller, empowering them to carry four thousand slaves +from Guinea to the Indies within the space of the following four years. +This differed from Garrevod's in that it required a payment of 20,000 +ducats to the crown and restricted the price at which the slaves were to +be sold in the islands to forty ducats each. In so far it approached the +asientos of the full type which became the regular recourse of the Spanish +government in the following centuries; but it fell short of the ultimate +plan by failing to bind the grantees to the performance of their +undertaking and by failing to specify the grades and the proportion of the +sexes among the slaves to be delivered. In short the crown's regard was +still directed more to the enrichment of courtiers than to the promotion of +prosperity in the islands. + +After the expiration of the Eynger and Sayller grant the king left the +control of the slave trade to the regular imperial administrative boards, +which, rejecting all asiento overtures for half a century, maintained a +policy of granting licenses for competitive trade in return for payments +of eight or ten ducats per head until 1560, and of thirty ducats or more +thereafter. At length, after the Spanish annexation of Portugal in 1580, +the government gradually reverted to monopoly grants, now however in the +definite form of asientos, in which by intent at least the authorities made +the public interest, with combined regard to the revenue and a guaranteed +labor supply, the primary consideration.[14] The high prices charged for +slaves, however, together with the burdensome restrictions constantly +maintained upon trade in general, steadily hampered the growth of Spanish +colonial industry. Furthermore the allurements of Mexico and Peru drained +the older colonies of virtually all their more vigorous white inhabitants, +in spite of severe penalties legally imposed upon emigration but never +effectively enforced. + +[Footnote 14: Scelle, I, books 1-3.] + +The agricultural régime in the islands was accordingly kept relatively +stagnant as long as Spain preserved her full West Indian domination. The +sugar industry, which by 1542 exported the staple to the amount of 110,000 +arrobas of twenty-five pounds each, was standardized in plantations of two +types--the _trapiche_ whose cane was ground by ox power and whose labor +force was generally thirty or forty negroes (each reckoned as capable of +the labor of four Indians); and the _inqenio_, equipped with a water-power +mill and employing about a hundred slaves.[15] Occasional slave revolts +disturbed the Spanish islanders but never for long diminished their +eagerness for slave recruits. The slave laws were relatively mild, the +police administration extremely casual, and the plantation managements +easy-going. In short, after introducing slavery into the new world the +Spaniards maintained it in sluggish fashion, chiefly in the islands, as an +institution which peoples more vigorous industrially might borrow and adapt +to a more energetic plantation régime. + +[Footnote 15: Saco, pp. 127, 128, 188; Oviedo, _Historia General de las +Indias_, book 4. chap. 8.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE + + +At the request of a slaver's captain the government of Georgia issued in +1772 a certificate to a certain Fenda Lawrence reciting that she, "a free +black woman and heretofore a considerable trader in the river Gambia on the +coast of Africa, hath voluntarily come to be and remain for some time in +this province," and giving her permission to "pass and repass unmolested +within the said province on her lawfull and necessary occations."[1] This +instance is highly exceptional. The millions of African expatriates went +against their own wills, and their transporters looked upon the business +not as passenger traffic but as trade in goods. Earnings came from selling +in America the cargoes bought in Africa; the transportation was but an item +in the trade. + +[Footnote 1: U.B. Phillips, _Plantation and Frontier Documents_, printed +also as vols. I and II of the _Documentary History of American Industrial +Society_ (Cleveland, O., 1909), II, 141, 142. This publication will be +cited hereafter as _Plantation and Frontier_.] + +The business bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the +Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the +active assistance of its respective sovereign. The preliminaries to the +commercial strife occurred in the Elizabethan age. French traders in gold +and ivory found the Portuguese police on the Guinea Coast to be negligible; +but poaching in the slave trade was a harder problem, for Spain held firm +control of her colonies which were then virtually the world's only slave +market. + +The test of this was made by Sir John Hawkins who at the beginning of his +career as a great English sea captain had informed himself in the Canary +Islands of the Afro-American opportunity awaiting exploitation. Backed by +certain English financiers, he set forth in 1562 with a hundred men in +three small ships, and after procuring in Sierra Leone, "partly by the +sword and partly by other means," above three hundred negroes he sailed to +Hispaniola where without hindrance from the authorities he exchanged them +for colonial produce. "And so, with prosperous success, and much gain to +himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the +month of September, 1563."[2] Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkins +again captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, and +proceeded to peddle them in the Spanish islands. When the authorities +interfered he coerced them by show of arms and seizure of hostages, and +when the planters demurred at his prices he brought them to terms through a +mixture of diplomacy and intimidation. After many adventures by the way he +reached home, as the chronicler concludes, "God be thanked! in safety: with +the loss of twenty persons in all the voyage; as with great profit to the +venturers in the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bringing +home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store. His name +therefore be praised for evermore! Amen." Before two years more had passed +Hawkins put forth for a third voyage, this time with six ships, two of them +among the largest then afloat. The cargo of slaves, procured by aiding a +Guinea tribe in an attack upon its neighbor, had been duly sold in the +Indies when dearth of supplies and stress of weather drove the fleet into +the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulloa. There a Spanish fleet of thirteen +ships attacked the intruders, capturing their treasure ship and three of +her consorts. Only the _Minion_ under Hawkins and the bark _Judith_ under +the young Francis Drake escaped to carry the harrowing tale to England. One +result of the episode was that it filled Hawkins and Drake with desire for +revenge on Spain, which was wreaked in due time but in European waters. +Another consequence was a discouragement of English slave trading for +nearly a century to follow. + +[Footnote 2: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, ed. 1589. This and the accounts of +Hawkins' later exploits in the same line are reprinted with a valuable +introduction in C.R. Beazley, ed., _Voyages and Travels_ (New York, 1903), +I, 29-126.] + +The defeat of the Armada in 1588 led the world to suspect the decline of +Spain's maritime power, but only in the lapse of decades did the suspicion +of her helplessness become a certainty. Meantime Portugal was for sixty +years an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at their +heroic labor for independence. Thus when the Dutch came to prevail at sea +in the early seventeenth century the Portuguese posts in Guinea fell their +prey, and in 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered to take them +over. Closely identified with the Dutch government, this company not +only founded the colony of New Netherland and endeavored to foster the +employment of negro slaves there, but in 1634 it seized the Spanish island +of Curaçao near the Venezuelan coast and made it a basis for smuggling +slaves into the Spanish dominions. And now the English, the French and the +Danes began to give systematic attention to the African and West Indian +opportunities, whether in the form of buccaneering, slave trading or +colonization. + +The revolt of Portugal in 1640 brought a turning point. For a +quarter-century thereafter the Spanish government, regarding the Portuguese +as rebels, suspended all trade relations with them, the asiento included. +But the trade alternatives remaining were all distasteful to Spain. The +English were heretics; the Dutch were both heretics and rebels; the French +and the Danes were too weak at sea to handle the great slave trading +contract with security; and Spain had no means of her own for large scale +commerce. The upshot was that the carriage of slaves to the Spanish +colonies was wholly interdicted during the two middle decades of the +century. But this gave the smugglers their highest opportunity. The Spanish +colonial police collapsed under the pressure of the public demand for +slaves, and illicit trading became so general and open as to be pseudo +legitimate. Such a boom came as was never felt before under Protestant +flags in tropical waters. The French, in spite of great exertions, were +not yet able to rival the Dutch and English. These in fact had such an +ascendency that when in 1663 Spain revived the asiento by a contract with +two Genoese, the contractors must needs procure their slaves by arrangement +with Dutch and English who delivered them at Curaçao and Jamaica. Soon +after this contract expired the asiento itself was converted from an item +of Spanish internal policy into a shuttlecock of international politics. It +became in fact the badge of maritime supremacy, possessed now by the Dutch, +now by the French in the greatest years of Louis XIV, and finally by the +English as a trophy in the treaty of Utrecht. + +By this time, however, the Spanish dominions were losing their primacy +as slave markets. Jamaica, Barbados and other Windward Islands under the +English; Hayti, Martinique and Guadeloupe under the French, and Guiana +under the Dutch were all more or less thriving as plantation colonies, +while Brazil, Virginia, Maryland and the newly founded Carolina were +beginning to demonstrate that slave labor had an effective calling without +as well as within the Caribbean latitudes. The closing decades of the +seventeenth century were introducing the heyday of the slave trade, and the +English were preparing for their final ascendency therein. + +In West African waters in that century no international law prevailed but +that of might. Hence the impulse of any new country to enter the Guinea +trade led to the project of a chartered monopoly company; for without +the resources of share capital sufficient strength could not be had, and +without the monopoly privilege the necessary shares could not be sold. The +first English company of moment, chartered in 1618, confined its trade to +gold and other produce. Richard Jobson while in its service on the Gambia +was offered some slaves by a native trader. "I made answer," Jobson +relates, "we were a people who did not deal in any such commodities; +neither did we buy or sell one another, or any that had our own shapes; at +which he seemed to marvel much, and told us it was the only merchandize +they carried down, and that they were sold to white men, who earnestly +desired them. We answered, they were another kind of people, different from +us; but for our part, if they had no other commodities, we would return +again."[3] This company speedily ending its life, was followed by another +in 1631 with a similarly short career; and in 1651 the African privilege +was granted for a time to the East India Company. + +[Footnote 3: Richard Jobson, _The Golden Trade_ (London 1623,), pp. 29, 87, +quoted in James Bandinel, _Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa_ +(London, 1842), p. 43.] + +Under Charles II activities were resumed vigorously by a company chartered +in 1662; but this promptly fell into such conflict with the Dutch that its +capital of £122,000 vanished. In a drastic reorganization its affairs were +taken over by a new corporation, the Royal African Company, chartered in +1672 with the Duke of York at its head and vested in its turn with monopoly +rights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Cape +of Good Hope.[4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, selling +some two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cash +dividends on its £100,000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300 +per cent. But now came reverses through European war and through the +competition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaves +legitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea. Now came also a +clamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and from +England also where oppression and abuses were charged against it by +would-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697 +restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea +upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent, +on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on +certain minor exports carried thence. + +[Footnote 4: The financial career of the company is described by W.R. +Scott, "The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of +England till 1720," in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259.] + +The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evil +practices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale at +reduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encourage +subscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all its +trade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyages +as compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stock +sold as low as 2-1/8 on the £100. A reorganization in 1712 however added +largely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it new +prosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate traders +of all dues, substituting a public grant of £10,000 a year toward the +maintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company, +managed in the early thirties by James Oglethorpe, kept up the unequal +contest until 1751 when it was dissolved. + +The company régime under the several flags was particularly dominant on the +coasts most esteemed in the seventeenth century; and in that century they +reached a comity of their own on the basis of live and let live. The French +were secured in the Senegal sphere of influence and the English on the +Gambia, while on the Gold Coast the Dutch and English divided the trade +between them. Here the two headquarters were in forts lying within sight +of each other: El Mina of the Dutch, and Cape Coast Castle of the English. +Each was commanded by a governor and garrisoned by a score or two of +soldiers; and each with its outlying factories had a staff of perhaps a +dozen factors, as many sub-factors, twice as many assistants, and a few +bookkeepers and auditors, as well as a corps of white artisans and an +abundance of native interpreters, boatmen, carriers and domestic servants. +The Dutch and English stations alternated in a series east and west, often +standing no further than a cannon-shot apart. Here and there one of them +had acquired a slight domination which the other respected; but in the case +of the Coromantees (or Fantyns) William Bosman, a Dutch company factor +about 1700, wrote that both companies had "equal power, that is none at +all. For when these people are inclined to it they shut up the passes so +close that not one merchant can come from the inland country to trade with +us; and sometimes, not content with this, they prevent the bringing of +provisions to us till we have made peace with them." The tribe was in fact +able to exact heavy tribute from both companies; and to stretch the treaty +engagements at will to its own advantage.[5] Further eastward, on the +densely populated Slave Coast, the factories were few and the trade +virtually open to all comers. Here, as was common throughout Upper Guinea, +the traits and the trading practices of adjacent tribes were likely to +be in sharp contrast. The Popo (or Paw Paw) people, for example, were so +notorious for cheating and thieving that few traders would go thither +unless prepared to carry things with a strong hand. The Portuguese alone +bore their grievances without retaliation, Bosman said, because their goods +were too poor to find markets elsewhere.[6]But Fidah (Whydah), next door, +was in Bosman's esteem the most agreeable of all places to trade in. The +people were honest and polite, and the red-tape requirements definite and +reasonable. A ship captain after paying for a license and buying the king's +private stock of slaves at somewhat above the market price would have the +news of his arrival spread afar, and at a given time the trade would be +opened with prices fixed in advance and all the available slaves herded +in an open field. There the captain or factor, with the aid of a surgeon, +would select the young and healthy, who if the purchaser were the Dutch +company were promptly branded to prevent their being confused in the crowd +before being carried on shipboard. The Whydahs were so industrious in the +trade, with such far reaching interior connections, that they could deliver +a thousand slaves each month.[7] + +[Footnote 5: Bosman's _Guinea_ (London, 1705), reprinted in Pinkerton's +_Voyages_, XVI, 363.] + +[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., XVI, 474-476.] + +[Footnote 7: _Ibid_., XVI, 489-491.] + +Of the operations on the Gambia an intimate view may be had from the +journal of Francis Moore, a factor of the Royal African Company from 1730 +to 1735.[8] Here the Jolofs on the north and the Mandingoes on the south +and west were divided into tribes or kingdoms fronting from five +to twenty-five leagues on the river, while tributary villages of +Arabic-speaking Foulahs were scattered among them. In addition there was +a small independent population of mixed breed, with very slight European +infusion but styling themselves Portuguese and using a "bastard language" +known locally as Creole. Many of these last were busy in the slave trade. +The Royal African headquarters, with a garrison of thirty men, were on an +island in the river some thirty miles from its mouth, while its trading +stations dotted the shores for many leagues upstream, for no native king +was content without a factory near his "palace." The slaves bought were +partly of local origin but were mostly brought from long distances inland. +These came generally in strings or coffles of thirty or forty, tied with +leather thongs about their necks and laden with burdens of ivory and corn +on their heads. Mungo Park when exploring the hinterland of this coast +in 1795-1797, traveling incidentally with a slave coffle on part of +his journey, estimated that in the Niger Valley generally the slaves +outnumbered the free by three to one.[9] But as Moore observed, the +domestic slaves were rarely sold in the trade, mainly for fear it would +cause their fellows to run away. When captured by their master's enemies +however, they were likely to be sent to the coast, for they were seldom +ransomed. + +[Footnote 8: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_ (London, 1738).] + +[Footnote 9: Mungo Park, _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_ (4th +ed., London, 1800), pp. 287, 428.] + +The diverse goods bartered for slaves were rated by units of value which +varied in the several trade centers. On the Gold Coast it was a certain +length of cowrie shells on a string; at Loango it was a "piece" which had +the value of a common gun or of twenty pounds of iron; at Kakongo it was +twelve- or fifteen-yard lengths of cotton cloth called "goods";[10] while +on the Gambia it was a bar of iron, apparently about forty pounds in +weight. But in the Gambia trade as Moore described it the unit or "bar" +in rum, cloth and most other things became depreciated until in some +commodities it was not above a shilling's value in English money. Iron +itself, on the other hand, and crystal beads, brass pans and spreadeagle +dollars appreciated in comparison. These accordingly became distinguished +as the "heads of goods," and the inclusion of three or four units of them +was required in the forty or fifty bars of miscellaneous goods making up +the price of a prime slave.[11] In previous years grown slaves alone had +brought standard prices; but in Moore's time a specially strong demand for +boys and girls in the markets of Cadiz and Lisbon had raised the prices of +these almost to a parity. All defects were of course discounted. Moore, for +example, in buying a slave with several teeth missing made the seller abate +a bar for each tooth. The company at one time forbade the purchase of +slaves from the self-styled Portuguese because they ran the prices up; but +the factors protested that these dealers would promptly carry their wares +to the separate traders, and the prohibition was at once withdrawn. + +[Footnote 10: The Abbé Proyart, _History of Loango_ (1776), in Pinkerton's +_Voyages_, XVI, 584-587.] + +[Footnote 11: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, p.45.] + +The company and the separate traders faced different problems. The latter +were less easily able to adjust their merchandise to the market. A Rhode +Island captain, for instance, wrote his owners from Anamabo in 1736, "heare +is 7 sails of us rume men, that we are ready to devour one another, for our +case is desprit"; while four years afterward another wrote after trading +at the same port, "I have repented a hundred times ye lying in of them dry +goods", which he had carried in place of the customary rum.[12] Again, a +veteran Rhode Islander wrote from Anamabo in 1752, "on the whole I never +had so much trouble in all my voiges", and particularized as follows: "I +have Gott on bord 61 Slaves and upards of thirty ounces of Goold, and have +Gott 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet Left on bord, and God noes when I shall Gett +Clear of it ye trade is so very Dull it is actuly a noof to make a man +Creasey my Cheef mate after making foor or five Trips in the boat was taken +Sick and Remains very bad yett then I sent Mr. Taylor, and he got not well, +and three more of my men has [been] sick.... I should be Glad I coold Com +Rite home with my slaves, for my vesiel will not Last to proceed farr +we can see Day Lite al Roond her bow under Deck.... heare Lyes Captains +hamlet, James, Jepson, Carpenter, Butler, Lindsay; Gardner is Due; Ferguson +has Gone to Leward all these is Rum ships."[13] + +[Footnote 12: _American Historical Record_, I (1872), 314, 317.] + +[Footnote 13: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 59, +60.] + +The separate traders also had more frequent quarrels with the natives. +In 1732 a Yankee captain was killed in a trade dispute and his crew set +adrift. Soon afterward certain Jolofs took another ship's officers captive +and required the value of twenty slaves as ransom. And in 1733 the natives +at Yamyamacunda, up the Gambia, sought revenge upon Captain Samuel Moore +for having paid them in pewter dollars on his previous voyage, and were +quieted through the good offices of a company factor.[14] The company +suffered far less from native disorders, for a threat of removing its +factory would bring any chief to terms. In 1731, however, the king of +Barsally brought a troop of his kinsmen and subjects to the Joar factory +where Moore was in charge, got drunk, seized the keys and rifled the +stores.[15] But the company's chief trouble was with its own factors. +The climate and conditions were so trying that illness was frequent and +insanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulent +practices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in the +reports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildew +and white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The expense +of the salary list, ship hire, provisions and merchandise was heavy and +continuous, while the returns were precarious to a degree. Not often did +such great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in +1726[16] and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734[17] to +glut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes. As a rule the company's +advantage of steady markets and friendly native relations appears to have +been more than offset by the freedom of the separate traders from fixed +charges and the necessity of dependence upon lazy and unfaithful employees. + +[Footnote 14: Moore, pp. 112, 164, 182.] + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., p. 82.] + +[Footnote 16: William Snelgrave, _A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and +the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. 8-32.] + +[Footnote 17: Moore, p. 157.] + +Instead of jogging along the coast, as many had been accustomed to do, and +casting anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by natives +who had slaves to sell,[18] the separate traders began before the close +of the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the +"castles," which were then a relic from the company régime. So advantageous +was this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared £500 +on her voyage, and next year the sloop _Adventure_, also of Newport, +Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade that after +losing by death one slave out of the ninety-five in her cargo she landed +the remainder in prime order at Barbados and sold them immediately in one +lot at £35 per head.[19] + +[Footnote 18: Snelgrave, introduction.] + +[Footnote 19: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 398, +429.] + +In Lower Guinea the Portuguese held an advantage, partly through the +influence of the Catholic priests. The Capuchin missionary Merolla, for +example, relates that while he was in service at the mouth of the Congo in +1685 word came that the college of cardinals had commanded the missionaries +in Africa to combat the slave trade. Promptly deciding this to be a +hopeless project, Merolla and his colleagues compromised with their +instructions by attempting to restrict the trade to ships of Catholic +nations and to the Dutch who were then supplying Spain under the asiento. +No sooner had the chiefs in the district agreed to this than a Dutch +trading captain set things awry by spreading Protestant doctrine among the +natives, declaring baptism to be the only sacrament required for salvation, +and confession to be superfluous. The priests then put all the Dutch under +the ban, but the natives raised a tumult saying that the Portuguese, the +only Catholic traders available, not only paid low prices in poor goods but +also aspired to a political domination. The crisis was relieved by a timely +plague of small-pox which the priests declared and the natives agreed was a +divinely sent punishment for their contumacy,--and for the time at least, +the exclusion of heretical traders was made effective.[20] The English +appear never to have excelled the Portuguese on the Congo and southward +except perhaps about the close of the eighteenth century. + +[Footnote 20: Jerom Merolla da Sorrente, _Voyage to Congo_ (translated from +the Italian), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 253-260.] + +The markets most frequented by the English and American separate traders +lay on the great middle stretches of the coast--Sierra Leone, the Grain +Coast (Liberia), the Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, the Oil Rivers as the +Niger Delta was then called, Cameroon, Gaboon and Loango. The swarm of +their ships was particularly great in the Gulf of Guinea upon whose shores +the vast fan-shaped hinterland poured its exiles along converging lines. + +The coffles came from distances ranging to a thousand miles or more, on +rivers and paths whose shore ends the European traders could see but +did not find inviting. These paths, always of single-file narrowness, +tortuously winding to avoid fallen trees and bad ground, never straightened +even when obstructions had rotted and gone, branching and crossing in +endless network, penetrating jungles and high-grass prairies, passing +villages that were and villages that had been, skirting the lairs of savage +beasts and the haunts of cannibal men, beset with drought and famine, storm +and flood, were threaded only by negroes, bearing arms or bearing burdens. +Many of the slaves fell exhausted on the paths and were cut out of the +coffles to die. The survivors were sorted by the purchasers on the coast +into the fit and the unfit, the latter to live in local slavery or to meet +either violent or lingering deaths, the former to be taken shackled on +board the strange vessels of the strange white men and carried to an +unknown fate. The only consolations were that the future could hardly be +worse than the recent past, that misery had plenty of company, and that +things were interesting by the way. The combination of resignation and +curiosity was most helpful. + +It was reassuring to these victims to see an occasional American negro +serving in the crew of a slaver and to know that a few specially favored +tribesmen had returned home with vivid stories from across the sea. On the +Gambia for example there was Job Ben Solomon who during a brief slavery +in Maryland attracted James Oglethorpe's attention by a letter written in +Arabic, was bought from his master, carried to England, presented at court, +loaded with gifts and sent home as a freeman in 1734 in a Royal African +ship with credentials requiring the governor and factors to show him every +respect. Thereafter, a celebrity on the river, he spread among his fellow +Foulahs and the neighboring Jolofs and Mandingoes his cordial praises of +the English nation.[21] And on the Gold Coast there was Amissa to testify +to British justice, for he had shipped as a hired sailor on a Liverpool +slaver in 1774, had been kidnapped by his employer and sold as a slave in +Jamaica, but had been redeemed by the king of Anamaboe and brought home +with an award by Lord Mansfield's court in London of £500 damages collected +from the slaving captain who had wronged him.[22] + +The bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 shifted the bulk of the +separate trading from London to the rival city of Bristol. But the removal +of the duties in 1730 brought the previously unimportant port of Liverpool +into the field with such vigor that ere long she had the larger half of +all the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessary +parsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions and +extra allowances they gave in their early years were nil.[23] By 1753 her +ships in the slave traffic numbered eighty-seven, totaling about eight +thousand tons burthen and rated to carry some twenty-five thousand slaves. +Eight of these vessels were trading on the Gambia, thirty-eight on the Gold +and Slave Coasts, five at Benin, three at New Calabar, twelve at Bonny, +eleven at Old Calabar, and ten in Angola.[24] For the year 1771 the number +of slavers bound from Liverpool was reported at one hundred and seven with +a capacity of 29,250 negroes, while fifty-eight went from London rated +to carry 8,136, twenty-five from Bristol to carry 8,810, and five from +Lancaster with room for 950. Of this total of 195 ships 43 traded in +Senegambia, 29 on the Gold Coast, 56 on the Slave Coast, 63 in the bights +of Benin and Biafra, and 4 in Angola. In addition there were sixty or +seventy slavers from North America and the West Indies, and these were +yearly increasing.[25] By 1801 the Liverpool ships had increased to 150, +with capacity for 52,557 slaves according to the reduced rating of five +slaves to three tons of burthen as required by the parliamentary act of +1788. About half of these traded in the Gulf of Guinea, and half in the +ports of Angola.[26] The trade in American vessels, particularly those of +New England, was also large. The career of the town of Newport in fact was +a small scale replied of Liverpool's. But acceptable statistics of the +American ships are lacking. + +[Footnote 21: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, pp. 69, 202-203.] + +[Footnote 22: Gomer Williams, _History of the Liverpool Privateers, with an +Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade_ (London, 1897), pp. 563, 564.] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid_., p. 471, quoting _A General and Descriptive History +of Liverpool_ (1795).] + +[Footnote 24: _Ibid_., p. 472 and appendix 7.] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), p. 492 +note.] + +[Footnote 26: Corner Williams, Appendix 13.] + +The ship captains in addition to their salaries generally received +commissions of "4 in 104," on the gross sales, and also had the privilege +of buying, transporting and selling specified numbers of slaves on their +private account. When surgeons were carried they also were allowed +commissions and privileges at a smaller rate, and "privileges" were often +allowed the mates likewise. The captains generally carried more or less +definite instructions. Ambrose Lace, for example, master of the Liverpool +ship _Marquis of Granby_ bound in 1762 for Old Calabar, was ordered to +combine with any other ships on the river to keep down rates, to buy +550 young and healthy slaves and such ivory as his surplus cargo would +purchase, and to guard against fire, fever and attack. When laden he was +to carry the slaves to agents in the West Indies, and thence bring home +according to opportunity sugar, cotton, coffee, pimento, mahogany and rum, +and the balance of the slave cargo proceeds in bills of exchange.[27] +Simeon Potter, master of a Rhode Island slaver about the same time, was +instructed by his owners: "Make yr Cheaf Trade with The Blacks and little +or none with the white people if possible to be avoided. Worter yr Rum as +much as possible and sell as much by the short mesuer as you can." And +again: "Order them in the Bots to worter thear Rum, as the proof will Rise +by the Rum Standing in ye Son."[28] As to the care of the slave cargo a +Massachusetts captain was instructed in 1785 as follows: "No people require +more kind and tender treatment: to exhilarate their spirits than the +Africans; and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, remember +that on the other hand too much circumspection cannot be observed by +yourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatment +by insurrection, etc. When you consider that on the health of your slaves +almost your whole voyage depends--for all other risques but mortality, +seizures and bad debts the underwriters are accountable for--you will +therefore particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her with +vinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and to +cleanliness among your own people as well as among the slaves."[29] + +[Footnote 27: Ibid., pp. 486-489.] + +[Footnote 28: W.B. Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_ +(Boston [1890]), II, 465.] + +[Footnote 29: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 66, 67, citing J.O. Felt, _Annals of +Salem_, 2d ed., II, 289, 290.] + +Ships were frequently delayed for many months on the pestilent coast, for +after buying their licenses in one kingdom and finding trade slack there +they could ill afford to sail for another on the uncertain chance of a more +speedy supply. Sometimes when weary of higgling the market, they tried +persuasion by force of arms; but in some instances as at Bonny, in +1757,[30] this resulted in the victory of the natives and the destruction +of the ships. In general the captains and their owners appreciated the +necessity of patience, expensive and even deadly as that might prove to be. + +[Footnote 30: Gomer Williams, pp. 481, 482.] + +The chiefs were eager to foster trade and cultivate good will, for it +brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy King +George" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace +a mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in," a gold +mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, +pewter plates, brass flagons, knives and forks, bullet and cannon-ball +molds, and sailcloth for his canoes, along with many other things for use +in trade.[31] + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 545-547.] + +The typical New England ship for the slave trade was a sloop, schooner or +barkentine of about fifty tons burthen, which when engaged in ordinary +freighting would have but a single deck. For a slaving voyage a second +flooring was laid some three feet below the regular deck, the space between +forming the slave quarters. Such a vessel was handled by a captain, two +mates, and from three to six men and boys. It is curious that a vessel of +this type, with capacity in the hold for from 100 to 120 hogsheads of rum +was reckoned by the Rhode Islanders to be "full bigg for dispatch,"[32] +while among the Liverpool slave traders such a ship when offered for +sale could not find a purchaser.[33] The reason seems to have been that +dry-goods and sundries required much more cargo space for the same value +than did rum. + +[Footnote 32: Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, LXIX, 524.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., 500.] + +The English vessels were generally twice as great of burthen and with twice +the height in their 'tween decks. But this did not mean that the slaves +could stand erect in their quarters except along the center line; for when +full cargoes were expected platforms of six or eight feet in width were +laid on each side, halving the 'tween deck height and nearly doubling the +floor space on which the slaves were to be stowed. Whatever the size of the +ship, it loaded slaves if it could get them to the limit of its capacity. +Bosnian tersely said, "they lie as close together as it is possible to be +crowded."[34] The women's room was divided from the men's by a bulkhead, +and in time of need the captain's cabin might be converted into a hospital. + +[Footnote 34: Bosnian's _Guinea_, in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 490.] + +While the ship was taking on slaves and African provisions and water the +negroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sake +of fresh air. But on departure for the "middle passage," as the trip to +America was called by reason of its being the second leg of the ship's +triangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and in +foul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air and +exercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters and +swabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant. The negro men were +usually kept shackled for the first part of the passage until the chances +of mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain's fears gave place +to confidence. On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to be +repelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense of +the vessel.[35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargo +was perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport of +poverty-stricken white emigrants. Henry Laurens, after withdrawing from +African factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted by +some of the participants in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw an +instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal +to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted +the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a +market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians +from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the +cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what +condition they were landed."[36] + +[Footnote 35: _E. g_., Gomer Williams, pp. 560, 561.] + +[Footnote 36: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_ (New York, 1915), pp. +67, 68. For the tragic sufferings of an English convict shipment in 1768 +see _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 372-373] + +William Snelgrave, long a ship captain in the trade, relates that he was +accustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through his +interpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and not +to be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complain +to the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if they +struck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to be +severely punished. Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies +in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he +never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, +"I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death +itself." In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified +by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of +an hour's time. "He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in him +to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I +should lose all the money I had paid for him.'" When the captain professed +himself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments assuring +his fellows that his life was safe.[37] + +[Footnote 37: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. +162-185. Snelgrave's book also contains vivid accounts of tribal wars, +human sacrifices, traders' negotiations and pirate captures on the Grain +and Slave Coasts.] + +The discomfort in the densely packed quarters of the slave ships may be +imagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added it +was wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water or +food ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and in +epidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limit +of human experience. The average voyage however was rapid and smooth +by virtue of the steadily blowing trade winds, the food if coarse was +generally plenteous and wholesome, and the sanitation fairly adequate. In +a word, under stern and often brutal discipline, and with the poorest +accommodations, the slaves encountered the then customary dangers and +hardships of the sea.[38] + +[Footnote 38: Voluminous testimony in regard to conditions on the middle +passage was published by Parliament and the Privy Council in 1789-1791. +Summaries from it may be found in T.F. Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and +the Remedy_ (London, 1840), part I, chap. 2; and in W.O. Blake, _History of +Slavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10.] + +Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West India +Company's ship _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in April +and May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barely +enough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island of +Amebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile bad +food had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died, +and the slave cargo was daily diminishing. Five weeks of sailing then +carried the ship across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refill +her leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near her +destination at Curaçao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally +a sloop sent by the Curaçao governor to remove the surviving slaves was +captured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprising +the cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and one +leaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 the +slave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as high +among the men as among the women.[39] About the same time, on the other +hand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher, +made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave.[40] The mortality on the +average ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or +ten per cent. + +[Footnote 39: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and +Arms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N.Y., 1867), pp. 1-13.] + +[Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515.] + +Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the New +England branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for a +projected voyage.[41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at £300 sterling, was +to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines +and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of £65, and provisioned for £50 more. +Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages +of £10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eight +thousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. per gallon and with forty-five +barrels, tierces and hogsheads of bread, flour, beef, pork, tar, tobacco, +tallow and sugar--all at an estimated cost of £775--it was to sail for the +Gold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some +35 slave men were to be bought at 100 gallons per head, 15 women at 85 +gallons, and 15 boys and girls at 65 gallons; and the residue of the rum +and miscellaneous cargo was expected to bring some seventy ounces of gold +in exchange as well as to procure food supplies for the westward voyage. +Recrossing the Atlantic, with an estimated death loss of a man, a woman and +two children, the surviving slaves were to be sold in Jamaica at about £21, +£18, and £14 for the respective classes. Of these proceeds about one-third +was to be spent for a cargo of 105 hogsheads of molasses at 8_d_. per +gallon, and the rest of the money remitted to London, whither the gold dust +was also to be sent. The molasses upon reaching Newport was expected to +bring twice as much as it had cost in the tropics. After deducting factor's +commissions of from 2-1/2 to 5 per cent. on all sales and purchases, and of +"4 in 104" on the slave sales as the captain's allowance, after providing +for insurance at four per cent. on ship and cargo for each leg of the +voyage, and for leakage of ten per cent. of the rum and five per cent. of +the molasses, and after charging off the whole cost of the ship's outfit +and one-third of her original value, there remained the sum of £357, 8s. +2d. as the expected profits of the voyage. + +[Footnote 41: "An estimate of a voyage from Rhode Island to the Coast of +Guinea and from thence to Jamaica and so back to Rhode Island for a sloop +of 60 Tons." The authorities of Yale University, which possesses the +manuscript, have kindly permitted the publication of these data. The +estimates in Rhode Island and Jamaica currencies, which were then +depreciated, as stated in the document, to twelve for one and seven for +five sterling respectively, are here changed into their approximate +sterling equivalents.] + +As to the gross volume of the trade, there are few statistics. As early as +1734 one of the captains engaged in it estimated that a maximum of seventy +thousand slaves a year had already been attained.[42] For the next half +century and more each passing year probably saw between fifty thousand and +a hundred thousand shipped. The total transportation from first to last may +well have numbered more than five million souls. Prior to the nineteenth +century far more negro than white colonists crossed the seas, though less +than one tenth of all the blacks brought to the western world appear to +have been landed on the North American continent. Indeed, a statistician +has reckoned, though not convincingly, that in the whole period before 1810 +these did not exceed 385,500[43] + +[Footnote 42: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_, p. 159.] + +[Footnote 43: H.C. Carey, _The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign_ +(Philadelphia, 1853), chap. 3.] + +In selling the slave cargoes in colonial ports the traders of course wanted +minimum delay and maximum prices. But as a rule quickness and high returns +were not mutually compatible. The Royal African Company tended to lay chief +stress upon promptness of sale. Thus at the end of 1672 it announced that +if persons would contract to receive whole cargoes upon their arrival and +to accept all slaves between twelve and forty years of age who were able to +go over the ship's side unaided they would be supplied at the rate of +£15 per head in Barbados, £16 in Nevis, £17 in Jamaica, and £18 in +Virginia.[44] The colonists were for a time disposed to accept this +arrangement where they could. For example Charles Calvert, governor of +Maryland, had already written Lord Baltimore in 1664: "I have endeavored to +see if I could find as many responsible men that would engage to take 100 +or 200 neigros every year from the Royall Company at that rate mentioned +in your lordship's letter; but I find that we are nott men of estates good +enough to undertake such a buisnesse, but could wish we were for we are +naturally inclined to love neigros if our purses could endure it."[45] But +soon complaints arose that the slaves delivered on contract were of the +poorest quality, while the better grades were withheld for other means of +sale at higher prices. Quarrels also developed between the company on the +one hand and the colonists and their legislatures on the other over the +rating of colonial moneys and the obstructions placed by law about the +collection of debts; and the colonists proceeded to give all possible +encouragement to the separate traders, legal or illegal as their traffic +might be.[46] + +[Footnote 44: E.D. Collins, "Studies in the Colonial Policy of England, +1672-1680," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1901, I, +158.] + +[Footnote 45: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_ no. 28, p. +249.] + +[Footnote 46: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_ (New York, 1912), part +I, vol. I, chap. 5.] + +Most of the sales, in the later period at least, were without previous +contract. A practice often followed in the British West Indian ports was to +advertise that the cargo of a vessel just arrived would be sold on board at +an hour scheduled and at a uniform price announced in the notice. At the +time set there would occur a great scramble of planters and dealers to grab +the choicest slaves. A variant from this method was reported in 1670 from +Guadeloupe, where a cargo brought in by the French African company was +first sorted into grades of prime men, (_pièces d'Inde_), prime women, boys +and girls rated at two-thirds of prime, and children rated at one-half. To +each slave was attached a ticket bearing a number, while a corresponding +ticket was deposited in one of four boxes according to the grade. At prices +then announced for the several grades, the planters bought the privilege of +drawing tickets from the appropriate boxes and acquiring thereby title to +the slaves to which the numbers they drew were attached.[47] + +[Footnote 47: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant +1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122, 123.] + +In the chief ports of the British continental colonies the maritime +transporters usually engaged merchants on shore to sell the slaves as +occasion permitted, whether by private sale or at auction. At Charleston +these merchants charged a ten per cent commission on slave sales, though +their factorage rate was but five per cent. on other sorts of merchandise; +and they had credits of one and two years for the remittance of the +proceeds.[48] The following advertisement, published at Charleston in 1785 +jointly by Ball, Jennings and Company, and Smiths, DeSaussure and Darrell +is typical of the factors' announcements: "GOLD COAST NEGROES. On Thursday, +the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the Exchange +(if not before disposed of by private contract) the remainder of the cargo +of negroes imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consisting +chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been +here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to this +climate. The conditions of the sale will be credit to the first of January, +1786, on giving bond with approved security where required--the negroes not +to be delivered till the terms are complied with."[49] But in such colonies +as Virginia where there was no concentration of trade in ports, the ships +generally sailed from place to place peddling their slaves, with notice +published in advance when practicable. The diseased or otherwise unfit +negroes were sold for whatever price they would bring. In some of the ports +it appears that certain physicians made a practise of buying these to sell +the survivors at a profit upon their restoration to health.[50] + +[Footnote 48: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 75.] + +[Footnote 49: _The Gazette of the State of South Carolina_, Mch. 10, 1785.] + +[Footnote 50: C. C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 170.] + +That by no means all the negroes took their enslavement grievously is +suggested by a traveler's note at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1806: "We +met ... a number of new negroes, some of whom had been in the country long +enough to talk intelligibly. Their likely looks induced us to enter into +a talk with them. One of them, a very bright, handsome youth of about +sixteen, could talk well. He told us the circumstances of his being caught +and enslaved, with as much composure as he would any common occurrence, +not seeming to think of the injustice of the thing nor to speak of it with +indignation.... He spoke of his master and his work as though all were +right, and seemed not to know he had a right to be anything but a +slave."[51] + +[Footnote 51: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1906, p. 882.] + +In the principal importing colonies careful study was given to the +comparative qualities of the several African stocks. The consensus +of opinion in the premises may be gathered from several contemporary +publications, the chief ones of which were written in Jamaica.[52] The +Senegalese, who had a strong Arabic strain in their ancestry, were +considered the most intelligent of Africans and were especially esteemed +for domestic service, the handicrafts and responsible positions. "They are +good commanders over other negroes, having a high spirit and a tolerable +share of fidelity; but they are unfit for hard work; their bodies are not +robust nor their constitutions vigorous." The Mandingoes were reputed to be +especially gentle in demeanor but peculiarly prone to theft. They easily +sank under fatigue, but might be employed with advantage in the distillery +and the boiling house or as watchmen against fire and the depredations of +cattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts as +hardy and stalwart of mind and body. Long calls them haughty, ferocious and +stubborn; Edwards relates examples of their Spartan fortitude; and it +was generally agreed that they were frequently instigators of slave +conspiracies and insurrections. Yet their spirit of loyalty made them the +most highly prized of servants by those who could call it forth. Of them +Christopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward Islands, wrote in 1701 to +the English Board of Trade: "The Corramantes are not only the best and +most faithful of our slaves, but are really all born heroes. There is a +differance between them and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possible +for your Lordships to conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of that +nation. Intrepid to the last degree, not a man of them but will stand to +be cut to pieces without a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kind +master, but implacably revengeful when ill-treated. My father, who had +studied the genius and temper of all kinds of negroes forty-five years with +a very nice observation, would say, noe man deserved a Corramante that +would not treat him like a friend rather than a slave."[53] + +[Footnote 52: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, 403, +404; Bryan Edwards, _History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, +various editions, book IV, chap. 3; and "A Professional Planter," +_Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves +in the Sugar Colonies_ (London, 1803), pp. 39-48. The pertinent portion of +this last is reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 127-133. For the +similar views of the French planters in the West Indies see Peytraud, +_L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_, pp. 87-90.] + +[Footnote 53: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West +Indies_, 1701, pp. 720, 721.] + +The Whydahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most +highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and +submissive. "That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel, +and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Pawpaws as the +chastisement of legal authority to which it is their duty to submit +patiently." As to the Eboes or Mocoes, described as having a sickly yellow +tinge in their complection, jaundiced eyes, and prognathous faces like +baboons, the women were said to be diligent but the men lazy, despondent +and prone to suicide. "They require therefore the gentlest and mildest +treatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence be +once obtained they manifest as great fidelity, affection and gratitude as +can reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery." + +The "kingdom of Gaboon," which straddled the equator, was the worst reputed +of all. "From thence a good negro was scarcely ever brought. They are +purchased so cheaply on the coast as to tempt many captains to freight with +them; but they generally die either on the passage or soon after +their arrival in the islands. The debility of their constitutions is +astonishing." From this it would appear that most of the so-called Gaboons +must have been in reality Pygmies caught in the inland equatorial forests, +for Bosman, who traded among the Gaboons, merely inveighed against their +garrulity, their indecision, their gullibility and their fondness for +strong drink, while as to their physique he observed: "they are mostly +large, robust well shaped men."[54] Of the Congoes and Angolas the Jamaican +writers had little to say except that in their glossy black they +were slender and sightly, mild in disposition, unusually honest, but +exceptionally stupid. + +[Footnote 54: Bosman in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 509, 510.] + +In the South Carolina market Gambia negroes, mainly Mandingoes, were the +favorites, and Angolas also found ready sale; but cargoes from Calabar, +which were doubtless comprised mostly of Eboes, were shunned because of +their suicidal proclivity. Henry Laurens, who was then a commission dealer +at Charleston, wrote in 1755 that the sale of a shipload from Calabar then +in port would be successful only if no other Guinea ships arrived before +its quarantine was ended, for the people would not buy negroes of that +stock if any others were to be had.[55] + +[Footnote 55: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 76, 77.] + +It would appear that the Congoes, Angolas and Eboes were especially prone +to run away, or perhaps particularly easy to capture when fugitive, for +among the 1046 native Africans advertised as runaways held in the Jamaica +workhouses in 1803 there were 284 Eboes and Mocoes, 185 Congoes and 259 +Angolas as compared with 101 Mandingoes, 60 Chambas (from Sierra Leone), 70 +Coromantees, 57 Nagoes and Pawpaws, and 30 scattering, along with a total +of 488 American-born negroes and mulattoes, and 187 unclassified.[56] + +[Footnote 56: These data were generously assembled for me by Professor +Chauncey S. Boucher of Washington University, St. Louis, from a file of the +_Royal Gazette_ of Kingston, Jamaica, for the year 1803, which is preserved +in the Charleston, S.C. Library.] + +This huge maritime slave traffic had great consequences for all the +countries concerned. In Liverpool it made millionaires,[57] and elsewhere +in England, Europe and New England it brought prosperity not only to ship +owners but to the distillers of rum and manufacturers of other trade goods. +In the American plantation districts it immensely stimulated the production +of the staple crops. On the other hand it kept the planters constantly +in debt for their dearly bought labor, and it left a permanent and +increasingly complex problem of racial adjustments. In Africa, it largely +transformed the primitive scheme of life, and for the worse. It created new +and often unwholesome wants; it destroyed old industries and it corrupted +tribal institutions. The rum, the guns, the utensils and the gewgaws were +irresistible temptations. Every chief and every tribesman acquired +a potential interest in slave getting and slave selling. Charges of +witchcraft, adultery, theft and other crimes were trumped up that the +number of convicts for sale might be swelled; debtors were pressed that +they might be adjudged insolvent and their persons delivered to the +creditors; the sufferings of famine were left unrelieved that parents might +be forced to sell their children or themselves; kidnapping increased until +no man or woman and especially no child was safe outside a village; and +wars and raids were multiplied until towns by hundreds were swept from the +earth and great zones lay void of their former teeming population.[58] + +[Footnote 57: Gomer Williams, chap. 6.] + +[Footnote 58: C.B. Wadstrom, _Observations on the Slave Trade_ (London, +1789); Lord Muncaster, _Historical Sketches of the Slave Trade and of its +Effects in Africa_ (London, 1792); Jerome Dowd, _The Negro Races_, vol. 3, +chap. 2 (MS).] + +The slave trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent. +But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting +got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were +quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors +who remained in the African jungle. The only participants who got +unquestionable profit were the English, European and Yankee traders and +manufacturers. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE SUGAR ISLANDS + + +As regards negro slavery the history of the West Indies is inseparable from +that of North America. In them the plantation system originated and reached +its greatest scale, and from them the institution of slavery was extended +to the continent. The industrial system on the islands, and particularly +on those occupied by the British, is accordingly instructive as an +introduction and a parallel to the continental régime. + +The early career of the island of Barbados gives a striking instance of +a farming colony captured by the plantation system. Founded in 1624 by a +group of unprosperous English emigrants, it pursued an even and commonplace +tenor until the Civil War in England sent a crowd of royalist refugees +thither, together with some thousands of Scottish and Irish prisoners +converted into indentured servants. Negro slaves were also imported to work +alongside the redemptioners in the tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigo +crops, and soon proved their superiority in that climate, especially when +yellow fever, to which the Africans are largely immune, decimated the white +population. In 1643, as compared with some five thousand negroes of all +sorts, there were about eighteen thousand white men capable of bearing +arms; and in the little island's area of 166 square miles there were nearly +ten thousand separate landholdings. Then came the introduction of +sugar culture, which brought the beginning of the end of the island's +transformation. A fairly typical plantation in the transition period was +described by a contemporary. Of its five hundred acres about two hundred +were planted in sugar-cane, twenty in tobacco, five in cotton, five in +ginger and seventy in provision crops; several acres were devoted to +pineapples, bananas, oranges and the like; eighty acres were in pasturage, +and one hundred and twenty in woodland. There were a sugar mill, a boiling +house, a curing house, a distillery, the master's residence, laborers' +cabins, and barns and stables. The livestock numbered forty-five oxen, +eight cows, twelve horses and sixteen asses; and the labor force comprised +ninety-eight "Christians," ninety-six negroes and three Indian women +with their children. In general, this writer said, "The slaves and their +posterity, being subject to their masters forever, are kept and preserved +with greater care than the (Christian) servants, who are theirs for but +five years according to the laws of the island.[1] So that for the time +being the servants have the worser lives, for they are put to very hard +labor, ill lodging and their dyet very light." + +[Footnote 1: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] + +As early as 1645 George Downing, then a young Puritan preacher recently +graduated from Harvard College but later a distinguished English diplomat, +wrote to his cousin John Winthrop, Jr., after a voyage in the West Indies: +"If you go to Barbados, you shal see a flourishing Iland, many able men. I +beleive they have bought this year no lesse than a thousand Negroes, and +the more they buie the better they are able to buye, for in a yeare and +halfe they will earne (with God's blessing) as much as they cost."[2] +Ten years later, with bonanza prices prevailing in the sugar market, the +Barbadian planters declared their colony to be "the most envyed of the +world" and estimated the value of its annual crops at a million pounds +sterling.[3] But in the early sixties a severe fall in sugar prices put an +end to the boom period and brought the realization that while sugar was the +rich man's opportunity it was the poor man's ruin. By 1666 emigration to +other colonies had halved the white population; but the slave trade had +increased the negroes to forty thousand, most of whom were employed on the +eight hundred sugar estates.[4] For the rest of the century Barbados held +her place as the leading producer of British sugar and the most esteemed +of the British colonies; but as the decades passed the fertility of her +limited fields became depleted, and her importance gradually fell secondary +to that of the growing Jamaica. + +[Footnote 2: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, series 4, vol. +6, p. 536.] + +[Footnote 3: G.L. Beer, _Origins of the British Colonial System_ (New York, +1908), P. 413.] + +[Footnote 4: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_, part I, vol. 2, pp. 9, +10.] + +The Barbadian estates were generally much smaller than those of Jamaica +came to be. The planters nevertheless not only controlled their community +wholly in their interest but long maintained a unique "planters' committee" +at London to make representations to the English government on behalf of +their class. They pleaded for the colony's freedom of trade, for example, +with no more vigor than they insisted that England should not interfere +with the Barbadian law to prohibit Quakers from admitting negroes to their +meetings. An item significant of their attitude upon race relations is +the following from the journal of the Crown's committee of trade and +plantations, Oct. 8, 1680: "The gentlemen of Barbados attend, ... who +declare that the conversion of their slaves to Christianity would not only +destroy their property but endanger the island, inasmuch as converted +negroes grow more perverse and intractable than others, and hence of less +value for labour or sale. The disproportion of blacks to white being great, +the whites have no greater security than the diversity of the negroes' +languages, which would be destroyed by conversion in that it would be +necessary to teach them all English. The negroes are a sort of people so +averse to learning that they will rather hang themselves or run away than +submit to it." The Lords of Trade were enough impressed by this argument to +resolve that the question be left to the Barbadian government.[5] + +[Footnote 5: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West +Indies_, 1677-1680, p. 611.] + +As illustrating the plantation régime in the island in the period of its +full industrial development, elaborate instructions are extant which were +issued about 1690 to Richard Harwood, manager or overseer of the Drax Hall +and Hope plantations belonging to the Codrington family. These included +directions for planting, fertilizing and cultivating the cane, for the +operation of the wind-driven sugar mill, the boiling and curing houses and +the distillery, and for the care of the live stock; but the main concern +was with the slaves. The number in the gangs was not stated, but the +expectation was expressed that in ordinary years from ten to twenty new +negroes would have to be bought to keep the ranks full, and it was advised +that Coromantees be preferred, since they had been found best for the work +on these estates. Plenty was urged in provision crops with emphasis upon +plantains and cassava,--the latter because of the certainty of its +harvest, the former because of the abundance of their yield in years of no +hurricanes and because the negroes especially delighted in them and +found them particularly wholesome as a dysentery diet. The services of a +physician had been arranged for, but the manager was directed to take great +care of the negroes' health and pay special attention to the sick. The +clothing was not definitely stated as to periods. For food each was +to receive weekly a pound of fish and two quarts of molasses, tobacco +occasionally, salt as needed, palm oil once a year, and home-grown +provisions in abundance. Offenses committed by the slaves were to be +punished immediately, "many of them being of the houmer of avoiding +punishment when threatened: to hang themselves." For drunkenness the stocks +were recommended. As to theft, recognized as especially hard to repress, +the manager was directed to let hunger give no occasion for it.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Original MS. in the Bodleian Library, A. 248, 3. Copy used +through the courtesy of Dr. F.W. Pitman of Yale University.] + +Jamaica, which lies a thousand miles west of Barbados and has twenty-five +times her area, was captured by the English in 1655 when its few hundreds +of Spaniards had developed nothing but cacao and cattle raising. English +settlement began after the Restoration, with Roundhead exiles supplemented +by immigrants from the Lesser Antilles and by buccaneers turned farmers. +Lands were granted on a lavish scale on the south side of the island where +an abundance of savannahs facilitated tillage; but the development of +sugar culture proved slow by reason of the paucity of slaves and the +unfamiliarity of the settlers with the peculiarities of the soil and +climate. With the increase of prosperity, and by the aid of managers +brought from Barbados, sugar plantations gradually came to prevail +all round the coast and in favorable mountain valleys, while smaller +establishments here and there throve more moderately in the production of +cotton, pimento, ginger, provisions and live stock. For many years the +legislature, prodded by occasional slave revolts, tried to stimulate the +increase of whites by requiring the planters to keep a fixed proportion of +indentured servants; but in the early eighteenth century this policy proved +futile, and thereafter the whites numbered barely one-tenth as many as +the negroes. The slaves were reported at 86,546 in 1734; 112,428 in 1744; +166,914 in 1768; and 210,894 in 1787. In addition there were at the last +date some 10,000 negroes legally free, and 1400 maroons or escaped slaves +dwelling permanently in the mountain fastnesses. The number of sugar +plantations was 651 in 1768, and 767 in 1791; and they contained about +three-fifths of all the slaves on the island. Throughout this latter part +of the century the average holding on the sugar estates was about 180 +slaves of all ages.[7] + +[Footnote 7: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_, I, 494, Bryan Edwards, +_History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, book II, appendix.] + +When the final enumeration of slaves in the British possessions was made +in the eighteen-thirties there were no single Jamaica holdings reported as +large as that of 1598 slaves held by James Blair in Guiana; but occasional +items were of a scale ranging from five to eight hundred each, and hundreds +numbered above one hundred each. In many of these instances the same +persons are listed as possessing several holdings, with Sir Edward Hyde +East particularly notable for the large number of his great squads. The +degree of absenteeism is indicated by the frequency of English nobles, +knights and gentlemen among the large proprietors. Thus the Earl of +Balcarres had 474 slaves; the Earl of Harwood 232; the Earl and Countess of +Airlie 59; Earl Talbot and Lord Shelborne jointly 79; Lord Seaford 70; Lord +Hatherton jointly with Francis Downing, John Benbow and the Right Reverend +H. Philpots, Lord Bishop of Exeter, two holdings of 304 and 236 slaves +each; and the three Gladstones, Thomas, William and Robert 468 slaves +jointly.[8] + +[Footnote 8: "Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims," in the British +official _Account: and Papers, 1837-1838_, vol. XLVIII.] + +Such an average scale and such a prevalence of absenteeism never prevailed +in any other Anglo-American plantation community, largely because none of +the other staples required so much manufacturing as sugar did in preparing +the crops for market. As Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793: "the business of +sugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages must +engage deeply.... It requires a capital of no less than thirty thousand +pounds sterling to embark in this employment with a fair prospect of +success." Such an investment, he particularized, would procure and +establish as a going concern a plantation of 300 acres in cane and 100 +acres each in provision crops, forage and woodland, together with the +appropriate buildings and apparatus, and a working force of 80 steers, 60 +mules and 250 slaves, at the current price for these last of £50 sterling +a head.[9] So distinctly were the plantations regarded as capitalistic +ventures that they came to be among the chief speculations of their time +for absentee investors. + +[Footnote 9: Bryan Edwards, _History of the West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] + +When Lord Chesterfield tried in 1767 to buy his son a seat in Parliament he +learned "that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for that +the rich East and West Indians had secured them all at the rate of three +thousand pounds at the least."[10] And an Englishman after traveling in the +French and British Antilles in 1825 wrote: "The French colonists, whether +Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast +no wistful looks toward France.... In our colonies it is quite different; +... every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging place where they +must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgages will let them live +elsewhere. They call England their home though many of them have never +been there.... The French colonist deliberately expatriates himself; the +Englishman never."[11] Absenteeism was throughout a serious detriment. Many +and perhaps most of the Jamaica proprietors were living luxuriously in +England instead of industriously on their estates. One of them, the +talented author "Monk" Lewis, when he visited his own plantation in +1815-1817, near the end of his life, found as much novelty in the doings of +his slaves as if he had been drawing his income from shares in the Banc of +England; but even he, while noting their clamorous good nature was chiefly +impressed by their indolence and perversity.[12] It was left for an invalid +traveling for his health to remark most vividly the human equation: "The +negroes cannot be silent; they talk in spite of themselves. Every passion +acts upon them with strange intensity, their anger is sudden and furious, +their mirth clamorous and excessive, their curiosity audacious, and their +love the sheer demand for gratification of an ardent animal desire. Yet +by their nature they are good-humored in the highest degree, and I know +nothing more delightful than to be met by a group of negro girls and to be +saluted with their kind 'How d'ye massa? how d'ye massa?'"[13] + +[Footnote 10: Lord Chesterfield, _Letters to his Son_ (London, 1774), II, +525.] + +[Footnote 11: H.N. Coleridge, _Six Months in the West Indies_, 4th ed. +(London, 1832), pp. 131, 132.] + +[Footnote 12: Matthew G. Lewis, _Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept +during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica_ (London, 1834).] + +[Footnote 13: H.N. Coleridge, p. 76.] + +On the generality of the plantations the tone of the management was too +much like that in most modern factories. The laborers were considered more +as work-units than as men, women and children. Kindliness and comfort, +cruelty and hardship, were rated at balance-sheet value; births and deaths +were reckoned in profit and loss, and the expense of rearing children was +balanced against the cost of new Africans. These things were true in some +degree in the North American slaveholding communities, but in the West +Indies they excelled. + +In buying new negroes a practical planter having a preference for those of +some particular tribal stock might make sure of getting them only by taking +with him to the slave ships or the "Guinea yards" in the island ports a +slave of the stock wanted and having him interrogate those for sale in +his native language to learn whether they were in fact what the dealers +declared them to be. Shrewdness was even more necessary to circumvent other +tricks of the trade, especially that of fattening up, shaving and oiling +the skins of adult slaves to pass them off as youthful. The ages most +desired in purchasing were between fifteen and twenty-five years. If these +were not to be had well grown children were preferable to the middle-aged, +since they were much less apt to die in the "seasoning," they would learn +English readily, and their service would increase instead of decreasing +after the lapse of the first few years. + +The conversion of new negroes into plantation laborers, a process called +"breaking in," required always a mingling of delicacy and firmness. Some +planters distributed their new purchases among the seasoned households, +thus delegating the task largely to the veteran slaves. Others housed and +tended them separately under the charge of a select staff of nurses and +guardians and with frequent inspection from headquarters. The mortality +rate was generally high under either plan, ranging usually from twenty to +thirty per cent, in the seasoning period of three or four years. The deaths +came from diseases brought from Africa, such as the yaws which was similar +to syphilis; from debilities and maladies acquired on the voyage; from the +change of climate and food; from exposure incurred in running away; from +morbid habits such as dirt-eating; and from accident, manslaughter and +suicide.[14] + +[Footnote 14: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 435; Edwards, _West Indies_, book +4, chap. 5; A Professional Planter, _Rules_, chap. 2; Thomas Roughley, +_Jamaica Planter's Guide_ (London, 1823), pp. 118-120.] + +The seasoned slaves were housed by families in separate huts grouped into +"quarters," and were generally assigned small tracts on the outskirts of +the plantation on which to raise their own provision crops. Allowances of +clothing, dried fish, molasses, rum, salt, etc., were issued them from the +commissary, together with any other provisions needed to supplement their +own produce. The field force of men and women, boys and girls was generally +divided according to strength into three gangs, with special details for +the mill, the coppers and the still when needed; and permanent corps were +assigned to the handicrafts, to domestic service and to various incidental +functions. The larger the plantation, of course, the greater the +opportunity of differentiating tasks and assigning individual slaves to +employments fitted to their special aptitudes. + +The planters put such emphasis upon the regularity and vigor of the routine +that they generally neglected other equally vital things. They ignored the +value of labor-saving devices, most of them even shunning so obviously +desirable an implement as the plough and using the hoe alone in breaking +the land and cultivating the crops. But still more serious was the passive +acquiescence in the depletion of their slaves by excess of deaths over +births. This decrease amounted to a veritable decimation, requiring the +frequent importation of recruits to keep the ranks full. Long estimated +this loss at about two per cent. annually, while Edwards reckoned that in +his day there were surviving in Jamaica little more than one-third as many +negroes as had been imported in the preceding career of the colony.[15] The +staggering mortality rate among the new negroes goes far toward accounting +for this; but even the seasoned groups generally failed to keep up their +numbers. The birth rate was notoriously small; but the chief secret of the +situation appears to have lain in the poor care of the newborn children. A +surgeon of long experience said that a third of the babies died in their +first month, and that few of the imported women bore children; and another +veteran resident said that commonly more than a quarter of the babies died +within the first nine days, of "jaw-fall," and nearly another fourth before +they passed their second year.[16] At least one public-spirited planter +advocated in 1801 the heroic measure of closing the slave trade in order +to raise the price of labor and coerce the planters into saving it both by +improving their apparatus and by diminishing the death rate.[17] But his +fellows would have none of his policy. + +[Footnote 15: Long, III, 432; Edwards, book 4, chap. 2.] + +[Footnote 16: _Abridgement of the evidence taken before a committee of the +whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), pp. 48, 80.] + +[Footnote 17: Clement Caines, _Letters on the Cultivation of the Otaheite +Cane_ (London, 1801), pp. 274-281.] + +While in the other plantation staples the crop was planted and reaped in +a single year, sugar cane had a cycle extending through several years. A +typical field in southside Jamaica would be "holed" or laid off in furrows +between March and June, planted in the height of the rainy season between +July and September, cultivated for fifteen months, and harvested in the +first half of the second year after its planting. Then when the rains +returned new shoots, "rattoons," would sprout from the old roots to yield +a second though diminished harvest in the following spring, and so on for +several years more until the rattoon or "stubble" yield became too small to +be worth while. The period of profitable rattooning ran in some specially +favorable districts as high as fourteen years, but in general a field was +replanted after the fourth crop. In such case the cycles of the several +fields were so arranged on any well managed estate that one-fifth of the +area in cane was replanted each year and four-fifths harvested. + +This coördination of cycles brought it about that oftentimes almost every +sort of work on the plantation was going on simultaneously. Thus on the +Lodge and Grange plantations which were apparently operated as a single +unit, the extant journal of work during the harvest month of May, 1801,[18] +shows a distribution of the total of 314 slaves as follows: ninety of the +"big gang" and fourteen of the "big gang feeble" together with fifty of +the "little gang" were stumping a new clearing, "holing" or laying off a +stubble field for replanting, weeding and filling the gaps in the field of +young first-year or "plant" cane, and heaping the manure in the ox-lot; +ten slaves were cutting, ten tying and ten more hauling the cane from +the fields in harvest; fifteen were in a "top heap" squad whose work was +conjecturally the saving of the green cane tops for forage and fertilizer; +nine were tending the cane mill, seven were in the boiling house, producing +a hogshead and a half of sugar daily, and two were at the two stills making +a puncheon of rum every four days; six watchmen and fence menders, twelve +artisans, eight stockminders, two hunters, four domestics, and two sick +nurses were at their appointed tasks; and eighteen invalids and pregnant +women, four disabled with sores, forty infants and one runaway were doing +no work. There were listed thirty horses, forty mules and a hundred oxen +and other cattle; but no item indicates that a single plow was in use. + +[Footnote 18: Printed by Clement Caines in a table facing p. 246 of his +_Letters_.] + +The cane-mill in the eighteenth century consisted merely of three +iron-sheathed cylinders, two of them set against the third, turned by +wind, water or cattle. The canes, tied into small bundles for greater +compression, were given a double squeezing while passing through the mill. +The juice expressed found its way through a trough into the boiling house +while the flattened stalks, called mill trash or megass in the British +colonies and bagasse in Louisiana, were carried to sheds and left to dry +for later use as fuel under the coppers and stills. + +In the boiling house the cane-juice flowed first into a large receptacle, +the clarifier, where by treatment with lime and moderate heat it was +separated from its grosser impurities. It then passed into the first +or great copper, where evaporation by boiling began and some further +impurities, rising in scum, were taken off. After further evaporation in +smaller coppers the thickened fluid was ladled into a final copper, the +teache, for a last boiling and concentration; and when the product of the +teache was ready for crystallization it was carried away for the curing. In +Louisiana the successive caldrons were called the grande, the propre, the +flambeau and the batterie, the last of these corresponding to the Jamaican +teache. + +The curing house was merely a timber framework with a roof above and a +great shallow sloping vat below. The sugary syrup from the teache was +generally potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, and +allowed to cool with occasional stirrings. Most of the sugar stayed in the +hogsheads, while some of it trickled with the mother liquor, molasses, +through perforations in the bottoms into the vat beneath. When the +hogsheads were full of the crudely cured, moist, and impure "muscovado" +sugar, they were headed up and sent to port. The molasses, the scum, and +the juice of the canes tainted by damage from rats and hurricanes were +carried to vats in the distillery where, with yeast and water added, the +mixture fermented and when distilled yielded rum. + +The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of a +certain degree of pageantry. Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaves +were freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopes +of Mont Pélée: "We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of +cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding +beyond an opening to the west.... Far down we can distinguish a line of +field-hands--the whole _atelier_, as it is called, of a plantation--slowly +descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go. There is a woman to every +two men, a binder (amarreuse): she gathers the canes as they are cut down, +binds them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, +and carries them away on her head;--the men wield their cutlasses so +beautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such +a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has +destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the islands, +with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march +of an army;--first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; +then the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the +_ka_, the drum,--with a paid _crieur_ or _crieuse_ to lead the song;--and +lastly the black Commandeur, for general."[19] + +[Footnote 19: Lafcadio Hearn, _Two Years in the French West Indies_ (New +York, 1890), p. 275.] + +After this bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may be +abundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation, +elaborated expressly for posterity's information. This estate, lying in +St. John's parish on the southern slope of the Jamaica mountain chain, +comprised not only the plantation proper, which had some 560 acres in sugar +cane and smaller fields in food and forage crops, but also Spring Garden, a +nearby cattle ranch, and Mickleton which was presumably a relay station for +the teams hauling the sugar and rum to Port Henderson. The records, which +are available for the years from 1792 to 1796 inclusive, treat the three +properties as one establishment.[20] + +[Footnote 20: These records have been analyzed in U.B. Phillips, "A Jamaica +Slave Plantation," in the _American Historical Review_, XIX, 543-558.] + +The slaves of the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, apparently +all seasoned negroes, of whom 150 were in the main field gang. But this +force was inadequate for the full routine, and in that year "jobbing gangs" +from outside were employed at rates from _2s. 6d_. to _3s_. per head per +day and at a total cost of £1832, reckoned probably in Jamaican currency +which stood at thirty per cent, discount. In order to relieve the need of +this outside labor the management began that year to buy new Africans on a +scale considered reckless by all the island authorities. In March five men +and five women were bought; and in October 25 men, 27 women, 16 boys, 16 +girls and 6 children, all new Congoes; and in the next year 51 males and 30 +females, part Congoes and part Coromantees and nearly all of them eighteen +to twenty years old. Thirty new huts were built; special cooks and nurses +were detailed; and quantities of special foodstuffs were bought--yams, +plantains, flour, fresh and salt fish, and fresh beef heads, tongues, +hearts and bellies; but it is not surprising to find that the next outlay +for equipment was for a large new hospital in 1794, costing £341 for +building its brick walls alone. Yaws became serious, but that was a trifle +as compared with dysentery; and pleurisy, pneumonia, fever and dropsy had +also to be reckoned with. About fifty of the new negroes were quartered +for several years in a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the +routine even for the able-bodied was much lighter than on Worthy Park. + +One of the new negroes died in 1792, and another in the next year. Then in +the spring of 1794 the heavy mortality began. In that year at least 31 of +the newcomers died, nearly all of them from the "bloody flux" (dysentery) +except two who were thought to have committed suicide. By 1795, however, +the epidemic had passed. Of the five deaths of the new negroes that year, +two were attributed to dirt-eating,[21] one to yaws, and two to ulcers, +probably caused by yaws. The three years of the seasoning period were now +ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still alive. The +loss was perhaps less than usual where such large batches were bought; but +it demonstrates the strength of the shock involved in the transplantation +from Africa, even after the severities of the middle passage had been +survived and after the weaklings among the survivors had been culled out at +the ports. The outlay for jobbing gangs on Worthy Park rapidly diminished. + +[Footnote 21: The "fatal habit of eating dirt" is described by Thomas +Roughley in his _Planter's Guide_ (London. 1823) pp. 118-120.] + +The list of slaves at the beginning of 1794 is the only one giving full +data as to ages, colors and health as well as occupations. The ages were of +course in many cases mere approximations. The "great house negroes" head +the list, fourteen in number. They comprised four housekeepers, one of +whom however was but eight years old, three waiting boys, a cook, two +washerwomen, two gardeners and a grass carrier, and included nominally +Quadroon Lizette who after having been hired out for several years to Peter +Douglass, the owner of a jobbing gang, was this year manumitted. + +The overseer's house had its proportionate staff of nine domestics with two +seamstresses added, and it was also headquarters both for the nursing corps +and a group engaged in minor industrial pursuits. The former, with a "black +doctor" named Will Morris at its head, included a midwife, two nurses for +the hospital, four (one of them blind) for the new negroes, two for the +children in the day nursery, and one for the suckling babies of the women +in the gangs. The latter comprised three cooks to the gangs, one of whom +had lost a hand; a groom, three hog tenders, of whom one was ruptured, +another "distempered" and the third a ten-year-old boy, and ten aged idlers +including Quashy Prapra and Abba's Moll to mend pads, Yellow's Cuba and +Peg's Nancy to tend the poultry house, and the rest to gather grass and hog +feed. + +Next were listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, to guard against +depredations of men, cattle and rats and against conflagrations which might +sweep the ripening cane-fields and the buildings. All of these were black +but the mulatto foreman, and only six were described as able-bodied. The +disabilities noted were a bad sore leg, a broken back, lameness, partial +blindness, distemper, weakness, and cocobees which was a malady of the +blood. + +A considerable number of the slaves already mentioned were in such +condition that little work might be expected of them. Those completely laid +off were nine superannuated ranging from seventy to eighty-five years old, +three invalids, and three women relieved of work as by law required for +having reared six children each. + +Among the tradesmen, virtually all the blacks were stated to be fit for +field work, but the five mulattoes and the one quadroon, though mostly +youthful and healthy, were described as not fit for the field. There were +eleven carpenters, eight coopers, four sawyers, three masons and twelve +cattlemen, each squad with a foreman; and there were two ratcatchers whose +work was highly important, for the rats swarmed in incredible numbers and +spoiled the cane if left to work their will. A Jamaican author wrote, for +example, that in five or six months on one plantation "not less than nine +and thirty thousand were caught."[22] + +[Footnote 22: William Beckford, _A Discriptive Account of Jamaica_ (London, +1790), I. 55, 56.] + +In the "weeding gang," in which most of the children from five to eight +years old were kept as much for control as for achievement, there were +twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had +borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were +too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of +these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house, +were manumitted in 1795. + +Fifty-five, all new negroes except Darby the foreman, and including Blossom +the infant daughter of one of the women, comprised the Spring Garden squad. +Nearly all of these were twenty or twenty-one years old. The men included +Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume and +Sheridan; the women Spring, Summer, July, Bashfull, Virtue, Frolic, +Gamesome, Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle and Cowslip. Seventeen of this +distinguished company died within the year. + +The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 64 men from nineteen +to sixty years old and 73 women from nineteen to fifty years, though but +four of the women and nine of the men, including Quashy the "head driver" +or foreman, were past forty years. The gang included a "head home wainman," +a "head road wainman," who appears to have been also the sole slave plowman +on the place, a head muleman, three distillers, a boiler, two sugar +potters, and two "sugar guards" for the wagons carrying the crop to port. +All of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied and black. A +considerable number in it were new negroes, but only seven of the whole +died in this year of heaviest mortality. + +The "second gang," employed in a somewhat lighter routine under Sharper as +foreman, comprised 40 women and 27 men ranging from fifteen to sixty years, +all black. While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, four +were ulcerated, one was "inclined to be bloated," one was "very weak," and +Pheba was "healthy but worthless." + +Finally in the third or "small gang," for yet lighter work under Baddy as +driveress with Old Robin as assistant, there were 68 boys and girls, all +black, mostly between twelve and fifteen years old. The draught animals +comprised about 80 mules and 140 oxen. + +Among the 528 slaves all told--284 males and 244 females--74, equally +divided between the sexes, were fifty years old and upwards. If the new +negroes, virtually all of whom were doubtless in early life, be subtracted +from the gross, it appears that one-fifth of the seasoned stock had reached +the half century, and one-eighth were sixty years old and over. This is a +good showing of longevity. + +About eighty of the seasoned women were within the age limits of +childbearing. The births recorded were on an average of nine for each of +the five years covered, which was hardly half as many as might have been +expected under favorable conditions. Special entry was made in 1795 of the +number of children each woman had borne during her life, the number +of these living at the time this record was made, and the number of +miscarriages each woman had had. The total of births thus recorded was 345; +of children then living 159; of miscarriages 75. Old Quasheba and Betty +Madge had each borne fifteen children, and sixteen other women had borne +from six to eleven each. On the other hand, seventeen women of thirty years +and upwards had had no children and no miscarriages. The childbearing +records of the women past middle age ran higher than those of the younger +ones to a surprising degree. Perhaps conditions on Worthy Park had been +more favorable at an earlier period, when the owner and his family may +possibly have been resident there. The fact that more than half of the +children whom these women had borne were dead at the time of the record +comports with the reputation of the sugar colonies for heavy infant +mortality. With births so infrequent and infant deaths so many it may well +appear that the notorious failure of the island-bred stock to maintain its +numbers was not due to the working of the slaves to death. The poor care +of the young children may be attributed largely to the absence of a white +mistress, an absence characteristic of Jamaica plantations. There appears +to have been no white woman resident on Worthy Park during the time of this +record. In 1795 and perhaps in other years the plantation had a contract +for medical service at the rate of £140 a year. + +"Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great Britain Esquire" was the +absentee owner of Worthy Park. His kinsman Rose Price Esquire who was in +active charge was not salaried but may have received a manager's commission +of six per cent, on gross crop sales as contemplated in the laws of the +colony. In addition there were an overseer at £200, later £300, a year, +four bookkeepers at £50 to £60, a white carpenter at £120, and a white +plowman at £56. The overseer was changed three times during the five years +of the record, and the bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. The +bachelor staff was most probably responsible for the mulatto and quadroon +offspring and was doubtless responsible also for the occasional manumission +of a woman or child. + +Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the "drivers" or gang +foremen. Each of these had for example every year a "doubled milled cloth +colored great coat" costing 11$. 6_d_ and a "fine bound hat with girdle and +buckle" costing 10$. 6_d_.As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quart +of rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, four +boilers, two head cattlemen, two head mulemen, the "stoke-hole boatswain," +and the black doctor, and to the foremen respectively of the sawyers, +coopers, blacksmiths, watchmen, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the +head home wainman, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's field +nurse. These allowances totaled about three hundred gallons yearly. But +a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at +Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were recorded of +"rum used for the negroes on the estate." Upon the birth of each child the +mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver dollar. + +No record of whippings appears to have been kept, nor of any offenses +except absconding. Of the runaways, reports were made to the parish vestry +of those lying out at the end of each quarter. At the beginning of the +record there were no runaways and at the end there were only four; but +during 1794 and 1795 there were eight or nine listed in each report, most +of whom were out for but a few months each, but several for a year or two; +and several furthermore absconded a second or third time after returning. +The runaways were heterogeneous in age and occupation, with more old +negroes among them than might have been expected. Most of them were men; +but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, and +the old pad-mender Abba's Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter. A +few of those recovered were returned through the public agency of the +workhouse. Some of the rest may have come back of their own accord. + +In the summer of 1795, when absconding had for some time been too common, +the recaptured runaways and a few other offenders were put for disgrace and +better surveillance into a special "vagabond gang." This comprised Billy +Scott, who was usually a mason and sugar guard, Oxford who as head cooper +had enjoyed a weekly quart of rum, Cesar a sawyer, and Moll the old +pad-mender, along with three men and two women from the main gangs, and +three half-grown boys. The vagabond gang was so wretchedly assorted for +industrial purposes that it was probably soon disbanded and its members +distributed to their customary tasks. For use in marking slaves a branding +iron was inventoried, but in the way of arms there were merely two muskets, +a fowling piece and twenty-four old guns without locks. Evidently no +turbulence was anticipated. Worthy Park bought nearly all of its hardware, +dry goods, drugs and sundries in London, and its herrings for the negroes +and salt pork and beef for the white staff in Cork. Corn was cultivated +between the rows in some of the cane fields on the plantation, and some +guinea-corn was bought from neighbors. The negroes raised their own yams +and other vegetables, and doubtless pigs and poultry as well; and plantains +were likely to be plentiful. + +Every October cloth was issued at the rate of seven yards of osnaburgs, +three of checks, and three of baize for each adult and proportionately for +children. The first was to be made into coats, trousers and frocks, the +second into shirts and waists, the third into bedclothes. The cutting and +sewing were done in the cabins. A hat and a cap were also issued to each +negro old enough to go into the field, and a clasp-knife to each one above +the age of the third gang. From the large purchases of Scotch rugs recorded +it seems probable that these were issued on other occasions than those of +childbirth. As to shoes, however, the record is silent. + +The Irish provisions cost annually about £300, and the English supplies +about £1000, not including such extra outlays as that of £1355 in 1793 for +new stills, worms, and coppers. Local expenditures were probably reckoned +in currency. Converted into sterling, the salary list amounted to about +£500, and the local outlay for medical services, wharfage, and petty +supplies came to a like amount. Taxes, manager's commissions, and the +depreciation of apparatus must have amounted collectively to £800. The +net death-loss of slaves, not including that from the breaking-in of new +negroes, averaged about two and a quarter per cent.; that of the mules and +oxen ten per cent. When reckoned upon the numbers on hand in 1796 when the +plantation with 470 slaves was operating with very little outside help, +these losses, which must be replaced by new purchases if the scale of +output was to be maintained, amounted to about £900. Thus a total of £4000 +sterling is reached as the average current expense in years when no mishaps +occurred. + +The crops during the years of the record averaged 311 hogsheads of sugar, +sixteen hundredweight each, and 133 puncheons of rum, 110 gallons each. +This was about the common average on the island, of two-thirds as many +hogsheads as there were slaves of all ages on a plantation.[23] If the +prices had been those current in the middle of the eighteenth century these +crops would have yielded the proprietor great profits. But at £15 per +hogshead and £10 per puncheon, the prices generally current in the island +in the seventeen-nineties, the gross return was but about £6000 sterling, +and the net earnings of the establishment accordingly not above £2000. The +investment in slaves, mules and oxen was about £28,000, and that in land, +buildings and equipment according to the island authorities, would reach a +like sum.[24] The net earnings in good years were thus less than four per +cent. on the investment; but the liability to hurricanes, earthquakes, +fires, epidemics and mutinies would bring the safe expectations +considerably lower. A mere pestilence which carried off about sixty mules +and two hundred oxen on Worthy Park in 1793-1794 wiped out more than a +year's earnings. + +[Footnote 23: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 433, 439.] + +[Footnote 24: Edwards, _West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] + +In the twenty years prior to the beginning of the Worthy Park record more +than one-third of all the sugar plantations in Jamaica had gone through +bankruptcy. It was generally agreed that, within the limits of efficient +operation, the larger an estate was, the better its prospect for net +earnings. But though Worthy Park had more than twice the number of slaves +that the average plantation employed, it was barely paying its way. + +In the West Indies as a whole there was a remarkable repetition of +developments and experiences in island after island, similar to that +which occurred in the North American plantation regions, but even more +pronounced. The career of Barbados was followed rapidly by the other Lesser +Antilles under the English and French flags; these were all exceeded by the +greater scale of Jamaica; she in turn yielded the primacy in sugar to Hayti +only to have that French possession, when overwhelmed by its great negro +insurrection, give the paramount place to the Spanish Porto Rico and Cuba. +In each case the opening of a fresh area under imperial encouragement would +promote rapid immigration and vigorous industry on every scale; the land +would be taken up first in relatively small holdings; the prosperity of the +pioneers would prompt a more systematic husbandry and the consolidation of +estates, involving the replacement of the free small proprietors by slave +gangs; but diminishing fertility and intensifying competition would in the +course of years more than offset the improvement of system. Meanwhile more +pioneers, including perhaps some of those whom the planters had bought out +in the original colonies, would found new settlements; and as these in turn +developed, the older colonies would decline and decay in spite of desperate +efforts by their plantation proprietors to hold their own through the +increase of investments and the improvement of routine.[25] + +[Footnote 25: Herman Merivale, _Colonisation and Colonies_ (London, 1841), +PP. 92,93.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE TOBACCO COLONIES + + +The purposes of the Virginia Company of London and of the English public +which gave it sanction were profit for the investors and aggrandizement +for the nation, along with the reduction of pauperism at home and the +conversion of the heathen abroad. For income the original promoters looked +mainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, and +the production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they were +on the alert for unexpected opportunities to be exploited. The following of +the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco +culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At +the outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, +Virginia was launched with varied hopes and vague expectations. The project +was on the knees of the gods, which for a time proved a place of extreme +discomfort and peril. + +The first comers in the spring of 1607, numbering a bare hundred men and +no women, were moved by the spirit of adventure. With a cumbrous and +oppressive government over them, and with no private ownership of land nor +other encouragement for steadygoing thrift, the only chance for personal +gain was through a stroke of discovery. No wonder the loss of time and +strength in futile excursions. No wonder the disheartening reaction in the +malaria-stricken camp of Jamestown. + +A second hundred men arriving early in 1608 found but forty of the first +alive. The combined forces after lading the ships with "gilded dirt" and +cedar logs, were left facing the battle with Indians and disease. The dirt +when it reached London proved valueless, and the cedar, of course, worth +little. The company that summer sent further recruits including two women +and several Poles and Germans to make soap-ashes, glass and pitch--"skilled +workmen from foraine parts which may teach and set ours in the way where we +may set thousands a work in these such like services."[1] At the same time +it instructed the captain of the ship to explore and find either a lump of +gold, the South Sea passage, or some of Raleigh's lost colonists, and it +sent the officials at Jamestown peremptory notice that unless the £2000 +spent on the present supply be met by the proceeds of the ship's return +cargo, the settlers need expect no further aid. The shrewd and redoubtable +Captain John Smith, now president in the colony, opposed the vain +explorings, and sent the council in London a characteristic "rude letter." +The ship, said he, kept nearly all the victuals for its crew, while the +settlers, "the one halfe sicke, the other little better," had as their diet +"a little meale and water, and not sufficient of that." The foreign experts +had been set at their assigned labors; but "it were better to give five +hundred pound a tun for those grosse commodities in Denmarke than send for +them hither till more necessary things be provided. For in over-toyling our +weake and unskilfull bodies to satisfie this desire of present profit we +can scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another.... As yet you +must not looke for any profitable returnes."[2] + +[Footnote 1: Alexander Brown, _The First Republic in America_ (Boston, +1898), p. 68.] + +[Footnote 2: Capt. John Smith, _Works_, Arber ed. (Birmingham, 1884), pp. +442-445. Smith's book, it should be said, is the sole source for this +letter.] + +This unwelcome advice while daunting all mercenary promoters gave spur to +strong-hearted patriots. The prospect of profits was gone; the hope of +an overseas empire survived. The London Company, with a greatly improved +charter, appealed to the public through sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, +and personal canvassing, with such success that subscriptions to its stock +poured in from "lords, knights, gentlemen and others," including the trade +guilds and the town corporations. In lieu of cash dividends the company +promised that after a period of seven years, during which the settlers were +to work on the company's account and any surplus earnings were to be spent +on the colony or funded, a dividend in land would be issued. In this the +settlers were to be embraced as if instead of emigrating each of them had +invested £12 10s. in a share of stock. Several hundred recruits were sent +in 1609, and many more in the following years; but from the successive +governors at Jamestown came continued reports of disease, famine and +prostration, and pleas ever for more men and supplies. The company, bravely +keeping up its race with the death rate, met all demands as best it could. + +To establish a firmer control, Sir Thomas Dale was sent out in 1611 as high +marshal along with Sir Thomas Gates as governor. Both of these were men +of military training, and they carried with them a set of stringent +regulations quite in keeping with their personal proclivities. These rulers +properly regarded their functions as more industrial than political. They +for the first time distributed the colonists into a series of settlements +up and down the river for farming and live-stock tending; they spurred the +willing workers by assigning them three-acre private gardens; and they +mercilessly coerced the laggard. They transformed the colony from a +distraught camp into a group of severely disciplined farms, owned by the +London Company, administered by its officials, and operated partly by its +servants, partly by its tenants who paid rent in the form of labor. That is +to say, Virginia was put upon a schedule of plantation routine, producing +its own food supply and wanting for the beginning of prosperity only a +marketable crop. This was promptly supplied through John Rolfe's experiment +in 1612 in raising tobacco. The English people were then buying annually +some £200,000 worth of that commodity, mainly from the Spanish West Indies, +at prices which might be halved or quartered and yet pay the freight and +yield substantial earnings; and so rapid was the resort to the staple in +Virginia that soon the very market place in Jamestown was planted in it. +The government in fact had to safeguard the food supply by forbidding +anyone to plant tobacco until he had put two acres in grain. + +When the Gates-Dale administration ended, the seven year period from 1609 +was on the point of expiry; but the temptation of earnings from tobacco +persuaded the authorities to delay the land dividend. Samuel Argall, the +new governor, while continuing the stringent discipline, robbed the company +for his own profit; and the news of his misdeeds reaching London in 1618 +discredited the faction in the company which had supported his régime. The +capture of control by the liberal element among the stockholders, led +by Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton, was promptly signalized by +measures for converting Virginia into a commonwealth. A land distribution +was provided on a generous scale, and Sir George Yeardley was dispatched as +governor with instructions to call a representative assembly of the people +to share in the making of laws. The land warrants were issued at the rate +of a hundred acres on each share of stock and a similar amount to each +colonist of the time, to be followed in either case by the grant of a +second hundred acres upon proof that the first had been improved; and fifty +acres additional in reward for the future importation of every laborer. + +While the company continued as before to send colonists on its own account, +notably craftsmen, indigent London children, and young women to become +wives for the bachelor settlers, it now offered special stimulus to its +members to supplement its exertions. To this end it provided that groups +of its stockholders upon organizing themselves into sub-companies or +partnerships might consolidate their several grants into large units called +particular plantations; and it ordered that "such captaines or leaders of +perticulerr plantations that shall goe there to inhabite by vertue of their +graunts and plant themselves, their tenants and servants in Virginia, +shall have liberty till a forme of government be here settled for them, +associatinge unto them divers of the gravest and discreetes of their +companies, to make orders, ordinances and constitutions for the better +orderinge and dyrectinge of their servants and buisines, provided they be +not repugnant to the lawes of England."[3] + +[Footnote 3: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. +(Washington, 1906), I, 303.] + +To embrace this opportunity some fifty grants for particular plantations +were taken out during the remaining life of the London Company. Among them +were Southampton Hundred and Martin's Hundred, to each of which two or +three hundred settlers were sent prior to 1620,[4] and Berkeley Hundred +whose records alone are available. The grant for this last was issued +in February, 1619, to a missionary enthusiast, George Thorpe, and his +partners, whose collective holdings of London Company stock amounted to +thirty-five shares. To them was given and promised land in proportion to +stock and settlers, together with a bonus of 1500 acres in view of their +project for converting the Indians. Their agent in residence was as usual +vested with public authority over the dwellers on the domain, limited +only by the control of the Virginia government in military matters and in +judicial cases on appeal.[5] After delays from bad weather, the initial +expedition set sail in September comprising John Woodleaf as captain and +thirty-four other men of diverse trades bound to service for terms ranging +from three to eight years at varying rates of compensation. Several of +these were designated respectively as officers of the guard, keeper of the +stores, caretaker of arms and implements, usher of the hall, and clerk +of the kitchen. Supplies of provisions and equipment were carried, and +instructions in detail for the building of houses, the fencing of land, +the keeping of watch, and the observances of religion. Next spring the +settlement, which had been planted near the mouth of the Appomattox River, +was joined by Thorpe himself, and in the following autumn by William Tracy +who had entered the partnership and now carried his own family together +with a preacher and some forty servants. Among these were nine women and +the two children of a man who had gone over the year before. As giving +light upon indented servitude in the period it may be noted that many of +those sent to Berkeley Hundred were described as "gentlemen," and that five +of them within the first year besought their masters to send them each +two indented servants for their use and at their expense. Tracy's vessel +however was too small to carry all whom it was desired to send. It was in +fact so crowded with plantation supplies that Tracy wrote on the eve of +sailing: "I have throw out mani things of my own yet is ye midill and upper +extre[m]li pestered so that ouer men will not lie like men and ye mareners +hath not rome to stir God is abel in ye gretest weknes to helpe we will +trust to marsi for he must help be yond hope." Fair winds appear to have +carried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly took +charge of the plantation, displacing Woodleaf whose services had given +dissatisfaction. Beyond this point the records are extremely scant; but +it may be gathered that the plantation was wrecked and most of its +inhabitants, including Thorpe, slain in the great Indian massacre of 1622. +The restoration of the enterprise was contemplated in an after year, but +eventually the land was sold to other persons. + +[Footnote 4: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. +(Washington, 1906), I, 350.] + +[Footnote 5: The records of this enterprise (the Smyth of Nibley papers) +have been printed in the New York Public Library _Bulletin_, III, 160-171, +208-233, 248-258, 276-295.] + +The fate of Berkeley Hundred was at the same time the fate of most others +of the same sort; and the extinction of the London Company in 1624 ended +the granting of patents on that plan. The owners of the few surviving +particular plantations, furthermore, found before long that ownership by +groups of absentees was poorly suited to the needs of the case, and that +the exercise of public jurisdiction was of more trouble than it was worth. +The particular plantation system proved accordingly but an episode, yet it +furnished a transition, which otherwise might not readily have been found, +from Virginia the plantation of the London Company, to Virginia the colony +of private plantations and farms. When settlement expanded afresh after the +Indians were driven away many private estates gradually arose to follow the +industrial routine of those which had been called particular. + +The private plantations were hampered in their development by dearth of +capital and labor and by the extremely low prices of tobacco which began at +the end of the sixteen-twenties as a consequence of overproduction. But +by dint of good management and the diversification of their industry the +exceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried. +Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirty +years standing," whose establishment was at Blunt Point on the lower James, +it was written in 1648: "He hath a fine house and all things answerable to +it; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; he +keeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, hath +eight shoemakers employed in this trade, hath forty negroe servants, brings +them up to trades in his house: he yeerly sowes abundance of wheat, barley, +etc. The wheat he selleth at four shillings the bushell; kills store of +beeves, and sells them to victuall the ships when they come thither; hath +abundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poltery. He +married the daughter of Sir Tho. Hinton, and in a word, keeps a good +house, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia. He is worthy of much +honour."[6] Many other planters were thriving more modestly, most of them +giving nearly all their attention to the one crop. The tobacco output was +of course increasing prodigiously. The export from Virginia in 1619 had +amounted to twenty thousand pounds; that from Virginia and Maryland in 1664 +aggregated fifty thousand hogsheads of about five hundred pounds each.[7] + +[Footnote 6: _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649), reprinted +in Peter Force _Tracts_, vol. II.] + +[Footnote 7: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth +Century_ (New York, 1896), I, 391.] + +The labor problem was almost wholly that of getting and managing bondsmen. +Land in the colony was virtually to be had for the taking; and in general +no freemen arriving in the colony would engage for such wages as employers +could afford to pay. Workers must be imported. Many in England were willing +to come, and more could be persuaded or coerced, if their passage were paid +and employment assured. To this end indentured servitude had already been +inaugurated by the London Company as a modification of the long used system +of apprenticeship. And following that plan, ship captains brought hundreds, +then thousands of laborers a year and sold their indentures to the planters +either directly or through dealers in such merchandize. The courts took +the occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts to +deportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisoners +during the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose the +supply was further swelled by the agency of professional kidnappers. + +The bondage varied as to its terms, with two years apparently the minimum. +The compensation varied also from mere transportation and sustenance to a +payment in advance and a stipulation for outfit in clothing, foodstuffs +and diverse equipment at the end of service. The quality of redemptioners +varied from the very dregs of society to well-to-do apprentice planters; +but the general run was doubtless fairly representative of the English +working classes. Even the convicts under the terrible laws of that century +were far from all being depraved. This labor in all its grades, however, +had serious drawbacks. Its first cost was fairly heavy; it was liable to an +acclimating fever with a high death rate; its term generally expired not +long after its adjustment and training were completed; and no sooner was +its service over than it set up for itself, often in tobacco production, to +compete with its former employers and depress the price of produce. If the +plantation system were to be perpetuated an entirely different labor supply +must be had. + +"About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty +negars." Thus wrote John Rolfe in a report of happenings in 1619;[8] and +thus, after much antiquarian dispute, the matter seems to stand as to the +first bringing of negroes to Virginia. The man-of-war, or more accurately +the privateer, had taken them from a captured slaver, and it seems to have +sold them to the colonial government itself, which in turn sold them to +private settlers. At the beginning of 1625, when a census of the colony was +made,[9] the negroes, then increased to twenty-three in a total population +of 1232 of which about one-half were white servants, were distributed in +seven localities along the James River. In 1630 a second captured cargo was +sold in the colony, and from 1635 onward small lots were imported nearly +every year.[10] Part of these came from England, part from New Netherland +and most of the remainder doubtless from the West Indies. In 1649 Virginia +was reckoned to have some three hundred negroes mingled with its fifteen +thousand whites.[11] After two decades of a somewhat more rapid importation +Governor Berkeley estimated the gross population in 1671 at forty thousand, +including six thousand white servants and two thousand negro slaves.[12] +Ere this there was also a small number of free negroes. But not until +near the end of the century, when the English government had restricted +kidnapping, when the Virginia assembly had forbidden the bringing in of +convicts, and when the direct trade from Guinea had reached considerable +dimensions, did the negroes begin to form the bulk of the Virginia +plantation gangs. + +[Footnote 8: John Smith _Works_, Arber ed., p. 541.] + +[Footnote 9: Tabulated in the _Virginia Magazine_, VII, 364-367.] + +[Footnote 10: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 72-77.] + +[Footnote 11: _A New Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649).] + +[Footnote 12: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, II, 515.] + +Thus for two generations the negroes were few, they were employed alongside +the white servants, and in many cases were members of their masters' +households. They had by far the best opportunity which any of their race +had been given in America to learn the white men's ways and to adjust +the lines of their bondage into as pleasant places as might be. Their +importation was, for the time, on but an experimental scale, and even their +legal status was during the early decades indefinite. + +The first comers were slaves in the hands of their maritime sellers; but +they were not fully slaves in the hands of their Virginian buyers, for +there was neither law nor custom then establishing the institution of +slavery in the colony. The documents of the times point clearly to a vague +tenure. In the county court records prior to 1661 the negroes are called +negro servants or merely negroes--never, it appears, definitely slaves. A +few were expressly described as servants for terms of years, and others +were conceded property rights of a sort incompatible with the institution +of slavery as elaborated in later times. Some of the blacks were in fact +liberated by the courts as having served out the terms fixed either by +their indentures or by the custom of the country. By the middle of the +century several had become free landowners, and at least one of them owned +a negro servant who went to court for his freedom but was denied it because +he could not produce the indenture which he claimed to have possessed. +Nevertheless as early as the sixteen-forties the holders of negroes were +falling into the custom of considering them, and on occasion selling them +along with the issue of the females, as servants for life and perpetuity. +The fact that negroes not bound for a term were coming to be appraised as +high as £30, while the most valuable white redemptioners were worth not +above £15 shows also the tendency toward the crystallization of slavery +before any statutory enactments declared its existence.[13] + +[Footnote 13: The substance of this paragraph is drawn mainly from the +illuminating discussion of J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ +(Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XXXI, no. 3, Baltimore, 1913), pp. +24-35.] + +Until after the middle of the century the laws did not discriminate in any +way between the races. The tax laws were an index of the situation. The +act of 1649, for example, confined the poll tax to male inhabitants of all +sorts above sixteen years old. But the act of 1658 added imported female +negroes, along with Indian female servants; and this rating of negro +women as men for tax purposes was continued thenceforward as a permanent +practice. A special act of 1668, indeed, gave sharp assertion to the policy +of using taxation as a token of race distinction: "Whereas some doubts have +arisen whether negro women set free were still to be accompted tithable +according to a former act, it is declared by this grand assembly that +negro women, though permitted to enjoy their freedome yet ought not in all +respects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and impunities +of the English, and are still liable to the payment of taxes."[14] + +[Footnote 14: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, I, 361, 454; +II, 267.] + +As to slavery itself, the earliest laws giving it mention did not establish +the institution but merely recognized it, first indirectly then directly, +as in existence by force of custom. The initial act of this series, passed +in 1656, promised the Indian tribes that when they sent hostages the +Virginians would not "use them as slaves."[15] The next, an act of +1660, removing impediments to trade by the Dutch and other foreigners, +contemplated specifically their bringing in of "negro slaves."[16] The +third, in the following year, enacted that if any white servants ran away +in company with "any negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by +addition of time," the white fugitives must serve for the time of the +negroes' absence in addition to suffering the usual penalties on their own +score.[17] A negro whose time of service could not be extended must needs +have been a servant for life--in other words a slave. Then in 1662 it was +enacted that "whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any +Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, ... all children born +in this colony shall be bond or free only according to the condition of the +mother."[18] Thus within six years from the first mention of slaves in the +Virginia laws, slavery was definitely recognized and established as the +hereditary legal status of such negroes and mulattoes as might be held +therein. Eighteen years more elapsed before a distinctive police law for +slaves was enacted; but from 1680 onward the laws for their control were as +definite and for the time being virtually as stringent as those which in +the same period were being enacted in Barbados and Jamaica. + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., I, 396.] + +[Footnote 16: _Ibid_., 540.] + +[Footnote 17: T Hening, II, 26.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., 170.] + +In the first decade or two after the London Company's end the plantation +and farm clearings broke the Virginian wilderness only in a narrow line on +either bank of the James River from its mouth to near the present site of +Richmond, and in a small district on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. +Virtually all the settlers were then raising tobacco, all dwelt at the +edge of navigable water, and all were neighbors to the Indians. As further +decades passed the similar shores of the parallel rivers to the northward, +the York, then the Rappahannock and the Potomac, were occupied in a similar +way, though with an increasing predominance of large landholdings. This +broadened the colony and gave it a shape conducive to more easy frontier +defence. It also led the way to an eventual segregation of industrial +pursuits, for the tidewater peninsulas were gradually occupied more or less +completely by the planters; while the farmers of less estate, weaned from +tobacco by its fall in price, tended to move west and south to new areas on +the mainland, where they dwelt in self-sufficing democratic neighborhoods, +and formed incidentally a buffer between the plantations on the seaboard +and the Indians round about. + +With the lapse of years the number of planters increased, partly through +the division of estates, partly through the immigration of propertied +Englishmen, and partly through the rise of exceptional yeomen to the +planting estate. The farmers increased with still greater speed; for the +planters in recruiting their gangs of indented laborers were serving +constantly as immigration agents and as constantly the redemptioners upon +completing their terms were becoming yeomen, marrying and multiplying. +Meanwhile the expansion of Maryland was extending an identical régime of +planters and farmers from the northern bank of the Potomac round the head +of the Chesapeake all the way to the eastern shore settlements of Virginia. + +In Maryland the personal proprietorship of Lord Baltimore and his desire to +found a Catholic haven had no lasting effect upon the industrial and social +development. The geographical conditions were so like those in Virginia and +the adoption of her system so obviously the road to success that no other +plans were long considered. Even the few variations attempted assimilated +themselves more or less promptly to the régime of the older colony. The +career of the manor system is typical. The introduction of that medieval +régime was authorized by the charter for Maryland and was provided for in +turn by the Lord Proprietor's instructions to the governor. Every grant of +one thousand, later two thousand acres, was to be made a manor, with its +appropriate court to settle differences between lord and tenant, to adjudge +civil cases between tenants where the issues involved did not exceed the +value of two pounds sterling, and to have cognizance of misdemeanors +committed on the manor. The fines and other profits were to go to the +manorial lord. + +Many of these grants were made, and in a few instances the manorial courts +duly held their sessions. For St. Clement's Manor, near the mouth of the +Potomac, for example, court records between 1659 and 1672 are extant. John +Ryves, steward of Thomas Gerard the proprietor, presided; Richard +Foster assisted as the elected bailiff; and the classified freeholders, +lease-holders, "essoines" and residents served as the "jury and homages." +Characteristic findings were "that Samuell Harris broke the peace with a +stick"; that John Mansell illegally entertained strangers; that land lines +"are at this present unperfect and very obscure"; that a Cheptico Indian +had stolen a shirt from Edward Turner's house, for which he is duly fined +"if he can be knowne"; "that the lord of the mannor hath not provided a +paire of stocks, pillory and ducking stoole--Ordered that these instruments +of justice be provided by the next court by a general contribution +throughout the manor"; that certain freeholders had failed to appear, "to +do their suit at the lord's court, wherefore they are amerced each man 50l. +of tobacco to the lord"; that Joshua Lee had injured "Jno. Hoskins his +hoggs by setting his doggs on them and tearing their eares and other hurts, +for which he is fined 100l. of tobacco and caske"; "that upon the death of +Mr. Robte Sly there is a reliefe due to the lord and that Mr. Gerard Sly is +his next heire, who hath sworne fealty accordingly,"[19] + +[Footnote 19: John Johnson, _Old Maryland Manors_ (Johns Hopkins University +_Studies_, I, no, 7, Baltimore, 1883), pp. 31-38.] + +St. Clement's was probably almost unique in its perseverance as a true +manor; and it probably discarded its medieval machinery not long after the +end of the existing record. In general, since public land was to be had +virtually free in reward for immigration whether in freedom or service, +most of the so-called manors doubtless procured neither leaseholders nor +essoines nor any other sort of tenants, and those of them which survived as +estates found their salvation in becoming private plantations with servant +and slave gangs tilling their tobacco fields. In short, the Maryland manors +began and ended much as the Virginia particular plantations had done before +them. Maryland on the whole assumed the features of her elder sister. Her +tobacco was of lower grade, partly because of her long delay in providing +public inspection; her people in consequence were generally less +prosperous, her plantations fewer in proportion to her farms, and her +labor supply more largely of convicts and other white servants and +correspondingly less of negroes. But aside from these variations in degree +the developments and tendencies in the one were virtually those of the +other. + +Before the end of the seventeenth century William Fitzhugh of Virginia +wrote that his plantations were being worked by "fine crews" of negroes, +the majority of whom were natives of the colony. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges +owned 108 slaves, John Carter 106, Ralph Wormeley 91, Robert Beverly 42, +Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., 40, and various other proprietors proportionate +numbers.[20] The conquest of the wilderness was wellnigh complete on +tidewater, and the plantation system had reached its full type for +the Chesapeake latitudes. Broad forest stretches divided most of the +plantations from one another and often separated the several fields on +the same estate; but the cause of this was not so much the paucity of +population as the character of the land and the prevalent industry. The +sandy expanses, and the occasional belts of clay likewise, had but a +surface fertility, and the cheapness of land prevented the conservation of +the soil. Hence the fields when rapidly exhausted by successive cropping in +tobacco were as a rule abandoned to broomsedge and scrub timber while new +and still newer grounds were cleared and cropped. Each estate therefore, if +its owner expected it to last a lifetime, must comprise an area in forestry +much larger than that at any one time in tillage. The great reaches of the +bay and the deep tidal rivers, furthermore, afforded such multitudinous +places of landing for ocean-going ships that all efforts to modify the +wholly rural condition of the tobacco colonies by concentrating settlement +were thwarted. It is true that Norfolk and Baltimore grew into consequence +during the eighteenth century; but the one throve mainly on the trade of +landlocked North Carolina, and the other on that of Pennsylvania. Not +until the plantation area had spread well into the piedmont hinterland did +Richmond and her sister towns near the falls on the rivers begin to focus +Virginia and Maryland trade; and even they had little influence upon life +on the tidewater peninsulas. + +[Footnote 20: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 88.] + +The third tobacco-producing colony, North Carolina, was the product of +secondary colonization. Virginia's expansion happened to send some of +her people across the boundary, where upon finding themselves under the +jurisdiction of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina they took pains to keep +that authority upon a strictly nominal basis. The first comers, about 1660, +and most of those who followed, were and continued to be small farmers; but +in the course of decades a considerable number of plantations arose in the +fertile districts about Albemarle Sound. Nearly everywhere in the lowlands, +however, the land was too barren for any distinct prosperity. The +settlements were quite isolated, the communications very poor, and the +social tone mostly that of the backwoods frontier. An Anglican missionary +when describing his own plight there in 1711 discussed the industrial +régime about him: "Men are generally of all trades and women the like +within their spheres, except some who are the posterity of old planters +and have great numbers of slaves who understand most handicraft. Men are +generally carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, coopers, butchers, tanners, +shoemakers, tallow-chandlers, watermen and what not; women, soap-makers, +starch-makers, dyers, etc. He or she that cannot do all these things, or +hath not slaves that can, over and above all the common occupations of both +sexes, will have but a bad time of it; for help is not to be had at any +rate, every one having business enough of his own. This makes tradesmen +turn planters, and these become tradesmen. No society one with another, but +all study to live by their own hands, of their own produce; and what they +can spare goes for foreign goods. Nay, many live on a slender diet to buy +rum, sugar and molasses, with other such like necessaries, which are sold +at such a rate that the planter here is but a slave to raise a provision +for other colonies, and dare not allow himself to partake of his own +creatures, except it be the corn of the country in hominy bread."[21] Some +of the farmers and probably all the planters raised tobacco according to +the methods prevalent in Virginia. Some also made tar for sale from the +abounding pine timber; but with most of the families intercourse with +markets must have been at an irreducible minimum. + +[Footnote 21: Letter of Rev. John Urmstone, July 7, 1711, to the secretary +of the Society for Propagating the Gospel, printed in F.L. Hawks, _History +of North Carolina_ (Fayetteville, N.C., 1857, 1858), II, 215, 216.] + +Tobacco culture, while requiring severe exertion only at a few crises, +involved a long painstaking routine because of the delicacy of the plant +and the difficulty of producing leaf of good quality, whether of the +original varieties, oronoko and sweet-scented, or of the many others later +developed. The seed must be sown in late winter or early spring in a +special bed of deep forest mold dressed with wood ashes; and the fields +must be broken and laid off by shallow furrows into hills three or four +feet apart by the time the seedlings were grown to a finger's length. Then +came the first crisis. During or just after an April, May or June rain the +young plants must be drawn carefully from their beds, distributed in the +fields, and each plant set in its hill. Able-bodied, expert hands could set +them at the rate of thousands a day; and every nerve must be strained for +the task's completion before the ground became dry enough to endanger the +seedlings' lives. Then began a steady repetition of hoeings and plowings, +broken by the rush after a rain to replant the hills whose first plants had +died or grown twisted. Then came also several operations of special tedium. +Each plant at the time of forming its flower bud must be topped at a height +to leave a specified number of leaves growing on the stalk, and each stalk +must have the suckers growing at the base of the leaf-stems pulled off; +and the under side of every leaf must be examined twice at least for the +destruction of the horn-worms. These came each year in two successive +armies or "gluts," the one when the plants were half grown, the other when +they were nearly ready for harvest. When the crop began to turn yellow the +stalks must be cut off close to the ground, and after wilting carried to +a well ventilated tobacco house and there hung speedily for curing. Each +stalk must hang at a proper distance from its neighbor, attached to laths +laid in tiers on the joists. There the crop must stay for some months, +with the windows open in dry weather and closed in wet. Finally came the +striking, sorting and prizing in weather moist enough to make the leaves +pliable. Part of the gang would lower the stalks to the floor, where the +rest working in trios would strip them, the first stripper taking the +culls, the second the bright leaves, the third the remaining ones of dull +color. Each would bind his takings into "hands" of about a quarter of a +pound each and throw them into assorted piles. In the packing or "prizing" +a barefoot man inside the hogshead would lay the bundles in courses, +tramping them cautiously but heavily. Then a second hogshead, without a +bottom, would be set atop the first and likewise filled, and then perhaps +a third, when the whole stack would be put under blocks and levers +compressing the contents into the one hogshead at the bottom, which when +headed up was ready for market. Oftentimes a crop was not cured enough for +prizing until the next crop had been planted. Meanwhile the spare time of +the gang was employed in clearing new fields, tending the subsidiary crops, +mending fences, and performing many other incidental tasks. With some +exaggeration an essayist wrote, "The whole circle of the year is one +scene of bustle and toil, in which tobacco claims a constant and chief +share."[22] + +[Footnote 22: C.W. Gooch, "Prize Essay on Agriculture in Virginia," in the +_Lynchburg Virginian_, July 14, 1833. More detailed is W.W. Bowie, "Prize +Essay on the Cultivation and Management of Tobacco," in the U.S. Patent +Office _Report_, 1849-1850, pp. 318-324. E.R. Billings, _Tobacco_ +(Hartford, 1875) is a good general treatise.] + +The general scale of slaveholdings in the tobacco districts cannot +be determined prior to the close of the American Revolution; but the +statistics then available may be taken as fairly representative for the +eighteenth century at large. A state census taken in certain Virginia +counties in 1782-1783[23] permits the following analysis for eight of them +selected for their large proportions of slaves. These counties, Amelia, +Hanover, Lancaster, Middlesex, New Kent, Richmond, Surry and Warwick, are +scattered through the Tidewater and the lower Piedmont. For each one of +their citizens, fifteen altogether, who held upwards of one hundred slaves, +there were approximately three who had from 50 to 99; seven with from 30 to +49; thirteen with from 20 to 29; forty with from 10 to 19; forty with from +5 to 9; seventy with from 1 to 4; and sixty who had none. In the three +chief plantation counties of Maryland, viz. Ann Arundel, Charles, and +Prince George, the ratios among the slaveholdings of the several scales, +according to the United States census of 1790, were almost identical +with those just noted in the selected Virginia counties, but the +non-slaveholders were nearly twice as numerous in proportion. In all these +Virginia and Maryland counties the average holding ranged between 8.5 +and 13 slaves. In the other districts in both commonwealths, where the +plantation system was not so dominant, the average slaveholding was +smaller, of course, and the non-slaveholders more abounding. + +[Footnote 23: Printed in lieu of the missing returns of the first U.S. +census, in _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: +Virginia_ (Washington, 1908).] + +The largest slaveholding in Maryland returned in the census of 1790 was +that of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, comprising 316 slaves. Among the +largest reported in Virginia in 1782-1783 were those of John Tabb, Amelia +County, 257; William Allen, Sussex County, 241; George Chewning, 224, and +Thomas Nelson, 208, in Hanover County; Wilson N. Gary, Fluvanna County, +200; and George Washington, Fairfax County, 188. Since the great planters +occasionally owned several scattered plantations it may be that the +censuses reported some of the slaves under the names of the overseers +rather than under those of the owners; but that such instances were +probably few is indicated by the fact that the holdings of Chewning and +Nelson above noted were each listed by the census takers in several +parcels, with the names of owners and overseers both given. + +The great properties were usually divided, even where the lands lay in +single tracts, into several plantations for more convenient operation, each +under a separate overseer or in some cases under a slave foreman. If the +working squads of even the major proprietors were of but moderate scale, +those in the multitude of minor holdings were of course lesser still. On +the whole, indeed, slave industry was organized in smaller units by far +than most writers, whether of romance or history, would have us believe. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE RICE COAST + + +The impulse for the formal colonization of Carolina came from Barbados, +which by the time of the Restoration was both overcrowded and torn with +dissension. Sir John Colleton, one of the leading planters in that little +island, proposed to several of his powerful Cavalier friends in England +that they join him in applying for a proprietary charter to the vacant +region between Virginia and Florida, with a view of attracting Barbadians +and any others who might come. In 1663 accordingly the "Merry Monarch" +issued the desired charter to the eight applicants as Lords Proprietors. +They were the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, Earl Craven, Lord +Ashley (afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury), Lord Berkeley, Sir George +Carteret, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir John Colleton. Most of these had no +acquaintance with America, and none of them had knowledge of Carolina or +purpose of going thither. They expected that the mere throwing open of the +region under their distinguished patronage would bring settlers in a rush; +and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offering +lands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popular +self-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlement +at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedingly +barren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile in +the more southerly region nothing was done beyond exploring the shore. + +Finding their passive policy of no avail, the Lords Proprietors bestirred +themselves in 1669 to the extent of contributing several hundred pounds +each toward planting a colony on their southward coast. At the same time +they adopted the "fundamental constitutions" which John Locke had framed +for the province. These contemplated land grants in huge parcels to a +provincial nobility, and a cumbrous oligarchical government with a minimum +participation of popular representatives. The grandiloquent feudalism of +the scheme appealed so strongly to the aristocratic Lords Proprietors +that in spite of their usual acumen in politics they were blinded to its +conflicts with their charter and to its utter top-heaviness. They rewarded +Locke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with it +a grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to the +fundamental constitutions, notwithstanding repeated rejections of them by +the colonists. + +The fund of 1669 was used in planting what proved a permanent settlement of +English and Barbadians on the shores of Charleston Harbor. Thereafter the +Lords Proprietors relapsed into passiveness, commissioning a new governor +now and then and occasionally scolding the colonists for disobedience. The +progress of settlement was allowed to take what course it might. + +The fundamental constitutions recognized the institution of negro slavery, +and some of the first Barbadians may have carried slaves with them +to Carolina. But in the early decades Indian trading, lumbering and +miscellaneous farming were the only means of livelihood, none of which gave +distinct occasion for employing negroes. The inhabitants, furthermore, had +no surplus income with which to buy slaves. The recruits who continued to +come from the West Indies doubtless brought some blacks for their service; +but the Huguenot exiles from France, who comprised the chief other +streamlet of immigration, had no slaves and little money. Most of the +people were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows. The Huguenots +in particular, settling mainly in the interior on the Cooper and Santee +Rivers, labored with extraordinary diligence and overcame the severest +handicaps. That many of the settlers whether from France or the West Indies +were of talented and sturdy stock is witnessed by the mention of the family +names of Legaré, Laurens, Marion and Ravenel among the Huguenots, Drayton, +Elliot, Gibbes and Middleton among the Barbadians, Lowndes and Rawlins +from St. Christopher's, and Pinckney from Jamaica. Some of the people were +sluggards, of course, but the rest, heterogeneous as they were, were living +and laboring as best they might, trying such new projects as they could, +building a free government in spite of the Lords Proprietors, and awaiting +the discovery of some staple resource from which prosperity might be won. + +Among the crops tried was rice, introduced from Madagascar by Landgrave +Thomas Smith about 1694, which after some preliminary failures proved so +great a success that from about the end of the seventeenth century its +production became the absorbing concern. Now slaves began to be imported +rapidly. An official account of the colony in 1708[1] reckoned the +population at about 3500 whites, of whom 120 were indentured servants, 4100 +negro slaves, and 1400 Indians captured in recent wars and held for the +time being in a sort of slavery. Within the preceding five years, while the +whites had been diminished by an epidemic, the negroes had increased by +about 1,100. The negroes were governed under laws modeled quite closely +upon the slave code of Barbados, with the striking exception that in this +period of danger from Spanish invasion most of the slave men were required +by law to be trained in the use of arms and listed as an auxiliary militia. + +[Footnote 1: Text printed in Edward McCrady, _South Carolina under the +Proprietary Government_ (New York, 1897). pp. 477-481.] + +During the rest of the colonial period the production of rice advanced at +an accelerating rate and the slave population increased in proportion, +while the whites multiplied somewhat more slowly. Thus in 1724 the whites +were estimated at 14,000, the slaves at 32,000, and the rice export was +about 4000 tons; in 1749 the whites were said to be nearly 25,000, the +slaves at least 39,000, and the rice export some 14,000 tons, valued at +nearly £100,000 sterling;[2] and in 1765 the whites were about 40,000, the +slaves about 90,000, and the rice export about 32,000 tons, worth some +£225,000.[3] Meanwhile the rule of the Lords Proprietors had been replaced +for the better by that of the crown, with South Carolina politically +separated from her northern sister; and indigo had been introduced as a +supplementary staple. The Charleston district was for several decades +perhaps the most prosperous area on the continent. + +[Footnote 2: Governor Glen, in B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of +South Carolina_ (New York, 1836), II, 218, 234, 266.] + +[Footnote 3: McCrady, _South Carolina under the Royal Government_ (New +York, 1899), pp. 389, 390, 807.] + +While rice culture did not positively require inundation, it was +facilitated by the periodical flooding of the fields, a practice which was +introduced into the colony about 1724. The best lands for this purpose were +level bottoms with a readily controllable water supply adjacent. During +most of the colonial period the main recourse was to the inland swamps, +which could be flooded only from reservoirs of impounded rain or brooks. +The frequent shortage of water in this régime made the flooding irregular +and necessitated many hoeings of the crop. Furthermore, the dearth of +watersheds within reach of the great cypress swamps on the river borders +hampered the use of these which were the most fertile lands in the colony. +Beginning about 1783 there was accordingly a general replacement of the +reservoir system by the new one of tide-flowing.[4] For this method tracts +were chosen on the flood-plains of streams whose water was fresh but whose +height was controlled by the tide. The land lying between the levels of +high and low tide was cleared, banked along the river front and on the +sides, elaborately ditched for drainage, and equipped with "trunks" or +sluices piercing the front embankment. On a frame above either end of each +trunk a door was hung on a horizontal pivot and provided with a ratchet. +When the outer door was raised above the mouth of the trunk and the inner +door was lowered, the water in the stream at high tide would sluice through +and flood the field, whereas at low tide the water pressure from the land +side would shut the door and keep the flood in. But when the elevation of +the doors was reversed the tide would be kept out and at low tide any water +collected in the ditches from rain or seepage was automatically drained +into the river. Occasional cross embankments divided the fields for greater +convenience of control. The tide-flow system had its own limitations and +handicaps. Many of the available tracts were so narrow that the cost of +embankment was very high in proportion to the area secured; and hurricanes +from oceanward sometimes raised the streams until they over-topped the +banks and broke them. If these invading waters were briny the standing crop +would be killed and the soil perhaps made useless for several years until +fresh water had leached out the salt. At many places, in fact, the water +for the routine flowing of the crop had to be inspected and the time +awaited when the stream was not brackish. + +[Footnote 4: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1809), +II, 201-206.] + +Economy of operation required cultivation in fairly large units. Governor +Glen wrote about 1760, "They reckon thirty slaves a proper number for a +rice plantation, and to be tended by one overseer."[5] Upon the resort to +tide-flowing the scale began to increase. For example, Sir James Wright, +governor of Georgia, had in 1771 eleven plantations on the Savannah, +Ogeechee and Canoochee Rivers, employing from 33 to 72 slaves each, +the great majority of whom were working hands.[6] At the middle of the +nineteenth century the single plantation of Governor Aiken on Jehossee +Island, South Carolina, of which more will be said in another chapter, had +some seven hundred slaves of all ages. + +[Footnote 5: Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, 202.] + +[Footnote 6: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, p. 445.] + +In spite of many variations in the details of cultivation, the tide-flow +system led to a fairly general standard of routine. After perhaps a +preliminary breaking of the soil in the preceding fall, operations began in +the early spring with smoothing the fields and trenching them with narrow +hoes into shallow drills about three inches wide at the bottom and twelve +or fourteen inches apart. In these between March and May the seed rice was +carefully strewn and the water at once let on for the "sprout flow." About +a week later the land was drained and kept so until the plants appeared +plentifully above ground. Then a week of "point flow" was followed by a +fortnight of dry culture in which the spaces between the rows were lightly +hoed and the weeds amidst the rice pulled up. Then came the "long flow" +for two or three weeks, followed by more vigorous hoeing, and finally +the "lay-by flow" extending for two or three months until the crop, then +standing shoulder high and thick with bending heads, was ready for harvest. +The flowings served a triple purpose in checking the weeds and grass, +stimulating the rice, and saving the delicate stalks from breakage and +matting by storms. + +A curious item in the routine just before the grain was ripe was the +guarding of the crop from destruction by rice birds. These bobolinks timed +their southward migration so as to descend upon the fields in myriads when +the grain was "in the milk." At that stage the birds, clinging to the +stalks, could squeeze the substance from within each husk by pressure of +the beak. Negroes armed with guns were stationed about the fields with +instructions to fire whenever a drove of the birds alighted nearby. This +fusillade checked but could not wholly prevent the bobolink ravages. To +keep the gunners from shattering the crop itself they were generally given +charges of powder only; but sufficient shot was issued to enable the guards +to kill enough birds for the daily consumption of the plantation. When +dressed and broiled they were such fat and toothsome morsels that in their +season other sorts of meat were little used. + +For the rice harvest, beginning early in September, as soon as a field was +drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting +a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to +sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day's +drying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief +curing. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed +the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. +In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for +threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the +husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice +flour" and broken grain, and barreled for market.[7] + +[Footnote 7: The best descriptions of the rice industry are Edmund Ruffin, +_Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ (Columbia, S.C. 1843); and R.F.W. +Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ (Charleston, 1854), which latter is +printed also in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615.] + +The ditches and pools in and about the fields of course bred swarms of +mosquitoes which carried malaria to all people subject. Most of the whites +were afflicted by that disease in the warmer half of the year, but the +Africans were generally immune. Negro labor was therefore at such a premium +that whites were virtually never employed on the plantations except as +overseers and occasionally as artisans. In colonial times the planters, +except the few quite wealthy ones who had town houses in Charleston, lived +on their places the year round; but at the close of the eighteenth century +they began to resort in summer to "pine land" villages within an hour or +two's riding distance from their plantations. In any case the intercourse +between the whites and blacks was notably less than in the tobacco region, +and the progress of the negroes in civilization correspondingly +slighter. The plantations were less of homesteads and more of business +establishments; the race relations, while often cordial, were seldom +intimate. + +The introduction of indigo culture was achieved by one of America's +greatest women, Eliza Lucas, afterward the wife of Charles Pinckney +(chief-justice of the province) and mother of the two patriot statesmen +Thomas and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Her father, the governor of the +British island of Antigua, had been prompted by his wife's ill health +to settle his family in South Carolina, where the three plantations he +acquired near Charleston were for several years under his daughter's +management. This girl while attending her father's business found time to +keep up her music and her social activities, to teach a class of young +negroes to read, and to carry on various undertakings in economic botany. +In 1741 her experiments with cotton, guinea-corn and ginger were defeated +by frost, and alfalfa proved unsuited to her soil; but in spite of two +preliminary failures that year she raised some indigo plants with success. +Next year her father sent a West Indian expert named Cromwell to manage her +indigo crop and prepare its commercial product. But Cromwell, in fear of +injuring the prosperity of his own community, purposely mishandled the +manufacturing. With the aid of a neighbor, nevertheless, Eliza not only +detected Cromwell's treachery but in the next year worked out the true +process. She and her father now distributed indigo seed to a number of +planters; and from 1744 the crop began to reach the rank of a staple.[8] +The arrival of Carolina indigo at London was welcomed so warmly that in +1748 Parliament established a bounty of sixpence a pound on indigo produced +in the British dominions. The Carolina output remained of mediocre quality +until in 1756 Moses Lindo, after a career in the indigo trade in London, +emigrated to Charleston and began to teach the planters to distinguish the +grades and manufacture the best.[9] At excellent prices, ranging generally +from four to six shillings a pound, the indigo crop during the rest of the +colonial period, reaching a maximum output of somewhat more than a million +pounds from some twenty thousand acres in the crop, yielded the community +about half as much gross income as did its rice. The net earnings of the +planters were increased in a still greater proportion than this, for the +work-seasons in the two crops could be so dovetailed that a single gang +might cultivate both staples. + +[Footnote 8: _Journal and Letters of Eliza Lucas_ (Wormesloe, Ga., 1850); +Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, _Eliza Pinckney_ (New York, 1896); _Plantation and +Frontier_, I, 265, 266.] + +[Footnote 9: B.A. Elzas, _The Jews of South Carolina_ (Philadelphia, 1905), +chap. 3.] + +Indigo grew best in the light, dry soil so common on the coastal plain. +From seed sown in the early spring the plant would reach its full growth, +from three to six feet high, and begin to bloom in June or early July. At +that stage the plants were cut off near the ground and laid under water in +a shallow vat for a fermentation which in the course of some twelve hours +took the dye-stuff out of the leaves. The solution then drawn into another +vat was vigorously beaten with paddles for several hours to renew and +complete the foaming fermentation. Samples were taken at frequent intervals +during the latter part of this process, and so soon as a blue tinge became +apparent lime water, in carefully determined proportions, was gently +stirred in to stop all further action and precipitate the "blueing." When +this had settled, the water was drawn off, the paste on the floor was +collected, drained in bags, kneaded, pressed, cut into cubes, dried in the +shade and packed for market.[10] A second crop usually sprang from the +roots of the first and was harvested in August or September. + +[Footnote 10: B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, +532-535.] + +Indigo production was troublesome and uncertain of results. Not only did +the furrows have to be carefully weeded and the caterpillars kept off the +plants, but when the stalks were being cut and carried to the vats great +pains were necessary to keep the bluish bloom on the leaves from being +rubbed off and lost, and the fermentation required precise control for +the sake of quality in the product.[11] The production of the blue staple +virtually ended with the colonial period. The War of Independence not only +cut off the market for the time being but ended permanently, of course, the +receipt of the British bounty. When peace returned the culture was revived +in a struggling way; but its vexations and vicissitudes made it promptly +give place to sea-island cotton.[12] + +[Footnote 11: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, +1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), pp. 187-189.] + +[Footnote 12: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_, II, 212; D.D. +Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 132.] + +The plantation of the rice-coast type had clearly shown its tendency to +spread into all the suitable areas from Winyah Bay to St. John's River, +when its southward progress was halted for a time by the erection of +the peculiar province of Georgia. The launching of this colony was the +beginning of modern philanthropy. Upon procuring a charter in 1732 +constituting them trustees of Georgia, James Oglethorpe and his colleagues +began to raise funds from private donations and parliamentary grants for +use in colonizing English debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates. The +beneficiaries, chosen because of their indigence, were transported at the +expense of the trust and given fifty-acre homesteads with equipment and +supplies. Instruction in agriculture was provided for them at Savannah, and +various regulations were established for making them soberly industrious on +a small-farming basis. The land could not be alienated, and neither slaves +nor rum could be imported. Persons immigrating at their own expense might +procure larger land grants, but no one could own more than five hundred +acres; and all settlers must plant specified numbers of grape vines and +mulberry trees with a view to establishing wine and silk as the staples of +the colony. + +In the first few years, while Oglethorpe was in personal charge at Savannah +and supplies from England were abundant, there was an appearance of +success, which soon proved illusory. Not only were the conditions unfit +for silk and wine, but the fertile tracts were malarial and the healthy +districts barren, and every industry suited to the climate had to meet the +competition of the South Carolinians with their slave labor and plantation +system. The ne'er-do-weels from England proved ne'er-do-weels again. They +complained of the soil, the climate, and the paternalistic regulations +under which they lived. They protested against the requirements of silk and +wine culture; they begged for the removal of all peculiar restrictions and +for the institution of self-government They bombarded the trustees with +petitions saying "rum punch is very wholesome in this climate," asking +fee-simple title to their lands, and demanding most vigorously the right of +importing slaves. But the trustees were deaf to complaints. They maintained +that the one thing lacking for prosperity from silk and wine was +perseverance, that the restriction on land tenure was necessary on the one +hand to keep an arms-bearing population in the colony and on the other +hand to prevent the settlers from contracting debts by mortgage, that the +prohibitions of rum and slaves were essential safeguards of sobriety and +industry, and that discontent under the benevolent care of the trustees +evidenced a perversity on the part of the complainants which would +disqualify them for self-government. Affairs thus reached an impasse. +Contributions stopped; Parliament gave merely enough money for routine +expenses; the trustees lost their zeal but not their crotchets; the colony +went from bad to worse. Out of perhaps five thousand souls in Georgia about +1737 so many departed to South Carolina and other free settlements that in +1741 there were barely more than five hundred left. This extreme depression +at length forced even the staunchest of the trustees to relax. First the +exclusion of rum was repealed, then the introduction of slaves on lease +was winked at, then in 1749 and 1750 the overt importation of slaves was +authorized and all restrictions on land tenure were canceled. Finally the +stoppage of the parliamentary subvention in 1751 forced the trustees in the +following year to resign their charter. + +Slaveholders had already crossed the Savannah River in appreciable +numbers to erect plantations on favorable tracts. The lapse of a few +more transition years brought Georgia to the status on the one hand of a +self-governing royal province and on the other of a plantation community +prospering, modestly for the time being, in the production of rice and +indigo. Her peculiarities under the trustee régime were gone but not +forgotten. The rigidity of paternalism, well meant though it had been, was +a lesson against future submission to outward control in any form; and +their failure as a peasantry in competition with planters across the river +persuaded the Georgians and their neighbors that slave labor was essential +for prosperity. + +It is curious, by the way, that the tender-hearted, philanthropic +Oglethorpe at the very time of his founding Georgia was the manager of the +great slave-trading corporation, the Royal African Company. The conflict of +the two functions cannot be relieved except by one of the greatest of all +reconciling considerations, the spirit of the time. Whatever else the +radicals of that period might wish to reform or abolish, the slave trade +was held either as a matter of course or as a positive benefit to the +people who constituted its merchandise. + +The narrow limits of the rice and indigo régime in the two colonies +made the plantation system the more dominant in its own area. Detailed +statistics are lacking until the first federal census, when indigo was +rapidly giving place to sea-island cotton; but the requirements of the new +staple differed so little from those of the old that the plantations near +the end of the century were without doubt on much the same scale as before +the Revolution. In the four South Carolina parishes of St. Andrew's, St. +John's Colleton, St. Paul's and St. Stephen's the census-takers of 1790 +found 393 slaveholders with an average of 33.7 slaves each, as compared +with a total of 28 non-slaveholding families. In these and seven more +parishes, comprising together the rural portion of the area known +politically as the Charleston District, there were among the 1643 heads of +families 1318 slaveholders owning 42,949 slaves. William Blake had 695; +Ralph Izard had 594 distributed on eight plantations in three parishes, +and ten more at his Charleston house; Nathaniel Heyward had 420 on his +plantations and 13 in Charleston; William Washington had 380 in the country +and 13 in town; and three members of the Horry family had 340, 229 and 222 +respectively in a single neighborhood. Altogether there were 79 separate +parcels of a hundred slaves or more, 156 of between fifty and ninety-nine, +318 of between twenty and forty-nine, 251 of between ten and nineteen, 206 +of from five to nine, and 209 of from two to four, 96 of one slave each, +and 3 whose returns in the slave column are illegible.[13] The statistics +of the Georgetown and Beaufort districts, which comprised the rest of the +South Carolina coast, show a like analysis except for a somewhat larger +proportion of non-slaveholders and very small slaveholders, who were, +of course, located mostly in the towns and on the sandy stretches of +pine-barren. The detailed returns for Georgia in that census have been +lost. Were those for her coastal area available they would surely show a +similar tendency toward slaveholding concentration. + +[Footnote 13: _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States, +1790: State of South Carolina_ (Washington, 1908); _A Century of Population +Growth_ (Washington, 1909), pp. 190, 191, 197, 198.] + +Avenues of transportation abundantly penetrated the whole district in the +form of rivers, inlets and meandering tidal creeks. Navigation on them was +so easy that watermen to the manner born could float rafts or barges for +scores of miles in any desired direction, without either sails or oars, by +catching the strong ebb and flow of the tides at the proper points. But +unlike the Chesapeake estuaries, the waterways of the rice coast were +generally too shallow for ocean-going vessels. This caused a notable +growth of seaports on the available harbors. Of those in South Carolina, +Charleston stood alone in the first rank, flanked by Georgetown and +Beaufort. In the lesser province of Georgia, Savannah found supplement in +Darien and Sunbury. The two leading ports were also the seats of government +in their respective colonies. Charleston was in fact so complete a focus +of commerce, politics and society that South Carolina was in a sense a +city-state. + +The towns were in sentiment and interest virtually a part of the plantation +community. The merchants were plantation factors; the lawyers and doctors +had country patrons; the wealthiest planters were town residents from time +to time; and many prospering townsmen looked toward plantation retirement, +carrying as it did in some degree the badge of gentility, as the crown of +their careers. Furthermore the urban negroes, more numerous proportionately +than anywhere else on the continent, kept the citizens as keenly alive +as the planters to the intricacies of racial adjustments. For example +Charleston, which in 1790 had 8089 whites, 7864 slaves and 586 free +negroes, felt as great anxiety as did the rural parishes at rumors of +slave conspiracies, and on the other hand she had a like interest in the +improvement of negro efficiency, morality and good will. + +The rice coast community was a small one. Even as measured in its number +of slaves it bulked only one-fourth as large, say in 1790, as the group of +tobacco commonwealths or the single sugar island of Jamaica. Nevertheless +it was a community to be reckoned with. Its people were awake to their +peculiar conditions and problems; it had plenty of talented citizens to +formulate policies; and it had excellent machinery for uniting public +opinion. In colonial times, plying its trade mainly with England and the +West Indies, it was in little touch with its continental neighbors, and it +developed a sense of separateness. As part of a loosely administered +empire its people were content in prosperity and self-government. But in a +consolidated nation of diverse and conflicting interests it would be likely +on occasion to assert its own will and resist unitedly anything savoring of +coercion. In a double sense it was of the _southern_ South. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE NORTHERN COLONIES + + +Had any American colony been kept wholly out of touch with both Indians +and negroes, the history of slavery therein would quite surely have been +a blank. But this was the case nowhere. A certain number of Indians were +enslaved in nearly every settlement as a means of disposing of captives +taken in war; and negro slaves were imported into every prosperous colony +as a mere incident of its prosperity. Among the Quakers the extent of +slaveholding was kept small partly, or perhaps mainly, by scruples of +conscience; in virtually all other cases the scale was determined by +industrial conditions. Here the plantation system flourished and slaves +were many; there the climate prevented profits from crude gang labor in +farming, and slaves were few. + +The nature and causes of the contrast will appear from comparing the +careers of two Puritan colonies launched at the same time but separated by +some thirty degrees of north latitude. The one was planted on the island +of Old Providence lying off the coast of Nicaragua, the other was on the +shores of Massachusetts bay. The founders of Old Providence were a score of +Puritan dignitaries, including the Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye and Sele, and +John Pym, incorporated into the Westminster Company in 1630 with a +combined purpose of erecting a Puritanic haven and gaining profits for +the investors. The soil of the island was known to be fertile, the nearby +Spanish Main would yield booty to privateers, and a Puritan government +would maintain orthodoxy. These enticements were laid before John Winthrop +and his companions; and when they proved steadfast in the choice of New +England, several hundred others of their general sort embraced the tropical +Providence alternative. Equipped as it was with all the apparatus of a "New +England Canaan," the founders anticipated a far greater career than seemed +likely of achievement in Massachusetts. Prosperity came at once in the form +of good crops and rich prizes taken at sea. Some of the latter contained +cargoes of negro slaves, as was of course expected, who were distributed +among the settlers to aid in raising tobacco; and when a certain Samuel +Rishworth undertook to spread ideas of liberty among them he was officially +admonished that religion had no concern with negro slavery and that +his indiscretions must stop. Slaves were imported so rapidly that the +outnumbered whites became apprehensive of rebellion. In the hope of +promoting the importation of white labor, so greatly preferable from the +public point of view, heavy impositions were laid upon the employment +of negroes, but with no avail. The apprehension of evils was promptly +justified. A number of the blacks escaped to the mountains where they dwelt +as maroons; and in 1638 a concerted uprising proved so formidable that the +suppression of it strained every resource of the government and the white +inhabitants. Three years afterward the weakened settlement was captured +by a Spanish fleet; and this was the end of the one Puritan colony in the +tropics.[1] + +[Footnote 1: A.P. Newton, _The Colonizing Activities of the English +Puritans_ (New Haven, 1914).] + +Massachusetts was likewise inaugurated by a corporation of Puritans, which +at the outset endorsed the institution of unfree labor, in a sense, by +sending over from England 180 indentured servants to labor on the company's +account. A food shortage soon made it clear that in the company's service +they could not earn their keep; and in 1630 the survivors of them were set +free.[2] Whether freedom brought them bread or whether they died of famine, +the records fail to tell. At any rate the loss of the investment in their +transportation, and the chagrin of the officials, materially hastened the +conversion of the colony from a company enterprise into an industrial +democracy. The use of unfree labor nevertheless continued on a private +basis and on a relatively small scale. Until 1642 the tide of Puritan +immigration continued, some of the newcomers of good estate bringing +servants in their train. The authorities not only countenanced this but +forbade the freeing of servants before the ends of their terms, and in at +least one instance the court fined a citizen for such a manumission.[3] +Meanwhile the war against the Pequots in 1637 yielded a number of +captives, whereupon the squaws and girls were distributed in the towns of +Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a parcel of the boys was shipped off +to the tropics in the Salem ship _Desire_. On its return voyage this +thoroughly Puritan vessel brought from Old Providence a cargo of tobacco, +cotton, and negroes.[4] About this time the courts began to take notice +of Indians as runaways; and in 1641 a "blackmore," Mincarry, procured the +inscription of his name upon the public records by drawing upon himself +an admonition from the magistrates.[5] This negro, it may safely be +conjectured, was not a freeman. That there were at least several other +blacks in the colony, one of whom proved unamenable to her master's +improper command, is told in the account of a contemporary traveler.[6] In +the same period, furthermore, the central court of the colony condemned +certain white criminals to become slaves to masters whom the court +appointed.[7] In the light of these things the pro-slavery inclination of +the much-disputed paragraph in the Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641, +admits of no doubt. The passage reads: "There shall never be any bond +slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull captives +taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or +are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages +which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doeth +morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged +thereto by authoritie."[8] + +[Footnote 2: Thomas Dudley, _Letter_ to the Countess of Lincoln, in Alex. +Young, _Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts Boy_ (Boston, +1846), p. 312.] + +[Footnote 3: _Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of +Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 135, 136.] + +[Footnote 4: Letter of John Winthrop to William Bradford, Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXXIII, 360; Winthrop, _Journal_ +(Original Narratives edition, New York, 1908), I, 260.] + +[Footnote 5: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 6: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 231.] + +[Footnote 7: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, pp. 78, 79, 86.] + +[Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 231.] + +On the whole it seems that the views expressed a few years later by Emanuel +Downing in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop were not seriously +out of harmony with the prevailing sentiment. Downing was in hopes of a war +with the Narragansetts for two reasons, first to stop their "worship of the +devill," and "2lie, If upon a just warre the Lord should deliver them into +our hands, we might easily have men, women and children enough to exchange +for Moores,[9] which wil be more gaynful pilladge for us than wee conceive, +for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee get into a stock of slaves +sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children's children will hardly +see this great continent filled with people, soe that our servants will +still desire freedome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie +great wages.[10] And I suppose you know verie well how we shall mayntayne +20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant." + +[Footnote 9: I. e. negroes.] + +[Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXXVI. 65.] + +When the four colonies, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, +created the New England Confederation in 1643 for joint and reciprocal +action in matters of common concern, they provided not only for the +intercolonial rendition of runaway servants, including slaves of course, +but also for the division of the spoils of Indian wars, "whether it be in +lands, goods or persons," among the participating colonies.[11] But perhaps +the most striking action taken by the Confederation in these regards was +a resolution adopted by its commissioners in 1646, in time of peace +and professedly in the interests of peace, authorizing reprisals for +depredations. This provided that if any citizen's property suffered injury +at the hands of an Indian, the offender's village or any other which +had harbored him might be raided and any inhabitants thereof seized in +satisfaction "either to serve or to be shipped out and exchanged for +negroes as the cause will justly beare."[12] Many of these captives were in +fact exported as merchandise, whether as private property or on the public +account of the several colonies.[13] The value of Indians for export was +greater than for local employment by reason of their facility in escaping +to their tribal kinsmen. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, +however, there was some importation of "Spanish Indians" as slaves.[14] + +[Footnote 11: _New Haven Colonial Records_, 1653-1665, pp. 562-566.] + +[Footnote 12: _Plymouth Records_, IX, 71.] + +[Footnote 13: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 30-48.] + +[Footnote 14: Cotton Mather, "Diary," in Massachusetts Historical Society +_Collections_, LXVII, 22, 203.] + +An early realization that the price of negroes also was greater than the +worth of their labor under ordinary circumstances in New England led the +Yankee participants in the African trade to market their slave cargoes in +the plantation colonies instead of bringing them home. Thus John Winthrop +entered in his journal in 1645: "One of our ships which went to the +Canaries with pipestaves in the beginning of November last returned now +and brought wine and sugar and salt, and some tobacco, which she had at +Barbadoes in exchange for Africoes which she carried from the Isle of +Maio."[15] In their domestic industry the Massachusetts people found +by experience that "many hands make light work, many hands make a full +fraught, but many mouths eat up all";[16] and they were shrewd enough to +apply the adage in keeping the scale of their industrial units within the +frugal requirements of their lives. + +[Footnote 15: Winthrop, _Journal_, II, 227.] + +[Footnote 16: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 332.] + +That the laws of Massachusetts were enforced with special severity against +the blacks is indicated by two cases before the central court in 1681, both +of them prosecutions for arson. Maria, a negress belonging to Joshua Lamb +of Roxbury, having confessed the burning of two dwellings, was sentenced by +the Governor "yt she should goe from the barr to the prison whence she +came and thence to the place of execution and there be burnt.--ye Lord be +mercifull to thy soule, sd ye Govr." The other was Jack, a negro belonging +to Samuel Wolcott of Weathersfield, who upon conviction of having set fire +to a residence by waving a fire brand about in search of victuals, was +condemned to be hanged until dead and then burned to ashes in the fire with +the negress Maria.[17] + +[Footnote 17: _Records of the Court of Assistants, 1630-1692_ (Boston, +1901), p. 198.] + +In this period it seems that Indian slaves had almost disappeared, and +the number of negroes was not great enough to call for special police +legislation. Governor Bradstreet, for example, estimated the "blacks or +slaves" in the colony in 1680 at "about one hundred or one hundred and +twenty."[18] But in 1708 Governor Dudley reckoned the number in Boston at +four hundred, one-half of whom he said had been born there, and those in +the rest of the colony at one hundred and fifty; and in the following +decades their number steadily mounted, as a concomitant of the colony's +increasing prosperity, until on the eve of the American Revolution they +were reckoned at well above five thousand. Although they never exceeded two +per cent. of the gross population, their presence prompted characteristic +legislation dating from about the beginning of the eighteenth century. +This on one hand taxed the importation of negros unless they were promptly +exported again on the other hand it forbade trading with slaves, restrained +manumission, established a curfew, provided for the whipping of any +negro or mulatto who should strike a "Christian," and prohibited the +intermarriage of the races. On the other hand it gave the slaves the +privilege of legal marriage with persons of their own race, though it did +not attempt to prevent the breaking up of such a union by the sale and +removal of the husband or wife.[19] Regarding the status of children there +was no law enacted, and custom ruled. The children born of Indian slave +mothers appear generally to have been liberated, for as willingly would a +man nurse a viper in his bosom as keep an aggrieved and able-bodied redskin +in his household. But as to negro children, although they were valued so +slightly that occasionally it is said they were given to any one who would +take them, there can be no reasonable doubt that by force of custom they +were the property of the owners of their mothers.[20] + +[Footnote 18: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 337.] + +[Footnote 19: Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 52-55.] + +[Footnote 20: _Ibid_., pp. 20-27.] + +The New Englanders were "a plain people struggling for existence in a +poor wilderness.... Their lives were to the last degree matter of +fact, realistic, hard." [21] Shrewd in consequence of their poverty, +self-righteous in consequence of their religion, they took their +slave-trading and their slaveholding as part of their day's work and as +part of God's goodness to His elect. In practical effect the policy of +colonial Massachusetts toward the backward races merits neither praise nor +censure; it was merely commonplace. + +[Footnote 21: C.F. Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_ +(Boston, 1893), p. 106.] + +What has been said in general of Massachusetts will apply with almost equal +fidelity to Connecticut.[22] The number of negroes in that colony was +hardly appreciable before 1720. In that year Governor Leete when replying +to queries from the English committee on trade and plantations took +occasion to emphasize the poverty of his people, and said as to bond labor: +"There are but fewe servants amongst us, and less slaves; not above 30, as +we judge, in the colony. For English, Scotts and Irish, there are so few +come in that we cannot give a certain acco[un]t. Some yeares come none; +sometimes a famaly or two in a year. And for Blacks, there comes sometimes +3 or 4 in a year from Barbadoes; and they are sold usually at the rate of +22l a piece, sometimes more and sometimes less, according as men can agree +with the master of vessels or merchants that bring them hither." Few +negroes had been born in the colony, "and but two blacks christened, as we +know of."[23] A decade later the development of a black code was begun by +an enactment declaring that any negro, mulatto, or Indian servant wandering +outside his proper town without a pass would be accounted a runaway and +might be seized by any person and carried before a magistrate for return to +his master. A free negro so apprehended without a pass must pay the court +costs. An act of 1702 discouraged manumission by ordering that if any +freed negroes should come to want, their former owners were to be held +responsible for their maintenance. Then came legislation forbidding the +sale of liquors to slaves without special orders from their masters, +prohibiting the purchase of goods from slaves without such orders, and +providing a penalty of not more than thirty lashes for any negro who should +offer to strike a white person; and finally a curfew law, in 1723, ordering +not above ten lashes for the negro, and a fine of ten shillings upon the +master, for every slave without a pass apprehended for being out of doors +after nine o'clock at night.[24] These acts, which remained in effect +throughout the colonial period, constituted a code of slave police which +differed only in degree and fullness from those enacted by the more +southerly colonies in the same generation. A somewhat unusual note, +however, was struck in an act of 1730 which while penalizing with stripes +the speaking by a slave of such words as would be actionable if uttered by +a free person provided that in his defence the slave might make the same +pleas and offer the same evidence as a freeman. The number of negroes in +the colony rose to some 6500 at the eve of the American Revolution. Most +of them were held in very small parcels, but at least one citizen, Captain +John Perkins of Norwich, listed fifteen slaves in his will. + +[Footnote 22: The scanty materials available are summarized in B.C. +Steiner, _History of Slavery in Connecticut_ (Johns Hopkins University +_Studies_, XI, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1893), pp. 9-23, 84. See also W.C. +Fowler, "The Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut," in the +_Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries_, III, 12-18, 81-85, 148-153, +260-266.] + +[Footnote 23: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, III, 298.] + +[Footnote 24: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, IV, 40, 376; +V, 52, 53; VI, 390, 391.] + +Rhode Island was distinguished from her neighbors by her diversity and +liberalism in religion, by her great activity in the African slave trade, +and by the possession of a tract of unusually fertile soil. This last, +commonly known as the Narragansett district and comprised in the two +so-called towns of North and South Kingstown, lay on the western shore of +the bay, in the southern corner of the colony. Prosperity from tillage, +and especially from dairying and horse-breeding, caused the rise in that +neighborhood of landholdings and slaveholdings on a scale more commensurate +with those in Virginia than with those elsewhere in New England. The +Hazards, Champlins, Robinsons, and some others accumulated estates ranging +from five to ten thousand acres in extent, each with a corps of bondsmen +somewhat in proportion. In 1730, for example, South Kingstown had a +population of 965 whites, 333 negroes and 233 Indians; and for a number +of years afterward those who may safely be assumed to have been bondsmen, +white, red and black, continued to be from a third to a half as many as the +free inhabitants.[25] It may be noted that the prevalent husbandry was not +such as generally attracted unfree labor in other districts, and that the +climate was poorly suited to a negro population. The question then arises, +Why was there so large a recourse to negro slave labor? The answer probably +lies in the proximity of Newport, the main focus of African trading in +American ships. James Browne wrote in 1737 from Providence, which was also +busy in the trade, to his brother Obadiah who was then in Southern waters +with an African cargo and who had reported poor markets: "If you cannot +sell all your slaves to your mind, bring some of them home; I believe they +will sell well." [26] This bringing of remainders home doubtless enabled +the nearby townsmen and farmers to get slaves from time to time at bargain +prices. The whole colony indeed came to have a relatively large proportion +of blacks. In 1749 there were 33,773 whites and 3077 negroes; in 1756 there +were 35,939 and 4697 respectively; and in 1774, 59,707 and 3668. Of this +last number Newport contained 1246, South Kingstown 440, Providence 303, +Portsmouth 122, and Bristol 114.[27] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_ (Johns Hopkins +University _Studies_, IV, no. 3, Baltimore, 1886).] + +[Footnote 26: Gertrude S. Kimball, _Providence in Colonial Times_ (Boston, +1912), p. 247.] + +[Footnote 27: W.D. Johnston, "Slavery in Rhode Island, 1755-1776," in Rhode +Island Historical Society _Publications_, new series, II, 126, 127.] + +The earliest piece of legislation in Rhode Island concerning negroes was of +an anti-slavery character. This was an act adopted by the joint government +of Providence and Warwick in 1652, when for the time being those towns were +independent of the rest. It required, under a penalty of £40, that all +negroes be freed after having rendered ten years of service.[28] This +act may be attributed partly perhaps to the liberal influence of Roger +Williams, and partly to the virtual absence of negroes in the towns near +the head of the bay. It long stood unrepealed, but it was probably never +enforced, for no sooner did negroes become numerous than a conservative +reaction set in which deprived this peculiar law of any public sanction it +may have had at the time of enactment. When in the early eighteenth century +legislation was resumed in regard to negroes, it took the form of a slave +code much like that of Connecticut but with an added act, borrowed perhaps +from a Southern colony, providing that slaves charged with theft be tried +by impromptu courts consisting of two or more justices of the peace or town +officers, and that appeal might be taken to a court of regular session only +at the master's request and upon his giving bond for its prosecution. Some +of the towns, furthermore, added by-laws of their own for more thorough +police. South Kingstown for instance adopted an order that if any slave +were found in the house of a free negro, both guest and host were to be +whipped.[29] The Rhode Island Quakers in annual meeting began as early as +1717 to question the propriety of importing slaves, and other persons from +time to time echoed their sentiments; but it was not until just before the +American Revolution that legislation began to interfere with the trade or +the institution. + +[Footnote 28: _Rhode Island Colonial Records_, I, 243.] + +[Footnote 29: Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_, p. 11.] + +The colonies of Plymouth and New Haven in the period of their separate +existence, and the colonies of Maine and New Hampshire throughout their +careers, are negligible in a general account of negro slavery because +their climate and their industrial requirements, along with their poverty, +prevented them from importing any appreciable number of negroes. + +New Netherland had the distinction of being founded and governed by a great +slave-trading corporation--the Dutch West India Company--which endeavored +to extend the market for its human merchandise whithersoever its influence +reached. This pro-slavery policy was not wholly selfish, for the directors +appear to have believed that the surest way to promote a colony's welfare +was to make slaves easy to buy. In the infancy of New Netherland, when it +consisted merely of two trading posts, the company delivered its first +batch of negroes at New Amsterdam. But to its chagrin, the settlers would +buy very few; and even the company's grant of great patroonship estates +failed to promote a plantation régime. Devoting their energies more to the +Indian trade than to agriculture, the people had little use for farm hands, +while in domestic service, if the opinion of the Reverend Jonas Michaelius +be a true index, the negroes were found "thievish, lazy and useless trash." +It might perhaps be surmised that the Dutch were too easy-going for success +in slave management, were it not that those who settled in Guiana became +reputed the severest of all plantation masters. The bulk of the slaves in +New Netherland, left on the company's hands, were employed now in building +fortifications, now in tillage. But the company, having no adequate means +of supervising them in routine, changed the status of some of the older +ones in 1644 from slavery to tribute-paying. That is to say, it gave eleven +of them their freedom on condition that each pay the company every year +some twenty-two bushels of grain and a hog of a certain value. At the same +time it provided, curiously, that their children already born or yet to be +born were to be the company's slaves. It was proposed at one time by some +of the inhabitants, and again by Governor Stuyvesant, that negroes be armed +with tomahawks and sent in punitive expeditions against the Indians, but +nothing seems to have come of that. + +The Dutch settlers were few, and the Dutch farmers fewer. But as years went +on a slender stream of immigration entered the province from New England, +settling mainly on Long Island and in Westchester; and these came to be +among the company's best customers for slaves. The villagers of Gravesend, +indeed, petitioned in 1651 that the slave supply might be increased. Soon +afterward the company opened the trade to private ships, and then sent +additional supplies on its own account to be sold at auction. It developed +hopes, even, that New Amsterdam might be made a slave market for the +neighboring English colonies. A parcel sold at public outcry in 1661 +brought an average price of 440 florins,[30] which so encouraged the +authorities that larger shipments were ordered. Of a parcel arriving in +the spring of 1664 and described by Stuyvesant as on the average old and +inferior, six men were reserved for the company's use in cutting timber, +five women were set aside as unsalable, and the remaining twenty-nine, of +both sexes, were sold at auction at prices ranging from 255 to 615 florins. +But a great cargo of two or three hundred slaves which followed in the same +year reached port only in time for the vessel to be captured by the English +fleet which took possession of New Netherland and converted it into the +province of New York.[31] + +[Footnote 30: The florin has a value of forty cents.] + +[Footnote 31: This account is mainly drawn from A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in +New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 246-254, +and from E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of +Amsterdam, with additional papers illustrative of the slave trade under the +Dutch_ (Albany, 1867), pp. 99-213.] + +The change of the flag was very slow in bringing any pronounced change in +the colony's general régime. The Duke of York's government was autocratic +and pro-slavery and the inhabitants, though for some decades they bought +few slaves, were nothing averse to the institution. After the colony was +converted into a royal province by the accession of James II to the English +throne popular self-government was gradually introduced and a light import +duty was laid upon slaves. But increasing prosperity caused the rise of +slave importations to an average of about one hundred a year in the first +quarter of the eighteenth century;[32] and in spite of the rapid increase +of the whites during the rest of the colonial period the proportion of the +negroes was steadily maintained at about one-seventh of the whole. They +became fairly numerous in all districts except the extreme frontier, but in +the counties fronting New York Harbor their ratio was somewhat above the +average.[33] In 1755 a special census was taken of slaves older than +fourteen years, and a large part of its detailed returns has been +preserved. These reports from some two-score scattered localities enumerate +2456 slaves, about one-third of the total negro population of the +specified age; and they yield unusually definite data as to the scale of +slaveholdings. Lewis Morris of Morrisania had twenty-nine slaves above +fourteen years old; Peter DeLancy of Westchester Borough had twelve; and +the following had ten each: Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, Martinus +Hoffman of Dutchess County, David Jones of Oyster Bay, Rutgert Van Brunt of +New Utrecht, and Isaac Willett of Westchester Borough. Seventy-two others +had from five to nine each, and 1048 had still smaller holdings.[34] The +average quota was two slaves of working age, and presumably the same number +of slave children. That is to say, the typical slaveholding family had a +single small family of slaves in its service. From available data it may be +confidently surmised, furthermore, that at least one household in every ten +among the eighty-three thousand white inhabitants of the colony held one or +more slaves. These two features--the multiplicity of slaveholdings and the +virtually uniform pettiness of their scale--constituted a régime never +paralleled in equal volume elsewhere. The economic interest in slave +property, nowhere great, was widely diffused. The petty masters, however, +maintained so little system in the management of their slaves that the +public problem of social control was relatively intense. It was a state +of affairs conducing to severe legislation, and to hysterical action in +emergencies. + +[Footnote 32: _Documentary History of New York_ (Albany, 1850), I, 482.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., I, 467-474.] + +[Footnote 34: _Documentary History of New York_, III, 505-521.] + +The first important law, enacted in 1702, repeated an earlier prohibition +against trading with slaves; authorized masters to chastise their slaves at +discretion; forbade the meeting of more than three slaves at any time or +place unless in their masters' service or by their consent; penalized with +imprisonment and lashes the striking of a "Christian" by a slave; made the +seductor or harborer of a runaway slave liable for heavy damages to the +owner; and excluded slave testimony from the courts except as against other +slaves charged with conspiracy. In order, however, that undue loss to +masters might be averted, it provided that if by theft or other trespass a +slave injured any person to the extent of not more than five pounds, the +slave was not to be sentenced to death as in some cases a freeman might +have been under the laws of England then current, but his master was to be +liable for pecuniary satisfaction and the slave was merely to be whipped. +Three years afterward a special act to check the fleeing to Canada provided +a death penalty for any slave from the city and county of Albany found +traveling more than forty miles north of that city, the master to be +compensated from a special tax on slave property in the district. And in +1706 an act, passed mainly to quiet any fears as to the legal consequences +of Christianization, declared that baptism had no liberating effect, and +that every negro or mulatto child should inherit the status of its mother. + +The murder of a white family by a quartet of slaves in conspiracy not only +led to their execution, by burning in one case, but prompted an enactment +in 1708 that slaves charged with the murder of whites might be tried +summarily by three justices of the peace and be put to death in such manner +as the enormity of their crimes might be deemed to merit, and that slaves +executed under this act should be paid for by the public. Thus stood the +law when a negro uprising in the city of New York in 1712 and a reputed +conspiracy there in 1741 brought atrociously numerous and severe +punishments, as will be related in another chapter.[35] On the former of +these occasions the royally appointed governor intervened in several cases +to prevent judicial murder. The assembly on the other hand set to work +at once on a more elaborate negro law which restricted manumissions, +prohibited free negroes from holding real estate, and increased the rigor +of slave control. Though some of the more drastic provisions were afterward +relaxed in response to the more sober sense of the community, the negro +code continued for the rest of the colonial period to be substantially as +elaborated between 1702 and 1712.[36] The disturbance of 1741 prompted +little new legislation and left little permanent impress upon the +community. When the panic passed the petty masters resumed their customary +indolence of control and the police officers, justly incredulous of public +danger, let the rigors of the law relapse into desuetude. + +[Footnote 35: Below, pp. 470, 471.] + +[Footnote 36: The laws are summarized and quoted in A.J. Northrup "Slavery +in New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 254-272. +_See also_ E.V. Morgan, "Slavery in New York," in the American Historical +Association _Papers_ (New York, 1891), V, 335-350.] + +As to New Jersey, the eastern half, settled largely from New England, was +like in conditions and close in touch with New York, while the western +half, peopled considerably by Quakers, had a much smaller proportion of +negroes and was in sentiment akin to Pennsylvania. As was generally the +case in such contrast of circumstances, that portion of the province which +faced the greater problem of control determined the legislation for +the whole. New Jersey, indeed, borrowed the New York slave code in all +essentials. The administration of the law, furthermore, was about as it was +in New York, in the eastern counties at least. An alleged conspiracy near +Somerville in 1734 while it cost the reputed ringleader his life, cost his +supposed colleagues their ears only. On the other hand sentences to burning +at the stake were more frequent as punishment for ordinary crimes; and on +such occasions the citizens of the neighborhood turned honest shillings +by providing faggots for the fire. For the western counties the published +annals concerning slavery are brief wellnigh to blankness.[37] + +[Footnote 37: H.S. Cooley, _A Study of Slavery in New Jersey_ (Johns +Hopkins University _Studios_, XIV, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1896).] + +Pennsylvania's place in the colonial slaveholding sisterhood was a little +unusual in that negroes formed a smaller proportion of the population than +her location between New York and Maryland might well have warranted. +This was due not to her laws nor to the type of her industry but to the +disrelish of slaveholding felt by many of her Quaker and German inhabitants +and to the greater abundance of white immigrant labor whether wage-earning +or indentured. Negroes were present in the region before Penn's colony was +founded. The new government recognized slavery as already instituted. Penn +himself acquired a few slaves; and in the first quarter of the eighteenth +century the assembly legislated much as New York was doing, though somewhat +more mildly, for the fuller control of the negroes both slave and free. The +number of blacks and mulattoes reached at the middle of the century +about eleven thousand, the great majority of them slaves. They were most +numerous, of course, in the older counties which lay in the southeastern +corner of the province, and particularly in the city of Philadelphia. +Occasional owners had as many as twenty or thirty slaves, employed either +on country estates or in iron-works, but the typical holding was on a petty +scale. There were no slave insurrections in the colony, no plots of any +moment, and no panics of dread. The police was apparently a little more +thorough than in New York, partly because of legislation, which the white +mechanics procured, lessening negro competition by forbidding masters to +hire out their slaves. From travelers' accounts it would appear that the +relation of master and slave in Pennsylvania was in general more kindly +than anywhere else on the continent; but from the abundance of newspaper +advertisements for runaways it would seem to have been of about average +character. The truth probably lies as usual in the middle ground, that +Pennsylvania masters were somewhat unusually considerate. The assembly +attempted at various times to check slave importations by levying +prohibitive duties, which were invariably disallowed by the English crown. +On the other hand, in spite of the endeavors of Sandiford, Lay, Woolman +and Benezet, all of them Pennsylvanians, it took no steps toward relaxing +racial control until the end of the colonial period.[38] + +[Footnote 38: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911); +R.R. Wright, Jr., _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, 1912).] + +In the Northern colonies at large the slaves imported were more generally +drawn from the West Indies than directly from Africa. The reasons were +several. Small parcels, better suited to the retail demand, might be +brought more profitably from the sugar islands whither New England, New +York and Pennsylvania ships were frequently plying than from Guinea whence +special voyages must be made. Familiarity with the English language and +the rudiments of civilization at the outset were more essential to petty +masters than to the owners of plantation gangs who had means for breaking +in fresh Africans by deputy. But most important of all, a sojourn in the +West Indies would lessen the shock of acclimatization, severe enough under +the best of circumstances. The number of negroes who died from it was +probably not small, and of those who survived some were incapacitated and +bedridden with each recurrence of winter. + +Slavery did not, and perhaps could not, become an important industrial +institution in any Northern community; and the problem of racial +adjustments was never as acute as it was generally thought to be. In not +more than two or three counties do the negroes appear to have numbered more +than one fifth of the population; and by reason of being distributed +in detail they were more nearly assimilated to the civilization of the +dominant race than in southerly latitudes where they were held in gross. +They nevertheless continued to be regarded as strangers within the gates, +by some welcomed because they were slaves, by others not welcomed even +though they were in bondage. By many they were somewhat unreasonably +feared; by few were they even reasonably loved. The spirit not of love but +of justice and the public advantage was destined to bring the end of their +bondage. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +REVOLUTION AND REACTION + + +After the whole group of colonies had long been left in salutary neglect +by the British authorities, George III and his ministers undertook the +creation of an imperial control; and Parliament was too much at the king's +command for opposing statesmen to stop the project. The Americans wakened +resentfully to the new conditions. The revived navigation laws, the stamp +act, the tea duty, and the dispatch of redcoats to coerce Massachusetts +were a cumulation of grievances not to be borne by high-spirited people. +For some years the colonial spokesmen tried to persuade the British +government that it was violating historic and constitutional rights; but +these efforts had little success. To the argument that the empire was +composed of parts mutually independent in legislation, it was replied that +Parliament had legislated imperially ever since the empire's beginning, and +that the colonial assemblies possessed only such powers as Parliament might +allow. The plea of no taxation without representation was answered by the +doctrine that all elements in the empire were virtually represented in +Parliament. The stress laid by the colonials upon their rights as Britons +met the administration's emphasis upon the duty of all British subjects +to obey British laws. This countering of pleas of exemption with +pronouncements of authority drove the complainants at length from proposals +of reform to projects of revolution. For this the solidarity of the +continent was essential, and that was to be gained only by the most +vigorous agitation with the aid of the most effective campaign cries. The +claim of historic immunities was largely discarded in favor of the more +glittering doctrines current in the philosophy of the time. The demands for +local self-government or for national independence, one or both of which +were the genuine issues at stake, were subordinated to the claim of the +inherent and inalienable rights of man. Hence the culminating formulation +in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be +self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by +their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, +liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The cause of the community was to be +won under the guise of the cause of individuals. + +In Jefferson's original draft of the great declaration there was a +paragraph indicting the king for having kept open the African slave trade +against colonial efforts to close it, and for having violated thereby the +"most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who never +offended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to +incur miserable death in their transportation thither." This passage, +according to Jefferson's account, "was struck out in complaisance to South +Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation +of slaves and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern +brethren also I believe," Jefferson continued, "felt a little tender under +these censures, for though their people have very few slaves themselves, +yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[1] By +reason of the general stress upon the inherent liberty of all men, however, +the question of negro status, despite its omission from the Declaration, +was an inevitable corollary to that of American independence. + +[Footnote 1: Herbert Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ (New +York, 1904), pp. 130, 272.] + +Negroes had a barely appreciable share in precipitating the Revolution +and in waging the war. The "Boston Massacre" was occasioned in part by an +insult offered by a slave to a British soldier two days before; and in that +celebrated affray itself, Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was one of the +five inhabitants of Boston slain. During the course of the war free negro +and slave enlistments were encouraged by law in the states where racial +control was not reckoned vital, and they were informally permitted in the +rest. The British also utilized this resource in some degree. As early as +November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the ousted royal governor of Virginia, +issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves "appertaining to +rebels" who would join him "for the more speedy reducing this colony to a +proper sense of their duty to his Majesty's crown and dignity."[2] In reply +the Virginia press warned the negroes against British perfidy; and the +revolutionary government, while announcing the penalties for servile +revolt, promised freedom to such as would promptly desert the British +standard. Some hundreds of negroes appear to have joined Dunmore, but they +did not save him from being driven away.[3] + +[Footnote 2: _American Archives_, Force ed., fourth series, III, 1385.] + +[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., III, 1387; IV, 84, 85; V, 160, 162.] + +When several years afterward military operations were transferred to the +extreme South, where the whites were few and the blacks many, the problem +of negro enlistments became at once more pressing and more delicate. Henry +Laurens of South Carolina proposed to General Washington in March, 1779, +the enrollment of three thousand blacks in the Southern department. +Hamilton warmly endorsed the project, and Washington and Madison more +guardedly. Congress recommended it to the states concerned, and pledged +itself to reimburse the masters and to set the slaves free with a payment +of fifty dollars to each of these at the end of the war. Eventually Colonel +John Laurens, the son of Henry, went South as an enthusiastic emissary of +the scheme, only to meet rebuff and failure.[4] Had the negroes in general +possessed any means of concerted action, they might conceivably have played +off the British and American belligerents to their own advantage. In +actuality, however, they were a passive element whose fate was affected +only so far as the master race determined. + +[Footnote 4: G.W. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_ (New +York [1882]), I, 353-362.] + +Some of the politicians who championed the doctrine of liberty inherent and +universal used it merely as a means to a specific and somewhat unrelated +end. Others endorsed it literally and with resolve to apply it wherever +consistency might require. How could they justly continue to hold men in +bondage when in vindication of their own cause they were asserting the +right of all men to be free? Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Edmund +Randolph and many less prominent slaveholders were disquieted by the +question. Instances of private manumission became frequent, and memorials +were fairly numerous advocating anti-slavery legislation. Indeed Samuel +Hopkins of Rhode Island in a pamphlet of 1776 declared that slavery in +Anglo-America was "without the express sanction of civil government," and +censured the colonial authorities and citizens for having connived in the +maintenance of the wrongful institution. + +As to public acts, the Vermont convention of 1777 when claiming statehood +for its community framed a constitution with a bill of rights asserting the +inherent freedom of all men and attaching to it an express prohibition of +slavery. The opposition of New York delayed Vermont's recognition until +1791 when she was admitted as a state with this provision unchanged. +Similar inherent-liberty clauses but without the expressed anti-slavery +application were incorporated into the bills of rights adopted severally by +Virginia in 1776, Massachusetts in 1780, and New Hampshire in 1784. In the +first of these the holding of slaves persisted undisturbed by this action; +and in New Hampshire the custom died from the dearth of slaves rather than +from the natural-rights clause. In Massachusetts likewise it is plain +from copious contemporary evidence that abolition was not intended by the +framers of the bill of rights nor thought by the people or the officials to +have been accomplished thereby.[5] One citizen, indeed, who wanted to keep +his woman slave but to be rid of her child soon to be born, advertised in +the _Independent Chronicle_ of Boston at the close of 1780: "A negro child, +soon expected, of a good breed, may be owned by any person inclining to +take it, and money with it."[6] The courts of the commonwealth, however, +soon began to reflect anti-slavery sentiment, as Lord Mansfield had done in +the preceding decade in England,[7] and to make use of the bill of rights +to destroy the masters' dominion. The decisive case was the prosecution of +Nathaniel Jennison of Worcester County for assault and imprisonment alleged +to have been committed upon his absconded slave Quork Walker in the process +of his recovery. On the trial in 1783 the jury responded to a strong +anti-slavery charge from Chief Justice Cushing by returning a verdict +against Jennison, and the court fined him £50 and costs. + +[Footnote 5: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_, pp. 181-209.] + +[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., p. 208. So far as the present writer's knowledge +extends, this item is without parallel at any other time or place.] + +[Footnote 7: The case of James Somerset on _habeas corpus_, in Howell's +_State Trials_, XX, §548.] + +This action prompted the negroes generally to leave their masters, though +some were deterred "on account of their age and infirmities, or because +they did not know how to provide for themselves, or for some pecuniary +consideration."[8] The former slaveholders now felt a double grievance: +they were deprived of their able-bodied negroes but were not relieved of +the legal obligation to support such others as remained on their hands. +Petitions for their relief were considered by the legislature but never +acted upon. The legal situation continued vague, for although an act of +1788 forbade citizens to trade in slaves and another penalized the sojourn +for more than two months in Massachusetts of negroes from other states,[9] +no legislation defined the status of colored residents. In the federal +census of 1790, however, this was the only state in which no slaves were +listed. + +[Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 386.] + +[Footnote 9: Moore, pp. 227-229.] + +Racial antipathy and class antagonism among the whites appear to +have contributed to this result. John Adams wrote in 1795, with some +exaggeration and incoherence: "Argument might have [had] some weight in +the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the +multiplication of labouring white people, who would no longer suffer the +rich to employ these sable rivals so much to their injury ... If the +gentlemen had been permitted by law to hold slaves, the common white people +would have put the negroes to death, and their masters too, perhaps ... +The common white people, or rather the labouring people, were the cause of +rendering negroes unprofitable servants. Their scoffs and insults, their +continual insinuations, filled the negroes with discontent, made them lazy, +idle, proud, vicious, and at length wholly useless to their masters, +to such a degree that the abolition of slavery became a measure of +economy."[10] + +[Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 402.] + +Slavery in the rest of the Northern states was as a rule not abolished, but +rather put in process of gradual extinction by legislation of a peculiar +sort enacted in response to agitations characteristic of the times. +Pennsylvania set the pattern in an act of 1780 providing that all children +born thereafter of slave mothers in the state were to be the servants of +their mothers' owners until reaching twenty-eight years of age, and then to +become free. Connecticut followed in 1784 with an act of similar purport +but with a specification of twenty-five years, afterward reduced to +twenty-one, as the age for freedom; and in 1840 she abolished her remnant +of slavery outright. In Rhode Island an act of the same year, 1784, enacted +that the children thereafter born of slave mothers were to be free at the +ages of twenty-one for males and eighteen for females, and that these +children were meanwhile to be supported and instructed at public expense; +but an amendment of the following year transferred to the mothers' owners +the burden of supporting the children, and ignored the matter of their +education. New York lagged until 1799, and then provided freedom for the +after-born only at twenty-eight and twenty-five years for males and females +respectively; but a further act of 1817 set the Fourth of July in 1827 as a +time for the emancipation for all remaining slaves in the state. New +Jersey fell into line last of all by an act of 1804 giving freedom to the +after-born at the ages of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females; +and in 1846 she converted the surviving slaves nominally into apprentices +but without materially changing their condition. Supplementary legislation +here and there in these states bestowed freedom upon slaves in military +service, restrained the import and export of slaves, and forbade the +citizens to ply the slave trade by land or sea.[11] + +[Footnote 11: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 77-85; B.C. +Steiner, _Slavery in Connecticut_, pp. 30-32; _Rhode Island Colonial +Records_, X, 132, 133; A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in New York," in the New +York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 286-298; H.S. Cooley, "Slavery +in New Jersey" (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XIV, nos. 9, 10), pp. +47-50; F.B. Lee, _New Jersey as a Colony and as a State_ (New York, 1912), +IV, 25-48.] + +Thus from Pennsylvania eastward the riddance of slavery was procured or put +in train, generally by the device of emancipating the _post nati_; and in +consequence the slave population in that quarter dwindled before the middle +of the nineteenth century to a negligible residue. To the southward the +tobacco states, whose industry had reached a somewhat stationary condition, +found it a simple matter to prohibit the further importation of slaves from +Africa. Delaware did this in 1776, Virginia in 1778, Maryland in 1783 and +North Carolina in 1794. But in these commonwealths as well as in their more +southerly neighbors, the contemplation of the great social and economic +problems involved in disestablishing slavery daunted the bulk of the +citizens and impelled their representatives to conservatism. The advocacy +of abolition, whether sudden or gradual, was little more than sporadic. +The people were not to be stampeded in the cause of inherent rights or +any other abstract philosophy. It was a condition and not a theory which +confronted them. + +In Delaware, however, the problem was hardly formidable, for at the time of +the first federal census there were hardly nine thousand slaves and a third +as many colored freemen in her gross population of some sixty thousand +souls. Nevertheless a bill for gradual abolition considered by the +legislature in 1786 appears not to have been brought to a vote,[12] and no +action in the premises was taken thereafter. The retention of slavery seems +to have been mainly due to mere public inertia and to the pressure of +political sympathy with the more distinctively Southern states. Because of +her border position and her dearth of plantation industry, the slaves in +Delaware steadily decreased to less than eighteen hundred in 1860, while +the free negroes grew to more than ten times as many. + +[Footnote 12: J.R. Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789," in J.F. +Jameson ed., _Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States, +1775-1789_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 300-302.] + +In Maryland various projects for abolition, presented by the Quakers +between 1785 and 1791 and supported by William Pinckney and Charles +Carroll, were successively defeated in the legislature; and efforts +to remove the legal restraints on private manumission were likewise +thwarted.[13] These restrictions, which applied merely to the freeing of +slaves above middle age, were in fact very slight. The manumissions indeed +were so frequent and the conditions of life in Maryland were so attractive +to free negroes, or at least so much less oppressive than in most other +states, that while the slave population decreased between 1790 and 1860 +from 103,036 to 87,189 souls the colored freemen multiplied from 8046 to +83,942, a number greater by twenty-five thousand than that in any other +commonwealth. + +[Footnote 13: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_ (Baltimore, 1899), pp. +52-64, 148-155.] + +Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1785 that anti-slavery men were as scarce to the +southward of Chesapeake Bay as they were common to the north of it, while +in Maryland, and still more in Virginia, the bulk of the people approved +the doctrine and a respectable minority were ready to adopt it in practice, +"a minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates against +the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of +a property which, however, keeps their conscience unquiet." Virginia, +he continued, "is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the +interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression, a +conflict in which the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx +into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the +principles of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to +them that I look with anxiety to turn the fate of the question."[14] +Jefferson had already tried to raise the issue by having a committee for +revising the Virginia laws, appointed in 1776 with himself a member, frame +a special amendment for disestablishing slavery. This contemplated a +gradual emancipation of the after-born children, their tutelage by the +state, their colonization at maturity, and their replacement in Virginia +by white immigrants.[15] But a knowledge that such a project would raise +a storm caused even its framers to lay it aside. The abolition of +primogeniture and the severance of church from state absorbed reformers' +energies at the expense of the slavery question. + +[Footnote 14: Jefferson, _Writings_, P.L. Ford ed., IV, 82-83.] + +[Footnote 15: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, various editions, query 14.] + +When writing his _Notes on Virginia_ in 1781 Jefferson denounced the +slaveholding system in phrases afterward classic among abolitionists: "With +what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one-half of +the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those +into despots and these into enemies ... And can the liberties of a nation +be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction +in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That +they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my +country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep +forever."[16] In the course of the same work, however, he deprecated +abolition unless it were to be accompanied with deportation: "Why not +retain and incorporate the blacks into the state...? Deep rooted prejudices +entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the +injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which +nature has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us into +parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the +extermination of the one or the other race ... This unfortunate difference +of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the +emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates while they wish to +vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve its +dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question 'What +further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those +who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans, emancipation +required but one effort. The slave when made free might mix without +staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary +unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of +mixture."[17] + +[Footnote 16: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, query 18.] + +[Footnote 17: _Ibid_., query 14.] + +George Washington wrote in 1786 that one of his chief wishes was that some +plan might be adopted "by which slavery may be abolished by slow, sure and +imperceptible degrees." But he noted in the same year that some abolition +petitions presented to the Virginia legislature had barely been given a +reading.[18] + +[Footnote 18: Washington, _Writings_, W.C. Ford ed., XI, 20, 62.] + +Seeking to revive the issue, Judge St. George Tucker, professor of law in +William and Mary College, inquired of leading citizens of Massachusetts in +1795 for data and advice, and undaunted by discouraging reports received in +reply or by the specific dissuasion of John Adams, he framed an intricate +plan for extremely gradual emancipation and for expelling the freedmen +without expense to the state by merely making their conditions of life +unbearable. This was presented to the legislature in a pamphlet of 1796 +at the height of the party strife between the Federalists and +Democratic-Republicans; and it was impatiently dismissed from +consideration.[19] Tucker, still nursing his project, reprinted his +"dissertation" as an appendix to his edition of Blackstone in 1803, where +the people and the politicians let it remain buried. In public opinion, the +problem as to the freedmen remained unsolved and insoluble. + +[Footnote 19: St. George Tucker, _A Dissertation on Slavery, with a +proposal for the gradual abolition of it in the State of Virginia_ +(Philadelphia, 1796, reprinted New York, 1860). Tucker's Massachusetts +correspondence is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society +_Collections_, XLIII (Belknap papers), 379-431.] + +Meanwhile the Virginia black code had been considerably moderated during +and after the Revolution; and in particular the previous almost iron-clad +prohibition of private manumission had been wholly removed in effect by an +act of 1782. In spite of restrictions afterward imposed upon manumission +and upon the residence of new freedmen in the state, the free negroes +increased on a scale comparable to that in Maryland. As compared with an +estimate of less than two thousand in 1782, there were 12,866 in 1790, +20,124 in 1800, and 30,570 in 1810. Thereafter the number advanced more +slowly until it reached 58,042, about one-eighth as many as the slaves +numbered, in 1860. + +In the more southerly states condemnation of slavery was rare. Among +the people of Georgia, the depressing experience of the colony under a +prohibition of it was too fresh in memory for them to contemplate with +favor a fresh deprivation. In South Carolina Christopher Gadsden had +written in 1766 likening slavery to a crime, and a decade afterward Henry +Laurens wrote: "You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery.... The day, I hope +is approaching when from principles of gratitude as well as justice every +man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the +golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my +negroes produce if sold at public auction tomorrow.... Nevertheless I am +devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail +of slavery. Great powers oppose me--the laws and customs of my country, +my own and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say if +I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not +insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest to +a better hand. I am not one of those ... who dare trust in Providence for +defence and security of their own liberty while they enslave and wish +to continue in slavery thousands who are as well entitled to freedom as +themselves. I perceive the work before me is great. I shall appear to many +as a promoter not only of strange but of dangerous doctrines; it will +therefore be necessary to proceed with caution."[20] Had either Gadsden +or Laurens entertained thoughts of launching an anti-slavery campaign, +however, the palpable hopelessness of such a project in their community +must have dissuaded them. The negroes of the rice coast were so +outnumbering and so crude that an agitation applying the doctrine of +inherent liberty and equality to them could only have had the effect of +discrediting the doctrine itself. Furthermore, the industrial prospect, +the swamps and forests calling for conversion into prosperous plantations, +suggested an increase rather than a diminution of the slave labor supply. +Georgia and South Carolina, in fact, were more inclined to keep open the +African slave trade than to relinquish control of the negro population. +Revolutionary liberalism had but the slightest of echoes there. + +[Footnote 20: Frank Moore ed., _Correspondence of Henry Laurens_ (New York, +1861), pp. 20, 21. The version of this letter given by Professor Wallace in +his _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 446, which varies from the present one, was +derived from a paraphrase by John Laurens to whom the original was written. +Cf. _South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine_, X. 49. For +related items in the Laurens correspondence _see_ D.D. Wallace, _Life of +Henry Laurens_, pp. 445, 447-455.] + +In North Carolina the prevailing lack of enterprise in public affairs had +no exception in regard to slavery. The Quakers alone condemned it. When in +1797 Nathaniel Macon, a pronounced individualist and the chief spokesman of +his state in Congress, discussed the general subject he said "there was not +a gentleman in North Carolina who did not wish there were no blacks in the +country. It was a misfortune--he considered it a curse; but there was no +way of getting rid of them." Macon put his emphasis upon the negro problem +rather than upon the question of slavery, and in so doing he doubtless +reflected the thought of his community.[21] The legislation of North +Carolina regarding racial control, like that of the period in South +Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, was more conservative than +liberal. + +[Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, VII, 661. American historians, through +preoccupation or inadvertence, have often confused anti-negro with +anti-slavery expressions. In reciting the speech of Macon here quoted +McMaster has replaced "blacks" with "slaves"; and incidentally he has made +the whole discussion apply to Georgia instead of North Carolina. Rhodes +in turn has implicitly followed McMaster in both errors. J.B. McMaster, +_History of the People of the United States_, II, 359; J.F. Rhodes, +_History of the United States_, I, 19.] + +The central government of the United States during the Revolution and the +Confederation was little concerned with slavery problems except in its +diplomatic affairs, where the question was merely the adjustment of +property in slaves, and except in regard to the western territories. +Proposals for the prohibition of slavery in these wilderness regions were +included in the first projects for establishing governments in them. +Timothy Pickering and certain military colleagues framed a plan in 1780 for +a state beyond the Ohio River with slavery excluded; but it was allowed +to drop out of consideration. In the next year an ordinance drafted by +Jefferson was introduced into Congress for erecting territorial governments +over the whole area ceded or to be ceded by the states, from the +Alleghanies to the Mississippi and from Canada to West Florida; and one of +its features was a prohibition of slavery after the year 1800 throughout +the region concerned. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress +could enact legislation only by the affirmative votes of seven state +delegations. When the ballot was taken on the anti-slavery clause the six +states from Pennsylvania eastward voted aye: Maryland, Virginia and South +Carolina voted no; and the other states were absent. Jefferson was not +alone in feeling chagrin at the defeat and in resolving to persevere. +Pickering expressed his own views in a letter to Rufus King: "To suffer the +continuance of slaves till they can be gradually emancipated, in states +already overrun with them, may be pardonable because unavoidable without +hazarding greater evils; but to introduce them into countries where none +already exist ... can never be forgiven." King in his turn introduced a +resolution virtually restoring the stricken clause, but was unable to bring +it to a vote. After being variously amended, the ordinance without this +clause was adopted. It was, however, temporary in its provision and +ineffectual in character; and soon the drafting of one adequate for +permanent purposes was begun. The adoption of this was hastened in July, +1787, by the offer of a New England company to buy from Congress a huge +tract of Ohio land. When the bill was put to the final vote it was +supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, +Abraham Yates. Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland +were present, and all of them voted aye. Its enactment gave to the country +a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to +the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. Applying +only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for +the erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed in +republican government, secured in the freedom of religion, jury trial and +all concomitant rights, endowed with public land for the support of schools +and universities, and while obligated to render fugitive slaves on claim +of their masters in the original states, shut out from the régime of +slaveholding itself.[22] "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary +servitude in the said territory," it prescribed, "otherwise than in +punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The +first Congress under the new constitution reënacted the ordinance, which +was the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government in +the period. + +[Footnote 22: A.C. McLaughlin, _The Confederation and the Constitution_ +(New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A. Hinsdale, _The Old Northwest_ (New York, +1888), chap. 15.] + +By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The +excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of +individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon +the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many +sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their +opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist +property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class +interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing +jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking +of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and +particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now +enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and +get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on the +principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old régime: matter-of-fact +reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. The +plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the +popular will to procure a general ratification. + +Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but +under local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, +its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it +continued to lie in the several state governments. The great convention +at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of +authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one +hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate +one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all +problems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignorance +by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in +another was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and the +secrecy of the convention's proceedings exempted it from any pressure of +anti-slavery sentiment from outside. + +On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises was +discredited. Roger Sherman of Connecticut "observed that the abolition of +slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense +of the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it." His +colleague Oliver Ellsworth said, "The morality or wisdom of slavery are +considerations belonging to the states themselves"; and again, "Let us not +intermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to +render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." +And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts "thought we had nothing to do with the +conduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any +sanction to it." The agreement was general that the convention keep its +hands off so far as might be; but positive action was required upon +incidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for the +institution itself. These issues concerned the apportionment of +representation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition of +fugitives. This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of a +clause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changed +in its phrasing to read: "No person held to service or labour in one state +under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any +law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but +shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour +may be due." After some jockeying, the other two questions were settled by +compromise. Representation in the lower house of Congress was apportioned +among the states "according to their several members, which shall be +determined by adding to the whole number of free persons ... three fifths +of all other persons." As to the foreign slave trade, Congress was +forbidden to prohibit it prior to the year 1808, and was merely permitted +meanwhile to levy an import duty upon slaves at a rate of not more than ten +dollars each. [23] + +[Footnote 23: Max Farrand ed., _The Records of the Federal Convention_ (New +Haven, 1911), _passim_] + +In the state conventions to which the Constitution was referred for +ratification the debates bore out a remark of Madison's at Philadelphia +that the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small +states but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. The +opponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slavery +instrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on the +ground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carried +and that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect of +a federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South the +opposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of the +African trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate, +while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmost +practicable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved. +Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifying +conventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered, +strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and still +were so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending to +establish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful to +the cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promote +and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of +slaves of every description."[24] The proposal seems to have received no +further attention at the time. + +[Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H.V. Ames, "Proposed Amendment +to the Constitution of the United States," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 208] + +In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of the +few debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positive +action. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was never +enacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly by +Quakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the close +of the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a more +concrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf of +some negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard of +legal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committee +reported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizance +alone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed, +the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned at all with slavery was +the act of 1793 empowering the master of an interstate fugitive to seize +him wherever found, carry him before any federal or state magistrate in the +vicinage, and procure a certificate warranting his removal to the state +from which he had fled. Proposals to supplement this rendition act on the +one hand by safeguarding free negroes from being kidnapped under fraudulent +claims and on the other hand by requiring employers of strange negroes to +publish descriptions of them and thus facilitate the recovery of runaways, +were each defeated in the House. + +On the whole the glamor of revolutionary doctrines was passing, and self +interest was regaining its wonted supremacy. While the rising cotton +industry was giving the blacks in the South new value as slaves, Northern +spokesmen were frankly stating an antipathy of their people toward negroes +in any capacity whatever.[25] The succession of disasters in San Domingo, +meanwhile, gave warning against the upsetting of racial adjustments in the +black belts, and the Gabriel revolt of 1800 in Virginia drove the lesson +home. On slavery questions for a period of several decades the policy +of each of the two sections was merely to prevent itself from being +overreached. The conservative trend, however, could not wholly remove the +Revolution's impress of philosophical liberalism from the minds of men. +Slavery was always a thing of appreciable disrelish in many quarters; and +the slave trade especially, whether foreign or domestic, bore a permanent +stigma. + +[Footnote 25: _E. g., Annals of Congress_, 1799-1801, pp. 230-246.] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE + + +The many attempts of the several colonies to restrict or prohibit the +importation of slaves were uniformly thwarted, as we have seen, by the +British government. The desire for prohibition, however, had been far from +constant or universal.[1] The first Continental Congress when declaring the +Association, on October 18, 1774, resolved: "We will neither import, nor +purchase any slave imported, after the first day of December next; after +which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither +be concerned in it ourselves nor will we hire our vessels nor sell our +commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[2] But even +this was mainly a political stroke against the British government; and the +general effect of the restraint lasted not more than two or three years.[3] +The ensuing war, of course, hampered the trade, and the legislatures of +several Northern states, along with Delaware and Virginia, took occasion +to prohibit slave importations. The return of peace, although followed by +industrial depression, revived the demand for slave labor. Nevertheless, +Maryland prohibited the import by an act of 1783; North Carolina laid a +prohibitive duty in 1787; and South Carolina in the spring of that year +enacted the first of a series of temporary laws which maintained a +continuous prohibition for sixteen years. Thus at the time when the framers +of the Federal Constitution were stopping congressional action for twenty +years, the trade was legitimate only in a few of the Northern states, all +of which soon enacted prohibitions, and in Georgia alone at the South. +The San Domingan cataclysm prompted the Georgia legislature in an act +of December 19, 1793, to forbid the importation of slaves from the West +Indies, the Bahamas and Florida, as well as to require free negroes to +procure magisterial certificates of industriousness and probity.[4] The +African trade was left open by that state until 1798, when it was closed +both by legislative enactment and by constitutional provision. + +[Footnote 1: The slave trade enactments by the colonies, the states and +the federal government are listed and summarized in W.E.B. DuBois, _The +Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638-1870_ +(New York, 1904), appendices.] + +[Footnote 2: W.C. Ford, ed., _Journals of the Continental Congress_ +(Washington, 1904), I, 75, 77.] + +[Footnote 3: DuBois, pp. 44-48.] + +[Footnote 4: The text of the act, which appears never to have been printed, +is in the Georgia archives. For a transcript I am indebted to the Hon. +Philip Cook, Secretary of State of Georgia.] + +The scale of the importation in the period when Georgia alone permitted +them appears to have been small. For the year 1796, for example, the +imports at Savannah were officially reported at 2084, including some who +had been brought coastwise from the northward for sale.[5] A foreign +traveler who visited Savannah in the period noted that the demand was light +because of the dearth of money and credit, that the prices were about three +hundred dollars per head, that the carriers were mainly from New England, +and that one third of each year's imports were generally smuggled into +South Carolina.[6] + +[Footnote 5: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, pp. 459, +460.] + +[Footnote 6: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ +(London, 1799), p. 605.] + +In the impulse toward the prohibitory acts the humanitarian motive was +obvious but not isolated. At the North it was supplemented, often in +the same breasts, by the inhumane feeling of personal repugnance toward +negroes. The anti-slave-trade agitation in England also had a contributing +influence; and there were no economic interests opposing the exclusion. +At the South racial repugnance was fainter, and humanitarianism though of +positive weight was but one of several factors. The distinctively Southern +considerations against the trade were that its continuance would lower the +prices of slaves already on hand, or at least prevent those prices from +rising; that it would so increase the staple exports as to spoil the +world's market for them; that it would drain out money and keep the +community in debt; that it would retard the civilization of the negroes +already on hand; and that by raising the proportion of blacks in the +population it would intensify the danger of slave insurrections. The +several arguments had varying degrees of influence in the several areas. +In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-going +comfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer districts the +settlers were more confident in their own alertness. Again, where +prosperity was declining the planters were fairly sure to favor anything +calculated to raise the prices of slaves which they might wish in future to +sell, while on the other hand the people in districts of rising industry +were tempted by programmes tending to cheapen the labor they needed. + +The arguments used in South Carolina for and against exclusion may be +gathered from scattering reports in the newspapers. In September, 1785, the +lower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governor +on the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committee +of fifteen on the state of the republic. In this committee there was a +vigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting +slave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it. Since the +peace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven thousand slaves +had been imported, which at £50 each would be trifling as a cause of the +existing stringency; and the closing of the ports would therefore fail to +relieve the distress[7] Thomas Pinckney supported Rutledge with an argument +that the exclusion of the trade from Charleston would at once drive +commerce in general to the ports of Georgia and North Carolina, and that +the advantage of low prices, which he said had fallen from a level of £90 +in 1783, would be lost to the planters. Judge Pendleton, on the other hand, +stressed the need of retrenchment. Planters, he said, no longer enjoyed the +long loans which in colonial times had protected them from distress; and +the short credits now alone available put borrowers in peril of bankruptcy +from a single season of short crops and low prices.[8] The committee +reported Izard's bill; but it was defeated in the House by a vote of 47 to +51, and an act was passed instead for an emission of bills of credit by the +state. The advocacy of the trade by Thomas Pinckney indicates that at this +time there was no unanimity of conservatives against it. + +[Footnote 7: Charleston _Evening Gazette_, Sept. 26 and 28, 1785.] + +[Footnote 8: _Ibid_., Oct. 1, 1785.] + +When two years later the stringency persisted, the radicals in the +legislature demanded a law to stay the execution of debts, while the now +unified conservatives proposed again the stoppage of the slave trade. In +the course of the debate David Ramsay "made a jocose remark that every +man who went to church last Sunday and said his prayers was bound by a +spiritual obligation to refuse the importation of slaves. They had devoutly +prayed not to be led into temptation, and negroes were a temptation too +great to be resisted."[9] The issue was at length adjusted by combining +the two projects of a stay-law and a prohibition of slave importations for +three years in a single bill. This was approved on March 28, 1787; and a +further act of the same day added a penalty of fine to that of forfeiture +for the illegal introduction of slaves. The exclusion applied to slaves +from every source, except those whose masters should bring them when +entering the state as residents.[10] + +[Footnote 9: Charleston _Morning Post_, March 23, 1787.] + +[Footnote 10: _Ibid_., March 29, 1787; Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at +Large of South Carolina_, VII, 430.] + +Early in the next year an attempt was made to repeal the prohibition. Its +leading advocate was Alexander Gillon, a populistic Charleston merchant +who had been made a commodore by the State of South Carolina but had never +sailed a ship. The opposition was voiced so vigorously by Edward Rutledge, +Charles Pinckney, Chancellor Matthews, Dr. Ramsay, Mr. Lowndes, and others +that the project was crushed by 93 votes to 40. The strongest weapon in +the hands of its opponents appears to have been a threat of repealing the +stay-law in retaliation.[11] At the end of the year the prohibitory act +had its life prolonged until the beginning of 1793; and continuation acts +adopted every two or three years thereafter extended the régime until the +end of 1803. The constitutionality of the prohibition was tested before the +judiciary of the state in January, 1802, when the five assembled judges +unanimously pronounced it valid.[12] + +[Footnote 11: _Georgia State Gazette_ (Savannah), Feb. 17, 1788.] + +[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Jan. 30, 1802.] + +But at last the advocates of the open trade had their innings. The governor +in a message of November 24, 1803, recited that his best exertions to +enforce the law had been of no avail. Inhabitants of the coast and the +frontier, said he, were smuggling in slaves abundantly, while the people of +the central districts were suffering an unfair competition in having to +pay high prices for their labor. He mentioned a recently enacted law of +Congress reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only to +pronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction; and he +dismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of smuggled slaves +as "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction in servitude."[13] +Having thus described the problem as insoluble by prohibitions, he left the +solution to the legislature. + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 5, 1803.] + +In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward by a +statement of William Lowndes in Congress,[14] there is reason to believe +that violations of the law had not been committed on a great scale. Slave +prices could not have become nearly doubled, as they did during the period +of legal prohibition, if African imports had been at all freely made. The +governor may quite possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view to +bringing the system of exclusion to an end. + +[Footnote 14: _Annals of Congress_, 1803-1804, p. 992.] + +However this may have been, a bill was promptly introduced in the Senate +to repeal all acts against importations. Mr. Barnwell opposed this on +the ground that the immense influx of slaves which might be expected in +consequence would cut in half the value of slave property, and that the +increase in the cotton output would lower the already falling prices of +cotton to disastrous levels. The resumption of the great war in Europe, +said he, had already diminished the supply of manufactured goods and raised +their prices. "Was it under these circumstances that we ought to lay +out the savings of our industry, the funds accumulated in many years of +prosperity and peace, to increase that produce whose value had already +fallen so much? He thought not. The permission given by the bill would lead +to ruinous speculations. Everyone would purchase negroes. It was well known +that those who dealt in this property would sell it at a very long credit. +Our citizens would purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate crops and +favorable markets for making their payments; and it would be found that +South Carolina would in a few years, if this trade continued open, be in +the same situation of debt, and subject to all misfortunes which that +situation had produced, as at the close of the Revolutionary war." The +newspaper closed its report of the speech by a concealment of its further +burden: "The Hon. member adduced in support of his opinion various other +arguments, still more cogent and impressive, which from reasons very +obvious we decline making public."[15] It may be surmised that the +suppressed remarks dealt with the danger of slave revolts. In the further +course of the debate, "Mr. Smith said he would agree to put a stop to the +importation of slaves, but he believed it impossible. For this reason he +would vote for the bill." The measure soon passed the Senate. + +[Footnote 15: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 26, 1803.] + +Meanwhile the lower house had resolved on December 8, in committee of the +whole, "that the laws prohibiting the importation of negroes and other +persons of colour in this state can be so amended as to prevent their +introduction amongst us," and had recommended that a select committee be +appointed to draft a bill accordingly.[16] Within the following week, +however, the sentiment of the House was swung to the policy of repeal, and +the Senate bill was passed. On the test vote the ayes were 55 and the +noes 46.[17] The act continued the exclusion of West Indian negroes, and +provided that slaves brought in from sister states of the Union must have +official certificates of good character; but as to the African trade it +removed all restrictions. In 1805 a bill to prohibit imports again was +introduced into the legislature, but after debate it was defeated.[18] + +[Footnote 16: _Ibid_., Dec. 20, 1803.] + +[Footnote 17: Charleston _City Gazette_, Dec. 22, 1803.] + +[Footnote 18: "Diary of Edward Hooker" in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] + +The local effect of the repeal is indicated in the experience of E.S. +Thomas, a Charleston bookseller of the time who in high prosperity had just +opened a new importation of fifty thousand volumes. As he wrote in after +years, the news that the legislature had reopened the slave trade "had not +been five hours in the city, before two large British Guineamen, that had +been lying on and off the port for several days expecting it, came up to +town; and from that day my business began to decline.... A great change at +once took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for the +coast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were bought +up with avidity, not only consuming the large funds that had been +accumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit +and mortgaging the slaves for payment.... For myself, I was upwards of five +years disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more than a half, in +all the principal towns from Augusta in Georgia to Boston."[19] + +[Footnote 19: E.S. Thomas, _Reminiscences_, II, 35, 36.] + +As reported at the end of the period, the importations amounted to 5386 +slaves in 1804; 6790 in 1805; 11,458 in 1806; and 15,676 in 1807.[20] +Senator William Smith of South Carolina upon examining the records at a +later time placed the total at 39,310, and analysed the statistics as +follows: slaves brought by British vessels, 19,449; by French vessels, +1078; by American vessels, operated mostly for the account of Rhode +Islanders and foreigners, 18,048.[21] If an influx no greater than this +could produce the effect which Thomas described, notwithstanding that many +of the slaves were immediately reshipped to New Orleans and many more +were almost as promptly sold into the distant interior, the scale of +the preceding illicit trade must have been far less than the official +statements and the apologies in Congress would indicate. + +[Footnote 20: _Virginia Argus_, Jan. 19, 1808.] + +[Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, 1821-1822, pp. 73-77.] + +South Carolina's opening of the trade promptly spread dismay in other +states. The North Carolina legislature, by a vote afterwards described as +virtually unanimous in both houses, adopted resolutions in December, 1804, +instructing the Senators from North Carolina and requesting her Congressmen +to use their utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procure +an amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at once to +prohibit the further importation of slaves and other persons of color +from Africa and the West Indies. Copies were ordered sent not only to the +state's delegation in Congress but to the governors of the other states for +transmission to the legislatures with a view to their concurrence.[22] In +the next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New +Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of the +time when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of the +Constitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme of +amendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for +the temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of +African importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at the +beginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on the general +question three years afterward. + +[Footnote 22: Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter of +Governor James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, in +the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.] + +[Footnote 23: H.V. Ames, _Proposed Amendments to the Constitution_, in the +American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 208, 209.] + +[Footnote 24: Printed from Senator Plumer's notes, in the _American +Historical Review_, XXII, 340-364.] + +In the winter of 1804-1805 bills were introduced in both Senate and House +to prohibit slave importations at large; but the one was postponed for a +year and the other was rejected,[25] doubtless because the time was not +near enough when they could take effect. At last the matter was formally +presented by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens," +he said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "on the approach of +the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to +withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation +in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued +on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the +reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to +proscribe. Although no law you can pass can take effect until the day of +the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening period +is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be +completed before that day."[26] Next day Senator Bradley of Vermont gave +notice of a bill which was shortly afterward introduced and which, after +an unreported discussion, was passed by the Senate on January 27. Its +conspicuous provisions were that after the close of the year 1807 the +importation of slaves was to be a felony punishable with death, and that +the interstate coasting trade in slaves should be illegal. + +[Footnote 25: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, p. +105.] + +The report of proceedings in the House was now full, now scant. The +paragraph of the President's message was referred on December 3 to a +committee of seven with Peter Early of Georgia as chairman and three other +Southerners in the membership. The committee's bill reported on December +15, proposed to prohibit slave importations, to penalize the fitting out of +vessels for the trade by fine and forfeiture, to lay fines and forfeitures +likewise upon the owners and masters found within the jurisdictional waters +of the United States with slaves from abroad on board, and empowered the +President to use armed vessels in enforcement. It further provided that if +slaves illegally introduced should be found within the United States they +should be forfeited, and any person wittingly concerned in buying or +selling them should be fined; it laid the burden of proof upon defendants +when charged on reasonable grounds of presumption with having violated the +act; and it prescribed that the slaves forfeited should, like other +goods in the same status, be sold at public outcry by the proper federal +functionaries.[27] + +[Footnote 26: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 14.] + +[Footnote 27 _Ibid_., pp. 167, 168.] + +Mr. Sloan of New Jersey instantly moved to amend by providing that the +forfeited slaves be entitled to freedom. Mr. Early replied that this would +rob the bill of all effect by depriving it of public sanction in the +districts whither slaves were likely to be brought. Those communities, he +said, would never tolerate the enforcement of a law which would set fresh +Africans at large in their midst. Mr. Smilie, voicing the sentiment and +indicating the dilemma of most of his fellow Pennsylvanians, declared +his unconquerable aversion to any measure which would make the federal +government a dealer in slaves, but confessed that he had no programme of +his own. Nathaniel Macon, the Speaker, saying that he thought the desire +to enact an effective law was universal, agreed with Early that Sloan's +amendment would defeat the purpose. Early himself waxed vehement, +prophesying the prompt extermination of any smuggled slaves emancipated in +the Southern states. The amendment was defeated by a heavy majority. + +Next day, however, Mr. Bidwell of Massachusetts renewed Sloan's attack by +moving to strike out the provision for the forfeiture of the slaves; but +his colleague Josiah Quincy, supported by the equally sagacious Timothy +Pitkin of Connecticut, insisted upon the necessity of forfeiture; and Early +contended that this was particularly essential to prevent the smuggling of +slaves across the Florida border where the ships which had brought them +would keep beyond the reach of congressional laws. The House finding itself +in an impasse referred the bill back to the same committee, which soon +reported it in a new form declaring the illegal importation of slaves +a felony punishable with death. Upon Early's motion this provision was +promptly stricken out in committee of the whole by a vote of 60 to 41; +whereupon Bidwell renewed his proposal to strike out the forfeiture of +slaves. He was numerously supported in speeches whose main burden was that +the United States government must not become the receiver of stolen goods. +The speeches in reply stressed afresh the pivotal quality of forfeiture in +an effective law; and Bidwell when pressed for an alternative plan could +only say that he might if necessary be willing to leave them to the +disposal of the several states, but was at any rate "opposed to disgracing +our statute book with a recognition of the principle of slavery." Quincy +replied that he wished Bidwell and his fellows "would descend from their +high abstract ground to the level of things in their own state--such +as have, do and will exist after your laws, and in spite of them." The +Southern members, said he, were anxious for nothing so much as a total +prohibition, and for that reason were insistent upon forfeiture. For the +sake of enforcing the law, and for the sake of controlling the future +condition of the smuggled slaves, forfeiture was imperative. Such a +provision would not necessarily admit that the importers had had a title +in the slaves before capture, but it and it alone would effectively divest +them of any color of title to which they might pretend. The amendment was +defeated by a vote of 36 to 63. + +When the bill with amendments was reported to the House by the committee of +the whole, on December 31, there was vigorous debate upon the question of +substituting imprisonment of from five to ten years in place of the death +penalty. Mr. Talmadge of Connecticut supported the provision of death with +a biblical citation; and Mr. Smilie said he considered it the very marrow +of the bill. Mr. Lloyd of Maryland thought the death penalty would be +out of proportion to the crime, and considered the extract from Exodus +inapplicable since few of the negroes imported had been stolen in Africa. +But Mr. Olin of Vermont announced that the man-stealing argument had +persuaded him in favor of the extreme penalty. Early now became furious, +and in his fury, frank. In a preceding speech he had pronounced slavery +"an evil regretted by every man in the country."[28] He now said: "A large +majority of the people in the Southern states do not ... believe it immoral +to hold human flesh in bondage. Many deprecate slavery as an evil; as a +political evil; but not as a crime. Reflecting men apprehend, at some +future day, evils, incalculable evils, from it; but it is a fact that +few, very few, consider it as a crime. It is best to be candid on this +subject.... I will tell the truth. A large majority of people in the +Southern states do not consider slavery as an evil. Let the gentleman go +and travel in that quarter of the Union; let him go from neighborhood to +neighborhood, and he will find that this is the fact. Some gentlemen appear +to legislate for the sake of appearances.... I should like to know what +honor you will derive from a law that will be broken every day of your +lives."[29] Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf of his +state of Rhode Island: "I wish the law made so strong as to prevent this +trade in future; but I cannot believe that a man ought to be hung for only +stealing a negro. Those who buy them are as bad as those who import them, +and deserve hanging quite as much." The yeas and nays recorded at the end +of the exhausting day showed 63 in favor and 53 against the substitution of +imprisonment. The North was divided, 29 to 37, with the nays coming mostly +from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut; the South, although South +Carolina as well as Kentucky was evenly divided, cast 34 yeas to 16 nays. +Virginia and Maryland, which might have been expected to be doubtful, +virtually settled the question by casting 17 yeas against 6 nays. + +[Footnote 28: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 174.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid_., pp. 238, 239.] + +When the consideration of the bill was resumed on January 7, Mr. Bidwell +renewed his original attack by moving to strike out the confiscation of +slaves; and when this was defeated by 39 to 77, he attempted to reach the +same end by a proviso "That no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of +this act," This was defeated only by the casting vote of the Speaker. Those +voting aye were all from Northern states, except Archer of Maryland, Broom +of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky and Williams of North Carolina. The noes +were all from the South except one from New Hampshire, ten from New York, +and one from Pennsylvania. The outcome was evidently unsatisfactory to the +bulk of the members, for on the next day a motion to recommit the bill to +a new committee of seventeen prevailed by a vote of 76 to 46. Among the +members who shifted their position over night were six of the ten from New +York, four from Maryland, three from Virginia, and two from North Carolina. +In the new committee Bedinger of Kentucky, who was regularly on the +Northern side, was chairman, and Early was not included. + +This committee reported in February a bill providing, as a compromise, that +forfeited negroes should be carried to some place in the United States +where slavery was either not permitted or was in course of gradual +extinction, and there be indentured or otherwise employed as the President +might deem best for them and the country. Early moved that for this there +be substituted a provision that the slaves be delivered to the several +states in which the captures were made, to be disposed of at discretion; +and he said that the Southern people would resist the indenture provision +with their lives. This reckless assertion suggests that Early was either +set against the framing of an effective law, or that he spoke in mere blind +rage. + +Before further progress was made the House laid aside its bill in favor of +the one which the Senate had now passed. An amendment to this, striking out +the death penalty, was adopted on February 12 by a vote of 67 to 48. The +North gave 31 ayes and 36 noes, quite evenly distributed among the states. +The South cast 37 ayes to 11 noes, five of the latter coming from Virginia, +two from North Carolina, and one each from Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and +South Carolina. A considerable shifting of votes appeared since the ballot +on the same question six weeks before. Knight of Rhode Island, Sailly and +Williams of New York, Helms of New Jersey and Wynns of North Carolina +changed in favor of the extreme penalty; but they were more than offset by +the opposite change of Bidwell of Massachusetts, Van Cortlandt of New York, +Lambert of New Jersey, Clay and Gray of Virginia and McFarland of North +Carolina. Numerous members from all quarters who voted on one of these +roll-calls were silent at the other, and this variation also had a net +result against the infliction of death. The House then filled the blank +it had made in the bill by defining the offense as a high misdemeanor and +providing a penalty of imprisonment of not less than five nor more than +ten years. John Randolph opposed even this as excessive, but found himself +unsupported. The House then struck out the prohibition of the coasting +trade in slaves, and returned the bill as amended to the Senate. The latter +concurred in all the changes except that as to the coastwise trade, and +sent the bill back to the House. + +John Randolph now led in the insistence that the House stand firm. If the +bill should pass without the amendment, said he, the Southern people would +set the law at defiance, and he himself would begin the violation of so +unconstitutional an infringement of the rights of property. The House voted +to insist upon its amendment, and sent the bill to conference where in +compromise the prohibition as to the coastwise carriage of slaves for sale +was made to apply only to vessels of less than forty tons burthen. The +Senate agreed to this. In the House Mr. Early opposed it as improper in law +and so easy of evasion that it would be perfectly futile for the prevention +of smuggling from Florida. John Randolph said: "The provision of the bill +touched the right of private property. He feared lest at a future period it +might be made the pretext of universal emancipation. He had rather lose the +bill, he had rather lose all the bills of the session, he had rather lose +every bill passed since the establishment of the government, than agree +to the provision contained in this slave bill. It went to blow up the +Constitution in ruins."[30] Concurrence was carried, nevertheless, by a +vote of 63 to 49, in which the North cast 51 ayes to 12 noes, and the South +12 ayes to 37 noes. The Southern ayes were four from Maryland, four +from North Carolina, two from Tennessee, and one each from Virginia and +Kentucky. The Northern noes were five from New York, two each from New +Hampshire and Vermont, and one each from Massachusetts, Connecticut and +Pennsylvania. + +[Footnote 30: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 626.] + +The bill then passed the House. Its variance from the original House bill +was considerable, for it made the importation of slaves from abroad a high +misdemeanor punishable with imprisonment; it prohibited the coastwise trade +by sea in vessels of less than forty tons, and required the masters of +larger vessels transporting negroes coastwise to deliver to the port +officials classified manifests of the negroes and certificates that to the +best of their knowledge and belief the slaves had not been imported since +the beginning of 1808; and instead of forfeiture to the United States it +provided that all smuggled slaves seized under the act should be subject to +such disposal as the laws of the state or territory in which the seizure +might be made should prescribe.[31] Randolph, still unreconciled, offered +an explanatory act, February 27, that nothing in the preceding act should +be construed to affect in any manner the absolute property right of masters +in their slaves not imported contrary to the law, and that such masters +should not be liable to any penalty for the coastwise transportation of +slaves in vessels of less than forty tons. In attempting to force this +measure through, he said that if it did not pass the House at once he hoped +the Virginia delegation would wait on the President and remonstrate against +his approving the act which had passed.[32] By a vote of 60 to 49 this bill +was made the order for the next day; but its further consideration was +crowded out by the rush of business at the session's close. The President +signed the prohibitory bill on March 2, without having received the +threatened Virginia visitation. + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 1266-1270.] + +[Footnote 32: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 637.] + +Among the votes in the House on which the yeas and nays were recorded in +the course of these complex proceedings, six may be taken as tests. They +were on striking out the death penalty, December 31; on striking out the +forfeiture of slaves, January 7; on the proviso that no person should +be sold by virtue of the act, January 7; on referring the bill to a new +committee, January 8; on striking out the death penalty from the Senate +bill, February 12; and on the prohibition of the coasting trade in slaves +in vessels of under forty tons, February 26. In each case a majority of +the Northern members voted on one side of the question, and a yet larger +majority of Southerners voted on the other. Twenty-two members voted in +every case on the side which the North tended to adopt. These comprised +seven from Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, three from Connecticut, +and one or two from each of the other Northern states except Rhode Island +and Ohio. They comprised also Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky, and +Morrow of Virginia; while Williams of North Carolina was almost equally +constant in opposing the policies advocated by the bulk of his fellow +Southerners. On the other hand the regulars on the Southern side comprised +not only ten Virginians, all of the six South Carolinians, except three of +their number on the punishment questions, all of the four Georgians, three +North Carolinians, two Marylanders and one Kentuckian, but in addition +Tenney of New Hampshire, Schuneman, Van Rensselaer and Verplanck of New +York on all but the punishment questions. + +On the whole, sectional divergence was fairly pronounced, but only on +matters of detail. The expressions from all quarters of a common desire +to make the prohibition of importations effective were probably sincere +without material exception. As regards the Virginia group of states, their +economic interest in high prices for slaves vouches for the genuine purpose +of their representatives, while that of the Georgians and South Carolinians +may at the most be doubted and not disproved. The South in general +wished to prevent any action which might by implication stigmatize the +slaveholding régime, and was on guard also against precedents tending to +infringe state rights. The North, on the other hand, was largely divided +between a resolve to stop the sanction of slavery and a desire to enact +an effective law in the premises directly at issue. The outcome was a law +which might be evaded with relative ease wherever public sanction was weak, +but which nevertheless proved fairly effective in operation. + +When slave prices rose to high levels after the war of 1812 systematic +smuggling began to prevail from Amelia Island on the Florida border, and on +a smaller scale on the bayous of the Barataria district below New Orleans; +but these operations were checked upon the passage of a congressional act +in 1818 increasing the rewards to informers. Another act in the following +year directed the President to employ armed vessels for police in both +African and American waters, and incidentally made provisions contemplating +the return of captured slaves to Africa. Finally Congress by an act of 1820 +declared the maritime slave trade to be piracy.[33] Smuggling thereafter +diminished though it never completely ceased. + +[Footnote 33: DuBois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, pp. 118-123.] + +As to the dimensions of the illicit importations between 1808 and 1860, +conjectures have placed the gross as high as two hundred and seventy +thousand.[34] Most of the documents in the premises, however, bear palpable +marks of unreliability. It may suffice to say that these importations were +never great enough to affect the labor supply in appreciable degree. So far +as the general economic régime was concerned, the foreign slave trade was +effectually closed in 1808. + +[Footnote 34: W.H. Collins, _The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern +States_ (New York [1904], pp. 12-20). _See also_ W.E.B. DuBois, +"Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1891, p. 173.] + +At that time, however, there were already in the United States about one +million slaves to serve as a stock from which other millions were to be +born to replenish the plantations in the east and to aid in the peopling of +the west. These were ample to maintain a chronic racial problem, and had no +man invented a cotton gin their natural increase might well have glutted +the market for plantation labor. Had the African source been kept freely +open, the bringing of great numbers to meet the demand in prosperous times +would quite possibly have so burdened the country with surplus slaves in +subsequent periods of severe depression that slave prices would have fallen +virtually to zero, and the slaveholding community would have been driven +to emancipate them wholesale as a means of relieving the masters from the +burden of the slaves' support. The foes of slavery had long reckoned that +the abolition of the foreign trade would be a fatal blow to slavery +itself. The event exposed their fallacy. Thomas Clarkson expressed the +disappointment of the English abolitionists in a letter of 1830: "We +certainly have been deceived in our first expectations relative to the +fruit of our exertions. We supposed that when by the abolition of the slave +trade the planters could get no more slaves, they would not only treat +better those whom they then had in their power, but that they would +gradually find it to their advantage to emancipate them. A part of our +expectations have been realized; ... but, alas! where the heart has been +desperately wicked, we have found no change. We did not sufficiently take +into account the effect of unlimited power on the human mind. No man likes +to part with power, and the more unbounded it is, the less he likes to +part with it. Neither did we sufficiently take into account the ignominy +attached to a black skin as the badge of slavery, and how difficult it +would be to make men look with a favourable eye upon what they had looked +[upon] formerly as a disgrace. Neither did we take sufficiently into +account the belief which every planter has, that such an unnatural state +as that of slavery can be kept up only by a system of rigour, and how +difficult therefore it would be to procure a relaxation from the ordinary +discipline of a slave estate."[35] + +[Footnote 35: MS. in private possession.] + +If such was the failure in the British West Indies, the change in +conditions in the United States was even greater; for the rise of the +cotton industry concurred with the prohibition of the African trade to +enhance immensely the preciousness of slaves and to increase in similar +degree the financial obstacle to a sweeping abolition. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR + + +The decade following the peace of 1783 brought depression in all the +plantation districts. The tobacco industry, upon which half of the Southern +people depended in greater or less degree, was entering upon a half century +of such wellnigh constant low prices that the opening of each new tract for +its culture was offset by the abandonment of an old one, and the export +remained stationary at a little less than half a million hogsheads. Indigo +production was decadent; and rice culture was in painful transition to the +new tide-flow system. Slave prices everywhere, like those of most other +investments, were declining in so disquieting a manner that as late as the +end of 1794 George Washington advised a friend to convert his slaves into +other forms of property, and said on his own account: "Were it not that I +am principled against selling negroes, as you would cattle in a market, I +would not in twelve months hence be possessed of a single one as a slave. +I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome +species of property ere many years have passed over our heads."[1] But at +that very time the addition of cotton and sugar to the American staples was +on the point of transforming the slaveholders' prospects. + +[Footnote 1: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, 1898, pp. 14, 15.] + +For centuries cotton had been among the world's materials for cloth, +though the dearth of supply kept it in smaller use than wool or flax. This +continued to be the case even when the original sources in the Orient were +considerably supplemented from the island of Bourbon and from the colonies +of Demarara, Berbice and Surinam which dotted the tropical South American +coast now known as Guiana. Then, in the latter half of the eighteenth +century, the great English inventions of spinning and Weaving machinery so +cheapened the manufacturing process that the world's demand for textiles +was immensely stimulated. Europe was eagerly inquiring for new fiber +supplies at the very time when the plantation states of America were under +the strongest pressure for a new source of income. + +The green-seed, short-staple variety of cotton had long been cultivated +for domestic use in the colonies from New Jersey to Georgia, but on such a +petty scale that spinners occasionally procured supplies from abroad. Thus +George Washington, who amid his many activities conducted a considerable +cloth-making establishment, wrote to his factor in 1773 that a bale of +cotton received from England had been damaged in transit.[2] The cutting +off of the foreign trade during the war for independence forced the +Americans to increase their cotton production to supply their necessities +for apparel. A little of it was even exported at the end of the war, eight +bags of which are said to have been seized by the customs officers at +Liverpool in 1784 on the ground that since America could not produce so +great a quantity the invoice must be fraudulent. But cotton was as yet kept +far from staple rank by one great obstacle, the lack of a gin. The fibers +of the only variety at hand clung to the seed as fast as the wool to the +sheep's back. It had to be cut or torn away; and because the seed-tufts +were so small, this operation when performed by hand was exceedingly slow +and correspondingly expensive. The preparation of a pound or two of lint a +day was all that a laborer could accomplish. + +[Footnote 2: MS. in the Library of Congress, Washington letter-books, XVII, +90.] + +The problem of the time had two possible solutions; the invention of a +machine for cleaning the lint from the seed of the sort already at hand, +or the introduction of some different variety whose lint was more lightly +attached. Both solutions were applied, and the latter first in point of +time though not in point of importance. + +About 1786 seed of several strains was imported from as many quarters +by planters on the Georgia-Carolina coast. Experiments with the Bourbon +variety, which yielded the finest lint then in the market, showed that +the growing season was too short for the ripening of its pods; but seed +procured from the Bahama Islands, of the sort which has ever since been +known as sea-island, not only made crops but yielded a finer fiber than +they had in their previous home. This introduction was accomplished by +the simultaneous experiments of several planters on the Georgia coast. Of +these, Thomas Spaulding and Alexander Bissett planted the seed in 1786 but +saw their plants fail to ripen any pods that year. But the ensuing winter +happened to be so mild that, although the cotton is not commonly a +perennial outside the tropics, new shoots grew from the old roots in the +following spring and yielded their crop in the fall.[3] Among those who +promptly adopted the staple was Richard Leake, who wrote from Savannah at +the end of 1788 to Tench Coxe: "I have been this year an adventurer, and +the first that has attempted on a large scale, in the article of cotton. +Several here as well as in Carolina have followed me and tried the +experiment. I shall raise about 5000 pounds in the seed from about eight +acres of land, and the next year I expect to plant from fifty to one +hundred acres."[4] + +[Footnote 3: Letter of Thomas Spaulding, Sapelo Island, Georgia, Jan. 20, +1844, to W.B. Scabrook, in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ +(New York, 1857), pp. 280-286.] + +[Footnote 4: E.J. Donnell, _Chronological and Statistical History of +Cotton_ (New York, 1872), p. 45.] + +The first success in South Carolina appears to have been attained by +William Elliott, on Hilton Head near Beaufort, in 1790. He bought five and +a half bushels of seed in Charleston at 14s per bushel, and sold his crop +at 10-1/2d per pound. In the next year John Screven of St. Luke's parish +planted thirty or forty acres, and sold his yield at from 1s. 2d. to 1s. +6d. sterling per pound. Many other planters on the islands and the adjacent +mainland now joined the movement. Some of them encountered failure, among +them General Moultrie of Revolutionary fame who planted one hundred and +fifty acres in St. John's Berkeley in 1793 and reaped virtually nothing.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, _Memoir on the Origin, Cultivation and +Uses of Cotton_ (Charleston, 1844), pp. 19, 20.] + +The English market came promptly to esteem the long, strong, silky +sea-island fiber as the finest of all cottons; and the prices at Liverpool +rose before the end of the century to as high as five shillings a pound. +This brought fortunes in South Carolina. Captain James Sinkler from a crop +of three hundred acres on his plantation, "Belvedere," in 1794 gathered +216 pounds to the acre, which at prices ranging from fifty to seventy-five +cents a pound brought him a gross return of $509 per laborer employed.[6] +Peter Gaillard of St. John's Berkeley received for his crop of the same +year an average of $340 per hand; and William Brisbane of St. Paul's earned +so much in the three years from 1796 to 1798 that he found himself rich +enough to retire from work and spend several years in travel at the North +and abroad. He sold his plantation to William Seabrook at a price which the +neighbors thought ruinously high, but Seabrook recouped the whole of it +from the proceeds of two years' crops.[7] + +[Footnote 6: Samuel DuBose, _Address delivered before the Black Oak +Agricultural Society, April 28, 1858_, in T.G. Thomas, _The Huguenots of +South Carolina_ (New York, 1887).] + +[Footnote 7: W.B. Seabrook, _Memoir on Cotton_, p. 20.] + +The methods of tillage were quickly systematized. Instead of being planted, +as at first, in separate holes, the seed came to be drilled and plants +grown at intervals of one or two feet on ridges five or six feet apart; +and the number of hoeings was increased. But the thinner fruiting of this +variety prevented the planters from attaining generally more than about +half the output per acre which their upland colleagues came to reap from +their crops of the shorter staple. A hundred and fifty pounds to the acre +and three or four acres to the hand was esteemed a reasonable crop on the +seaboard.[8] The exports of the sea-island staple rose by 1805 to nearly +nine million pounds, but no further expansion occurred until 1819 when an +increase carried the exports for a decade to about eleven million pounds a +year. In the course of the twenties Kinsey Burden and Hugh Wilson, both of +St. John's Colleton, began breeding superfine fiber through seed selection, +with such success that the latter sold two of his bales in 1828 at the +unequaled price of two dollars a pound. The practice of raising fancy +grades became fairly common after 1830, with the result, however, that for +the following decade the exports fell again to about eight million pounds a +year.[9] + +[Footnote 8: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. +132; J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 129, 131.] + +[Footnote 9: Seabrook, pp. 35-37, 53.] + +Sea-island cotton, with its fibers often measuring more than two inches in +length, had the advantages of easy detachment from its glossy black seed by +squeezing it between a pair of simple rollers, and of a price for even its +common grades ranging usually more than twice that of the upland staple. +The disadvantages were the slowness of the harvesting, caused by the +failure of the bolls to open wide; the smallness of the yield; and the +necessity of careful handling at all stages in preparing the lint for +market. Climatic requirements, furthermore, confined its culture within +a strip thirty or forty miles wide along the coast of South Carolina and +Georgia. In the first flush of the movement some of the rice fields were +converted to cotton;[10] but experience taught the community ere long that +the labor expense in the new industry absorbed too much of the gross return +for it to displace rice from its primacy in the district. + +[Footnote 10: F.A. Michaux, _Travels_, in R.G. Thwaites, ed., _Early +Western Travels_, III, 303.] + +In the Carolina-Georgia uplands the industrial and social developments +of the eighteenth century had been in marked contrast with those on the +seaboard. These uplands, locally known as the Piedmont, were separated from +the tide-water tract by a flat and sandy region, the "pine barrens," a +hundred miles or more in breadth, where the soil was generally too light +for prosperous agriculture before the time when commercial fertilizers came +into use. The Piedmont itself is a rolling country, extending without a +break from Virginia to Alabama and from the mountains of the Blue Ridge to +the line of the lowest falls on the rivers. The soil of mingled clay +and sand was originally covered with rich forest mold. The climate was +moderately suited to a great variety of crops; but nothing was found for +which it had a marked superiority until short-staple cotton was made +available. + +In the second half of the eighteenth century this region had come to +be occupied in scattered homesteads by migrants moving overland from +Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, extending their régime of frontier +farms until the stubborn Creek and Cherokee Indian tribes barred further +progress. Later comers from the same northeastward sources, some of them +bringing a few slaves, had gradually thickened the settlement without +changing materially its primitive system of life. Not many recruits had +entered from the rice coast in colonial times, for the régime there was not +such as to produce pioneers for the interior. The planters, unlike those of +Maryland and Virginia, had never imported appreciable numbers of indentured +servants to become in after years yeomen and fathers of yeomen; the slaves +begat slaves alone to continue at their masters' bidding; and the planters +themselves had for the time being little inducement to forsake the +lowlands. The coast and the Piedmont were unassociated except by a trickle +of trade by wagon and primitive river-boat across the barrens. The capture +of Savannah and Charleston by the British during the War for Independence, +however, doubtless caused a number of the nearby inhabitants to move into +the Piedmont as refugees, carrying their slaves with them. + +The commercial demands of the early settlers embraced hardly anything +beyond salt, ammunition and a little hardware. The forest and their +half-cleared fields furnished meat and bread; workers in the households +provided rude furniture and homespun; and luxuries, except home-made +liquors, were unknown. But the time soon came when zealous industry yielded +more grain and cattle than each family needed for its own supply. The +surplus required a market, which the seaboard was glad to furnish. The road +and river traffic increased, and the procurement of miscellaneous goods +from the ports removed the need of extreme diversity in each family's work. +This treeing of energy led in turn to a search for more profitable market +crops. Flax and hemp were tried, and tobacco with some success. Several new +villages were founded, indeed, on the upper courses of the rivers to serve +as stations for the inspection and shipment of tobacco; but their budding +hopes of prosperity from that staple were promptly blighted. The product +was of inferior grade, the price was low, and the cost of freightage high. +The export from Charleston rose from 2680 hogsheads in 1784 to 9646 in +1799, but rapidly declined thereafter. Tobacco, never more than a makeshift +staple, was gladly abandoned for cotton at the first opportunity.[11] + +[Footnote 11: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern +Cotton Belt to 1860_ (New York, 1908), pp. 46-55.] + +At the time of the federal census of 1790 there were in the main group of +upland counties of South Carolina, comprised then in the two "districts" of +Camden and Ninety-six, a total of 91,704 white inhabitants, divided into +15,652 families. Of these 3787 held slaves to the number of 19,934--an +average of 5-1/4 slaves in each holding. No more than five of these parcels +comprised as many as one hundred slaves each, and only 156 masters, about +four per cent, of the whole, had as many as twenty each. These larger +holdings, along with the 335 other parcels ranging from ten to nineteen +slaves each, were of course grouped mainly in the river counties in the +lower part of the Piedmont, while the smallest holdings were scattered far +and wide. That is to say, there was already discoverable a tendency toward +a plantation régime in the localities most accessible to market, while +among the farmers about one in four had one or more slaves to aid in the +family's work. The Georgia Piedmont, for which the returns of the early +censuses have been lost, probably had a somewhat smaller proportion of +slaves by reason of its closer proximity to the Indian frontier. + +A sprinkling of slaves was enough to whet the community's appetite for +opportunities to employ them with effect and to buy more slaves with the +proceeds. It is said that in 1792 some two or three million pounds +of short-staple cotton was gathered in the Piedmont,[12] perhaps in +anticipation of a practicable gin, and that the state of Georgia had +appointed a commission to promote the desired invention.[13] It is certain +that many of the citizens were discussing the problem when in the spring of +1793 young Eli Whitney, after graduating at Yale College, left his home in +Massachusetts intending to teach school in the South. While making a visit +at the home of General Greene's widow, near Savannah, he listened to a +conversation on the subject by visitors from upland Georgia, and he was +urged by Phineas Miller, the manager of the Greene estate, to apply his +Yankee ingenuity to the solution. When Miller offered to bear the expenses +of the project, Whitney set to work, and within ten days made a model which +met the essential requirements. This comprised a box with a slatted side +against which a wooden cylinder studded with wire points was made to play. +When seed cotton was fed into the box and the cylinder was revolved, the +sharp wires passing between the slats would engage the lint and pull it +through as they passed out in the further revolution of the cylinder. The +seed, which were too large to pass through the grating, would stay within +the hopper until virtually all the wool was torn off, whereupon they would +fall through a crevice on the further side. The minor problem which now +remained of freeing the cylinder's teeth from their congestion of lint +found a solution in Mrs. Greene's stroke with a hearth-broom. Whitney, +seizing the principle, equipped his machine with a second cylinder studded +with brushes, set parallel to the first but revolving in an opposite +direction and at a greater speed. This would sweep the teeth clean as fast +as they emerged lint-laden from the hopper. Thus was the famous cotton-gin +devised.[14] + +[Footnote 12: Letter of Phineas Miller to the Comptroller of South +Carolina, in the _American Historical Review_, III, 115.] + +[Footnote 13: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_ (New York, 1807), p. 23.] + +[Footnote 14: Denison Olmstead, _Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esq_. (New Haven, +1846), reprinted in J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. +297-320. M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, pp. 25, 26.] + +Miller, who now married Mrs. Greene, promptly entered into partnership with +Whitney not only to manufacture gins but also to monopolize the business +of operating them, charging one-third of the cotton as toll. They even +ventured into the buying and selling of the staple on a large scale. Miller +wrote Whitney in 1797, for example, that he was trying to raise money for +the purchase of thirty or forty thousand pounds of seed cotton at the +prevailing price of three cents, and was projecting a trade in the lint to +far-off Tennessee.[15] By this time the partners had as many as thirty gins +in operation at various points in Georgia; but misfortune had already begun +to pursue them. Their shop on the Greene plantation had been forced by a +mob even before their patent was procured in 1793, and Jesse Bull, Charles +M. Lin and Edward Lyons, collaborating near Wrightsboro, soon put forth an +improved gin in which saw-toothed iron discs replaced the wire points of +the Whitney model.[16] Whitney had now returned to New Haven to establish +a gin factory, and Miller wrote him in 1794 urging prompt shipments and +saying: "The people of the country are running mad for them, and much can +be said to justify their importunity. When the present crop is harvested +there will be a real property of at least fifty thousand dollars lying +useless unless we can enable the holders to bring it to market," But an +epidemic prostrated Whitney's workmen that year, and a fire destroyed his +factory in 1795. Meanwhile rival machines were appearing in the market, and +Whitney and Miller were beginning their long involvement in lawsuits. Their +overreaching policy of monopolizing the operation of their gins turned +public sentiment against them and inclined the juries, particularly in +Georgia, to decide in favor of their opponents. Not until 1807, when their +patent was on the point of expiring did they procure a vindication in the +Georgia courts. Meanwhile a grant of $50,000 from the legislature of South +Carolina to extinguish the patent right in that state, and smaller grants +from North Carolina and Tennessee did little more than counterbalance +expenses.[17] A petition which Whitney presented to Congress in 1812 for a +renewal of his expired patent was denied, and Whitney turned his talents to +the manufacture of muskets. + +[Footnote 15: _American Historical Review_. Ill, 104.] + +[Footnote 16: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 289, 290, +293-295.] + +[Footnote 17: M.B. Hammond, "Correspondence of Eli Whitney relating to the +Invention of the Cotton Gin," in the _American Historical Review_, III, +90-127.] + +In Georgia the contest of lawyers in the courts was paralleled by a battle +of advertisers in the newspapers. Thomas Spaulding offered to supply Joseph +Eve's gins from the Bahama Islands at fifty guineas each;[18] and Eve +himself shortly immigrated to Augusta to contend for his patent rights on +roller-gins, for some of his workmen had changed his model in such a way as +to increase the speed, and had put their rival gins upon the market.[19] +Among these may have been John Currie, who offered exclusive county rights +at $100 each for the making, using and vending of his type of gins,[20] +also William Longstreet of Augusta who offered to sell gins of his own +devising at $150 each,[21] and Robert Watkins of the short-lived town of +Petersburg, Georgia, who denounced Longstreet as an infringer of his patent +and advertised local non-exclusive rights for making and using his own +style of gins at the bargain rate of sixty dollars.[22] All of these were +described as roller gins; but all were warranted to gin upland as well as +sea-island cotton.[23] By the year 1800 Miller and Whitney had also +adopted the practice of selling licenses in Georgia, as is indicated by an +advertisement from their agent at Augusta. Meanwhile ginners were calling +for negro boys and girls ten or twelve years old on hire to help at the +machines;[24] and were offering to gin for a toll of one-fifth of the +cotton.[25] As years passed the rates were still further lowered. At +Augusta in 1809, for example, cotton was ginned and packed in square bales +of 350 pounds at a cost of $1.50 per hundredweight.[26] + +[Footnote 18: _Columbian Museum_ (Savannah, Ga.), April 26, 1796.] + +[Footnote 19: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 281.] + +[Footnote 20: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Dec. 10, 1796.] + +[Footnote 21: _Southern Sentinel_ (Augusta, Ga.), July 14, 1796.] + +[Footnote 22: _Ibid_., Feb. 7, 1797; Augusta _Chronicle_, June 10, 1797.] + +[Footnote 23: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 13, 1800.] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Sentinel_, April 23, 1795.] + +[Footnote 25: Augusta _Chronicle_, Jan. 16, 1796.] + +[Footnote 26: _Ibid_., Sept. 9, 1809.] + +The upland people of Georgia and the two Carolinas made prompt response to +the new opportunity. By 1800 even Tennessee had joined the movement, and +a gin of such excellence was erected near Nashville that the proprietors +exacted fees from visitors wishing to view it;[27] and by 1802 not only +were consignments being shipped to New Orleans for the European market, but +part of the crop was beginning to be peddled in wagons to Kentucky and in +pole-boats on the Ohio as far as Pittsburg, for the domestic making of +homespun.[28] In 1805 John Baird advertised at Nashville that, having +received a commission from correspondents at Baltimore, he was ready to +buy as much as one hundred thousand pounds of lint at fifteen cents a +pound.[29] In the settlements about Vicksburg in the Mississippi Territory, +cotton was not only the staple product by 1809, but was also for the time +being the medium of exchange, while in Arkansas the squatters were debarred +from the new venture only by the poverty which precluded them from getting +gins.[30] In Virginia also, in such of the southerly counties as had +summers long enough for the crop to ripen in moderate security, cotton +growing became popular. But for the time being these were merely an +out-lying fringe of cotton's principality. The great rush to cotton growing +prior to the war of 1812 occurred in the Carolina-Georgia Piedmont, with +its trend of intensity soon pointing south-westward. + +[Footnote 27: _Tennessee Gazette_ (Nashville, Tenn.), April 9, 1800.] + +[Footnote 28: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, +252.] + +[Footnote 29: _Tennessee Gazette_, March 27, 1805.] + +[Footnote 30: F. Cuming, _Tour to the Western Country_ (Pittsburg, 1810), +in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 272, 280, 298.] + +A shrewd contemporary observer found special reason to rejoice that the new +staple required no large capital and involved no exposure to disease. Rice +and indigo, said he, had offered the poorer whites, except the few employed +as overseers, no livelihood "without the degradation of working with +slaves"; but cotton, stimulating and elevating these people into the rank +of substantial farmers, tended "to fill the country with an independent +industrious yeomanry."[31] True as this was, it did not mean that producers +on a plantation scale were at a disadvantage. Settlers of every type, +in fact, adopted the crop as rapidly as they could get seed and ginning +facilities, and newcomers poured in apace to share the prosperity. + +[Footnote 31: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1808), +II, 448-9.] + +The exports mounted swiftly, but the world's market readily absorbed them +at rising prices until 1801 when the short-staple output was about forty +million pounds and the price at the ports about forty-four cents a pound. +A trade in slaves promptly arose to meet the eager demand for labor; and +migrants coming from the northward and the rice coast brought additional +slaves in their train. General Wade Hampton was the first conspicuous one +of these. With the masterful resolution which always characterized him, he +carried his great gang from the seaboard to the neighborhood of Columbia +and there in 1799 raised six hundred of the relatively light weight bales +of that day on as many acres.[32] His crop was reckoned to have a value of +some ninety thousand dollars.[33] + +[Footnote 32: Seabrook, pp. 16, 17.] + +[Footnote 33: Note made by L. C Draper from the Louisville, Ga., _Gazette_, +Draper MSS., series VV, vol. XVI, p. 84, Wisconsin Historical Society.] + +The general run of the upland cultivators, however, continued as always to +operate on a minor scale; and the high cost of transportation caused them +generally to continue producing miscellaneous goods to meet their domestic +needs. The diversified régime is pictured in Michaux's description of a +North Carolina plantation in 1802: "In eight hundred acres of which it is +composed, a hundred and fifty are cultivated in cotton, Indian corn, wheat +and oats, and dunged annually, which is a great degree of perfection in the +present state of agriculture in this part of the country. Independent of +this [the proprietor] has built in his yard several machines that the same +current of water puts in motion; they consist of a corn mill, a saw mill, +another to separate the cotton seeds, a tan-house, a tan-mill, a distillery +to make peach brandy, and a small forge where the inhabitants of the +country go to have their horses shod. Seven or eight negro slaves are +employed in the different departments, some of which are only occupied at +certain periods of the year. Their wives are employed under the direction +of the mistress in manufacturing cotton and linen for the use of the +family."[34] + +[Footnote 34: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, +292.] + +The speed of the change to a general slaveholding régime in the uplands may +easily be exaggerated. In those counties of South Carolina which lay wholly +within the Piedmont the fifteen thousand slaves on hand in 1790 formed +slightly less than one-fifth of the gross population there. By 1800 +the number of slaves increased by seventy per cent., and formed nearly +one-fourth of the gross; in the following decade they increased by ninety +per cent., until they comprised one-third of the whole; from 1810 to 1820 +their number grew at the smaller rate of fifty per cent, and reached +two-fifths of the whole; and by 1830, with a further increase of forty per +cent., the number of slaves almost overtook that of the whites. The slaves +were then counted at 101,982, the whites at 115,318, and the free negroes +at 2,115. In Georgia the slave proportion grew more rapidly than this +because it was much smaller at the outset; in North Carolina, on the +other hand, the rise was less marked because cotton never throve there so +greatly. + +In its industrial requirements cotton was much closer to tobacco than to +rice or sugar. There was no vital need for large units of production. On +soils of the same quality the farmer with a single plow, if his family did +the hoeing and picking, was on a similar footing with the greatest planter +as to the output per hand, and in similar case as to cost of production per +bale. The scale of cotton-belt slaveholdings rose not because free labor +was unsuited to the industry but because slaveholders from the outside +moved in to share the opportunity and because every prospering +non-slaveholder and small slaveholder was eager to enlarge his personal +scale of operations. Those who could save generally bought slaves with +their savings; those who could not, generally continued to raise cotton +nevertheless. + +The gross cotton output, in which the upland crop greatly and increasingly +outweighed that of the sea-island staple, rapidly advanced from about +forty-eight million pounds in 1801 to about eighty million in 1806; then it +was kept stationary by the embargo and the war of 1812, until the return +of peace and open trade sent it up by leaps and bounds again. The price +dropped abruptly from an average of forty-four cents in the New York market +in 1801 to nineteen cents in 1802, but there was no further decline until +the beginning of the war with Great Britain.[35] + +[Footnote 35: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, table following p. 357.] + +Cotton's absorption of the people's energies already tended to become +excessive. In 1790 South Carolina had sent abroad a surplus of corn from +the back country measuring well over a hundred thousand bushels. But by +1804 corn brought in brigs was being advertised in Savannah to meet the +local deficit;[36] and in the spring of 1807 there seems to have been a +dearth of grain in the Piedmont itself. At that time an editorial in the +_Augusta Chronicle_ ran as follows: "A correspondent would recommend to the +planters of Georgia, now the season is opening, to raise more corn and less +cotton ... The dear bought experience of the present season should teach us +to be more provident for the future." [37] Under the conditions of the time +this excess at the expense of grain was likely to correct itself at once, +for men and their draught animals must eat to work, and in the prevailing +lack of transportation facilities food could not be brought from a +distance at a price within reach. The systematic basis of industry was the +production, whether by planters or farmers, of such food as was locally +needed and such supplies of cloth together with such other outfit as it was +economical to make at home, and the devotion of all further efforts to the +making of cotton. + +[Footnote 36: Savannah _Museum_, April n, 1804.] + +[Footnote 37: Reprinted in the _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), April 11, +1807.] + +Coincident with the rise of cotton culture in the Atlantic states was that +of sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana. In this triangular +district, whose apex is the junction of the Red and Mississippi rivers, the +country is even more amphibious than the rice coast. Everywhere in fact the +soil is too waterlogged for tillage except close along the Father of Waters +himself and his present or aforetime outlets. Settlement must, therefore, +take the form of strings of plantations and farms on these elevated +riparian strips, with the homesteads fronting the streams and the fields +stretching a few hundred or at most a few thousand yards to the rear; and +every new establishment required its own levee against the flood. So long +as there were great areas of unrestricted flood-plain above Vicksburg to +impound the freshets and lower their crests, the levees below required no +great height or strength; but the tasks of reclamation were at best arduous +enough to make rapid expansion depend upon the spur of great expectations. + +The original colony of the French, whose descendants called themselves +Creoles, was clustered about the town of New Orleans. A short distance up +stream the river banks in the parishes of St. Charles and St. John the +Baptist were settled at an early period by German immigrants; thence the +settlements were extended after the middle of the eighteenth century, first +by French exiles from Acadia, next by Creole planters, and finally by +Anglo-Americans who took their locations mostly above Baton Rouge. As to +the westerly bayous, the initial settlers were in general Acadian small +farmers. Negro slaves were gradually introduced into all these districts, +though the Creoles, who were the most vigorous of the Latin elements, were +the chief importers of them. Their numbers at the close of the colonial +period equalled those of the whites, and more than a tenth of them had been +emancipated. + +The people in the later eighteenth century were drawing their livelihoods +variously from hunting, fishing, cattle raising and Indian trading, from +the growing of grain and vegetables for sale to the boatmen and townsmen, +and from the production of indigo on a somewhat narrow margin of profit as +the principal export crop. Attempts at sugar production had been made in +1725 and again in 1762, but the occurrence of winter frosts before the cane +was fully ripe discouraged the enterprise; and in most years no more cane +was raised than would meet the local demand for sirup and rum. In the +closing decades of the century, however, worm pests devoured the indigo +leaves with such thoroughness as to make harvesting futile; and thereby the +planters were driven to seek an alternative staple. Projects of cotton were +baffled by the lack of a gin, and recourse was once more had to sugar. A +Spaniard named Solis had built a small mill below New Orleans in 1791 and +was making sugar with indifferent success when, in 1794-1795, Etienne de +Boré, a prominent Creole whose estate lay just above the town, bought a +supply of seed cane from Solis, planted a large field with it, engaged a +professional sugar maker, and installed grinding and boiling apparatus +against the time of harvest. The day set for the test brought a throng of +onlookers whose joy broke forth at the sight of crystals in the cooling +fluid--for the good fortune of Boré, who received some $12,000 for his crop +of 1796, was an earnest of general prosperity. + +Other men of enterprise followed the resort to sugar when opportunity +permitted them to get seed cane, mills and cauldrons. In spite of a dearth +of both capital and labor and in spite of wartime restrictions on maritime +commerce, the sugar estates within nine years reached the number of +eighty-one, a good many of which were doubtless the property of San +Domingan refugees who were now pouring into the province with whatever +slaves and other movables they had been able to snatch from the black +revolution. Some of these had fled first to Cuba and after a sojourn there, +during which they found the Spanish government oppressive, removed afresh +to Louisiana. As late as 1809 the year's immigration from the two islands +was reported by the mayor of New Orleans to the governor of Louisiana at +2,731 whites and 3,102 free persons of color, together with 3,226 slaves +warranted as the property of the free immigrants.[38] The volume of the +San Domingan influx from first to last was great enough to double the +French-speaking population. The newcomers settled mainly in the New Orleans +neighborhood, the whites among them promptly merging themselves with the +original Creole population. By reason of their previous familiarity with +sugar culture they gave additional stimulus to that industry. + +[Footnote 38: _Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Mch. +24, 1810.] + +Meanwhile the purchase of Louisiana by the United States in 1803 had +transformed the political destinies of the community and considerably +changed its economic prospects. After prohibiting in 1804 the importation +into the territory of any slaves who had been brought from Africa since +1798, Congress passed a new act in 1805 which, though probably intended to +continue the prohibition, was interpreted by the attorney-general to permit +the inhabitants to bring in any slaves whatever from any place within the +United States.[39] This news was published with delight by the New Orleans +newspapers at the end of February, 1806;[40] and from that time until the +end of the following year their columns bristled with advertisements of +slaves from African cargoes "just arrived from Charleston." Of these the +following, issued by the firm of Kenner and Henderson, June 24, 1806, is +an example: "The subscribers offer for sale 74 prime slaves of the Fantee +nation on board the schooner _Reliance_, I. Potter master, from Charleston, +now lying opposite this city. The sales will commence on the 25th. inst. +at 9 o'clock A.M., and will continue from day to day until the whole is +sold.[41] Good endorsed notes will be taken in payment, payable the 1st. +of January, 1807. Also [for sale] the above mentioned schooner _Reliance_, +burthen about 60 tons, completely fitted for an African voyage." + +[Footnote 39: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, pp. +87-90. The acts of 1804 and 1805 are printed in B.P. Poore, _Charters and +Constitutions_ (Washington, 1877), I, 691-697.] + +[Footnote 40: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 28, 1806.] + +[Footnote 41: _Louisiana Gazette_, July 4, 1806.] + +Upon the prohibition of the African trade at large in 1808, the slave +demand of the sugar parishes was diverted to the Atlantic plantation states +where it served to advertise the Louisiana boom. Wade Hampton of South +Carolina responded in 1811 by carrying a large force of his slaves to +establish a sugar estate of his own at the head of Bayou Lafourche, and a +few others followed his example. The radical difference of the industrial +methods in sugar from those in the other staples, however, together with +the predominance of the French language, the Catholic religion and a +Creole social régime in the district most favorable for sugar, made +Anglo-Americans chary of the enterprise; and the revival of cotton prices +after 1815 strengthened the tendency of migrating planters to stay within +the cotton latitudes. Many of those who settled about Baton Rouge and on +the Red River with cotton as their initial concern shifted to sugar at the +end of the 'twenties, however, in response to the tariff of 1828 which +heightened sugar prices at a time when the cotton market was depressed. +This was in response, also, to the introduction of ribbon cane which +matured earlier than the previously used Malabar and Otaheite varieties and +could accordingly be grown in a somewhat higher latitude. + +The territorial spread was mainly responsible for the sudden advance of the +number of sugar estates from 308 operating in 1827, estimated as employing +21,000 able-bodied slaves and having a gross value of $34,000,000, to 691 +plantations in 1830,[42] with some 36,000 working slaves and a gross value +of $50,000,000. At this time the output was at the rate of about 75,000 +hogsheads containing 1,000 pounds of sugar each, together with some forty +or fifty gallons of molasses per hogshead as a by-product. Louisiana was at +this time supplying about half of the whole country's consumption of sugar +and bade fair to meet the whole demand ere long.[43] The reduction of +protective tariff rates, coming simultaneously with a rise of cotton +prices, then checked the spread of the sugar industry, and the substitution +of steam engines for horse power in grinding the cane caused some +consolidation of estates. In 1842 accordingly, when the slaves numbered +50,740 and the sugar crop filled 140,000 hogsheads, the plantations were +but 668.[44] The raising of the tariff anew in that year increased the +plantations to 762 in 1845 and they reached their maximum number of 1,536 +in 1849, when more than half of their mills were driven by steam[45] and +their slaves numbered probably somewhat more than a hundred thousand of +all ages.[46] Thereafter the recovery of the cotton market from the severe +depression of the early 'forties caused a strong advance in slave prices +which again checked the sugar spread, while the introduction of vacuum pans +and other improvements in apparatus[47] promoted further consolidations. +The number of estates accordingly diminished to 1,298 in 1859, on 987 of +which the mills were steam driven, and on 52 of which the extraction and +evaporation of the sugar was done by one sort or another of the newly +invented devices. The gross number of slaves in the sugar parishes was +nearly doubled between 1830 and 1850, but in the final ante-bellum decade +it advanced only at about the rate of natural increase.[48] The sugar +output advanced to 200,000 hogsheads in 1844 and to 450,000 in 1853. Bad +seasons then reduced it to 74,000 in 1856; and the previous maximum was not +equaled in the remaining ante-bellum years.[49] The liability of the +crop to damage from drought and early frost, and to destruction from the +outpouring of the Mississippi through crevasses in the levees, explains the +fluctuations in the yield. Outside of Louisiana the industry took no grip +except on the Brazos River in Texas, where in 1858 thirty-seven plantations +produced about six thousand hogsheads.[50] + +[Footnote 42: _DeBow's Review_, I, 55.] + +[Footnote 43: V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, 1851), +pp. 151 ff.] + +[Footnote 44: E.J. Forstall, _Agricultural Productions of Louisiana_ (New +Orleans, 1845).] + +[Footnote 45: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in +Louisiana_ (New Orleans, annual, 1848-1859).] + +[Footnote 46: DeBow, in the _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 94, +estimated the sugar plantation slaves at 150,000; but this is clearly an +overestimate.] + +[Footnote 47: Some of these are described by Judah P. Benjamin in _DeBow's +Review_, II, 322-345.] + +[Footnote 48: _I. e_. from 150,000 to 180,000.] + +[Footnote 49: The crop of 1853, indeed, was not exceeded until near the +close of the nineteenth century.] + +[Footnote 50: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop ... in +1858-1859_, p. 40.] + +In Louisiana in the banner year 1853, with perfect weather and no +crevasses, each of some 50,000 able-bodied field hands cultivated, besides +the incidental food crops, about five acres of cane on the average and +produced about nine hogsheads of sugar and three hundred gallons of +molasses per head. On certain specially favored estates, indeed, the +product reached as much as fifteen hogsheads per hand[51]. In the total of +1407 fully equipped plantations 103 made less than one hundred hogsheads +each, while forty produced a thousand hogsheads or more. That year's +output, however, was nearly twice the size of the average crop in the +period. A dozen or more proprietors owned two or more estates each, some of +which were on the largest scale, while at the other extreme several dozen +farmers who had no mills of their own sent cane from their few acres to be +worked up in the spare time of some obliging neighbor's mill. In general +the bulk of the crop was made on plantations with cane fields ranging from +rather more than a hundred to somewhat less than a thousand acres, and with +each acre producing in an ordinary year somewhat more than a hogshead of +sugar. + +[Footnote 51: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 199, 200.] + +Until about 1850 the sugar district as well as the cotton belt was calling +for labor from whatever source it might be had; but whereas the uplands had +work for people of both races and all conditions, the demand of the delta +lands, to which the sugar crop was confined, was almost wholly for negro +slaves. The only notable increase in the rural white population of the +district came through the fecundity of the small-farming Acadians who had +little to do with sugar culture. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT + + +The flow of population into the distant interior followed the lines of +least resistance and greatest opportunity. In the earlier decades these lay +chiefly in the Virginia latitudes. The Indians there were yielding, the +mountains afforded passes thither, and the climate permitted the familiar +tobacco industry. The Shenandoah Valley had been occupied mainly by +Scotch-Irish and German small farmers from Pennsylvania; but the glowing +reports, which the long hunters brought and the land speculators spread +from beyond the further mountains, made Virginians to the manner born +resolve to compete with the men of the backwoods for a share of the +Kentucky lands. During and after the war for independence they threaded +the gorges, some with slaves but most without. Here and there one found a +mountain glade so fertile that he made it his permanent home, while his +fellows pushed on to the greater promised land. Some of these emerging upon +a country of low and uniform hills, closely packed and rounded like the +backs of well-fed pigs crowding to the trough, staked out their claims, set +up their cabins, deadened their trees, and planted wheat. Others went on +to the gently rolling country about Lexington, let the luxuriant native +bluegrass wean them from thoughts of tobacco, and became breeders of horses +for evermore. A few, settling on the southerly edge of the bluegrass, +mainly in and about Garrard County, raised hemp on a plantation scale. The +rest, resisting all these allurements, pressed on still further to the +pennyroyal country where tobacco would have no rival. While thousands made +the whole journey overland, still more made use of the Ohio River for +the later stages. The adjutant at Fort Harmar counted in seven months of +1786-1787, 177 boats descending the Ohio, carrying 2,689 persons, 1,333 +horses, 766 cattle, 102 wagons and one phaëton, while still others passed +by night uncounted.[1] The family establishments in Kentucky were always +on a smaller scale, on an average, than those in Virginia. Yet the people +migrating to the more fertile districts tended to maintain and even to +heighten the spirit of gentility and the pride of type which they carried +as part of their heritage. The laws erected by the community were favorable +to the slaveholding régime; but after the first decades of the migration +period, the superior attractions of the more southerly latitudes for +plantation industry checked Kentucky's receipt of slaves. + +[Footnote 1: _Massachusetts Centinel_ (Boston), July 21, 1787.] + +The wilderness between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, meanwhile, was +attracting Virginia and Carolina emigrants as well as those from the +northerly states. The soil there was excellent, and some districts were +suited to tobacco culture. The Ordinance of 1787, however, though it was +not strictly enforced, made slaveholdings north of the Ohio negligible from +any but an antiquarian point of view. + +The settlement of Tennessee was parallel, though subsequent, to that of the +Shenandoah and Kentucky. The eastern intramontane valley, broad and fertile +but unsuited to the staple crops, gave homes to thousands of small farmers, +while the Nashville basin drew planters of both tobacco and cotton, and the +counties along the western and southern borders of the state made cotton +their one staple. The scale of slaveholdings in middle and western +Tennessee, while superior to that in Kentucky, was never so great as those +which prevailed in Virginia and the lower South. + +Missouri, whose adaptation to the southern staples was much poorer, came +to be colonized in due time partly by planters from Kentucky but mostly +by farmers from many quarters, including after the first decades a large +number of Germans, some of whom entered through the eastern ports and +others through New Orleans. + +This great central region as a whole acquired an agricultural régime +blending the features of the two national extremes. The staples were +prominent but never quite paramount. Corn and wheat, cattle and hogs were +produced regularly nearly everywhere, not on a mere home consumption basis, +but for sale in the cotton belt and abroad. This diversification caused +the region to wane in the esteem of the migrating planters as soon as the +Alabama-Mississippi country was opened for settlement. + +Preliminaries of the movement into the Gulf region had begun as early as +1768, when a resident of Pensacola noted that a group of Virginians had +been prospecting thereabouts with such favorable results that five of them +had applied for a large grant of lands, pledging themselves to bring in a +hundred slaves and a large number of cattle.[2] In 1777 William Bartram met +a group of migrants journeying from Georgia to settle on the lower course +of the Alabama River;[3] and in 1785 a citizen of Augusta wrote that "a +vast number" of the upland settlers were removing toward the Mississippi in +consequence of the relinquishment of Natchez by the Spaniards.[4] But these +were merely forerunners. Alabama in particular, which comprises for the +most part the basin draining into Mobile Bay, could have no safe market +for its produce until Spain was dispossessed of the outlet. The taking +of Mobile by the United States as an episode of the war of 1812, and the +simultaneous breaking of the Indian strength, removed the obstacles. The +influx then rose to immense proportions. The roads and rivers became +thronged, and the federal agents began to sell homesteads on a scale which +made the "land office business" proverbial.[5] + +[Footnote 2: Boston, Mass, _Chronicle_, Aug. 1-7, 1768.] + +[Footnote 3: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), p. 441.] + +[Footnote 4: _South Carolina Gazette_, May 26, 1785.] + +[Footnote 5: C.F. Emerick, "The Credit System and the Public Domain," +in the Vanderbilt University _Southern History Publications_, no. 3 +(Nashville, Tenn., 1899).] + +The Alabama-Mississippi population rose from 40,000 in round numbers in +1810 to 200,000 in 1820, 445,000 in 1830, 965,000 in 1840, 1,377,000 in +1850, and 1,660,000 in 1860, while the proportion of slaves advanced from +forty to forty-seven per cent. In the same period the tide flowed on into +the cotton lands of Arkansas and Louisiana and eventually into Texas. +Florida alone of the newer southern areas was left in relative neglect +by reason of the barrenness of her soil. The states and territories from +Alabama and Tennessee westward increased their proportion of the whole +country's cotton output from one-sixteenth in 1811 to one-third in 1820, +one-half before 1830, nearly two-thirds in 1840, and quite three-fourths in +1860; and all this was in spite of continued and substantial enlargements +of the eastern output. + +In the western cotton belt the lands most highly esteemed in the +ante-bellum period lay in two main areas, both of which had soils far more +fertile and lasting than any in the interior of the Atlantic states. One of +these formed a crescent across south-central Alabama, with its western horn +reaching up the Tombigbee River into northeastern Mississippi. Its soil of +loose black loam was partly forested, partly open, and densely matted with +grass and weeds except where limestone cropped out on the hill crests and +where prodigious cane brakes choked the valleys. The area was locally +known as the prairies or the black belt.[6] The process of opening it for +settlement was begun by Andrew Jackson's defeat of the Creeks in 1814 but +was not completed until some twenty years afterward. The other and greater +tract extended along both sides of the Mississippi River from northern +Tennessee and Arkansas to the mouth of the Red River. It comprised the +broad alluvial bottoms, together with occasional hill districts of rich +loam, especially notable among the latter of which were those lying about +Natchez and Vicksburg. The southern end of this area was made available +first, and the hills preceded the delta in popularity for cotton culture. +It was not until the middle thirties that the broadest expanse of the +bottoms, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, began to receive its great influx. +The rest of the western cotton belt had soils varying through much the same +range as those of Georgia and the Carolinas. Except in the bottoms, where +the planters themselves did most of the pioneering, the choicer lands of +the whole district were entered by a pellmell throng of great planters, +lesser planters and small farmers, with the farmers usually a little in +the lead and the planters ready to buy them out of specially rich lands. +Farmers refusing to sell might by their own thrift shortly rise into the +planter class; or if they sold their homesteads at high prices they might +buy slaves with the proceeds and remove to become planters in still newer +districts. + +[Footnote 6: This use of the term "black belt" is not to be confused with +the other and more general application of it to such areas in the South at +large as have a majority of negroes in their population.] + +The process was that which had already been exemplified abundantly in the +eastern cotton belt. A family arriving perhaps in the early spring with a +few implements and a small supply of food and seed, would build in a few +days a cabin of rough logs with an earthen floor and a roof of bark or of +riven clapboards. To clear a field they would girdle the larger trees and +clear away the underbrush. Corn planted in April would furnish roasting +ears in three months and ripe grain in six weeks more. Game was plenty; +lightwood was a substitute for candles; and housewifely skill furnished +homespun garments. Shelter, food and clothing and possibly a small cotton +crop or other surplus were thus had the first year. Some rested with this; +but the more thrifty would soon replace their cabins with hewn log or frame +houses, plant kitchen gardens and watermelon patches, set out orchards and +increase the cotton acreage. The further earnings of a year or two would +supply window glass, table ware, coffee, tea and sugar, a stock of poultry, +a few hogs and even perhaps a slave or two. The pioneer hardships decreased +and the homely comforts grew with every passing year of thrift. But the +orchard yield of stuff for the still, and the cotton field's furnishing +the wherewithal to buy more slaves, brought temptations. Distilleries and +slaves, a contemporary said, were blessings or curses according as they +were used or abused; for drunkenness and idleness were the gates of the +road to retrogression.[7] + +[Footnote 7: David Ramsay _History of South Carolina_, II, pp. 246 ff.] + +The pathetic hardships which some of the poorer migrants underwent in their +labors to reach the western opportunity are exemplified in a local item +from an Augusta newspaper in 1819: "Passed through this place from +Greenville District [South Carolina] bound for Chatahouchie, a man and his +wife, his son and his wife, with a cart but no horse. The man had a belt +over his shoulders and he drew in the shafts; the son worked by traces tied +to the end of the shafts and assisted his father to draw the cart; the +son's wife rode in the cart, and the old woman was walking, carrying +a rifle, and driving a cow."[8] This example, while extreme, was not +unique.[9] + +[Footnote 8: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 24, 1819, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 196.] + +[Footnote 9: _Niles' Register_, XX, 320.] + +The call of the west was carried in promoters' publications,[10] in +private letters, in newspaper reports, and by word of mouth. A typical +communication was sent home in 1817 by a Marylander who had moved to +Louisiana: "In your states a planter with ten negroes with difficulty +supports a family genteelly; here well managed they would be a fortune to +him. With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here the +crops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life never for a moment +causes the heart to ache--abundance spreads the table of the poor man, and +contentment smiles on every countenance."[11] Other accounts told glowingly +of quick fortunes made and to be made by getting lands cheaply in the early +stages of settlement and selling them at greatly enhanced prices when the +tide of migration arrived in force.[12] Such ebullient expressions were +taken at face value by thousands of the unwary; and other thousands of the +more cautious followed in the trek when personal inquiries had reinforced +the tug of the west. The larger planters generally removed only after +somewhat thorough investigation and after procuring more or less +acquiescence from their slaves; the smaller planters and farmers, with +lighter stake in their homes and better opportunity to sell them, with +lighter impedimenta for the journey, with less to lose by misadventure, +and with poorer facilities for inquiry, responded more readily to the +enticements. + +[Footnote 10: _E. g_., the Washington, Ky., _Mirror_, Sept. 30, 1797.] + +[Footnote 11: _Niles' Register_, XIII, 38.] + +[Footnote 12: _E. g., Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), March 11, 1836.] + +The fever of migration produced in some of the people an unconquerable +restlessness. An extraordinary illustration of this is given in the career +of Gideon Lincecum as written by himself. In 1802, when Gideon was ten +years old, his father, after farming successfully for some years in the +Georgia uplands was lured by letters from relatives in Tennessee to sell +out and remove thither. Taking the roundabout road through the Carolinas to +avoid the Cherokee country, he set forth with a wagon and four horses to +carry a bed, four chests, four white and four negro children, and his +mother who was eighty-eight years old. When but a few days on the road an +illness of the old woman caused a halt, whereupon Lincecum rented a nearby +farm and spent a year on a cotton crop. The journey was then resumed, but +barely had the Savannah River been crossed when another farm was rented and +another crop begun. Next year they returned to Georgia and worked a farm +near Athens. Then they set out again for Tennessee; but on the road in +South Carolina the wreck of the wagon and its ancient occupant gave +abundant excuse for the purchase of a farm there. After another crop, +successful as usual, the family moved back to Georgia and cropped still +another farm. Young Gideon now attended school until his father moved +again, this time southward, for a crop near Eatonton. Gideon then left his +father after a quarrel and spent several years as a clerk in stores here +and there, as a county tax collector and as a farmer, and began to read +medicine in odd moments. He now married, about the beginning of the year +1815, and rejoined his father who was about to cross the Indian country to +settle in Alabama. But they had barely begun this journey when the father, +while tipsy, bought a farm on the Georgia frontier, where the two families +settled and Gideon interspersed deer hunting with his medical reading. Next +spring the cavalcade crossed the five hundred miles of wilderness in six +weeks, and reached the log cabin village of Tuscaloosa, where Gideon built +a house. But provisions were excessively dear, and his hospitality to other +land seekers from Georgia soon consumed his savings. He began whipsawing +lumber, but after disablement from a gunpowder explosion he found lighter +employment in keeping a billiard room. He then set out westward again, +breaking a road for his wagon as he went. Upon reaching the Tombigbee River +he built a clapboard house in five days, cleared land from its canebrake, +planted corn with a sharpened stick, and in spite of ravages from bears and +raccoons gathered a hundred and fifty bushels from six acres. When the town +of Columbus, Mississippi, was founded nearby in 1819 he sawed boards to +build a house on speculation. From this he was diverted to the Indian +trade, bartering whiskey, cloth and miscellaneous goods for peltries. He +then became a justice of the peace and school commissioner at Columbus, +surveyed and sold town lots on public account, and built two school houses +with the proceeds. He then moved up the river to engage anew in the Indian +trade with a partner who soon proved a drunkard. He and his wife there +took a fever which after baffling the physicians was cured by his own +prescription. He then moved to Cotton Gin Port to take charge of a store, +but was invalided for three years by a sunstroke. Gradually recovering, +he lived in the woods on light diet until the thought occurred to him of +carrying a company of Choctaw ball players on a tour of the United States. +The tour was made, but the receipts barely covered expenses. Then in 1830, +Lincecum set himself up as a physician at Columbus. No sooner had he built +up a practice, however, than he became dissatisfied with allopathy and +went to study herb remedies among the Indians; and thereafter he practiced +botanic medicine. In 1834 he went as surgeon with an exploring party to +Texas and found that country so attractive that after some years further +at Columbus he spent the rest of his long life in Texas as a planter, +physician and student of natural history. He died there in 1873 at the age +of eighty years.[13] + +[Footnote 13: F.L. Riley, ed., "The Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum," in +the Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, VIII, 443-519.] + +The descriptions and advice which prospectors in the west sent home are +exemplified in a letter of F.X. Martin, written in New Orleans in 1911, +to a friend in eastern North Carolina. The lands, he said, were the most +remunerative in the whole country; a planter near Natchez was earning $270 +per hand each year. The Opelousas and Attakapas districts for sugar, +and the Red River bottoms for cotton, he thought, offered the best +opportunities because of the cheapness of their lands. As to the journey +from North Carolina, he advised that the start be made about the first of +September and the course be laid through Knoxville to Nashville. Traveling +thence through the Indian country, safety would be assured by a junction +with other migrants. Speed would be greater on horseback, but the route was +feasible for vehicles, and a traveler would find a tent and a keg of +water conducive to his comfort. The Indians, who were generally short of +provisions in spring and summer, would have supplies to spare in autumn; +and the prevailing dryness of that season would make the streams and swamps +in the path less formidable. An alternative route lay through Georgia; +but its saving of distance was offset by the greater expanse of Indian +territory to be crossed, the roughness of the road and the frequency of +rivers. The viewing of the delta country, he thought, would require three +or four months of inspection before a choice of location could safely be +made.[14] + +[Footnote 14: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 197-200.] + +The procedure of planters embarking upon long distance migration may be +gathered from the letters which General Leonard Covington of Calvert +County, Maryland, wrote to his brother and friends who had preceded him to +the Natchez district. In August, 1808, finding a prospect of selling +his Maryland lands, he formed a project of carrying his sixty slaves to +Mississippi and hiring out some of them there until a new plantation should +be ready for routine operation. He further contemplated taking with him ten +or fifteen families of non-slaveholding whites who were eager to migrate +under his guidance and wished employment by him for a season while they +cast about for farms of their own. Covington accordingly sent inquiries as +to the prevailing rates of hire and the customary feeding and treatment of +slaves. He asked whether they were commonly worked only from "sun to sun," +and explained his thought by saying, "It is possible that so much labor +may be required of hirelings and so little regard may be had for their +constitutions as to render them in a few years not only unprofitable but +expensive." He asked further whether the slaves there were contented, +whether they as universally took wives and husbands and as easily reared +children as in Maryland, whether cotton was of more certain yield and +sale than tobacco, what was the cost of clearing land and erecting rough +buildings, what the abundance and quality of fruit, and what the nature of +the climate. + +The replies he received were quite satisfactory, but a failure to sell part +of his Maryland lands caused him to leave twenty-six of his slaves in the +east. The rest he sent forward with a neighbor's gang. Three white men were +in charge, but one of the negroes escaped at Pittsburg and was apparently +not recaptured. Covington after detention by the delicacy of his wife's +health and by duties in the military service of the United States, set +out at the beginning of October, 1809, with his wife and five children, +a neighbor named Waters and his family, several other white persons, and +eleven slaves. He described his outfit as "the damnedest cavalcade that +ever man was burdened with; not less than seven horses compose my troop; +they convey a close carriage (Jersey stage), a gig and horse cart, so +that my family are transported with comfort and convenience, though at +considerable expense. All these odd matters and contrivances I design to +take with me to Mississippi if possible. Mr. Waters will also take down +his waggon and team." Upon learning that the Ohio was in low water he +contemplated journeying by land as far as Louisville; but he embarked at +Wheeling instead, and after tedious dragging "through shoals, sandbars and +ripples" he reached Cincinnati late in November. When the last letter on +the journey was written he was on the point of embarking afresh on a +boat so crowded, that in spite of his desire to carry a large stock of +provisions he could find room for but a few hundredweight of pork and a few +barrels of flour. He apparently reached his destination at the end of the +year and established a plantation with part of his negroes, leaving the +rest on hire. The approach of the war of 1812 brought distress; cotton was +low, bacon was high, and the sale of a slave or two was required in making +ends meet. Covington himself was now ordered by the Department of War to +take the field in command of dragoons, and in 1813 was killed in a battle +beyond the Canadian border. The fate of his family and plantation does not +appear in the records.[15] + +[Footnote 15: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 201-208.] + +A more successful migration was that of Col. Thomas S. Dabney in 1835. +After spending the years of his early manhood on his ancestral tide-water +estate, Elmington, in Gloucester County, Virginia, he was prompted to +remove by the prospective needs of his rapidly growing family. The justice +of his anticipations appears from the fact that his second wife bore him +eventually sixteen children, ten of whom survived her. After a land-looking +tour through Alabama and Louisiana, Dabney chose a tract in Hinds County, +Mississippi, some forty miles east of Vicksburg, where he bought the +property of several farmers as the beginning of a plantation which finally +engrossed some four thousand acres. Returning to Virginia, he was given a +great farewell dinner at Richmond, at which Governor Tyler presided and +many speakers congratulated Mississippi upon her gain of such a citizen +at Virginia's expense.[16] Several relatives and neighbors resolved to +accompany him in the migration. His brother-in-law, Charles Hill, took +charge of the carriages and the white families, while Dabney himself had +the care of the wagons and the many scores of negroes. The journey was +accomplished without mishap in two months of perfect autumn weather. Upon +arriving at the new location most of the log houses were found in ruins +from a recent hurricane; but new shelters were quickly provided, and in a +few months the great plantation, with its force of two hundred slaves, was +in routine operation. In the following years Dabney made it a practice to +clear about a hundred acres of new ground annually. The land, rich and +rolling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a general +failure of crops was never experienced--the bottoms would thrive in dry +seasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosper +them all. The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabney +at first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty of +his slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved while directing +their work, the beneficiary and his fellows were less grateful for the +service than offended at the undemocratic manner of its rendering. When +Dabney, furthermore, made no return calls for assistance, the restraint was +increased. The rich might patronize the poor in the stratified society +of old Virginia; in young Mississippi such patronage was an unpleasant +suggestion that stratification was beginning.[17] With the passage of years +and the continued influx of planters ready to buy their lands at good +prices, such fanners as did not thrive tended to vacate the richer soils. +The Natchez-Vicksburg district became largely consolidated into great +plantations,[18] and the tract extending thence to Tuscaloosa, as likewise +the district about Montgomery, Alabama, became occupied mostly by smaller +plantations on a scale of a dozen or two slaves each,[19] while the +non-slaveholders drifted to the southward pine-barrens or the western or +northwestern frontiers. + +[Footnote 16: _Richmond Enquirer_, Sept. 22, 1835, reprinted in Susan D. +Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (2d. ed., Baltimore, 1888), pp. +43-47.] + +[Footnote 17: Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 42-68.] + +[Footnote 18: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1860), pp. 20, 28] + +[Footnote 19: _Ibid_., pp. 160, 161; Robert Russell, _North America_ +(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 207.] + +The caravans of migrating planters were occasionally described by travelers +in the period. Basil Hall wrote of one which he overtook in South Carolina +in 1828: "It ... did not consist of above thirty persons in all, of whom +five-and-twenty at least were slaves. The women and children were stowed +away in wagons, moving slowly up a steep, sandy hill; but the curtains +being let down we could see nothing of them except an occasional glance of +an eye, or a row of teeth as white as snow. In the rear of all came a light +covered vehicle, with the master and mistress of the party. Along the +roadside, scattered at intervals, we observed the male slaves trudging in +front. At the top of all, against the sky line, two men walked together, +apparently hand in hand pacing along very sociably. There was something, +however, in their attitude, which seemed unusual and constrained. When +we came nearer, accordingly, we discovered that this couple were bolted +together by a short chain or bar riveted to broad iron clasps secured in +like manner round the wrists. 'What have you been doing, my boys,' said our +coachman in passing, 'to entitle you to these ruffles?' 'Oh, sir,' cried +one of them quite gaily, 'they are the best things in the world to travel +with.' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one of +the slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take the +matter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, it +appeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, not +to his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the female +not choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The +wretched husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man who +having no such tie to draw him back might be more safely trusted on the +journey."[20] + +[Footnote 20: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), +III, 128, 129. _See also_ for similar scenes, Adam Hodgson, _Letters from +North America_ (London, 1854), I, 113.] + +Timothy Flint wrote after observing many of these caravans: "The slaves +generally seem fond of their masters, and as much delighted and interested +in their migration as their masters. It is to me a very pleasing and +patriarchal sight."[21] But Edwin L. Godkin, who in his transit of a +Mississippi swamp in 1856 saw a company in distress, used the episode as a +peg on which to hang an anti-slavery sentiment: "I fell in with an emigrant +party on their way to Texas. Their mules had sunk in the mud, ... the +wagons were already embedded as far as the axles. The women of the party, +lightly clad in cotton, had walked for miles, knee-deep in water, through +the brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were now +crouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree.... The men +were making feeble attempts to light a fire.... 'Colonel,' said one of them +as I rode past, 'this is the gate of hell, ain't it?' ... The hardships the +negroes go through who are attached to one of these emigrant parties baffle +description.... They trudge on foot all day through mud and thicket without +rest or respite.... Thousands of miles are traversed by these weary +wayfarers without their knowing or caring why, urged on by the whip and in +the full assurance that no change of place can bring any change to them.... +Hard work, coarse food, merciless floggings, are all that await them, and +all that they can look to. I have never passed them, staggering along in +the rear of the wagons at the close of a long day's march, the weakest +furthest in the rear, the strongest already utterly spent, without +wondering how Christendom, which eight centuries ago rose in arms for a +sentiment, can look so calmly on at so foul and monstrous a wrong as this +American slavery."[22] If instead of crossing the Mississippi bottoms and +ascribing to slavery the hardships he observed, Godkin had been crossing +the Nevada desert that year and had come upon, as many others did, a train +of emigrants with its oxen dead, its women and children perishing +of thirst, and its men with despairing eyes turned still toward the +gold-fields of California, would he have inveighed against freedom as the +cause? Between Flint's impression of pleasure and Godkin's of gloom no +choice need be made, for either description was often exemplified. In +general the slaves took the fatigues and the diversions of the route merely +as the day's work and the day's play. + +[Footnote 21: Timothy Flint, _History and Geography of the Western States_ +(Cincinnati, 1828), p. 11.] + +[Footnote 22: Letter of E.L. Godkin to the _London News_, reprinted in the +_North American Review_, CLXXXV (1907), 46, 47.] + +Many planters whose points of departure and of destination were accessible +to deep water made their transit by sea. Thus on the brig _Calypso_ sailing +from Norfolk to New Orleans in April, 1819, Benjamin Ballard and Samuel T. +Barnes, both of Halifax County, North Carolina, carrying 30 and 196 slaves +respectively, wrote on the margins of their manifests, the one "The owner +of these slaves is moving to the parish of St. Landry near Opelousas where +he has purchased land and intends settling, and is not a dealer in human +flesh," the other, "The owner of these slaves is moving to Louisiana to +settle, and is not a dealer in human flesh." On the same voyage Augustin +Pugh of the adjoining Bertie County carried seventy slaves whose manifest, +though it bears no such asseveration, gives evidence that they likewise +were not a trader's lot; for some of the negroes were sixty years old, and +there were as many children as adults in the parcel. Lots of such sizes +as these were of course exceptional. In the packages of manifests now +preserved in the Library of Congress the lists of from one to a dozen +slaves outnumbered those of fifty or more by perhaps a hundred fold. + +The western cotton belt not only had a greater expanse and richer lands +than the eastern, but its cotton tended to have a longer fiber, ranging, +particularly in the district of the "bends" of the Mississippi north of +Vicksburg, as much as an inch and a quarter in length and commanding a +premium in the market. Its far reaching waterways, furthermore, made +freighting easy and permitted the planters to devote themselves the more +fully to their staple. The people in the main made their own food supplies; +yet the market demand of the western cotton belt and the sugar bowl for +grain and meat contributed much toward the calling of the northwestern +settlements into prosperous existence.[23] + +[Footnote 23: G.S. Callender in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, XVII, +111-162.] + +This thriving of the West, however, was largely at the expense of the older +plantation states.[24] In 1813 John Randolph wrote: "The whole country +watered by the rivers which fall into the Chesapeake is in a state of +paralysis...The distress is general and heavy, and I do not see how the +people can pay their taxes." And again: "In a few years more, those of us +who are alive will move off to Kaintuck or the Massissippi, where corn can +be had for sixpence a bushel and pork for a penny a pound. I do not wonder +at the rage for emigration. What do the bulk of the people get here that +they cannot have there for one fifth the labor in the western country?" +Next year, after a visit to his birthplace, he exclaimed: "What a spectacle +does our lower country present! Deserted and dismantled country-houses once +the seats of cheerfulness and plenty, and the temples of the Most High +ruinous and desolate, 'frowning in portentous silence upon the land,'" And +in 1819 he wrote from Richmond: "You have no conception of the gloom and +distress that pervade this place. There has been nothing like it since 1785 +when from the same causes (paper money and a general peace) there was a +general depression of everything."[25] + +[Footnote 24: Edmund Quincy, _Life of Josiah Quincy_ (Boston, 1869), p. +336.] + +[Footnote 25: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (Philadelphia, 1851), +II, 15; I, 2; II, 105.] + +The extreme depression passed, but the conditions prompting emigration were +persistent and widespread. News items from here and there continued for +decades to tell of movement in large volume from Tide-water and Piedmont, +from the tobacco states and the eastern cotton-belt, and even from Alabama +in its turn, for destinations as distant and divergent as Michigan, +Missouri and Texas. The communities which suffered cast about for both +solace and remedy. An editor in the South Carolina uplands remarked at the +beginning of 1833 that if emigration should continue at the rate of the +past year the state would become a wilderness; but he noted with grim +satisfaction that it was chiefly the "fire-eaters" that were moving +out.[26] In 1836 another South Carolinian wrote: "The spirit of emigration +is still rife in our community. From this cause we have lost many, and we +are destined, we fear, to lose more, of our worthiest citizens." Though +efforts to check it were commonly thought futile, he addressed himself to +suasion. The movement, said he, is a mistaken one; South Carolina planters +should let well enough alone. The West is without doubt the place for +wealth, but prosperity is a trial to character. In the West money is +everything. Its pursuit, accompanied as it is by baneful speculation, +lawlessness, gambling, sabbath-breaking, brawls and violence, prevents +moral attainment and mental cultivation. Substantial people should stay in +South Carolina to preserve their pristine purity, hospitality, freedom of +thought, fearlessness and nobility.[27] + +[Footnote 26: Sumterville, S.C., _Whig_, Jan. 5, 1833.] + +[Footnote 27: "The Spirit of Emigration," signed "A South Carolinian," in +the _Southern Literary Journal_, II, 259-262 (June, 1836).] + +An Alabama spokesman rejoiced in the manual industry of the white people in +his state, and said if the negroes were only thinned off it would become a +great and prosperous commonwealth.[28] But another Alabamian, A.B. Meek, +found reason to eulogize both emigration and slavery. He said the +roughness of manners prevalent in the haphazard western aggregation of +New Englanders, Virginians, Carolinians and Georgians would prove but +a temporary phase. Slavery would be of benefit through its tendency to +stratify society, ennoble the upper classes, and give even the poorer +whites a stimulating pride of race. "In a few years," said he, "owing to +the operation of this institution upon our unparalleled natural advantages, +we shall be the richest people beneath the bend of the rainbow; and then +the arts and the sciences, which always follow in the train of wealth, will +flourish to an extent hitherto unknown on this side of the Atlantic." [29] + +[Footnote 28: Portland, Ala., _Evening Advertiser_, April 12, 1833.] + +[Footnote 29: _Southern Ladies' Book_ (Macon, Ga.), April, 1840.] + +As a practical measure to relieve the stress of the older districts a +beginning was made in seed selection, manuring and crop rotation to +enhance the harvests; horses were largely replaced by mules, whose earlier +maturity, greater hardihood and longer lives made their use more economical +for plow and wagon work;[30] the straight furrows of earlier times gave +place in the Piedmont to curving ones which followed the hill contours +and when supplemented with occasional grass balks and ditches checked the +scouring of the rains and conserved in some degree the thin soils of the +region; a few textile factories were built to better the local market for +cotton and lower the cost of cloth as well as to yield profits to their +proprietors; the home production of grain and meat supplies was in some +measure increased; and river and highway improvements and railroad +construction were undertaken to lessen the expenses of distant +marketing.[31] Some of these recourses were promptly adopted in the newer +settlements also; and others proved of little avail for the time being. The +net effect of the betterments, however, was an appreciable offsetting +of the western advantage; and this, when added to the love of home, the +disrelish of primitive travel and pioneer life, and the dread of the costs +and risks involved in removal, dissuaded multitudes from the project of +migration. The actual depopulation of the Atlantic states was less than the +plaints of the time would suggest. The volume of emigration was undoubtedly +great, and few newcomers came in to fill the gaps. But the birth rate alone +in those generations of ample families more than replaced the losses year +by year in most localities. The sense of loss was in general the product +not of actual depletion but of disappointment in the expectation of +increase. + +[Footnote 30: H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New +York, 1916), pp. 166-168.] + +[Footnote 31: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern +Cotton Belt to 1860_.] + +The non-slaveholding backwoodsmen formed the vanguard of settlement on +each frontier in turn; the small slaveholders followed on their heels and +crowded each fertile district until the men who lived by hunting as well as +by farming had to push further westward; finally the larger planters with +their crowded carriages, their lumbering wagons and their trudging slaves +arrived to consolidate the fields of such earlier settlers as would sell. +It often seemed to the wayfarer that all the world was on the move. But in +the districts of durable soil thousands of men, clinging to their homes, +repelled every attack of the western fever. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE + + +In the New England town of Plymouth in November, 1729, a certain Thompson +Phillips who was about to sail for Jamaica exchanged a half interest in his +one-legged negro man for a similar share in Isaac Lathrop's negro boy who +was to sail with Phillips and be sold on the voyage. Lathrop was meanwhile +to teach the man the trade of cordwaining, and was to resell his share +to Phillips at the end of a year at a price of £40 sterling.[1] This +transaction, which was duly concluded in the following year, suggests the +existence of a trade in slaves on a small scale from north to south in +colonial times. Another item in the same connection is an advertisement in +the _Boston Gazette_ of August 17, 1761, offering for sale young slaves +just from Africa and proposing to take in exchange "any negro men, strong +and hearty though not of the best moral character, which are proper +subjects of transportation";[2] and a third instance appears in a letter of +James Habersham of Georgia in 1764 telling of his purchase of a parcel +of negroes at New York for work on his rice plantation.[3] That the +disestablishment of slavery in the North during and after the American +Revolution enhanced the exportation of negroes was recited in a Vermont +statute of 1787,[4] and is shown by occasional items in Southern archives. +One of these is the registry at Savannah of a bill of sale made at New +London in 1787 for a mulatto boy "as a servant for the term of ten years +only, at the expiration of which time he is to be free."[5] Another is a +report from an official at Norfolk to the Governor of Virginia, in 1795, +relating that the captain of a sloop from Boston with three negroes on +board pleaded ignorance of the Virginia law against the bringing in of +slaves.[6] + +[Footnote 1: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XXIV, 335, +336.] + +[Footnote 2: Reprinted in Joshua Coffin, _An Account of Some of the +Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860), p. 15.] + +[Footnote 3: "The Letters of James Habersham," in the Georgia Historical +Society _Collections_, VI, 22, 23.] + +[Footnote 4: _New England Register_, XXIX, 248, citing Vermont _Statutes_, +1787, p. 105.] + +[Footnote 5: U.B. Phillips, "Racial Problems, Adjustments and Disturbances +in the Ante-bellum South," in _The South in the Building of the Nation_, +IV, 218.] + +[Footnote 6: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, VIII, 255.] + +The federal census returns show that from 1790 onward the decline in the +number of slaves in the Northern states was more than counterbalanced by +the increase of their free negroes. This means either that the selling of +slaves to the southward was very slight, or that the statistical effect +of it was canceled by the northward flight of fugitive slaves and the +migration of negroes legally free. There seems to be no evidence that the +traffic across Mason and Dixon's line was ever of large dimensions, the +following curious item from a New Orleans newspaper in 1818 to the contrary +notwithstanding: "Jersey negroes appear to be peculiarly adapted to this +market--especially those that bear the mark of Judge Van Winkle, as it is +understood that they offer the best opportunity for speculation. We have +the right to calculate on large importations in future, from the success +which hitherto attended the sale."[7] + +[Footnote 7: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 22, 1818, quoting the New +Orleans _Chronicle_, July 14, 1818.] + +The internal trade at the South began to be noticeable about the end of the +eighteenth century. A man at Knoxville, Tennessee, in December, 1795, sent +notice to a correspondent in Kentucky that he was about to set out with +slaves for delivery as agreed upon, and would carry additional ones on +speculation; and he concluded by saying "I intend carrying on the business +extensively."[8] In 1797 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt met a "drove of +negroes" about one hundred in number,[9] whose owner had abandoned the +planting business in the South Carolina uplands and was apparently carrying +them to Charleston for sale. In 1799 there was discovered in the Georgia +treasury a shortage of some ten thousand dollars which a contemporary news +item explained as follows: Mr. Sims, a member of the legislature, having +borrowed the money from the treasurer, entrusted it to a certain Speers for +the purchase of slaves in Virginia. "Speers accordingly went and purchased +a considerable number of negroes; and on his way returning to this state +the negroes rose and cut the throats of Speers and another man who +accompanied him. The slaves fled, and about ten of them, I think, were +killed. In consequence of this misfortune Mr. Sims was rendered unable to +raise the money at the time the legislature met."[10] Another transaction +achieved record because of a literary effusion which it prompted. Charles +Mott Lide of South Carolina, having inherited a fortune, went to Virginia +early in 1802 to buy slaves, and began to establish a sea-island cotton +plantation in Georgia. But misfortune in other investments forced him next +year to sell his land, slaves and crops to two immigrants from the Bahama +Islands. Thereupon, wrote he, "I composed the following valedictory, which +breathes something of the tenderness of Ossian."[11] Callous history is not +concerned in the farewell to his "sweet asylum," but only in the fact that +he bought slaves in Virginia and carried them to Georgia. A grand jury +at Alexandria presented as a grievance in 1802, "the practice of persons +coming from distant parts of the United States into this district for the +purpose of purchasing slaves."[12] Such fugitive items as these make up the +whole record of the trade in its early years, and indeed constitute the +main body of data upon its career from first to last. + +[Footnote 8: Unsigned MS. draft in the Wisconsin Historical Society, Draper +collection, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 55, 56.] + +[Footnote 9: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_, p. +592.] + +[Footnote 10: Charleston, S.C., _City Gazette_, Dec. 21, 1799.] + +[Footnote 11: Alexander Gregg, _History of the Old Cheraws_ (New York, +1877), pp. 480-482.] + +[Footnote 12: Quoted in a speech in Congress in 1829, _Register of +Debates_, V, 177.] + +As soon as the African trade was closed, the interstate traffic began to +assume the aspect of a regular business though for some years it not only +continued to be of small scale but was oftentimes merely incidental in +character. That is to say, migrating planters and farmers would in some +cases carry extra slaves bought with a view to reselling them at western +prices and applying the proceeds toward the expense of their new +homesteads. The following advertisement by William Rochel at Natchez in +1810 gives an example of this: "I have upwards of twenty likely Virginia +born slaves now in a flat bottomed boat lying in the river at Natchez, for +sale cheaper than has been sold here in years.[13] Part of said negroes +I wish to barter for a small farm. My boat may be known by a large cane +standing on deck." + +[Footnote 13: Natchez, Miss., _Weekly Chronicle_, April 2, 1810.] + +The heyday of the trade fell in the piping times of peace and migration +from 1815 to 1860. Its greatest activity was just prior to the panic of +1837, for thereafter the flow was held somewhat in check, first by the +hard times in the cotton belt and then by an agricultural renaissance in +Virginia. A Richmond newspaper reported in the fall of 1836 that estimates +by intelligent men placed Virginia's export in the preceding year at +120,000 slaves, of whom at least two thirds had been carried by emigrating +owners, and the rest by dealers.[14] This was probably an exaggeration +for even the greatest year of the exodus. What the common volume of the +commercial transport was can hardly be ascertained from the available data. + +[Footnote 14: _Niles' Register_, LI, 83 (Oct. 8, 1836), quoting the +_Virginia Times_.] + +The slave trade was partly systematic, partly casual. For local sales every +public auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in each +city there were brokers buying them to sell again or handling them on +commission. One of these at New Orleans in 1854 was Thomas Foster who +advertised that he would pay the highest prices for sound negroes as +well as sell those whom merchants or private citizens might consign him. +Expecting to receive negroes throughout the season, he said, he would have +a constant stock of mechanics, domestics and field hands; and in addition +he would house as many as three hundred slaves at a time, for such as +were importing them from other states.[16] Similarly Clark and Grubb, of +Whitehall Street in Atlanta, when advertising their business as wholesale +grocers, commission merchants and negro brokers, announced that they kept +slaves of all classes constantly on hand and were paying the highest market +prices for all that might be offered.[16] At Nashville, William L. Boyd, +Jr., and R.W. Porter advertised as rival slave dealers in 1854;[17] and in +the directory of that city for 1860 E.S. Hawkins, G.H. Hitchings, and Webb, +Merrill and Company were also listed in this traffic. At St. Louis in 1859 +Corbin Thompson and Bernard M. Lynch were the principal slave dealers. The +rates of the latter, according to his placard, were 37-1/2 cents per day +for board and 2-1/2 per cent, commission on sales; and all slaves entrusted +to his care were to be held at their owners' risk.[18] + +[Footnote 15: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 163.] + +[Footnote 16: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Mch. 7, 1860.] + +[Footnote 17: _Southern Business Directory_, II, 131.] + +[Footnote 18: H.A. Trexler, _Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865_ (Baltimore, +1914), p. 49.] + +On the other hand a rural owner disposed to sell a slave locally would +commonly pass the word round among his neighbors or publish a notice in the +county newspaper. To this would sometimes be appended a statement that the +slave was not to be sent out of the state, or that no dealers need apply. +The following is one of many such Maryland items: "Will be sold for cash or +good paper, a negro woman, 22 years old, and her two female children. She +is sold for want of employment, and will not be sent out of the state. +Apply to the editor."[19] In some cases, whether rural or urban, the slave +was sent about to find his or her purchaser. In the city of Washington +in 1854, for example, a woman, whose husband had been sold South, was +furnished with the following document: "The bearer, Mary Jane, and her two +daughters, are for sale. They are sold for no earthly fault whatever. She +is one of the most ladylike and trustworthy servants I ever knew. She is +a first rate parlour servant; can arrange and set out a dinner or party +supper with as much taste as the most of white ladies. She is a pretty good +mantua maker; can cut out and make vests and pantaloons and roundabouts +and joseys for little boys in a first rate manner. Her daughters' ages are +eleven and thirteen years, brought up exclusively as house servants. The +eldest can sew neatly, both can knit stockings; and all are accustomed to +all kinds of house work. They would not be sold to speculators or traders +for any price whatever." The price for the three was fixed at $1800, but a +memorandum stated that a purchaser taking the daughters at $1000 might have +the mother on a month's trial. The girls were duly bought by Dr. Edward +Maynard, who we may hope took the mother also at the end of the stipulated +month.[20] In the cities a few slaves were sold by lottery. One Boulmay, +for example, advertised at New Orleans in 1819 that he would sell fifty +tickets at twenty dollars each, the lucky drawer to receive his girl +Amelia, thirteen years old.[21] + +[Footnote 19: Charleston, Md., _Telegraph_, Nov. 7, 1828.] + +[Footnote 20: MSS. in the New York Public Library, MSS. division, filed +under "slavery."] + +[Footnote 21: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Aug. 17, 1819.] + +The long distance trade, though open to any who would engage in it, appears +to have been conducted mainly by firms plying it steadily. Each of these +would have an assembling headquarters with field agents collecting slaves +for it, one or more vessels perhaps for the coastwise traffic, and a +selling agency at one of the centers of slave demand. The methods followed +by some of the purchasing agents, and the local esteem in which they were +held, may be gathered by an item written in 1818 at Winchester in the +Shenandoah Valley: "Several wretches, whose hearts must be as black as the +skins of the unfortunate beings who constitute their inhuman traffic, have +for several days been impudently prowling about the streets of this place +with labels on their hats exhibiting in conspicuous characters the words +'Cash for negroes,'"[22] That this repugnance was genuine enough to cause +local sellers to make large concessions in price in order to keep faithful +servants out of the hands of the long-distance traders is evidenced by +the following report in 1824 from Hillsborough on the eastern shore of +Maryland: "Slaves in this county, and I believe generally on this shore, +have always had two prices, viz. a neighbourhood or domestic and a foreign +or Southern price. The domestic price has generally been about a third less +than the foreign, and sometimes the difference amounts to one half."[23] + +[Footnote 22: _Virginia Northwestern Gazette_, Aug. 15, 1818.] + +[Footnote 23: _American Historical Review_, XIX, 818.] + +The slaves of whom their masters were most eager to be rid were the +indolent, the unruly, and those under suspicion. A Creole settler at Mobile +wrote in 1748, for example, to a friend living on the Mississippi: "I am +sending you l'Eveille and his wife, whom I beg you to sell for me at the +best price to be had. If however they will not bring 1,500 francs each, +please keep them on your land and make them work. What makes me sell them +is that l'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of some thirty +Mobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this; but since there is +rarely smoke without fire I think it well to take the precaution."[24] The +converse of this is a laconic advertisement at Charleston in 1800: +"Wanted to purchase one or two negro men whose characters will not be +required."[25] It is probable that offers were not lacking in response. + +[Footnote 24: MS. in private possession, here translated from the French.] + +[Footnote 25: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 8, 1800.] + +Some of the slaves dealt in were actually convicted felons sold by the +states in which their crimes had been committed. The purchasers of these +were generally required to give bond to transport them beyond the limits +of the United States; but some of the traders broke their pledges on the +chance that their breaches would not be discovered. One of these, a certain +W.H. Williams, when found offering his outlawed merchandize of twenty-four +convict slaves at New Orleans in 1841, was prosecuted and convicted. His +penalty included the forfeiture of the twenty-four slaves, a fine of $500 +to the state of Louisiana for each of the felons introduced, and the +forfeiture to the state of Virginia of his bond in the amount of $1,000 per +slave. The total was reckoned at $48,000.[26] + +[Footnote 26: _Niles' Register_, LX, 189, quoting the New Orleans +_Picayune_, May 2, 1841.] + +The slaves whom the dealers preferred to buy for distant sale were "likely +negroes from ten to thirty years old."[27] Faithfulness and skill in +husbandry were of minor importance, for the trader could give little proof +of them to his patrons. Demonstrable talents in artisanry would of course +enhance a man's value; and unusual good looks on the part of a young woman +might stimulate the bidding of men interested in concubinage. Episodes of +the latter sort were occasionally reported; but in at least one instance +inquiry on the spot showed that sex was not involved. This was the case of +the girl Sarah, who was sold to the highest bidder on the auction block in +the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel at New Orleans in 1841 at a price of +eight thousand dollars. The onlookers were set agog, but a newspaper man +promptly found that the sale had been made as a mere form in the course of +litigation and that the bidding bore no relation to the money which was to +change hands.[28] Among the thousands of bills of sale which the present +writer has scanned, in every quarter of the South, many have borne record +of exceptional prices for men, mostly artisans and "drivers"; but the few +women who brought unusually high prices were described in virtually every +case as fine seamstresses, parlor maids, laundresses, hotel cooks, and +the like. Another indication against the multiplicity of purchases for +concubinage is that the great majority of the women listed in these records +were bought in family groups. Concubinage itself was fairly frequent, +particularly in southern Louisiana; but no frequency of purchases for it as +a predominant purpose can be demonstrated from authentic records. + +[Footnote 27: Advertisement in the _Western Carolinian_ (Salisbury, N. C), +July 12, 1834.] + +[Footnote 28: New Orleans _Bee_, Oct. 16, 1841.] + +Some of the dealers used public jails, taverns and warehouses for the +assembling of their slaves, while others had stockades of their own. That +of Franklin and Armfield at Alexandria, managed by the junior member of +the firm, was described by a visitor in July, 1835. In addition to a brick +residence and office, it comprised two courts, for the men and women +respectively, each with whitewashed walls, padlocked gates, cleanly +barracks and eating sheds, and a hospital which at this time had no +occupants. In the men's yards "the slaves, fifty or sixty in number, were +standing or moving about in groups, some amusing themselves with rude +sports, and others engaged in conversation which was often interrupted +by loud laughter in all the varied tones peculiar to negroes." They were +mostly young men, but comprised a few boys of from ten to fifteen years +old. In the women's yard the ages ranged similarly, and but one woman had a +young child. The slaves were neatly dressed in clothes from a tailor shop +within the walls, and additional clothing was already stored ready to be +sent with the coffle and issued to its members at the end of the southward +journey. In a yard behind the stockade there were wagons and tents made +ready for the departure. Shipments were commonly made by the firm once +every two months in a vessel for New Orleans, but the present lot was to +march overland. Whether by land or sea, the destination was Natchez, where +the senior partner managed the selling end of the business. Armfield +himself was "a man of fine personal appearance, and of engaging and +graceful manners"; and his firm was said to have gained the confidence of +all the countryside by its honorable dealings and by its resolute efforts +to discourage kidnapping. It was said to be highly esteemed even among the +negroes.[29] + +[Footnote 29: E.A. Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the +United States_ (Boston, 1836), pp. 135, 143, 150.] + +Soon afterward this traveler made a short voyage on the Potomac with a +trader of a much more vulgar type who was carrying about fifty slaves, +mostly women with their children, to Fredericksburg and thence across the +Carolinas. Overland, the trader said, he was accustomed to cover some +twenty-five miles a day, with the able-bodied slaves on foot and the +children in wagons. The former he had found could cover these marches, +after the first few days, without much fatigue. His firm, he continued, had +formerly sent most of its slaves by sea, but one of the vessels carrying +them had been driven to Bermuda, where all the negroes had escaped to land +and obtained their freedom under the British flag.[30] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid_., pp. 145-149.] + +The scale of the coasting transit of slaves may be ascertained from the +ship manifests made under the requirements of the congressional act of +1808 and now preserved in large numbers in the manuscripts division of the +Library of Congress. Its volume appears to have ranged commonly, between +1815 and 1860, at from two to five thousand slaves a year. Several score of +these, or perhaps a few hundred, annually were carried as body servants by +their owners when making visits whether to southern cities or to New York +or Philadelphia. Of the rest about half were sent or carried without intent +of sale. Thus in 1831 James L. Pettigru and Langdon Cheves sent from +Charleston to Savannah 85 and 64 slaves respectively of ages ranging from +ninety and seventy years to infancy, with obvious purpose to develop newly +acquired plantations in Georgia. Most of the non-commercial shipments, +however, were in lots of from one to a dozen slaves each. The traders' +lots, on the other hand, which were commonly of considerable dimensions, +may be somewhat safely distinguished by the range of the negroes' ages, +with heavy preponderance of those between ten and thirty years, and by the +recurrence of shippers' and consignees' names. The Chesapeake ports were +the chief points of departure, and New Orleans the great port of entry. +Thus in 1819 Abner Robinson at Baltimore shipped a cargo of 99 slaves to +William Kenner and Co. at New Orleans, whereas by 1832 Robinson had himself +removed to the latter place and was receiving shipments from Henry King +at Norfolk. In the latter year Franklin and Armfield sent from Alexandria +_via_ New Orleans to Isaac Franklin at Natchez three cargoes of 109, 117 +and 134 slaves, mainly of course within the traders' ages; R.C. Ballard and +Co. sent batches from Norfolk to Franklin at Natchez and to John Hogan and +Co. at New Orleans; and William T. Foster, associated with William Rollins +who was master of the brig _Ajax_, consigned numerous parcels to various +New Orleans correspondents. About 1850 the chief shippers were Joseph +Donovan of Baltimore, B.M. and M.L. Campbell of the same place, David +Currie of Richmond and G.W. Apperson of Norfolk, each of whom sent each +year several shipments of several score slaves to New Orleans. The +principal recipients there were Thomas Boudar, John Hogan, W.F. Talbott, +Buchanan, Carroll and Co., Masi and Bourk, and Sherman Johnson. The outward +manifests from New Orleans show in turn a large maritime distribution from +that port, mainly to Galveston and Matagorda Bay. The chief bulk of this +was obviously migrant, not commercial; but a considerable dependence of all +the smaller Gulf ports and even of Montgomery upon the New Orleans labor +market is indicated by occasional manifests bulking heavily in the traders' +ages. In 1850 and thereabouts, it is curious to note, there were manifests +for perhaps a hundred slaves a year bound for Chagres _en route_ for San +Francisco. They were for the most part young men carried singly, and were +obviously intended to share their masters' adventures in the California +gold fields. + +Many slaves carried by sea were covered by marine insurance. Among a number +of policies issued by the Louisiana Insurance Company to William Kenner and +Company was one dated February 18, 1822, on slaves in transit in the brig +_Fame_. It was made out on a printed form of the standard type for the +marine insurance of goods, with the words "on goods" stricken out and "on +slaves" inserted. The risks, specified as assumed in the printed form were +those "of the sea, men of war, fire, enemies, pirates, rovers, thieves, +jettison, letters of mart and counter-mart, surprisals, taking at sea, +arrests, restraints and detainments of all kings, princes or people of what +nation, condition or quality soever, barratry of the master and mariners, +and all other perils, losses and misfortunes that have or shall come to the +hurt, detriment or damage of the said goods or merchandize, or any part +thereof." In manuscript was added: "This insurance is declared to be made +on one hundred slaves, valued at $40,000 and warranted by the insured to be +free from insurrection, elopement, suicide and natural death." The premium +was one and a quarter per cent, of the forty thousand dollars.[31] That +the insurers were not always free from serious risk is indicated by a New +Orleans news item in 1818 relating that two local insurance companies +had recently lost more than forty thousand dollars in consequence of the +robbery of seventy-two slaves out of a vessel from the Chesapeake by a +piratical boat off the Berry Islands.[32] + +[Footnote 31: Original in private possession.] + +[Footnote 32: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 23, 1818, quoting the +_Orleans Gazette_.] + +Overland coffles were occasionally encountered and described by travelers. +Featherstonhaugh overtook one at daybreak one morning in southwestern +Virginia bound through the Tennessee Valley and wrote of it as follows: "It +was a camp of negro slave drivers, just packing up to start. They had about +three hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding night +in chains in the woods. These they were conducting to Natchez on the +Mississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana. It +resembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had +a caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages for the purpose of +conducting the white people and any of the blacks that should fall lame.... +The female slaves, some of them sitting on logs of wood, while others were +standing, and a great many little black children, were warming themselves +at the fire of the bivouac. In front of them all, and prepared for the +march, stood in double files about two hundred men slaves, manacled and +chained to each other." The writer went on to ejaculate upon the horror of +"white men with liberty and equality in their mouths," driving black men +"to perish in the sugar mills of Louisiana, where the duration of life for +a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven years."[33] Sir Charles Lyell, +who was less disposed to moralize or to repeat slanders of the Louisiana +régime, wrote upon reaching the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, in January, +1846: "The first sight we saw there was a long line of negroes, men, women +and boys, well dressed and very merry, talking and laughing, who stopped to +look at our coach. On inquiry we were told that it was a gang of slaves, +probably from Virginia, going to the market to be sold."[34] Whether this +laughing company wore shackles the writer failed to say. + +[Footnote 33: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion through the Slave States_ +(London, 1844), I, 120.] + +[Footnote 34: Sir Charles Lyell, _A Second Visit to the United States_ (New +York, 1849), II, 35.] + +Some of the slaves in the coffles were peddled to planters and townsmen +along the route; the rest were carried to the main distributing centers and +there either kept in stock for sale at fixed prices to such customers as +might apply, or sold at auction. Oftentimes a family group divided for sale +was reunited by purchase. Johann Schoepf observed a prompt consummation of +the sort when a cooper being auctioned continually called to the bidders +that whoever should buy him must buy his son also, an injunction to which +his purchaser duly conformed.[35] Both hardness of heart and shortness +of sight would have been involved in the neglect of so ready a means of +promoting the workman's equanimity; and the good nature of the competing +bidders doubtless made the second purchase easy. More commonly the sellers +offered the slaves in family groups outright. By whatever method the sales +were made, the slaves of both sexes were subjected to such examination of +teeth and limbs as might be desired.[36] Those on the block oftentimes +praised their own strength and talents, for it was a matter of pride to +fetch high prices. On the other hand if a slave should bear a grudge +against his seller, or should hope to be bought only by someone who would +expect but light service, he might pretend a disability though he had it +not. The purchasers were commonly too shrewd to be deceived in either way; +yet they necessarily took risks in every purchase they made. If horse +trading is notoriously fertile in deception, slave trading gave opportunity +for it in as much greater degree as human nature is more complex and +uncertain than equine and harder to fathom from surface indications. + +[Footnote 35: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, +1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), I, 148.] + +[Footnote 36: The proceedings at typical slave auctions are narrated by +Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 143-145; and +by William Chambers, _Things as they are in America_ (2d edition, London, +1857), pp. 273-284.] + +There was also some risk of loss from defects of title. The negroes offered +might prove to be kidnapped freemen, or stolen slaves, or to have been +illegally sold by their former owners in defraud of mortgagees. The last +of these considerations was particularly disquieting in times of financial +stress, for suspicion of wholesale frauds then became rife. At the +beginning of 1840, for example, the offerings of slaves from Mississippi in +large numbers and at bargain prices in the New Orleans market prompted a +local editor to warn the citizens against buying cheap slaves who might +shortly be seized by the federal marshal at the suit of citizens in other +states. A few days afterward the same journal printed in its local news the +following: "Many slaves were put up this day at the St. Louis exchange. Few +if any were sold. It is very difficult now to find persons willing to buy +slaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears entertained that +such property may be already mortgaged to the banks of the above named +states. Our moneyed men and speculators are now wide awake. It will take a +pretty cunning child to cheat them."[37] + +[Footnote 37: _Louisiana Courier_, Feb. 12 and 15, 1840.] + +The disesteem in which the slavetraders were held was so great and general +in the Southern community as to produce a social ostracism. The prevailing +sentiment was expressed, with perhaps a little exaggeration, by D.R. +Hundley of Alabama in his analysis of Southern social types: "Preëminent in +villainy and a greedy love of filthy lucre stands the hard-hearted negro +trader.... Some of them, we do not doubt, are conscientious men, but the +number is few. Although honest and honorable when they first go into the +business, the natural result of their calling seems to corrupt them; for +they usually have to deal with the most refractory and brutal of the slave +population, since good and honest slaves are rarely permitted to fall into +the unscrupulous clutches of the speculator.... [He] is outwardly a coarse, +ill-bred person, provincial in speech and manners, with a cross-looking +phiz, a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking eyes, a dirty +tobacco-stained mouth, and shabby dress.... He is not troubled evidently +with a conscience, for although he habitually separates parent from child, +brother from sister, and husband from wife, he is yet one of the jolliest +dogs alive, and never evinces the least sign of remorse.... Almost every +sentence he utters is accompanied by an oath.... Nearly nine tenths of the +slaves he buys and sells are vicious ones sold for crimes and misdemeanors, +or otherwise diseased ones sold because of their worthlessness as property. +These he purchases for about one half what healthy and honest slaves would +cost him; but he sells them as both honest and healthy, mark you! So soon +as he has completed his 'gang' he dresses them up in good clothes, makes +them comb their kinky heads into some appearance of neatness, rubs oil on +their dusky faces to give them a sleek healthy color, gives them a dram +occasionally to make them sprightly, and teaches each one the part he or +she has to play; and then he sets out for the extreme South.... At every +village of importance he sojourns for a day or two, each day ranging his +'gang' in a line on the most busy street, and whenever a customer makes his +appearance the oily speculator button-holes him immediately and begins to +descant in the most highfalutin fashion upon the virtuous lot of darkeys he +has for sale. Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom was not a circumstance to any one of +the dozens he points out. So honest! so truthful! so dear to the hearts +of their former masters and mistresses! Ah! Messrs. stock-brokers of Wall +Street--you who are wont to cry up your rotten railroad, mining, steamboat +and other worthless stocks[38]--for ingenious lying you should take lessons +from the Southern negro trader!" Some of the itinerant traders were said, +however, and probably with truth, to have had silent partners among the +most substantial capitalists in the Southern cities.[39] + +[Footnote 38: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 139-142.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid_., p.145.] + +The social stigma upon slave dealing doubtless enhanced the profits of the +traders by diminishing the competition. The difference in the scales of +prices prevailing at any time in the cheapest and the dearest local markets +was hardly ever less than thirty per cent. From such a margin, however, +there had to be deducted not only the cost of feeding, clothing, +sheltering, guarding and transporting the slaves for the several months +commonly elapsing between purchase and sale in the trade, but also +allowances for such loss as might occur in transit by death, illness, +accident or escape. At some periods, furthermore, slave prices fell so +rapidly that the prospect of profit for the speculator vanished. At +Columbus, Georgia, in December, 1844, for example, it was reported that a +coffle from North Carolina had been marched back for want of buyers.[40] +But losses of this sort were more than offset in the long run by the upward +trend of prices which was in effect throughout the most of the ante-bellum +period. The Southern planters sometimes cut into the business of the +traders by going to the border states to buy and bring home in person the +slaves they needed.[41] The building of railways speeded the journeys and +correspondingly reduced the costs. The Central of Georgia Railroad +improved its service in 1858 by instituting a negro sleeping car [42]--an +accommodation which apparently no railroad has furnished in the post-bellum +decades. + +[Footnote 40: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 31, 1844.] + +[Footnote 41: Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade_, p.171.] + +While the traders were held in common contempt, the incidents and effects +of their traffic were viewed with mixed emotions. Its employment of +shackles was excused only on the ground of necessary precaution. Its +breaking up of families was generally deplored, although it was apologized +for by thick-and-thin champions of everything Southern with arguments that +negro domestic ties were weak at best and that the separations were no more +frequent than those suffered by free laborers at the North under the stress +of economic necessity. Its drain of money from the districts importing the +slaves was regretted as a financial disadvantage. On the other hand, the +citizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being +saved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at +seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even +these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, +by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen +materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young +workmen and women rather than culls who were being sold South, that white +immigration was not filling their gaps, and that accordingly land prices +were falling as slave prices rose.[45] + +[Footnote 42: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1859.] + +[Footnote 43: _National Intelligencer_ (Washington, D.C.), Jan. 19, 1833.] + +[Footnote 44: R.R. Howison, _History of Virginia_ (Richmond, Va., +1846-1848), II. 519, 520.] + +[Footnote 45: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in +_DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] + +Delaware alone among the states below Mason and Dixon's line appears to +have made serious effort to restrict the outgoing trade in slaves; but all +the states from Maryland and Kentucky to Louisiana legislated from time to +time for the prohibition of the inward trade.[46] The enforcement of these +laws was called for by citizen after citizen in the public press, as +demanded by "every principle of justice, humanity, policy and interest," +and particularly on the ground that if the border states were drained of +slaves they would be transferred from the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery +group in politics.[47] The state laws could not constitutionally debar +traders from the right of transit, and as a rule they did not prohibit +citizens from bringing in slaves for their own use. These two apertures, +together with the passiveness of the public, made the legislative obstacles +of no effect whatever. As to the neighborhood trade within each community, +no prohibition was attempted anywhere in the South. + +[Footnote 46: These acts are summarized in W.H. Collins, _Domestic Slave +Trade_, chap. 7.] + +[Footnote 47: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1818 and Jan. 29, 1823; +_Louisiana Courier_, Jan. 13, 1831; _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), +Dec. 4, 1821, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 67-70; _Federal +Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Feb. 6, 1847.] + +On the whole, instead of hampering migration, as serfdom would have done, +the institution of slavery made the negro population much more responsive +to new industrial opportunity than if it had been free. The long distance +slave trade found its principal function in augmenting the westward +movement. No persuasion of the ignorant and inert was required; the fiat of +one master set them on the road, and the fiat of another set them to new +tasks. The local branch of the trade had its main use in transferring labor +from impoverished employers to those with better means, from passive owners +to active, and from persons with whom relations might be strained to +others whom the negroes might find more congenial. That this last was not +negligible is suggested by a series of letters in 1860 from William Capers, +overseer on a Savannah River rice plantation, to Charles Manigault his +employer, concerning a slave foreman or "driver" named John. In the first +of these letters, August 5, Capers expressed pleasure at learning that +John, who had in previous years been his lieutenant on another estate, was +for sale. He wrote: "Buy him by all means. There is but few negroes +more competent than he is, and he was not a drunkard when under my +management.... In speaking with John he does not answer like a smart negro, +but he is quite so. You had better say to him who is to manage him on +Savannah." A week later Capers wrote: "John arrived safe and handed me +yours of the 9th inst. I congratulate you on the purchase of said negro. +He says he is quite satisfied to be here and will do as he has always done +'during the time I have managed him.' No drink will be offered him. All +on my part will be done to bring John all right." Finally, on October 15, +Capers reported: "I have found John as good a driver as when I left him on +Santee. Bad management was the cause of his being sold, and [I] am glad you +have been the fortunate man to get him."[48] + +[Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 337, 338.] + +Leaving aside for the present, as topics falling more fitly under the +economics of slavery, the questions of the market breeding of slaves in the +border states and the working of them to death in the lower South, as well +as the subject of inflations and depressions in slave prices, it remains +to mention the chief defect of the slave trade as an agency for the +distribution of labor. This lay in the fact that it dealt only in lifetime +service. Employers, it is true, might buy slaves for temporary employment +and sell them when the need for their labor was ended; but the fluctuations +of slave prices and of the local opportunity to sell those on hand would +involve such persons in slave trading risks on a scale eclipsing that of +their industrial earnings. The fact that slave hiring prevailed extensively +in all the Southern towns demonstrates the eagerness of short term +employers to avoid the toils of speculation. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE COTTON RÉGIME + + +It would be hard to overestimate the predominance of the special crops in +the industry and interest of the Southern community. For good or ill they +have shaped its development from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. +Each characteristic area had its own staple, and those districts which had +none were scorned by all typical Southern men. The several areas expanded +and contracted in response to fluctuations in the relative prices of their +products. Thus when cotton was exceptionally high in the early 'twenties +many Virginians discarded tobacco in its favor for a few years,[1] and on +the Louisiana lands from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, the planters from time +to time changed from sugar to cotton and back again.[2] There were local +variations also in scale and intensity; but in general the system in each +area tended to be steady and fairly uniform. The methods in the several +staples, furthermore, while necessarily differing in their details, were so +similar in their emphasis upon routine that each reinforced the influence +of the others in shaping the industrial organization of the South as a +whole. + +[Footnote 1: _Richmond Compiler_, Nov. 25, 1825, and _Alexandria Gazette_, +Feb. 11, 1826, quoted in the _Charleston City Gazette_, Dec. 1, 1825 and +Feb. 20, 1826; _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore, Dec. 29, 1825), VII, 299.] + +[Footnote 2: _Hunt's Merchant's Magazine_, IX, 149.] + +At the height of the plantation system's career, from 1815 to 1860, indigo +production was a thing of the past; hemp was of negligible importance; +tobacco was losing in the east what it gained in the west; rice and +sea-island cotton were stationary; but sugar was growing in local +intensity, and upland cotton was "king" of a rapidly expanding realm. +The culture of sugar, tobacco and rice has been described in preceding +chapters; that of the fleecy staple requires our present attention. + +The outstanding features of the landscape on a short-staple cotton +plantation were the gin house and its attendant baling press. The former +was commonly a weatherboarded structure some forty feet square, raised +about eight feet from the ground by wooden pillars. In the middle of the +space on the ground level, a great upright hub bore an iron-cogged pinion +and was pierced by a long horizontal beam some three feet from the ground. +Draught animals hitched to the ends of this and driven in a circular path +would revolve the hub and furnish power for transmission by cogs and belts +to the gin on the floor above. At the front of the house were a stair and a +platform for unloading seed cotton from the wagons; inside there were bins +for storage, as well as a space for operating the gin; and in the rear a +lean-to room extending to the ground level received the flying lint and let +it settle on the floor. The press, a skeleton structure nearby, had in the +center a stout wooden box whose interior length and width determined the +height and thickness of the bales but whose depth was more than twice as +great as the intended bale's width. The floor, the ends and the upper +halves of the sides of the box were built rigidly, but the lower sides were +hinged at the bottom, and the lid was a block sliding up and down according +as a great screw from above was turned to left or right. The screw, +sometimes of cast iron but preferably of wood as being less liable to break +under strain without warning, worked through a block mortised into a timber +frame above the box, and at its upper end it supported two gaunt beams +which sloped downward and outward to a horse path encircling the whole. +A cupola roof was generally built on the revolving apex to give a slight +shelter to the apparatus; and in some cases a second roof, with the screw +penetrating its peak, was built near enough the ground to escape the whirl +of the arms. When the contents of the lint room were sufficient for a bale, +a strip of bagging was laid upon the floor of the press and another was +attached to the face of the raised lid; the sides of the press were then +made fast, and the box was filled with cotton. The draught animals at the +beam ends were then driven round the path until the descent of the lid +packed the lint firmly; whereupon the sides were lowered, the edges of the +bagging drawn into place, ropes were passed through transverse slots in +the lid and floor and tied round the bale in its bagging, the pressure +was released, and the bale was ready for market. Between 1820 and 1860 +improvements in the apparatus promoted an increase in the average weight +of the bales from 250 to 400 pounds; while in still more recent times the +replacement of horse power by steam and the substitution of iron ties for +rope have caused the average bale to be yet another hundredweight heavier. +The only other distinctive equipment for cotton harvesting comprised cloth +bags with shoulder straps, and baskets of three or four bushels capacity +woven of white-oak splits to contain the contents of the pickers' bags +until carried to the gin house to be weighed at the day's end. + +Whether on a one-horse farm or a hundred-hand plantation, the essentials in +cotton growing were the same. In an average year a given force of laborers +could plant and cultivate about twice as much cotton as it could pick. The +acreage to be seeded in the staple was accordingly fixed by a calculation +of the harvesting capacity, and enough more land was put into other crops +to fill out the spare time of the hands in spring and summer. To this +effect it was customary to plant in corn, which required less than half as +much work, an acreage at least equal to that in cotton, and to devote the +remaining energy to sweet potatoes, peanuts, cow peas and small grain. In +1820 the usual crop in middle Georgia for each full hand was reported at +six acres of cotton and eight of corn;[3] but in the following decades +during which mules were advantageously substituted for horses and oxen, +and the implements of tillage were improved and the harvesters grew more +expert, the annual stint was increased to ten acres in cotton and ten in +corn. + +[Footnote 3: _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore), II, 359.] + +At the Christmas holiday when the old year's harvest was nearly or quite +completed, well managed plantations had their preliminaries for the new +crop already in progress. The winter months were devoted to burning +canebrakes, clearing underbrush and rolling logs in the new grounds, +splitting rails and mending fences, cleaning ditches, spreading manure, +knocking down the old cotton and corn stalks, and breaking the soil of the +fields to be planted. Some planters broke the fields completely each year +and then laid off new rows. Others merely "listed" the fields by first +running a furrow with a shovel plow where each cotton or corn row was to be +and filling it with a single furrow of a turn plow from either side; then +when planting time approached they would break out the remaining balks with +plows, turning the soil to the lists and broadening them into rounded plant +beds. This latter plan was advocated as giving a firm seed bed while making +the field clean of all grass at the planting. The spacing of the cotton +rows varied from three to five feet according to the richness of the soil. +The policy was to put them at such distance that the plants when full grown +would lightly interlace their branches across the middles. + +In March the corn fields were commonly planted, not so much because this +forehandedness was better for the crop as for the sake of freeing the +choicer month of April for the more important planting of cotton. In this +operation a narrow plow lightly opened the crests of the beds; cotton seed +were drilled somewhat thickly therein; and a shallow covering of earth was +given by means of a concave board on a plow stock, or by a harrow, a roller +or a small shallow plow. + +Within two or three weeks, as soon as the young plants had put forth three +or four leaves, thinning and cultivation was begun. Hoe hands, under +orders to chop carefully, stirred the crust along the rows and reduced the +seedlings to a "double stand," leaving only two plants to grow at each +interval of twelve or eighteen inches. The plows then followed, stirring +the soil somewhat deeply near the rows. In another fortnight the hoes gave +another chopping, cutting down the weaker of each pair of plants, thus +reducing the crop to a "single stand"; and where plants were missing they +planted fresh seed to fill the gaps. The plows followed again, with broad +wings to their shares, to break the crust and kill the grass throughout the +middles. Similar alternations of chipping and plowing then ensued until +near the end of July, each cultivation shallower than the last in order +that the roots of the cotton should not be cut.[4] + +[Footnote 4: Cotton Culture is described by M.W. Philips in the _American +Agriculturist_, II (New York, 1843), 51, 81, 117, 149; by various writers +in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ (New York, 1856), chap. +I; Harry Hammond, _The Cotton Plant_ (U.S. Department of Agriculture, +Experiment Station, _Bulletin_ 33, 1896); and in the U.S. Census, 1880, +vols. V and VI.] + +When the blossoms were giving place to bolls in midsummer, "lay-by time" +was at hand. Cultivation was ended, and the labor was diverted to other +tasks until in late August or early September the harvest began. The +corn, which had been worked at spare times previously, now had its blades +stripped and bundled for fodder; the roads were mended, the gin house and +press put in order, the premises in general cleaned up, and perhaps a few +spare days given to recreation. + +The cotton bolls ripened and opened in series, those near the center of the +plant first, then the outer ones on the lower branches, and finally the +top crop. If subjected unduly to wind and rain the cotton, drooping in the +bolls, would be blown to the ground or tangled with dead leaves or stained +with mildew. It was expedient accordingly to send the pickers through the +fields as early and as often as there was crop enough open to reward the +labor. + +Four or five compartments held the contents of each boll; from sixty to +eighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed; and three or four +pounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of lint. When a boll was wide +open a deft picker could empty all of its compartments by one snatch of +the fingers; and a specially skilled one could keep both hands flying +independently, and still exercise the small degree of care necessary to +keep the lint fairly free from the trash of the brittle dead calyxes. As +to the day's work, a Georgia planter wrote in 1830: "A hand will pick or +gather sixty to a hundred pounds of cotton in the seed, with ease, per day. +I have heard of some hands gathering a hundred and twenty pounds in a day. +The hands on a plantation ought to average sixty-five pounds," [5] But +actual records in the following decades made these early pickers appear +very inept. On Levin Covington's plantation near Natchez in 1844, in a +typical week of October, Bill averaged 220 pounds a day, Dred 205 pounds, +Aggy 215, and Delia 185; and on Saturday of that week all the twenty-eight +men and boys together picked an average of 160 pounds, and all the eighteen +women and girls an average of 125.[6] But these were dwarfed in turn by the +pickings on J.W. Fowler's Prairie plantation, Coahoma County, Mississippi, +at the close of the ante-bellum period. In the week of September 12 to 17, +1859, Sandy, Carver and Gilmore each averaged about three hundred pounds a +day, and twelve other men and five women ranged above two hundred, while +the whole gang of fifty-one men and women, boys and girls average 157 +pounds each.[7] + +[Footnote 5: _American Farmer_, II, 359.] + +[Footnote 6: MS. in the Mississippi Department of History and Archives, +Jackson, Miss.] + +[Footnote 7: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] + +The picking required more perseverance than strength. Dexterity was at a +premium, but the labors of the slow, the youthful and the aged were all +called into requisition. When the fields were white with their fleece and +each day might bring a storm to stop the harvesting, every boll picked +might well be a boll saved from destruction. Even the blacksmith was called +from his forge and the farmer's children from school to bend their backs in +the cotton rows. The women and children picked steadily unless rains drove +them in; the men picked as constantly except when the crop was fairly under +control and some other task, such as breaking in the corn, called the whole +gang for a day to another field or when the gin house crew had to clear the +bins by working up their contents to make room for more seed cotton. + +In the Piedmont where the yield was lighter the harvest was generally ended +by December; but in the western belt, particularly when rains interrupted +the work, it often extended far into the new year. Lucien Minor, for +example, wrote when traveling through the plantations of northern Alabama, +near Huntsville, in December, 1823: "These fields are still white with +cotton, which frequently remains unpicked until March or April, when the +ground is wanted to plant the next crop."[8] Planters occasionally noted in +their journals that for want of pickers the top crop was lost. + +[Footnote 8: _Atlantic Monthly_, XXVI, 175.] + +As to the yield, an adage was current, that cotton would promise more and +do less and promise less and do more than any other green thing that grew. +The plants in the earlier stages were very delicate. Rough stirring of the +clods would kill them; excess of rain or drought would be likewise fatal; +and a choking growth of grass would altogether devastate the field. +Improvement of conditions would bring quick recuperation to the surviving +stalks, which upon attaining their full growth became quite hardy; but +undue moisture would then cause a shedding of the bolls, and the first +frost of autumn would stop the further fruiting. The plants, furthermore, +were liable to many diseases and insect ravages. In infancy cut-worms might +sever the stalks at the base, and lice might sap the vitality; in the full +flush of blooming luxuriance, wilt and rust, the latter particularly on +older lands, might blight the leaves, or caterpillars in huge armies reduce +them to skeletons and blast the prospect; and even when the fruit was +formed, boll-worms might consume the substance within, or dry-rot prevent +the top crop from ripening. The ante-bellum planters, however, were exempt +from the Mexican boll-weevil, the great pest of the cotton belt in the +twentieth century. + +While every planter had his fat years and lean, and the yield of the belt +as a whole alternated between bumper crops and short ones, the industry was +in general of such profit as to maintain a continued expansion of its area +and a never ending though sometimes hesitating increase of its product. The +crop rose from eighty-five million pounds in 1810 to twice as much in 1820; +it doubled again by 1830 and more than doubled once more by 1840. Extremely +low prices for the staple in the early 'forties and again in 1849 prompted +a campaign for crop reduction; and in that decade the increase was only +from 830,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 pounds. But the return of good prices in +the 'fifties caused a fresh and huge enlargement to 2,300,000,000 pounds in +the final census year of the ante-bellum period. While this was little more +than one fourth as great as the crops of sixteen million bales in 1912 and +1915, it was justly reckoned in its time, at home and abroad, a prodigious +output. All the rest of the world then produced barely one third as much. +The cotton sent abroad made up nearly two thirds of the value of the gross +export trade of the United States, while the tobacco export had hardly a +tenth of the cotton's worth. In competition with all the other staples, +cotton engaged the services of some three fourths of all the country's +plantation labor, in addition to the labor of many thousands of white +farmers and their families. + +The production and sale of the staple engrossed no less of the people's +thought than of their work. A traveler who made a zig-zag journey from +Charleston to St. Louis in the early months of 1827, found cotton "a +plague." At Charleston, said he, the wharves were stacked and the stores +and ships packed with the bales, and the four daily papers and all +the patrons of the hotel were "teeming with cotton." At Augusta the +thoroughfares were thronged with groaning wagons, the warehouses were +glutted, the open places were stacked, and the steamboats and barges hidden +by their loads. On the road beyond, migrating planters and slaves bound +for the west, "'where the cotton land is not worn out,'" met cotton-laden +wagons townward bound, whereupon the price of the staple was the chief +theme of roadside conversation. Occasionally a wag would have his jest. The +traveler reported a tilt between two wagoners: "'What's cotton in Augusta?' +says the one with a load.... 'It's cotton,' says the other. 'I know that,' +says the first, 'but what is it?' 'Why,' says the other, 'I tell you it's +cotton. Cotton is cotton in Augusta and everywhere else that I ever heard +of,' 'I know that as well as you,' says the first, 'but what does cotton +bring in Augusta?' 'Why, it brings nothing there, but everybody brings +cotton,'" Whereupon the baffled inquirer appropriately relieved his +feelings and drove on. At his crossing of the Oconee River the traveler saw +pole-boats laden with bales twelve tiers high; at Milledgeville and Macon +cotton was the absorbing theme; in the newly opened lands beyond he "found +cotton land speculators thicker than locusts in Egypt"; in the neighborhood +of Montgomery cotton fields adjoined one another in a solid stretch for +fourteen miles along the road; Montgomery was congested beyond the capacity +of the boats; and journeying thence to Mobile he "met and overtook nearly +one hundred cotton waggons travelling over a road so bad that a state +prisoner could hardly walk through it to make his escape." As to Mobile, it +was "a receptacle monstrous for the article. Look which way you will you +see it, and see it moving; keel boats, steamboats, ships, brigs, schooners, +wharves, stores, and press-houses, all appeared to be full; and I believe +that in the three days I was there, boarding with about one hundred cotton +factors, cotton merchants and cotton planters, I must have heard the word +cotton pronounced more than three thousand times." New Orleans had a +similar glut. + +On the journey up the Mississippi the plaint heard by this traveler from +fellow passengers who lived at Natchitoches, was that they could not get +enough boats to bring the cotton down the Red. The descending steamers and +barges on the great river itself were half of them heavy laden with cotton +and at the head of navigation on the Tennessee, in northwestern Alabama, +bales enough were waiting to fill a dozen boats. "The Tennesseeans," said +he, "think that no state is of any account but their own; Kentucky, they +say, would be if it could grow cotton, but as it is, it is good for +nothing. They count on forty or fifty thousand bales going from Nashville +this season; that is, if they can get boats to carry it all." The fleet +on the Cumberland River was doing its utmost, to the discomfort of the +passengers; and it was not until the traveler boarded a steamer for +St. Louis at the middle of March, that he escaped the plague which had +surrounded him for seventy days and seventy nights. This boat, at last, +"had not a bale of cotton on board, nor did I hear it named more than twice +in thirty-six hours...I had a pretty tolerable night's sleep, though I +dreamed of cotton."[9] + +[Footnote 9: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Oct. 11, 1827, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, I, 283-289.] + +This obsession was not without its undertone of disquiet. Foresighted men +were apprehensive lest the one-crop system bring distress to the cotton +belt as it had to Virginia. As early as 1818 a few newspaper editors[10] +began to decry the régime; and one of them in 1821 rejoiced in a widespread +prevalence of rot in the crop of the preceding year as a blessing, in that +it staved off the rapidly nearing time when the staple's price would fall +below the cost of production.[11] A marked rise of the price to above +twenty cents a pound at the middle of the decade, however, silenced these +prophets until a severe decline in the later twenties prompted the sons of +Jeremiah to raise their voices again, and the political crisis procured +them a partial hearing. Politicians were advocating the home production +of cloth and foodstuffs as a demonstration against the protective tariff, +while the economists pleaded for diversification for the sake of permanent +prosperity, regardless of tariff rates. One of them wrote in 1827: "That we +have cultivated cotton, cotton, cotton and bought everything else, has long +been our opprobrium. It is time that we should be aroused by some means or +other to see that such a course of conduct will inevitably terminate in +our ultimate poverty and ruin. Let us manufacture, because it is our best +policy. Let us go more on provision crops and less on cotton, because we +have had everything about us poor and impoverished long enough.... We have +good land, unlimited water powers, capital in plenty, and a patriotism +which is running over in some places. If the tariff drives us to this, +we say, let the name be sacred in all future generations."[12] Next year +William Ellison of the South Carolina uplands welcomed even the low price +of cotton as a lever[13] which might pry the planters out of the cotton rut +and shift them into industries less exhausting to the soil. + +[Footnote 10: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 23, 1818.] + +[Footnote 11: _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville), June 5, 1821.] + +[Footnote 12: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), June 21, 1827.] + +[Footnote 13: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 13.] + +But in the breast of the lowlander, William Elliott, the depression of the +cotton market produced merely a querulous complaint that the Virginians, by +rushing into the industry several years before when the prices were high, +had spoiled the market. Each region, said he, ought to devote itself to +the staples best suited to its climate and soil; this was the basis of +profitable commerce. The proper policy for Virginia and most of North +Carolina was to give all their labor spared from tobacco to the growing of +corn which South Carolina would gladly buy of them if undisturbed in her +peaceful concentration upon cotton.[14] The advance of cotton prices +throughout most of the thirties suspended the discussion, and the régime +went on virtually unchanged. As an evidence of the specialization of the +Piedmont in cotton, it was reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbia +alone the purchases of bacon during the preceding year had amounted to +three and a half million pounds.[15] + +[Footnote 14: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 61.] + +[Footnote 15: _Niles' Register_, LI, 46.] + +The world-wide panic of 1837 began to send prices down, and the specially +intense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so thoroughly that for five +years afterward the producers had to take from five to seven cents a pound +for their crops. Planters by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously in +the inflated southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves afresh +to study the means of salvation. Edmund Ruffin, the Virginian enthusiast +for fertilizers, was employed by the authority of the South Carolina +legislature to make an agricultural survey of that state with a view to +recommending improvements. Private citizens made experiments on their +estates; and the newspapers and the multiplying agricultural journals +published their reports and advice. Most prominent among the cotton belt +planters who labored in the cause of reform were ex-Governor James H. +Hammond of South Carolina, Jethro V. Jones of Georgia, Dr. N.B. Cloud of +Alabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of Mississippi. Of these, Hammond was +chiefly concerned in swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase, +and livestock improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improved +strains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing; and Philips was +an all-round experimenter and propagandist. Hammond and Philips, who were +both spurred to experiments by financial stress, have left voluminous +records in print and manuscript. Their careers illustrate the handicaps +under which innovators labored. + +Hammond's estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, some +sixteen miles below Augusta. Impressed by the depletion of his upland +soils, he made a journey in 1838 through southwestern Georgia and the +adjacent portion of Florida in search of a new location; but finding land +prices inflated, he returned without making a purchase,[17] and for the +time being sought relief at home through the improvement of his methods. He +wrote in 1841: "I have tried almost all systems, and unlike most planters +do not like what is old. I hardly know anything old in corn or cotton +planting but what is wrong." His particular enthusiasm now was for plow +cultivation as against the hoe. The best planter within his acquaintance, +he said, was Major Twiggs, on the opposite bank of the Savannah, who ran +thirty-four plows with but fourteen hoes. Hammond's own plowmen were now +nearly as numerous as his full hoe hands, and his crops were on a scale of +twenty acres of cotton, ten of corn and two of oats to the plow. He was +fertilizing each year a third of his corn acreage with cotton seed, and a +twentieth of his cotton with barnyard manure; and he was making a surplus +of thirty or forty bushels of corn per hand for sale.[18] This would +perhaps have contented him in normal times, but the severe depression of +cotton prices drove him to new prognostications and plans. His confidence +in the staple was destroyed, he said, and he expected the next crop +to break the market forever and force virtually everyone east of the +Chattahoochee to abandon the culture. "Here and there," he continued, "a +plantation may be found; but to plant an acre that will not yield three +hundred pounds net will be folly. I cannot make more than sixty dollars +clear to the hand on my whole plantation at seven cents...The western +plantations have got fairly under way; Texas is coming in, and the game is +up with us." He intended to change his own activities in the main to the +raising of cattle and hogs; and he thought also of sending part of his +slaves to Louisiana or Texas, with a view to removing thither himself after +a few years if the project should prove successful.[19] In an address of +the same year before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, he +advised those to emigrate who intended to continue producing cotton, +and recommended for those who would stay in the Piedmont a diversified +husbandry including tobacco but with main emphasis upon cereals and +livestock.[20] Again at the end of 1849, he voiced similar views at the +first annual fair of the South Carolina Institute. The first phase of the +cotton industry, said he, had now passed; and the price henceforward would +be fixed by the cost of production, and would yield no great profits even +in the most fertile areas. The rich expanses of the Southwest, he thought, +could meet the whole world's demand at a cost of less than five cents a +pound, for the planters there could produce two thousand pounds of lint +per hand while those in the Piedmont could not exceed an average of twelve +hundred pounds. This margin of difference would deprive the slaves of their +value in South Carolina and cause their owners to send them West, unless +the local system of industry should be successfully revolutionized. +The remedies he proposed were the fertilization of the soil, the +diversification of crops, the promotion of commerce, and the large +development of cotton manufacturing.[21] + +[Footnote 16: Described in 1846 in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, 113, +114.] + +[Footnote 17: MS. diary, April 13 to May 14, 1838, in Hammond papers, +Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 18: Letters of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 27 and Mch. +9, 1841. Hammond's MS. drafts are in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 19: Letter to Isaac W. Hayne, Jan. 21, 1841.] + +[Footnote 20: MS. oration in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 21: James H. Hammond, _An Address delivered before the South +Carolina Institute, at the first annual Fair, on the 20th November, 1849_ +(Charleston. 1849).] + +Hammond found that not only the public but his own sons also, with the +exception of Harry, were cool toward his advice and example; and he himself +yielded to the temptation of the higher cotton prices in the 'fifties, and +while not losing interest in cattle and small grain made cotton and corn +his chief reliance. He appears to have salved his conscience in this +relapse by devoting part of his income to the reclamation of a great marsh +on his estate. He operated two plantations, the one at his home, "Silver +Bluff," the other, "Cathwood," near by. The field force on the former +comprised in 1850 sixteen plow hands, thirty-four full hoe hands, six +three-quarter hands, two half hands and a water boy, the whole rated at +fifty-five full hands. At Cathwood the force, similarly grouped, was rated +at seventy-one hands; but at either place the force was commonly subject to +a deduction of some ten per cent, of its rated strength, on the score of +the loss of time by the "breeders and suckers" among the women. In addition +to their field strength and the children, of whom no reckoning was made in +the schedule of employments, the two plantations together had five stable +men, two carpenters, a miller and job worker, a keeper of the boat landing, +three nurses and two overseers' cooks; and also thirty-five ditchers in the +reclamation work. + +At Silver Bluff, the 385 acres in cotton were expected to yield 330 bales +of 400 pounds each; the 400 acres in corn had an expectation of 9850 +bushels; and 10 acres of rice, 200 bushels. At Cathwood the plantings and +expectations were 370 acres in cotton to yield 280 bales, 280 in corn to +yield 5000 bushels, 15 in wheat to yield 100 bushels, 11 in rye to yield +50, and 2 in rice to yield 50. In financial results, after earning in 1848 +only $4334.91, which met barely half of his plantation and family expenses +for the year, his crop sales from 1849 to 1853 ranged from seven to twenty +thousand dollars annually in cotton and from one and a half to two and +a half thousand dollars in corn. His gross earnings in these five years +averaged $16,217.76, while his plantation expenses averaged $5393.87, and +his family outlay $6392.67, leaving an average "clear gain per annum," as +he called it, of $4431.10. The accounting, however, included no reckoning +of interest on the investment or of anything else but money income and +outgo. In 1859 Hammond put upon the market his 5500 acres of uplands with +their buildings, livestock, implements and feed supplies, together with 140 +slaves including 70 full hands. His purpose, it may be surmised, was to +confine his further operations to his river bottoms.[22] + +[Footnote 22: Hammond MSS., Library of Congress.] + +Philips, whom a dearth of patients drove early from the practice of +medicine, established in the 'thirties a plantation which he named Log +Hall, in Hinds County, Mississippi. After narrowly escaping the loss of his +lands and slaves in 1840 through his endorsement of other men's notes, +he launched into experimental farming and agricultural publication. He +procured various fancy breeds of cattle and hogs, only to have most of +them die on his hands. He introduced new sorts of grasses and unfamiliar +vegetables and field crops, rarely with success. Meanwhile, however, he +gained wide reputation through his many writings in the periodicals, and in +the 'fifties he turned this to some advantage in raising fancy strains +of cotton and selling their seed. His frequent attendance at fairs and +conventions and his devotion to his experiments and to his pen caused +him to rely too heavily upon overseers in the routine conduct of his +plantation. In consequence one or more slaves occasionally took to the +woods; the whole force was frequently in bad health; and his women, though +remarkably fecund, lost most of their children in infancy. In some degree +Philips justified the prevalent scorn of planters for "book farming."[23] + +[Footnote 23: M.W. Phillips, "Diary," F.L. Riley, ed., in the Mississippi +Historical Society _Publications_, X, 305-481; letters of Philips in the +_American Agriculturist, DeBow's Review_, etc., and in J.A. Turner, ed., +_The Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 98-123.] + +The newspapers and farm journals everywhere printed arguments in the +'forties in behalf of crop diversification, and _DeBow's Review_, founded +in 1846, joined in the campaign; but the force of habit, the dearth of +marketable substitutes and the charms of speculation conspired to make all +efforts of but temporary avail. The belt was as much absorbed in cotton in +the 'fifties as it had ever been before. + +Meanwhile considerable improvement had been achieved in cotton methods. +Mules, mainly bred in Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, largely replaced +the less effective horses and oxen; the introduction of horizontal plowing +with occasional balks and hillside ditches, checked the washing of the +Piedmont soils; the use of fertilizers became fairly common; and cotton +seed was better selected. These last items of manures and seed were the +subject of special campaigns. The former was begun as early as 1808 by the +Virginian John Taylor of Caroline in his "Arator" essays, and was furthered +by the publications of Edmund Ruffin and many others. But an adequate +available source of fertilizers long remained a problem without solution. +Taylor stressed the virtues of dung and rotation; but the dearth of forage +hampered the keeping of large stocks of cattle, and soiling crops were +thought commonly to yield too little benefit for the expense in labor. +Ruffin had great enthusiasm for the marl or phosphate rock of the Carolina +coast; but until the introduction in much later decades of a treatment by +sulphuric acid this was too little soluble to be really worth while as a +plant food. Lime was also praised; but there were no local sources of it in +the districts where it was most needed. + +Cotton seed, in fact, proved to be the only new fertilizer generally +available in moderate abundance prior to the building of the railroads. In +early years the seed lay about the gins as refuse until it became a public +nuisance. To abate it the village authorities of Sparta, Georgia, for +example, adopted in 1807 an ordinance "that the owner of each and every +cotton machine within the limits of said town shall remove before the first +day of May in each year all seed and damaged cotton that may be about such +machines, or dispose of such seed or cotton so as to prevent its unhealthy +putrefaction."[24] Soon after this a planter in St. Stephen's Parish, +South Carolina, wrote: "We find from experience our cotton seed one of the +strongest manures we make use of for our Indian corn; a pint of fresh seed +put around or in the corn hole makes the corn produce wonderfully",[25] +but it was not until the lapse of another decade or two that such practice +became widespread. In the thirties Harriet Martineau and J.S. Buckingham +noted that in Alabama the seed was being strewn as manure on a large +scale.[26] As an improvement of method the seed was now being given in many +cases a preliminary rotting in compost heaps, with a consequent speeding of +its availability as plant food;[27] and cotton seed rose to such esteem as +a fertilizer for general purposes that many planters rated it to be worth +from sixteen to twenty-five cents a bushel of twenty-five pounds.[28] As +early as 1830, furthermore a beginning was made in extracting cottonseed +oil for use both in painting and illumination, and also in utilizing the +by-product of cottonseed meal as a cattle feed.[29] By the 'fifties the oil +was coming to be an unheralded substitute for olive oil in table use; but +the improvements which later decades were to introduce in its extraction +and refining were necessary for the raising of the manufacture to the scale +of a substantial industry. + +[Footnote 24: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Jan. 31, 1807.] + +[Footnote 25: Letter of John Palmer. Dec. 3, 1808, to David Ramsay. MS. in +the Charleston Library.] + +[Footnote 26: Harriet Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_, (London, +1838), I, 218; I.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, +1842), I, 257.] + +[Footnote 27: D.R. Williams of South Carolina described his own practice to +this effect in an essay of 1825 contributed to the _American Farmer_ and +reprinted in H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New +York, 1916), pp. 226, 227.] + +[Footnote 28: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 99; Robert +Russell, _North America_, p. 269.] + +[Footnote 29: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 563; _American Farmer_, II, 98; +H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_, pp. 197-209.] + +The importation of fertilizers began with guano. This material, the dried +droppings of countless birds, was discovered in the early 'forties on +islands off the coast of Peru;[30] and it promptly rose to such high esteem +in England that, according to an American news item, Lloyd's listed for +1845 not less than a thousand British vessels as having sailed in search of +guano cargoes. The use of it in the United States began about that year; +and nowhere was its reception more eager than in the upland cotton belt. +Its price was about fifty dollars a ton in the seaports. To stimulate the +use of fertilizers, the Central of Georgia Railroad Company announced +in 1858 that it would carry all manures for any distance on its line in +carload lots at a flat rate of two dollars per ton; and the connecting +roads concurred in this policy. In consequence the Central of Georgia +carried nearly two thousand tons of guano in 1859, and more than nine +thousand tons in 1860, besides lesser quantities of lime, salt and bone +dust. The superintendent reported that while the rate failed to cover the +cost of transportation, the effect in increasing the amount of cotton to be +freighted, and in checking emigration, fully compensated the road.[31] A +contributor to the _North American Review_ in January, 1861, wrote: "The +use of guano is increasing. The average return for each pound used in the +cotton field is estimated to be a pound and a half of cotton; and the +planter who could raise but three bales to the hand on twelve acres of +exhausted soil has in some instances by this appliance realized ten bales +from the same force and area. In North Carolina guano is reported to +accelerate the growth of the plant, and this encourages the culture on +the northern border of the cotton-field, where early frosts have proved +injurious." + +[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, III, 283.] + +[Footnote 31: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Reports_, 1858-1860.] + +Widespread interest in agricultural improvement was reported by _DeBow's +Review_ in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local and general +fairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of Alabama, for example, +announced success in devising a cotton picking machine; but as in many +subsequent cases in the same premises, the proclamation was premature. + +As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to have begun +about 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results from seed newly +procured from Mexico. These were in a few years widely distributed under +the name of Petit Gulf cotton. Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began to +breed strains from selected seed; and others here and there followed his +example, most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The more dignified +of the planters who prided themselves on selling nothing but cotton, would +distribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fine +plants they might encounter in their fields, and make little ado about +it. Men of a more flamboyant sort, such as M.W. Philips, contemning such +"ruffle-shirt cant," would christen their strains with attractive names, +publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy seed for +sale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was in +vogue, selling at many places for five dollars a quart. In 1839 this was +eclipsed by the Alvarado strain, which its sponsors computed from an +instance of one heavily fruited stalk nine feet high and others not so +prodigious, might yield three thousand pounds per acre.[32] Single Alvarado +seeds were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160. In +the succeeding years Vick's Hundred Seed, Brown's, Pitt's, Prolific, Sugar +Loaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan's, Banana, Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, +Mammoth, Mastodon and many others competed for attention and sale. Some +proved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger +bolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate +weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test of +planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth the +cost of carriage. Extreme prices for seed of any strain were of course +obtainable only for the first year or two; and the temptation to make +fraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not always +resisted. Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the +succession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a certain Miller +of Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered by +chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton +per acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named +it Accidental Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad town +Atlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton," he wrote in a +public letter, "would run a three million bale crop up to more than four +millions; and this would reduce the price probably to four or five cents. +Don't you see, Mr. Miller, that we had better let you keep and plant your +seed? You say that you had rather plant your crop with them than take a +dollar a pint.... Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well--we might +do worse."[33] + +[Footnote 32: _Southern Banner_( Athens, Ga.), Sept. 20, 1839.] + +[Footnote 33: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 98-128.] + +In the sea-island branch of the cotton industry the methods differed +considerably from those in producing the shorter staple. Seed selection was +much more commonly practiced, and extraordinary care was taken in ginning +and packing the harvest. The earliest and favorite lands for this crop +were those of exceedingly light soil on the islands fringing the coast of +Georgia and South Carolina. At first the tangle of live-oak and palmetto +roots discouraged the use of the plow; and afterward the need of heavy +fertilization with swamp mud and seaweed kept the acreage so small in +proportion to the laborers that hoes continued to be the prevalent means of +tillage. Operations were commonly on the basis of six or seven acres to the +hand, half in cotton and the rest in corn and sweet potatoes. In the swamps +on the mainland into which this crop was afterwards extended, the use of +the plow permitted the doubling of the area per hand; but the product of +the swamp lands was apparently never of the first grade. + +The fields were furrowed at five-foot intervals during the winter, bedded +in early spring, planted in late April or early May, cultivated until the +end of July, and harvested from September to December. The bolls opened but +narrowly and the fields had to be reaped frequently to save the precious +lint from damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to have +averaged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The preparation for market +required the greatest painstaking of all. First the seed cotton was dried +on a scaffold; next it was whipped for the removal of trash and sand; then +it was carefully sorted into grades by color and fineness; then it went to +the roller gins, whence the lint was spread upon tables where women picked +out every stained or matted bit of the fiber; and finally when gently +packed into sewn bags it was ready for market. A few gin houses were +equipped in the later decades with steam power; but most planters retained +the system of a treadle for each pair of rollers as the surest safeguard +of the delicate filaments. A plantation gin house was accordingly a simple +barn with perhaps a dozen or two foot-power gins, a separate room for the +whipping, a number of tables for the sorting and moting, and a round hole +in the floor to hold open the mouth of the long bag suspended for the +packing.[34] In preparing a standard bale of three hundred pounds, it was +reckoned that the work required of the laborers at the gin house was as +follows: the dryer, one day; the whipper, two days; the sorters, at fifty +pounds of seed cotton per day for each, thirty days; the ginners, each +taking 125 pounds in the seed per day and delivering therefrom 25 pounds of +lint, twelve days; the moters, at 43 pounds, seven days; the inspector and +packer, two days; total fifty-four days. + +[Footnote 34: The culture and apparatus are described by W.B. Seabrook, +_Memoir on Cotton_, pp. 23-25; Thomas Spaulding in the _American +Agriculturist_, III, 244-246; R.F.W. Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ +(Charleston, 1854), reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615; J.A. +Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 131-136. The routine of +operations is illustrated in the diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, of Woodboo +plantation, 1847-1850, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 195-208.] + +The roller gin was described in a most untechnical manner by Basil Hall: +"It consists of two little wooden rollers, each about as thick as a man's +thumb, placed horizontally and touching each other. On these being put into +rapid motion, handfulls of the cotton are cast upon them, which of course +are immediately sucked in.... A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth ... is +made to wag up and down with considerable velocity in front of the rollers. +This rugged comb, which is equal in length to the rollers, lies parallel to +them, with the sharp ends of its teeth almost in contact with them. By +the quick wagging motion given to this comb by the machinery, the buds of +cotton cast upon the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to be +sucked in. The seeds, now released ... fly off like sparks to the right and +left, while the cotton itself passes between the rollers."[35] + +[Footnote 35: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), +III, 221, 222.] + +As to yields and proceeds, a planter on the Georgia seaboard analyzed his +experience from 1830 to 1847 as follows: the harvest average per acre +ranged from 68 pounds of lint in 1846 to 223 pounds in 1842, with a general +average for the whole period of 137 pounds; the crop's average price per +pound ranged from 14 cents in 1847 to 41 cents in 1838, with a general +average of 23 1/2 cents; and the net proceeds per hand were highest at +$137 in 1835, lowest at $41 in 1836, and averaged $83 for the eighteen +years.[36] + +[Footnote 36: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 128, 129.] + +In the cotton belt as a whole the census takers of 1850 enumerated 74,031 +farms and plantations each producing five bales or more,[37] and they +reckoned the crop at 2,445,793 bales of four hundred pounds each. Assuming +that five bales were commonly the product of one full hand, and leaving +aside a tenth of the gross output as grown perhaps on farms where the +cotton was not the main product, it appears that the cotton farms and +plantations averaged some thirty bales each, and employed on the average +about six full hands. That is to say, there were very many more small +farms than large plantations devoted to cotton; and among the plantations, +furthermore, it appears that very few were upon a scale entitling them +to be called great, for the nature of the industry did not encourage the +engrossment of more than sixty laborers under a single manager.[38] It is +true that some proprietors operated on a much larger scale than this. It +was reported in 1859, for example, that Joseph Bond of Georgia had marketed +2199 bales of his produce, that numerous Louisiana planters, particularly +about Concordia Parish, commonly exceeded that output; that Dr. Duncan of +Mississippi had a crop of 3000 bales; and that L.R. Marshall, who lived at +Natchez and had plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, was +accustomed to make more than four thousand bales.[39] The explanation lies +of course in the possession by such men of several more or less independent +plantations of manageable size. Bond's estate, for example, comprised not +less than six plantations in and about Lee County in southwestern Georgia, +while his home was in the town of Macon. The areas of these, whether +cleared or in forest, ranged from 1305 to 4756 acres.[40] But however large +may have been the outputs of exceptionally great planters, the fact remains +on the other hand that virtually half of the total cotton crop each year +was made by farmers whose slaves were on the average hardly more numerous +than the white members of their own families. The plantation system +nevertheless dominated the régime. + +[Footnote 37: _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 178] + +[Footnote 38: _DeBow's Review_, VIII, 16.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid_., XXVI, 581.] + +[Footnote 40: Advertisement of Bond's executors offering the plantations +for sale in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Nov. 8, 1859.] + +The British and French spinners, solicitous for their supply of material, +attempted at various times and places during the ante-bellum period to +enlarge the production of cotton where it was already established and to +introduce it into new regions. The result was a complete failure to lessen +the predominance of the United States as a source. India, Egypt and Brazil +might enlarge their outputs considerably if the rates in the market were +raised to twice or thrice their wonted levels; but so long as the price +held a moderate range the leadership of the American cotton belt could not +be impaired, for its facilities were unequaled. Its long growing season, +hot in summer by day and night, was perfectly congenial to the plant, its +dry autumns permitted the reaping of full harvests, and its frosty winters +decimated the insect pests. Its soil was abundant, its skilled managers +were in full supply, its culture was well systematized, and its labor +adequate for the demand. To these facilities there was added in the +Southern thought of the time, as no less essential for the permanence of +the cotton belt's primacy, the plantation system and the institution of +slavery. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS + + +The tone and method of a plantation were determined partly by the crop and +the lie of the land, partly by the characters of the master and his men, +partly by the local tradition. Some communities operated on the basis of +time-work, or the gang system; others on piece-work or the task system. The +former was earlier begun and far more widely spread, for Sir Thomas Dale +used it in drilling the Jamestown settlers at their work, it was adopted +in turn on the "particular" and private plantations thereabout, and it was +spread by the migration of the sons and grandsons of Virginia throughout +the middle and western South as far as Missouri and Texas. The task system, +on the other hand, was almost wholly confined to the rice coast. The gang +method was adaptable to operations on any scale. If a proprietor were of +the great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and his +sons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step for +step at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe. If there were a dozen +or two working hands, the master, and perhaps the son, instead of laboring +manually would superintend the work of the plow and hoe gangs. If the +slaves numbered several score the master and his family might live in +leisure comparative or complete, while delegating the field supervision to +an overseer, aided perhaps by one or more slave foremen. When an estate +was inherited by minor children or scattered heirs, or where a single +proprietor had several plantations, an overseer would be put into full +charge of an establishment so far as the routine work was concerned; and +when the plantations in one ownership were quite numerous or of a great +scale a steward might be employed to supervise the several overseers. Thus +in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall +on the Potomac had a steward to assist in the administration of his many +scattered properties, and Washington after dividing the Mount Vernon lands +into several units had an overseer upon each and a steward for the whole +during his own absence in the public service. The neighboring estate of +Gunston Hall, belonging to George Mason, was likewise divided into several +units for the sake of more detailed supervision. Even the 103 slaves of +James Mercer, another neighbor, were distributed on four plantations under +the management in 1771 of Thomas Oliver. Of these there were 54 slaves on +Marlborough, 19 on Acquia, 12 on Belviderra and 9 on Accokeek, besides 9 +hired for work elsewhere. Of the 94 not hired out, 64 were field workers. +Nearly all the rest, comprising the house servants, the young children, the +invalids and the superannuated, were lodged on Marlborough, which was of +course the owner's "home place." Each of the four units had its implements +of husbandry, and three of them had tobacco houses; but the barn and +stables were concentrated on Marlborough. This indicates that the four +plantations were parts of a single tract so poor in soil that only pockets +here and there would repay cultivation.[1] This presumption is reinforced +by an advertisement which Mercer published in 1767: "Wanted soon, ... a +farmer who will undertake the management of about 80 slaves, all settled +within six miles of each other, to be employed in making of grain."[2] In +such a case the superintendent would combine the functions of a regular +overseer on the home place with those of a "riding boss" inspecting the +work of the three small outlying squads from time to time. Grain crops +would facilitate this by giving more frequent intermissions than tobacco in +the routine. The Mercer estate might indeed be more correctly described +as a plantation and three subsidiary farms than as a group of four +plantations. The occurrence of tobacco houses in the inventory and of grain +crops alone in the advertisement shows a recent abandonment of the tobacco +staple; and the fact of Mercer's financial embarrassment[3] suggests, what +was common knowledge, that the plantation system was ill suited to grain +production as a central industry. + +[Footnote 1: Robert Carter's plantation affairs are noted in Philip V. +Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, N.J., 1900); the Gunston Hall +estate is described in Kate M. Rowland, _Life of George Mason_ (New York, +1892), I, 98-102; many documents concerning Mt. Vernon are among the George +Washington MSS. in the Library of Congress, and Washington's letters, +1793-179, to his steward are printed in the Long Island Historical Society +_Memoirs_ v. 4; of James Mercer's establishments an inventory taken in 1771 +is reproduced in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 249.] + +[Footnote 2: _Virginia Gazette_ (Williamsburg, Va.), Oct. 22, 1767, +reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 133.] + +[Footnote 3: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 286.] + +The organization and routine of the large plantations on the James River in +the period of an agricultural renaissance are illustrated in the inventory +and work journal of Belmead, in Powhatan County, owned by Philip St. George +Cocke and superintended by S.P. Collier.[4] At the beginning of 1854 the +125 slaves were scheduled as follows: the domestic staff comprised a +butler, two waiters, four housemaids, a nurse, a laundress, a seamstress, a +dairy maid and a gardener; the field corps had eight plowmen, ten male and +twelve female hoe hands, two wagoners and four ox drivers, with two cooks +attached to its service; the stable and pasture staff embraced a carriage +driver, a hostler, a stable boy, a shepherd, a cowherd and a hog herd; in +outdoor crafts there were two carpenters and five stone masons; in indoor +industries a miller, two blacksmiths, two shoemakers, five women spinners +and a woman weaver; and in addition there were forty-five children, one +invalid, a nurse for the sick, and an old man and two old women hired off +the place, and finally Nancy for whom no age, value or classification is +given. The classified workers comprised none younger than sixteen years +except the stable boy of eleven, a waiter of twelve, and perhaps some of +the housemaids and spinners whose ages are not recorded. At the other +extreme there were apparently no slaves on the plantation above sixty years +old except Randal, a stone mason, who in spite of his sixty-six years was +valued at $300, and the following who had no appraisable value: Old Jim the +shepherd, Old Maria the dairy maid, and perhaps two of the spinners. The +highest appraisal, $800, was given to Payton, an ox driver, twenty-eight +years old. The $700 class comprised six plowmen, five field hands, the +three remaining ox drivers, both wagoners, both blacksmiths, the carriage +driver, four stone masons, a carpenter, and Ned the twenty-eight year old +invalid whose illness cannot have been chronic. The other working men +ranged between $250 and $500 except the two shoemakers whose rating was +only $200 each. None of the women were appraised above $400, which was the +rating also of the twelve and thirteen year old boys. The youngest children +were valued at $100 each. These ratings were all quite conservative for +that period. The fact that an ox driver overtopped all others in appraisal +suggests that the artisans were of little skill. The masons, the carpenters +and various other specialists were doubtless impressed as field hands on +occasion. + +[Footnote 4: These records are in the possession of Wm. Bridges of +Richmond, Va. For copies of them, as well as for many other valuable items, +I am indebted to Alfred H. Stone of Dunleith, Miss.] + +The livestock comprised twelve mules, nine work horses, a stallion, a brood +mare, four colts, six pleasure horses and "William's team" of five head; +sixteen work oxen, a beef ox, two bulls, twenty-three cows, and twenty-six +calves; 150 sheep and 115 swine. The implements included two reaping +machines, three horse rakes, two wheat drills, two straw cutters, three +wheat fans, and a corn sheller; one two-horse and four four-horse wagons, +two horse carts and four ox carts; nine one-horse and twelve two-horse +plows, six colters, six cultivators, eight harrows, two earth scoops, and +many scythes, cradles, hoes, pole-axes and miscellaneous farm implements as +well as a loom and six spinning wheels. + +The bottom lands of Belmead appear to have been cultivated in a rotation +of tobacco and corn the first year, wheat the second and clover the third, +while the uplands had longer rotations with more frequent crops of clover +and occasional interspersions of oats. The work journal of 1854 shows +how the gang dovetailed the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of the +several crops and the general upkeep of the plantation. + +On specially moist days from January to the middle of April all hands were +called to the tobacco houses to strip and prize the cured crop; when the +ground was frozen they split and hauled firewood and rails, built fences, +hauled stone to line the ditches or build walls and culverts, hauled +wheat to the mill, tobacco and flour to the boat landing, and guano, land +plaster, barnyard manure and straw to the fields intended for the coming +tobacco crop; and in milder dry weather they spread and plowed in these +fertilizers, prepared the tobacco seed bed by heaping and burning brush +thereon and spading it mellow, and also sowed clover and oats in their +appointed fields. In April also the potato patch and the corn fields were +prepared, and the corn planted; and the tobacco bed was seeded at the +middle of the month. In early May the corn began to be plowed, and the soil +of the tobacco fields drawn by hoes into hills with additional manure in +their centers. From the end of May until as late as need be in July the +occurrence of every rain sent all hands to setting the tobacco seedlings in +their hills at top speed as long as the ground stayed wet enough to give +prospect of success in the process. In the interims the corn cultivation +was continued, hay was harvested in the clover fields and the meadows, and +the tobacco fields first planted began to be scraped with hoe and plow. The +latter half of June was devoted mainly to the harvesting of small grain +with the two reaping machines and the twelve cradles; and for the following +two months the main labor force was divided between threshing the wheat and +plowing, hoeing, worming and suckering the tobacco, while the expert Daniel +was day after day steadily topping the plants. In late August the plows +began breaking the fallow fields for wheat. Early in September the cutting +and housing of tobacco began, and continued at intervals in good weather +until the middle of October. Then the corn was harvested and the sowing of +wheat was the chief concern until the end of November when winter plowing +was begun for the next year's tobacco. Two days in December were devoted to +the housing of ice; and Christmas week, as well as Easter Monday and a +day or two in summer and fall, brought leisure. Throughout the year the +overseer inspected the negroes' houses and yards every Sunday morning and +regularly reported them in good order. + +The greatest of the tobacco planters in this period was Samuel Hairston, +whose many plantations lying in the upper Piedmont on both sides of the +Virginia-North Carolina boundary were reported in 1854 to have slave +populations aggregating some 1600 souls, and whose gardens at his homestead +in Henry County, Virginia, were likened to paradise. Of his methods +of management nothing more is known than that his overseers were +systematically superintended and that his negroes were commonly both fed +and clothed with the products of the plantations themselves.[5] + +[Footnote 5: William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ (London, +1857), pp. 194, 195, quoting a Richmond newspaper of 1854.] + +In the eastern cotton belt a notable establishment of earlier decades was +that of Governor David R. Williams, who began operations with about a +hundred slaves in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, near the beginning +of the nineteenth century and increased their number fivefold before his +death in 1830. While each of his four plantations gave adequate yields of +the staple as well as furnishing their own full supplies of corn and pork, +the central feature and the chief source of prosperity was a great bottom +tract safeguarded from the floods of the Pee Dee by a levee along the river +front. The building of this embankment was but one of many enterprises +which Williams undertook in the time spared from his varied political and +military services. Others were the improvement of manuring methods, the +breeding of mules, the building of public bridges, the erection and +management of a textile factory, the launching of a cottonseed oil mill, of +which his talents might have made a success even in that early time had not +his untimely death intervened. The prosperity of Williams' main business in +the face of his multifarious diversions proves that his plantation +affairs were administered in thorough fashion. His capable wife must have +supplemented the husband and his overseers constantly and powerfully in the +conduct of the routine. The neighboring plantation of a kinsman, Benjamin +F. Williams, was likewise notable in after years for its highly improved +upland fields as well as for the excellent specialized work of its slave +craftsmen.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Harvey T. Cooke, _The Life and Legacy of David Rogerson +Williams_ (New York, 1916), chaps. XIV, XVI, XIX, XX, XXV. This book, +though bearing a New York imprint, is actually published, as I have been at +pains to learn, by Mr. J.W. Norwood of Greenville, South Carolina.] + +In the fertile bottoms on the Congaree River not far above Columbia, lay +the well famed estate of Colonel Wade Hampton, which in 1846 had some +sixteen hundred acres of cotton and half as much of corn. The traveler, +when reaching it after long faring past the slackly kept fields and +premises common in the region, felt equal enthusiasm for the drainage and +the fencing, the avenues, the mansion and the mill, the stud of blooded +horses, the herd of Durham cattle, the flock of long-wooled sheep, and the +pens of Berkshire pigs.[7] Senator McDuffie's plantation in the further +uplands of the Abbeville district was likewise prosperous though on a +somewhat smaller scale. Accretions had enlarged it from three hundred acres +in 1821 to five thousand in 1847, when it had 147 slaves of all ages. Many +of these were devoted to indoor employments, and seventy were field workers +using twenty-four mules. The 750 acres in cotton commonly yielded crops of +a thousand pounds in the seed; the 325 acres in corn gave twenty-five or +thirty bushels; the 300 in oats, fifteen bushels; and ten acres in peas, +potatoes and squashes yielded their proportionate contribution.[8] + +[Footnote 7: Described by R.L. Allen in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, +20, 21.] + +[Footnote 8: _DeBow's Review_, VI, 149.] + +The conduct and earnings of a cotton plantation fairly typical among those +of large scale, may be gathered from the overseer's letters and factor's +accounts relating to Retreat, which lay in Jefferson County, Georgia. This +was one of several establishments founded by Alexander Telfair of Savannah +and inherited by his two daughters, one of whom became the wife of W.B. +Hodgson. For many years Elisha Cain was its overseer. The first glimpse +which the correspondence affords is in the fall of 1829, some years after +Cain had taken charge. He then wrote to Telfair that many of the negroes +young and old had recently been ill with fever, but most of them had +recovered without a physician's aid. He reported further that a slave named +John had run away "for no other cause than that he did not feel disposed to +be governed by the same rules and regulations that the other negroes on +the land are governed by." Shortly afterward John returned and showed +willingness to do his duty. But now Cain encountered a new sort of trouble. +He wrote Telfair in January, 1830: "Your negroes have a disease now among +them that I am fully at a loss to know what I had best to do. Two of them +are down with the venereal disease, Die and Sary. Doctor Jenkins has been +attending Die four weeks, and very little alteration as I can learn. It is +very hard to get the truth; but from what I can learn, Sary got it from +Friday." A note appended to this letter, presumably by Telfair, reads: +"Friday is the house servant sent to Retreat every summer. I have all the +servants examined before they leave Savannah." + +In a letter of February, 1831, Cain described his winter work and his +summer plans. The teams had hauled away nearly all the cotton crop of 205 +bales; the hog killing had yielded thirteen thousand pounds of pork, from +which some of the bacon and lard was to be sent to Telfair's town house; +the cotton seed were abundant and easily handled, but they were thought +good for fertilizing corn only; the stable and cowpen manure was +embarrassingly plentiful in view of the pressure of work for the mules and +oxen; and the encumbrance of logs and brush on the fields intended for +cotton was straining all the labor available to clear them. The sheep, he +continued, had not had many lambs; and many of the pigs had died in spite +of care and feeding; but "the negroes have been healthy, only colds, and +they have for some time now done their work in as much peace and have been +as obedient as I could wish." + +One of the women, however, Darkey by name, shortly became a pestilent +source of trouble. Cain wrote in 1833 that her termagant outbreaks among +her fellows had led him to apply a "moderate correction," whereupon she had +further terrorized her housemates by threats of poison. Cain could then +only unbosom himself to Telfair: "I will give you a full history of my +belief of Darkey, to wit: I believe her disposition as to temper is as bad +as any in the whole world. I believe she is as unfaithful as any I have +ever been acquainted with. In every respect I believe she has been more +injury to you in the place where she is than two such negroes would sell +for.... I have tryed and done all I could to get on with her, hopeing that +she would mend; but I have been disappointed in every instant. I can not +hope for the better any longer." + +The factor's record becomes available from 1834, with the death of Telfair. +The seventy-six pair of shoes entered that year tells roughly the number +of working hands, and the ninety-six pair in 1842 suggests the rate of +increase. Meanwhile the cotton output rose from 166 bales of about three +hundred pounds in 1834 to 407 bales of four hundred pounds in the fine +weather of 1841. In 1836 an autumn report from Cain is available, dated +November 20. Sickness among the negroes for six weeks past had kept +eight or ten of them in their beds; the resort to Petit Gulf seed had +substantially increased the cotton yield; and the fields were now white +with a crop in danger of ruin from storms. "My hands," he said, "have +picked well when they were able, and some of them appear to have a kind +of pride in making a good crop." A gin of sixty saws newly installed had +proved too heavy for the old driving apparatus, but it was now in operation +with shifts of four mules instead of two as formerly. This pressure, in +addition to the hauling of cotton to market had postponed the gathering of +the corn crop. The corn would prove adequate for the plantation's need, and +the fodder was plentiful, but the oats had been ruined by the blast. The +winter cloth supply had been spun and woven, as usual, on the place; but +Cain now advised that the cotton warp for the jeans in future be bought. +"The spinning business on this plantation," said he, "is very ungaining. In +the present arrangement there is eight hands regular imployed in spinning +and weaving, four of which spin warpe, and it could be bought at the +factory at 120 dollars annually. Besides, it takes 400 pounds of cotton +each year, leaveing 60 dollars only to the four hands who spin warp.... +These hands are not old negroes, not all of them. Two of Nanny's daughters, +or three I may say, are all able hands ... and these make neither corn nor +meat. Take out $20 to pay their borde, and it leaves them in debt. I give +them their task to spin, and they say they cannot do more. That is, they +have what is jenerly given as a task." + +In 1840 Cain raised one of the slaves to the rank of driver, whereupon +several of the men ran away in protest, and Cain was impelled to defend his +policy in a letter to Mary Telfair, explaining that the new functionary had +not been appointed "to lay off tasks and use the whip." The increase of the +laborers and the spread of the fields, he said, often required the working +of three squads, the plowmen, the grown hoe hands, and the younger hoe +hands. "These separate classes are frequently separate a considerable +distance from each other, and so soon as I am absent from either they are +subject to quarrel and fight, or to idle time, or beat and abuse the mules; +and when called to account each negro present when the misconduct took +place will deny all about the same. I therefore thought, and yet believe, +that for the good order of the plantation and faithful performance of their +duty, it was proper to have some faithful and trusty hand whose duty it +should be to report to me those in fault, and that is the only dread they +have of John, for they know he is not authorized to beat them. You mention +in your letter that you do not wish your negroes treated with severity. +I have ever thought my fault on the side of lenity; if they were treated +severe as many are, I should not be their overseer on any consideration." +In the same letter Cain mentioned that the pork made on the place the +preceding year had yielded eleven monthly allowances to the negroes at the +rate of 1050 pounds per month, and that the deficit for the twelfth month +had been filled as usual by a shipment from Savannah. + +From 407 bales in 1841 the cotton output fell rapidly, perhaps because of +restriction prompted by the low prices, to 198 bales in 1844. Then it rose +to the maximum of 438 bales in 1848. Soon afterwards Cain's long service +ended, and after two years during which I. Livingston was in charge, I.N. +Bethea was engaged and retained for the rest of the ante-bellum period. The +cotton crops in the 'fifties did not commonly exceed three hundred bales +of a weight increasing to 450 pounds, but they were supplemented to some +extent by the production of wheat and rye for market. The overseer's wages +were sometimes as low as $600, but were generally $1000 a year. In the +expense accounts the annual charges for shoes, blankets and oznaburgs were +no more regular than the items of "cotton money for the people." These +sums, averaging about a hundred dollars a year, were distributed among +the slaves in payment for the little crops of nankeen cotton which they +cultivated in spare time on plots assigned to the several families. Other +expense items mentioned salt, sugar, bacon, molasses, tobacco, wool and +cotton cards, loom sleighs, mules and machinery. Still others dealt with +drugs and doctor's bills. In 1837, for example, Dr. Jenkins was paid $90 +for attendance on Priscilla. In some years the physician's payment was a +round hundred dollars, indicating services on contract. In May, 1851, there +are debits of $16.16 for a constable's reward, a jail fee and a railroad +fare, and of $1.30 for the purchase of a pair of handcuffs, two padlocks +and a trace chain. These constitute the financial record of a runaway's +recapture. + +From 1834 to 1841 the gross earnings on Retreat ranged between eight and +fifteen thousand dollars, of which from seven to twelve thousand each year +was available for division between the owners. The gross then fell rapidly +to $4000 in 1844, of which more than half was consumed in expenses. It then +rose as rapidly to its maximum of $21,300 in 1847, when more than half of +it again was devoted to current expenses and betterments. Thereafter the +range of the gross was between $8000 and $17,000 except for a single +year of crop failure, 1856, when the 109 bales brought $5750. During the +'fifties the current expenses ranged usually between six and ten thousand +dollars, as compared with about one third as much in the 'thirties. This is +explained partly by the resolution of the owners to improve the fields, +now grown old, and to increase the equipment. For the crop of 1856, for +example, purchases were made of forty tons of Peruvian guano at $56 per +ton, and nineteen tons of Mexican guano at $25 a ton. In the following +years lime, salt and dried blood were included in the fertilizer purchases. +At length Hodgson himself gave over his travels and his ethnological +studies to take personal charge on Retreat. He wrote in June, 1859, to his +friend Senator Hammond, of whom we have seen something in the preceding +chapter, that he had seriously engaged in "high farming," and was spreading +huge quantities of fertilizers. He continued: "My portable steam engine +is the _delicia domini_ and of overseer too. It follows the reapers +beautifully in a field of wheat, 130 acres, and then in the rye fields. In +August it will be backed up to the gin house and emancipate from slavery +eighteen mules and four little nigger drivers."[9] + +[Footnote 9: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +The factor's books for this plantation continue their records into the war +time. From the crop of 1861 nothing appears to have been sold but a single +bale of cotton, and the year's deficit was $6,721. The proceeds from the +harvests of 1862 were $500 from nineteen bales of cotton, and some $10,000 +from fodder, hay, peanuts and corn. The still more diversified market +produce of 1863 comprised also wheat, which was impressed by the +Confederate government, syrup, cowpeas, lard, hams and vinegar. The +proceeds were $17,000 and the expenses about $9000, including the +overseer's wages at $1300 and the purchase of 350 bushels of peanuts from +the slaves at $1.50 per bushel. The reckonings in the war period were made +of course in the rapidly depreciating Confederate currency. The stoppage of +the record in 1864 was doubtless a consequence of Sherman's march through +Georgia.[10] + +[Footnote 10: The Retreat records are in the possession of the Georgia +Historical Society, trustee for the Telfair Academy of Art, Savannah, Ga. +The overseer's letters here used are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, +I, 314, 330-336, II, 39, 85.] + +In the western cotton belt the plantations were much like those of the +eastern, except that the more uniform fertility often permitted the fields +to lie in solid expanses instead of being sprawled and broken by waste +lands as in the Piedmont. The scale of operations tended accordingly to be +larger. One of the greatest proprietors in that region, unless his display +were far out of proportion to his wealth, was Joseph A.S. Acklen whose +group of plantations was clustered near the junction of the Red and +Mississippi Rivers. In 1859 he began to build a country house on the style +of a Gothic castle, with a great central hall and fifty rooms exclusive of +baths and closets.[11] The building was expected to cost $150,000, and +the furnishings $125,000 more. Acklen's rules for the conduct of his +plantations will be discussed in another connection;[12] but no description +of his estate or his actual operations is available. + +[Footnote 11: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 2, 1859.] + +[Footnote 12: Below, pp. 262 ff.] + +Olmsted described in detail a plantation in the neighborhood of Natchez. +Its thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of cotton, corn and incidental +crops were tilled by a plow gang of thirty and a hoe gang of thirty-seven, +furnished by a total of 135 slaves on the place. A driver cracked a whip +among the hoe hands, occasionally playing it lightly upon the shoulders +of one or another whom he thought would be stimulated by the suggestion. +"There was a nursery for sucklings at the quarters, and twenty women at +this time left their work four times a day, for half an hour, to nurse the +young ones, and whom the overseer counted as half hands--that is, expected +to do half an ordinary day's work." At half past nine every night the hoe +and plow foremen, serving alternately, sounded curfew on a horn, and half +an hour afterward visited each cabin to see that the households were at +rest and the fires safely banked. The food allowance was a peck of corn and +four pounds of pork weekly. Each family, furthermore, had its garden, fowl +house and pigsty; every Christmas the master distributed among them coffee, +molasses, tobacco, calico and "Sunday tricks" to the value of from a +thousand to fifteen hundred dollars; and every man might rive boards in the +swamp on Sundays to buy more supplies, or hunt and fish in leisure times to +vary his family's fare. Saturday afternoon was also free from the routine. +Occasionally a slave would run away, but he was retaken sooner or later, +sometimes by the aid of dogs. A persistent runaway was disposed of by +sale.[13] + +[Footnote 13: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1860), pp. 46-54.] + +Another estate in the same district, which Olmsted observed more cursorily, +comprised four adjoining plantations, each with its own stables and +quarter, each employing more than a hundred slaves under a separate +overseer, and all directed by a steward whom the traveler described as +cultured, poetic and delightful. An observation that women were at some +of the plows prompted Olmsted to remark that throughout the Southwest the +slaves were worked harder as a rule than in the easterly and northerly +slaveholding states. On the other hand he noted: "In the main the negroes +appeared to be well cared for 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 large loft. The remainder +lived in log huts, small and mean in appearance;[14] but those of their +overseers were little better, and preparations were being made to replace +all of these by neat boarded cottages." + +[Footnote 14: Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp. 72-92.] + +In the sugar district Estwick Evans when on his "pedestrious tour" in 1817 +found the shores of the Mississippi from a hundred miles above New Orleans +to twenty miles below the city in a high state of cultivation. +"The plantations within these limits," he said, "are superb beyond +description.... The dwelling houses of the planters are not inferior to any +in the United States, either with respect to size, architecture, or the +manner in which they are furnished. The gardens and yards contiguous to +them are formed and decorated with much taste. The cotton, sugar and ware +houses are very large, and the buildings for the slaves are well finished. +The latter buildings are in some cases forty or fifty in number, and each +of them will accommodate ten or twelve persons.... The planters here derive +immense profits from the cultivation of their estates.[15] The yearly +income from them is from twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars." + +[Footnote 15: Estwick Evans, _A Pedestrious Tour ... through the Western +States and Territories_ (Concord, N.H., 1817), p. 219, reprinted in R.G. +Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, VIII, 325, 326.] + +Gross proceeds running into the tens of thousands of dollars were indeed +fairly common then and afterward among Louisiana sugar planters, for the +conditions of their industry conduced strongly to a largeness of plantation +scale. Had railroad facilities been abundant a multitude of small +cultivators might have shipped their cane to central mills for manufacture, +but as things were the weight and the perishableness of the cane made +milling within the reach of easy cartage imperative. It was inexpedient +even for two or more adjacent estates to establish a joint mill, for the +imminence of frost in the harvest season would make wrangles over the +questions of precedence in the grinding almost inevitable. As a rule, +therefore, every unit in cane culture was also a unit in sugar manufacture. +Exceptions were confined to the scattering instances where some small farm +lay alongside a plantation which had a mill of excess capacity available +for custom grinding on slack days. + +The type of plantation organization in the sugar bowl was much like that +which has been previously described for Jamaica. Mules were used as draught +animals instead of oxen, however, on account of their greater strength +and speed, and all the seeding and most of the cultivation was done with +deep-running plows. Steam was used increasingly as years passed for driving +the mills, railways were laid on some of the greater estates for hauling +the cane, more suitable varieties of cane were introduced, guano was +imported soon after its discovery to make the rich fields yet more fertile, +and each new invention of improved mill apparatus was readily adopted for +the sake of reducing expenses. In consequence the acreage cultivated per +hand came to be several times greater than that which had prevailed in +Jamaica's heyday. But the brevity of the growing season kept the saccharine +content of the canes below that in the tropics, and together with the +mounting price of labor made prosperity depend in some degree upon +protective tariffs. The dearth of land available kept the sugar output +well below the domestic demand, though the molasses market was sometimes +glutted. + +A typical prosperous estate of which a description and a diary are +extant[16] was that owned by Valcour Aime, lying on the right bank of the +Mississippi about sixty miles above New Orleans. Of the 15,000 acres which +it comprised in 1852, 800 were in cane, 300 in corn, 150 in crops belonging +to the slaves, and most of the rest in swampy forest from which two or +three thousand cords of wood were cut each year as fuel for the sugar mill +and the boiling house. The slaves that year numbered 215 of all ages, half +of them field hands,[17] and the mules 64. The negroes were well housed, +clothed and fed; the hospital and the nursery were capacious, and the +stables likewise. The mill was driven by an eighty-horse-power steam +engine, and the vacuum pans and the centrifugals were of the latest types. +The fields were elaborately ditched, well manured, and excellently tended. +The land was valued at $360,000, the buildings at $100,000, the machinery +at $60,000, the slaves at $170,000, and the livestock at $11,000; +total, $701,000. The crop of 1852, comprising 1,300,000 pounds of white +centrifugal sugar at 6 cents and 60,000 gallons of syrup at 36 cents, +yielded a gross return of almost $100,000. The expenses included 4,629 +barrels of coal from up the river, in addition to the outlay for wages and +miscellaneous supplies. + +[Footnote 16: _Harper's Magasine_, VII, 758, 759 (November, 1853); +Valcour Aime, _Plantation Diary_ (New Orleans, 1878), partly reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, I, 214, 230.] + +[Footnote 17: According to the MS. returns of the U.S. census of 1850 +Aime's slaves at that time numbered 231, of whom 58 were below fifteen +years old, 164 were between 15 and 65, and 9 (one of them blind, another +insane) were from 66 to 80 years old. Evidently there was a considerable +number of slaves of working age not classed by him as field hands.] + +In the routine of work, each January was devoted mainly to planting fresh +canes in the fields from which the stubble canes or second rattoons had +recently been harvested. February and March gave an interval for cutting +cordwood, cleaning ditches, and such other incidentals as the building and +repair of the plantation's railroad. Warm weather then brought the corn +planting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of the +crops gave time for incidentals again. Corn and hay were now harvested, the +roads and premises put in order, the cordwood hauled from the swamp, the +coal unladen from the barges, and all things made ready for the rush of +the grinding season which began in late October. In the first phase of +harvesting the main gang cut and stripped the canes, the carters and the +railroad crew hauled them to the mill, and double shifts there kept up the +grinding and boiling by day and by night. As long as the weather continued +temperate the mill set the pace for the cutters. But when frost grew +imminent every hand who could wield a knife was sent to the fields to cut +the still standing stalks and secure them against freezing. For the first +few days of this phase, the stalks as fast as cut were laid, in their +leaves, in great mats with the tops turned south to prevent the entrance +of north winds, with the leaves of each layer covering the butts of that +below, and with a blanket of earth over the last butts in the mat. Here +these canes usually stayed until January when they were stripped and strewn +in the furrows of the newly plowed "stubble" field as the seed of a new +crop. After enough seed cane were "mat-layed," the rest of the cut was +merely laid lengthwise in the adjacent furrows to await cartage to the +mill.[18] In the last phase of the harvest, which followed this work of the +greatest emergency, these "windrowed" canes were stripped and hauled, with +the mill setting the pace again, until the grinding was ended, generally in +December. + +[Footnote 18: These processes of matlaying and windrowing are described in +L. Bouchereau, _Statement of the Sugar and Rice Crops made in Louisiana in +1870-71_ (New Orleans, 1871), p. xii.] + +Another typical sugar estate was that of Dr. John P.R. Stone, comprising +the two neighboring though not adjacent plantations called Evergreen and +Residence, on the right bank of the Mississippi in Iberville Parish. The +proprietor's diary is much like Aime's as regards the major crop routine +but is fuller in its mention of minor operations. These included the +mending and heightening of the levee in spring, the cutting of staves, +the shaving of hoops and the making of hogsheads in summer, and, in their +fitting interims, the making of bricks, the sawing of lumber, enlarging +old buildings, erecting new ones, whitewashing, ditching, pulling fodder, +cutting hay, and planting and harvesting corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, +peas and turnips. There is occasional remark upon the health of the slaves, +usually in the way of rejoicing at its excellence. Apparently no outside +help was employed except for an Irish carpenter during the construction of +a sugar house on Evergreen in 1850.[19] The slaves on Evergreen in 1850 +numbered 44 between the ages of 15 and 60 years and 26 children; on +Residence, 25 between 15 and 65 years and 6 children.[20] The joint crop +in 1850, ground in the Residence mill, amounted to 312 hogsheads of brown +sugar and sold for 4-3/4 to 5 cents a pound; that of the phenomenal year +1853, when the Evergreen mill was also in commission, reached 520 hogsheads +on that plantation and 179 on Residence, but brought only 3 cents a pound. +These prices were much lower than those of white sugar at the time; but as +Valcour Aime found occasion to remark, the refining reduced the weight of +the product nearly as much as it heightened the price, so that the chief +advantage of the centrifugals lay in the speed of their process. + +[Footnote 19: Diary of Dr. J.P.R. Stone. MS. in the possession of Mr. John +Stone Ware, White Castle, La. For the privilege of using the diary I +am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody of the University of Michigan, now +Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] + +[Footnote 20: MS. returns in the U.S. Census Bureau, data procured through +the courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Mr.(now +Lieutenant) V. Alton Moody.] + +All of the characteristic work in the sugar plantation routine called +mainly for able-bodied laborers. Children were less used than in tobacco +and cotton production, and the men and women, like the mules, tended to be +of sturdier physique. This was the result partly of selection, partly of +the vigorous exertion required. + +Among the fourteen hundred and odd sugar plantations of this period, the +average one had almost a hundred slaves of all ages, and produced average +crops of nearly three hundred hogsheads or a hundred and fifty tons. Most +of the Anglo-Americans among the planters lived about Baton Rouge and on +the Red River, where they or their fathers had settled with an initial +purpose of growing cotton. Their fellows who acquired estates in the Creole +parishes were perhaps as often as otherwise men who had been merchants and +not planters in earlier life. One of these had removed from New York in the +eighteenth century and had thriven in miscellaneous trade at Pensacola and +on the Mississippi. In 1821 he bought for $140,000 a plantation and its +complement of slaves on Bayou Lafourche, and he afterward acquired a second +one in Plaquemines Parish. In the conduct of his plantation business he +shrewdly bought blankets by the bale in Philadelphia, and he enlarged his +gang by commissioning agents to buy negroes in Virginia and Maryland. The +nature of the instructions he gave may be gathered from the results, for +there duly arrived in several parcels between 1828 and 1832, fully covered +by marine insurance for the coastwise voyage, fifty slaves, male and +female, virtually all of whom ranged between the ages of ten and +twenty-five years.[21] This planter prospered, and his children after him; +and while he may have had a rugged nature, his descendants to-day are among +the gentlest of Louisianians. Another was Duncan F. Kenner, who was long a +slave trader with headquarters at New Orleans before he became a planter in +Ascension Parish on a rapidly increasing scale. His crop advanced from 580 +hogsheads in 1849 to 1,370 hogsheads in 1853 and 2,002 hogsheads in 1858 +when he was operating two mills, one equipped with vacuum pans and the +other with Rillieux apparatus.[22] A third example was John Burnside, who +emigrated from the North of Ireland in his youth rose rapidly from grocery +clerk in upland Virginia to millionaire merchant in New Orleans, and then +in the fifties turned his talents to sugar growing. He bought the three +contiguous plantations of Col. J.S. Preston lying opposite Donaldsonville, +and soon added a fourth one to the group. In 1858 his aggregate crop was +3,701 hogsheads; and in 1861 his fields were described by William H. +Russell as exhibiting six thousand acres of cane in an unbroken tract. By +employing squads of immigrant Irishmen for ditching and other severe +work he kept his literally precious negroes, well housed and fed, in +fit condition for effective routine under his well selected staff of +overseers.[23] Even after the war Burnside kept on acquiring plantations, +and with free negro labor kept on making large sugar crops. At the end of +his long life, spent frugally as a bachelor and somewhat of a recluse, +he was doubtless by far the richest man in all the South. The number of +planters who had been merchants and the frequency of partnerships and +corporations operating sugar estates, as well as the magnitude of scale +characteristic of the industry, suggest that methods of a strictly business +kind were more common in sugar production than in that of cotton or +tobacco. Domesticity and paternalism were nevertheless by no means alien to +the sugar régime. + +[Footnote 21: MSS. in private possession, data from which were made +available through the kindness of Mr. V.A. Moody.] + +[Footnote 22: The yearly product of each sugar plantation in Louisiana +between 1849 and 1858 is reported in P.A. Champonier's _Annual Statement_ +of the crop. (New Orleans, 1850-1859).] + +[Footnote 23: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, +1863), pp. 268-279] + +Virtually all of the tobacco, short staple cotton and sugar plantations +were conducted on the gang system. The task system, on the other hand, was +instituted on the rice coast, where the drainage ditches checkering +the fields into half or quarter acre plots offered convenient units of +performance in the successive processes. The chief advantage of the task +system lay in the ease with which it permitted a planter or an overseer +to delegate much of his routine function to a driver. This official each +morning would assign to each field hand his or her individual plot, and +spend the rest of the day in seeing to the performance of the work. At +evening or next day the master could inspect the results and thereby keep +a check upon both the driver and the squad. Each slave when his day's task +was completed had at his own disposal such time as might remain. The driver +commonly gave every full hand an equal area to be worked in the same way, +and discriminated among them only in so far as varying conditions from plot +to plot would permit the assignment of the stronger and swifter workmen to +tracts where the work required was greater, and the others to plots where +the labor was less. Fractional hands were given fractional tasks, or were +combined into full hands for full tasks. Thus a woman rated at three +quarters might be helped by her own one quarter child, or two half-hand +youths might work a full plot jointly. The system gave some stimulus to +speed of work, at least from time to time, by its promise of afternoon +leisure in reward. But for this prospect to be effective the tasks had to +be so limited that every laborer might have the hope of an hour or two's +release as the fruit of diligence. The performance of every hand tended +accordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of the +weakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, was +almost equally strong in the gang system also. + +The task acre was commonly not a square of 210 feet, but a rectangle 300 +feet long and 150 feet broad, divided into square halves and rectangular +quarters, and further divisible into "compasses" five feet wide and 150 +feet long, making one sixtieth of an acre. The standard tasks for full +hands in rice culture were scheduled in 1843 as follows: plowing with two +oxen, with the animals changed at noon, one acre; breaking stiff land with +the hoe and turning the stubble under, ten compasses; breaking such land +with the stubble burnt off, or breaking lighter land, a quarter acre or +slightly more; mashing the clods to level the field, from a quarter to half +an acre; trenching the drills, if on well prepared land, three quarters of +an acre; sowing rice, from three to four half-acres; covering the drills, +three quarters; the first hoeing, half an acre, or slightly less if the +ground were lumpy and the drills hard to clear; second hoeing, half an +acre, or slightly less or more according to the density of the grass; third +hoeing with hand picking of the grass from the drills, twenty compasses; +fourth hoeing, half an acre; reaping with the sickle, three quarters, +or much less if the ground were new and cumbered or if the stalks were +tangled; and threshing with the flail, six hundred sheaves for the men, +five hundred for the women.[24] Much of the incidental work was also done +by tasks, such as ditching, cutting cordwood, squaring timber, splitting +rails, drawing staves and hoop poles, and making barrels. The scale of the +crop was commonly five acres of rice to each full hand, together with about +half as much in provision crops for home consumption. + +[Footnote 24: Edmund Ruffin, _Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ +(Columbia, 1843), p. 118.] + +Under the task system, Olmsted wrote: "most of the slaves work rapidly and +well...Custom has settled the extent of the task, and it is difficult to +increase it. The driver who marks it out has to remain on the ground until +it is finished, and has no interest in over-measuring it; and if it should +be systematically increased very much there is the danger of a general +stampede to the 'swamp'--a danger a slave can always hold before his +master's cupidity...It is the driver's duty to make the tasked hands do +their work well.[25] If in their haste to finish it they neglect to do it +properly he 'sets them back,' so that carelessness will hinder more than +it hastens the completion of their tasks." But Olmsted's view was for once +rose colored. A planter who lived in the régime wrote: "The whole task +system ... is one that I most unreservedly disapprove of, because it +promotes idleness, and that is the parent of mischief."[26] Again the truth +lies in the middle ground. The virtue or vice of the system, as with the +gang alternative, depended upon its use by a diligent master or its abuse +by an excessive delegation of responsibility. + +[Footnote 25: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 435, 436.] + +[Footnote 26: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 34.] + +That the tide when taken at the flood on the rice coast as elsewhere +would lead to fortune is shown by the career of the greatest of all rice +planters, Nathaniel Heyward. At the time of his birth, in 1766, his father +was a planter on an inland swamp near Port Royal. Nathaniel himself after +establishing a small plantation in his early manhood married Harriett +Manigault, an heiress with some fifty thousand dollars. With this, when +both lands and slaves were cheap, Heyward bought a tide-land tract and +erected four plantations thereon, and soon had enough accrued earnings to +buy the several inland plantations of the Gibbes brothers, who had fallen +into debt from luxurious living. With the proceeds of his large crops at +high prices during the great wars in Europe, he bought more slaves year +after year, preferably fresh Africans as long as that cheap supply remained +available, and he bought more land when occasion offered. Joseph Manigault +wrote of him in 1806: "Mr. Heyward has lately made another purchase of +land, consisting of 300 acres of tide swamp, joining one of his Combahee +plantations and belonging to the estate of Mrs. Bell. I believe he has made +a good bargain. It is uncleared and will cost him not quite £20 per acre. +I have very little doubt that he will be in a few years, if he lives, the +richest, as he is the best planter in the state. The Cooper River lands +give him many a long ride." Heyward was venturesome in large things, +conservative in small. He long continued to have his crops threshed by +hand, saying that if it were done by machines his darkies would have no +winter work; but when eventually he instituted mechanical threshers, no +one could discern an increase of leisure. In the matter of pounding +mills likewise, he clung for many years to those driven by the tides and +operating slowly and crudely; but at length he built two new ones driven by +steam and so novel and complete in their apparatus as to be the marvels of +the countryside. He necessarily depended much upon overseers; but his own +frequent visits of inspection and the assistance rendered by his sons kept +the scattered establishments in an efficient routine. The natural increase +of his slaves was reckoned by him to have ranged generally between one and +five per cent. annually, though in one year it rose to seven per cent. At +his death in 1851 he owned fourteen rice plantations with fields ranging +from seventy to six hundred acres in each, and comprising in all 4,390 +acres in cultivation. He had also a cotton plantation, much pine land and a +sawmill, nine residences in Charleston, appraised with their furniture at +$180,000; securities and cash to the amount of $200,000; $20,000 worth of +horses, mules and cattle; $15,000 worth of plate; and $3000 worth of old +wine. His slaves, numbering 2,087 and appraised at an average of $550, made +up the greater part of his two million dollar estate. His heirs continued +his policy. In 1855, for example, they bought a Savannah River plantation +called Fife, containing 500 acres of prime rice land at $150 per +acre, together with its equipment and 120 slaves, at a gross price of +$135,600.[27] + +[Footnote 27: MSS. in the possession of Mrs. Hawkins K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, +S.C., including a "Memoir of Nathaniel Heyward," written in 1895 by Gabriel +E. Manigault.] + +The history of the estate of James Heyward, Nathaniel's brother, was in +striking contrast with this. When on a tour in Ireland he met and married +an actress, who at his death in 1796 inherited his plantation and 214 +slaves. Two suitors for the widow's hand promptly appeared in Alexander +Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and Charles Baring, his cousin. Mrs. +Heyward married the latter, who increased the estate to seven or eight +hundred acres in rice, yielding crops worth from twelve to thirty thousand +dollars. But instead of superintending its work in person Baring bought +a large tract in the North Carolina mountains, built a house there, and +carried thither some fifty slaves for his service. After squandering the +income for nearly fifty years, he sold off part of the slaves and mortgaged +the land; and when the plantation was finally surrendered in settlement of +Baring's debts, it fell into Nathaniel Heyward's possession.[28] + +[Footnote 28: Notes by Louis Manigault of a conversation with Nathaniel +Heyward in 1846. M.S. in the collection above mentioned.] + +Another case of absentee neglect, made notorious through Fanny Kemble's +_Journal_, was the group of rice and sea-island cotton plantations founded +by Senator Pierce Butler on and about Butler's Island near the mouth of the +Altamaha River. When his two grandsons inherited the estate, they used it +as a source of revenue but not as a home. One of these was Pierce Butler +the younger, who lived in Philadelphia. When Fanny Kemble, with fame +preceding her, came to America in 1832, he became infatuated, followed +her troupe from city to city, and married her in 1834. The marriage was +a mistake. The slaveholder's wife left the stage for the time being, but +retained a militant English abolitionism. When in December, 1838, she and +her husband were about to go South for a winter on the plantations, she +registered her horror of slavery in advance, and resolved to keep a journal +of her experiences and observations. The resulting record is gloomy enough. +The swarms of negroes were stupid and slovenly, the cabins and hospitals +filthy, the women overdriven, the overseer callous, the master indifferent, +and the new mistress herself, repudiating the title, was more irritable and +meddlesome than helpful.[29] The short sojourn was long enough. A few years +afterward the ill-mated pair were divorced and Fanny Kemble resumed her +own name and career. Butler did not mend his ways. In 1859 his half of the +slaves, 429 in number, were sold at auction in Savannah to pay his debts. + +[Footnote 29: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal of a Residence on a Georgia +Plantation in 1838-1839_(London, 1863).] + +A pleasanter picture is afforded by the largest single unit in rice culture +of which an account is available. This was the plantation of William Aiken, +at one time governor of South Carolina, occupying Jehossee Island near the +mouth of the Edisto River. It was described in 1850 by Solon Robinson, an +Iowa farmer then on tour as correspondent for the _American Agriculturist_. +The two or three hundred acres of firm land above tide comprised the +homestead, the negro quarter, the stables, the stock yard, the threshing +mill and part of the provision fields. Of the land which could be flooded +with the tide, about fifteen hundred acres were diked and drained. About +two-thirds of this appears to have been cropped in rice each year, and the +rest in corn, oats and sweet potatoes. The steam-driven threshing apparatus +was described as highly efficient. The sheaves were brought on the heads of +the negroes from the great smooth stack yard, and opened in a shed where +the scattered grain might be saved. A mechanical carrier led thence to the +threshing machines on the second floor, whence the grain descended through +a winnowing fan. The pounding mill, driven by the tide, was a half mile +distant at the wharf, whence a schooner belonging to the plantation carried +the hulled and polished rice in thirty-ton cargoes to Charleston. The +average product per acre was about forty-five bushels in the husk, each +bushel yielding some thirty pounds of cleaned rice, worth about three cents +a pound. The provision fields commonly fed the force of slaves and mules; +and the slave families had their own gardens and poultry to supplement +their fare. The rice crops generally yielded some twenty-five +thousand dollars in gross proceeds, while the expenses, including the +two-thousand-dollar salary of the overseer, commonly amounted to some ten +thousand dollars. During the summer absence of the master, the overseer +was the only white man on the place. The engineers, smiths, carpenters +and sailors were all black. "The number of negroes upon the place," wrote +Robinson, "is just about 700, occupying 84 double frame houses, each +containing two tenements of three rooms to a family besides the +cockloft.... There are two common hospitals and a 'lying-in hospital,' and +a very neat, commodious church, which is well filled every Sabbath.... Now +the owner of all this property lives in a very humble cottage, embowered in +dense shrubbery and making no show.... He and his family are as plain and +unostentatious in their manners as the house they live in.... Nearly all +the land has been reclaimed and the buildings, except the house, erected +new within the twenty years that Governor Aiken has owned the island. I +fully believe that he is more concerned to make his people comfortable +and happy than he is to make money."[30] When the present writer visited +Jehossee in the harvest season sixty years after Robinson, the fields were +dotted with reapers, wage earners now instead of slaves, but still using +sickles on half-acre tasks; and the stack yard was aswarm with sable men +and women carrying sheaves on their heads and chattering as of old in a +dialect which a stranger can hardly understand. The ante-bellum hospital +and many of the cabins in their far-thrown quadruple row were still +standing. The site of the residence, however, was marked only by desolate +chimneys, a live-oak grove and a detached billiard room, once elegant but +now ruinous, the one indulgence which this planter permitted himself. + +[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 187, 188, reprinted in _DeBow's +Review_, IX, 201-203.] + +The ubiquitous Olmsted chose for description two rice plantations operated +as one, which he inspected in company with the owner, whom he calls "Mr. +X." Frame cabins at intervals of three hundred feet constituted the +quarters; the exteriors were whitewashed, the interiors lathed and +plastered, and each family had three rooms and a loft, as well as a chicken +yard and pigsty not far away. "Inside, the cabins appeared dirty and +disordered, which was rather a pleasant indication that their home life +was not much interfered with, though I found certain police regulations +enforced." Olmsted was in a mellow mood that day. At the nursery "a number +of girls eight or ten years old were occupied in holding and tending the +youngest infants. Those a little older--the crawlers--were in the pen, and +those big enough to toddle were playing on the steps or before the house. +Some of these, with two or three bigger ones, were singing and dancing +about a fire they had made on the ground.... The nurse was a kind-looking +old negro woman.... I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not a +baby of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three other +plantation nurseries which I have visited." The chief slave functionary was +a "gentlemanly-mannered mulatto who ... carried by a strap at his waist a +very large bunch of keys and had charge of all the stores of provisions, +tools and materials on the plantations, as well as of their produce before +it was shipped to market. He weighed and measured out all the rations of +the slaves and the cattle.... In all these departments his authority was +superior to that of the overseer; ... and Mr. X. said he would trust him +with much more than he would any overseer he had ever known." The master +explained that this man and the butler, his brother, having been reared +with the white children, had received special training to promote their +sense of dignity and responsibility. The brothers, Olmsted further +observed, rode their own horses the following Sunday to attend the same +church as their master, and one of them slipped a coin into the hand of the +boy who had been holding his mount. The field hands worked by tasks under +their drivers. "I saw one or two leaving the field soon after one o'clock, +several about two; and between three and four I met a dozen men and women +coming home to their cabins, having finished their day's work." As to +punishment, Olmsted asked how often it was necessary. The master replied: +"'Sometimes perhaps not once for two or three weeks; then it will seem as +if the devil had gotten into them all and there is a good deal of it.'" As +to matings: "While watching the negroes in the field, Mr. X. addressed a +girl who was vigorously plying a hoe near us: 'Is that Lucy?--Ah, Lucy, +what's this I hear about you?' The girl simpered, but did not answer or +discontinue her work. 'What is this I hear about you and Sam, eh?' The girl +grinned and still hoeing away with all her might whispered 'Yes, sir.' 'Sam +came to see me this morning,' 'If master pleases.' 'Very well; you may come +up to the house Saturday night, and your mistress will have something for +you.'"[31] We may hope that the pair whose prospective marriage was thus +endorsed with the promise of a bridal gift lived happily ever after. + +[Footnote 31: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_,418-448.] + +The most detailed record of rice operations available is that made by +Charles Manigault from the time of his purchase in 1833 of "Gowrie," on the +Savannah River, twelve miles above the city of Savannah.[32] The plantation +then had 220 acres in rice fields, 80 acres unreclaimed, a good pounding +mill, and 50 slaves. The price of $40,000 was analyzed by Manigault as +comprising $7500 for the mill, $70 per acre for the cleared, and $37 for +the uncleared, and an average of $300 for the slaves. His maintenance +expense per hand he itemized at a weekly peck of corn, $13 a year; summer +and winter clothes, $7; shoes, $1; meat at times, salt, molasses and +medical attention, not estimated. In reward for good service, however, +Manigault usually issued broken rice worth $2.50 per bushel, instead of +corn worth $1. Including the overseer's wages the current expense for the +plantation for the first six years averaged about $2000 annually. Meanwhile +the output increased from 200 barrels of rice in 1833 to 578 in 1838. The +crop in the latter year was particularly notable, both in its yield of +three barrels per acre, or 161-1/2 barrels per working hand, and its price +of four cents per pound or $24 per barrel. The net proceeds of the one crop +covered the purchase in 1839 of two families of slaves, comprising sixteen +persons, mostly in or approaching their prime, at a price of $640 each. + +[Footnote 32: The Manigault MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. H.K. +Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation +and Frontier_, I, 134-139 _et passim_.] + +Manigault and his family were generally absent every summer and sometimes +in winter, at Charleston or in Europe, and once as far away as China. His +methods of administration may be gathered from his letters, contracts and +memoranda. In January, 1848, he wrote from Naples to I.F. Cooper whom his +factor had employed at $250 a year as a new overseer on Gowrie: "My negroes +have the reputation of being orderly and well disposed; but like all +negroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to. I expect +the kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been a +principal thing with me. I never suffer them to work off the place, or +exchange work with any plantation....It has always been my plan to give out +allowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, because +this has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if they +received allowance on Saturday for instance some of them would be off with +it that same evening to the shops to trade, and perhaps would not get back +until Monday morning. I allow no strange negro to take a wife on my place, +and none of mine to keep a boat."[33] + +[Footnote 33: MS. copy in Manigault letter book.] + +A few years after this, Manigault bought an adjoining plantation, "East +Hermitage," and consolidated it with Gowrie, thereby increasing his rice +fields to 500 acres and his slaves to about 90 of all ages. His draught +animals appear to have comprised merely five or six mules. A new overseer, +employed in 1853 at wages of $500 together with corn and rice for his table +and the services of a cook and a waiting boy, was bound by a contract +stipulating the duties described in the letter to Cooper above quoted, +along with a few additional items. He was, for example, to procure a book +of medical instructions and a supply of the few requisite "plantation +medicines" to be issued to the nurses with directions as needed. In case of +serious injury to a slave, however, the sufferer was to be laid upon a door +and sent by the plantation boat to Dr. Bullock's hospital in Savannah. +Except when the work was very pressing the slaves were to be sent home for +the rest of the day upon the occurrence of heavy rains in the afternoon, +for Manigault had found by experience "that always after a complete +wetting, particularly in cold rainy weather in winter or spring, one +or more of them are made sick and lie up, and at times serious illness +ensues."[34] + +[Footnote 34: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 122-126.] + +In 1852 and again in 1854 storms and freshets heavily injured Manigault's +crops, and cholera decimated his slaves. In 1855 the fields were in +bad condition because of volunteer rice, and the overseer was dying of +consumption. The slaves, however, were in excellent health, and the crop, +while small, brought high prices because of the Crimean war. In 1856 a new +overseer named Venters handled the flooding inexpertly and made but half +a crop, yielding $12,660 in gross proceeds. For the next year Venters was +retained, on the maxim "never change an overseer if you can help it," +and nineteen slaves were bought for $11,850 to fill the gaps made by the +cholera. Furthermore a tract of pine forest was bought to afford summer +quarters for the negro children, who did not thrive on the malarial +plantation, and to provide a place of isolation for cholera cases. In 1857 +Venters made a somewhat better crop, but as Manigault learned and wrote at +the end of the year, "elated by a strong and very false religious feeling, +he began to injure the plantation a vast deal, placing himself on a par +with the negroes by even joining in with them at their prayer meetings, +breaking down long established discipline which in every case is so +difficult to preserve, favoring and siding in any difficulty with the +people against the drivers, besides causing numerous grievances." The +successor of the eccentric Venters in his turn proved grossly neglectful; +and it was not until the spring of 1859 that a reliable overseer was found +in William Capers, at a salary of $1000. Even then the year's experience +was such that at its end Manigault recorded the sage conclusion: "The truth +is, on a plantation, to attend to things properly it requires both master +and overseer." + +The affairs of another estate in the Savannah neighborhood, "Sabine +Fields," belonging to the Alexander Telfair estate, may be gleaned from +its income and expense accounts. The purchases of shoes indicate a +working force of about thirty hands. The purchases of woolen clothing and +waterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather; +but the scale of the doctor's bills suggest either epidemics or serious +occasional illnesses. The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeen +and eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the record +they included both rice and sea-island cotton. The gross receipts were +highest at $1,695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied from +a surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2,035 in the two years 1853 and +1854 for which the accounting was consolidated. Under E.S. Mell, who was +overseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until +1849, losses thereafter. The following items of expense in this latter +period, along with high doctor's bills, may explain the reverse: for taking +a negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of a +boy prosecuted for larceny, $9.26; jail fees of Cesar, $2.69; for the +apprehension of a runaway, $5; paid Jones for trying to capture a negro, +$5. In February, 1854, Mell was paid off, and a voucher made record of a +newspaper advertisement for another overseer. What happened to the new +incumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855: "Paid ... amount +Jones' bill for capturing negroes, $25. Expenses of Overseer Page's burial +as follows, Ferguson's bill, $25; Coroner's, $14; Dr. Kollock's, $5; total +$69." A further item in 1856 of twenty-five dollars paid for the arrest of +Bing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing of +the overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean that +disorders continued under Page's successor.[35] + +[Footnote 35: Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the Telfair +MSS. in the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.] + +Other lowland plantations on a scale similar to that of Sabine Fields +showed much better earnings. One of these, in Liberty County, Georgia, +belonged to the heirs of Dr. Adam Alexander of Savannah. It was devoted to +sea-island cotton in the 'thirties, but rice was added in the next decade. +While the output fluctuated, of course, the earnings always exceeded the +expenses and sometimes yielded as much as a hundred dollars per hand for +distribution among the owners.[36] + +[Footnote 36: The accounts for selected years are printed in _Plantation +and Frontier_, I, 150-165.] + +The system of rice production was such that plantations with less than +a hundred acres available for the staple could hardly survive in the +competition. If one of these adjoined another estate it was likely to be +merged therewith; but if it lay in isolation the course of years would +probably bring its abandonment. The absence of the proprietors every summer +in avoidance of malaria, and the consequent expense of overseer's wages, +hampered operations on a small scale, as did also the maintenance of +special functionaries among the slaves, such as drivers, boatswains, trunk +minders, bird minders, millers and coopers. In 1860 Louis Manigault listed +the forty-one rice plantations on the Savannah River and scheduled their +acreage in the crop. Only one of them had as little as one hundred acres +in rice, and it seems to have been an appendage of a larger one across the +river. On the other hand, two of them had crops of eleven hundred, and two +more of twelve hundred acres each. The average was about 425 acres per +plantation, expected to yield about 1200 pounds of rice per acre each +year.[37] A census tabulation in 1850, ignoring any smaller units, numbered +the plantations which produced annually upwards of 20,000 pounds of rice at +446 in South Carolina, 80 in Georgia, and 25 in North Carolina.[38] + +[Footnote 37: MS. in the possession of Mrs. H.K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C.] + +[Footnote 38: _Compendium of the Seventh U.S. Census_, p. 178.] + +Indigo and sea-island cotton fields had no ditches dividing them +permanently into task units; but the fact that each of these in its day was +often combined with rice on the same plantations, and that the separate +estates devoted to them respectively lay in the region dominated by the +rice régime, led to the prevalence of the task system in their culture +also. The soils used for these crops were so sandy and light, however, that +the tasks, staked off each day by the drivers, ranged larger than those in +rice. In the cotton fields they were about half an acre per hand, whether +for listing, bedding or cultivation. In the collecting and spreading of +swamp mud and other manures for the cotton the work was probably done +mostly by gangs rather than by task, since the units were hard to measure. +In cotton picking, likewise, the conditions of the crop were so variable +and the need of haste so great that time work, perhaps with special rewards +for unusually heavy pickings, was the common resort. Thus the lowland +cotton régime alternated the task and gang systems according to the work +at hand; and even the rice planters of course abandoned all thoughts of +stinted performance when emergency pressed, as in the mending of breaks in +the dikes, or when joint exertion was required, as in log rolling, or when +threshing and pounding with machinery to set the pace. + +That the task system was extended sporadically into the South Carolina +Piedmont, is indicated by a letter of a certain Thomas Parker of the +Abbeville district, in 1831,[39] which not only described his methods but +embodied an essential plantation precept. He customarily tasked his hoe +hands, he said, at rates determined by careful observation as just both to +himself and the workers. These varied according to conditions, but ranged +usually about three quarters of an acre. He continued: "I plant six acres +of cotton to the hand, which is about the usual quantity planted in my +neighborhood. I do not make as large crops as some of my neighbors. I am +content with three to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with my +provisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of my +neighbors made five bales to the hand. In such cases I have vanity enough, +however, to attribute this to better lands. I have no overseer, nor indeed +is there one in the neighborhood. We personally attend to our planting, +believing that as good a manure as any, if not the best we can apply to our +fields, is the print of the master's footstep." + +[Footnote 39: _Southern Agriculturist_, March. 1831, reprinted in the +_American Farmer_, XIII, 105, 106.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +PLANTATION MANAGEMENT + + +Typical planters though facile in conversation seldom resorted to their +pens. Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form of +instructions to their stewards and overseers. These counsels of perfection, +drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much in +detail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions. Their initial topic +was usually the care of the slaves. Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in +1759 for the guidance of his steward: "The care of negroes is the first +thing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wants +that they may be provided with all necessarys. The breeding wenches more +particularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to, +and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that will +be injurious to them, ... and the children to be well looked after, ... and +that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care." +P.C. Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856: "The proprietor, in the first +place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first +object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the +negroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may +proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty, +severity or want of care towards the negroes. For the well being, however, +of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and +discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed, +and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the +one hand or harshness on the other." Charles Manigault likewise required of +his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindness +and consideration in sickness and health." On J.W. Fowler's plantation in +the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter +such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed +in 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline and +obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency +of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being +indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable +dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about +the Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby +establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my +Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all +overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1] + +[Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are +printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 109-129.] + +Joseph A.S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of +applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2] +His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the +most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read in +part: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the +maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its +time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for +everything and everything done according to rule. In this way labor becomes +easy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he +himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage +negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of +his temper." + +[Footnote 2: They were also printed in _DeBow's Review_, XXII, 617-620, +XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).] + +[Footnote 3: _See above_, p. 239.] + +James H. Hammond's "plantation manual" which is the fullest of such +documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to +subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good crop +means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land, +mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which +must be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not be +merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but +as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value +of the rest of the property.... There should be an increase in number and +improvement in condition of negroes."[4] + +[Footnote 4: MS. bound volume, "Plantation Manual," among the Hammond +papers in the Library of Congress.] + +For the care of the sick, of course, all these planters were solicitous. +Acklen, Manigault and Weston provided that mild cases be prescribed for by +the overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness a +doctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwife +and general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks and +whites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey is +the doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, when +she thinks she can do no more for the sick, you will employ a physician." +Hammond, however, was such a devotee of homeopathy that in the lack of an +available physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote in +his manual: "No negro will be allowed to remain at his own house when sick, +but must be confined to the hospital. Every reasonable complaint must be +promptly attended to; and with any marked or general symptom of sickness, +however trivial, a negro may lie up a day or so at least.... Each case +has to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain the +disease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination; +... the directions for treatment, diet, etc., most implicitly followed; the +effects and changes cautiously observed.... In cases where there is the +slightest uncertainty, the books must be taken to the bedside and a careful +and thorough examination of the case and comparison of remedies made before +administering them. The overseer must record in the prescription book +every dose of medicine administered." Weston said he would never grudge a +doctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness under +pretence of illness. "Nothing," said he, "is so subversive of discipline, +or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposed +to do the work of the lazy." + +Pregnancy, childbirth and the care of children were matters of special +concern. Weston wrote: "The pregnant women are always to do some work up +to the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field and +staying there. If they are sick, they are to go to the hospital and stay +there until it is pretty certain their time is near." "Lying-in women are +to be attended by the midwife as long as is necessary, and by a woman put +to nurse them for a fortnight. They will remain at the negro houses for +four weeks, and then will work two weeks on the highland. In some cases, +however, it is necessary to allow them to lie up longer. The health of many +women has been ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond's rules +were as follows: "Sucklers are not required to leave their homes until +sunrise, when they leave their children at the children's house before +going to field. The period of suckling is twelve months. Their work lies +always within half a mile of the quarter. They are required to be cool +before commencing to suckle--to wait fifteen minutes at least in summer, +after reaching the children's house before nursing. It is the duty of the +nurse to see that none are heated when nursing, as well as of the overseer +and his wife occasionally to do so. They are allowed forty-five minutes at +each nursing to be with their children. They return three times a day until +their children are eight months old--in the middle of the forenoon, at +noon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twice +a day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only...The amount +of work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a full +hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months +are put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required of +them. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances as +full-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in +confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during +delivery. The confined woman lies up one month, and the midwife remains in +constant attendance for seven days. Each woman on confinement has a bundle +given her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of cloth +and rag, and some nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice and flour for the +mother." + +The instructions with one accord required that the rations issued to the +negroes be never skimped. Corbin wrote, "They ought to have their belly +full, but care must be taken with this plenty that no waste is committed." +Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, ordered his overseer to "see that +their necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing be good and +sufficient, their houses comfortable; and be kind and attentive to them in +sickness and old age." And further: "There will be stated hours for the +negroes to breakfast and dine [in the field], and those hours must be +regularly observed. The manager will frequently inspect the meals as they +are brought by the cook--see that they have been properly prepared, and +that vegetables be at all times served with the meat and bread." At the +same time he forbade his slaves to use ardent spirits or to have such about +their houses. Weston wrote: "Great care should be taken that the negroes +should never have less than their regular allowance. In all cases of doubt, +it should be given in favor of the largest quantity. The measure should +not be struck, but rather heaped up over. None but provisions of the best +quality should be used." Telfair specified as follows: "The allowance for +every grown negro, however old and good for nothing, and every young one +that works in the field, is a peck of corn each week and a pint of salt, +and a piece of meat, not exceeding fourteen pounds, per month...The +suckling children, and all other small ones who do not work in the field, +draw a half allowance of corn and salt....Feed everything plentifully, but +waste nothing." He added that beeves were to be killed for the negroes in +July, August and September. Hammond's allowance to each working hand was a +heaping peck of meal and three pounds of bacon or pickled pork every week. +In the winter, sweet potatoes were issued when preferred, at the rate of a +bushel of them in lieu of the peck of meal; and fresh beef, mutton or pork, +at increased weights, were to be substituted for the salt pork from time to +time. The ditchers and drivers were to have extra allowances in meat and +molasses. Furthermore, "Each ditcher receives every night, when ditching, a +dram (jigger) consisting of two-thirds whiskey and one-third water, with as +much asafoetida as it will absorb, and several strings of red peppers added +in the barrel. The dram is a large wine-glass full. In cotton picking time +when sickness begins to be prevalent, every field hand gets a dram in the +morning before leaving for the field. After a soaking rain all exposed to +it get a dram before changing their clothes; also those exposed to the +dust from the shelter and fan in corn shelling, on reaching the quarter at +night; or anyone at any time required to keep watch in the night. Drams are +not given as rewards, but only as medicinal. From the second hoeing, or +early in May, every work hand who uses it gets an occasional allowance of +tobacco, about one sixth of a pound, usually after some general operation, +as a hoeing, plowing, etc. This is continued until their crops are +gathered, when they can provide for themselves." The families, furthermore, +shared in the distribution of the plantation's peanut crop every fall. Each +child was allowed one third as much meal and meat as was given to each +field hand, and an abundance of vegetables to be cooked with their meat. +The cooking and feeding was to be done at the day nursery. For breakfast +they were to have hominy and milk and cold corn bread; for dinner, +vegetable soup and dumplings or bread; and cold bread or potatoes were to +be kept on hand for demands between meals. They were also to have molasses +once or twice a week. Each child was provided with a pan and spoon in +charge of the nurse. + +Hammond's clothing allowance was for each man in the fall two cotton +shirts, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket, and in the spring two +cotton shirts and two pairs of cotton pants, with privilege of substitution +when desired; for each woman six yards of woolen cloth and six yards of +cotton cloth in the fall, six yards of light and six of heavy cotton cloth +in the spring, with needles, thread and buttons on each occasion. Each +worker was to have a pair of stout shoes in the fall, and a heavy blanket +every third year. Children's cloth allowances were proportionate and their +mothers were required to dress them in clean clothes twice a week. + +In the matter of sanitation, Acklen directed the overseer to see that the +negroes kept clean in person, to inspect their houses at least once a week +and especially during the summer, to examine their bedding and see to its +being well aired, to require that their clothes be mended, "and everything +attended to which conduces to their comfort and happiness." In these +regards, as in various others, Fowler incorporated Acklen's rules in his +own, almost verbatim. Hammond scheduled an elaborate cleaning of the houses +every spring and fall. The houses were to be completely emptied and their +contents sunned, the walls and floors were to be scrubbed, the mattresses +to be emptied and stuffed with fresh hay or shucks, the yards swept and the +ground under the houses sprinkled with lime. Furthermore, every house was +to be whitewashed inside and out once a year; and the negroes must appear +once a week in clean clothes, "and every negro habitually uncleanly in +person must be washed and scrubbed by order of the overseer--the driver and +two other negroes officiating." + +As to schedules of work, the Carolina and Georgia lowlanders dealt in +tasks; all the rest in hours. Telfair wrote briefly: "The negroes to be +tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work, well +done--the task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength +of the negro." Weston wrote with more elaboration: "A task is as much work +as the meanest full hand can do in nine hours, working industriously.... +This task is never to be increased, and no work is to be done over task +except under the most urgent necessity; which over-work is to be reported +to the proprietor, who will pay for it. No negro is to be put into a task +which [he] cannot finish with tolerable ease. It is a bad plan to punish +for not finishing tasks; it is subversive of discipline to leave tasks +unfinished, and contrary to justice to punish for what cannot be done. In +nothing does a good manager so much excel a bad as in being able to discern +what a hand is capable of doing, and in never attempting to make him do +more." In Hammond's schedule the first horn was blown an hour before +daylight as a summons for work-hands to rise and do their cooking and other +preparations for the day. Then at the summons of the plow driver, at first +break of day, the plowmen went to the stables whose doors the overseer +opened. At the second horn, "just at good daylight," the hoe gang set out +for the field. At half past eleven the plowmen carried their mules to a +shelter house in the fields, and at noon the hoe hands laid off for dinner, +to resume work at one o'clock, except that in hot weather the intermission +was extended to a maximum of three and a half hours. The plowmen led the +way home by a quarter of an hour in the evening, and the hoe hands followed +at sunset. "No work," said Hammond, "must ever be required after dark." +Acklen contented himself with specifying that "the negroes must all rise at +the ringing of the first bell in the morning, and retire when the last +bell rings at night, and not leave their houses after that hour unless on +business or called." Fowler's rule was of the same tenor: "All hands should +be required to retire to rest and sleep at a suitable hour and permitted to +remain there until such time as it will be necessary to get out in time to +reach their work by the time they can see well how to work." + +Telfair, Fowler and Hammond authorized the assignment of gardens and +patches to such slaves as wanted to cultivate them at leisure times. To +prevent these from becoming a cloak for thefts from the planter's crops, +Telfair and Fowler forbade the growing of cotton in the slaves' private +patches, and Hammond forbade both cotton and corn. Fowler specifically +gave his negroes the privilege of marketing their produce and poultry "at +suitable leisure times." Hammond had a rule permitting each work hand to go +to Augusta on some Sunday after harvest; but for some reason he noted in +pencil below it: "This is objectionable and must be altered." Telfair +and Weston directed that their slaves be given passes on application, +authorizing them to go at proper times to places in the neighborhood. The +negroes, however, were to be at home by the time of the curfew horn about +nine o'clock each night. Mating with slaves on other plantations was +discouraged as giving occasion for too much journeying. + +"Marriage is to be encouraged," wrote Hammond, "as it adds to the comfort, +happiness and health of those who enter upon it, besides insuring a greater +increase. Permission must always be obtained from the master before +marriage, but no marriage will be allowed with negroes not belonging to the +master. When sufficient cause can be shewn on either side, a marriage may +be annulled; but the offending party must be severely punished. Where both +are in wrong, both must be punished, and if they insist on separating must +have a hundred lashes apiece. After such a separation, neither can marry +again for three years. For first marriage a bounty of $5.00, to be invested +in household articles, or an equivalent of articles, shall be given. If +either has been married before, the bounty shall be $2.50. A third marriage +shall be not allowed but in extreme cases, and in such cases, or where both +have been married before, no bounty will be given." + +"Christianity, humanity and order elevate all, injure none," wrote Fowler, +"whilst infidelity, selfishness and disorder curse some, delude others and +degrade all. I therefore want all of my people encouraged to cultivate +religious feeling and morality, and punished for inhumanity to their +children or stock, for profanity, lying and stealing." And again: "I would +that every human being have the gospel preached to them in its original +purity and simplicity. It therefore devolves upon me to have these +dependants properly instructed in all that pertains to the salvation of +their souls. To this end whenever the services of a suitable person can be +secured, have them instructed in these things. In view of the fanaticism +of the age, it behooves the master or overseer to be present on all +such occasions. They should be instructed on Sundays in the day time if +practicable; if not, then on Sunday night." Acklen wrote in his usual +peremptory tone: "No negro preachers but my own will be permitted to preach +or remain on any of my places. The regularly appointed minister for my +places must preach on Sundays during daylight, or quit. The negroes must +not be suffered to continue their night meetings beyond ten o'clock." +Telfair in his rules merely permitted religious meetings on Saturday nights +and Sunday mornings. Hammond encouraged his negroes to go to church on +Sundays, but permitted no exercises on the plantation beyond singing and +praying. He, and many others, encouraged his negroes to bring him their +complaints against drivers and overseers, and even against their own +ecclesiastical authorities in the matter of interference with recreations. + +Fighting among the negroes was a common bane of planters. Telfair +prescribed: "If there is any fighting on the plantation, whip all engaged +in it, for no matter what the cause may have been, all are in the wrong." +Weston wrote: "Fighting, particularly amongst women, and obscene or abusive +language, is to be always rigorously punished." + +"Punishment must never be cruel or abusive," wrote Acklen, closely followed +by Fowler, "for it is absolutely mean and unmanly to whip a negro from mere +passion and malice, and any man who can do so is utterly unfit to have +control of negroes; and if ever any of my negroes are cruelly or inhumanly +treated, bruised, maimed or otherwise injured, the overseer will be +promptly discharged and his salary withheld." Weston recommended the lapse +of a day between the discovery of an offense and the punishment, and he +restricted the overseer's power in general to fifteen lashes. He continued: +"Confinement (not in the stocks) is to be preferred to whipping; but the +stoppage of Saturday's allowance, and doing whole task on Saturday, will +suffice to prevent ordinary offenses. Special care must be taken to prevent +any indecency in punishing women. No driver or other negro is to be allowed +to punish any person in any way except by order of the overseer and in his +presence." And again: "Every person should be made perfectly to understand +what they are punished for, and should be made to perceive that they are +not punished in anger or through caprice. All abusive language or violence +of demeanor should be avoided; they reduce the man who uses them to a level +with the negro, and are hardly ever forgotten by those to whom they are +addressed." Hammond directed that the overseer "must never threaten a +negro, but punish offences immediately on knowing them; otherwise he will +soon have runaways." As a schedule he wrote: "The following is the order +in which offences must be estimated and punished: 1st, running away; 2d, +getting drunk or having spirits; 3d, stealing hogs; 4th, stealing; 5th, +leaving plantation without permission; 6th, absence from house after +horn-blow at night; 7th, unclean house or person; 8th, neglect of tools; +9th, neglect of work. The highest punishment must not exceed a hundred +lashes in one day, and to that extent only in extreme cases. The whip lash +must be one inch in width, or a strap of one thickness of leather 1-1/2 +inches in width, and never severely administered. In general fifteen to +twenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging. The hands in every case must +be secured by a cord. Punishment must always be given calmly, and never +when angry or excited." Telfair was as usual terse: "No negro to have +more than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime." +Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sent +special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You had +best think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the important +old plantation maxim, viz: 'never to threaten a negro,' or he will do as +you and I would when at school--he will run. But with such a one, ... if +you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and +give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for +three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again.... Mind then and tell +him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels +with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on +himself, for he now sees how easy it is to fix 'a bad disposed nigger.' +Then give my compliments to him and tell him that you wrote me of his +conduct, and say if he don't change for the better I'll sell him to a slave +trader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent several +of the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause." In one +case Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver brought +him up for punishment but allowed him to run before it was administered.[5] + +[Footnote 5: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 32, 94.] + +As to rewards, Hammond was the only one of these writers to prescribe them +definitely. His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driver +three dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each every +Christmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for every +actual increase of two on the place. Further, "for every infant thirteen +months old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, the +mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock." + +"The head driver," Hammond wrote, "is the most important negro on the +plantation, and is not required to work like other hands. He is to +be treated with more respect than any other negro by both master and +overseer....He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all +times; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to +punish it with discretion on the spot....He is a confidential servant, and +may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer." Weston, +forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer's +order and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance of +quiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slaves +to the fields each morning, the assignment and supervision of tasks, +and the inspection of "such things as the overseer only generally +superintends." Telfair informed his overseer: "I have no driver. You are to +task the negroes yourself, and each negro is responsible to you for his own +work, and nobody's else." + +Of the master's own functions Hammond wrote in another place: "A planter +should have all his work laid out, days, weeks, months, seasons and years +ahead, according to the nature of it. He must go from job to job without +losing a moment in turning round, and he must have all the parts of his +work so arranged that due proportion of attention may be bestowed upon each +at the proper time. More is lost by doing work out of season, and doing it +better or worse than is requisite, than can readily be supposed. Negroes +are harassed by it, too, instead of being indulged; so are mules, and +everything else. A halting, vacillating, undecided course, now idle, now +overstrained, is more fatal on a plantation than in any other kind of +business--ruinous as it is in any."[6] + +[Footnote 6: Letter of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 21, 1841, +from Hammond's MS. copy in the Library of Congress.] + +In the overseer all the virtues of a master were desired, with a deputy's +obedience added. Corbin enjoined upon his staff that they "attend their +business with diligence, keep the negroes in good order, and enforce +obedience by the example of their own industry, which is a more effectual +method in every respect than hurry and severity. The ways of industry," he +continued, "are constant and regular, not to be in a hurry at one time and +do nothing at another, but to be always usefully and steadily employed. +A man who carries on business in this manner will be prepared for every +incident that happens. He will see what work may be proper at the distance +of some time and be gradually and leisurely preparing for it. By this +foresight he will never be in confusion himself, and his business, instead +of a labor, will be a pleasure to him." Weston wrote: "The proprietor +wishes particularly to impress upon the overseer the criterions by which +he will judge of his usefullness and capacity. First, by the general +well-being of all the negroes; their cleanly appearance, respectful +manners, active and vigorous obedience; their completion of their tasks +well and early; the small amount of punishment; the excess of births over +deaths; the small number of persons in hospital; and the health of the +children. Secondly, the condition and fatness of the cattle and mules; the +good repair of all the fences and buildings, harness, boats, flats and +ploughs; more particularly the good order of the banks and trunks, and the +freedom of the fields from grass and volunteer [rice]. Thirdly, the amount +and quality of the rice and provision crops.... The overseer is expressly +forbidden from three things, viz.: bleeding, giving spirits to any negro +without a doctor's order, and letting any negro on the place have or keep +any gun, powder or shot." One of Acklen's prohibitions upon his overseers +was: "Having connection with any of my female servants will most certainly +be visited with a dismissal from my employment, and no excuse can or will +be taken." + +Hammond described the functions as follows: "The overseer will never be +expected to work in the field, but he must always be with the hands when +not otherwise engaged in the employer's business.... The overseer must +never be absent a single night, nor an entire day, without permission +previously obtained. Whenever absent at church or elsewhere he must be on +the plantation by sundown without fail. He must attend every night and +morning at the stables and see that the mules are watered, cleaned and fed, +and the doors locked. He must keep the stable keys at night, and all the +keys, in a safe place, and never allow anyone to unlock a barn, smoke-house +or other depository of plantation stores but himself. He must endeavor, +also, to be with the plough hands always at noon." He must also see that +the negroes are out promptly in the morning, and in their houses after +curfew, and must show no favoritism among the negroes. He must carry on all +experiments as directed by the employer, and use all new implements and +methods which the employer may determine upon; and he must keep a full +plantation diary and make monthly inventories. Finally, "The negroes must +be made to obey and to work, which may be done, by an overseer who attends +regularly to his business, with very little whipping. Much whipping +indicates a bad tempered or inattentive manager, and will not be allowed." +His overseer might quit employment on a month's notice, and might be +discharged without notice. Acklen's dicta were to the same general effect. + +As to the relative importance of the several functions of an overseer, all +these planters were in substantial agreement. As Fowler put it: "After +taking proper care of the negroes, stock, etc., the next most important +duty of the overseer is to make, if practicable, a sufficient quantity of +corn, hay, fodder, meat, potatoes and other vegetables for the consumption +of the plantation, and then as much cotton as can be made by requiring good +and reasonable labor of operatives and teams." Likewise Henry Laurens, +himself a prosperous planter of the earlier time as well as a statesman, +wrote to an overseer of whose heavy tasking he had learned: "Submit to +make less rice and keep my negroes at home in some degree of happiness in +preference to large crops acquired by rigour and barbarity to those poor +creatures." And to a new incumbent: "I have now to recommend to you the +care of my negroes in general, but particularly the sick ones. Desire Mrs. +White not to be sparing of red wine for those who have the flux or bad +loosenesses; let them be well attended night and day, and if one wench is +not sufficient add another to nurse them. With the well ones use gentle +means mixed with easy authority first--if that does not succeed, make +choice of the most stubborn one or two and chastise them severely but +properly and with mercy, that they may be convinced that the end of +correction is to be amendment," Again, alluding to one of his slaves +who had been gathering the pennies of his fellows: "Amos has a great +inclination to turn rum merchant. If his confederate comes to that +plantation, I charge you to discipline him with thirty-nine sound lashes +and turn him out of the gate and see that he goes quite off."[7] + +[Footnote 7: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 133, 192.] + +The published advice of planters to their fellows was quite in keeping with +these instructions to overseers. About 1809, for example, John Taylor, of +Caroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day, +wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows: "The addition of +comfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for the +advantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by a +ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniary +point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections +throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof +brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty +in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for +pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for +upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole +force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the +thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure +to inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations. "A daily +allowance of cyder," Taylor continued, "will extend the success of this +system for the management of slaves, and particularly its effect of +diminishing corporal punishments. But the reader is warned that a stern +authority, strict discipline and complete subordination must be combined +with it to gain any success at all."[8] + +[Footnote 8: John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, _Arator, Being +a Series of Agricultural Essays_ (2d ed., Georgetown, D. C, 1814), pp. +122-125.] + +Another Virginian's essay, of 1834, ran as follows: Virginia negroes are +generally better tempered than any other people; they are kindly, grateful, +attached to persons and places, enduring and patient in fatigue and +hardship, contented and cheerful. Their control should be uniform and +consistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity. Punishment for real +faults should be invariable but moderate. "The best evidence of the good +management of slaves is the keeping up of good discipline with little or +no punishment." The treatment should be impartial except for good conduct +which should bring rewards. Praise is often a better cure for laziness than +stripes. The manager should know the temper of each slave. The proud and +high spirited are easily handled: "Your slow and sulky negro, although he +may have an even temper, is the devil to manage. The negro women are all +harder to manage than the men. The only way to get along with them is by +kind words and flattery. If you want to cure a sloven, give her something +nice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she has +on anything tolerably decent." Eschew suspicion, for it breeds dishonesty. +Promote harmony and sound methods among your neighbors. "A good +disciplinarian in the midst of bad managers of slaves cannot do much; and +without discipline there cannot be profit to the master or comfort to the +slaves." Feed and clothe your slaves well. The best preventive of theft is +plenty of pork. Let them have poultry and gardens and fruit trees to attach +them to their houses and promote amenability. "The greatest bar to good +discipline in Virginia is the number of grog shops in every farmer's +neighborhood." There is no severity in the state, and there will be no +occasion for it again if the fanatics will only let us alone.[9] + +[Footnote 9: "On the Management of Negroes. Addressed to the Farmers and +Overseers of Virginia," signed "H. C," in the _Farmer's Register_, I, 564, +565 (February, 1834).] + +An essay written after long experience by Robert Collins, of Macon, +Georgia, which was widely circulated in the 'fifties, was in the same tone: +"The best interests of all parties are promoted by a kind and liberal +treatment on the part of the owner, and the requirement of proper +discipline and strict obedience on the part of the slave ... Every attempt +to force the slave beyond the limits of reasonable service by cruelty or +hard treatment, so far from extorting more work, only tends to make him +unprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation and a curse." The quarters should +be well shaded, the houses free of the ground, well ventilated, and large +enough for comfort; the bedding and blankets fully adequate. "In former +years the writer tried many ways and expedients to economize in the +provision of slaves by using more of the vegetable and cheap articles of +diet, and less of the costly and substantial. But time and experience have +fully proven the error of a stinted policy ... The allowance now given per +week to each hand ... is five pounds of good clean bacon and one quart of +molasses, with as much good bread as they require; and in the fall, or +sickly season of the year, or on sickly places, the addition of one pint of +strong coffee, sweetened with sugar, every morning before going to work." +The slaves may well have gardens, but the assignment of patches for market +produce too greatly "encourages a traffic on their own account, and +presents a temptation and opportunity, during the process of gathering, for +an unscrupulous fellow to mix a little of his master's produce with his +own. It is much better to give each hand whose conduct has been such as to +merit it an equivalent in money at the end of the year; it is much less +trouble, and more advantageous to both parties." Collins further advocated +plenty of clothing, moderate hours, work by tasks in cotton picking and +elsewhere when feasible, and firm though kindly discipline. "Slaves," he +said, "have no respect or affection for a master who indulges them over +much.... Negroes are by nature tyrannical in their dispositions, and if +allowed, the stronger will abuse the weaker, husbands will often abuse +their wives and mothers their children, so that it becomes a prominent duty +of owners and overseers to keep peace and prevent quarrelling and disputes +among them; and summary punishment should follow any violation of this +rule. Slaves are also a people that enjoy religious privileges. Many +of them place much value upon it; and to every reasonable extent that +advantage should be allowed them. They are never injured by preaching, but +thousands become wiser and better people and more trustworthy servants +by their attendance at church. Religious services should be provided and +encouraged on every plantation. A zealous and vehement style, both in +doctrine and manner, is best adapted to their temperament. They are good +believers in mysteries and miracles, ready converts, and adhere with much +pertinacity to their opinions when formed."[10] It is clear that Collins +had observed plantation negroes long and well. + +[Footnote 10: Robert Collins, "Essay on the Management of Slaves," +reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 421-426, and partly reprinted in F.L. +Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 692-697.] + +Advice very similar to the foregoing examples was also printed in the +form of manuals at the front of blank books for the keeping of plantation +records;[11] and various planters described their own methods in operation +as based on the same principles. One of these living at Chunnennuggee, +Alabama, signing himself "N.B.P.," wrote in 1852 an account of the problems +he had met and the solutions he had applied. Owning some 150 slaves, he had +lived away from his plantation until about a decade prior to this writing; +but in spite of careful selection he could never get an overseer combining +the qualities necessary in a good manager. "They were generally on +extremes; those celebrated for making large crops were often too severe, +and did everything by coercion. Hence turmoil and strife ensued. The +negroes were ill treated and ran away. On the other hand, when he employed +a good-natured man there was a want of proper discipline; the negroes +became unmanageable and, as a natural result, the farm was brought into +debt," The owner then entered residence himself and applied methods which +resulted in contentment, health and prolific increase among the slaves, and +in consistently good crops. The men were supplied with wives at home so far +as was practicable; each family had a dry and airy house to itself, with a +poultry house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly were +three and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, together +with a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nursery +were fed from the master's kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables and +bread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women were +given time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all hands +had to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; and +a clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday. The chief +distinction of this plantation, however, lay in its device for profit +sharing. To each slave was assigned a half-acre plot with the promise that +if he worked with diligence in the master's crop the whole gang would in +turn be set to work his crop. This was useful in preventing night and +Sunday work by the negroes. The proceeds of their crops, ranging from ten +to fifty dollars, were expended by the master at their direction for Sunday +clothing and other supplies.[12] On a sugar plantation visited by Olmsted +a sum of as many dollars as there were hogsheads in the year's crop was +distributed among the slaves every Christmas.[13] + +[Footnote 11: Pleasant Suit, _Farmer's Accountant and Instructions for +Overseers_ (Richmond, Va., 1828); _Affleck's Cotton Plantation Record and +Account Book_, reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVIII, 339-345, and in Thomas +W. Knox, _Campfire and Cotton Field_ (New York, 1865), pp. 358-364. _See +also_ for varied and interesting data as to rules, experience and advice; +Thomas S. Clay (of Bryan County, Georgia), _Detail of a Plan for the Moral +Improvement of Negroes on Plantations_ (1833); and _DeBow's Review_, XII, +291, 292; XIX, 358-363; XXI, 147-149, 277-279; XXIV, 321-326; XXV, 463; +XXVI, 579, 580; XXIX, 112-115, 357-368.] + +[Footnote 12: _Southern Quarterly Review_, XXI, 215, 216.] + +[Footnote 13: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 660.] + +Of overseers in general, the great variety in their functions, their +scales of operation and their personal qualities make sweeping assertions +hazardous. Some were at just one remove from the authority of a great +planter, as is suggested by the following advertisement: "Wanted, a manager +to superintend several rice plantations on the Santee River. As the +business is extensive, a proportionate salary will be made, and one or two +young men of his own selection employed under him.[14] A healthful summer +residence on the seashore is provided for himself and family." Others +were hardly more removed from the status of common field hands. Lawrence +Tompkins, for example, signed with his mark in 1779 a contract to oversee +the four slaves of William Allason, near Alexandria, and to work steadily +with them. He was to receive three barrels of corn and three hundred pounds +of pork as his food allowance, and a fifth share of the tobacco, hemp and +flax crops and a sixth of the corn; but if he neglected his work he might +be dismissed without pay of any sort.[15] Some overseers were former +planters who had lost their property, some were planters' sons working for +a start in life, some were English and German farmers who had brought their +talents to what they hoped might prove the world's best market, but most of +them were of the native yeomanry which abounded in virtually all parts +of the South. Some owned a few slaves whom they put on hire into their +employers' gangs, thereby hastening their own attainment of the means to +become planters on their own score.[16] + +[Footnote 14: _Southern Patriot_ (Charleston, S. C), Jan. 9, 1821.] + +[Footnote 15: MS. Letter book, 1770-1787, among the Allason papers in the +New York Public Library.] + +[Footnote 16: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 21, 135.] + +If the master lived on the plantation, as was most commonly the case, the +overseer's responsibilities were usually confined to the daily execution of +orders in supervising the slaves in the fields and the quarters. But when +the master was an absentee the opportunity for abuses and misunderstandings +increased. Jurisdiction over slaves and the manner of its exercise were the +grounds of most frequent complaint. On the score of authority, for example, +a Virginia overseer in the employ of Robert Carter wrote him in 1787 in +despair at the conduct of a woman named Suckey: "I sent for hir to Come in +the morning to help Secoure the foder, but She Sent me word that She would +not come to worke that Day, and that you had ordered her to wash hir +Cloaiths and goo to Any meeting She pleased any time in the weke without my +leafe, and on monday when I Come to Reken with hir about it She Said it was +your orders and She would do it in Defiance of me.... I hope if Suckey is +aloud that privilige more than the Rest, that she will bee moved to some +other place, and one Come in her Room."[17] On the score of abuses, Stancil +Barwick, an overseer in southwestern Georgia, wrote in 1855 to John B. +Lamar: "I received your letter on yesterday ev'ng. Was vary sorry to hear +that you had heard that I was treating your negroes so cruely. Now, sir, I +do say to you in truth that the report is false. Thear is no truth in it. +No man nor set of men has ever seen me mistreat one of the negroes on the +place." After declaring that miscarriages by two of the women had been due +to no requirement of work, he continued: "The reports that have been sent +must have been carried from this place by negroes. The fact is I have made +the negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, an +is the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found among +the negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, but +not cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on the +place. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed by +no man on earth,"[18] + +[Footnote 17: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 325.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., I, 312, 313.] + +To diminish the inducement for overdriving, the method of paying the +overseers by crop shares, which commonly prevailed in the colonial period, +was generally replaced in the nineteenth century by that of fixed salaries. +As a surer preventive of embezzlement, a trusty slave was in some cases +given the store-house keys in preference to the overseer; and sometimes +even when the master was an absentee an overseer was wholly dispensed with +and a slave foreman was given full charge. This practice would have been +still more common had not the laws discouraged it.[19] Some planters +refused to leave their slaves in the full charge of deputies of any kind, +even for short periods. For example, Francis Corbin in 1819 explained +to James Madison that he must postpone an intended visit because of the +absence of his son. "Until he arrives," Corbin wrote, "I dare not, in +common prudence, leave my affairs to the sole management of overseers, who +in these days are little respected by our intelligent negroes, many of whom +are far superior in mind, morals and manners to those who are placed in +authority over them."[20] + +[Footnote 19: Olmsted, _Seaboard States_, p. 206.] + +[Footnote 20: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 261.] + +Various phases of the problem of management are illustrated in a letter of +A.H. Pemberton of the South Carolina midlands to James H. Hammond at the +end of 1846. The writer described himself as unwilling to sacrifice his +agricultural reading in order to superintend his slaves in person, but as +having too small a force to afford the employment of an overseer pure and +simple. For the preceding year he had had one charged with the double +function of working in person and supervising the slaves' work also; but +this man's excess of manual zeal had impaired his managerial usefulness. +What he himself did was well done, said Pemberton, "and he would do _all_ +and leave the negroes to do virtually nothing; and as they would of course +take advantage of this, what he did was more than counterbalanced by what +they did not." Furthermore, this employee, "who worked harder than any man +I ever saw," used little judgment or foresight. "Withal, he has always been +accustomed to the careless Southern practice generally of doing things +temporarily and in a hurry, just to last for the present, and allowing the +negroes to leave plows and tools of all kinds just where they use them, +no matter where, so that they have to be hunted all over the place when +wanted. And as to stock, he had no idea of any more attention to them than +is common in the ordinarily cruel and neglectful habits of the South." +Pemberton then turned to lamentation at having let slip a recent +opportunity to buy at auction "a remarkably fine looking negro as to size +and strength, very black, about thirty-five or forty, and so intelligent +and trustworthy that he had charge of a separate plantation and eight or +ten hands some ten or twelve miles from home." The procuring of such a +foreman would precisely have solved Pemberton's problem; the failure to +do so left him in his far from hopeful search for a paragon manager and +workman combined.[21] + +[Footnote 21: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +On the whole, the planters were disposed to berate the overseers as a class +for dishonesty, inattention and self indulgence. The demand for new +and better ones was constant. For example, the editor of the _American +Agriculturist_, whose office was at New York, announced in 1846: "We are +almost daily beset with applications for properly educated managers +for farms and plantations--we mean for such persons as are up to the +improvements of the age, and have the capacity to carry them into +effect."[22] Youths occasionally offered themselves as apprentices. One of +them, in Louisiana, published the following notice in 1822: "A young man +wishing to acquire knowledge of cotton planting would engage for twelve +months as overseer and keep the accounts of a plantation.... Unquestionable +reference as to character will be given."[23] And a South Carolinian in +1829 proposed that the practice be systematized by the appointment of local +committees to bring intelligent lads into touch with planters willing to +take them as indentured apprentices.[24] The lack of system persisted, +however, both in agricultural education and in the procuring of managers. +In the opinion of Basil Hall and various others the overseers were commonly +better than the reputation of their class,[25] but this is not to say that +they were conspicuous either for expertness or assiduity. On the whole +they had about as much human nature, with its merits and failings, as the +planters or the slaves or anybody else. + +[Footnote 22: _American Agriculturist_, V, 24.] + +[Footnote 23: _Louisiana Herald_ (Alexandria, La.), Jan. 12, 1822, +advertisement.] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 271.] + +[Footnote 25: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_, III, 193.] + +It is notable that George Washington was one of the least tolerant +employers and masters who put themselves upon record.[26] This was +doubtless due to his own punctiliousness and thorough devotion to system as +well as to his often baffled wish to diversify his crops and upbuild his +fields. When in 1793 he engaged William Pearce as a new steward for the +group of plantations comprising the Mount Vernon estate, he enjoined strict +supervision of his overseers "to keep them from running about and to oblige +them to remain constantly with their people, and moreover to see at what +time they turn out in the morning--for," said he, "I have strong suspicions +that this with some of them is at a late hour, the consequences of which +to the negroes is not difficult to foretell." "To treat them civilly," +Washington continued, "is no more than what all men are entitled to; but my +advice to you is, keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow upon +familiarity in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not. Pass +by no faults or neglects, particularly at first, for overlooking one only +serves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some of +them, one in particular, will try at first what lengths he may go." +Particularizing as to the members of his staff, Washington described their +several characteristics: Stuart was intelligent and apparently honest and +attentive, but vain and talkative, and usually backward in his schedule; +Crow would be efficient if kept strictly at his duty, but seemed prone to +visiting and receiving visits. "This of course leaves his people too much +to themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side and +flogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfaction +which it creates, has in one or two instances been productive of serious +consequences." McKay was a "sickly, slothful and stupid sort of fellow," +too much disposed to brutality in the treatment of the slaves in his +charge; Butler seemed to have "no more authority over the negroes ... than +an old woman would have"; and Green, the overseer of the carpenters, was +too much on a level with the slaves for the exertion of control. Davy, the +negro foreman at Muddy Hole, was rated in his master's esteem higher than +some of his white colleagues, though Washington had suspicions concerning +the fate of certain lambs which had vanished while in his care. Indeed the +overseers all and several were suspected from time to time of drunkenness, +waste, theft and miscellaneous rascality. In the last of these categories +Washington seems to have included their efforts to secure higher wages. + +[Footnote 26: Voluminous plantation data are preserved in the Washington +MSS. in the Library of Congress. Those here used are drawn from the letters +of Washington published in the Long Island Historical Society _Memoirs_, +vol. IV; entitled _George Washington and Mount Vernon_. A map of the Mount +Vernon estate is printed in Washington's _Writings_ (W.C. Ford ed.), XII, +358.] + +The slaves in their turn were suspected of ruining horses by riding them at +night, and of embezzling grain issued for planting, as well as of lying and +malingering in general. The carpenters, Washington said, were notorious +piddlers; and not a slave about the mansion house was worthy of trust. +Pretences of illness as excuses for idleness were especially annoying. +"Is there anything particular in the cases of Ruth, Hannah and Pegg," +he enquired, "that they have been returned as sick for several weeks +together?... If they are not made to do what their age and strength will +enable them, it will be a very bad example to others, none of whom would +work if by pretexts they can avoid it." And again: "By the reports I +perceive that for every day Betty Davis works she is laid up two. If she +is indulged in this idleness she will grow worse and worse, for she has a +disposition to be one of the most idle creatures on earth, and is besides +one of the most deceitful." Pearce seems to have replied that he was at a +loss to tell the false from the true. Washington rejoined: "I never found +so much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in distinguishing between real +and feigned sickness, or when a person is much afflicted with pain. Nobody +can be very sick without having a fever, or any other disorder continue +long upon anyone without reducing them.... But my people, many of them, +will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible change in their +countenance nor the loss of an ounce of flesh is discoverable; and their +allowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them." Runaways were +occasional. Of one of them Washington directed: "Let Abram get his deserts +when taken, by way of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, for +I have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment in +all his corrections." Of another, whom he had previously described as an +idler beyond hope of correction: "Nor is it worth while, except for the +sake of example, ... to be at much trouble, or any expence over a trifle, +to hunt him up." Of a third, who was thought to have escaped in company +with a neighbor's slave: "If Mr. Dulany is disposed to pursue any measure +for the purpose of recovering his man, I will join him in the expence so +far as it may respect Paul; but I would not have my name appear in any +advertisement, or other measure, leading to it." Again, when asking that a +woman of his who had fled to New Hampshire be seized and sent back if it +could be done without exciting a mob: "However well disposed I might be to +gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of +people (if the latter was in itself practicable), at this moment it would +neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature +preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow +serv'ts who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than +herself of favor."[27] Finally: "The running off of my cook has been a most +inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeable +is that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by +purchase. But this resolution I fear I must break. I have endeavored to +hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied." As to provisions, the +slaves were given fish from Washington's Potomac fishery while the supply +lasted, "meat, fat and other things ... now and then," and of meal "as +much as they can eat without waste, and no more." The housing and clothing +appear to have been adequate. The "father of his country" displayed little +tenderness for his slaves. He was doubtless just, so far as a business-like +absentee master could be; but his only generosity to them seems to have +been the provision in his will for their manumission after the death of his +wife. + +[Footnote 27: Marion G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_( Boston, 1891), p. +36.] + +Lesser men felt the same stresses in plantation management. An owner of +ninety-six slaves told Olmsted that such was the trouble and annoyance +his negroes caused him, in spite of his having an overseer, and such the +loneliness of his isolated life, that he was torn between a desire to sell +out at once and a temptation to hold on for a while in the expectation of +higher prices. At the home of another Virginian, Olmsted wrote: "During +three hours or more in which I was in company with the proprietor I do +not think there were ten consecutive minutes uninterrupted by some of the +slaves requiring his personal direction or assistance. He was even obliged +three times to leave the dinner table. 'You see,' said he smiling, as he +came in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure,'" A +third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's +cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children, +infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate, +some fractious, and each class required different treatment. With the daily +wants of food, clothing and the like, "the poor man's time and thoughts, +indeed every faculty of mind, must be exercised on behalf of those who have +no minds of their own."[28] + +[Footnote 28: F.L. Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 44, 58, 718.] + +Harriet Martineau wrote on her tour of the South: "Nothing struck me +more than the patience of slave-owners ... with their slaves ... When I +considered how they love to be called 'fiery Southerners,' I could not but +marvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to which +they are liable in their homes. Persons from New England, France or +England, becoming slaveholders, are found to be the most severe masters +and mistresses, however good their tempers may always have appeared +previously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half an +hour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible +manner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, +their infants slighted,--themselves deluded by artifices--they cannot, like +the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled."[29] It is clear from +every sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negro +slaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnigh +necessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness and +patience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financial +ruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; the +possession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern not +vital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns were +turned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineau +and most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, wrote after a journey to +Charleston in 1855: "The change to a Northerner in coming South is always +a great one when he steps over the boundary of the free states; and the +farther you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness and +careless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution and +skilful management.... The outside first aspect of slavery has nothing +horrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about looking +unhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips and +chains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in the +free as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone ten +times as far, I dare say, without seeing the first sign of negro misery +or white tyranny."[30] If, indeed, the neatness of aspect be the test of +success, most plantations were failures; if the test of failure be the lack +of harmony and good will, it appears from the available evidence that most +plantations were successful. + +[Footnote 29: Harriet Martineau, _Society in America_ (London, 1837), II +315, 316.] + +[Footnote 30: Charles Eliot Norton, _Letters_ (Boston, 1913), I, 121.] + +The concerns and the character of a high-grade planter may be gathered from +the correspondence of John B. Lamar, who with headquarters in the town of +Macon administered half a dozen plantations belonging to himself and his +kinsmen scattered through central and southwestern Georgia and northern +Florida.[31] The scale of his operations at the middle of the nineteenth +century may be seen from one of his orders for summer cloth, presumably +at the rate of about five yards per slave. This was to be shipped from +Savannah to the several plantations as follows: to Hurricane, the property +of Howell Cobb, Lamar's brother-in-law, 760 yards; to Letohatchee, a trust +estate in Florida belonging to the Lamar family, 500 yards; and to Lamar's +own plantations the following: Swift Creek, 486; Harris Place, 360; Domine, +340; and Spring Branch, 229. Of his course of life Lamar wrote: "I am one +half the year rattling over rough roads with Dr. Physic and Henry, stopping +at farm houses in the country, scolding overseers in half a dozen counties +and two states, Florida and Georgia, and the other half in the largest +cities of the Union, or those of Europe, living on dainties and riding on +rail-cars and steamboats. When I first emerge from Swift Creek into the +hotels and shops on Broadway of a summer, I am the most economical body +that you can imagine. The fine clothes and expensive habits of the people +strike me forcibly.... In a week I become used to everything, and in a +month I forget my humble concern on Swift Creek and feel as much a nabob as +any of them.... At home where everything is plain and comfortable we look +on anything beyond that point as extravagant. When abroad where things are +on a greater scale, our ideas keep pace with them. I always find such to be +my case; and if I live to a hundred I reckon it will always be so." + +[Footnote 31: Lamar's MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, +Athens, Ga. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, +I, 167-183, 309-312, II, 38, 41.] + +Lamar could command strong words, as when a physician demanded five hundred +dollars for services at Hurricane in 1844, or when overseers were detected +in drunkenness or cruelty; but his most characteristic complaints were of +his own short-comings as a manager and of the crotchets of his relatives. +His letters were always cheery, and his repeated disappointments in +overseers never damped his optimism concerning each new incumbent. His +old lands contented him until he found new and more fertile ones to buy, +whereupon his jubilation was great. When cotton was low he called himself a +toad under the harrow; but rising markets would set him to counting bales +before the seed had more than sprouted and to building new plantations in +the air. In actual practice his log-cabin slave quarters gave place to +frame houses; his mules were kept in full force; his production of corn and +bacon was nearly always ample for the needs of each place; his slaves were +permitted to raise nankeen cotton on their private accounts; and his own +frequent journeys of inspection and stimulus, as he said, kept up an +_esprit du corps_. When an overseer reported that his slaves were down with +fever by the dozen and his cotton wasting in the fields, Lamar would hasten +thither with a physician and a squad of slaves impressed from another +plantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. He +redistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a better +balancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy as +far as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate the +families. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among his +slaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized them +to find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and good +nature made "Mas John" a favorite recourse. + +As to crops and management, Lamar indicated his methods in criticizing +those of a relative: "Uncle Jesse still builds air castles and blinds +himself to his affairs. Last year he tinkered away on tobacco and sugar +cane, things he knew nothing about.... He interferes with the arrangements +of his overseers, and has no judgment of his own.... If he would employ a +competent overseer and move off the plantation with his family he could +make good crops, as he has a good force of hands and good lands.... I have +found that it is unprofitable to undertake anything on a plantation out of +the regular routine. If I had a little place off to itself, and my business +would admit of it, I should delight in agricultural experiments." In his +reliance upon staple routine, as in every other characteristic, Lamar rings +true to the planter type. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +PLANTATION LABOR + + +WHILE produced only in America, the plantation slave was a product of +old-world forces. His nature was an African's profoundly modified but +hardly transformed by the requirements of European civilization. The wrench +from Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting his +ancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperament +than upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee, Ebo or Angola, +he became instead the American negro. The Caucasian was also changed by the +contact in a far from negligible degree; but the negro's conversion +was much the more thorough, partly because the process in his case was +coercive, partly because his genius was imitative. + +The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit reservation +as to limits, that a negro was what a white man made him. The molding, +however, was accomplished more by groups than by individuals. The purposes +and policies of the masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence the +negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the +predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagerness +for society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person, +dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness +toward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to +superstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for +praise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, a +healthy human repugnance toward overwork. "It don't do no good to hurry," +was a negro saying, "'caze you're liable to run by mo'n you overtake." +Likewise painstaking was reckoned painful; and tomorrow was always waiting +for today's work, while today was ready for tomorrow's share of play. On +the other hand it was a satisfaction to work sturdily for a hard boss, and +so be able to say in an interchange of amenities: "Go long, half-priced +nigger! You wouldn't fotch fifty dollars, an' I'm wuth a thousand!"[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Daily Tropic_ (New Orleans), May 18, 1846.] + +Contrasts were abundant. John B. Lamar, on the one hand, wrote: "My man Ned +the carpenter is idle or nearly so at the plantation. He is fixing gates +and, like the idle groom in Pickwick, trying to fool himself into the +belief that he is doing something.... He is an eye servant. If I was with +him I could have the work done soon and cheap; but I am afraid to trust him +off where there is no one he fears."[2] On the other hand, M.W. Philips +inscribed a page of his plantation diary as follows:[3] + +[Footnote 2: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 38.] + +[Footnote 3: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 444.] + + Sunday + July 10, 1853 + Peyton is no more + Aged 42 + Though he was a bad man in many respects + yet he was a most excellent field + hand, always at his + post. + On this place for 21 years. + Except the measles and its sequence, the + injury rec'd by the mule last Nov'r and its sequence, + he has not lost 15 days' work, I verily believe, in the + remaining 19 years. I wish we could hope for his + eternal state. + +Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the old-fashioned prime +negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch the +roustabouts at work--those chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging, +lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of New +Orleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made.[4] Ready +at every touching of the shore day and night, resting and sleeping only +between landings, they carry their loads almost at running speed, and when +returning for fresh burdens they "coonjine" by flinging their feet in +semi-circles at every step, or cutting other capers in rhythm to show their +fellows and the gallery that the strain of the cotton bales, the grain +sacks, the oil barrels and the timbers merely loosen their muscles and +lighten their spirits. + +[Footnote 4: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of +Economics, New Orleans, April 11th, 1911, on River Transportation and Its +Relation to New Orleans, Past, Present and Future_. [New Orleans, 1911.]] + +Such an exhibit would have been the despair of the average ante-bellum +planter, for instead of choosing among hundreds of applicants and rejecting +or discharging those who fell short of a high standard, he had to make +shift with such laborers as the slave traders chanced to bring or as his +women chanced to rear. His common problem was to get such income and +comfort as he might from a parcel of the general run; and the creation +of roustabout energy among them would require such vigor and such iron +resolution on his own part as was forthcoming in extremely few cases. + +Theoretically the master might be expected perhaps to expend the minimum +possible to keep his slaves in strength, to discard the weaklings and the +aged, to drive his gang early and late, to scourge the laggards hourly, to +secure the whole with fetters by day and with bolts by night, and to keep +them in perpetual terror of his wrath. But Olmsted, who seems to have gone +South with the thought of finding some such theory in application, wrote: +"I saw much more of what I had not anticipated and less of what I had in +the slave states than, with a somewhat extended travelling experience, in +any other country I ever visited";[5] and Nehemiah Adams, who went from +Boston to Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himself +laughing with the laughing ones instead.[6] + +[Footnote 5: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 179.] + +[Footnote 6: Nehemiah Adams. _A Southside View of Slavery, or Three Months +in the South in 1854_ (Boston, 1854), chap. 2.] + +The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was as strange to +the bulk of the planters as the doctrine and practice of moderation was to +those who viewed the régime from afar and with the mind's eye. A planter +in explaining his mildness might well have said it was due to his being +neither a knave nor a fool He refrained from the use of fetters not so much +because they would have hampered the slaves in their work as because the +general use of them never crossed his mind. And since chains and bolts were +out of the question, the whole system of control must be moderate; slaves +must be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might be by +loyalty, pride and the prospect of reward. + +Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional degree. A +certain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked success even when his whole +force was of fresh Africans. In a pamphlet of the late eighteen-twenties +he told of his method as follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settled +a plantation on St. John's River in Florida with about fifty new negroes, +many of whom I brought from the Coast myself. They were mostly fine young +men and women, and nearly in equal numbers. I never interfered in their +connubial concerns nor domestic affairs, but let them regulate these after +their own manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and what I +thought would add to their physical and moral happiness. I encouraged as +much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon +and night and Sunday morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] was +usually employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for the +week. Both men and women were very industrious. Many of them made twenty +bushels of corn to sell, and they vied with each other in dress and +dancing.... They were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared perfectly +happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had +to apply other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, the +punishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing their work +well. My object was to excite their ambition and attachment by kindness, +not to depress their spirits by fear and punishment.... Perfect confidence, +friendship and good understanding reigned between us." During the War of +1812 most of these negroes were killed or carried off in a Seminole raid. +When peace returned and Kingsley attempted to restore his Eden with a +mixture of African and American negroes, a serpent entered in the guise of +a negro preacher who taught the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sunday +and eating the catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves +"became poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was only to +do justice--to take what belonged to them, because I kept them in unjust +bondage." They came to believe "that all pastime or pleasure in this +iniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of sorrow and +repentance, and the sooner they were out of it the better; that they would +then go to a good country where they would experience no want of anything, +and have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful and would +pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and ask +forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to the +church, etc.... Finally myself and the overseer became completely divested +of all authority over the negroes.... Severity had no effect; it only made +it worse."[7] + +[Footnote 7: [Z. Kingsley] _A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society +as It exists ... under the Name of Slavery_. By an inhabitant of Florida. +Fourth edition (1834), pp. 21, 22. (Copy in the Library of Congress.)] + +This experience left Kingsley undaunted in his belief that liberalism +and profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the plantation régime. +To support this contention further he cited an experiment by a South +Carolinian who established four or five plantations in a group on Broad +River, with a slave foreman on each and a single overseer with very limited +functions over the whole. The cotton crop was the master's, while the hogs, +corn and other produce belonged to the slaves for their sustenance and the +sale of any surplus. The output proved large, "and the owner had no further +trouble nor expense than furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying the +overseer's wages, so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that he +could realize his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without paying +the customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on the operation +of his slaves." In Kingsley's opinion the system "answered extremely well, +and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivating +utility, local attachment and moral improvement among the slaves."[8] + +[Footnote 8: [Z. Kingsley] _Treatise_, p. 22.] + +The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government by slaves +is probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on their +plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi. There +the slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in every +way they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts +composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to be +inflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with his +power of pardon. The régime was maintained for a number of years in full +effect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9] + +[Footnote 9: W.L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro +Problem," in the _Sewanee Review_ (October, 1908).] + +These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend to +counterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme. +In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, the +relation of planter and slave was largely shaped by a sense of propriety, +proportion and cooperation. + +As to food, clothing and shelter, a few concrete items will reinforce the +indications in the preceding chapters that crude comfort was the rule. +Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776 that a Georgia slaveholder with +whom he stopped sold no dairy products from his forty cows in milk. The +proprietor explained this by saying: "I have a considerable family of black +people who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for Those I have +were either chosen for their good qualities or born in the family; and I +find from long experience and observation that the better they are fed, +clothed and treated, the more service and profit we may expect to derive +from their labour. In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or any +article of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best advantage +amongst my family and slaves." At another place Bartram noted the arrival +at a plantation of horse loads of wild pigeons taken by torchlight from +their roosts in a neighboring swamp.[10] + +[Footnote 10: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), pp. 307-310, 467, +468.] + +On Charles Cotesworth Pinckney's two plantations on the South Carolina +coast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a detail of four slaves was +shifted from the field work each week for a useful holiday in angling +for the huge drumfish which abounded in those waters; and their catches +augmented the fare of the white and black families alike.[11] Game and +fish, however, were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combined +the virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness. On +Fowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands numbered a little less +than half a hundred, the pork harvest throughout the eighteen-fifties, +except for a single year of hog cholera, yielded from eleven to +twenty-three hundred pounds; and when the yield was less than the normal, +northwestern bacon or barreled pork made up the deficit.[12] + +In the matter of clothing, James Habersham sent an order to London in 1764 +on behalf of himself and two neighbors for 120 men's jackets and breeches +and 80 women's gowns to be made in assorted sizes from strong and heavy +cloth. The purpose was to clothe their slaves "a little better than common" +and to save the trouble of making the garments at home.[13] In January, +1835, the overseer of one of the Telfair plantations reported that the +woolen weaving had nearly supplied the full needs of the place at the rate +of six or six and a half yards for each adult and proportionately for the +children.[14] In 1847, in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrote +from Paris to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroes +and see how many jackets and trousers you want for the men at Gowrie, ... +and then write to Messrs. Matthiessen and Co. of Charleston to send them to +you, together with the same quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and a +large woolen Scotch cap for each man and youth on the place.... Send back +anything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs. Habersham and +Son the twilled wool and cotton, called by some 'Hazzard's cloth,' for all +the women and children, and get two or three dozen handkerchiefs so as to +give each woman and girl one.... The shoes you will procure as usual from +Mr. Habersham by sending down the measures in time."[15] Finally, the +register of A.L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont contains +record of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a steady schedule. Every +spring each man drew two cotton shirts and two pair of homespun woolen +trousers, each woman a frock and chemises, and each child clothing or cloth +in proportion; and every fall the men drew shirts, trousers and coats, the +women shifts, petticoats, frocks and sacks, the children again on a similar +scale, and the several families blankets as needed.[16] + +[Footnote 11: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 203-208.] + +[Footnote 12: MS. records in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, +Miss.] + +[Footnote 13: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 293, 294.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., 192, 193.] + +[Footnote 15: MS. copy in Manigault's letter book.] + +[Footnote 16: MS. in the possession of Mrs. J.F. Minis, Savannah, Ga.] + +As for housing, the vestiges of the old slave quarters, some of which +have stood abandoned for half a century, denote in many cases a sounder +construction and greater comfort than most of the negroes in freedom have +since been able to command. + +With physical comforts provided, the birth-rate would take care of itself. +The pickaninnies were winsome, and their parents, free of expense and +anxiety for their sustenance, could hardly have more of them than they +wanted. A Virginian told Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fast +as they did on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and in +Georgia, Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits."[18] In Mississippi +M.W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when at the age of +thirty she was married by her master to a new husband, and had eight more +thereafter, including a set of triplets.[19] But the culminating instance +is the following as reported by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERY +REMARKABLE. There is now living in the vicinity of Campbell a negro +woman belonging to a gentleman by the name of Todd; this woman is in her +forty-second year and has had forty-one children and at this time is +pregnant with her forty-second child, and possibly with her forty-third, as +she has frequently had doublets."[20] Had childbearing been regulated +in the interest of the masters, Todd's woman would have had less than +forty-one and Amy less than her nineteen, for such excesses impaired the +vitality of the children. Most of Amy's, for example, died a few hours or +days after birth. + +[Footnote 17: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 57.] + +[Footnote 18: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 179.] + +[Footnote 19: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 439, 443, +447, 480.] + +[Footnote 20: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 11, 1822, quoting the +Lynchburg _Press_.] + +A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie." Virtually +all of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and wives except Caroline +who in twenty years bore ten children. Her husband was presumably the slave +of some other master. Tom and Milly had nine children in eighteen years; +Harry and Jainy had seven in twenty-two years; Fanny had five in seventeen +years with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa likewise had +five in nineteen years with Bob as the father of all but the first; and +Hector and Mary had five in seven years. On the other hand, two old couples +and one in their thirties had had no children, while eight young pairs had +from one to four each.[21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisiana +plantation called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole. The +slaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards comprised +thirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre des naissances" +showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859 distributed among +twenty-three women, two of whom were still in their teens when the record +ended. Rhodé bore six children between her seventeenth and thirty-fourth +years; Henriette bore six between twenty-one and forty; Esther six between +twenty-one and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two; +Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore from one +to three children each, including Celestine who had her first baby when +fifteen and her second two years after. None of the matings or paternities +appear in the record, though the christenings and the slave godparents are +registered.[22] + +[Footnote 21: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] + +[Footnote 22: MS. in the Howard Memorial Library, New Orleans.] + +The death rate was a subject of more active solicitude. This may be +illustrated from the journal for 1859-1860 of the Magnolia plantation, +forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its record of rations to 138 +hands, and of the occasional births, deaths, runaways and recaptures, and +of the purchase of a man slave for $2300, it contains the following summary +under date of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen months +over 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping cough, and then +the diphtheria, all of which we have gone through with but little loss save +in the whooping cough when we lost some twelve children." This entry was in +the spirit of rejoicing at escape from disasters. But on December 18 there +were two items of another tone. One of these was entered by an overseer +named Kellett: "[I] shot the negro boy Frank for attempting to cut at me +and three boys with his cane knife with intent to kill." The other, in a +different handwriting, recorded tersely: "J.A. Randall commenst buisnass +this mornung. J. Kellett discharged this morning." The owner could not +afford to keep an overseer who killed negroes even though it might be in +self defence.[23] + +[Footnote 23: MS. preserved on the plantation, owned by ex-Governor H.C. +War-moth.] + +Of epidemics, yellow fever was of minor concern as regards the slaves, for +negroes were largely immune to it; but cholera sometimes threatened to +exterminate the slaves and bankrupt their masters. After a visitation of +this in and about New Orleans in 1832, John McDonogh wrote to a friend: +"All that you have seen of yellow fever was nothing in comparison. It is +supposed that five or six thousand souls, black and white, were carried off +in fourteen days."[24] The pecuniary loss in Louisiana from slave deaths +in that epidemic was estimated at four million dollars.[25] Two years +afterward it raged in the Savannah neighborhood. On Mr. Wightman's +plantation, ten miles above the city, there were in the first week of +September fifty-three cases and eighteen deaths. The overseer then checked +the spread by isolating the afflicted ones in the church, the barn and the +mill. The neighboring planters awaited only the first appearance of the +disease on their places to abandon their crops and hurry their slaves to +lodges in the wilderness.[26] Plagues of smallpox were sometimes of similar +dimensions. + +[Footnote 24: William Allen, _Life of John McDonogh_ (Baltimore, 1886), p. +54.] + +[Footnote 25: _Niles' Register_, XLV, 84] + +[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Sept. 14 and 17 and +Oct. 22, 1834.] + +Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin. A series +of them drove M.W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation journal: "Oh! my +losses almost make me crazy. God alone can help." In short, planters must +guard their slaves' health and life as among the most vital of their own +interests; for while crops were merely income, slaves were capital. The +tendency appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrant +labor when available for such work as would involve strain and exposure. +The documents bearing on this theme are scattering but convincing. Thus +E.J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields, +said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantation +ditches;[27] T.B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippi +in 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planter +when describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were +hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usual +routine.[29] Olmsted noted on the Virginia seaboard that "Mr. W.... had an +Irish gang draining for him by contract." Olmsted asked, "why he should +employ Irishmen in preference to doing the work with his own hands. 'It's +dangerous work,' the planter replied, 'and a negro's life is too valuable +to be risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss you +know,'"[30] On a Louisiana plantation W.H. Russell wrote in 1860: "The +labor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands and hewing down the +forests is generally done by Irish laborers who travel about the country +under contractors or are engaged by resident gangsmen for the task. Mr. +Seal lamented the high prices of this work; but then, as he said, 'It was +much better to have Irish do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they +died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment,'" Russell +added on his own score: "There is a wonderful mine of truth in this +observation. Heaven knows how many poor Hibernians have been consumed and +buried in these Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshop +keeper and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the planter." +On another plantation the same traveller was shown the débris left by the +last Irish gang and was regaled by an account of the methods by which their +contractor made them work.[31] Robert Russell made a similar observation on +a plantation near New Orleans, and was told that even at high wages Irish +laborers were advisable for the work because they would do twice as +much ditching as would an equal number of negroes in the same time.[32] +Furthermore, A. de Puy Van Buren, noted as a common sight in the Yazoo +district, "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,' +straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chief +element among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.[33] +Likewise Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his boat with +cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at +the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the +wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division +of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise +confirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggers +are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, +or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chance +observations it may be added that many newspaper items and canal and +railroad company reports from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that the +construction gangs were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attracted +those whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor was +their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the lives +of their slaves. + +[Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, _The Agricultural Productions of +Louisiana_ (New Orleans, 1845).] + +[Footnote 28: _Harper's Magazine_, VII, 755.] + +[Footnote 29: _DeBoufs Review_, XI, 401.] + +[Footnote 30: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 90, 91.] + +[Footnote 31: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp +272, 273, 278.] + +[Footnote 32: Robert Russell, _North America, Its Agriculture and Chwate_ +(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 272.] + +[Footnote 33: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the +South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 84, 318.] + +[Footnote 34: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 550, 551.] + +Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease, disability +and death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better than +a slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on the +plantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely +took vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened +punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape from +bondage altogether. + +Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a protest against +severities. An episode of this sort was recounted in a letter of a Georgia +overseer to his absent employer: "Sir: I write you a few lines in order to +let you know that six of your hands has left the plantation--every man but +Jack. They displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a few +lashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were missing. I think +they are lying out until they can see you or your uncle Jack, as he is +expected daily. They may be gone off, or they may be lying round in this +neighbourhood, but I don't know. I blame Tom for the whole. I don't think +the rest would of left the plantation if Tom had not of persuaded them of +for some design. I give Tom but a few licks, but if I ever get him in my +power I will have satisfaction. There was a part of them had no cause for +leaving, only they thought if they would all go it would injure me moore. +They are as independent a set for running of as I have ever seen, and I +think the cause is they have been treated too well. They want more whipping +and no protecter; but if our country is so that negroes can quit their +homes and run of when they please without being taken they will have the +advantage of us. If they should come in I will write to you immediately and +let you know." [35] + +[Footnote 35: Letter of I.E.H. Harvey, Jefferson County, Georgia, April 16, +1837, to H.C. Flournoy, Athens, Ga. MS. in private possession. Punctuation +and capitals, which are conspicuously absent in the original, have here +been supplied for the sake of clarity.] + +Such a case is analogous to that of wage-earning laborers on strike for +better conditions of work. The slaves could not negotiate directly at such +a time, but while they lay in the woods they might make overtures to the +overseer through slaves on a neighboring plantation as to terms upon which +they would return to work, or they might await their master's posthaste +arrival and appeal to him for a redress of grievances. Humble as their +demeanor might be, their power of renewing the pressure by repeating their +flight could not be ignored. A happy ending for all concerned might be +reached by mutual concessions and pledges. That the conclusion might be +tragic is illustrated in a Louisiana instance where the plantation was in +charge of a negro foreman. Eight slaves after lying out for some weeks +because of his cruelty and finding their hardships in the swamp intolerable +returned home together and proposed to go to work again if granted amnesty. +When the foreman promised a multitude of lashes instead, they killed him +with their clubs. The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia, +told what they had done, and surrendered themselves. The coroner went to +the plantation and found the foreman dead according to specifications.[36] +The further history of the eight is unknown. + +[Footnote 36: _Daily Delta_ (New Orleans), April 17, 1849.] + +Most of the runaways went singly, but some of them went often. Such chronic +offenders were likely to be given exemplary punishment when recaptured. In +the earlier decades branding and shackling were fairly frequent. Some of +the punishments were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflicted +upon talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quite +as fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period the more common +resorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale. The menace of this last +was shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell +on earth of any district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise. +"They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave +refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the +slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for they +recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turn +blackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiable +purpose of keeping their own slaves content. + +Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered more +or less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper advertisements for +fugitives reinforces the impression that the need of deterrence was vital. +Whippings, instead of proving a cure, might bring revenge in the form of +sabotage, arson or murder. Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter might +prove of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical. The +preventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and festivities to +create lightness of heart; overtime and overtask payments to promote zeal +and satisfaction; kindliness and care to call forth loyalty in return; +and the special device of crop patches to give every hand a stake in the +plantation. This last raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaves +were allowed to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might be +stimulated more than industry and punishments become more necessary +than before. In the cotton belt a solution was found at last in nankeen +cotton.[37] This variety had been widely grown for domestic use as early as +the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was left largely in neglect +until when in the thirties it was hit upon for negro crops. While the +prices it brought were about the same as those of the standard upland +staple, its distinctive brown color prevented the admixture of the +planter's own white variety without certain detection when it reached +the gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations is +indicated by the proceeds of $1,969.65 in 1859 from the nankeen of the +negroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in Taylor County, Georgia.[38] Such +returns might be distributed in cash; but planters generally preferred for +the sake of sobriety that money should not be freely handled by the slaves. +Earnings as well as gifts were therefore likely to be issued in the form of +tickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed the following +to the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg in the Christmas season of +1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let the bearer George have ten dollars value in +anything he chooses"; and the merchants entered a memorandum that George +chose two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a pair +of hose, and six shillings in cash.[39] + +[Footnote 37: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. +128.] + +[Footnote 38: Macon, Ga., _Telegraph_, Feb. 3, 1859, quoted in _DeBow's +Review_, XXIX, 362, note.] + +[Footnote 39: MS. among the Allen and Ellis papers in the Library of +Congress.] + +In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to avoid the +occasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too heavy, the simplest +recourse was to reduce the schedule. If jobs were slackly done, +acquiescence was easier than correction. The easy-going and plausible +disposition of the blacks conspired with the heat of the climate to soften +the resolution of the whites and make them patient. Severe and unyielding +requirements would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied with +geniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization would make +plantation life not only tolerable but charming. + +In the actual régime severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness the +rule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote in 1820: "After travelling +through three slave states I am obliged to go back to theory to raise any +abhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an instance of +cruel treatment nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in +'the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and appear at +least as independent as their masters; in animal spirits they have greatly +the advantage."[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828: "I have no wish, God knows! +to defend slavery in the abstract; ... but ... nothing during my recent +journey gave me more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I was +gradually brought that the planters of the Southern states of America, +generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage their estates with +the least possible severity. I do not say that undue severity is nowhere +exercised; but the discipline, taken upon the average, as far as I could +learn, is not more strict than is necessary for the maintenance of a proper +degree of authority, without which the whole framework of society in that +quarter would be blown to atoms."[41] And Olmsted wrote: "The only whipping +of slaves that I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazy +children as they are being broke in to work."[42] + +[Footnote 40: Adlard Welby, _Visit to North America_ (London, 1821 ) +reprinted in Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, XII, 289] + +[Footnote 41: Basil Hall, _Travels in the United States_, III, 227, 228.] + +[Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 146.] + +As to the rate and character of the work, Hall said that in contrast with +the hustle prevailing on the Northern farms, "in Carolina all mankind +appeared comparatively idle."[43] Olmsted, when citing a Virginian's remark +that his negroes never worked enough to tire themselves, said on his own +account: "This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at +work--they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength +into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, +perhaps."[44] And Solon Robinson reported tersely from a rice plantation +that the negroes plied their hoes "at so slow a rate, the motion would have +given a quick-working Yankee convulsions."[45] + +[Footnote 43: Basil Hall, III, 117.] + +[Footnote 44: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 91.] + +[Footnote 45: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 93.] + +There was clearly no general prevalence of severity and strain in the +régime. There was, furthermore, little of that curse of impersonality +and indifference which too commonly prevails in the factories of the +present-day world where power-driven machinery sets the pace, where the +employers have no relations with the employed outside of work hours, where +the proprietors indeed are scattered to the four winds, where the directors +confine their attention to finance, and where the one duty of the +superintendent is to procure a maximum output at a minimum cost. No, the +planters were commonly in residence, their slaves were their chief property +to be conserved, and the slaves themselves would not permit indifference +even if the masters were so disposed. The generality of the negroes +insisted upon possessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectful +intimacy. While by no means every plantation was an Arcadia there were many +on which the industrial and racial relations deserved almost as glowing +accounts as that which the Englishman William Faux wrote in 1819 of the +"goodly plantation" of the venerable Mr. Mickle in the uplands of South +Carolina.[46] "This gentleman," said he, "appears to me to be a rare +example of pure and undefiled religion, kind and gentle in manners.... +Seeing a swarm, or rather herd, of young negroes creeping and dancing +about the door and yard of his mansion, all appearing healthy, happy and +frolicsome and withal fat and decently clothed, both young and old, I felt +induced to praise the economy under which they lived. 'Aye,' said he, 'I +have many black people, but I have never bought nor sold any in my life. +All that you see came to me with my estate by virtue of my father's will. +They are all, old and young, true and faithful to my interests. They need +no taskmaster, no overseer. They will do all and more than I expect them +to do, and I can trust them with untold gold. All the adults are well +instructed, and all are members of Christian churches in the neighbourhood; +and their conduct is becoming their professions. I respect them as my +children, and they look on me as their friend and father. Were they to be +taken from me it would be the most unhappy event of their lives,' This +conversation induced me to view more attentively the faces of the adult +slaves; and I was astonished at the free, easy, sober, intelligent and +thoughtful impression which such an economy as Mr. Mickle's had indelibly +made on their countenances." + +[Footnote 46: William Faux, _Memorable Days in America_ (London, 1823), p. +68, reprinted in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, XI, 87.] + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +PLANTATION LIFE + + +When Hakluyt wrote in 1584 his _Discourse of Western Planting_, his theme +was the project of American colonization; and when a settlement was planted +at Jamestown, at Boston or at Providence as the case might be, it was +called, regardless of the type, a plantation. This usage of the word in the +sense of a colony ended only upon the rise of a new institution to which +the original name was applied. The colonies at large came then to be known +as provinces or dominions, while the sub-colonies, the privately +owned village estates which prevailed in the South, were alone called +plantations. In the Creole colonies, however, these were known as +_habitations_--dwelling places. This etymology of the name suggests the +nature of the thing--an isolated place where people in somewhat peculiar +groups settled and worked and had their being. The standard community +comprised a white household in the midst of several or many negro families. +The one was master, the many were slaves; the one was head, the many were +members; the one was teacher, the many were pupils. + +The scheme of the buildings reflected the character of the group. The "big +house," as the darkies loved to call it, might be of any type from a double +log cabin to a colonnaded mansion of many handsome rooms, and its setting +might range from a bit of primeval forest to an elaborate formal garden. +Most commonly the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretense +to distinction without nor to luxury within. The two fairly constant +features were the hall running the full depth of the house, and the +verandah spanning the front. The former by day and the latter at evening +served in all temperate seasons as the receiving place for guests and the +gathering place for the household at all its leisure times. The house was +likely to have a quiet dignity of its own; but most of such beauty as the +homestead possessed was contributed by the canopy of live-oaks if on the +rice or sugar coasts, or of oaks, hickories or cedars, if in the uplands. +Flanking the main house in many cases were an office and a lodge, +containing between them the administrative headquarters, the schoolroom, +and the apartments for any bachelor overflow whether tutor, sons or +guests. Behind the house and at a distance of a rod or two for the sake of +isolating its noise and odors, was the kitchen. Near this, unless a spring +were available, stood the well with its two buckets dangling from the +pulley; and near this in turn the dairy and the group of pots and tubs +which constituted the open air laundry. Bounding the back yard there were +the smoke-house where bacon and hams were cured, the sweet potato pit, the +ice pit except in the southernmost latitudes where no ice of local origin +was to be had, the carriage house, the poultry house, the pigeon cote, and +the lodgings of the domestic servants. On plantations of small or medium +scale the cabins of the field hands generally stood at the border of the +master's own premises; but on great estates, particularly in the lowlands, +they were likely to be somewhat removed, with the overseer's house, the +smithy, and the stables, corn cribs and wagon sheds nearby. At other +convenient spots were the buildings for working up the crops--the tobacco +house, the threshing and pounding mills, the gin and press, or the sugar +house as the respective staples required. The climate conduced so strongly +to out of door life that as a rule each roof covered but a single unit of +residence, industry or storage. + +The fields as well as the buildings commonly radiated from the planter's +house. Close at hand were the garden, the orchards and the horse lot; and +behind them the sweet potato field, the watermelon patch and the forage +plots of millet, sorghum and the like. Thence there stretched the fields +of the main crops in a more or less solid expanse according to the local +conditions. Where ditches or embankments were necessary, as for sugar and +rice fields, the high cost of reclamation promoted compactness; elsewhere +the prevailing cheapness of land promoted dispersion. Throughout the +uplands, accordingly, the area in crops was likely to be broken by wood +lots and long-term fallows. The scale of tillage might range from a few +score acres to a thousand or two; the expanse of unused land need have no +limit but those of the proprietor's purse and his speculative proclivity. + +The scale of the orchards was in some degree a measure of the domesticity +prevailing. On the rice coast the unfavorable character of the soil and the +absenteeism of the planter's families in summer conspired to keep the fruit +trees few. In the sugar district oranges and figs were fairly plentiful. +But as to both quantity and variety in fruits the Piedmont was unequaled. +Figs, plums, apples, pears and quinces were abundant, but the peaches +excelled all the rest. The many varieties of these were in two main groups, +those of clear stones and soft, luscious flesh for eating raw, and those +of clinging stones and firm flesh for drying, preserving, and making pies. +From June to September every creature, hogs included, commonly had as many +peaches as he cared to eat; and in addition great quantities might be +carried to the stills. The abandoned fields, furthermore, contributed +dewberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild plums in summer, and +persimmons in autumn, when the forest also yielded its muscadines, fox +grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts and chinquapins, and along the +Gulf coast pecans. + +The resources for edible game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, +opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, +doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and +marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and +rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin +and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In +most localities it required little time for a household, slave or free, to +lay forest, field or stream under tribute. + +The planter's own dietary, while mostly home grown, was elaborate. Beef and +mutton were infrequent because the pastures were poor; Irish potatoes were +used only when new, for they did not keep well in the Southern climate; +and wheaten loaves were seldom seen because hot breads were universally +preferred. The standard meats were chicken in its many guises, ham and +bacon. Wheat flour furnished relays of biscuit and waffles, while corn +yielded lye hominy, grits, muffins, batter cakes, spoon bread, hoe cake +and pone. The gardens provided in season lettuce, cucumbers, radishes and +beets, mustard greens and turnip greens, string beans, snap beans and +butter beans, asparagus and artichokes, Irish potatoes, squashes, onions, +carrots, turnips, okra, cabbages and collards. The fields added green corn +for boiling, roasting, stewing and frying, cowpeas and black-eyed peas, +pumpkins and sweet potatoes, which last were roasted, fried or candied +for variation. The people of the rice coast, furthermore, had a special +fondness for their own pearly staple; and in the sugar district _strop de +batterie_ was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves and jellies were +in variety and quantity limited only by the almost boundless resources and +industry of the housewife and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breads +and relishes would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpected +guests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal than would +be taken away at the end, never to return. If ever tables had a habit of +groaning it was those of the planters. Frugality, indeed, was reckoned a +vice to be shunned, and somewhat justly so since the vegetables and eggs +were perishable, the bread and meat of little cost, and the surplus from +the table found sure disposal in the kitchen or the quarters. Lucky was the +man whose wife was the "big house" cook, for the cook carried a basket, and +the basket was full when she was homeward bound. + +The fare of the field hands was, of course, far more simple. Hoecake and +bacon were its basis and often its whole content. But in summer fruit +and vegetables were frequent; there was occasional game and fish at all +seasons; and the first heavy frost of winter brought the festival of +hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all +other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare +ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings +greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of +corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, +carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by brought +recreation, but the hog-killing brought fat satisfaction.[1] + +[Footnote 1: This account of plantation homesteads and dietary is drawn +mainly from the writer's own observations in post-bellum times in which, +despite the shifting of industrial arrangements and the decrease of wealth, +these phases have remained apparent. Confirmation may be had in Philip +Fithian _Journal_ (Princeton, 1900); A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a +Year's Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859); Susan D. Smedes, +_Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (Baltimore, 1887); Mary B. Chestnutt, _A +Diary from Dixie_ (New York, 1905); and many other memoirs and traveller's +accounts.] + +The warmth of the climate produced some distinctive customs. One was the +high seasoning of food to stimulate the appetite; another was the afternoon +siesta of summer; a third the wellnigh constant leaving of doors ajar even +in winter when the roaring logs in the chimney merely took the chill from +the draughts. Indeed a door was not often closed on the plantation except +those of the negro cabins, whose inmates were hostile to night air, and +those of the storerooms. As a rule, it was only in the locks of the latter +that keys were ever turned by day or night. + +The lives of the whites and the blacks were partly segregate, partly +intertwined. If any special link were needed, the children supplied it. +The whites ones, hardly knowing their mothers from their mammies or their +uncles by blood from their "uncles" by courtesy, had the freedom of the +kitchen and the cabins, and the black ones were their playmates in the +shaded sandy yard the livelong day. Together they were regaled with +folklore in the quarters, with Bible and fairy stories in the "big house," +with pastry in the kitchen, with grapes at the scuppernong arbor, with +melons at the spring house and with peaches in the orchard. The half-grown +boys were likewise almost as undiscriminating among themselves as the dogs +with which they chased rabbits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, when +the fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something +to envy in the freedom of their fellows' feet from the cramping weight of +shoes and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With +the approach of maturity came routine and responsibility for the whites, +routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each +race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, some +of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of +both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a somewhat +distinctive plantation type. + +In amusements and in religion the activities of the whites and blacks were +both mingled and separate. Fox hunts when occurring by day were as a rule +diversions only for the planters and their sons and guests, but when they +occurred by moonlight the chase was joined by the negroes on foot with +halloos which rivalled the music of the hounds. By night also the blacks, +with the whites occasionally joining in, sought the canny 'possum and the +embattled 'coon; in spare times by day they hied their curs after the +fleeing Brer Rabbit, or built and baited seductive traps for turkeys and +quail; and fishing was available both by day and by night. At the horse +races of the whites the jockeys and many of the spectators were negroes; +while from the cock fights and even the "crap" games of the blacks, white +men and boys were not always absent. + +Festivities were somewhat more separate than sports, though by no means +wholly so. In the gayeties of Christmas the members of each race were +spectators of the dances and diversions of the other. Likewise marriage +merriment in the great house would have its echo in the quarters; and +sometimes marriages among the slaves were grouped so as to give occasion +for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general +invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding +among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the +fiddle, the banjo and the bones were not seldom in requisition. + +[Footnote 2: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), April 20, 1858.] + +It was a matter of discomfort that in the evangelical churches dancing +and religion were held to be incompatible. At one time on Thomas Dabney's +plantation in Mississippi, for instance, the whole negro force fell captive +in a Baptist "revival" and forswore the double shuffle. "I done buss' my +fiddle an' my banjo, and done fling 'em away," the most music-loving +fellow on the place said to the preacher when asked for his religious +experiences.[3] Such a condition might be tolerable so long as it was +voluntary; but the planters were likely to take precautions against its +becoming coercive. James H. Hammond, for instance, penciled a memorandum +in his plantation manual: "Church members are privileged to dance on all +holyday occasions; and the class-leader or deacon who may report them shall +be reprimanded or punished at the discretion of the master."[4] The logic +with which sin and sanctity were often reconciled is illustrated in Irwin +Russell's remarkably faithful "Christmas in the Quarters." "Brudder Brown" +has advanced upon the crowded floor to "beg a blessin' on dis dance:" + +[Footnote 3: S.D. Smedes. _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 161, 162.] + +[Footnote 4: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + + O Mashr! let dis gath'rin' fin' a blessin' in yo' sight! + Don't jedge us hard fur what we does--you knows it's Chrismus night; + An' all de balunce ob de yeah we does as right's we kin. + Ef dancin's wrong, O Mashr! let de time excuse de sin! + + We labors in de vineya'd, wukin' hard and wukin' true; + Now, shorely you won't notus, ef we eats a grape or two, + An' takes a leetle holiday,--a leetle restin' spell,-- + Bekase, nex' week we'll start in fresh, an' labor twicet as well. + + Remember, Mashr,--min' dis, now,--de sinfulness ob sin + Is 'pendin' 'pon de sperrit what we goes an' does it in; + An' in a righchis frame ob min' we's gwine to dance an' sing, + A-feelin' like King David, when he cut de pigeon-wing. + + It seems to me--indeed it do--I mebbe mout be wrong-- + That people raly _ought_ to dance, when Chrismus comes along; + Des dance bekase dey's happy--like de birds hops in de trees, + De pine-top fiddle soundin' to de blowin' ob de breeze. + + We has no ark to dance afore, like Isrul's prophet king; + We has no harp to soun' de chords, to holp us out to sing; + But 'cordin' to de gif's we has we does de bes' we knows, + An' folks don't 'spise de vi'let-flower bekase it ain't de rose. + + You bless us, please, sah, eben ef we's doin' wrong tonight: + Kase den we'll need de blessin' more'n ef we's doin' right; + An' let de blessin' stay wid us, untel we comes to die, + An' goes to keep our Chrismus wid dem sheriffs in de sky! + + Yes, tell dem preshis anjuls we's a-gwine to jine 'em soon: + Our voices we's a-trainin' fur to sing de glory tune; + We's ready when you wants us, an' it ain't no matter when-- + O Mashr! call yo' chillen soon, an' take 'em home! Amen.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Irwin Russell, _Poems_ (New York [1888]), pp. 5-7.] + +The churches which had the greatest influence upon the negroes were those +which relied least upon ritual and most upon exhilaration. The Baptist and +Methodist were foremost, and the latter had the special advantage of the +chain of camp meetings which extended throughout the inland regions. At +each chosen spot the planters and farmers of the countryside would jointly +erect a great shed or "stand" in the midst of a grove, and would severally +build wooden shelters or "tents" in a great square surrounding it. When the +crops were laid by in August, the households would remove thither, their +wagons piled high with bedding, chairs and utensils to keep "open house" +with heavy-laden tables for all who might come to the meeting. With less +elaborate equipment the negroes also would camp in the neighborhood and +attend the same service as the whites, sitting generally in a section of +the stand set apart for them. The camp meeting, in short, was the chief +social and religious event of the year for all the Methodist whites and +blacks within reach of the ground and for such non-Methodists as cared +to attend. For some of the whites this occasion was highly festive, for +others, intensely religious; but for any negro it might easily be both at +once. Preachers in relays delivered sermons at brief intervals from +sunrise until after nightfall; and most of the sermons were followed by +exhortations for sinners to advance to the mourners' benches to receive +the more intimate and individual suasion of the clergy and their corps of +assisting brethren and sisters. The condition was highly hypnotic, and the +professions of conversion were often quite as ecstatic as the most fervid +ministrant could wish. The negroes were particularly welcome to the +preachers, for they were likely to give the promptest response to the +pulpit's challenge and set the frenzy going. A Georgia preacher, for +instance, in reporting from one of these camps in 1807, wrote: "The first +day of the meeting, we had a gentle and comfortable moving of the spirit of +the Lord among us; and at night it was much more powerful than before, and +the meeting was kept up all night without intermission. However, before +day the white people retired, and the meeting was continued by the black +people." It is easy to see who led the way to the mourners' bench. "Next +day," the preacher continued, "at ten o'clock the meeting was remarkably +lively, and many souls were deeply wrought upon; and at the close of the +sermon there was a general cry for mercy, and before night there were a +good many persons who professed to get converted. That night the meeting +continued all night, both by the white and black people, and many souls +were converted before day." The next day the stir was still more general. +Finally, "Friday was the greatest day of all. We had the Lord's Supper at +night, ... and such a solemn time I have seldom seen on the like occasion. +Three of the preachers fell helpless within the altar, and one lay a +considerable time before he came to himself. From that the work of +convictions and conversions spread, and a large number were converted +during the night, and there was no intermission until the break of day. At +that time many stout hearted sinners were conquered. On Saturday we had +preaching at the rising of the sun; and then with many tears we took leave +of each other."[6] + +[Footnote 6: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Aug. 8, 1807, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 285, 286.] + +The tone of the Baptist "protracted meetings" was much like that of the +Methodist camps. In either case the rampant emotionalism, effective enough +among the whites, was with the negroes a perfect contagion. With some of +these the conversion brought lasting change; with others it provided a +garment of piety to be donned with "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes" and +doffed as irksome on week days. With yet more it merely added to the joys +of life. The thrill of exaltation would be followed by pleasurable "sin," +to give place to fresh conversion when the furor season recurred. The +rivalry of the Baptist and Methodist churches, each striving by similar +methods to excel the other, tempted many to become oscillating proselytes, +yielding to the allurements first of the one and then of the other, and on +each occasion holding the center of the stage as a brand snatched from the +burning, a lost sheep restored to the fold, a cause and participant of +rapture. + +In these manifestations the negroes merely followed and enlarged upon the +example of some of the whites. The similarity of practices, however, +did not promote a permanent mingling of the two races in the same +congregations, for either would feel some restraint upon its rhapsody +imposed by the presence of the other. To relieve this there developed in +greater or less degree a separation of the races for purposes of worship, +white ministers preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantation +missions, and home talent among the negroes filling the intervals. While +some of the black exhorters were viewed with suspicion by the whites, +others were highly esteemed and unusually privileged. One of these at +Lexington, Kentucky, for example, was given the following pass duly signed +by his master: "Tom is my slave, and has permission to go to Louisville for +two or three weeks and return here after he has made his visit. Tom is a +preacher of the reformed Baptist church, and has always been a faithful +servant."[7] As a rule the greater the proportion of negroes in a district +or a church connection, the greater the segregation in worship. If the +whites were many and the negroes few, the latter would be given the gallery +or some other group of pews; but if the whites were few and the negroes +many, the two elements would probably worship in separate buildings. Even +in such case, however, it was very common for a parcel of black domestics +to flock with their masters rather than with their fellows. + +[Footnote 7: Dated Aug. 6, 1856, and signed E. McCallister. MS. in the New +York Public Library.] + +The general régime in the fairly typical state of South Carolina was +described in 1845 in a set of reports procured preliminary to a convention +on the state of religion among the negroes and the means of its betterment. +Some of these accounts were from the clergy of several denominations, +others from the laity; some treated of general conditions in the several +districts, others in detail of systems on the writers' own plantations. In +the latter group, N.W. Middleton, an Episcopalian of St. Andrew's parish, +wrote that he and his wife and sons were the only religious teachers of his +slaves, aside from the rector of the parish. He read the service and taught +the catechism to all every Sunday afternoon, and taught such as came +voluntarily to be instructed after family prayers on Wednesday nights. His +wife and sons taught the children "constantly during the week," chiefly in +the catechism. On the other hand R.F.W. Allston, a fellow Episcopalian of +Prince George, Winyaw, had on his plantation a place of worship open to all +denominations. A Methodist missionary preached there on alternate Sundays, +and the Baptists were less regularly cared for. Both of these sects, +furthermore, had prayer meetings, according to the rules of the plantation, +on two nights of each week. Thus while Middleton endeavored to school his +slaves in his own faith, Allston encouraged them to seek salvation by such +creed as they might choose. + +An Episcopal clergyman in the same parish with Allston wrote that he held +fortnightly services among the negroes on ten plantations, and enlisted +some of the literate slaves as lay readers. His restriction of these to the +text of the prayer book, however, seems to have shorn them of power. The +bulk of the slaves flocked to the more spontaneous exercises elsewhere; +and the clergyman could find ground for satisfaction only in saying that +frequently as many as two hundred slaves attended services at one of the +parish churches in the district. + +The Episcopal failure was the "evangelical" opportunity. Of the thirteen +thousand slaves in Allston's parish some 3200 were Methodists and 1500 +Baptists, as compared with 300 Episcopalians. In St. Peter's parish a +Methodist reported that in a total of 6600 slaves, 1335 adhered to his +faith, about half of whom were in mixed congregations of whites and blacks +under the care of two circuit-riders, and the rest were in charge of two +missionaries who ministered to negroes alone. Every large plantation, +furthermore, had one or more "so-called negro preachers, but more properly +exhorters." In St. Helena parish the Baptists led with 2132 communicants; +the Methodists followed with 314 to whom a missionary holding services on +twenty plantations devoted the whole of his time; and the Episcopalians as +usual brought up the rear with fifty-two negro members of the church at +Beaufort and a solitary additional one in the chapel on St. Helena island. + +Of the progress and effects of religion in the lowlands Allston and +Middleton thought well. The latter said, "In every respect I feel +encouraged to go on." The former wrote: "Of my own negroes and those in my +immediate neighborhood I may speak with confidence. They are attentive to +religious instruction and greatly improved in intelligence and morals, in +domestic relations, etc. Those who have grown up under religious training +are more intelligent and generally, though not always, more improved than +those who have received religious instruction as adults. Indeed the degree +of intelligence which as a class they are acquiring is worthy of deep +consideration." Thomas Fuller, the reporter from the Beaufort neighborhood, +however, was as much apprehensive as hopeful. While the negroes had greatly +improved in manners and appearance as a result of coming to worship in town +every Sunday, said he, the freedom which they were allowed for the purpose +was often misused in ways which led to demoralization. He strongly advised +the planters to keep the slaves at home and provide instruction there. + +From the upland cotton belt a Presbyterian minister in the Chester district +wrote: "You are all aware, gentlemen, that the relation and intercourse +between the whites and the blacks in the up-country are very different from +what they are in the low-country. With us they are neither so numerous nor +kept so entirely separate, but constitute a part of our households, and are +daily either with their masters or some member of the white family. From +this circumstance they feel themselves more identified with their owners +than they can with you. I minister steadily to two different congregations. +More than one hundred blacks attend.... The gallery, or a quarter of the +house, is appropriated to them in all our churches, and they enjoy the +preached gospel in common with the whites." Finally, from the Greenville +district, on the upper edge of the Piedmont, where the Methodists and +Baptists were completely dominant among whites and blacks alike, it was +reported: "About one fourth of the members in the churches are negroes. +In the years 1832, '3 and '4 great numbers of negroes joined the churches +during a period of revival. Many, I am sorry to say, have since been +excommunicated. As the general zeal in religion declined, they backslid." +There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer continued, who were +thought to do some good; but the general improvement in negro character, he +thought, was mainly due to the religious and moral training given by their +masters, and still more largely by their mistresses. From all quarters the +expression was common that the promotion of religion among the slaves was +not only the duty of masters but was to their interest as well in that it +elevated the morals of the workmen and improved the quality of the service +they rendered.[8] + +[Footnote 8: _Proceedings of the Meeting in Charleston, S.C., May 13-15, +1845, on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, together with the Report +of the Committee and the Address to the Public_ (Charleston, 1845). The +reports of the Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes in +Liberty County, Georgia, printed annually for a dozen years or more in the +'thirties and 'forties, relate the career of a particularly interesting +missionary work in that county on the rice coast, under the charge of the +Reverend C.C. Jones. The tenth report in the series (1845) summarizes the +work of the first decade, and the twelfth (1847) surveys the conditions +then prevalent. In C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ +(Nashville, [1857]) the ninth chapter is made up of reports on the mission +activities of that church among the negroes in various quarters of the +South.] + +In general, the less the cleavage of creed between master and man, the +better for both, since every factor conducing to solidarity of sentiment +was of advantage in promoting harmony and progress. When the planter went +to sit under his rector while the slave stayed at home to hear an exhorter, +just so much was lost in the sense of fellowship. It was particularly +unfortunate that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had no +co-religionists except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they had +more conflict than community of economic and sentimental interest. On +the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsible +religious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroes +everywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired by +consistent self-control in the performance of duty rather man by the +alternation of spasmodic reforms and relapses. + +Occasionally some hard-headed negro would resist the hypnotic suggestion +of his preacher, and even repudiate glorification on his death-bed. A +Louisiana physician recounts the final episode in the career of "Old Uncle +Caleb," who had long been a-dying. "Before his departure, Jeff, the negro +preacher of the place, gathered his sable flock of saints and sinners +around the bed. He read a chapter and prayed, after which they sang a +hymn.... Uncle Caleb lay motionless with closed eyes, and gave no sign. +Jeff approached and took his hand. 'Uncle Caleb,' said he earnestly, 'de +doctor says you are dying; and all de bredderin has come in for to see you +de last time. And now, Uncle Caleb, dey wants to hear from your own mouf de +precious words, dat you feels prepared to meet your God, and is ready and +willin' to go,' Old Caleb opened his eyes suddenly, and in a very peevish, +irritable tone, rebuffed the pious functionary in the following unexpected +manner: 'Jeff, don't talk your nonsense to me! You jest knows dat I an't +ready to go, nor willin' neder; and dat I an't prepared to meet nobody,' +Jeff expatiated largely not only on the mercy of God, but on the glories of +the heavenly kingdom, as a land flowing with milk and honey, etc. 'Dis ole +cabin suits me mon'sus well!' was the only reply he could elicit from the +old reprobate. And so he died."[9] + +[Footnote 9: William H. Holcombe, "Sketches of Plantation Life," in the +_Knickerbocker Magazine_, LVII, 631 (June, 1861).] + +The slaves not only had their own functionaries in mystic matters, +including a remnant of witchcraft, but in various temporal concerns also. +Foremen, chosen by masters with the necessary sanction of the slaves, had +industrial and police authority; nurses were minor despots in sick rooms +and plantation hospitals; many an Uncle Remus was an oracle in folklore; +and many an Aunt Dinah was arbitress of style in turbans and of elegancies +in general. Even in the practice of medicine a negro here and there gained +a sage's reputation. The governor of Virginia reported in 1729 that he had +"met with a negro, a very old man, who has performed many wonderful cures +of diseases. For the sake of his freedom he has revealed the medicine, a +concoction of roots and barks.... There is no room to doubt of its being +a certain remedy here, and of singular use among the negroes--it is well +worth the price (£60) of the negro's freedom, since it is now known how to +cure slaves without mercury."[10] And in colonial South Carolina a slave +named Caesar was particularly famed for his cure for poison, which was a +decoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rum +and lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in +case of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription +published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal which +printed it found its copies exhausted by the demand.[11] An example of more +common episodes appears in a letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, +to Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall, asking that "Brother Tom," Carter's +coachman, be sent to see a sick child in his quarter. Dawson continued: +"The black people at this place hath more faith in him as a doctor than any +white doctor; and as I wrote you in a former letter I cannot expect you to +lose your man's time, etc., for nothing, but am quite willing to pay for +same."[12] + +[Footnote 10: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913), +p. 53, note.] + +[Footnote 11: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1751.] + +[Footnote 12: MS. in the Carter papers, Virginia Historical Society.] + +Each plantation had a double head in the master and the mistress. The +latter, mother of a romping brood of her own and over-mother of the +pickaninny throng, was the chatelaine of the whole establishment. Working +with a never flagging constancy, she carried the indoor keys, directed the +household routine and the various domestic industries, served as head nurse +for the sick, and taught morals and religion by precept and example. +Her hours were long, her diversions few, her voice quiet, her influence +firm.[13] Her presence made the plantation a home; her absence would have +made it a factory. The master's concern was mainly with the able-bodied in +the routine of the crops. He laid the plans, guessed the weather, ordered +the work, and saw to its performance. He was out early and in late, +directing, teaching, encouraging, and on occasion punishing. Yet he found +time for going to town and for visits here and there, time for politics, +and time for sports. If his duty as he saw it was sometimes grim, and +his disappointments keen, hearty diversions were at hand to restore his +equanimity. His horn hung near and his hounds made quick response on +Reynard's trail, and his neighbors were ready to accept his invitations and +give theirs lavishly in return, whether to their houses or to their fields. +When their absences from home were long, as they might well be in the +public service, they were not unlikely upon return to meet such a reception +as Henry Laurens described: "I found nobody there but three of our old +domestics--Stepney, Exeter and big Hagar. These drew tears from me by their +humble and affectionate salutes. My knees were clasped, my hands kissed, +my very feet embraced, and nothing less than a very--I can't say fair, but +full--buss of my lips would satisfy the old man weeping and sobbing in my +face.... They ... held my hands, hung upon me; I could scarce get from +them. 'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never thought to see you again; now I am +happy; Ah, I never thought to see you again.'"[14] + +[Footnote 13: Emily J. Putnam, _The Lady_ (New York, 1910), pp. 282-323.] + +[Footnote 14: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 436.] + +Among the clearest views of plantation life extant are those of two +Northern tutors who wrote of their Southern sojourns. One was Philip +Fithian who went from Princeton in 1773 to teach the children of Colonel +Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall in the "Northern Neck" of Virginia, probably +the most aristocratic community of the whole South: the other was A. de Puy +Van Buren who left Battle Creek in the eighteen-fifties to seek health and +employment in Mississippi and found them both, and happiness too, amid the +freshly settled folk on the banks of the Yazoo River. Each of these made +jottings now and then of the work and play of the negroes, but both of them +were mainly impressed by the social régime in which they found themselves +among the whites. Fithian marveled at the evidences of wealth and the +stratification of society, but he reckoned that a well recommended +Princeton graduate, with no questions asked as to his family, fortune or +business, would be rated socially as on an equal footing with the owner +of a £10,000 estate, though this might be discounted one-half if he were +unfashionably ignorant of dancing, boxing, fencing, fiddling and cards.[15] +He was attracted by the buoyancy, the good breeding and the cordiality of +those whom he met, and particularly by the sound qualities of Colonel and +Mrs. Carter with whom he dwelt; but as a budding Presbyterian preacher he +was a little shocked at first by the easy-going conduct of the Episcopalian +planters on Sundays. The time at church, he wrote, falls into three +divisions: first, that before service, which is filled by the giving and +receiving of business letters, the reading of advertisements and the +discussion of crop prices and the lineage and qualities of favorite horses; +second, "in the church at service, prayrs read over in haste, a sermon +seldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound +morality or deep, studied metaphysicks;"[16] third, "after service is over, +three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the church among the +crowd, in which time you will be invited by several different gentlemen +home with them to dinner." + +[Footnote 15: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), +p. 287.] + +[Footnote 16: Fithian _Journal and Letters_, p. 296.] + +Van Buren found the towns in the Yazoo Valley so small as barely to be +entitled to places on the map; he found the planters' houses to be commonly +mere log structures, as the farmers' houses about his own home in Michigan +had been twenty years before; and he found the roads so bad that the mule +teams could hardly draw their wagons nor the spans of horses their chariots +except in dry weather. But when on his horseback errands in search of a +position he learned to halloo from the roadway and was regularly met at +each gate with an extended hand and a friendly "How do you do, sir? Won't +you alight, come in, take a seat and sit awhile?"; when he was invariably +made a member of any circle gathered on the porch and refreshed with cool +water from the cocoanut dipper or with any other beverages in circulation; +when he was asked as a matter of course to share any meal in prospect and +to spend the night or day, he discovered charms even in the crudities of +the pegs for hanging saddles on the porch and the crevices between the logs +of the wall for the keeping of pipes and tobacco, books and newspapers. +Finally, when the planter whose house he had made headquarters for two +months declined to accept a penny in payment, Van Buren's heart overflowed. +The boys whom he then began to teach he found particularly apt in +historical studies, and their parents with whom he dwelt were thorough +gentlefolk. + +Toward the end of his narrative, Van Buren expressed the thought that +Mississippi, the newly settled home of people from all the older Southern +states, exemplified the manners of all. He was therefore prompted to +generalize and interpret: "A Southern gentleman is composed of the same +material that a Northern gentleman is, only it is tempered by a Southern +clime and mode of life. And if in this temperament there is a little more +urbanity and chivalry, a little more politeness and devotion to the ladies, +a little more _suaviter in modo_, why it is theirs--be fair and acknowledge +it, and let them have it. He is from the mode of life he lives, especially +at home, more or less a cavalier; he invariably goes a-horseback. His boot +is always spurred, and his hand ensigned with the riding-whip. Aside from +this he is known by his bearing--his frankness and firmness." Furthermore +he is a man of eminent leisureliness, which Van Buren accounts for as +follows: "Nature is unloosed of her stays there; she is not crowded for +time; the word haste is not in her vocabulary. In none of the seasons is +she stinted to so short a space to perform her work as at the North. She +has leisure enough to bud and blossom--to produce and mature fruit, and do +all her work. While on the other hand in the North right the reverse is +true. Portions are taken off the fall and spring to lengthen out the +winter, making his reign nearly half the year. This crowds the work of +the whole year, you might say, into about half of it. This ... makes the +essential difference between a Northerner and a Southerner. They are +children of their respective climes; and this is why Southrons are so +indifferent about time; they have three months more of it in a year than we +have." [17] + +[Footnote 17: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the +South_, pp. 232-236.] + +A key to Van Buren's enthusiasm is given by a passage in the diary of +the great English reporter, William H. Russell: "The more one sees of a +planter's life the greater is the conviction that its charms come from a +particular turn of mind, which is separated by a wide interval from modern +ideas in Europe. The planter is a denomadized Arab;--he has fixed himself +with horses and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women with +Oriental care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tender +and hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming, +because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments of +womanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudeness +about it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents are +visible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, in +its decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery."[18] The Southerners +themselves took its incongruities much as a matter of course. The régime +was to their minds so clearly the best attainable under the circumstances +that its roughnesses chafed little. The plantations were homes to which, +as they were fond of singing, their hearts turned ever; and the negroes, +exasperating as they often were to visiting strangers, were an element +in the home itself. The problem of accommodation, which was the central +problem of the life, was on the whole happily solved. + +[Footnote 18: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, +1863), p. 285.] + +The separate integration of the slaves was no more than rudimentary. They +were always within the social mind and conscience of the whites, as the +whites in turn were within the mind and conscience of the blacks. The +adjustments and readjustments were mutually made, for although the masters +had by far the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by no +means devoid of influence. A sagacious employer has well said, after long +experience, "a negro understands a white man better than the white man +understands the negro."[19] This knowledge gave a power all its own. The +general régime was in fact shaped by mutual requirements, concessions +and understandings, producing reciprocal codes of conventional morality. +Masters of the standard type promoted Christianity and the customs of +marriage and parental care, and they instructed as much by example as +by precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences, and +permitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought the slaves could be +trusted not to abuse; they refrained from selling slaves except under +the stress of circumstances; they avoided cruel, vindictive and captious +punishments, and endeavored to inspire effort through affection rather +than through fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderate +industrial results. In short their despotism, so far as it might properly +be so called was benevolent in intent and on the whole beneficial in +effect. + +[Footnote 19: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of +Economics_ [New Orleans, 1911], p. 8.] + +Some planters there were who inflicted severe punishments for disobedience +and particularly for the offense of running away; and the community +condoned and even sanctioned a certain degree of this. Otherwise no planter +would have printed such descriptions of scars and brands as were fairly +common in the newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the recapture +of absconders.[20] When severity went to an excess that was reckoned as +positive cruelty, however, the law might be invoked if white witnesses +could be had; or the white neighbors or the slaves themselves might apply +extra-legal retribution. The former were fain to be content with inflicting +social ostracism or with expelling the offender from the district;[21] the +latter sometimes went so far as to set fire to the oppressor's house or to +accomplish his death by poison, cudgel, knife or bullet.[22] + +[Footnote 20: Examples are reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, +79-91.] + +[Footnote 21: An instance is given in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the +Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., [1914]), p. 75.] + +[Footnote 22: For instances _see Plantation and Frontier_, II, 117-121.] + +In the typical group there was occasion for terrorism on neither side. The +master was ruled by a sense of dignity, duty and moderation, and the +slaves by a moral code of their own. This embraced a somewhat obsequious +obedience, the avoidance of open indolence and vice, the attainment of +moderate skill in industry, and the cultivation of the master's good +will and affection. It winked at petty theft, loitering and other little +laxities, while it stressed good manners and a fine faithfulness in major +concerns. While the majority were notoriously easy-going, very many made +their master's interests thoroughly their own; and many of the masters had +perfect confidence in the loyalty of the bulk of their servitors. When on +the eve of secession Edmund Ruffin foretold[23] the fidelity which the +slaves actually showed when the war ensued, he merely voiced the faith of +the planter class. + +[Footnote 23: _Debowfs Review_, XXX, 118-120 (January, 1861).] + +In general the relations on both sides were felt to be based on pleasurable +responsibility. The masters occasionally expressed this in their letters. +William Allason, for example, who after a long career as a merchant at +Falmouth, Virginia, had retired to plantation life, declined his niece's +proposal in 1787 that he return to Scotland to spend his declining years. +In enumerating his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing which +in your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithful +slaves, which perhaps we have raised from their earliest breath. Even this, +however, some can do, as with horses, etc., but I must own that it is not +in my disposition."[24] + +[Footnote 24: Letter dated Jan. 22, 1787, in the Allason MS. mercantile +books, Virginia State Library.] + +Others were yet more expressive when they came to write their wills. +Thus[25] Howell Cobb of Houston County, Georgia, when framing his testament +in 1817 which made his body-servant "to be what he is really deserving, a +free man," and gave an annuity along with virtual freedom to another slave, +of an advanced age, said that the liberation of the rest of his slaves was +prevented by a belief that the care of generous and humane masters would +be much better for them than a state of freedom. Accordingly he bequeathed +these to his wife who he knew from her goodness of temper would treat them +with unflagging kindness. But should the widow remarry, thereby putting her +property under the control of a stranger, the slaves and the plantation +were at once to revert to the testator's brother who was recommended to +bequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he were deemed worthy of the +trust. "It is my most ardent desire that in whatsoever hands fortune +may place said negroes," the will enjoined, "that all the justice and +indulgence may be shown them that is consistent with a state of slavery. I +flatter myself with the hope that none of my relations or connections will +be so ungrateful to my memory as to treat or use them otherwise." Surely +upon the death of such a master the slaves might, with even more than usual +unction, raise their melodious refrain: + +[Footnote 25: MS. copy in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, +Ga. The nephew mentioned in the will was Howell Cobb of Confederate +prominence.] + + Down in de cawn fiel' + Hear dat mo'nful soun'; + All de darkies am aweepin', + Massa's in de col', col' ground. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +PLANTATION TENDENCIES + + +Every typical settlement in English America was in its first phase a bit +of the frontier. Commerce was rudimentary, capital scant, and industry +primitive. Each family had to suffice itself in the main with its own +direct produce. No one could afford to specialize his calling, for the +versatility of the individual was wellnigh a necessity of life. This phase +lasted only until some staple of export was found which permitted the rise +of external trade. Then the fruit of such energy as could be spared from +the works of bodily sustenance was exchanged for the goods of the outer +world; and finally in districts of special favor for staples, the bulk of +the community became absorbed in the special industry and procured most of +its consumption goods from without. + +In the hidden coves of the Southern Alleghanies the primitive régime has +proved permanent. In New England where it was but gradually replaced +through the influence first of the fisheries and then of manufacturing, it +survived long enough to leave an enduring spirit of versatile enterprise, +evidenced in the plenitude of "Yankee notions." In the Southern lowlands +and Piedmont, however, the pristine advantages of self-sufficing industry +were so soon eclipsed by the profits to be had from tobacco, rice, indigo, +sugar or cotton, that in large degree the whole community adopted a +stereotyped economy with staple production as its cardinal feature. +The earnings obtained by the more efficient producers brought an early +accumulation of capital, and at the same time the peculiar adaptability of +all the Southern staples to production on a large scale by unfree labor +prompted the devotion of most of the capital to the purchase of servants +and slaves. Thus in every district suited to any of these staples, the +growth of an industrial and social system like that of Europe and the +Northern States was cut short and the distinctive Southern scheme of things +developed instead. + +This régime was conditioned by its habitat, its products and the racial +quality of its labor supply, as well as by the institution of slavery and +the traditional predilections of the masters. The climate of the South was +generally favorable to one or another of the staples except in the elevated +tracts in and about the mountain ranges. The soil also was favorable except +in the pine barrens which skirted the seaboard. Everywhere but in the +alluvial districts, however, the land had only a surface fertility, and all +the staples, as well as their great auxiliary Indian corn, required the +fields to be kept clean and exposed to the weather; and the heavy rainfall +of the region was prone to wash off the soil from the hillsides and to +leach the fertile ingredients through the sands of the plains. But so +spacious was the Southern area that the people never lacked fresh fields +when their old ones were outworn. Hence, while public economy for the long +run might well have suggested a conservation of soil at the expense of +immediate crops, private economy for the time being dictated the opposite +policy; and its dictation prevailed, as it has done in virtually all +countries and all ages. Slaves working in squads might spread manure and +sow soiling crops if so directed, as well as freemen working individually; +and their failure to do so was fully paralleled by similar neglect at the +North in the same period. New England, indeed, was only less noted than the +South for exhausted fields and abandoned farms. The newness of the country, +the sparseness of population and the cheapness of land conspired with +crops, climate and geological conditions to promote exploitive methods. +The planters were by no means alone in shaping their program to fit these +circumstances.[1] The heightened speed of the consequences was in a sense +merely an unwelcome proof of their system's efficiency. Their laborers, by +reason of being slaves, must at word of command set forth on a trek of +a hundred or a thousand miles. No racial inertia could hinder nor local +attachments hold them. In the knowledge of this the masters were even more +alert than other men of the time for advantageous new locations; and they +were accordingly fain to be content with rude houses and flimsy fences in +any place of sojourn, and to let their hills remain studded with stumps as +well as to take the exhaustion of the soil as a matter of course.[2] + +[Footnote 1 Edmund Ruffin, _Address on the opposite results of exhausting +and fertilizing systems of agriculture. Read before the South Carolina +Institute, November 18, 1852_ (Charleston, 1853), pp. 12, 13.] + +[Footnote 2 W.L. Trenholm, "The Southern States, their social and +industrial history, conditions and needs," in the _Journal of Social +Science_, no. IX (January, 1878).] + +Migration produced a more or less thorough segregation of types, for +planters and farmers respectively tended to enter and remain in the +districts most favorable to them.[3] The monopolization of the rice and +sugar industries by the planters, has been described in previous chapters. +At the other extreme the farming régime was without a rival throughout the +mountain regions, in the Shenandoah and East Tennessee Valleys and in +large parts of Kentucky and Missouri where the Southern staples would not +flourish, and in great tracts of the pine barrens where the quality of +the soil repelled all but the unambitious. The tobacco and cotton belts +remained as the debatable ground in which the two systems might compete on +more nearly even terms, though in some cotton districts the planters had +always an overwhelming advantage. In the Mississippi bottoms, for example, +the solid spread of the fields facilitated the supervision of large gangs +at work, and the requirement of building and maintaining great levees on +the river front virtually debarred operations by small proprietors. The +extreme effects of this are illustrated in Issa-quena County, Mississippi, +and Concordia Parish, Louisiana, where in 1860 the slaveholdings averaged +thirty and fifty slaves each, and where except for plantation overseers +and their families there were virtually no non-slaveholders present. The +Alabama prairies, furthermore, showed a plantation predominance almost as +complete. In the six counties of Dallas, Greene, Lowndes, Macon, Perry, +Sumter and Wilcox, for example, the average slaveholdings ranged from +seventeen to twenty-one each, and the slaveholding families were from twice +to six times as numerous as the non-slaveholding ones. Even in the more +rugged parts of the cotton belt and in the tobacco zone as well, the same +tendency toward the engrossment of estates prevailed, though in milder +degree and with lesser effects. + +[Footnote 3 F.V. Emerson, "Geographical Influences in American Slavery," in +the American Geographical Society _Bulletin_, XLIII (1911), 13-26, 106-118, +170-181.] + +This widespread phenomenon did not escape the notice of contemporaries. Two +members of the South Carolina legislature described it as early as 1805 in +substance as follows: "As one man grows wealthy and thereby increases his +stock of negroes, he wants more land to employ them on; and being fully +able, he bids a large price for his less opulent neighbor's plantation, who +by selling advantageously here can raise money enough to go into the back +country, where he can be more on a level with the most forehanded, can get +lands cheaper, and speculate or grow rich by industry as he pleases."[4] +Some three decades afterward another South Carolinian spoke sadly "on the +incompatibleness of large plantations with neighboring farms, and their +uniform tendency to destroy the yeoman."[5] Similarly Dr. Basil Manly,[6] +president of the University of Alabama, spoke in 1841 of the inveterate +habit of Southern farmers to buy more land and slaves and plod on captive +to the customs of their ancestors; and C.C. Clay, Senator from Alabama, +said in 1855 of his native county of Madison, which lay on the Tennessee +border: "I can show you ... the sad memorials of the artless and exhausting +culture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking the cream off their +lands, unable to restore them by rest, manures or otherwise, are going +further west and south in search of other virgin lands which they may and +will despoil and impoverish in like manner. Our wealthier planters, with +greater means and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, +extending their plantations and adding to their slave force. The wealthy +few, who are able to live on smaller profits and to give their blasted +fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merely +independent.... In traversing that county one will discover numerous farm +houses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied +by slaves, or tenantless, deserted and dilapidated; he will observe +fields, once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those evil +harbingers fox-tail and broomsedge; he will see the moss growing on the +mouldering walls of once thrifty villages; and will find 'one only master +grasps the whole domain' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen white +families. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty years ago scarce +a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is already +exhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and +the Carolinas; the freshness of its agricultural glory is gone, the vigor +of its youth is extinct, and the spirit of desolation seems brooding over +it."[7] + +[Footnote 4: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] + +[Footnote 5: Quoted in Francis Lieber, _Slavery, Plantations and the +Yeomanry_ (Loyal Publication Society, no. 29, New York, 1863), p. 5.] + +[Footnote 6: _Tuscaloosa Monitor_, April 13, 1842.] + +[Footnote 7: _DeBow's Review_, XIX, 727.] + +The census returns for Madison County show that in 1830 when the gross +population was at its maximum the whites and slaves were equally numerous, +and that by 1860 while the whites had diminished by a fourth the slaves had +increased only by a twentieth. This suggests that the farmers were drawn, +not driven, away. + +The same trend may be better studied in the uplands of eastern Georgia +where earlier settlements gave a longer experience and where fuller +statistics permit a more adequate analysis. In the county of Oglethorpe, +typical of that area, the whites in the year 1800 were more than twice as +many as the slaves, the non-slaveholding families were to the slaveholders +in the ratio of 8 to 5, and slaveholders on the average had but 5 +slaves each. In 1820 the county attained its maximum population for the +ante-bellum period, and competition between the industrial types was +already exerting its full effect. The whites were of the same number as +twenty years before, but the slaves now exceeded them; the slaveholding +families also slightly exceeded those who had none, and the scale of the +average slaveholding had risen to 8.5. Then in the following forty years +while the whites diminished and the number of slaves remained virtually +constant, the scale of the average slaveholding rose to 12.2; the number of +slaveholders shrank by a third and the non-slaveholders by two thirds.[8] +The smaller slaveholders, those we will say with less than ten slaves each, +ought of course to be classed among the farmers. When this is done the +farmers of Oglethorpe appear to have been twice as many as the planters +even in 1860. But this is properly offset by rating the average plantation +there at four or five times the industrial scale of the average farm, which +makes it clear that the plantation régime had grown dominant. + +[Footnote 8: U.B. Phillips, "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black +Belts," in the _American Historical Review_, XI, 810-813 (July, 1906).] + +In such a district virtually everyone was growing cotton to the top of his +ability. When the price of the staple was high, both planters and farmers +prospered in proportion to their scales. Those whose earnings were greatest +would be eager to enlarge their fields, and would make offers for adjoining +lands too tempting for some farmers to withstand. These would sell out and +move west to resume cotton culture to better advantage than before. When +cotton prices were low, however, the farmers, feeling the stress most +keenly, would be inclined to forsake staple production. But in such case +there was no occasion for them to continue cultivating lands best fit for +cotton. The obvious policy would be to sell their homesteads to neighboring +planters and move to cheaper fields beyond the range of planters' +competition. Thus the farmers were constantly pioneering in districts of +all sorts, while the plantation régime, whether by the prosperity and +enlargement of the farms or by the immigration of planters, or both, was +constantly replacing the farming scale in most of the staple areas. + +In the oldest districts of all, however, the lowlands about the Chesapeake, +the process went on to a final stage in which the bulk of the planters, +after exhausting the soil for staple purposes, departed westward and were +succeeded in their turn by farmers, partly native whites and free negroes +and partly Northerners trickling in, who raised melons, peanuts, potatoes, +and garden truck for the Northern city markets. + +Throughout the Southern staple areas the plantations waxed and waned in a +territorial progression. The régime was a broad billow moving irresistibly +westward and leaving a trough behind. At the middle of the nineteenth +century it was entering Texas, its last available province, whose cotton +area it would have duly filled had its career escaped its catastrophic +interruption. What would have occurred after that completion, without the +war, it is interesting to surmise. Probably the crest of the billow would +have subsided through the effect of an undertow setting eastward again. +Belated immigrants, finding the good lands all engrossed, would have +returned to their earlier homes, to hold their partially exhausted soils +in higher esteem than before and to remedy the depletion by reformed +cultivation. That the billow did not earlier give place to a level flood +was partly due to the shortage of slaves; for the African trade was closed +too soon for the stock to fill the country in these decades. To the same +shortage was owing such opportunity as the white yeomanry had in staple +production. The world offered a market, though not at high prices, for a +greater volume of the crops than the plantation slaves could furnish; the +farmers supplied the deficit. + +Free workingmen in general, whether farmers, artisans or unskilled wage +earners, merely filled the interstices in and about the slave plantations. +One year in the eighteen-forties a planter near New Orleans, attempting to +dispense with slave labor, assembled a force of about a hundred Irish and +German immigrants for his crop routine. Things went smoothly until the +midst of the grinding season, when with one accord the gang struck for +double pay. Rejecting the demand the planter was unable to proceed with +his harvest and lost some ten thousand dollars worth of his crop.[9] The +generality of the planters realized, without such a demonstration, that +each year must bring its crop crisis during which an overindulgence by the +laborers in the privileges of liberty might bring ruin to the employers. +To secure immunity from this they were the more fully reconciled to the +limitations of their peculiar labor supply. Freemen white or black might +be convenient as auxiliaries, and were indeed employed in many instances +whether on annual contract as blacksmiths and the like or temporarily +as emergency helpers in the fields; but negro slaves were the standard +composition of the gangs. This brought it about that whithersoever the +planters went they carried with them crowds of negro slaves and all the +problems and influences to which the presence of negroes and the prevalence +of slavery gave rise. + +[Footnote 9: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_, +(London, 1850), II, 162, 163.] + +One of the consequences was to keep foreign immigration small. In the +colonial period the trade in indentured servants recruited the white +population, and most of those who came in that status remained as permanent +citizens of the South; but such Europeans as came during the nineteenth +century were free to follow their own reactions without submitting to a +compulsory adjustment. Many of them found the wage-earning opportunity +scant, for the slaves were given preference by their masters when steady +occupations were to be filled, and odd jobs were often the only recourse +for outsiders. This was an effect of the slavery system. Still more +important, however, was the repugnance which the newcomers felt at working +and living alongside the blacks; and this was a consequence not of the +negroes being slaves so much as of the slaves being negroes. It was +a racial antipathy which when added to the experience of industrial +disadvantage pressed the bulk of the newcomers northwestward beyond the +confines of the Southern staple belts, and pressed even many of the native +whites in the same direction. + +This intrenched the slave plantations yet more strongly in their local +domination, and by that very fact it hampered industrial development. Great +landed proprietors, it is true, have oftentimes been essential for making +beneficial innovations. Thus the remodeling of English agriculture which +Jethro Tull and Lord Townsend instituted in the eighteenth century could +not have been set in progress by any who did not possess their combination +of talent and capital.[10] In the ante-bellum South, likewise, it was the +planters, and necessarily so, who introduced the new staples of sea-island +cotton and sugar, the new devices of horizontal plowing and hillside +terracing, the new practice of seed selection, and the new resource of +commercial fertilizers. Yet their constant bondage to the staples debarred +the whole community in large degree from agricultural diversification, and +their dependence upon gangs of negro slaves kept the average of skill and +assiduity at a low level. + +[Footnote 10: R.E. Prothero, _English Farming, past and present_, (London, +1912), chap. 7.] + +The negroes furnished inertly obeying minds and muscles; slavery provided a +police; and the plantation system contributed the machinery of direction. +The assignment of special functions to slaves of special aptitudes would +enhance the general efficiency; the coördination of tasks would prevent +waste of effort; and the conduct of a steady routine would lessen the +mischiefs of irresponsibility. But in the work of a plantation squad no +delicate implements could be employed, for they would be broken; and no +discriminating care in the handling of crops could be had except at a cost +of supervision which was generally prohibitive. The whole establishment +would work with success only when the management fully recognized and +allowed for the crudity of the labor. + +The planters faced this fact with mingled resolution and resignation. The +sluggishness of the bulk of their slaves they took as a racial trait to +be conquered by discipline, even though their ineptitude was not to +be eradicated; the talents and vigor of their exceptional negroes and +mulattoes, on the other hand, they sought to foster by special training and +rewards. But the prevalence of slavery which aided them in the one policy +hampered them in the other, for it made the rewards arbitrary instead of +automatic and it restricted the scope of the laborers' employments and of +their ambitions as well. The device of hiring slaves to themselves, which +had an invigorating effect here and there in the towns, could find little +application in the country; and the paternalism of the planters could +provide no fully effective substitute. Hence the achievements of the +exceptional workmen were limited by the status of slavery as surely as +the progress of the generality was restricted by the fact of their being +negroes. + +A further influence of the plantation system was to hamper the growth of +towns. This worked in several ways. As for manufactures, the chronic demand +of the planters for means with which to enlarge their scales of operations +absorbed most of the capital which might otherwise have been available for +factory promotion. A few cotton mills were built in the Piedmont where +water power was abundant, and a few small ironworks and other industries; +but the supremacy of agriculture was nowhere challenged. As for commerce, +the planters plied the bulk of their trade with distant wholesale dealers, +patronizing the local shopkeepers only for petty articles or in emergencies +when transport could not be awaited; and the slaves for their part, while +willing enough to buy of any merchant within reach, rarely had either money +or credit. + +Towns grew, of course, at points on the seaboard where harbors were good, +and where rivers or railways brought commerce from the interior. Others +rose where the fall line marked the heads of river navigation, and on the +occasional bluffs of the Mississippi, and finally a few more at railroad +junctions. All of these together numbered barely three score, some of which +counted their population by hundreds rather than by thousands; and in the +wide intervals between there was nothing but farms, plantations and thinly +scattered villages. In the Piedmont, country towns of fairly respectable +dimensions rose here and there, though many a Southern county-seat could +boast little more than a court house and a hitching rack. Even as regards +the seaports, the currents of trade were too thin and divergent to permit +of large urban concentration, for the Appalachian water-shed shut off +the Atlantic ports from the commerce of the central basin; and even the +ambitious construction of railroads to the northwest, fostered by the +seaboard cities, merely enabled the Piedmont planters to get their +provisions overland, and barely affected the volume of the seaboard trade. +New Orleans alone had a location promising commercial greatness; but her +prospects were heavily diminished by the building of the far away Erie +Canal and the Northern trunk line railroads which diverted the bulk of +Northwestern trade from the Gulf outlet. + +As conditions were, the slaveholding South could have realized a +metropolitan life only through absentee proprietorships. In the Roman +_latifundia_, which overspread central and southern Italy after the +Hannibalic war, absenteeism was a chronic feature and a curse. The +overseers there were commonly not helpers in the proprietors' daily +routine, but sole managers charged with a paramount duty of procuring +the greatest possible revenues and transmitting them to meet the urban +expenditures of their patrician employers. The owners, having no more +personal touch with their great gangs of slaves than modern stockholders +have with the operatives in their mills, exploited them accordingly. Where +humanity and profits were incompatible, business considerations were likely +to prevail. Illustrations of the policy may be drawn from Cato the Elder's +treatise on agriculture. Heavy work by day, he reasoned, would not only +increase the crops but would cause deep slumber by night, valuable as a +safeguard against conspiracy; discord was to be sown instead of harmony +among the slaves, for the same purpose of hindering plots; capital +sentences when imposed by law were to be administered in the presence of +the whole corps for the sake of their terrorizing effect; while rations for +the able-bodied were not to exceed a fixed rate, those for the sick were to +be still more frugally stinted; and the old and sick slaves were to be +sold along with other superfluities.[11] Now, Cato was a moralist of wide +repute, a stoic it is true, but even so a man who had a strong sense of +duty. If such were his maxims, the oppressions inflicted by his fellow +proprietors and their slave drivers must have been stringent indeed. + +[Footnote 11: A.H.J. Greenidge, _History of Rome during the later Republic +and the early Principate_ (New York, 1905), I, 64-85; M. Porcius Cato, _De +Agri Cultura_, Keil ed. (Leipsig, 1882).] + +The heartlessness of the Roman _latifundiarii_ was the product partly of +their absenteeism, partly of the cheapness of their slaves which were +poured into the markets by conquests and raids in all quarters of the +Mediterranean world, and partly of the lack of difference between masters +and slaves in racial traits. In the ante-bellum South all these conditions +were reversed: the planters were commonly resident; the slaves were costly; +and the slaves were negroes, who for the most part were by racial quality +submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable +and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited +paternalism rather than repression. Many a city slave in Rome was the boon +companion of his master, sharing his intellectual pleasures and his revels, +while most of those on the _latifundia_ were driven cattle. It was hard to +maintain a middle adjustment for them. In the South, on the other hand, the +medium course was the obvious thing. The bulk of the slaves, because they +were negroes, because they were costly, and because they were in personal +touch, were pupils and working wards, while the planters were teachers and +guardians as well as masters and owners. There was plenty of coercion in +the South; but in comparison with the harshness of the Roman system the +American régime was essentially mild. + +Every plantation of the standard Southern type was, in fact, a school +constantly training and controlling pupils who were in a backward state of +civilization. Slave youths of special promise, or when special purposes +were in view, might be bound as apprentices to craftsmen at a distance. +Thus James H. Hammond in 1859 apprenticed a fourteen-year-old mulatto boy, +named Henderson, for four years to Charles Axt, of Crawfordville, Georgia, +that he might be taught vine culture. Axt agreed in the indenture to feed +and clothe the boy, pay for any necessary medical attention, teach him his +trade, and treat him with proper kindness. Before six months were ended +Alexander H. Stephens, who was a neighbor of Axt and a friend of Hammond, +wrote the latter that Henderson had run away and that Axt was unfit to have +the care of slaves, especially when on hire, and advised Hammond to take +the boy home. Soon afterward Stephens reported that Henderson had returned +and had been whipped, though not cruelly, by Axt.[12] The further history +of this episode is not ascertainable. Enough of it is on record, however, +to suggest reasons why for the generality of slaves home training was +thought best. + +[Footnote 12: MSS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +This, rudimentary as it necessarily was, was in fact just what the bulk of +the negroes most needed. They were in an alien land, in an essentially +slow process of transition from barbarism to civilization. New industrial +methods of a simple sort they might learn from precepts and occasional +demonstrations; the habits and standards of civilized life they could only +acquire in the main through examples reinforced with discipline. These the +plantation régime supplied. Each white family served very much the function +of a modern social settlement, setting patterns of orderly, well bred +conduct which the negroes were encouraged to emulate; and the planters +furthermore were vested with a coercive power, salutary in the premises, of +which settlement workers are deprived. The very aristocratic nature of the +system permitted a vigor of discipline which democracy cannot possess. On +the whole the plantations were the best schools yet invented for the mass +training of that sort of inert and backward people which the bulk of the +American negroes represented. The lack of any regular provision for the +discharge of pupils upon the completion of their training was, of course, a +cardinal shortcoming which the laws of slavery imposed; but even in view +of this, the slave plantation régime, after having wrought the initial and +irreparable misfortune of causing the negroes to be imported, did at +least as much as any system possible in the period could have done toward +adapting the bulk of them to life in a civilized community. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE + + +In barbaric society slavery is a normal means of conquering the isolation +of workers and assembling them in more productive coördination. Where +population is scant and money little used it is almost a necessity in the +conduct of large undertakings, and therefore more or less essential for +the advancement of civilization. It is a means of domesticating savage or +barbarous men, analogous in kind and in consequence to the domestication of +the beasts of the field.[1] It was even of advantage to some of the people +enslaved, in that it saved them from extermination when defeated in war, +and in that it gave them touch with more advanced communities than their +own. But this was counterbalanced by the stimulus which the profits of +slave catching gave to wars and raids with all their attendant injuries. +Any benefit to the slave, indeed, was purely incidental. The reason for the +institution's existence was the advantage which accrued to the masters. +So positive and pronounced was this reckoned to be, that such highly +enlightened people as the Greeks and Romans maintained it in the palmiest +days of their supremacies. + +[Footnote 1: This thought was expressed, perhaps for the first time, in +T.R. Dew's essay on slavery (1832); it is elaborated in Gabriel Tarde, _The +Laws of Imitation_ (Parsons tr., New York, 1903), pp. 278, 279.] + +Western Europe in primitive times was no exception. Slavery in a more or +less fully typical form was widespread. When the migrations ended in the +middle ages, however, the rise of feudalism gave the people a thorough +territorial regimentation. The dearth of commerce whether in goods or in +men led gradually to the conversion of the unfree laborers from slaves +into serfs or villeins attached for generations to the lands on which they +wrought. Finally, the people multiplied so greatly and the landless were +so pressed for livelihood that at the beginning of modern times European +society found the removal of bonds conducive to the common advantage. Serfs +freed from their inherited obligations could now seek employment wherever +they would, and landowners, now no longer lords, might employ whom they +pleased. Bondmen gave place to hirelings and peasant proprietors, +status gave place to contract, industrial society was enabled to make +redistributions and readjustments at will, as it had never been before. In +view of the prevailing traits and the density of the population a general +return whether to slavery or serfdom was economically unthinkable. An +intelligent Scotch philanthropist, Fletcher of Saltoun, it is true, +proposed at the end of the seventeenth century that the indigent and their +children be bound as slaves to selected masters as a means of relieving +the terrible distresses of unemployment in his times;[2] but his project +appears to have received no public sanction whatever. The fact that he +published such a plan is more a curious antiquarian item than one of +significance in the history of slavery. Not even the thin edge of a wedge +could possibly be inserted which might open a way to restore what everyone +was on virtually all counts glad to be free of. + +[Footnote 2: W.E.H. Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ +(New York, 1879), II, 43,44.] + +When the American mining and plantation colonies were established, however, +some phases of the most ancient labor problems recurred. Natural resources +invited industry in large units, but wage labor was not to be had. The +Spaniards found a temporary solution in impressing the tropical American +aborigines, and the English in a recourse to indented white immigrants. But +both soon resorted predominantly for plantation purposes to the importation +of Africans, for whom the ancient institution of slavery was revived. Thus +from purely economic considerations the sophisticated European colonists +of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved themselves and their +descendants, with the connivance of their home governments, in the toils of +a system which on the one hand had served their remote forbears with good +effect, but which on the other hand civilized peoples had long and almost +universally discarded as an incubus. In these colonial beginnings the +negroes were to be had so cheaply and slavery seemed such a simple and +advantageous device when applied to them, that no qualms as to the future +were felt. At least no expressions of them appear in the records of thought +extant for the first century and more of English colonial experience. +And when apprehensions did arise they were concerned with the dangers of +servile revolt, not with any deleterious effects to arise from the economic +nature of slavery in time of peace. + +Now, slavery and indented servitude are analogous to serfdom in that they +may yield to the employers all the proceeds of industry beyond what is +required for the sustenance of the laborers; but they have this difference, +immense for American purposes, that they permit labor to be territorially +shifted, while serfdom keeps it locally fixed. By choosing these +facilitating forms of bondage instead of the one which would have attached +the laborers to the soil, the founders of the colonial régime in industry +doubtless thought they had avoided all economic handicaps in the premises. +Their device, however, was calculated to meet the needs of a situation +where the choice was between bond labor and no labor. As generations passed +and workingmen multiplied in America, the system of indentures for white +immigrants was automatically dissolved; but slavery for the bulk of the +negroes persisted as an integral feature of economic life. Whether this +was conducive or injurious to the prosperity of employers and to the +community's welfare became at length a question to which students far and +wide applied their faculties. Some of the participants in the discussion +considered the problem as one in pure theory; others examined not only the +abstract ratio of slave and free labor efficiency but included in their +view the factor of negro racial traits and the prospects and probable +consequences of abolition under existing circumstances. On the one point +that an average slave might be expected to accomplish less in an hour's +work than an average free laborer, agreement was unanimous; on virtually +every other point the views published were so divergent as to leave the +public more or less distracted. Adam Smith, whose work largely shaped the +course of economic thought for a century following its publication in 1776, +said of slave labor merely that its cost was excessive by reason of its +lack of zest, frugality and inventiveness. The tropical climate of the +sugar colonies, he conceded, might require the labor of negro slaves, +but even there its productiveness would be enhanced by liberal policies +promoting intelligence among the slaves and assimilating their condition to +that of freemen.[3] To some of these points J.B. Say, the next economist to +consider the matter, took exception. Common sense must tell us, said he, +that a slave's maintenance must be less than that of a free workman, since +the master will impose a more drastic frugality than a freeman will adopt +unless a dearth of earnings requires it. The slave's work, furthermore, +is more constant, for the master will not permit so much leisure and +relaxation as the freeman customarily enjoys. Say agreed, however, that +slavery, causing violence and brutality to usurp the place of intelligence, +both hampered the progress of invention and enervated such free laborers as +were in touch with the régime.[4] + +[Footnote 3: Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_, various editions, book I, +chap. 8; book III, chap. 2; book IV, chaps. 7 and 9.] + +[Footnote 4: J.B. Say, _Traité d'Economie Politique_ (Paris, 1803), book I, +chap. 28; in various later editions, book I, chap. 19.] + +The translation of Say's book into English evoked a reply to his views on +slavery by Adam Hodgson, an Englishman with anti-slavery bent who had made +an American tour; but his essay, though fortified with long quotations, +was too rambling and ill digested to influence those who were not already +desirous of being convinced.[5] More substantial was an essay of 1827 by +a Marylander, James Raymond, who cited the experiences of his own +commonwealth to support his contentions that slavery hampered economy by +preventing seasonal shiftings of labor, by requiring employers to support +their operatives in lean years as well as fat, and by hindering the +accumulation of wealth by the laborers. The system, said he, could yield +profits to the masters only in specially fertile districts; and even there +it kept down the growth of population and of land values.[6] + +[Footnote 5: Adam Hodgson, _A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, on the +comparative expense of free and slave labour_ (Liverpool, 1823; New York, +1823).] + +[Footnote 6: James Raymond, _Prize Essay on the Comparative Economy of Free +and Slave Labor in Agriculture_ (Frederick [Md.], 1827), reprinted in the +_African Repository_, III, 97-110 (June, 1827).] + +About the same time Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, +wrote: "Slave labour is undoubtedly the dearest kind of labour; it is all +forced, and forced too from a class of human beings who have the least +propensity to voluntary labour even when it is to benefit themselves +alone." The cost of rearing a slave to the age of self support, he +reckoned, including insurance, at forty dollars a year for fifteen years. +The usual work of a slave field hand, he thought, was barely two-thirds of +what a white laborer at usual wages would perform, and from his earnings +about forty dollars a year must be deducted for his maintenance. When +interest on the investment and a proportion of an overseer's wages were +deducted in addition, he thought the prevalent rate, six to eight dollars +a month and board valued at forty or fifty dollars a year, for free white +farm hands in the Northern states gave a decisive advantage to those who +hired laborers over those who owned them. "Nothing will justify slave +labour in point of economy," he concluded, "but the nature of the soil and +climate which incapacitates a white man from labouring in the summer time, +as on the rich lands in Carolina and Georgia extending one hundred miles +from the seaboard."[7] + +[Footnote 7: Thomas Cooper, _Lectures on the Elements of Political +Economy_, (Columbia [S.C.], 1826), pp. 94, 95.] + +The economic vices of slavery as exemplified in Virginia were elaborated in +an essay printed in 1832 attributed to Jesse Burton Harrison of that state. +Slavery, said this essay, drives away free workmen by stigmatizing labor, +for "nothing but the most abject necessity would lead a white man to hire +himself to work in the fields under the overseer"; it causes exhaustion of +the soil by reason of the negligence it promotes in the workmen and +the stress which overseers are fain to put upon immediate returns; it +discourages all forms of industry but plantation tillage, furthermore, for +although it has not and perhaps cannot be proved that slaves may not be +successfully employed in manufactures, the community has gone and tends +still to go, on that assumption; it discourages mechanic skill, for the +slaves never acquire more than the rudiments of artisanry, and the planters +discourage white craftsmen by giving preference uniformly to their +own laborers. Slave labor is dearer than free, because of its lack of +incentive; the régime costs the community the services of the immigrants +who would otherwise enter; and finally it promotes waste instead of +frugality on the part of both masters and slaves. The only means by which +Virginia could procure profit from slaves, it concluded, was that of +raising them for sale to the lower South; but such profit could only be +gained systematically at a complete sacrifice of honor.[8] + +[Footnote 8: [Jesse Burton Harrison], _Review of the Slave Question, +extracted from the American Quarterly Review, Dec. 1832_. By a Virginian +(Richmond, 1833).] + +Daniel R. Goodloe of North Carolina wrote in 1846 in a similar tone but +with original arguments. Beginning with an exposition of the South's +comparative backwardness in economic development, he showed a twofold +working of the institution of slavery as the cause. For one thing it +lessened the vigor of industry by degrading labor in the estimation of the +poor and engendering pride in the rich; but far more important, it required +employers to sink large amounts of capital in the purchase of laborers +instead of permitting them to pay for work, as the wage system does, out +of current proceeds. It thereby particularly hampered the growth of +manufactures, for in such lines, as well as in commerce, "the fact that +slavery absorbs the bulk of Southern capital must always present an +obstacle to extensive operations." The holding of laborers as property, he +continued, can contribute nothing to production, for the destruction of the +property by the liberation of the slaves would not impair their laboring +efficiency. Hence all the individual wealth which has assumed that shape +has added nothing to the resources of the community. "Slavery merely serves +to appropriate the wages of labor--it distributes wealth, but cannot create +it." It involves expenditure in acquiring early population, then operates +to prevent land improvements and the diversification of industry, +restricting, indeed, even the range of agriculture. The monopoly which the +South has enjoyed in the production of the staples has palliated the evils +of slavery, but at the same time has expanded the system to the point of +great injury to the public. Goodloe accordingly advocated the riddance of +the institution, contending that both landowners and laborers would thereby +benefit. The continued maintenance of the institution, on the other hand, +would bring severe loss to the slaveholders, for within the coming decade +the demand of the Southwest for slaves would be sated, he thought, and +nothing but a great advancement of cotton prices and an unlimited supply of +fertile land for its production could sustain slave prices. "It is +evident that the Southern country approaches a period of great and sudden +depreciation in the value of slave property."[9] + +[Footnote 9: [D.R. Goodloe], _Inquiry into the Causes which have retarded +the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the +Southern States, in which the question of slavery is considered in a +politico-economic point of view. By a Carolinian_. (Washington, 1846.) +_See also_ a similar essay by the same author in the U.S. Commissioner of +Agriculture's _Report_ for 1865, pp. 102-135.] + +The statistical theme of the South's backwardness was used by many other +essayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding régime. With most +of these, however, exemplified saliently by H.R. Helper, logic was to such +extent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from the +proper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy. + +On the other hand, Thomas R. Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turn +of the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery, +attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of the +United States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency. +His central theme was the imperative necessity of maintaining the +enslavement of the negroes on hand until a sound plan was devised and made +applicable for their peaceful and prosperous disposal elsewhere. Among +Dew's disciples, William Harper of South Carolina admitted that slave labor +was dear and unskillful, though he thought it essential for productive +industry in the tropics and sub-tropics, and he considered coercion +necessary for the negroes elsewhere in civilized society. James H. Hammond, +likewise, agreed that "as a general rule ... free labor is cheaper than +slave labor," but in addition to the factor of race he stressed the +sparsity of population in the South as a contributing element in +economically necessitating the maintenance of slavery.[10] + +[Footnote 10: "Essay" (1832), Harper's "Memoir" (1838), and Hammond's +"Letters to Clarkson" (1845) are collected in the _Pro-Slavery Argument_ +(Philadelphia, 1852).] + +Most of the foregoing Southern writers were men of substantial position and +systematic reasoning. N.A. Ware, on the other hand who in 1844 issued in +the capacity of a Southern planter a slender volume of _Notes on Political +Economy_ was both obscure and irresponsible. Contending as his main theme +that protective tariffs were of no injury to the plantation interests, he +asserted that slave labor was incomparably cheaper than free, and attempted +to prove it by ignoring the cost of capital and by reckoning the price +of bacon at four cents a pound and corn at fifteen cents a bushel. Then, +curiously, he delivered himself of the following: "When slavery shall have +run itself out or yielded to the changes and ameliorations of the times, +the owners and all dependent upon it will stand appalled and prostrate, +as the sot whose liquor has been withheld, and nothing but the bad and +worthless habit left to remind the country of its ruinous effects. The +political economist, as well as all wise statesmen in this country, cannot +think of any measure going to discharge slavery that would not be a worse +state than its existence." His own remedy for the depression prevailing at +the time when he wrote, was to divert a large proportion of the slaves from +the glutted business of staple agriculture into manufacturing, for which he +thought them well qualified.[11] Equally fantastic were the ideas of H.C. +Carey of Pennsylvania who dealt here and there with slavery in the course +of his three stout volumes on political economy. His lucubrations are +negligible for the present survey. + +[Footnote 11: [N.A. Ware] _Notes on Political Economy as applicable to the +United States_. By a Southern Planter (New York, 1844), pp. 200-204.] + +All these American writers except Goodloe accomplished little of +substantial quality in the field of economic thought beyond adding details +to the doctrines of Adam Smith and Say. John Stuart Mill in turn did little +more than combine the philosophies of his predecessors. "It is a truism +to assert," said he, "that labour extorted by fear of punishment is +insufficient and unproductive"; yet some people can be driven by the +lash to accomplish what no feasible payment would have induced them to +undertake. In sparsely settled regions, furthermore, slavery may afford +the otherwise unobtainable advantages of labour combination, and it has +undoubtedly hastened industrial development in some American areas. Yet, +since all processes carried on by slave labour are conducted in the rudest +manner, virtually any employer may pay a considerably greater value in +wages to free labour than the maintenance of his slaves has cost him and be +a gainer by the change.[12] + +[Footnote 12: John Stuart Mill, _Principles of Political Economy_ (London, +1848, and later editions), book II, chap. 5.] + +Partly concurring and partly at variance with Mill's views were those which +Edmund Ruffin of Virginia published in a well reasoned essay of 1857, _The +Political Economy of Slavery_. "Slave labor in each individual case and for +each small measure of time," he said, "is more slow and inefficient than +the labor of a free man." On the other hand it is more continuous, for +hirelings are disposed to work fewer hours per day and fewer days per year, +except when wages are so low as to require constant exertion in the +gaining of a bare livelihood. Furthermore, the consolidation of domestic +establishments, which slavery promotes, permits not only an economy in the +purchase of supplies but also a great saving by the specialization of labor +in cooking, washing, nursing, and the care of children, thereby releasing +a large proportion of the women from household routine and rendering them +available for work in the field. An increasing density of population, +however, would depress the returns of industry to the point where slaves +would merely earn their keep, and free laborers would of necessity lengthen +their hours. Finally a still greater glut of labor might come, and indeed +had occurred in various countries of Europe, carrying wages so low that +only the sturdiest free laborers could support themselves and all the +weaker ones must enter a partial pauperism. At such a stage the employment +of slaves could only be continued at a steady deficit, to relieve +themselves from which the masters must resort to a general emancipation. In +the South, however, there were special public reasons, lying in the racial +traits of the slave population, which would make that recourse particularly +deplorable; for the industrial collapse ensuing upon emancipation in the +British West Indies on the one hand, and on the other the pillage and +massacre which occurred in San Domingo and the disorder still prevailing +there, were alternative examples of what might be apprehended from orderly +or revolutionary abolition as the case might be. The Southern people, in +short, might well congratulate themselves that no ending of their existing +régime was within visible prospect.[13] + +[Footnote 13: Edmund Ruffin, _The Political Economy of Slavery_ ([Richmond, +1857]).] + +About the same time a writer in _DeBow's Review_ elaborated the theme that +the comparative advantages of slavery and freedom depended wholly upon the +attainments of the laboring population concerned. "Both are necessarily +recurring types of social organization, and each suited to its peculiar +phase of society." "When a nation or society is in a condition unfit for +self-government, ... often the circumstance of contact with or subjection +by more enlightened nations has been the means of transition to a higher +development." "All that is now needed for the defence of United States +negro slavery and its entire exoneration from reproach is a thorough +investigation of fact; ... and political economy ... must ... pronounce our +system ... no disease, but the normal and healthy condition of a society +formed of such mixed material as ours." "The strong race and the weak, the +civilized and the savage," the one by nature master, the other slave, "are +here not only cast together, but have been born together, grown together, +lived together, worked together, each in his separate sphere striving for +the good of each.... These two races of men are mutually assistant to each +other and are contributing in the largest possible degree consistent with +their mutual powers to the good of each other and mankind." A general +emancipation therefore could bring nothing but a detriment.[14] + +[Footnote 14: _DeBow's Review_, XXI, 331-349, 443-467 (October and +November, 1856).] + +What proved to be the last work in the premises before the overthrow of +slavery in the United States was _The Slave Power, its Character, Career +and Probable Designs_, by J.E. Cairnes, professor of political economy in +the University of Dublin and in Queen's College, Galway. It was published +in 1862 and reissued with appendices in the following year. Cairnes at the +outset scouted the factors of climate and negro racial traits. The sole +economic advantage of slavery, said he, consists in its facilitation +of control in large units; its defects lay in its causing reluctance, +unskilfulness and lack of versatility. The reason for its prevalence in the +South he found in the high fertility and the immense abundance of soil on +the one hand, and on the other the intensiveness of staple cultivation. A +single operative, said he, citing as authority Robert Russell's erroneous +assertion, "might cultivate twenty acres in wheat or Indian corn, but could +not manage more than two in tobacco or three in cotton; therefore the +supervision of a considerable squad is economically feasible in these +though it would not be so in the cereals." These conditions might once have +made slave labor profitable, he conceded; but such possibility was now +doubtless a thing of the distant past. The persistence of the system did +not argue to the contrary, for it would by force of inertia persist as long +as it continued to be self-supporting. + +Turning to a different theme, Cairnes announced that slave labor, since it +had never been and never could be employed with success in manufacturing or +commercial pursuits, must find its whole use in agriculture; and even there +it required large capital, at the same time that the unthrifty habits +inculcated in the masters kept them from accumulating funds. The +consequence was that slaveholding society must necessarily be and remain +heavily in debt. The imperative confinement of slave labor to the most +fertile soils, furthermore, prevented the community from utilizing any +areas of inferior quality; for slaveholding society is so exclusive that it +either expels free labor from its vicinity or deprives it of all industrial +vigor. It is true that some five millions of whites in the South have no +slaves; but these "are now said to exist in this manner in a condition +little removed from savage life, eking out a wretched subsistence by +hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves for occasional jobs, by plunder." +These "mean whites ... are the natural growth of the slave system; ... +regular industry is only known to them as the vocation of slaves, and it is +the one fate which above all others they desire to avoid."[15] + +[Footnote 15: First American edition (New York, 1862), pp. 54, 78, 79.] + +"The constitution of a slave society," he says again, "resolves itself into +three classes, broadly distinguished from each other and connected by no +common interest--the slaves on whom devolves all the regular industry, the +slaveholders who reap all its fruits, and an idle and lawless rabble who +live dispensed over vast plains in a condition little removed from absolute +barbarism."[16] Nowhere can any factors be found which will promote any +progress of civilization so long as slavery persists. The non-slaveholders +will continue in "a life alternating between listless vagrancy and the +excitement of marauding expeditions." "If civilization is to spring up +among the negro race, it will scarcely be contended that this will happen +while they are still slaves; and if the present ruling class are ever to +rise above the existing type, it must be in some other capacity than +as slaveholders."[17] Even as a "probationary discipline" to prepare a +backward people for a higher form of civilized existence, slavery as it +exists in America cannot be justified; for that effect is vitiated by +reason of the domestic slave trade. "Considerations of economy, ... which +under a natural system afford some security for humane treatment by +identifying the master's interest with the slave's preservation, when once +trading in slaves is practised become reasons for racking to the utmost the +toil of the slave; for when his place can at once be supplied from foreign +preserves the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment than +its productiveness while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slave +management in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is +that which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the +utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth."[18] + +[Footnote 16: Ibid., p. 60.] + +[Footnote 17: Ibid., p. 83.] + +[Footnote 18: First American edition (New York, 1862), p. 73.] + +The force of circumstances gave this book a prodigious and lasting vogue. +Its confident and cogent style made skepticism difficult; the dearth of +contrary data prevented impeachment on the one side of the Atlantic, and +on the other side the whole Northern people would hardly criticise such a +vindication of their cause in war by a writer from whose remoteness might +be presumed fairness, and whose professional position might be taken as +giving a stamp of thoroughness and accuracy. Yet the very conditions and +method of the writer made his interpretations hazardous. An economist, +using great caution, might possibly have drawn the whole bulk of his data +from travelers' accounts, as Cairnes did, and still have reached fairly +sound conclusions; but Cairnes gave preference not to the concrete +observations of the travelers but to their generalizations, often biased +or amateurish, and on them erected his own. Furthermore, he ignored such +material as would conflict with his preconceptions. His conclusions, +accordingly, are now true, now false, and while always vivid are seldom +substantially illuminating. His picture of the Southern non-slaveholders, +which, be it observed, he applied in his first edition to five millions +or ten-elevenths of that whole white population, and which he restricted, +under stress of contemporary criticism, only to four million souls in the +second edition,[19] is merely the most extreme of his grotesqueries. The +book was, in short, less an exposition than an exposure. + +[Footnote 19: Ibid., second edition (London, 1863), appendix D.] + +These criticisms of Cairnes will apply in varying lesser degrees to all of +his predecessors in the field. Those who sought the truth merely were in +general short of data; those who could get the facts in any fullness were +too filled with partisan purpose. What was begun as a study was continued +as a dispute, necessarily endless so long as the political issue remained +active. Many data which would have been illuminating, such as plantation +records and slave price quotations, were never systematically assembled; +and the experience resulting from negro emancipation was then too slight +for use in substantial generalizations. The economist M'Culloch, for +example, concluded from the experience of San Domingo and Jamaica that +cane sugar production could not be sustained without slavery;[20] but the +industrial careers of Cuba, Porto Rico and Louisiana since his time have +refuted him. He, like virtually all his contemporaries in economic thought, +confused the several factors of slavery, race traits and the plantation +system; the consequent liability to error was inevitable. + +[Footnote 20: J.R. M'Culloch, _Principles of Political Economy_ (fourth +edition, Edinburgh, 1849), p. 439.] + +Economists of later times have nearly all been too much absorbed in current +problems to give attention to a discarded institution. Most of them have +ignored the subject of slavery altogether, and the concern of the rest with +it has been merely incidental. Nicholson, for example, alludes to it as[21] +"one of the earliest and one of the most enduring forms of poverty," and +again as "the original and universal form of bankruptcy." Smart deals with +it only as concerns the care of workingmen's children: "The one good thing +in slavery was the interest of the master in the future of his workers. +The children of the slaves were the master's property. They were always at +least a valuable asset.... But there is no such continuity in the +relation between the employer [of free labor] and his human cattle. The +best-intentioned employer cannot be expected to be much concerned about the +efficient upkeep of the workman's child when the child is free to go where +he likes.... The child's future is bound up with the father's wage. The +wage may be enough, even when low, to support the father's efficiency, but +it is not necessarily enough to keep up the efficiency of the young laborer +on which the future depends."[22] Loria deals more extensively with +slavery as affected by the valuation of labor,[23] and Gibson[24] examines +elaborately the nature of hypothetically absolute slavery in analyzing the +earnings of labor. The contributions of both Loria and Gibson will be used +below. The economic bearings of the institution in history still await +satisfactory analysis. + +[Footnote 21: J.S. Nicholson, _Principles of Political Economy_ (New York, +1898), I, 221, 391.] + +[Footnote 22: William Smart, _The Distribution of Income_ (London, 1899), +pp. 296, 297.] + +[Footnote 23: Achille Loria, _La Costitutione Economica Odierna_ (Turin, +1899), chap. 6, part 2.] + +[Footnote 24: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909).] + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +BUS + + +An expert accountant has well defined the property of a master in his slave +as an annuity extending throughout the slave's working life and amounting +to the annual surplus which the labor of the slave produced over and above +the cost of his maintenance.[1] Before any profit accrued to the master +in any year, however, various deductions had to be subtracted from this +surplus. These included interest on the slave's cost, regardless of +whether he had been reared by his owner or had been bought for a price; +amortization of the capital investment; insurance against the slave's +premature death or disability and against his escape from service; +insurance also for his support when incapacitated whether by illness, +accident or old age; taxes; and wages of superintendence. None of these +charges would any sound method of accounting permit the master to escape. + +[Footnote 1: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909), p. 202. +The substance of the present paragraph and the three following ones is +mostly in close accord with Gibson's analysis.] + +The maintenance of the slave at the full rate required for the preservation +of lusty physique was essential. The master could not reduce it below that +standard without impairing his property as well as lessening its immediate +return; and as a rule he could shift none of the charge to other shoulders, +for the public would grant his workmen no dole from its charity funds. On +the other hand, he was often induced to raise the scale above the minimum +standard in order to increase the zeal and efficiency of his corps. In any +case, medical attendance and the like was necessarily included in the cost +of maintenance. + +The capital investment in a slave reared by his master would include +charges for the insurance of the child's mother at the time of his birth +and for her deficit of routine work before and afterward; the food, +clothing, nurse's care and incidentals furnished in childhood; the surplus +of supplies over earnings in the period of youth while the slave was not +fully earning his own keep and his overhead charges; compound interest on +all of these until the slave reached adolescence or early manhood; and a +proportion of similar charges on behalf of other children in his original +group who had died in youth. In his teens the slave's earnings would +gradually increase until they covered all his current charges, including +the cost of supervision; and shortly before the age of twenty he would +perhaps begin to yield a net return to the owner. + +A slave's highest rate of earning would be reached of course when his +physical maturity and his training became complete, and would normally +continue until his bodily powers began to flag. This period would extend +in the case of male field hands from perhaps twenty-five to possibly fifty +years of age, and in the case of artizans from say thirty to fifty-five +years. The maximum valuation of the slave as property, however, would come +earlier, at the point when the investment in his production was first +complete and when his maximum earnings were about to begin; and his value +would thereafter decline, first slowly and then more swiftly with every +passing year, in anticipation of the decline and final cessation of his +earning power. Thus the ratio between the capital value of a slave and his +annual net earnings, far from remaining constant, would steadily recede +from the beginning to the end of his working life. At the age of twenty +it might well be as ten to one; at the age of fifty it would probably not +exceed four to one; at sixty-five it might be less than a parity. + +In the buying and selling of nearly all non-human commodities the cost of +production, or of reproduction, bears a definite relation to the market +price, in that it fixes a limit below which owners will not continue to +produce and sell. In the case of slaves, however, the cost of rearing had +no practical bearing upon the market price, for the reason that the owners +could not, or at least did not, increase or diminish the production at +will.[2] It has been said by various anti-slavery spokesmen that many +slaveowners systematically bred slaves for the market. They have adduced no +shred of supporting evidence however; and although the present writer has +long been alert for such data he has found but a single concrete item in +the premises. This one came, curiously enough, from colonial Massachusetts, +where John Josslyn recorded in 1636: "Mr. Maverick's negro woman came to my +chamber window and in her own country language and tune sang very loud and +shril. Going out to her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and +willingly would have expressed her grief in English. But I apprehended it +by her countenance and deportment, whereupon I repaired to my host to learn +of him the cause, for that I understood before that she had been a queen in +her own countrey, and observed a very humble and dutiful garb used towards +her by another negro who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a +breed of negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield to perswasions +to company with a negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, +will'd she nill'd she to go to bed to her--which was no sooner done than +she kickt him out again. This she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, +and this was the cause of her grief."[3] + +[Footnote 2: This is at variance with Gibson's thesis which, professedly +dealing always in pure hypothesis, assumes a state of "perfect" slavery in +which breeding is controlled on precisely the same basis as in the case of +cattle.] + +[Footnote 3: John Josslyn, "Account of two Voyages to New England," in the +Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections, XXIII_, 231.] + +As for the ante-bellum South, the available plantation instructions, +journals and correspondence contain no hint of such a practice. Jesse +Burton Harrison, a Virginian in touch with planters' conversation and +himself hostile to slavery,[4] went so far as to write, "It may be that +there is a small section of Virginia (perhaps we could indicate it) where +the theory of population is studied with reference to the yearly income +from the sale of slaves," but he went no further; and this, be it noted, is +not clearly to hint anything further than that the owners of multiplying +slaves reckoned their own gains from the unstimulated increase. If pressure +were commonly applied James H. Hammond would not merely have inserted the +characteristic provision in his schedule of rewards: "For every infant +thirteen months old and in sound health that has been properly attended to, +the mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock."[5] A planter here and +there may have exerted a control of matings in the interest of industrial +and commercial eugenics, but it is extremely doubtful that any appreciable +number of masters attempted any direct hastening of slave increase. The +whole tone of the community was hostile to such a practice. Masters were +in fact glad enough to leave the slaves to their own inclinations in all +regards so long as the day's work was not obstructed and good order was +undisturbed. They had of course everywhere and at all times an interest +in the multiplication of their slaves as well as the increase of their +industrial aptitudes. Thus William Lee wrote in 1778 concerning his +plantation in Virginia: "I wish particular attention may be paid to rearing +young negroes, and taking care of those grown up, that the number may be +increased as much as possible; also putting several of the most promising +and ingenious lads apprentices to different trades, such as carpenters, +coopers, wheelwrights, sawyers, shipwrights, bricklayers, plasterers, +shoemakers and blacksmiths; some women should also be taught to weave."[6] + +[Footnote 4: _Review of the Slave Question_ (Richmond, 1833), p. 17.] + +[Footnote 5: See above, p. 272.] + +[Footnote 6: W.C. Ford, ed., _Letters of William Lee_ (Brooklyn, 1891), II, +363, 364.] + +But even if masters had stimulated breeding on occasion, that would have +created but a partial and one-sided relationship between cost of production +and market price. To make the connection complete it would have been +requisite for them to check slave breeding when prices were low; and even +the abolitionists, it seems, made no assertion to that effect. No, the +market might decline indefinitely without putting an appreciable check upon +the birth rate; and the master had virtually no choice but to rear every +child in his possession. The cost of production, therefore, could not serve +as a nether limit for slave prices at any time. + +An upper limit to the price range was normally fixed by the reckoning of a +slave's prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance. The slave +may here be likened to a mine operated by a corporation leasing the +property. The slave's claim to his maintenance represents the prior claim +of the land-owner to his rent; the master's claim to the annual surplus +represents the equity of the stockholders in the corporation. But the ore +will some day be exhausted and the dividends cease. Purchasers of the stock +should accordingly consider amortization and pay only such price as will +be covered by the discounted value of the prospective dividends during the +life of the mine. The price of the output fluctuates, however, and the +rate of any year's earnings can only be conjectured. Precise reckoning is +therefore impracticable, and the stock will rise and fall in the market in +response to the play of conjectures as to the present value of the total +future earnings applicable to dividends. So also a planter entering the +slave market might have reckoned in advance the prospect of working life +which a slave of given age would have, and the average earnings above +maintenance which might be expected from his labor. By discounting each of +those annual returns at the prevailing rate of interest to determine their +present values, and adding up the resulting sums, he would ascertain the +price which his business prospects would justify him in paying. Having +bought a slave at such a price, an equally thoroughgoing caution would have +led him to take out a life, health and accident insurance policy on the +slave; but even then he must personally have borne the risk of the slave's +running away. In practice the lives of a few slaves engaged in steamboat +operation and other hazardous pursuits were insured,[7] but the total +number of policies taken on their lives, except as regards marine insurance +in the coasting slave trade, was very small. The planters as a rule carried +their own risks, and they generally dispensed with actuarial reckonings in +determining their bids for slaves. About 1850 a rule of thumb was current +that a prime hand was worth a hundred dollars for every cent in the current +price of a pound of cotton. In general, however, the prospective purchaser +merely "reckoned" in the Southern sense of conjecturing, at what price +he could employ an added slave with probable advantage, and made his bid +accordingly. + +[Footnote 7: J.C. Nott, in J.B.D. DeBow, ed., _Industrial Resources of the +Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 299; F.L. Hoffman, in +_The South in the Building of the Nation_ (Richmond, Va. [1909]), 638-655. +_DeBow's Review_, X, 241, contains an advertisement of a company offering +life and accident insurance on slaves. + +A typical policy is preserved in the MSS. division of the Library of +Congress. It was issued Dec. 31, 1851, by the Louisville agent of the +Mutual Benefit Fire and Life Insurance Company of Louisiana, to T.P. +Linthicum of Bairdstown, Ky., insuring for $650 each the lives of Jack, 26 +years old and Alexander, 31 years old, for one year, at the rates of 2 and +2-1/2 per cent, respectively, plus one per cent, for permission to employ +the slaves on steamboats during the first half of the period. They were +employed as waiters. Jack died Nov. 20, and the insurance was duly paid.] + +A slave's market price was affected by sex, age, physique, mental quality, +industrial training, temper, defects and vices, so far as each of these +could be ascertained. The laws of most of the states presumed a seller's +warrant of health at the time of sale, unless expressly withheld, and in +Louisiana this warrant extended to mental and moral soundness. The period +in which the buyer might apply for redress, however, was limited to a few +months, and the verdicts of juries were uncertain. On the whole, therefore, +if the buyer were unacquainted with the slave's previous career and with +his attitude toward the transfer of possession, he necessarily incurred +considerable risk in making each purchase. But in general the taking of +reasonable precautions would cause the loss through unsuspected vices in +one case to be offset by gains through unexpected virtues in another. + +The scale and the trend of slave prices are essential features of the +régime which most economists have ignored and for which the rest have had +too little data. For colonial times the quotations are scant. An historian +of the French West Indies, however, has ascertained from the archives +that whereas the prices ranged perhaps as low as 200 francs for imported +Africans there at the middle of the seventeenth century, they rose to +450 francs by the year 1700 and continued in a strong and steady advance +thereafter, except in war times, until the very eve of the French +Revolution. Typical prices for prime field hands in San Domingo were 650 +francs in 1716, 800 in 1728, 1,160 in 1750, 1,400 in 1755, 1,180 in 1764, +1,600 in 1769, 1,860 in 1772, 1,740 in 1777, and 2,200 francs in 1785.[8] + +[Footnote 8: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant +1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122-127.] + +In the British West Indies it is apparent from occasional documents that +the trend was similar. A memorial from Barbados in 1689, for example, +recited that in earlier years the planters had been supplied with Africans +at £7 sterling per head, of which forty shillings covered the Guinea cost +and £5 paid the freightage; but now since the establishment of the Royal +African company, "we buy negroes at the price of an engrossed commodity, +the common rate of a good negro on shipboard being twenty pound. And we are +forced to scramble for them in so shameful a manner that one of the great +burdens of our lives is the going to buy negroes. But we must have them; we +cannot be without them."[9] The overthrow of the monopoly, however, brought +no relief. In 1766 the price of new negroes in the West Indies ranged at +about £26;[10] and in 1788-1790 from £41 to £49. At this time the value +of a prime field hand, reared in the islands, was reported to be twice as +great as that of an imported African.[11] + +[Footnote 9: _Groans of the Plantations_ (1679), p. 5, quoted in W. +Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1892), +II, 278, note.] + +[Footnote 10: _Abridgement of the Evidence taken before a Committee of the +whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), p. 37.] + +[Footnote 11: "An Old Member of Parliament," _Doubts on the Abolition of +the Slave Trade_ (London, 1790), p. 72, quoting Dr. Adair's evidence in the +_Privy Council Report_, part 3, Antigua appendix no. II]. + +In Virginia the rise was proportionate. In 1671 a planter wrote of his +purchase of a negro for £26. 10_s_ and said he supposed the price was the +highest ever paid in those parts; but a few years afterward a lot of four +men brought £30 a head, two women the same rate, and two more women £25 +apiece; and before the end of the seventeenth century men were being +appraised at £40.[12] An official report from the colony in 1708 noted a +great increase of the slave supply in recent years, but observed that the +prices had nevertheless risen.[13] In 1754 George Washington paid £52 for a +man and nearly as much for a woman; in 1764 he bought a lot at £57 a head; +in 1768 he bought two mulattoes at £50 and £61.15_s_ respectively, a negro +for £66.10_s_, another at public vendue for £72, and a girl for £49.10_s_. +Finally in 1772 he bought five males, one of whom cost £50, another £65, a +third £75, and the remaining two £90 each;[14] and in the same year he was +offered £80 for a slave named Will Shagg whom his overseer described as an +incorrigible runaway.[15] + +[Footnote 12: P.A. Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth +Century_, II, 88-92.] + +[Footnote 13: _North Carolina Colonial Records_, I, 693.] + +[Footnote 14: W.C. Ford, _George Washington_ (Paris and New York, 1900), +I, 125-127; _Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor_ (Brooklyn, +1889).] + +[Footnote 15: S.M. Hamilton, ed., _Letters to Washington_. IV, 127.] + +Scattered items which might be cited from still other colonies make the +evidence conclusive that there was a general and substantially continuous +rise throughout colonial times. The advances which occurred in the +principal British West India islands and in Virginia, indeed, were a +consequence of advances elsewhere, for by the middle of the eighteenth +century all of these colonies were already passing the zenith of their +prosperity, whereas South Carolina, Georgia, San Domingo and Brazil, as +well as minor new British tropical settlements, were in course of rapid +plantation expansion. Prices in the several communities tended of course to +be equalized partly by a slender intercolonial slave trade but mainly by +the Guineamen's practice of carrying their wares to the highest of the many +competing markets. + +The war for American independence, bringing hard times, depressed all +property values, those of slaves included. But the return of peace brought +prompt inflation in response to exaggerated anticipations of prosperity to +follow. Wade Hampton, for example, wrote to his brother from Jacksonborough +in the South Carolina lowlands, January 30, 1782: "All attempts to purchase +negroes have been fruitless, owing to the flattering state of our affairs +in this quarter."[16] The sequel was sharply disappointing. The indigo +industry was virtually dead, and rice prices, like those of tobacco, did +not maintain their expected levels. The financial experience was described +in 1786 by Henry Pendleton, a judge on the South Carolina bench, in words +which doubtless would have been similarly justified in various other +states: "No sooner had we recovered and restored the country to peace and +order than a rage for running into debt became epidemical.... A happy +speculation was almost every man's object and pursuit.... What a load +of debt was in a short time contracted in the purchase of British +superfluities, and of lands and slaves for which no price was too high if +credit for the purchase was to be obtained!... How small a pittance of the +produce of the years 1783, '4, '5, altho' amounting to upwards of 400,000 +sterling a year on an average, hath been applied toward lessening old +burdens!... What then was the consequence? The merchants were driven to the +exportation of gold and silver, which so rapidly followed; ... a diminution +of the value of the capital as well as the annual produce of estates in +consequence of the fallen price; ... the recovery of new debts as well +as old in effect suspended, while the numerous bankruptcies which have +happened in Europe amongst the merchants trading to America, the reproach +of which is cast upon us, have proclaimed to all the trading nations +to guard against our laws and policy, and even against our moral +principles."[17] + +[Footnote 16: MS. among the Gibbes papers In the capitol at Columbia, S.C.] + +[Footnote 17: _Charleston Morning Post_, Dec. 13, 1786 quoted in the +_American Historical Review_, XIV, 537, 538] + +The depression continued with increasing severity into the following +decade, when it appears that many of the planters in the Charleston +district were saved from ruin only by the wages happily drawn from the +Santee Canal Company in payment for the work of their slaves in the canal +construction gangs.[18] The conditions and prospects in Virginia at the +same time are suggested by a remark of George Washington in 1794 on slave +investments: "I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a +very troublesome species of property ere many years have passed over our +heads."[19] + +[Footnote 18: Samuel DuBose, "Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish," in +T.G. Thomas, ed., _History of the Huguenots in South Carolina_ (New York, +1887), pp. 66-68.] + +[Footnote 19: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, II, 15. This letter has +been quoted at greater length at the beginning of chapter VIII above.] + +Prices in this period were so commonly stated in currency of uncertain +depreciation that a definite schedule by years may not safely be made. It +is clear, however, that the range in 1783 was little lower than it had been +on the eve of the war, while in 1795 it was hardly more than half as high. +For the first time in American history, in a period of peace, there was +a heavy and disquieting fall in slave prices. This was an earnest of +conditions in the nineteenth century when advances and declines alternated. +From about 1795 onward the stability of the currency and the increasing +abundance of authentic data permit the fluctuations of prices to be +measured and their causes and effects to be studied with some assurance. + +The materials extant comprise occasional travellers' notes, fairly numerous +newspaper items, and quite voluminous manuscript collections of appraisals +and bills of sale, all of which require cautious discrimination in their +analysis.[20] The appraisals fall mainly into two groups: the valuation of +estates in probate, and those for the purpose of public compensation to +the owners of slaves legally condemned for capital crimes. The former were +oftentimes purely perfunctory, and they are generally serviceable only as +aids in ascertaining the ratios of value between slaves of the diverse ages +and sexes. The appraisals of criminals, however, since they prescribed +actual payments on the basis of the market value each slave would have had +if his crime had not been committed, may be assumed under such laws as +Virginia maintained in the premises to be fairly accurate. A file of more +than a thousand such appraisals, with vouchers of payment attached, which +is preserved among the Virginia archives in the State Library at Richmond, +is particularly copious in regard to prices as well as in regard to crimes +and punishments. + +[Footnote 20: The difficulties to be encountered in ascertaining the values +at any time and place are exemplified in the documents pertaining to slave +prices in the various states in the year 1815, printed in the _American +Historical Review_, XIX, 813-838. In the gleaning of slave prices I have +been actively assisted by Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of +Georgia and Miss Lillie Richardson of New Orleans.] + +The bills of sale recording actual market transactions remain as the chief +and central source of information upon prices. Some thousands of these, +originating in the city of Charleston, are preserved in a single file among +the state archives of South Carolina at Columbia; other thousands are +scattered through the myriad miscellaneous notarial records in the court +house at New Orleans; many smaller accumulations are to be found in +county court houses far and wide, particularly in the cotton belt; and +considerable numbers are in private possession, along with plantation +journals and letters which sometimes contain similar data. + +Now these documents more often than otherwise record the sale of slaves +in groups. One of the considerations involved was that a gang already +organized would save its purchaser time and trouble in establishing a new +plantation as a going concern, and therefore would probably bring a higher +gross price than if its members were sold singly. Another motive was that +of keeping slave families together, which served doubly in comporting with +scruples of conscience and inducing to the greater contentment of slaves +in their new employ. The documents of the time demonstrate repeatedly the +appreciation of equanimity as affecting value. But group sales give slight +information upon individual prices; and even the bills of individual +sale yield much less than a statistician could wish. The sex is always +presumable from the slave's name, the color is usually stated or implied, +and occasionally deleterious proclivities are specified, as of a confirmed +drunkard or a persistent runaway; but specifications of age, strength and +talents are very often, one and all, omitted. The problem is how may these +bare quotations of price be utilized. To strike an average of all prices +in any year at any place would be fruitless, since an even distribution of +slave grades cannot be assumed when quotations are not in great volume: the +prices of young children are rarely ascertainable from the bills, since +they were hardly ever sold separately; the prices of women likewise are too +seldom segregated from those of their children to permit anything to be +established beyond a ratio to some ascertained standard; and the prices of +artizans varied too greatly with their skill to permit definite schedules +of them. The only market grade, in fact, for which basic price tabulations +can be made with any confidence is that of young male prime field hands, +for these alone may usually be discriminated even when ages and qualities +are not specified. The method here is to select in the group of bills for +any time and place such maximum quotations for males as occur with any +notable degree of frequency. Artizans, foremen and the like are thereby +generally excluded by the infrequency of their sales, while the +middle-aged, the old and the defective are eliminated by leaving aside the +quotations of lower range. The more scattering bills in which ages +and crafts are given will then serve, when supplemented from probate +appraisals, to establish valuation ratios between these able-bodied +unskilled young men and the several other classes of slaves. Thus, artizans +often brought twice as much as field hands of similar ages, prime women +generally brought three-fourths or four-fifths as much as prime men; boys +and girls entering their teens, and men and women entering their fifties, +brought about half of prime prices for their sexes; and infants were +generally appraised at about a tenth or an eighth of prime. The average +price for slaves of all ages and both sexes, furthermore, was generally +about one-half of the price for male prime field hands. The fluctuation +of prime prices, therefore, measures the rise and fall of slave values in +general. + +The accompanying chart will show the fluctuations of the average prices +of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in +middle Georgia, and at New Orleans, a£ well as the contemporary range of +average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, +that of New York. The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from +about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in +1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence of the initial +impulse of cotton and sugar production and of the contemporary prohibition +of the African slave trade by the several states. At those levels prices +remained virtually fixed, in most markets, for nearly a decade as an effect +of South Carolina's reopening of her ports and of the hampering of export +commerce by the Napoleonic war. The latter factor prevented even the +congressional stoppage of the foreign slave trade in 1808 from exerting +any strong effect upon slave prices for the time being except in the sugar +district. The next general movement was in fact a downward one of about +$100 a head caused by the War of 1812. At the return of peace the prices +leaped with parallel perpendicularity in all the markets from $400-$500 in +1814 to twice that range in 1818, only to be upset by the world-wide panic +of the following year and to descend to levels of $400 to $600 in 1823. +Then came a new rise in the cotton and sugar districts responding to a +heightened price of their staples, but for once not evoking a sympathetic +movement in the other markets. A small decline then ensuing gave place to +a soaring movement at New Orleans, in response to the great stimulus which +the protective tariff of 1828 gave to sugar production. The other markets +began in the early thirties to make up for the tardiness of their rise; and +as a feature of the general inflation of property values then prevalent +everywhere, slave prices rose to an apex in 1837 of $1,300 in the +purchasing markets and $1,100 in Virginia. The general panic of 1837 +began promptly to send them down; and though they advanced in 1839 as a +consequence of a speculative bolstering of the cotton market that year, +they fell all the faster upon the collapse of that project, finding new +levels of rest only at a range of $500-$700. A final advance then set in +at the middle of the forties which continued until the highest levels on +record were attained on the eve of secession and war. [Illustration: PRICES +OF SLAVES AND OF COTTON.] + +There are thus in the slave price diagram for the nineteenth century a +plateau, with a local peak rising from its level in the sugar district, and +three solid peaks--all of them separated by intervening valleys, and all +corresponding more or less to the elevations and depressions in the cotton +range. The plateau, 1803-1812, was prevented from producing a peak in the +eastern markets by the South Carolina repeal of the slave trade prohibition +and by the European imbroglio. The first common peak, 1818, and its ensuing +trough came promptly upon the establishment of the characteristic régime of +the ante-bellum period, in which the African reservoir could no longer +be drawn upon to mitigate labor shortages and restrain the speculative +enhancement of slave prices. The trough of the 'twenties was deeper and +broader in the upper and eastern South than elsewhere partly because the +panic of 1819 had brought a specially severe financial collapse there from +the wrecking of mushroom canal projects and the like.[21] It is remarkable +that so wide a spread of rates in the several districts prevailed for so +long a period as here appears. The statistics may of course be somewhat at +fault, but there is reason for confidence that their margin of error is not +great enough to vitiate them. + +[Footnote 21: _E. g., The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey_ (North Carolina +Historical Commission _Publications_, Raleigh, 1914), I, 93ff] + +The next peak, 1837-1839, was in most respects like the preceding one, and +the drop was quite as sudden and even more severe. The distresses of the +time in the district where they were the most intense were described in a +diary of 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in the +hope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrin +was promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster. "Speculation," +said he, "has been making poor men rich and rich men princes." But now "a +revulsion has taken place. Mississippi is ruined. Her rich men are poor, +and her poor men beggars.... We have seen hard times in North Carolina, +hard times in the east, hard times everywhere; but Mississippi exceeds them +all.... Lands ... that once commanded from thirty to fifty dollars per acre +may now be bought for three or five dollars, and that with considerable +improvements, while many have been sold at sheriff's sales at fifty cents +that were considered worth ten to twenty dollars. The people, too, are +running their negroes to Texas and to Alabama, and leaving their real +estate and perishable property to be sold, or rather sacrificed.... So +great is the panic and so dreadful the distress that there are a great many +farms prepared to receive crops, and some of them actually planted, and yet +deserted, not a human being to be found upon them. I had prepared myself to +see hard times here, but unlike most cases, the actual condition of affairs +is much worse than the report."[22] + +[Footnote 22: W.H. Wills, "Diary," in the Southern History Association +_Publications_, VIII (Washington, 1904), 35.] + +The fall of Mississippi slaves continued, accompanying that of cotton and +even anticipating it in the later phase of the movement, until extreme +depths were reached in the middle forties, though at New Orleans and in the +Georgia uplands the decline was arrested in 1842 at a level of about $700. +The sugar planters began prospering from the better prices established for +their staple by the tariff of that year, and were able to pay more than +panic prices for slaves; but as has been noted in an earlier chapter, +suspicion of fraud in the cases of slaves offered from Mississippi +militated against their purchase. A sugar planter would be willing to pay +considerably more for a neighbor's negro than for one who had come down the +river and who might shortly be seized on a creditor's attachment. + +At the middle of the forties, with a rising cotton market, there began +a strong and sustained advance, persisting throughout the fifties and +carrying slave prices to unexampled heights. By 1856 the phenomenon was +receiving comment in the newspapers far and wide. In the early months of +that year the _Republican_ of St. Louis reported field hand sales in +Pike County, Missouri, at from $1,215 to $1,642; the _Herald_ of Lake +Providence, Louisiana, recorded the auction of General L.C. Folk's slaves +at which "negro men ranged from $1,500 to $1,635, women and girls from +$1,250 to $1,550, children in proportion--all cash" and concluded: "Such a +sale, we venture to say, has never been equaled in the state of Louisiana." +In Virginia, likewise, the Richmond _Despatch_ in January told of the sale +of an estate in Halifax County at which "among other enormous prices, one +man brought $1,410 and another $1,425, and both were sold again privately +the same day at advances of $50. They were ordinary field hands, not +considered no. I. in any respect." In April the Lynchburg _Virginian_ +reported the sale of men in the auction of a large estate at from $1,120 to +$2,110, with most of the prices ranging midway between; and in August the +Richmond _Despatch_ noted that instead of the customary summer dullness in +the demand for slaves, it was unprecedentedly vigorous, with men's prices +ranging from $1,200 to $1,500.[23] + +The _Southern Banner_ of Athens, Georgia, said as early as January, 1855: +"Everybody except the owners of slaves must feel and know that the price +of slave labor and slave property at the South is at present too high when +compared with the prices of everything else. There must ere long be a +change; and ... we advise parties interested to 'stand from under!'"[24] +But the market belied the apprehensions. A neighboring journal noted at the +beginning of 1858, that in the face of the current panic, slave prices +as indicated in newspapers from all quarters of the South held up +astonishingly. "This argues a confidence on the part of the planters that +there is a good time coming. Well," the editor concluded with a hint of +his own persistent doubts, "we trust they may not be deceived in their +calculations."[25] + +The market continued deaf to the Cassandra school. When in March, 1859, +Pierce Butler's half of the slaves from the plantations which his quondam +wife made notorious were auctioned to defray his debts, bidders who +gathered from near and far offered prices which yielded an average rate +of $708 per head for the 429 slaves of all ages.[26] And in January and +February the still greater auction at Albany, Georgia, of the estate of +Joseph Bond, lately deceased, yielded $2,850 for one of the men, about +$1,900 as an average for such prime field hands as were sold separately, +and a price of $958.64 as a general average for the 497 slaves of all ages +and conditions.[27] Sales at similar prices were at about the same time +reported from various other quarters.[28] + +[Footnote 23: These items were reprinted in George M. Weston, _Who are and +who may be Slaves in the U.S._ [1856].] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Banner_, Jan. 11, 1855, endorsing an editorial of +similar tone in the New York _Express_.] + +[Footnote 25: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 21, 1858.] + +[Footnote 26: _What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation Auction +Sale of Slaves at Savannah, March 2d and 3d, 1859. A Sequel to Mrs. +Kemble's Journal_ [1863]. This appears to have been a reprint of an +article in the New York _Tribune_. The slaves were sold in family parcels +comprising from two to seven persons each.] + +[Footnote 27: MS. record in the Ordinary's office at Macon, Ga. Probate +Returns, vol. 9, pp. 2-7.] + +[Footnote 28: Edward Ingle, _Southern Sidelights_ (New York [1896]), p. +294. note.] + +Editorial warnings were now more vociferous than before. The _Federal +Union_ of Milledgeville said for example: "There is a perfect fever raging +in Georgia now on the subject of buying negroes.... Men are borrowing money +at exorbitant rates of interest to buy negroes at exorbitant prices. The +speculation will not sustain the speculators, and in a short time we shall +see many negroes and much land offered under the sheriff's hammer, with few +buyers for cash; and then this kind of property will descend to its real +value. The old rule of pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the +pound--that is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents a negro man is +worth $1,200.00, if at fifteen cents then $1,500.00--does not seem to be +regarded. Negroes are 25 per cent. higher now with cotton at ten and one +half cents than they were two or three years ago when it was worth fifteen +and sixteen cents. Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surely +come."[29] + +[Footnote 29: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Jan. 17, 1860, +reprinted with endorsement in the _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 26, +1860, and reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 73, 74.] + +The fever was likewise raging in the western South,[30] and it persisted +until the end of 1860. Indeed the peak of this price movement was evidently +cut off by the intervention of war. How great an altitude it might have +reached, and what shape its downward slope would have taken had peace +continued, it is idle to conjecture. But that a crash must have come is +beyond a reasonable doubt. + +[Footnote 30: Prices at Lebanon, Tenn., and Franklin, Ky., are given in +_Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XI, 774 (Dec., 1859).] + +The Charleston _Mercury_[31] attributed the advance of slave prices in the +fifties mainly to the demand of the railroads for labor. This was borne +out in some degree by the transactions of the railroad companies whose +headquarters were in that city. The president of the Charleston and +Savannah Railroad Company, endorsing the arguments which had been advanced +by a writer in _DeBows Review_,[32] recommended in his first annual report, +1855, an extensive purchase of slaves for the company's construction gangs, +reckoning that at the price of $1,000, with interest at 7 per cent. and +life insurance at 2-1/2 per cent. the annual charge would be little more +than half the current cost in wages at $180. The yearly cost of maintenance +and superintendence, reckoned at $20 for clothing, $15 for corn, molasses +and tobacco, $1 for physician's fees, $10 for overseer's wages and $15 for +tools and repairs, he said, would be the same whether the slaves were hired +or bought.[33] How largely the company adopted its president's plan is not +known. For the older and stronger South Carolina Railroad Company, however, +whose lines extended from Charleston to Augusta, Columbia and Camden, +detailed records in the premises are available. This company was created +in 1843 by the merging of two earlier corporations, one of which already +possessed eleven slaves. In February, 1845, the new company bought three +more slaves, two of which cost $400 apiece and the third $686. At the end +of the next year the superintendent reported: "After hands for many years +in the company's service have acquired the knowledge and skill necessary to +make them valuable, the company are either compelled to submit to higher +rates of wages imposed or to pass others at a lower rate of compensation +through the same apprenticeship, with all the hazard of a strike, in their +turn, by the owners."[34] The directors, after studying the problem thus +presented, launched upon a somewhat extensive slave-purchasing programme, +buying one in 1848 and seven in 1849 at uniform prices of $900; one in +1851 at $800 thirty-seven in 1852, all but two of which were procured in a +single purchase from J.C. Sproull and Company, at prices from $512.50 to +$1,004.50, but mostly ranging near $900; and twenty-eight more at various +times between 1853 and 1859, at prices rising to $1,500. Finally, when two +or three years of war had put all property, of however precarious a nature, +at a premium over Confederate currency, the company bought another slave +in August, 1863, for $2,050, and thirty-two more in 1864 at prices ranging +from $2,450 to $6,005.[35] All of these slaves were males. No ages or +trades are specified in the available records, and no statement of the +advantages actually experienced in owning rather than hiring slaves. + +[Footnote 31: Reprinted in William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ +(London, 1857), P. 207.] + +[Footnote 32: _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 76-82.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., XVIII, 404-406.] + +[Footnote 34: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_ +(New York, 1908), p. 205.] + +[Footnote 35: South Carolina Railroad Company _Reports_ for 1860 and 1865.] + +The Brandon Bank, at Brandon, Mississippi, which was virtually identical +with the Mississippi and Alabama Railroad Company, bought prior to 1839, +$159,000 worth of slaves for railroad employment, but it presumably lost +them shortly after that year when the bank and the railroad together went +bankrupt.[36] The state of Georgia had bought about 190 slaves in and +before 1830 for employment in river and road improvements, but it sold them +in 1834,[37] and when in the late 'forties and the 'fifties it built and +operated the Western and Atlantic Railroad it made no repetition of the +earlier experiment. In the 'fifties, indeed, the South Carolina Railroad +Company was almost unique in its policy of buying slaves for railroad +purposes. + +[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, LVI, 130 (April 27, 1839).] + +[Footnote 37: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_, +pp. 114, 115; W.C. Dawson, _Compilation of Georgia Laws_, p. 399; O.H. +Prince, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 742.] + +The most cogent reason against such a policy was not that the owned slaves +increased the current charges, but that their purchase involved the +diversion of capital in a way which none but abnormal circumstances could +justify. In the year 1846 when the superintendent of the South Carolina +company made his recommendation, slave prices were abnormally low and +cotton prices were leaping in such wise as to make probable a strong +advance in the labor market. By 1855, however, the price of slaves had +nearly doubled, and by 1860 it was clearly inordinate. The special occasion +for a company to divert its funds or increase its capital obligations had +accordingly vanished, and sound policy would have suggested the sale of +slaves on hand rather than the purchase of more. The state of Louisiana, +indeed, sold in 1860[38] the force of nearly a hundred slave men which it +had used on river improvements long enough for many of its members to have +grown old in the service.[39] + +[Footnote 38: Board of Public Works _Report_ for 1860 (Baton Rouge, 1861), +p. 7.] + +[Footnote 39: State Engineer's _Report_ for 1856 (New Orleans, 1857), p. +7.] + +Manufacturing companies here and there bought slaves to man their works, +but in so doing added seriously to the risks of their business. A news item +of 1849 reported that an outbreak of cholera at the Hillman Iron Works near +Clarksville, Tenn., had brought the death of four or five slaves and the +removal of the remainder from the vicinity until the epidemic should have +passed.[40] A more normal episode of mere financial failure was that which +wrecked the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company whose plant was located on Broad +River in South Carolina. To complete its works and begin operations this +company procured a loan of some $92,000 in 1837 from the Bank of the State +of South Carolina on the security of the land and buildings and a hundred +slaves owned by the company. After several years of operation during which +the purchase of additional slaves raised the number to 194, twenty-seven of +whom were mechanics, the company admitted its insolvency. When the mortgage +was foreclosed in 1845 the bank bought in virtually the whole property to +save its investment, and operated the works for several years until a new +company, with a manager imported from Sweden, was floated to take the +concern off its hands.[41] + +[Footnote 40: New Orleans _Delta_, Mch. 10, 1849.] + +[Footnote 41: _Report of the Special Joint Committee appointed to examine +the Bank of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1849); _Report of +the President and Directors of the Bank of the State of South Carolina, +November, 1850_ (Columbia, 1850).] + +Most of the cotton mills depended wholly upon white labor, though a few +made experiments with slave staffs. One of these was in operation in Maury +County, Tennessee, in 1827,[42] and another near Pensacola, Florida, twenty +years afterward. Except for their foremen, each of these was run by slave +operatives exclusively; and in the latter case, at least, all the slaves +were owned by the company. These comprised in 1847 some forty boys and +girls, who were all fed, and apparently well fed, at the company's +table.[43] The career of these enterprises is not ascertainable. A better +known case is that of the Saluda Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina. +When J. Graves came from New England in 1848 to assume the management of +this mill he found several negroes among the operatives, all of whom were +on hire. His first impulse was to replace all the negroes with whites; but +before this was accomplished the newcomer was quite converted by their +"activity and promptness," and he recommended that the number of black +operatives be increased instead of diminished. "They are easily trained +to habits of industry and patient endurance," he said, "and by the +concentration of all their faculties ... their imitative faculties become +cultivated to a very high degree, their muscles become trained and obedient +to the will, so that whatever they see done they are quick in learning to +do."[44] The company was impelled by Graves' enthusiasm to resort to slave +labor exclusively, partly on hire from their owners and partly by purchase. +At the height of this régime, in 1851, the slave operatives numbered +158.[45] But whether from the incapacity of the negroes as mill hands or +from the accumulation of debt through the purchase of slaves, the company +was forced into liquidation at the close of the following year.[46] + +[Footnote 42: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Apr. 24, 1828, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 258.] + +[Footnote 43: _DeBow's Review_, IV, 256.] + +[Footnote 44: Letter of J. Graves, May 15, 1849, in the Augusta, Ga., +_Chronicle_, June 1, 1849. Cf. also J.B. D Debow, _Industrial Resources of +the Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 339.] + +[Footnote 45: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 319, 320.] + +[Footnote 46: _Augusta Chronicle_, Jan. 5, 1853.] + +Corporations had reason at all times, in fact, to prefer free laborers over +slaves even on hire, for in so doing they escaped liabilities for injuries +by fellow servants. When a firm of contractors, for example, advertised +in 1833 for five hundred laborers at $15 per month to work on the Muscle +Shoals canal in northern Alabama, it deemed it necessary to say that in +cases of accidents to slaves it would assume financial responsibility "for +any injury or damage that may hereafter happen in the process of blasting +rock or of the caving of banks."[47] Free laborers, on the other hand, +carried their own risks. Except when some planter would take a contract for +grading in his locality, to be done under his own supervision in the spare +time of his gang, slaves were generally called for in canal and railroad +work only when the supply of free labor was inadequate. + +[Footnote 47: Reprinted in E.S. Abdy, _Journal of a Residence in the United +States_ (London, 1835), II, 109.] + +Slaveowners, on the other hand, were equally reluctant to hire their slaves +to such corporations or contractors except in times of special depression, +for construction camps from their lack of sanitation, discipline, +domesticity and stability were at the opposite pole from plantations as +places of slave residence. High wages were no adequate compensation for +the liability to contagious and other diseases, demoralization, and the +checking of the birth rate by the separation of husbands and wives. The +higher the valuation of slave property, the greater would be the strength +of these considerations. + +Slaves were a somewhat precarious property under all circumstances. Losses +were incurred not only through disease[48] and flight but also through +sudden death in manifold ways, and through theft. A few items will furnish +illustration. An early Charleston newspaper printed the following: "On the +ninth instant Mr. Edward North at Pon Pon sent a sensible negro fellow to +Moon's Ferry for a jug of rum, which is about two miles from his house; +and he drank to that excess in the path that he died within six or seven +hours."[49] From the Eutaws in the same state a correspondent wrote in 1798 +of a gin-house disaster: "I yesterday went over to Mr. Henry Middleton's +plantation to view the dreadful effects of a flash of lightning which the +day before fell on his machine house in which were about twenty negro men, +fourteen of which were killed immediately."[50] In 1828 the following +appeared in a newspaper at New Orleans: "Yesterday towards one o'clock +P.M., as one of the ferry boats was crossing the river with sixteen slaves +on board belonging to General Wade Hampton, with their baggage, a few rods +distant from the shore these negroes, being frightened by the motion of the +boat, all threw themselves on the same side, which caused the boat to fill; +and notwithstanding the prompt assistance afforded, four or five of these +unfortunates perished."[51] In 1839 William Lowndes Yancey, who was then a +planter in South Carolina, lost his whole gang through the poisoning of a +spring on his place, and was thereby bankrupted.[52] About 1858 certain +bandits in western Louisiana abducted two slaves from the home of the Widow +Bernard on Bayou Vermilion. After the lapse of several months they were +discovered in the possession of one Apcher, who was tried for the theft +but acquitted. The slaves when restored to their mistress were put in the +kitchen, bound together by their hands. But while the family was at dinner +the two ran from the house and drowned themselves in the bayou. The +narrator of the episode attributed the impulse for suicide to the taste for +vagabondage and the hatred for work which the negroes had acquired from the +bandit.[53] + +[Footnote 48: For the effect of epidemics _see_ above, pp. 300, 301.] + +[Footnote 49: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 12 to 19, 1741.] + +[Footnote 50: _Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Feb. 4, 1798, supplement.] + +[Footnote 51: _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 3, 1828.] + +[Footnote 52: J.W. DuBose, _Life of W.L. Yancey_ (Birmingham, Ala., 1892), +p. 39.] + +[Footnote 53: Alexandra Barbe, _Histoire des Comités de Vigilance aux +Attakapas_] (Louisiana, 1861), pp. 182-185. + +The governor of South Carolina reported the convictions of five white +men for the crime of slave stealing in the one year;[54] and in the +penitentiary lists of the several states the designation of slave stealers +was fairly frequent, in spite of the fact that the death penalty was +generally prescribed for the crime. One method of their operation was +described in a Georgia newspaper item of 1828 which related that two +wagoners upon meeting a slave upon the road persuaded him to lend a hand in +shifting their load. When the negro entered the wagon they overpowered him +and drove on. When they camped for the night they bound him to the wheel; +but while they slept he cut his thongs and returned to his master.[55] The +greatest activities in this line, however, were doubtless those of the +Murrell gang of desperadoes operating throughout the southwest in the early +thirties with a shrewd scheme for victimizing both whites and blacks. They +would conspire with a slave, promising him his freedom or some other reward +if he would run off with them and suffer himself to be sold to some unwary +purchaser and then escape to join them again.[56] Sometimes they repeated +this process over and over again with the same slave until a threat of +exposure from him led to his being silenced by murder. In the same period a +smaller gang with John Washburn as its leading spirit and with Natchez as +informal headquarters, was busy at burglary, highway and flatboat robbery, +pocket picking and slave stealing.[57] In 1846 a prisoner under arrest at +Cheraw, South Carolina, professed to reveal a new conspiracy for slave +stealing with ramifications from Virginia to Texas; but the details appear +not to have been published.[58] + +[Footnote 54: H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of the Slave in South +Carolina_ [1914], pp. 110-112.] + +[Footnote 55: _The Athenian_ (Athens, Ga.), Aug. 19, 1828.] + +[Footnote 56: H.R. Howard, compiler, _The History of Virgil A. Stewart and +his Adventure in capturing and exposing the great "Western Land Pirate" and +his Gang_ (New York, 1836), pp. 63-68, 104, _et passim_. The truth of these +accounts of slave stealings is vouched for in a letter to the editor of the +New Orleans _Bulletin_, reprinted in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, +Ga.), Nov. 5, 1835.] + +[Footnote 57: The manifold felonies of the gang were described by Washburn +in a dying confession after his conviction for a murder at Cincinnati. +Natchez _Courier_, reprinted in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Feb. +28, 1837. Other reports of the theft of slaves appear in the Charleston +_Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Nov. 2, 1786; _Southern Banner_ +(Athens, Ga.), July 19, 1834, advertisement; _Federal Union_ +(Milledgeville, Ga.), July 18, 1835; and the following New Orleans +journals: _Louisiana Gazette_, Apr. 1 and Sept. 10, 1819; _Mercantile +Advertiser_, Sept 29, 1831; _Bee_, Dec. 14, 1841; Mch. 10, 1845, and Aug. +1 and Nov. 11, 1848; _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 29 and Sept. 18, 1840; +_Picayune_, Aug. 21, 1845.] + +[Footnote 58: New Orleans _Commercial Times_, Aug. 26, 1846.] + +Certain hostile critics of slavery asserted that in one district or another +masters made reckonings favorable to such driving of slaves at their work +as would bring premature death. Thus Fanny Kemble wrote in 1838, when on +the Georgia coast: "In Louisiana ... the humane calculation was not only +made but openly and unhesitatingly avowed that the planters found it upon +the whole their most profitable plan to work off (kill with labour) their +whole number of slaves about once in seven years, and renew the whole +stock."[59] The English traveler Featherstonhaugh likewise wrote of +Louisiana in 1844, when he had come as close to it as East Tennessee, +that "the duration of life for a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven +years."[60] William Goodell supported a similar assertion of his own in +1853 by a series of citations. The first of these was to Theodore Weld as +authority, that "Professor Wright" had been told at New York by Dr. Deming +of Ashland, Ohio, a story that Mr. Dickinson of Pittsburg had been told by +Southern planters and slave dealers on an Ohio River steamboat. The tale +thus vouched for contained the assertion that sugar planters found that by +the excessive driving of slaves day and night in the grinding season they +could so increase their output that "they could afford to sacrifice one set +of hands in seven years," and "that this horrible system was now practised +to a considerable extent." The second citation was likewise to Weld for a +statement by Mr. Samuel Blackwell of Jersey City, whose testimonial lay in +the fact of his membership in the Presbyterian church, that while on a tour +in Louisiana "the planters generally declared to him that they were obliged +so to overwork their slaves during the sugar-making season (from eight to +ten weeks) as to use them up in seven or eight years." The third was to the +Rev. Mr. Reed of London who after a tour in Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky +in 1834 published the following: "I was told, confidentially, from +excellent authority, that recently at a meeting of planters in South +Carolina the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more +profitable to the owner if well fed, well clothed and worked lightly, or if +made the most of at once and exhausted in some eight years. The decision +was in favor of the last alternative"[61] An anonymous writer in 1857 +repeated this last item without indication of its date or authority but +with a shortening of the period of exhaustion to "some four or five +years."[62] + +[Footnote 59: Frances A. Kemble, _Journal_ (New York, 1863), p. 28.] + +[Footnote 60: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion Through the Slave States_ +(London, 1844), I, 120. Though Featherstonhaugh afterward visited New +Orleans his book does not recur to this topic.] + +[Footnote 61: William Goodell, _The American Slave Code in Theory and +Practise_ (New York, 1853), pp. 79-81, citing Theodore Weld, _Slavery as it +is_, p 39, and Mattheson, _Visit to the American Churches_, II, 173.] + +[Footnote 62: _The Suppressed Book about Slavery! Prepared for publication +in 1857, never published until the present time_ (New York, 1864), p. 211.] + +These assertions, which have been accepted by some historians as valid, +prompt a series of reflections. In the first place, anyone who has had +experience with negro labor may reasonably be skeptical when told that +healthy, well fed negroes, whether slave or free, can by any routine +insistence of the employer be driven beyond the point at which fatigue +begins to be injurious. In the second place, plantation work as a rule had +the limitation of daylight hours; in plowing, mules which could not +be hurried set the pace; in hoeing, haste would imperil the plants by +enhancing the proportion of misdirected strokes; and in the harvest of +tobacco, rice and cotton much perseverance but little strain was involved. +The sugar harvest alone called for heavy exertion and for night work in the +mill. But common report in that regard emphasized the sturdy sleekness as +well as the joviality of the negroes in the grinding season;[63] and even +if exhaustion had been characteristic instead, the brevity of the period +would have prevented any serious debilitating effect before the coming of +the more leisurely schedule after harvest. In fact many neighboring Creole +and Acadian farmers, fishermen and the like were customarily enlisted +on wages as plantation recruits in the months of stress.[64] The sugar +district furthermore was the one plantation area within easy reach of a +considerable city whence a seasonal supply of extra hands might be had to +save the regular forces from injury. The fact that a planter, as reported +by Sir Charles Lyell, failed to get a hundred recruits one year in the +midst of the grinding season[65] does not weaken this consideration. It may +well have been that his neighbors had forestalled him in the wage-labor +market, or that the remaining Germans and Irish in the city refused to take +the places of their fellows who were on strike. It is well established that +sugar planters had systematic recourse to immigrant labor for ditching and +other severe work.[66] It is incredible that they ignored the same recourse +if at any time the requirements of their crop threatened injury to their +property in slaves. The recommendation of the old Roman, Varro, that +freemen be employed in harvesting to save the slaves[67] would apply with +no more effect, in case of need, to the pressing of oil and wine than to +the grinding of sugar-cane. Two months' wages to a Creole, a "'Cajun" or +an Irishman would be cheap as the price of a slave's continued vigor, +even when slave prices were low. On the whole, however, the stress of the +grinding was not usually as great as has been fancied. Some of the regular +hands in fact were occasionally spared from the harvest at its height and +set to plow and plant for the next year's crop.[68] + +[Footnote 63: E. g., Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 668.] + +[Footnote 64: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 606.] + +[Footnote 65: _See_ above, p. 337.] + +[Footnote 66: See above, pp. 301, 302.] + +[Footnote 67: Varro, _De Re Rustica_, I, XVII, 2.] + +[Footnote 68: _E. g_., items for November, 1849, in the plantation diary of +Dr. John P.R. Stone, of Iberville Parish, Louisiana. For the use of this +document, the MS. of which is in the possession of Mr. John Stone Ware, +White-Castle, La., I am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody, of the University +of Michigan, now Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] + +The further question arises: how could a master who set himself to work a +slave to death in seven years make sure on the one hand that the demise +would not be precipitated within a few months instead, and on the other +that the consequence would not be merely the slave's incapacitation instead +of his death? In the one case a serious loss would be incurred at once; in +the other the stoppage of the slave's maintenance, which would be the only +conceivable source of gain in the premises, would not have been effected, +but the planter would merely have an invalid on his hands instead of a +worker. Still further, the slaves had recourses of their own, even aside +from appeals for legal redress. They might shoot or stab the oppressor, +burn his house, or run away, or resort to any of a dozen other forms of +sabotage. These possibilities the masters knew as well as the slaves. Mere +passive resistance, however, in cases where even that was needed, would +generally prove effective enough. + +Finally, if all the foregoing arguments be dismissed as fallacious, there +still remains the factor of slave prices as a deterrent in certain periods. +If when slaves were cheap and their produce dear it might be feasible and +profitable to exhaust the one to increase the other, the opportunity would +surely vanish when the price relations were reversed. The trend of the +markets was very strong in that direction. Thus at the beginning of the +nineteenth century a prime field hand in the upland cotton belt had the +value of about 1,500 pounds of middling cotton; by 1810 this value had +risen to 4,500 pounds; by 1820 to 5,500; by 1830 to 6,000; by 1840 to +8,300; from 1843 to 1853 it was currently about 10,000; and in 1860 it +reached about 16,000 pounds. Comparison of slave values as measured in the +several other staples would show quite similar trends, though these great +appreciations were accompanied by no remotely proportionate increase of +the slaves' industrial capacities. The figures tell their own tale of +the mounting preposterousness of any calculated exhaustion of the human +chattels. + +The tradition in anti-slavery circles was however too strong to die. +Various travelers touring the South, keen for corroborative evidence but +finding none, still nursed the belief that a further search would bring +reward. It was like the rainbow's end, always beyond the horizon. Thus the +two Englishmen, Marshall Hall and William H. Russell, after scrutinizing +many Southern localities and finding no slave exhaustion, asserted that it +prevailed either in a district or in a type of establishment which they had +not examined. Hall, who traveled far in the Southern states and then merely +touched at Havana on his way home, wrote: "In the United States the life of +the slave has been cherished and his offspring promoted. In Cuba the lives +of the slaves have been 'used up' by excessive labour, and increase in +number disregarded. It is said, indeed, that the slave-life did not extend +beyond eight or ten years."[69] Russell recorded his surprise at finding +that the Louisiana planters made no reckoning whatever of the cost of their +slaves' labor, that Irish gangs nevertheless did the ditching, and that the +slave children of from nine to eleven years were at play, "exempted from +that cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and +manufacturing districts of England"; and then upon glimpsing the homesteads +of some Creole small proprietors, he wrote: "It is among these men that, at +times, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that slaves are exposed to +the severest labor."[70] Johann Schoepf on the other hand while travelling +many years before on the Atlantic seaboard had written: "They who have the +largest droves [of slaves] keep them the worst, let them run naked mostly +or in rags, and accustom them as much as possible to hunger, but exact of +them steady work."[71] That no concrete observations were adduced in any +of these premises is evidence enough, under the circumstances, that the +charges were empty. + +[Footnote 69: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ +(London, 1854), p. 154.] + +[Footnote 70: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp. +274, 278.] + +[Footnote 71: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation_, A.J. +Morrisson, tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), II, 147. But _see ibid_., pp. 94, 116, +for observations of a general air of indolence among whites and blacks +alike.] + +The capital value of the slaves was an increasingly powerful insurance of +their lives and their health. In four days of June, 1836, Thomas Glover of +Lowndes County, Alabama, incurred a debt of $35 which he duly paid, for +three visits with mileage and prescriptions by Dr. Salley to his "wench +Rina";[72] and in the winter of 1858 Nathan Truitt of Troup County, +Georgia, had medical attendance rendered to a slave child of his to the +amount of $130.50.[73] These are mere chance items in the multitude which +constantly recur in probate records. Business prudence required expenditure +with almost a lavish hand when endangered property was to be saved. The +same consideration applied when famines occurred, as in Alabama in 1828[74] +and 1855.[75] Poverty-stricken freemen might perish, but slaveowners could +use the slaves themselves as security for credits to buy food at famine +prices to feed them.[76] As Olmsted said, comparing famine effects in the +South and in Ireland, "the slaves suffered no physical want--the peasant +starved."[77] The higher the price of slaves, the more stringent the +pressure upon the masters to safeguard them from disease, injury and risk +of every sort. + +[Footnote 72: MS. receipt in private possession.] + +[Footnote 73: MS. probate records at LaGrange, Ga.] + +[Footnote 74: Charleston, _City Gazette_, May 28, 1828.] + +[Footnote 75: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 707, 708, quoting +contemporary newspapers.] + +[Footnote 76: Cf. D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 429.] + +[Footnote 77: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 244.] + +Although this phase of the advancing valuation gave no occasion for regret, +other phases brought a spread of dismay and apprehension. In an essay of +1859 Edmund Ruffin analyzed the effects in Virginia. In the last fifteen +years, he said, the value of slaves had been doubled, solely because of +the demand from the lower South. The Virginians affected fell into three +classes. The first were those who had slaves to be sold, whether through +pressure of debt or in the legal division of estates or in the rare event +of liquidating a surplus of labor. These would receive advantage from high +prices. The second were those who wishing neither to buy nor sell slaves +desired merely to keep their estates intact. These were, of course, +unaffected by the fluctuations. The third were the great number of +enterprising planters and farmers who desired to increase the scale of +their industrial operations and who would buy slaves if conditions were +propitious but were debarred therefrom by the immoderate prices. When these +men stood aside in the bidding the manual force and the earning power of +the commonwealth were depleted. The smaller volume of labor then remaining +must be more thinly applied; land values must needs decline; and the +shrewdest employers must join the southward movement. The draining of +the slaves, he continued, would bring compensation in an inflow of white +settlers only when the removal of slave labor had become virtually complete +and had brought in consequence the most extreme prostration of land +prices and of the incomes of the still remaining remnant of the original +population. The exporting of labor, at whatever price it might be sold, he +likened to a farmer's conversion of his plow teams into cash instead of +using them in his work. According to these views, he concluded, "the +highest prices yet obtained from the foreign purchasers of our slaves have +never left a profit to the state or produced pecuniary benefit to general +interests. And even if prices should continue to increase, as there is good +reason to expect and to dread, until they reach $2000 or more for the best +laborers, or $1200 for the general average of ages and sexes, these prices, +though necessarily operating to remove every slave from Virginia, will +still cause loss to agricultural and general interests in every particular +sale, and finally render the state a desert and a ruin."[78] + +[Footnote 78: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in +_DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] + +At Charleston a similar plaint was voiced by L.W. Spratt. In early years +when the African trade was open and slaves were cheap, said he, in the +Carolina lowlands "enterprise found a profitable field, and necessarily +therefore the fortunes of the country bloomed and brightened. But when +the fertilizing stream of labor was cut off, when the opening West had +no further supply to meet its requisitions, it made demands upon the +accumulations of the seaboard. The limited amount became a prize to be +contended for. Land in the interior offered itself at less than one dollar +an acre. Land on the seaboard had been raised to fifty dollars per acre, +and labor, forced to elect between them, took the cheaper. The heirs who +came to an estate, or the men of capital who retired from business, sought +a location in the West. Lands on the seaboard were forced to seek for +purchasers; purchasers came to the seaboard to seek for slaves. Their +prices were elevated to their value not upon the seaboard where lands were +capital but in the interior where the interest upon the cost of labor was +the only charge upon production. Labor therefore ceased to be profitable +in the one place as it became profitable in the other. Estates which were +wealth to their original proprietors became a charge to the descendants +who endeavored to maintain them. Neglect soon came to the relief of +unprofitable care; decay followed neglect. Mansions became tenantless and +roofless. Trees spring in their deserted halls and wave their branches +through dismantled windows. Drains filled up; the swamps returned. Parish +churches in imposing styles of architecture and once attended by a goodly +company in costly equipages, are now abandoned. Lands which had ready sale +at fifty dollars per acre now sell for less than five dollars; and over +all these structures of wealth, with their offices of art, and over +these scenes of festivity and devotion, there now hangs the pall of an +unalterable gloom."[79] In a later essay the same writer dealt with +developments in the 'fifties in more sober phrases which are corroborated +by the census returns. Within the decade, he said, as many as ten thousand +slaves had been drawn from Charleston by the attractive prices of the west, +and the towns of the interior had suffered losses in the same way. The +slaves had been taken in large numbers from all manufacturing employments, +and were now being sold by thousands each year from the rice fields. "They +are as yet retained by cotton and the culture incident to cotton; but as +almost every negro offered in our markets is bid for by the West, the drain +is likely to continue." In the towns alone was the loss offset in any +degree by an inflow of immigration.[80] + +[Footnote 79: L.W. Spratt, _The Foreign Slave Trade, the source of +political power, of material progress, of social integrity and of social +emancipation to the South_ (Charleston, 1858), pp. 7, 8.] + +[Footnote 80: L.W. Spratt, "Letter to John Perkins of Louisiana," in the +Charleston _Mercury_, Feb. 13, 1861.] + +A similar trend as to slaves but with a sharply contrasting effect upon +prosperity was described by Gratz Brown as prevailing in Missouri. The +slave population, said he, is in process of rapid decline except in a dozen +central counties along the Missouri River. "Hemp is the only staple here +left that will pay for investment in negroes," and that can hardly hold +them against the call of the cotton belt. Already the planters of the +upland counties are beginning to send their slaves to southerly markets +in response to the prices there offered. In most parts of Missouri, he +continued, slavery could not be said to exist as a system. It accordingly +served, not as an appreciable industrial agency, but only as a deterrent +hampering the progress of immigration. Brown therefore advocated the +complete extirpation of the institution as a means of giving great impetus +to the state's prosperity.[81] + +[Footnote 81: B. Gratz Brown, _Speech in the Missouri Legislature, February +12, 1857 on gradual emancipation in Missouri_ (St. Louis, 1857).] + +These accounts are colored by the pro-slavery views of Ruffin and Spratt +and the opposite predilections of Brown. It is clear nevertheless that the +net industrial effects of the exportation of slaves were strikingly +diverse in the several regions. In Missouri, and in Delaware also, where +plantations had never been dominant and where negroes were few, the loss +of slaves was more than counterbalanced by the gain of freemen; in some +portions of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky the replacement of the one by +the other was at so evenly compensating a rate that the volume of industry +was not affected; but in other parts of those states and in the rural +districts of the rice coast the depletion of slaves was not in any +appreciable measure offset by immigration. This applies also to the older +portions of the eastern cotton belt. + +Throughout the northern and eastern South doubts had often been expressed +that slave labor was worth its price. Thus Philip Fithian recorded in his +Virginia diary in 1774 a conversation with Mrs. Robert Carter in which she +expressed an opinion, endorsed by Fithian, "that if in Mr. Carter's or in +any gentleman's estate all the negroes should be sold and the money put to +interest in safe hands, and let the land which the negroes now work lie +wholly uncultivated, the bare interest of the price of the negroes would be +a much greater yearly income than what is now received from their working +the lands, making no allowance at all for the trouble and risk of the +masters as to crops and negroes."[82] In 1824 John Randolph said: "It is +notorious that the profits of slave labor have been for a long time on the +decrease, and that on a fair average it scarcely reimburses the expense of +the slave," and concluded by prophesying that a continuance of the tendency +would bring it about "in case the slave shall not elope from his master, +that his master will run away from him."[83] In 1818 William Elliott +of Beaufort, South Carolina, had written that in the sea-island cotton +industry for a decade past the high valuations of lands and slaves had been +wholly unjustified. On the one hand, said he, the return on investments +was extremely small; on the other, it was almost impossible to relieve an +embarrassed estate by the sale of a part, for the reduction of the scale of +operations would cause a more than proportionate reduction of income.[84] + +[Footnote 82: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), +p. 145.] + +[Footnote 83: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (New York 1851), II, +215.] + +[Footnote 84: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 151-163.] + +The remorseless advance of slave prices as measured in their produce tended +to spread the adverse conditions noted by Elliott into all parts of the +South; and by the close of the 'fifties it is fairly certain that no +slaveholders but those few whose plantations lay in the most advantageous +parts of the cotton and sugar districts and whose managerial ability was +exceptionally great were earning anything beyond what would cover their +maintenance and carrying charges. + +Achille Loria has repeatedly expressed the generalization that slaves have +been systematically overvalued wherever the institution has prevailed, and +he has attempted to explain the phenomenon by reference to an economic law +of his own formulation that capitalists always and everywhere exploit labor +by devices peculiarly adapted to each régime in turn. His latest argument +in the premises is as follows: Man, who is by nature dispersively +individualistic, is brought into industrial coordination only by coercion. +Isolated labor if on exceptionally fertile soil or if equipped with +specially efficient apparatus or if supernormal in energy may produce a +surplus income, but ordinarily it can earn no more than a bare subsistence. +Associative labor yields so much greater returns that masters of one sort +or another emerge in every progressive society to replace dispersion with +concentration and to engross most of the accruing enhancement of produce +to themselves as captains of industry. This "persistent and continuous +coercion, compelling them to labour in conformity to a unitary plan or in +accordance with a concentrating design" is commonly in its earlier form +slavery, and slaveholders are thus the first possessors of capital. As +capitalists they become perpetually concerned with excluding the laborers +from the proprietorship of land and the other means of production. So long +as land is relatively abundant this can be accomplished only by keeping +labor enslaved, and enslavement cannot be maintained unless the slaves are +prevented from buying their freedom. This prevention is procured by the +heightening of slave prices at such a rate as to keep the cost of freedom +always greater than the generality of the slaves can pay with their own +accumulated savings or _peculia_. Slave prices in fact, whether in ancient +Rome or in modern America, advanced disproportionately to the advantage +which the owners could derive from the ownership. "This shows that an +element of speculation enters into the valuation of the slave, or that +there is a hypervaluation of the slave. _This is the central phenomenon of_ +_slavery_; and it is to this far more than to the indolence of slave labour +that is due the low productivity of slave states, the permanently unstable +equilibrium of the slaveholding enterprise, and its inevitable ruin." The +decline of earnings and of slave prices promotes a more drastic oppression, +as in Roman Sicily, to reduce the slave's _peculium_ and continue the +prevention of his self-purchase. When this device is about to fail of its +purpose the masters may foil the intention of the slaves by changing them +into serfs, attaching the lands to the laborers as an additional thing to +be purchased as a condition of freedom. The value of the man may now +be permitted to fall to its natural level. Finally, when the growth of +population has made land so dear that common laborers in freedom cannot +save enough to buy farms, the occasion for slavery and serfdom lapses. +Laborers may now be freed to become a wage-earning proletariat, to take +their own risks. An automatic coercion replaces the systematic; the labor +stimulus is intensified, but the stress of the employer is diminished. The +laborer does not escape from coercion, but merely exchanges one of its +forms for another.[85] + +[Footnote 85: Achille Loria, _The Economic Synthesis_, M. Eden Paul tr. +(London, 1914), PP. 23-26, 91-99.] + +Now Loria falls into various fallacies in other parts of his book, as when +he says that southern lands are generally more fertile than northern +and holds that alone, to the exclusion of climate and racial qualities, +responsible for the greater prevalence of slavery ancient and modern in +southerly latitudes; or when he follows Cairnes in asserting that upon the +American slave plantations "the only form of culture practised was spade +culture, merely agglomerating upon a single area of land a number of +isolated laborers"; or when he contends that either slavery or serfdom +since based on force and fraud "destroys the possibility of fiduciary +credit by cancelling the conditions [of trust and confidence] which alone +can foster it." [86] Such errors disturb one's faith. In the presentation +of his main argument, furthermore, he not only exaggerates the cleavage +between capitalists and laborers, the class consciousness of the two groups +and the rationality of capitalistic purpose, but he falls into calamitous +ambiguity and confusion. The central phenomenon of slavery, says he, is +speculation or the overvaluation of the slave. He thereupon assumes that +speculation always means overvaluation, ignoring its downward possibility, +and he accounts for the asserted universal and continuously increasing +overvaluation by reference to the desire of masters to prevent slaves from +buying their freedom. Here he ignores essential historic facts. In American +law a slave's _peculium_ had no recognition; and the proportion of slaves, +furthermore, who showed any firm disposition to accumulate savings for the +purpose of buying their freedom was very small. Where such efforts were +made, however, they were likely to be aided by the masters through +facilities for cash earnings, price concessions and honest accounting +of instalments, notwithstanding the lack of legal requirements in the +premises. Loria's explanation of the "central phenomenon" is therefore +hardly tenable. + +[Footnote 86: _Ibid_., pp. 26, 190, 260.] + +A far sounder basic doctrine is that of the accountant Gibson, recited +at the beginning of this chapter, that the valuation of a slave is +theoretically determined by the reckoning of his prospective earnings above +the cost of his maintenance. In the actual Southern régime, however, this +was interfered with by several influences. For one thing, the successful +proprietors of small plantations could afford to buy additional slaves at +somewhat more than the price reckoned on _per capita_ earnings, because the +advance of their establishments towards the scale of maximum efficiency +would reduce the proportionate cost of administration. Again, the scale of +slaveholdings was in some degree a measure of social rank, and men were +accordingly tempted by uneconomic motives to increase their trains of +retainers. Both of these considerations stimulated the bidding. On the +other hand conventional morality deterred many proprietors from selling +slaves except under special stress, and thereby diminished the offers in +the market. If the combination of these factors is not adequate as an +explanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a new +country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly +sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome +business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The +variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them +to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated +prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On the +other hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available as a +rule more tempting than slaves as investments. Corporation securities were +few and unseasoned; lands were liable to wear out and were painfully slow +in liquidation; but slaves were a self-perpetuating stock whose ownership +was a badge of dignity, whose management was generally esteemed a +pleasurable responsibility, whose labor would yield an income, and whose +value could be realized in cash with fair promptitude in time of need. No +calculated overvaluation by proprietors for the sake of keeping the slaves +enslaved need be invented. Loria's thesis is a work of supererogation. + +But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices did +rise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that in +virtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area had +been accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog upon +material progress. The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its making +labor mobile, regular and secure. These qualities accorded remarkably, so +far as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the one +hand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other. Its vices +were more numerous, and in part more subtle. + +The North was annually acquiring thousands of immigrants who came at their +own expense, who worked zealously for wages payable from current earnings, +and who possessed all the inventive and progressive potentialities of +European peoples. But aspiring captains of industry at the South could as +a rule procure labor only by remitting round sums in money or credit which +depleted their working capital and for which were obtained slaves fit only +for plantation routine, negroes of whom little initiative could be expected +and little contribution to the community's welfare beyond their mere +muscular exertions. The negroes were procured in the first instance mainly +because white laborers were not to be had; afterward when whites might +otherwise have been available the established conditions repelled them. The +continued avoidance of the South by the great mass of incoming Europeans in +post-bellum decades has now made it clear that it was the negro character +of the slaves rather than the slave status of the negroes which was chiefly +responsible. The racial antipathy felt by the alien whites, along with +their cultural repugnance and economic apprehensions, intrenched the +negroes permanently in the situation. The most fertile Southern areas when +once converted into black belts tended, and still tend as strongly as ever, +to be tilled only by inert negroes, the majority of whom are as yet perhaps +less efficient in freedom than their forbears were as slaves. + +The drain of funds involved in the purchase of slaves was impressive to +contemporaries. Thus Governor Spotswood wrote from Virginia to the British +authorities in 1711 explaining his assent to a £5 tax upon the importation +of slaves. The members of the legislature, said he, "urged what is really +true, that the country is already ruined by the great number of negros +imported of late years, that it will be impossible for them in many years +to discharge the debts already contracted for the purchase of those negroes +if fresh supplys be still poured upon them while their tobacco continues so +little valuable, but that the people will run more and more in debt."[87] +And in 1769 a Charleston correspondent wrote to a Boston journal: "A +calculation having been made of the amount of purchase money of slaves +effected here the present year, it is computed at £270,000 sterling, which +sum will by that means be drained off from this province."[88] + +[Footnote 87: Virginia Historical Society _Collections_, I, 52.] + +[Footnote 88: Boston _Chronicle_, Mch. 27, 1769.] + +An unfortunate fixation of capital was likewise remarked. Thus Sir Charles +Lyell noted at Columbus, Georgia, in 1846 that Northern settlers were +"struck with the difficulty experienced in raising money here by small +shares for the building of mills. 'Why,' say they, 'should all our cotton +make so long a journey to the North, to be manufactured there, and come +back to us at so high a price? It is because all spare cash is sunk here in +purchasing negroes.'" And again at another stage of his tour: "That slave +labour is more expensive than free is an opinion which is certainly gaining +ground in the higher parts of Alabama, and is now professed openly by some +Northerners who have settled there. One of them said to me, 'Half the +population of the South is employed in seeing that the other half do their +work, and they who do work accomplish half what they might do under a +better system.' 'We cannot,' said another,[89] 'raise capital enough for +new cotton factories because all our savings go to buy negroes, or as has +lately happened, to feed them when the crop is deficient." + +[Footnote 89: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_ +(London, 1850), II, 35, 84, 85.] + +The planters, who were the principal Southern capitalists, trod in a +vicious circle. They bought lands and slaves wherewith to grow cotton, +and with the proceeds ever bought more slaves to make more cotton; and +oftentimes they borrowed heavily on their lands and slaves as collateral in +order to enlarge their scale of production the more speedily. When slave +prices rose the possessors of those in the cotton belt seldom took profit +from the advance, for it was a rare planter who would voluntarily sell his +operating force. When crops failed or prices fell, however, the loans might +be called, the mortgages foreclosed, and the property sold out at panic +levels. Thus while the slaves had a guarantee of their sustenance, their +proprietors, themselves the guarantors, had a guarantee of nothing. By +virtue, or more properly by vice, of the heavy capitalization of the +control of labor which was a cardinal feature of the ante-bellum régime, +they were involved in excessive financial risks. + +The slavery system has often been said to have put so great a stigma on +manual labor as to have paralyzed the physical energies of the Southern +white population. This is a great exaggeration; and yet it is true that the +system militated in quite positive degree against the productivity of the +several white classes. Among the well-to-do it promoted leisure by giving +rise to an abnormally large number of men and women who whether actually +or nominally performing managerial functions, did little to bring sweat +to their brows. The proportion of white collars to overalls and of muslin +frocks to kitchen aprons was greater than in any other Anglo-Saxon +community of equal income. The contrast so often drawn between Southern +gentility and Northern thrift had a concrete basis in fact. At the other +extreme the enervation of the poor whites, while mainly due to malaria +and hookworm, had as a contributing cause the limitation upon their +wage-earning opportunity which the slavery system imposed. Upon the middle +class and the yeomanry, which were far more numerous and substantial[90] +than has been commonly realized, the slavery system exerted an economic +influence by limiting the availability of capital and by offering the +temptation of an unsound application of earnings. When a prospering farmer, +for example, wanted help for himself in his fields or for his wife indoors, +the habit of the community prompted him to buy or hire slaves at a greater +cost than free labor would normally have required.[91] The high price of +slaves, furthermore, prevented many a capable manager from exercising his +talents by debarring him from the acquisition of labor and the other means +of large-scale production. + +[Footnote 90: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 91-100, 193-303; John M. Aughey, _The Iron Furnace, or +Slavery and Secession_ (Philadelphia, 1863), p. 231.] + +[Footnote 91: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, p. 513.] + +Finally, the force of custom, together with the routine efficiency of slave +labor itself, caused the South to spoil the market for its distinctive +crops by producing greater quantities than the world would buy at +remunerative prices. To this the solicitude of the masters for the health +of their slaves contributed. The harvesting of wheat, for example, as a +Virginian planter observed in a letter to his neighbor James Madison, in +the days when harvesting machinery was unknown, required exertion much more +severe than the tobacco routine, and was accordingly, as he put it, "by +no means so conducive to the health of our negroes, upon whose increase +(_miserabile dictu_!) our principal profit depends."[92] The same +letter also said: "Where there is negro slavery there will be laziness, +carelessness and wastefulness. Nor is it possible to prevent them. Severity +increases the evil, and humanity does not lessen it." + +[Footnote 92: Francis Corbin to James Madison, Oct. 10, 1819, in the +Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 263.] + +On the whole, the question whether negro labor in slavery was more or less +productive than free negro labor would have been is not the crux of the +matter. The influence of the slaveholding régime upon the whites themselves +made it inevitable that the South should accumulate real wealth more slowly +than the contemporary North. The planters and their neighbors were in the +grip of circumstance. The higher the price of slaves the greater was the +absorption of capital in their purchase, the blacker grew the black belts, +the more intense was the concentration of wealth and talent in plantation +industry, the more complete was the crystallization of industrial society. +Were there any remedies available? Certain politicians masquerading as +economists advocated the territorial expansion of the régime as a means +of relief. Their argument, however, would not stand analysis. On one hand +virtually all the territory on the continent climatically available for the +staples was by the middle of the nineteenth century already incorporated +into slaveholding states; on the other hand, had new areas been available +the chief effects of their exploitation would have been to heighten the +prices of slaves and lower the prices of crops. Actual expansion had in +fact been too rapid for the best interests of society, for it had kept the +population too sparse to permit a proper development of schools and the +agencies of communications. + +With a view to increase the power of the South to expand, and for other +purposes mainly political, a group of agitators in the 'fifties raised a +vehement contention in favor of reopening the African slave trade in full +volume. This, if accomplished, would have lowered the cost of labor, but +its increase of the crops would have depressed staple prices in still +greater degree; its unsettling of the slave market would have hurt vested +interests; and its infusion of a horde of savage Africans would have +set back the progress of the negroes already on hand and have magnified +permanently the problems of racial adjustment. + +The prohibition of the interstate slave trade was another project for +modifying the situation. It was mooted in the main by politicians alien to +the régime. If accomplished it would have wrought a sharp differentiation +in the conditions within the several groups of Southern states. An analogy +may be seen in the British possessions in tropical America, where, +following the stoppage of the intercolonial slave trade in 1807, a royal +commission found that the average slave prices as gathered from sale +records between 1822 and 1830 varied from a range in the old and stagnant +colonies of £27 4_s_. 11-3/4_d_. in Bermuda, £29 18_s_. 9-3/4_d_. in the +Bahamas, £47 1_s_. in Barbados and £44 15_s_. 2-1/4_d_. in Jamaica, to £105 +4_s_., £114 11_s_. and £120 4_s_. 7-1/2_d_ respectively in the new and +buoyant settlements of Trinidad, Guiana and British Honduras.[93] If the +interstate transfer had been stopped, the Virginia, Maryland and Carolina +slave markets would have been glutted while the markets of every +southwestern state were swept bare. Slave prices in the former would have +fallen to such levels that masters would have eventually resorted to +manumission in self-defence, while in the latter all existing checks to the +inflation of prices would have been removed and all the evils consequent +upon the capitalization of labor intensified. + +[Footnote 93: _Accounts and Papers_ [of the British Government], 1837-1838, +vol. 48, [p. 329].] + +Another conceivable plan would have been to replace slavery at large by +serfdom. This would have attached the negroes to whatever lands they +chanced to occupy at the time of the legislation. By force of necessity it +would have checked the depletion of soils; but by preventing territorial +transfer it would have robbed the negroes and their masters of all +advantages afforded by the virginity of unoccupied lands. Serfdom could +hardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparsely +settled country such as the South then was. + +Finally the conversion of slaves into freemen by a sweeping emancipation +was a project which met little endorsement except among those who ignored +the racial and cultural complications. Financially it would work drastic +change in private fortunes, though the transfer of ownership from the +masters to the laborers themselves need not necessarily have great effect +for the time being upon the actual wealth of the community as a whole. +Emancipation would most probably, however, break down the plantation system +by making the labor supply unstable, and fill the country partly with +peasant farmers and partly with an unattached and floating negro +population. Exceptional negroes and mulattoes would be sure to thrive upon +their new opportunities, but the generality of the blacks could be counted +upon to relax into a greater slackness than they had previously been +permitted to indulge in. The apprehension of industrial paralysis, however, +appears to have been a smaller factor than the fear of social chaos as a +deterrent in the minds of the Southern whites from thoughts of abolition. + +The slaveholding régime kept money scarce, population sparse and land +values accordingly low; it restricted the opportunities of many men of both +races, and it kept many of the natural resources of the Southern country +neglected. But it kept the main body of labor controlled, provisioned and +mobile. Above all it maintained order and a notable degree of harmony in a +community where confusion worse confounded would not have been far to +seek. Plantation slavery had in strictly business aspects at least as many +drawbacks as it had attractions. But in the large it was less a business +than a life; it made fewer fortunes than it made men. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +TOWN SLAVES + + +Southern households in town as well as in country were commonly large, and +the dwellings and grounds of the well-to-do were spacious. The dearth of +gas and plumbing and the lack of electric light and central heating made +for heavy chores in the drawing of water, the replenishment of fuel and the +care of lamps. The gathering of vegetables from the kitchen garden, the +dressing of poultry and the baking of relays' of hot breads at meal times +likewise amplified the culinary routine. Maids of all work were therefore +seldom employed. Comfortable circumstances required at least a cook and +a housemaid, to which might be added as means permitted a laundress, a +children's nurse, a seamstress, a milkmaid, a butler, a gardener and a +coachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none but +the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the gross +population was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menial +employment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection of +householders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate services +and gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census of +Charleston in 1848,[94] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics as +compared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. The slaves were more +numerous than the free also in the semi-domestic employments of coachmen +and porters, and among the dray-men and the coopers and the unskilled +laborers in addition. + +[Footnote 94: J.L. Dawson and H.W. DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for +1848_ (Charleston, 1849), pp. 31-36. The city's population then comprised +some 20,000 whites, a like number of slaves, and about 3,500 free persons +of color. The statistics of occupations are summarized in the accompanying +table.] + +MANUAL OCCUPATIONS IN CHARLESTON, 1848 + + Slaves | Free Negroes| Whites + Men | Women Men |Women Men |Women +Domestic servants 1,888 | 3,384 9 | 28 13 | 100 +Cooks and +confectioners 7 | 12 18 | 18 ... | 5 +Nurses and midwives ...| 2 ... | 10 ... | 5 +Laundresses ...| 33 ... | 45 ... | ... +Seamstresses and +mantua makers ... | 24 ... | 196 ... | 125 +Milliners ... | ... ... | 7 ... | 44 +Fruiterers, hucksters +and pedlers ... | 18 6 | 5 46 | 18 +Gardeners 3 | ... ...| ... 5 | 1 +Coachmen 15 | ... 4 | ... 2 | ... +Draymen 67 | ... 11 | ... 13 | ... +Porters 35 | ... 5 | ... 8 | ... +Wharfingers and +stevedores 2 | ... 1 | ... 21 | ... +Pilots and sailors 50 | ... 1 | ... 176 | ... +Fishermen 11 | ... 14 | ... 10 | ... +Carpenters 120 | ... 27 | ... 119 | ... +Masons and +bricklayers 68 | ... 10 | ... 60 | ... +Painters and +plasterers 16 | ... 4 | ... 18 | ... +Tinners 3 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Ship carpenters +and joiners 51 | ... 6 | ... 52 | ... +Coopers 61 | ... 2 | ... 20 | ... +Coach makers and +wheelwrights 3 | ... 1 | ... 26 | ... +Cabinet makers 8 | ... ... | ... 26 | ... +Upholsterers 1 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Gun, copper and +locksmiths 2 | ... 1 | ... 16 | ... +Blacksmiths and +horseshoers 40 | ... 4 | ... 51 | ... +Millwrights ... | ... 5 | ... 4 | ... +Boot and shoemakers 6 | ... 17 | ... 30 | ... +Saddle and harness +makers 2 | ... 1 | ... 29 | ... +Tailors and cap makers 36 | ... 42 | 6 68 | 6 +Butchers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Millers ... | ... 1 | ... 14 | ... +Bakers 39 | ... 1 | ... 35 | 1 +Barbers and hairdressers 4 | ... 14 | ... ... | 6 +Cigarmakers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Bookbinders 3 | ... ... | ... 10 | ... +Printers 5 | ... ... | ... 65 | ... +Other mechanics [A] 45 | ... 2 | ... 182 | ... +Apprentices 43 | 8 14 | 7 55 | 5 +Unclassified, unskilled +laborers 838 | 378 19 | 2 192 | ... +Superannuated 38 | 54 1 | 5 ... | ... + +[Footnote A: The slaves and free negroes in this group were designated +merely as mechanics. The whites were classified as follows: 3 joiners, +1 plumber, 8 gas fitters, 7 bell hangers, 1 paper hanger, 6 carvers and +gilders, 9 sail makers, 5 riggers, 1 bottler, 8 sugar makers, 43 engineers, +10 machinists, 6 boilermakers, 7 stone cutters, 4 piano and organ builders, +23 silversmiths, 15 watchmakers, 3 hair braiders, 1 engraver, 1 cutler, 3 +molders, 3 pump and block makers, 2 turners, 2 wigmakers, 1 basketmaker, 1 +bleacher, 4 dyers, and 4 journeymen. + +In addition there were enumerated of whites in non-mechanical employments +in which the negroes did not participate, 7 omnibus drivers and 16 +barkeepers.] + +On the other hand, although Charleston excelled every other city in the +proportion of slaves in its population, free laborers predominated in all +the other industrial groups, though but slightly in the cases of the masons +and carpenters. The whites, furthermore, heavily outnumbered the free +negroes in virtually all the trades but that of barbering which they +shunned. Among women workers the free colored ranked first as seamstresses, +washerwomen, nurses and cooks, with white women competing strongly in the +sewing trades alone. A census of Savannah in the same year shows a similar +predominance of whites in all the male trades but that of the barbers, in +which there were counted five free negroes, one slave and no whites.[2] +From such statistics two conclusions are clear: first, that the repulsion +of the whites was not against manual work but against menial service; +second, that the presence of the slaves in the town trades was mainly due +to the presence of their fellows as domestics. + +[Footnote 2: Joseph Bancroft, _Census of the City of Savannah_ (Savannah, +1848).] + +Most of the slave mechanics and out-of-door laborers were the husbands and +sons of the cooks and chambermaids, dwelling with them on their masters' +premises, where the back yard with its crooning women and romping +vari-colored children was as characteristic a feature as on the +plantations. Town slavery, indeed, had a strong tone of domesticity, and +the masters were often paternalistically inclined. It was a townsman, for +example, who wrote the following to a neighbor: "As my boy Reuben has +formed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her for a wife, this +is to let you know that I am perfectly willing that he should, with your +consent, marry her. His character is good; he is honest, faithful and +industrious." The patriarchal relations of the country, however, which +depended much upon the isolation of the groups, could hardly prevail in +similar degree where the slaves of many masters intermingled. Even for +the care of the sick there was doubtless fairly frequent recourse to such +establishments as the "Surgical Infirmary for Negroes" at Augusta which +advertised its facilities in 1854,[3] though the more common practice, of +course, was for slave patients in town as well as country to be nursed +at home. A characteristic note in this connection was written by a young +Georgia townswoman: "No one is going to church today but myself, as we have +a little negro very sick and Mama deems it necessary to remain at home to +attend to him."[4] + +[Footnote 3: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 289, +advertisement. The building was described as having accommodations for +fifty or sixty patients. The charge for board, lodging and nursing was $10 +per month, and for surgical operations and medical attendance "the usual +rates of city practice."] + +[Footnote 4: Mary E. Harden to Mrs. Howell Cobb, Athens, Ga., Nov. 13, +1853. MS. in possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +The town régime was not so conducive to lifelong adjustments of masters +and slaves except as regards domestic service; for whereas a planter could +always expand his operations in response to an increase of his field hands +and could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he might +produce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire +out or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic +establishment. On the other hand a building contractor with an expanding +business could not await the raising of children but must buy or hire +masons and carpenters where he could find them. + +Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs. Thus William Elfe, a +Charleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial period, had title to +four sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and he managed to keep some of +their wives and children in his possession also by having a farm on the +further side of the harbor for their residence and employment.[5] William +Rouse, a Charleston leather worker who closed his business in 1825 when +the supply of tan bark ran short, had for sale four tanners, a currier and +seven shoemakers, with, however, no women or children;[6] and the seven +slaves of William Brockelbank, a plastering contractor of the same city, +sold after his death in 1850, comprised but one woman and no children.[7] +Likewise when the rope walk of Smith, Dorsey and Co. at New Orleans was +offered for sale in 1820, fourteen slave operatives were included without +mention of their families.[8] + +[Footnote 5: MS. account book of William Elfe, in the Charleston Library.] + +[Footnote 6: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 5, 1826, advertisement.] + +[Footnote 7: Charleston _Mercury_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. +5, 1850. This news item owed its publication to the "handsome prices" +realized. A plasterer 28 years old brought $2,135; another, 30, $1,805; a +third, 24, $1775; a fourth, 24, $1,100; and a fifth, 20, $730.] + +[Footnote 8: _Louisiana Advertiser_ (New Orleans), May 13, 1820, +advertisement.] + +Far more frequently such laborers were taken on hire. The following are +typical of a multitude of newspaper advertisements: Michael Grantland at +Richmond offered "good wages" for the year 1799 by piece or month for six +or eight negro coopers.[9] At the same time Edward Rumsey was calling for +strong negro men of good character at $100 per year at his iron works in +Botetourt County, Virginia, and inviting free laboring men also to take +employment with him.[10] In 1808 Daniel Weisinger and Company wanted three +or four negro men to work in their factory at Frankfort, Kentucky, saying +"they will be taught weaving, and liberal wages will be paid for their +services."[11] George W. Evans at Augusta in 1818 "Wanted to hire, eight or +ten white or black men for the purpose of cutting wood."[12] A citizen of +Charleston in 1821 called for eight good black carpenters on weekly or +monthly wages, and in 1825 a blacksmith and wheel-wright of the same city +offered to take black apprentices.[13] In many cases whites and blacks +worked together in the same employ, as in a boat-building yard on the Flint +River in 1836,[14] and in a cotton mill at Athens, Georgia, in 1839.[15] + +[Footnote 9: _Virginia Gazette_ (Richmond), Nov. 20, 1798.] + +[Footnote 10: Winchester, Va., _Gazette_, Jan. 30, 1799.] + +[Footnote 11: The _Palladium_ (Frankfort, Ky.), Dec. 1, 1808.] + +[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 1, 1818.] + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 22, 1825.] + +[Footnote 14: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 18, 1836, +reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 356.] + +[Footnote 15: J.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, +[1842]), II, 112.] + +In some cases the lessor of slaves procured an obligation of complete +insurance from the lessee. An instance of this was a contract between +James Murray of Wilmington in 1743, when he was departing for a sojourn in +Scotland, and his neighbor James Hazel. The latter was to take the three +negroes Glasgow, Kelso and Berwick for three years at an annual hire of £21 +sterling for the lot. If death or flight among them should prevent Hazel +from returning any of the slaves at the end of the term he was to reimburse +Murray at full value scheduled in the lease, receiving in turn a bill of +sale for any runaway. Furthermore if any of the slaves were permanently +injured by willful abuse at the hands of Hazel's overseer, Murray was to be +paid for the damage.[16] Leases of this type, however, were exceptional. +As a rule the owners appear to have carried all risks except in regard to +willful injury, and the courts generally so adjudged it where the contracts +of hire had no stipulations in the premises.[17] When the Georgia supreme +court awarded the owner a full year's hire of a slave who had died in the +midst of his term the decision was complained of as an innovation "signally +oppressive to the poorer classes of our citizens--the large majority--who +are compelled to hire servants."[18] + +[Footnote 16: Nina M. Tiffany ed., _Letters of James Murray, Loyalist_ +(Boston, 1901), pp. 67-69.] + +[Footnote 17: J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_ (New York, 1837), pp. +152-155.] + +[Footnote 18: Editorial in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. +12, 1854.] + +The main supply of slaves for hire was probably comprised of the husbands +and sons, and sometimes the daughters, of the cooks and housemaids of the +merchants, lawyers and the like whose need of servants was limited but who +in many cases made a point of owning their slaves in families. On the other +hand, many townsmen whose capital was scant or whose need was temporary +used hired slaves even for their kitchen work; and sometimes the filling of +the demand involved the transfer of a slave from one town to another. Thus +an innkeeper of Clarkesville, a summer resort in the Georgia mountains, +published in the distant newspapers of Athens and Augusta in 1838 his +offer of liberal wages for a first rate cook.[19] This hiring of domestics +brought periodic embarrassments to those who depended upon them. A Virginia +clergyman who found his wife and himself doing their own chores "in the +interval between the hegira of the old hirelings and the coming of the +new"[20] was not alone in his plight. At the same season, a Richmond editor +wrote: "The negro hiring days have come, the most woeful of the year! So +housekeepers think who do not own their own servants; and even this class +is but a little better off than the rest, for all darkeydom must have +holiday this week, and while their masters and mistresses are making fires +and cooking victuals or attending to other menial duties the negroes are +promenading the streets decked in their finest clothes."[21] Even the +tobacco factories, which were constantly among the largest employers of +hired slaves, were closed for lack of laborers from Christmas day until +well into January.[22] + +[Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1838, advertisement +ordering its own republication in the Augusta _Constitutionalist_.] + +[Footnote 20: T.C. Johnson, _Life of Robert L. Dabney_ (Richmond, 1905), p. +120.] + +[Footnote 21: Richmond _Whig_, quoted in the _Atlanta Intelligencer_, Jan. +5, 1859.] + +[Footnote 22: Robert Russell, _North America_ (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 151.] + +That the bargain of hire sometimes involved the consent of more than two +parties is suggested by a New Year's colloquy overheard by Robert Russell +on a Richmond street: "I was rather amused at the efforts of a market +gardener to hire a young woman as a domestic servant. The price her owner +put upon her services was not objected to by him, but they could not agree +about other terms. The grand obstacle was that she would not consent to +work in the garden, even when she had nothing else to do. After taking an +hour's walk in another part of town I again met the two at the old bargain. +Stepping towards them, I now learned that she was pleading for other +privileges--her friends and favourites must be allowed to visit her.[23] +At length she agreed to go and visit her proposed home and see how things +looked." That the scruples of proprietors occasionally prevented the +placing of slaves is indicated by a letter of a Georgia woman anent her +girl Betty and a free negro woman, Matilda: "I cannot agree for Betty to +be hired to Matilda--her character is too bad. I know her of old; she is a +drunkard, and is said to be bad in every respect. I would object her being +hired to any colored person no matter what their character was; and if she +cannot get into a respectable family I had rather she came home, and if she +can't work out put her to spinning and weaving. Her relations here beg she +may not be permitted to go to Matilda. She would not be worth a cent at the +end of the year."[24] + +The coördination of demand and supply was facilitated in some towns by +brokers. Thus J. de Bellievre of Baton Rouge maintained throughout 1826 a +notice in the local _Weekly Messenger_ of "Servants to hire by the day or +month," including both artizans and domestics; and in the Nashville city +directory of 1860 Van B. Holman advertised his business as an agent for the +hiring of negroes as well as for the sale and rental of real estate. + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid_.] + +[Footnote 24: Letter of Mrs. S.R. Cobb, Cowpens, Ga., Jan. 9 1843, to +her daughter-in-law at Athens. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, +Athens, Ga.] + +Slave wages, generally quoted for the year and most frequently for +unskilled able-bodied hands, ranged materially higher, of course, in the +cotton belt than in the upper South. Women usually brought about half +the wages of men, though they were sometimes let merely for the keep of +themselves and their children. In middle Georgia the wages of prime men +ranged about $100 in the first decade of the nineteenth century, dropped to +$60 or $75 during the war of 1812, and then rose to near $150 by 1818. The +panic of the next year sent them down again; and in the 'twenties they +commonly ranged between $100 and $125. Flush times then raised them in +such wise that the contractors digging a canal on the Georgia coast found +themselves obliged in 1838 to offer $18 per month together with the +customary weekly rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quarts +of corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitute +for life and health insurance.[25] The beginning of the distressful +'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville could get its +street gang on a scale of $125;[26] at the middle of the decade slaveowners +were willing to take almost any wages offered; and in its final year the +Georgia Railroad paid only $70 to $75 for section hands. In 1850, however, +this rate leaped to $100 and $110, and caused a partial substitution of +white laborers for the hired slaves;[27] but the brevity of any relief +procured by this recourse is suggested by a news item from Chattanooga in +1852 reporting that the commonest labor commanded a dollar a day, that +mechanics were all engaged far in advance, that much building was perforce +being postponed, and that all persons who might be seeking employment were +urged to answer the city's call.[28] By 1854 the continuing advance began +to discommode rural employers likewise. A Norfolk newspaper of the time +reported that the current wages of $150 for ordinary hands and $225 for +the best laborers, together with life insurance for the full value of +the slaves, were so high that prudent farmers were curtailing their +operations.[29] At the beginning of 1856 the wages in the Virginia tobacco +factories advanced some fifteen per cent. over the rates of the preceding +year;[30] and shortly afterward several of these establishments took refuge +in the employment of white women for their lighter processes.[31] In 1860 +there was a culmination of this rise of slave wages throughout the South, +contemporaneous with that of their purchase prices. First-rate hands +were engaged by the Petersburg tobacco factories at $225;[32] and in +northwestern Louisiana the prime field hands in a parcel of slaves hired +for the year brought from $300 to $360 each, and a blacksmith $430.[33] The +general average then prevalent for prime unskilled slaves, however, was +probably not much above two hundred dollars. While the purchase price of +slaves was wellnigh quadrupled in the three score years of the nineteenth +century, slave wages were little more than doubled, for these were of +course controlled not by the fluctuating hopes and fears of what the +distant future might bring but by the sober prospect of the work at hand. + +[Footnote 25: Advertisement in the Savannah newspapers, reprinted in J.S. +Buckingham, _Slave States_ (London, 1842), I, 137.] + +[Footnote 26: MS. minutes of the board of aldermen, in the town hall at +Milledgeville, Ga. Item dated Feb. 23, 1841.] + +[Footnote 27: Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1850, p. 13.] + +[Footnote 28: Chattanooga _Advertiser_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +June 6, 1852.] + +[Footnote 29: Norfolk _Argus_, quoted in _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), +Jan. 12, 1854.] + +[Footnote 30: Richmond _Dispatch_, Jan., 1856, quoted in G.M. Weston, _Who +are and who may be Slaves in the U.S._ (caption).] + +[Footnote 31: _Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XL, 522.] + +[Footnote 32: Petersburg _Democrat_, quoted by the Atlanta _Intelligencer_, +Jan., 1860.] + +[Footnote 33: _DeBow's Review_, XXIX, 374.] + +The proprietors of slaves for hire appear to have been generally as much +concerned with questions of their moral and physical welfare as with the +wages to be received, for no wage would compensate for the debilitation of +the slave or his conversion into an inveterate runaway. The hirers in their +turn had the problem, growing more intense with the advance of costs, of +procuring full work without resorting to such rigor of discipline as +would disquiet the owners of their employees. The tobacco factories found +solution in piece work with bonus for excess over the required stint. At +Richmond in the middle 'fifties this was commonly yielding the slaves from +two to five dollars a month for their own uses; and these establishments, +along with all other slave employers, suspended work for more than a week +at the Christmas season.[34] + +[Footnote 34: Robert Russell, _North America_, p. 152.] + +The hiring of slaves from one citizen to another did not meet all the needs +of the town industry, for there were many occupations in which the regular +supervision of labor was impracticable. Hucksters must trudge the streets +alone; and market women sit solitary in their stalls. If slaves were to +follow such callings at all, and if other slaves were to utilize their +talents in keeping cobbler and blacksmith shops and the like for public +patronage,[35] they must be vested with fairly full control of their own +activities. To enable them to compete with whites and free negroes in the +trades requiring isolated and occasional work their masters early and +increasingly fell into the habit of hiring many slaves to the slaves +themselves, granting to each a large degree of industrial freedom in return +for a stipulated weekly wage. The rates of hire varied, of course, with the +slave's capabilities and the conditions of business in their trades. The +practice brought friction sometimes between slaves and owners when wages +were in default. An instance of this was published in a Charleston +advertisement of 1800 announcing the auction of a young carpenter and +saying as the reason of the sale that he had absconded because of a deficit +in his wages.[36] Whether the sale was merely by way of punishment or +was because the proprietor could not give personal supervision to the +carpenter's work the record fails to say. The practice also injured the +interests of white competitors in the same trades, who sometimes bitterly +complained;[37] it occasionally put pressure upon the slaves to fill +out their wages by theft; and it gave rise in some degree to a public +apprehension that the liberty of movement might be perverted to purposes of +conspiracy. The law came to frown upon it everywhere; but the device was +too great a public and private convenience to be suppressed. + +[Footnote 35: _E. g_., "For sale: a strong, healthy Mulatto Man, about +24 years of age, by trade a blacksmith, and has had the management of a +blacksmith shop for upwards of two years" Advertisement in the Alexandria, +Va., _Times and Advertiser_, Sept. 26, 1797.] + +[Footnote 36: Charleston _City Gazette_, May 12, 1800.] + +[Footnote 37: _E. g., Plantation and Frontier_, II, 367.] + +To procure the enforcement of such laws a vigilance committee was proposed +at Natchez in 1824;[38] but if it was created it had no lasting effect. +With the same purpose newspaper campaigns were waged from time to time. +Thus in the spring of 1859 the _Bulletin_ of Columbia, South Carolina, said +editorially: "Despite the laws of the land forbidding under penalty the +hiring of their time by slaves, it is much to be regretted that the +pernicious practice still exists," and it censured the citizens who were +consciously and constantly violating a law enacted in the public interest. +The nearby Darlington _Flag_ endorsed this and proposed in remedy that +the town police and the rural patrols consider void all tickets issued by +masters authorizing their slaves to pass and repass at large, that all +slaves found hiring their time be arrested and punished, and that their +owners be indicted as by law provided. The editor then ranged further. +"There is another evil of no less magnitude," said he, "and perhaps the +foundation of the one complained of. It is that of transferring slave labor +from its legitimate field, the cultivation of the soil, into that of the +mechanic arts.... Negro mechanics are an ebony aristocracy into which +slaves seek to enter by teasing their masters for permission to learn a +trade. Masters are too often seduced by the prospect of gain to yield their +assent, and when their slaves have acquired a trade are forced to the +violation of the law to realize their promised gain. We should therefore +have a law to prevent slave mechanics going off their masters' premises to +work. Let such a law be passed, and ... there will no longer be need of a +law to prohibit slaves hiring their own time," The _Southern Watchman_ of +Athens, Georgia, reprinted all of this in turn, along with a subscriber's +communication entitled "free slaves." There were more negroes enjoying +virtual freedom in the town of Athens, this writer said, than there were +_bona fide_ free negroes in any ten counties of the district. "Everyone who +is at all acquainted with the character of the slave race knows that they +have great ideas of liberty, and in order to get the enjoyment of it they +make large offers for their time. And everyone who knows anything of the +negro knows that he won't work unless he is obliged to.... The negro thus +set free, in nine cases out of ten, idles away half of his time or gambles +away what he does make, and then relies on his ingenuity in stealing to +meet the demands pay day inevitably brings forth; and this is the way our +towns are converted into dens of rogues and thieves."[39] + +[Footnote 38: Natchez _Mississippian_, quoted in _Le Courrier de la +Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Aug. 25, 1854.] + +[Footnote 39: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Apr. 20, 1859.] + +These arguments had been answered long before by a citizen of Charleston. +The clamor, said he, was intended not so much to guard the community +against theft and insurrection as to diminish the competition of slaves +with white mechanics. The strict enforcement of the law would almost +wholly deprive the public of the services of jobbing slaves, which were +indispensable under existing circumstances. Let the statute therefore be +left in the obscurity of the lawyers' bookshelves, he concluded, to be +brought forth only in case of an emergency.[40] And so such laws were left +to sleep, despite the plaints of self-styled reformers. + +[Footnote 40: Letter to the editor in the Charleston _City Gazette_, Nov. +1, 1825. To similar effect was an editorial in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +Oct. 16, 1851.] + +That self-hire may often have led to self-purchase is suggested by an +illuminating letter of Billy Procter, a slave at Americus, Georgia, in 1854 +to Colonel John B. Lamar of whom something has been seen in a foregoing +chapter. The letter, presumably in the slave's own hand, runs as follows: +"As my owner, Mr. Chapman, has determined to dispose of all his Painters, I +would prefer to have you buy me to any other man. And I am anxious to get +you to do so if you will. You know me very well yourself, but as I wish +you to be fully satisfied I beg to refer you to Mr. Nathan C. Monroe, Dr. +Strohecker and Mr. Bogg. I am in distress at this time, and will be until I +hear from you what you will do. I can be bought for $1000--and I think that +you might get me for 50 Dolls less if you try, though that is Mr. Chapman's +price. Now Mas John, I want to be plain and honest with you. If you will +buy me I will pay you $600 per year untill this money is paid, or at any +rate will pay for myself in two years.... I am fearfull that if you do not +buy me, there is no telling where I may have to go, and Mr. C. wants me to +go where I would be satisfied,--I promise to serve you faithfully, and I +know that I am as sound and healthy as anyone you could find. You will +confer a great favour, sir, by Granting my request, and I would be +very glad to hear from you in regard to the matter at your earliest +convenience."[41] + +[Footnote 41: MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., +printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 41. The writer must have been +well advanced in years or else highly optimistic. Otherwise he could not +have expected to earn his purchase price within two years.] + +The hiring of slaves by one citizen to another prevailed to some extent +in country as well as town, and the hiring of them to themselves was +particularly notable in the forest labors of gathering turpentine and +splitting shingles[42]; but slave hire in both its forms was predominantly +an urban resort. On the whole, whereas the plantation system cherished +slavery as a wellnigh fundamental condition, town industry could tolerate +it only by modifying its features to make labor more flexibly responsive to +the sharply distinctive urban needs. + +[Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 153-155.] + +As to routine control, urban proprietors were less complete masters even +of slaves in their own employ than were those in the country. For example, +Morgan Brown of Clarksville, Tennessee, had occasion to publish the +following notice: "Whereas my negroes have been much in the habit of +working at night for such persons as will employ them, to the great injury +of their health and morals, I therefore forbid all persons employing them +without my special permission in writing. I also forbid trading with them, +buying from or selling to them, without my written permit stating the +article they may buy or sell. The law will be strictly enforced against +transgressors, without respect to persons[43]." + +[Footnote 43: _Town Gazette and Farmers' Register_ (Clarksville, Tenn.), +Aug. 9, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 45, 46.] + +When broils occurred in which slaves were involved, the masters were likely +to find themselves champions rather than judges. This may be illustrated by +two cases tried before the town commissioners of Milledgeville, Georgia, +in 1831. In the first of these Edward Gary was ordered to bring before the +board his slave Nathan to answer a charge of assault upon Richard Mayhorn, +a member of the town patrol, and show why punishment should not be +inflicted. On the day set Cary appeared without the negro and made a +counter charge supported by testimony that Mayhorn had exceeded his +authority under the patrol ordinance. The prosecution of the slave was +thereupon dropped, and the patrolman was dismissed from the town's employ. +The second case was upon a patrol charge against a negro named Hubbard, +whose master or whose master's attorney was one Wiggins, reciting an +assault upon Billy Woodliff, a slave apparently of Seaborn Jones. Billy +being sworn related that Hubbard had come to the door of his blacksmith +shop and "abused and bruised him with a rock." Other evidence revealed that +Hubbard's grievance lay in Billy's having taken his wife from him. "The +testimony having been concluded, Mr. Wiggins addressed the board in a +speech containing some lengthy, strengthy and depthy argument: whereupon +the board ordered that the negro man Hubbard receive from the marshall ten +lashes, moderately laid on, and be discharged."[44] Even in the maintenance +of household discipline masters were fain to apply chastisement vicariously +by having the town marshal whip their offending servants for a small fee. + +[Footnote 44: MS. archives in the town hall at Milledgeville, Ga., selected +items from which are printed in the American Historical Association +_Report_ for 1903, I, 468, 469.] + +The variety in complexion, status and attainment among town slaves led to a +somewhat elaborate gradation of colored society. One stratum comprised the +fairly numerous quadroons and mulattoes along with certain exceptional +blacks. The men among these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, +painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the +cast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread, +and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This element +was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or less +irked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could not +cross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes on the +other hand, with an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, the +women frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors, carrying +their burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying as great store in +their kerchief turbans as their paler cousins did in their beflowered +bonnets. The men of this class wore their shreds and patches with an +easy swing, doffed their wool hats to white men as they passed, called +themselves niggers or darkies as a matter of course, took the joys and +sorrows of the day as they came, improvised words to the music of their +work, and customarily murdered the Queen's English, all with a true if +humble nonchalance and a freedom from carking care. + +The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more than +rudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work days assumed +a grandiloquence of manner when they donned their holiday clothes. The +gayeties of the colored population were most impressive to visitors from +afar. Thus Adam Hodgson wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "I +was pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day in +their best attire, and was amused with their manners towards each other. +They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, and make the +most formal and particular inquiries after each other's families."[45] J.S. +Buckingham wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays, when the +slaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they move about in +every thoroughfare, and are generally more gaily dressed than the whites. +The females wear white muslin and light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets, +ribbons and feathers; some carry reticules on the arm and many are seen +with parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchief +before them in the most fashionable style. The young men among the +slaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed hats, and carry +walking-sticks; and from the bowings, curtseying and greetings in the +highway one might almost imagine one's self to be at Hayti and think that +the coloured people had got possession of the town and held sway, while the +whites were living among them by sufferance."[46] Olmsted in his turn found +the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the whites,[47] +and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia. The town ordinances, +while commonly strict in regard to the police of slaves for the rest of the +year, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festive +assemblies at Christmas tide. + +[Footnote 45: Adam Hodgson, _Letters from North America_, I, 97.] + +[Footnote 46: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States_, II, 427.] + +[Footnote 47: _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 101, 103. Cf. also _DeBow's +Review_, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199.] + +Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasional +complaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, among +matters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grog +shops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night, +in spite of the prohibitions of the law.[48] A citizen of Charleston +protested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form of +dissipation. "There are," said he, "sometimes every evening in the week, +funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes ... who +disturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of burying grounds in Pitt +street near Boundary street. It appears to be a jubilee for every slave in +the city. They are seen eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters, +and such is frequently the crowd and noise made by them that carriages +cannot safely be driven that way."[49] + +[Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 153.] + +[Footnote 49: Letter of a citizen in the _Southern Patriot_, quoted in H.M. +Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., 1914), +p. 144.] + +The operations of urban constables and police courts are exemplified in +some official statistics of Charleston. In the year ending September 1, +1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all, were followed in 138 cases +by prompt magisterial discharge, by fines in 309 cases, and by punishment +in the workhouse or by remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264 +of the remainder. The mayor said in summary: "Of the 573 slaves fined or +committed to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for being out at +night without tickets or being found in the dram shops or other unlawful +places. The fines imposed did not in general exceed $1, and where corporal +punishment was inflicted it was always moderate. It is worthy to remark +that of the 460 cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 were +prosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303 cases, and in +118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by a previous examination +421 suits." Arrests of colored freemen in the same period numbered 78, of +which 27 were followed by discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentence +to the workhouse, and 10 by remandment. + +In the second year following, the slave and free negro arrests for being +"out after the beating of the tattoo without tickets, fighting and rioting +in the streets, following military companies, walking on the battery +contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or other +violation of the city and state laws" advanced for some unexplained reason +to an aggregate of 1424. Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged +after examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted +or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines were +paid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners or guardians, 115 +were runaways who were duly returned to their masters or otherwise disposed +of according to law, and the remaining 252 were delivered on their owners' +orders.[50] + +[Footnote 50: Official reports quoted in H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of +Slaves in South Carolina_, pp. 49, 50.] + +At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the public whipping +of negro offenders at prominent points on the city streets, but +complaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[51] had brought its +discontinuance. For the punishment of misdemeanants under sentences to hard +labor a treadmill was instituted in the workhouse;[52] and the ensuing +substitution of labor for the lash met warm official commendation.[53] + +[Footnote 51: _Columbian Herald_ (Charleston), June 26, 1788.] + +[Footnote 52: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 2, 1826.] + +[Footnote 53: Grand jury presentments, _ibid_., May 15, 1826.] + +In church affairs the two races adhered to the same faiths, but their +worship tended slowly to segregate. A few negroes habitually participated +with the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal rituals, or listened to the +long and logical sermons of the Presbyterians. Larger numbers occupied the +pews appointed for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptist +whites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with their own +tastes. But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint. The +white preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing of +the negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptu +eloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when +dignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their own +manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemly +conduct.[54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding of separate +congregations to which the white ministers occasionally preached and in +which white laymen often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonly +filled by blacks alone. There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiar +talent for "'rousements" and the prayer leader might beseech the Almighty +in tones to reach His ears though afar off. There the sisters might sway +and croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur the +spokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. There +not only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead of +the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermon +would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm. + +[Footnote 54: A Methodist preacher wrote of an episode at Wilmington: "On +one occasion I took a summary process with a certain black woman who in +their love-feast, with many extravagant gestures, cried out that she was +'young King Jesus,' I bade her take her seat, and then publicly read her +out of membership, stating that we would not have such wild fanatics +among us, meantime letting them all know that such expressions were even +blasphemous. Poor Aunt Katy felt it deeply, repented, and in a month I took +her back again. The effect was beneficial, and she became a rational +and consistent member of the church." Joseph Travis, _Autobiography_ +(Nashville, 1855), pp. 71, 72.] + +In some cases the withdrawal of the blacks had the full character of +secession. An example in this line had been set in Philadelphia when +some of the negroes who had been attending white churches of various +denominations were prompted by the antipathy of the whites and by the +ambition of the colored leaders to found, in 1791, an African church with +a negro minister. In the course of a few years this was divided into +congregations of the several sects. Among these the Methodists prospered +to such degree that in 1816 they launched the African Methodist Episcopal +Church, with congregations in Baltimore and other neighboring cities +included within its jurisdiction.[55] Richard Allen as its first bishop +soon entered into communication with Morris Brown and other colored +Methodists of Charleston who were aggrieved at this time by the loss of +their autonomy. In former years the several thousand colored Methodists, +who outnumbered by tenfold the whites in the congregations there, had +enjoyed a quarterly conference of their own, with the custody of their +collections and with control over the church trials of colored members; but +on the ground of abuses these privileges were cancelled in 1815. A secret +agitation then ensued which led on the one hand to the increase of the +negro Methodists by some two thousand souls, and on the other to the visit +of two of their leaders to Philadelphia where they were formally ordained +for Charleston pastorates. When affairs were thus ripened, a dispute as +to the custody of one of their burial grounds precipitated their intended +stroke in 1818. Nearly all the colored class leaders gave up their papers +simultaneously, and more than three-quarters of their six thousand +fellows withdrew their membership from the white Methodist churches. "The +galleries, hitherto crowded, were almost completely deserted," wrote a +contemporary, "and it was a vacancy that could be _felt_. The absence of +their responses and hearty songs were really felt to be a loss to those so +long accustomed to hear them.... The schismatics combined, and after +great exertion succeeded in erecting a neat church building.... Their +organization was called the African Church," and one of its ministers was +constituted bishop. Its career, however, was to be short lived, for the +city authorities promptly proceeded against them, first by arresting a +number of participants at one of their meetings but dismissing them with a +warning that their conduct was violative of a statute of 1800 prohibiting +the assemblage of slaves and free negroes for mental instruction without +the presence of white persons; next by refusing, on the grounds that both +power and willingness were lacking, a plea by the colored preachers for a +special dispensation; and finally by the seizure of all the attendants at +another of their meetings and the sentencing of the bishop and a dozen +exhorters, some to a month's imprisonment or departure from the state, +others to ten lashes or ten dollars' fine. The church nevertheless +continued in existence until 1822 when in consequence of the discovery of a +plot for insurrection among the Charleston negroes the city government had +the church building demolished. Morris Brown moved to Philadelphia, where +he afterward became bishop of the African Church, and the whole Charleston +project was ended.[56] The bulk of the blacks returned to the white +congregations, where they soon overflowed the galleries and even the +"boxes" which were assigned them at the rear on the main floors. Some of +the older negroes by special privilege then took seats forward in the main +body of the churches, and others not so esteemed followed their example in +such numbers that the whites were cramped for room. After complaints on +this score had failed for several years to bring remedy, a crisis came +in Bethel Church on a Sunday in 1833 when Dr. Capers was to preach. More +whites came than could be seated the forward-sitting negroes refused +to vacate their seats for them; and a committee of young white members +forcibly ejected these blacks At a "love-feast" shortly afterward one of +the preachers criticized the action of the committee thereby giving the +younger element of the whites great umbrage. Efforts at reconciliation +failing, nine of the young men were expelled from membership, whereupon +a hundred and fifty others followed them into a new organization which +entered affiliation with the schismatic Methodist Protestant Church.[57] +Race relations in the orthodox congregations were doubtless thereafter more +placid. + +[Footnote 55: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911), +pp. 134-136.] + +[Footnote 56: Charleston _Courier_, June 9, 1818; Charleston _City +Gazette_, quoted in the _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), July 10, 1818; +J.L.E.W. Shecut, _Medical and Philosophical Essays_ (Charleston, 1819), +p. 34; C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ (Nashville +[1857]), pp. 212-214, 232; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, p. 142.] + +[Footnote 57: C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_, pp. +215-217.] + +In most of the permanent segregations the colored preachers were ordained +and their congregations instituted under the patronage of the whites. +At Savannah as early as 1802 the freedom of the slave Henry Francis was +purchased by subscription, and he was ordained by white ministers at the +African Baptist Church. After a sermon by the Reverend Jesse Peter of +Augusta, the candidate "underwent a public examination respecting his faith +in the leading doctrines of Christianity, his call to the sacred ministry +and his ideas of church government. Giving entire satisfaction on these +important points, he kneeled down, when the ordination prayer with +imposition of hands was made by Andrew Bryant The ordained ministers +present then gave the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Francis, who was +forthwith presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by Mr. +Holcombe."[58] The Methodists were probably not far behind the Baptists in +this policy. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with much smaller numbers +of negro co-religionists to care for, followed the same trend in later +decades. Thus the presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of +$7,700, a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregation +to be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian Church of the +city. The building had a T shape, the transepts appropriated to the use of +white persons. The Sunday school of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirty +white men and women as its teaching staff.[59] + +[Footnote 58: Henry Holcombe ed., _The Georgia Analytical Repository_ (a +Baptist magazine of Savannah, 1802), I, 20, 21. For further data concerning +Francis and other colored Baptists of his time see the _Journal of Negro +History_, I, 60-92.] + +[Footnote 59: J.H. Thornwell, D.D., _The Rights and Duties of Masters: a +sermon preached at the dedication of a church erected at Charleston, S.C. +for the benefit and instruction of the colored population_ (Charleston, +1850).] + +Such arrangements were not free from objection, however, as the +Episcopalians of Charleston learned about this time. To relieve the +congestion of the negro pews in St. Michael's and St. Philip's, a separate +congregation was organized with a few whites included in its membership. +While it was yet occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mob +demolished Calvary Church which was being built for its accommodation. When +the proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further use of his premises +the congregation dispersed. The mob's action was said to be in protest +against the doings of the "bands" or burial societies among the Calvary +negroes.[60] + +[Footnote 60: _Public Proceedings relating to Calvary Church and the +Religious Instruction of Slaves_ (Charleston, 1850).] + +The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave and free was +obstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that it might be perverted +to insurrectionary purposes. Thus when at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two free +negroes petitioned the Virginia legislature on behalf of themselves and +several hundred slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by the +whites had not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanction +for the creation of a "Baptist African Church," the legislature withheld +its permission. In 1841, however, this purpose was in effect accomplished +when it was found that a negro church would not be in violation of the law +provided it had a white pastor. At that time the First Baptist Church +of Richmond, having outgrown its quarters, erected a new building to +accommodate its white members and left its old one to the negroes. The +latter were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white minister +and with the choice of its deacons vested in a white committee. In 1855, +when this congregation had grown to three thousand members, the +Ebenezer church was established as an offshoot, with a similar plan of +government.[61] + +[Footnote 61: J.B. Earnest, _The Religious Development of the Negro in +Virginia_ (Charlottesville, 1914), pp. 72-83. For the similar trend of +church segregation in the Northern cities see J.W. Cromwell, _The Negro in +American History_ (Washington, 1914). pp. 61-70.] + +At Baltimore there were in 1835 ten colored congregations, with slave and +free membership intermingled, several of which had colored ministers;[62] +and by 1847 the number of churches had increased to thirteen or more, +ten of which were Methodist.[63] In 1860 there were two or more colored +congregations at Norfolk; at Savannah three colored churches were paying +salaries of $800 to $1000 to their colored ministers,[64] and in Atlanta +a subscription was in progress for the enlargement of the negro church +building to relieve its congestion.[65] By this time a visitor in virtually +any Southern city might have witnessed such a scene as William H. Russell +described at Montgomery:[66] "As I was walking ... I perceived a crowd +of very well-dressed negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brick +building which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into which +white people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, or +persons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated much +comfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all were slaves. One of my +companions went up to a woman in a straw hat, with bright red and green +ribbon trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and +a rainbow-like gown blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious +crinoline, and asked her 'Whom do you belong to?' She replied, 'I b'long to +Massa Smith, sar.'" + +[Footnote 62: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] + +[Footnote 63: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 206.] + +[Footnote 64: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 350, 351.] + +[Footnote 65: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, July 13, 1859, editorial commending +the purpose.] + +[Footnote 66: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), p. +167.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +FREE NEGROES + + +In the colonial period slaves were freed as a rule only when generous +masters rated them individually deserving of liberty or when the negroes +bought themselves. Typical of the time were the will of Thomas Stanford of +New Jersey in 1722 directing that upon the death of the testator's wife +his negro man should have his freedom if in the opinion of three neighbors +named he had behaved well,[1] and a deed signed by Robert Daniell of +South Carolina in 1759 granting freedom to his slave David Wilson in +consideration of his faithful service and of £600 currency in hand paid.[2] +So long as this condition prevailed, in which the ethics of slaveholding +were little questioned, the freed element remained extremely small. + +[Footnote 1: _New Jersey Archives_, XXIII, 438.] + +[Footnote 2: MS. among the probate records at Charleston.] + +The liberal philosophy of the Revolution, persisting thereafter in spite of +reaction, not only wrought the legal disestablishment of slavery throughout +the North, but prompted private manumissions far and wide.[3] Thus Philip +Graham of Maryland made a deed in 1787 reciting his realization that the +holding of his "fellow men in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the +golden law of God and the unalienable right of mankind as well as to +every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place in +America," and converting his slaves into servants for terms, the adults +to become free at the close of that year and the children as they reached +maturity.[4] In the same period, upon his coming of age, Richard Randolph, +brother of the famous John, wrote to his guardian: "With regard to the +division of the estate, I have only to say that I want not a single negro +for any other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every +individual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say +nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant an +animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."[5] +The Randolph estate, however, was so cumbered with debts that the desired +manumissions could not then be made. At Richard's death in 1796 he left a +will of the expected tenor, providing for a wholesale freeing as promptly +as it could legally be accomplished by the clearance of the mortgage.[6] In +1795 John Stratton of Norfolk, asserting his "full persuassion that freedom +is the natural right of all men," set free his able-bodied slave, Peter +Wakefield.[7] Robert K. Moore of Louisville mingled thrift with liberalism +by setting free in 1802 two pairs of married slaves because of his +conviction that involuntary servitude was wrong, and at the same time +binding them by indenture to serve him for some fourteen years longer in +consideration of certain small payments in advance and larger ones at the +ends of their terms.[8] + +[Footnote 3: These were restricted for a time in North Carolina, however, +by an act of 1777 which recited the critical and alarming state of public +affairs as its occasion.] + +[Footnote 4: MS. transcript in the file of powers of attorney, I, 243, +among the county records at Louisville, Ky.] + +[Footnote 5: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph of Roanoke_ (New York, +1851), I, 63.] + +[Footnote 6: _DeBow's Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] + +[Footnote 7: MS. along with many similar documents among the deed files at +Norfolk, Va.] + +[Footnote 8: MSS. in the powers of attorney files, II, 118, 122, 127, at +Louisville, Ky.] + +Manumissions were in fact so common in the deeds and wills of the men of +'76 that the number of colored freemen in the South exceeded thirty-five +thousand in 1790 and was nearly doubled in each of the next two decades. +The greater caution of their successors, reinforced by the rise of slave +prices, then slackened the rate of increase to twenty-five and finally to +ten per cent. per decade. Documents in this later period, reverting to the +colonial basis, commonly recited faithful service or self purchase rather +than inherent rights as the grounds for manumission. Liberations on a large +scale, nevertheless, were not wholly discontinued. John Randolph's will set +free nearly four hundred in 1833;[9] Monroe Edwards of Louisiana manumitted +160 by deed in 1840;[10] and George W.P. Custis of Virginia liberated his +two or three hundred at his death in 1857.[11] + +[Footnote 9: Garland, _Life of Randolph_, II, 150, 151.] + +[Footnote 10: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 245.] + +Still other large proprietors while not bestowing immediate liberty made +provisions to bring it after the lapse of years. Prominent among these were +three Louisianians. Julien Poydras, who died in 1824, ordered his executors +to sell his six plantations with their respective staffs under contracts to +secure the manumission of each slave after twenty-five years of service +to the purchaser, together with an annual pension of $25 to each of those +above sixty years of age; and years afterward a nephew of the testator +procured an injunction from the supreme court of the state estopping the +sale of some of the slaves by one of their purchasers in such way as would +hazard the fulfilment of the purpose.[12] Stephen Henderson, a Scotch +immigrant who had acquired several sugar plantations, provided as follows, +by will made in 1837 and upheld by the courts: ten and twenty slaves +respectively were to be chosen by lot at periods five and ten years after +his death to be freed and sent to Liberia, and at the end of twenty-five +years the rest were to fare likewise, but any who refused to be deported +were to be kept as apprentices on the plantations.[13] John McDonogh, the +most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, made a unique bargain with +his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively to +earn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by the overtime work of +Saturday afternoons. This labor was to be done in McDonogh's own service, +and he was to keep account of their earnings. They were entitled to draw +upon this fund upon approved occasions; but since the contract was with the +whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash the others must +draw theirs _pro rata_, thereby postponing the common day of liberation. +Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the +master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of the +rest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule, and after some delay +in embarkation they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, with +their late master's benediction. In concluding his public narration in the +premises McDonogh wrote: "They have now sailed for Liberia, the land of +their fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more +virtuous people does not exist in any country."[14] + +[Footnote 11: _Daily True Delta_ (New Orleans), Dec. 19, 1857.] + +[Footnote 12: Poydras _vs_. Mourrain, in _Louisiana Reports_, IX, 492. The +will is quoted in the decision.] + +[Footnote 13: _Niles' Register_, LXVIII, 361. The original MS. is filed in +will book no. 6 in the New Orleans court house.] + +[Footnote 14: J.T. Edwards ed., _Some Interesting Papers of John McDonogh_ +(McDonoghville, Md., 1898), pp. 49-58.] + +Among more romantic liberations was that of Pierre Chastang of Mobile who, +in recognition of public services in the war of 1812 and the yellow fever +epidemic of 1819 was bought and freed by popular subscription;[15] that of +Sam which was provided by a special act of the Georgia legislature in 1834 +at a cost of $1,800 in reward for his having saved the state capitol from +destruction by fire;[16] and that of Prince which was attained through the +good offices of the United States government. Prince, after many years as +a Mississippi slave, wrote a letter in Arabic to the American consul at +Tangier in which he recounted his early life as a man of rank among the +Timboo people and his capture in battle and sale overseas. This led Henry +Clay on behalf of the Adams administration to inquire at what cost he +might be bought for liberation and return. His master thereupon freed him +gratuitously, and the citizens of Natchez raised a fund for the purchase of +his wife, with a surplus for a flowing Moorish costume in which Prince +was promptly arrayed. The pair then departed, in 1828, for Washington _en +route_ for Morocco, Prince avowing that he would soon send back money for +the liberation of their nine children.[17] + +[Footnote 15: D.W. Mitchell, _Ten Years in the United States_ (London, +1862), p. 235.] + +[Footnote 16: Georgia Senate _Journal_ for 1834, p. 25. At a later period +the Georgia legislature had occasion to reward another slave, Ransom by +name, who while hired from his master by the state had heroically saved +the Western and Atlantic Railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee River +from destruction by fire. Since official sentiment was now hostile to +manumission, it was resolved in 1849 that he be bought by the state and +ensured a permanent home; and in 1853 a further resolution directed the +chief engineer of the state-owned railroad to pay him just wages during +good behavior. Georgia _Acts, 1849-1850_, pp. 416, 417; _1853-1854_, pp. +538, 539. Old citizens relate that a house was built for Ransom on the +Western and Atlantic right of way in Atlanta which he continued to occupy +until his death many years after the Civil War. For these data I am +indebted to Mr. J. Groves Cohen, Secretary of the Western and Atlantic +Railroad Commission, Atlanta, Ga.] + +[Footnote 17: "Letter from a Gentleman of Natchez to a Lady of Cincinnati," +in the _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), May 22, 1828. For a similar instance in +colonial Maryland see the present work, p. 31.] + +Most of the negroes who procured freedom remained in the United States, +though all of those who gained it by flight and many of those manumitted +had to shift their location at the time of changing their status. At least +one of the fugitives, however, made known his preference for his native +district in a manner which cost him his liberty. After two years in Ohio +and Canada he returned to the old plantation in Georgia, where he was +welcomed with a command to take up the hoe. Rejecting this implement, he +proposed to buy himself if a thousand dollars would suffice. When his +master, declining to negotiate, ordered him into custody he stabbed one of +the negroes who seized him. At the end of the episode the returned wanderer +lay in jail; but where his money was, or whether in truth he had any, is +not recorded.[18] Among some of those manumitted and sent out of their +original states as by law required, disappointment and homesickness were +distressingly keen. A group of them who had been carried to New York in +1852 under the will of a Mr. Cresswell of Louisiana, found themselves in +such misery there that they begged the executor to carry them back, saying +he might keep them as slaves or sell them--that they had been happy before +but were wretched now.[19] + +[Footnote 18: Cassville, Ga., _Standard_, May 31, 1858, reprinted in the +_Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), June 8, 1858.] + +[Footnote 19: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 90.] + +The slaves manumitted for meritorious service and those who bought +themselves formed together an element of substantial worth in the Southern +free colored population. Testamentary endorsement like that which Abel +P. Upshur gave on freeing his man David Rich--"I recommend him in the +strongest manner to the respect, esteem and confidence of any community in +which he may live"[20]--are sufficiently eloquent in the premises. Those +who bought themselves were similarly endorsed in many instances, and the +very fact of their self purchase was usually a voucher of thrift and +sobriety. Many of those freed on either of these grounds were of mixed +blood; and to them were added the mulatto and quadroon children set free by +their white fathers, with particular frequency in Louisiana, who by virtue +oftentimes of gifts in lands, goods and moneys were in the propertied class +from the time of their manumission. The recruits joining the free colored +population through all of these channels tended, together with their +descendants, to be industrious, well-mannered and respected members of +society. + +[Footnote 20: William C. Nell, _The Colored Patriots of the American +Revolution_ (Boston, 1855), pp. 215, 216. For a similar item see Garland's +_Randolph_, p. 151.] + +Each locality was likely to have some outstanding figure among these. In +Georgia the most notable was Austin Dabney, who as a mulatto youth served +in the Revolutionary army and attached himself ever afterward to the white +family who saved his life when he had been wounded in battle. The Georgia +legislature by special act gave him a farm; he was welcomed in the tavern +circle of chatting lawyers whenever his favorite Judge Dooly held court +at his home village; and once when the formality of drawing his pension +carried him to Savannah the governor of the state, seeing him pass, dragged +him from his horse and quartered him as a guest in his house.[21] John +Eady of the South Carolina lowlands by a like service in the War for +Independence earned a somewhat similar recognition which he retained +throughout a very long life.[22] + +[Footnote 21: George R. Giltner, _Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of +Upper Georgia_ (New York, 1855), pp. 212-215.] + +[Footnote 22: Diary of Thomas P. Porcher. MS. in private possession.] + +Others were esteemed rather for piety and benevolence than for heroic +services. "Such," wrote Bishop Capers of the Southern Methodist Church, +"were my old friends Castile Selby and John Bouquet of Charleston, Will +Campbell and Harry Myrick of Wilmington, York Cohen of Savannah, and others +I might name. These I might call remarkable for their goodness. But I use +the word in a broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the father +of the Methodist church, white and black, in Fayetteville, and the best +preacher of his time in that quarter." Evans, a free-born full-blooded +black, as Capers went on to relate, had been a shoemaker and licensed +preacher in Virginia, but while journeying toward Charleston in search +of better employment he had been so struck by the lack of religion and +morality among the negroes in Fayetteville that he determined upon their +conversion as his true mission in life. When the town authorities dispersed +his meetings he shifted his rude pulpit into the woods outside their +jurisdiction and invited surveillance by the whites to prove his lack +of offence. The palpable improvement in the morals of his followers led +erelong to his being invited to preach within the town again, where the +white people began to be numerous among his hearers. A regular congregation +comprising members of both races was organized and a church building +erected. But the white attendance grew so large as to threaten the crowding +out of the blacks. To provide room for these the side walls of the +church were torn off and sheds built on either flank; and these were the +conditions when Capers himself succeeded the aged negro in its pulpit in +1810 and found him on his own score an inspiration. Toward the ruling race, +Capers records, Evans was unfailingly deferential, "never speaking to a +white but with his hat under his arm; never allowing himself to be seated +in their houses.... 'The whites are kind to me and come to hear me preach,' +he would say, 'but I belong to my own sort and must not spoil them.' And +yet Henry Evans was a Boanerges; and in his duty feared not the face of +man." [23] + +[Footnote 23: W.W. Wightman, _Life of William Capers_ (Nashville, 1858), +pp. 124-129.] + +In the line of intellectual attainment and the like the principal +figures lived in the eighteenth century. One of them was described in a +contemporary news item which suggests that some journalists then were akin +to their successors of more modern times. "There is a Mr. St. George, +a Creole, son to the French governor of St. Domingo, now at Paris, who +realizes all the accomplishments attributed by Boyle and others to the +Admirable Creighton of the Scotch. He is so superior at the sword that +there is an edict of the Parliament of Paris to make his engagement in any +duel actual death. He is the first dancer (even before the Irish Singsby) +in the world. He plays upon seven instruments of music, beyond any other +individual. He speaks twenty-six languages, and maintains public thesises +in each. He walks round the various circles of science like the master of +each; and strange to be mentioned to white men, this Mr. St. George is a +mulatto, the son of an African mother."[24] Less happy was the career of +Francis Williams of Jamaica, a plaything of the human gods. Born of negro +parents who had earned special privilege in the island, he was used by the +Duke of Montague in a test of negro mental capacity and given an education +in an English grammar school and at Cambridge University. Upon his return +to Jamaica his patron sought his appointment as a member of the governor's +council but without success; and he then became a schoolmaster and a poet +on occasion in the island capital. Williams described himself with some +pertinence as "a white man acting under a black skin." His contempt for +his fellow negroes and particularly for the mulattoes made him lonely, +eccentric, haughty and morose. A Latin panegyric which is alone available +among his writings is rather a language exercise than a poem.[25] On +the continent Benjamin Banneker was an almanac maker and somewhat of an +astronomer, and Phyllis Wheatley of Boston a writer of verses. Both +were doubtless more noted for their sable color than for their positive +qualities. The wonder of them lay in their ambition and enterprise, not in +their eminence among scientific and literary craftsmen at large.[26] Such +careers as these had no equivalent in the nineteenth century until its +closing decades when Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar and W.E.B. +DuBois set new paces in their several courses of endeavor. + +[Footnote 24: News item dated Philadelphia, Mch. 28, in the _Georgia State +Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), May 19, 1787.] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, +447-485; T.H. MacDermott, "Francis Williams," in the _Journal of Negro +History_, II, 147-159. The Latin poem is printed in both of these +accounts.] + +[Footnote 26: John W. Cromwell, _The Negro in American History_ +(Washington, 1914), pp. 77-97.] + +Of a more normal but less conspicuous type was Jehu Jones, the colored +proprietor of one of Charleston's most popular hotels who lived in the same +manner as his white patrons, accumulated property to the value of some +forty thousand dollars, and maintained a reputation for high business +talent and integrity.[27] At New Orleans men of such a sort were quite +numerous. Prominent among them by reason of his wealth and philanthropy was +Thomy Lafon, a merchant and money lender who systematically accumulated +houses and lots during a lifetime extending both before and after the +Civil War and whose possessions when he died at the age of eighty-two were +appraised at nearly half a million dollars.[28] Prosperity and good repute, +however, did not always go hand in hand. The keeper of the one good tavern +in the Louisiana village of Bayou Sara in 1831 was a colored woman of whom +Anne Royall wrote: "This _nigger_ or mulatto was rich, owned the tavern and +several slaves, to whom she was a great tyrant. She owned other valuable +property and a great deal of money, as report said; and doubtless it is +true. She was very insolent, and, I think, drank. It seems one Tague [an +Irishman], smitten with her charms and her property, made love to her +and it was returned, and they live together as man and wife. She was the +ugliest wench I ever saw, and, if possible, he was uglier, so they were +well matched."[29] One might ascribe the tone of this description to the +tartness of Mrs. Royall's pen were it not that she recorded just afterward +that a body-servant of General Ripley who was placed at her command in St. +Francisville was "certainly the most accomplished servant I ever saw."[30] + +[Footnote 27: W.C. Nell, _Colored Patriots_, pp. 244, 245.] + +[Footnote 28: New Orleans _Picayune_, Dec. 23, 1893. His many charitable +bequests are scheduled in the _Picayune_ of a week later.] + +[Footnote 29: Anne Royall, _Southern Tour_ (Washington, 1831), pp. 87-89.] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid_., p. 91.] + +The property of colored freemen oftentimes included slaves. Such instances +were quite numerous in pre-revolutionary San Domingo; and some in +the British West Indies achieved notoriety through the exposure of +cruelties.[31] On the continent a negro planter in St. Paul's Parish, South +Carolina, was reported before the close of the eighteenth century to have +two hundred slaves as well as a white wife and son-in-law, and the returns +of the first federal census appear to corroborate it.[32] In Louisiana +colored planters on a considerable scale became fairly numerous. Among them +were Cyprien Ricard who bought at a sheriff's sale in 1851 an estate in +Iberville Parish along with its ninety-one slaves for nearly a quarter of +a million dollars; Marie Metoyer of Natchitoches Parish had fifty-eight +slaves and more than two thousand acres of land when she died in 1840; +Charles Roques of the same parish died in 1854 leaving forty-seven slaves +and a thousand acres; and Martin Donato of St. Landry dying in 1848 +bequeathed liberty to his slave wife and her seven children and left them +eighty-nine slaves and 4,500 arpents of land as well as notes and mortgages +to a value of $46,000.[33] In rural Virginia and Maryland also there were +free colored slaveholders in considerable numbers.[34] + +[Footnote 31: Reverend Charles Peters, _Two Sermons Preached at Dominica, +with an appendix containing minutes of evidence of three trials_ (London, +1802), pp. 36-49.] + +[Footnote 32: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ +(London, 1799), p. 602, giving the negro's name as Pindaim. The census +returns of 1790 give no such name, but they list James Pendarvis in a group +comprising a white man, a free colored person and 123 slaves, and also a +Mrs. Persons, free colored, with 136 slaves. She may have been Pindaim's +(or Pendarvis') mulatto daughter, while the white man listed in the +Pendarvis item was perhaps her husband or an overseer. _Heads of Families +at the First Census of the United States: South Carolina_ (Washington, +1908), pp. 35, 37.] + +[Footnote 33: For these and other data I am indebted to Professor E.P. +Puckett of Central College, Fayette, Mo., who has permitted me to use his +monograph, "_Free Negroes in Louisiana_," in manuscript. The arpent was the +standard unit of area in the Creole parishes of Louisiana, the acre in the +parishes of Anglo-American settlement.] + +[Footnote 34: Calvin D. Wilson, "Black Masters," in the _North American +Review_, CLXXXI, 685-698, and "Negroes who owned Slaves," in the _Popular +Science Monthly_, LXXXI, 483-494; John H. Russell, "Colored Freemen as +Slave Owners in Virginia," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 233-242.] + +Slaveholdings by colored townsmen were likewise fairly frequent. Among the +360 colored taxpayers in Charleston in 1860, for example, 130, including +nine persons described as of Indian descent, were listed as possessing 390 +slaves.[35] The abundance of such holdings at New Orleans is evidenced by +the multiplicity of applications from colored proprietors for authority +to manumit slaves, with exemption from the legal requirement that the new +freedmen must leave the state.[36] A striking example of such petitions was +that presented in 1832 by Marie Louise Bitaud, free woman of color, +which recited that in the preceding year she had bought her daughter and +grandchild at a cost of $700; that a lawyer had now told her that in view +of her lack of free relatives to inherit her property, in case of death +intestate her slaves would revert to the state; that she had become alarmed +at this prospect; and she accordingly begged permission to manumit them +without their having to leave Louisiana. The magistrates gave their consent +on condition that the petitioner furnish a bond of $500 to insure the +support and education of the grandson until his coming of age. This was +duly done and the formalities completed.[37] + +[Footnote 35: _List of the Taxpayers of Charleston for 1860_(Charleston, +1861), part 2.] + +[Footnote 36: Many of these are filed in the record books of manumissions +in the archive rooms of the New Orleans city hall. Some were denied on the +ground that proof was lacking that the slaves concerned were natives of +the state or that they would be self-supporting in freedom; others were +granted.] + +[Footnote 37: For the use of this MS. petition with its accompanying +certificates I am indebted to Mr. J.F. Schindler of New York.] + +Evidence of slaveholdings by colored freemen occurs also in the bills of +sale filed in various public archives. One of these records that a citizen +of Charleston sold in 1828 a man slave to the latter's free colored sister +at a price of one dollar, "provided he is kindly treated and is never sold, +he being an unfortunate individual and requiring much attention." In the +same city a free colored man bought a slave sailmaker for $200.[38] At +Savannah in 1818 Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800 +to Alex Hunter, guardian of the colored freeman Louis Mirault, in trust for +him; and in 1833 Anthony Ordingsell, free colored, having obtained through +his guardian an order of court, sold a slave woman to the highest bidder +for $385.[39] + +[Footnote 38: MSS. in the files of slave sales in the South Carolina +archives at Columbia.] + +[Footnote 39: MSS. among the county archives at Savannah, Ga.] + +It is clear that aside from the practice of holding slave relatives as a +means of giving them virtual freedom, an appreciable number of colored +proprietors owned slaves purely as a productive investment. It was +doubtless a group of these who sent a joint communication to a New Orleans +newspaper when secession and war were impending: "The free colored +population (native) of Louisiana ... own slaves, and they are dearly +attached to their native land, ... and they are ready to shed their blood +for her defence. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the +North, but they have plenty for Louisiana.... They will fight for her in +1861 as they fought in 1814-'15.... If they have made no demonstration it +is because they have no right to meddle with politics, but not because they +are not well disposed. All they ask is to have a chance, and they will +be worthy sons of Louisiana."[40] Oral testimony gathered by the present +writer from old residents in various quarters of the South supports the +suggestion of this letter that many of the well-to-do colored freemen +tended to prize their distinctive position so strongly as to deplore any +prospect of a general emancipation for fear it would submerge them in the +great black mass. + +[Footnote 40: Letter to the editor, signed "A large number of them," in the +New Orleans _Daily Delta_, Dec. 28, 1860. Men of this element had indeed +rendered service under Jackson in the defence of the city against Pakenham, +as Louisianians well knew.] + +The types discussed thus far were exceptional. The main body of the free +negroes were those who whether in person or through their mothers had been +liberated purely from sentiment and possessed no particular qualifications +for self-directed careers. The former slaves of Richard Randolph who were +colonized in accordance with his will as petty landed proprietors near +Farmville, Virginia, proved commonly thriftless for half a century +afterward;[41] and Olmsted observed of the Virginia free negroes in general +that their poverty was not due to the lack of industrial opportunity.[42] +Many of those in the country were tenants. George Washington found one of +them unprofitable as such;[43] and Robert Carter in 1792 rented farms to +several in spite of his overseer's remonstrance that they had no adequate +outfit of tools and teams, and against his neighbors' protests.[44] Not a +few indeed were mere squatters on waste lands. A Georgia overseer reported +in 1840 that several such families had made clearings in the woods of +the plantation under his charge, and proposed that rent be required of +them;[45] and travellers occasionally came upon negro cabins in fields +which had been abandoned by their proprietors.[46] The typical rural family +appears to have tilled a few acres on its own account, and to have been +willing to lend a hand to the whites for wages when they needed service. +It was this readiness which made their presence in many cases welcome in a +neighborhood. A memorial signed by thirty-eight citizens of Essex County, +Virginia, in 1842 in behalf of a freedman might be paralleled from the +records of many another community: "We would be glad if he could be +permitted to remain with us and have his freedom, as he is a well disposed +person and a very useful man in many respects. He is a good carpenter, a +good cooper, a coarse shoemaker, a good hand at almost everything that is +useful to us farmers."[47] Among the free negroes on the seaboard there was +a special proclivity toward the water pursuits of boating, oystering and +the like.[48] In general they found a niche in industrial society much on +a level with the slaves but as free as might be from the pressure of +systematic competition. + +[Footnote 41: F.N. Watkins, "The Randolph Emancipated Slaves," in _DeBow's +Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] + +[Footnote 42: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 126.] + +[Footnote 43: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 239.] + +[Footnote 44: Carter MSS. in the Virginia Historical Society.] + +[Footnote 45: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 155.] + +[Footnote 46: _E. g_., F. Cumming, _Tour to the West_, reprinted in +Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 336.] + +[Footnote 47: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 153.] + +[Footnote 48: _Ibid_., p. 150.] + +Urban freemen had on the average a somewhat higher level of attainment than +their rural fellows, for among them was commonly a larger proportion of +mulattoes and quadroons and of those who had demonstrated their capacity +for self direction by having bought their own freedom. Recruits of some +skill in the crafts, furthermore, came in from the country, because of +the advantages which town industry, in sharp contrast with that of the +plantations, gave to free labor. A characteristic state of affairs is shown +by the official register of free persons of color in Richmond County, +Georgia, wherein lay the city of Augusta, for the year 1819[49]. Of the +fifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, only +seven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specific +trades or employments. The prosperity of the group must have been but +moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers +at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and +although an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its minister +must have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for no +designation of a preacher appears in the list. At Charleston, likewise, +according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a total +of 239 listed in manual occupations were unclassified laborers, while the +great majority were engaged in the shop and building trades. The women +again were very numerous in sewing and washing employments, and an +appreciable number of them were domestic servants outright.[50] + +[Footnote 49: _Augusta Chronicle_, Mch. 13, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 143-147.] + +[Footnote 50: Dawson and DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for 1848_, +summarized in the table given on p. 403 of the present work.] + +In the compendium of the United States census of 1850 there are printed in +parallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored males +above fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans. In +the Northern metropolis there were 3337 enumerated, and in the Southern +1792. The former had 4 colored lawyers and 3 colored druggists while the +latter had none of either; and the colored preachers and doctors were 21 +to 1 and 9 to 4 in New York's favor. But New Orleans had 4 colored +capitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 brokers and 2 collectors, with +none of any of these at New York; and 64 merchants, 5 jewelers and 61 +clerks to New York's 3, 3 and 7 respectively, and 12 colored teachers to 8. +New York had thrice New Orleans' number of colored barbers, and twice as +many butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrasted +with 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers, +tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not in +much better proportion. One-third of all New York's colored men, indeed, +were unskilled laborers and another quarter were domestic servants, not to +mention the many cooks, coachmen and other semi-domestic employees, whereas +at New Orleans the unskilled were but a tenth part of the whole and no male +domestics were listed. This showing, which on the whole is highly favorable +to New Orleans, is partly attributable to the more than fourfold excess +of mulattoes over the blacks in its free population, in contrast with a +reversed proportion at New York; for the men of mixed blood filled all the +places above the rank of artisan at New Orleans, and heavily preponderated +in virtually all the classes but that of unskilled laborers. New York's +poor showing as regards colored craftsmen, however, was mainly due to the +greater discrimination which its white people applied against all who had a +strain of negro blood. + +This antipathy and its consequent industrial repression was palpably more +severe at the North in general than in the South. De Tocqueville remarked +that "the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in +proportion as they are emancipated." Fanny Kemble, in her more vehement +style, wrote of the negroes in the North: "They are not slaves indeed, +but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own +despised race, scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not +tolerated even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free +certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the +offscouring of the very dregs of your society.... All hands are extended to +thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, the +most vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turn +the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach."[51] Marshall +Hall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of that +prejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, a +prejudice unknown in the South, where the domestic relations between the +African and the European are so much more intimate."[52] Olmsted recorded +a conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red River +steamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "He +said that colored people could associate with whites much more easily +and comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason he +preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from +white people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North than +in Louisiana."[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who after +buying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but had +promptly returned. When questioned by his former owner this man said: "Oh, +I don't like dat Philadelphy, massa; an't no chance for colored folks dere. +Spec' if I'd been a runaway de wite folks dere take care o' me; but I +couldn't git anythin' to do, so I jis borrow ten dollar of my broder an' +cum back to old Virginny."[54] In Ohio, John Randolph's freedmen were +prevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors had +bought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in the +state;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a public +meeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place would +not be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke up +the school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for colored +girls. The legislatures of various Northern states, furthermore, excluded +free immigrants as well as discriminating sharply against those who were +already inhabitants. Wherever the negroes clustered numerously, from Boston +to Philadelphia and Cincinnati, they were not only brow-beaten and excluded +from the trades but were occasionally the victims of brutal outrage whether +from mobs or individual persecutors.[56] + +[Footnote 51: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal_ (London, 1863), p. 7.] + +[Footnote 52: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ +(London, 1854), p. 17.] + +[Footnote 53: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 636.] + +[Footnote 54: _Ibid_., p. 104.] + +[Footnote 55: F.U. Quillin, _The Color Line in Ohio_ (Ann Arbor, Mich.), p. +20; _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 143.] + +[Footnote 56: J.P. Gordy, _Political History of the United States_ (New +York, 1902), II, 404, 405; John Daniels, _In Freedom's Birthplace_ (Boston, +1914), pp. 25-29; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, +1911), pp. 143-168, 195-204, containing many details; F.U. Quillin, _The +Color Line in Ohio_, pp. 11-87; C.G. Woodson, "The Negroes of Cincinnati +Prior to the Civil War," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 1-22; N.D. +Harris, _Negro Slavery in Illinois_ (Chicago, 1906), pp. 226-240.] + +In the South, on the other hand, the laws were still more severe but the +practice of the white people was much more kindly. Racial antipathy was +there mitigated by the sympathetic tie of slavery which promoted an +attitude of amiable patronage even toward the freedmen and their +descendants.[57] The tone of the memorials in which many Southern townsmen +petitioned for legal exemptions to permit specified free negroes to remain +in their communities[58] found no echo from the corresponding type of +commonplace unromantic citizens of the North. A few Southern petitions were +of a contrasting tenor, it is true, one for example presented to the city +council of Atlanta in 1859: "We feel aggrieved as Southern citizens that +your honorable body tolerates a negro dentist (Roderick Badger) in our +midst; and in justice to ourselves and the community it ought to be abated. +We, the residents of Atlanta, appeal to you for justice."[59] But it may +readily be guessed that these petitioners were more moved by the interest +of rival dentists than by their concern as Southern citizens. Southern +protests of another class, to be discussed below, against the toleration +of colored freedmen in general, were prompted by considerations of public +security, not by personal dislike. + +[Footnote 57: Cf. N.S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 166, +186-191.] + +[Footnote 58: _E. g_., J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. +152-155.] + +[Footnote 59: J.H. Martin, _Atlanta and its Builders_ ([Atlanta,] 1902), I, +145.] + +Although the free colored numbers varied greatly from state to state, +their distribution on the two sides of Mason and Dixon's line maintained +a remarkable equality throughout the antebellum period. The chief +concentration was in the border states of either section. At the one +extreme they were kept few by the chill of the climate; at the other +by stringency of the law and by the high prices of slave labor which +restrained the practice of manumission. Wherever they dwelt, they lived +somewhat precariously upon the sufferance of the whites, and in a more or +less palpable danger of losing their liberty. + +Not only were escaped slaves liable to recapture anywhere within the United +States, but those who were legally free might be seized on fraudulent +claims and enslaved in circumvention of the law, or they might be kidnapped +outright. One of those taken by fraud described his experience and +predicament as follows in a letter from "Boonvill Missouria" to the +governor of Georgia: "Mr. Coob Dear Sir I have Embrast this oppertuniny of +Riting a few Lines to you to inform you that I am sold as a Slave for 14 +hundard dolars By the man that came to you Last may and told you a Pack +of lies to get you to Sine the warrant that he Brought that warrant was a +forged as I have heard them say when I was Coming on to this Countrey and +Sir I thought that I would write and see if I could get you to do any thing +for me in the way of Getting me my freedom Back a Gain if I had some Papers +from the Clarkes office in the City of Milledgeville and a little Good +addvice in a Letter from you or any kind friend that I could get my freedom +a Gain and my name can Be found on the Books of the Clarkes office Mr Bozal +Stulers was Clarke when I was thear last and Sir a most any man can City +that I Charles Covey is lawfuley a free man ... But at the same time I do +not want you to say any thing about this to any one that may acquaint my +Preseant mastear of these things as he would quickly sell me and there +fore I do not want this known and the men that came after me Carried me to +Mempears tenessee and after whiping me untill my Back was Raw from my rump +to the Back of my neck sent me to this Place and sold me Pleas to ancer +this as soon as you Can and Sir as soon as I can Get my time Back I will +pay you all charges if you will Except of it yours in beast Charles Covey +Borned and Raized in the City of Milledgeville and a Blacksmith by trade +and James Rethearfurd in the City of Macon is my Laller [lawyer?] and can +tell you all about these things."[60] + +[Footnote 60: Letter of Charles Covey to Howell Cobb, Nov. 30, 1853. MS. in +the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., for the use of which I am +indebted to Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia. For +another instance in which Cobb's aid was asked see the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1911, II, 331-334.] + +In a few cases claims of ownership were resurrected after a long lapse. +That of Alexander Pierre, a New Orleans negro who had always passed as +free-born, was the consequence of an affray in which he had worsted another +black. In revenge the defeated combatant made the fact known that Pierre +was the son of a blind girl who because of her lack of market value had +been left by her master many years before to shift for herself when he had +sold his other slaves and gone to France. Thereupon George Heno, the heir +of the departed and now deceased proprietor, laid claim to the whole Pierre +group, comprising the blind mother, Alexander himself, his sister, and +that sister's two children. Whether Heno's proceedings at law to procure +possession succeeded or failed is not told in the available record.[61] In +a kindred case not long afterward, however, the cause of liberty triumphed. +About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupée Parish had permitted his slave +Eulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; and +thereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtual +freedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to get +official sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring and +desiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominal +sale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this man +proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and +the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for +freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state +supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in +strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall +suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in +this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of +action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be +a runaway or fugitive."[62] + +[Footnote 61: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, May 25, 1849.] + +[Footnote 62: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the +New Orleans _True Delta_, Dec. 16, 1854.] + +Kidnappings without pretense of legal claim were done so furtively that +they seldom attained record unless the victims had recourse to the courts; +and this was made rare by the helplessness of childhood in some cases and +in others by the fear of lashes. Indeed when complexion gave presumption of +slave status, as it did, and custody gave color of ownership, the prospect +of redress through the law was faint unless the services of some white +friend could be enlisted. Two cases made conspicuous by the publication of +elaborate narratives were those of Peter Still and Solomon Northrup. The +former, kidnapped in childhood near Philadelphia, served as a slave some +forty years in Kentucky and northern Alabama, until with his own savings he +bought his freedom and returned to his boyhood home. The problem which he +then faced of liberating his wife and three children was taken off his +hands for a time by Seth Concklin, a freelance white abolitionist who +volunteered to abduct them. This daring emancipator duly went to Alabama +in 1851, embarked the four negroes on a skiff and carried them down the +Tennessee and up the Ohio and the Wabash until weariness at the oars drove +the company to take the road for further travel. They were now captured +and the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; but +Concklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohio +by the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procured +endorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of New +York and New England by which he raised funds enough to buy his family's +freedom. At the conclusion of the narrative of their lives Peter and his +wife were domestics in a New Jersey boardinghouse, one of their two +sons was a blacksmith's apprentice in a neighboring town, the other had +employment in a Pennsylvania village, and the daughter was at school in +Philadelphia.[63] + +[Footnote 63: Kate E.R. Pickard, _The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, being the +personal recollections of Peter Still and his wife Vina after forty years +of slavery_ (Syracuse, 1856). The dialogue in which the book abounds is, +of course, fictitious, but the outlines of the narrative and the documents +quoted are presumably authentic.] + +Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until +in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers +offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington. +Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free +papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans. +Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, +lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter +had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's +commission from the governor of New York. With the assistance of the local +authorities Northrup's identity was promptly established, his liberty +procured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to his +wife and children at Saratoga.[64] + +[Footnote 64: [David Wilson ed.], _Narrative of Solomon Northrup_ (New +York, 1853). Though the books of this class are generally of dubious value +this one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantation +life and labor are of particular interest.] + +A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William +Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had +come from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had +been offered passage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de +Blanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had +ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his +papers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston was +sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring +merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houston +accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold +to one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of title, refused +payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F. +Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the +British consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed +his whole narrative that it might "assist the plaintiff to prove his +freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave."[65] + +[Footnote 65: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, June 1, 1850.] + +Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping +and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among +which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66] +Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally; +but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential +value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many +thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 there +were 83,942 of this class in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North +Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large. + +[Footnote 66: Alexandria, Va., _Advertiser_, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of the +society's quarterly meeting; J.D. Paxton, _Letters on Slavery_ (Lexington, +Ky., 1833), p. 30, note.] + +A few free negroes were reduced by public authority to private servitude, +whether for terms or for life, in punishment for crime. In Maryland under +an act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following two +years, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictions +ranging from arson to petty larceny.[67] Some others were sold in various +states under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even to +default of jail fees during imprisonment as fugitive suspects. + +[Footnote 67: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, pp. 231, 232.] + +A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who +had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state +petitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was +doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband +"from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering +as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds +William Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859, +reciting "That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom +he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied +man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, +committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives +a thousand times harder and in more destitution than the slaves of many +planters in this district." He accordingly asked permission by special act +to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive +him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such +occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted +laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at +their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to +enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia +law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any +creditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during which +protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master +to pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginia +archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely +scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from +$300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations +of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years +old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature. +An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July, +1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five +hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free +wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer +escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears +to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio +than among the whites. + +[Footnote 68: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 161, 162.] + +[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., II, 163, 164.] + +[Footnote 70: In the absence of permissive laws the self-enslavement of +negroes was invalid. Texas Supreme Court _Reports_, XXIV, 560. And a negro +who had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retain +his free status, though the contract between him and his employer was not +thereby voided. North Carolina Supreme Court _Reports_, LX, 434.] + +[Footnote 71: MSS. in the Virginia State Library.] + +[Footnote 72: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, p. 577.] + +[Footnote 73: An instance is given in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New +Orleans), Aug. 26, 1830, and another in the New Orleans _Commercial +Advertiser_, Oct. 25, 1831. The motives are not stated.] + +Invitations to American free negroes to try their fortunes in other lands +were not lacking. Facilities for emigration to Liberia were steadily +maintained by the Colonization Society from 1819 onward;[74] the Haytian +government under President Boyer offered special inducements from that +republic in 1824;[75] in 1840 an immigration society in British Guiana +proffered free transportation for such as would remove thither;[76] and in +1859 Hayti once more sent overtures, particularly to the French-speaking +colored people of Louisiana, promising free lands to all who would come as +well as free transportation to such as could not pay their passage.[77] But +these opportunities were seldom embraced. With the great bulk of those to +whom they were addressed the dread of an undiscovered country from whose +bourne few travellers had returned puzzled their wills, as it had done +Hamlet's, and made them rather bear those ills they had than to fly to +others that they knew not of. + +[Footnote 74: J.H.T. McPherson, _History of Liberia_ (Johns Hopkins +University _Studies_, IX, no. 10).] + +[Footnote 75: _Correspondence relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the +Free People of Colour in the United States, together with the instructions +to the agent sent out by President Boyer_ (New York, 1824); _Plantation and +Frontier_, II, 155-157.] + +[Footnote 76: _Inducements to the Colored People of the United States +to Emigrate to British Guiana, compiled from statements and documents +furnished by Mr. Edward Carberry, agent of the immigration society of +British Guiana and a proprietor in that colony_. By "A friend to the +Colored People" (Boston, 1840); The _Liberator_ (Boston), Feb. 28, 1840, +advertisement.] + +[Footnote 77: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the +New Orleans _Picayune_, July 16, 1859, and Oct. 21 and 23, 1860.] + +Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generally +at the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from the +white schools and poorly provided with schools of their own.[78] Exclusion +of the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close of +the war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was made +complete by the action of the constitutional convention of North Carolina +in 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807 +and 1838,[79] was a more palpable grievance against which a convention +of colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested.[80] +Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites was +likewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in the +North as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required license +and registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions upon +movement, education and occupations; and several of them required the +procurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for good +behavior. + +[Footnote 78: The schooling facilities are elaborately and excellently +described and discussed in C.G. Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior +to 1861_ (New York, 1915).] + +[Footnote 79: Emil Olbrich, _The Development of Sentiment for Negro +Suffrage to 1860_ (University of Wisconsin _Bulletin_, Historical Series, +III, no, I).] + +[Footnote 80: _Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of +the People of Colour, held in Philadelphia from the sixth to the eleventh +of June_, 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831).] + +These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressions +which they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment which +colored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that some +of them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularly +when white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent. +Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excess +among the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the colored +inmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratio +to the free colored population but half as high as did the corresponding +prisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios were +about six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northern +whites respectively.[81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess of +actual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for the +discriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables, +magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negro +was doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth under +circumstances in which white men went free. The more severe industrial +discrimination at the North, which drove large numbers to an alternative of +destitution or crime, was furthermore contributive to the special excess of +negro criminality there. + +[Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10,000 of the respective +populations was about 2.2 for the whites and 13.0 for the free colored +(with slave convicts included) at the South, and 2.5 for the whites and +28.7 for the free colored at the North. _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, +p. 166. See also _Southern Literary Messenger_, IX, 340-352; _DeBow's +Review_, XIV, 593-595; David Christy, _Cotton Is King_ (Cincinnati, 1855), +p. 153; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 155-158.] + +In some instances the violence of mobs was added to the might of the law. +Such was the case at Washington in 1835 when following on the heels of a +man's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and his +trial within the jail as a precaution to keep him from the mob's clutches, +a new report was spread that Beverly Snow, the free mulatto proprietor of +a saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken in +slurring terms of the wives and daughters of white mechanics as a class. +"In a very short time he had more customers than both Brown and Gadsby--but +the landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made all +through the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increased +number of guests, but Snow was still absent." The mob then began to search +the houses of his associates for him. In that of James Hutton, another free +mulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to a +magistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held an +organized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee was +appointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council held +session, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out. +Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negro +hut and breaking the windows of a negro church.[82] Such outrages appear to +have been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racial +subordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter. + +[Footnote 82: Washington _Globe_, about August 14, reprinted in the _North +Carolina Standard_, Aug. 27, 1835.] + +Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatly +refrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freeman +was one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. They +submitted to the régime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course, +because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because there +were solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes had +reason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carry +themselves with a quiet conservative dignity. The less prosperous blacks, +together with such of their mulatto confrères as were similarly inert, +had the satisfaction at least of not being slaves; and those in the South +commonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic of +both African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends among +the whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay in +fairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarly +their own. + +The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stress +upon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they were +doubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among the +whites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of these +institutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers. +There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless +slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the +colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and +conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual +aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of +them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership +confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free +blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings +of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent +cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits +of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a +free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were +thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from +thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85] + +[Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, +1909), p. 6.] + +[Footnote 84: _Ibid_., pp. 68, 69.] + +[Footnote 85: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] + +The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the +constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New +Orleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officers +were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and +six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month. +Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to +its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow +members, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love," and to +wear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrears +of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a +subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was the +duty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of the +official mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was to +see to the washing of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work from +the lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to have +charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members +as might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extent +of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule. +Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of +a member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpse +and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge +was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, +hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all +told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify +that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as +sociable as an Irish wake. + +[Footnote 86: _The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society of +Orleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace_ (Caption).] + +Doubtless to some extent in their lodges, and certainly to a great degree +in their daily affairs, the lives of the free colored and the slaves +intermingled. Colored freemen, except in the highest of their social +strata, took free or slave wives almost indifferently. Some indeed appear +to have preferred the unfree, either because in such case the husband would +not be responsible for the support of the family or because he might engage +the protection of his wife's master in time of need.[87] On the other hand +the free colored women were somewhat numerously the prostitutes, or in more +favored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereabouts +particularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon balls," was +a systematized practice.[88] When this had persisted for enough generations +to produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtless +cut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful though +clandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions of +some of those who to this day take the seats assigned to colored passengers +in the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossing +the line" has not in all such breasts been a mastering ambition. + +[Footnote 87: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 130-133.] + +[Footnote 88: Albert Phelps, _Louisiana_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 212, 213.] + +The Southern whites were of several minds regarding the free colored +element in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealously +disposed on the ground of their competition, the interest and inclination +of citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon those +whose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, these +men shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, the +freedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services were +enlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. One +of the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoes +and the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousness +of the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety and +contending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove allies +of the whites.[89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. The +general discussion at the South in the premises did not concern the +virtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as the +influence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connection +that the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the ground +of their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was more +than matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. A +citizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91] +"It is a melancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities of +Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equality +with the whites, ... they are chiefly noted for their aversion to labor +and proneness to villainy. Men of this class are peculiarly dangerous in +a community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness of +their manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wicked +and deep laid plots." + +[Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated +against the Southern and Western States respecting the institution and +existence of Slavery among them_. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1822), +pp. 84, 85.] + +[Footnote 90: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 158.] + +[Footnote 91: Letter to the editor in the _Louisiana Gazette_, Aug. 12, +1819.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +SLAVE CRIME + + +The negroes were in a strange land, coercively subjected to laws and +customs far different from those of their ancestral country; and by being +enslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprived +of that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope of +individual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected that +their conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whites +who were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks, +however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and the +reckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole well +founded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave no +special concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt. + +Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they were +commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and +often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences +of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the +penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of serious +infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict +slave régime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for +investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in the +premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials +of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812 +Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 Fannie +Micklejohn, charged with the murder of an infant was acquitted; and Tom, +convicted of murdering a fellow slave was sentenced to branding on each +cheek with the letter M and to thirty-nine lashes on his bare back on each +of three successive days, after which he was to be discharged. In 1816 +John, a slave of William McGeehee, convicted of the theft of a $100 bill +was sentenced to whipping in similar fashion. In 1818 Aleck was found +guilty of an assault with intent to murder, and received sentence of fifty +lashes on three days in succession. In 1819 Rodney was capitally sentenced +for arson. In 1821 Peter, charged with murdering a slave, was convicted of +manslaughter and ordered to be branded with M on the right cheek and to be +given the customary three times thirty-nine lashes; and Edmund, charged +with involuntary manslaughter, was dismissed on the ground that the court +had no cognizance of such offense. In 1822 Davis was convicted of assault +upon a white person with intent to kill, but his sentence is not recorded. +In or about the same year John, a slave of William Robertson, convicted of +burglary but recommended to mercy, was sentenced to be branded with T on +the right cheek and to receive three times thirty-nine lashes; and on the +same day the same slave was sentenced to death for assault upon a white +man with intent to kill. In 1825 John Ponder's George when convicted of +burglary was recommended by the jury to the mercy of the court but received +sentence of death nevertheless; and Stephen was sentenced likewise for +murderous assault upon a white man. In 1826 Elleck, charged with assault +with intent of murder and rape, was convicted on the first part of the +charge only, but received sentence of death. In 1828 Elizabeth Smith's +George was acquitted of larceny from the house; and next year Caroline was +likewise acquitted on a charge of maiming a white person. Finally, in 1832 +Martin, upon pleading guilty to a charge of murderous assault, was given a +whipping sentence of the customary thirty-nine lashes on three successive +days.[2] + +[Footnote 1: W.E.B. DuBois, in the _Annals of the Academy of Political and +Social Science_, XVIII, 132.] + +[Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of Baldwin +County on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences." MS. in the +court house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac American +Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 123-125.] + +A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave +circumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as +the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy +as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became +skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the +whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro +midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time +a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was +missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its +two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky, +charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to +receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of +four days.[3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because the +law declared them to be such when committed by persons of that class. The +striking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them are +examples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were of +sorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of the +perpetrators. + +[Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 1, 1864.] + +In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume of +criminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact that +in the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slave +convicts at a cost of £15,538 for the compensation of their masters,[4] and +that in 1816 some forty such were deported from New York to New Orleans, +much to the disquiet of the Louisiana authorities.[5] As for the South, +state-wide statistical views with any approach to adequacy are available +for two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that the +laws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerable +impartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In its +penitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmates +comprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All the +slaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving life +terms.[6] Classed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3 +for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 for +poisoning, 5 for attempts to poison, 7 for assault with intent to kill, 2 +for stabbing, 3 for shooting, 20 for striking or wounding a white person, +1 for wounding a child, 4 for attempts to rape, and 3 for insurrection.[7] +This catalogue is notable for its omissions as well as for its content. +While there were four white inmates of the prison who stood convicted of +rape, there were no negroes who had accomplished that crime. Likewise as +compared with 52 whites and 4 free negroes serving terms for larceny, there +were no slave prisoners in that category. Doubtless on the one hand the +negro rapists had been promptly put to death, and on the other hand the +slaves committing mere theft had been let off with whippings. Furthermore +there were no slaves committed for counterfeiting or forgery, horse +stealing, slave stealing or aiding slaves to escape. + +[Footnote 4: _Royal Gazette_ (Kingston, Jamaica), Jan. 29, 1803.] + +[Footnote 5: Message of Governor Claiborne in the _Journal_ of the +Louisiana House of Representatives, 3d legislature, 1st session, p, 22. For +this note I am indebted to Mr. V.A. Moody.] + +[Footnote 6: Under an act of 1854, effective at this time, the owner of any +slave executed or imprisoned was to receive indemnity from the state to the +extent of two-thirds of the slave's appraised value.] + +[Footnote 7: _Report of the Board of Control of the Louisiana Penitentiary, +January, 1861_ (Baton Rouge, 1861). Among the 22 pardoned in 1860 were 2 +slaves who had been sentenced for murder, 2 for arson, and 1 for assault +with intent to kill.] + +The uniquely full view which may be had of the trend of serious crimes +among the Virginia slaves is due to the preservation of vouchers filed in +pursuance of a law of that state which for many decades required appraisal +and payment by the public for all slaves capitally convicted and sentenced +to death or deportation. The file extends virtually from 1780 to 1864, +except for a gap of three years in the late 1850's.[8] The volume of crime +rose gradually decade by decade to a maximum of 242 in the 1820's, and +tended to decline slowly thereafter. The gross number of convictions was +1,418, all but 91 of which were of males. For arson there were 90 slaves +convicted, including 29 women. For burglary there were 257, with but one +woman among them. The highway robbers numbered 15, the horse thieves 20, +and the thieves of other sorts falling within the purview of the vouchers +24, with no women in these categories. It would be interesting to know how +the slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but this +the vouchers fail to tell. + +[Footnote 8: The MS. vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia State +Library. They have been statistically analyzed by the present writer, +substantially as here follows, in the _American Historical Review_, XX, +336-340.] + +For murder there were 346, discriminated as having been committed upon the +master 56, the mistress 11, the overseer 11; upon other white persons 120; +upon free negroes 7; upon slaves 85, including 12 children all of whom were +killed by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of the +murderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison, +including the administering of ground glass, 40 men and 16 women were +convicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman for +administering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous assault there +were 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon male +offenders and only two of which were described as having been directed +against colored victims. + +For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This total +of 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but the +territorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewater +district than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slave +crime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; and +its notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to the +contemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroes +among them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at least +two cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, if +one be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicion +of rape," they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentioned +among the victims is of course far from proving that these were never +violated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the private +cognizance of the masters.[9] A Delaware instance of the sort attained +record through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had run +away after being punished. + +[Footnote 9: Elkton (Md.) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertisement, reprinted +in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122.] + +For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them in +Henrico County in 1800 for participation in Gabriel's revolt, 17 in 1831, +mainly in Southampton County as followers of Nat Turner, and the rest +mostly scattering. Among miscellaneous and unclassified cases there was one +slave convicted of forgery, another of causing the printing of anti-slavery +writings, and 301 sentenced without definite specification of their crimes. +Among the vouchers furthermore are incidental records of the killing of a +slave in 1788 who had been proclaimed an outlaw, and of the purchase and +manumission by the commonwealth of Tom and Pharaoh in 1801 for services +connected with the suppression of Gabriel's revolt. + +As to punishments, the vouchers of the eighteenth century are largely +silent, though one of them contains the only unusual sentence to be found +in the whole file. This directed that the head of a slave who had murdered +a fellow slave be cut off and stuck on a pole at the forks of the road. +In the nineteenth century only about one-third of the vouchers record +execution. The rest give record of transportation whether under the +original sentences or upon commutation by the governor, except for the +cases which from 1859 to 1863 were more numerous than any others where the +commutations were to labor on the public works. + +The statistics of rape in Virginia, and the Georgia cases already given, +refute the oft-asserted Southern tradition that negroes never violated +white women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may be +drawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester, +Massachusetts in 1768.[10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned to +death, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt at +rape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governor +issued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, a +slave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in +1844 a jury in Habersham County, after testimony by the victim and others, +found a slave named Dave guilty of rape upon Hester An Dobbs, "a free white +female in the peace of God and state of Georgia," and the criminal was duly +hanged by the sheriff.[12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rape +at Tuscaloosa,[13] and another in Washington County confessed after capture +that while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from her +horse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circumstances +too horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben was +sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.[15] In +Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into the +woods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. The +criminal had been caught when the report went to press.[16] + +[Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by a +contemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Man +who was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed on +the body of one Deborah Metcalfe_" (Boston, 1768).] + +[Footnote 11: Augusta _Chronicle_, Mch. 29, 1811.] + +[Footnote 12: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 579, +580.] + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _Observer_, Nov. 24, 1827.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., Nov. 10, 1827.] + +[Footnote 15: New Orleans _Delta_, June 23, 1849.] + +[Footnote 16: New Orleans _Bee_, Sept. 27, 1842, reprinted in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 121, 122.] + +Other examples will show that lynchings were not altogether lacking +in those days in sequel to such crimes. Near the village of Gallatin, +Mississippi, in 1843, two slave men entered a farmer's house in his absence +and after having gotten liquor from his wife by threats, "they forcibly +took from her arms the infant babe and rudely throwing it upon the floor, +they threw her down, and while one of them accomplished the fiendish design +of a ravisher the other, pointing the muzzle of a loaded gun at her head, +said he would blow out her brains if she resisted or made any noise." The +miscreants then loaded a horse with plunder from the house and made off, +but they were shortly caught by pursuing citizens and hanged. The local +editor said on his own score when recounting the episode: "We have ever +been and now are opposed to any kind of punishment being administered +under the statutes of Judge Lynch; but ... a due regard for candor and the +preservation of all that is held most sacred and all that is most dear to +man in the domestic circles of life impels us to acknowledge the fact that +if the perpetrators of this excessively revolting crime had been burned +alive, as was at first decreed, their fate would have been too good for +such diabolical and inhuman wretches."[17] + +[Footnote 17: Gallatin, Miss., _Signal_, Feb. 27, 1843, reprinted in the +_Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Mch. 1, 1843.] + +An editorial in the _Sentinel_ of Columbus, Georgia, described and +discussed a local occurrence of August 12, 1851,[18] in a different tone: + +[Footnote 18: Columbus _Sentinel_, reprinted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +Aug. 17, 1851. This item, which is notable in more than one regard, was +kindly furnished by Prof. R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia.] + +"Our community has just been made to witness the most high-handed and +humiliating act of violence that it has ever been our duty to chronicle.... +At the May term of the Superior Court a negro man was tried and condemned +on the charge of having attempted to commit rape upon a little white girl +in this county. His trial was a fair one, his counsel was the best our +bar afforded, his jury was one of the most intelligent that sat upon the +criminal side of our court, and on patient and honest hearing he was found +guilty and sentenced to be hung on Tuesday, the 12th inst. This, by the +way, was the second conviction. The negro had been tried and convicted +before, but his counsel had moved and obtained a new trial, which we have +seen resulted like the first in a conviction. + +"Notwithstanding his conviction, it was believed by some that the negro was +innocent. Those who believed him innocent, in a spirit of mercy, undertook +a short time since to procure his pardon; and a petition to that effect was +circulated among our citizens and, we believe, very numerously signed. This +we think was a great error.... It is dangerous for the people to undertake +to meddle with the majesty of the jury trial; and strange as it may sound +to some people, we regard the unfortunate denouement of this case as but +the extreme exemplification of the very principle which actuated those who +originated this petition. Each proceeded from a spirit of discontent with +the decisions of the authorized tribunals; the difference being that in the +one case peaceful means were used for the accomplishment of mistaken mercy, +and in the other violence was resorted to for the attainment of mistaken +justice. + +"The petition was sent to Governor Towns, and on Monday evening last the +messenger returned with a full and free pardon to the criminal. In the +meantime the people had begun to flock in from the country to witness the +execution; and when it was announced that a pardon had been received, the +excitement which immediately pervaded the streets was indescribable. Monday +night passed without any important demonstration. Tuesday morning the crowd +in the streets increased, and the excitement with it. A large and excited +multitude gathered early in the morning at the market house, and after +numerous violent harangues a leader was chosen, and resolutions passed to +the effect that the mob should demand the prisoner at four o'clock in the +afternoon, and if he should not be given up he was to be taken by force +and executed. After this decision the mob dispersed, and early in the +afternoon, upon the ringing of the market bell, it reassembled and +proceeded to the jail. The sheriff of the county of course refused to +surrender the negro, when he was overpowered, the prison doors broken open, +and the unfortunate culprit dragged forth and hung. + +"These are the facts, briefly and we believe accurately, stated. We do +not feel now inclined to comment upon them. We leave them to the public, +praying in behalf of our injured community all the charity which can be +extended to an act so outraging, so unpardonable." + +A similar occurrence in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1855 was reported with +no expression of regret. A negro who had raped and murdered a young girl +there was brought before the superior court in regular session. "When the +case was called for trial a motion for change of venue to the county of +Greene was granted. This so exasperated the citizens of Sumter (many of +whom were in favor of summary punishment in the outset) that a large number +of them collected on the 23d. ult., took him out of prison, chained him +to a stake on the very spot where the murder was committed, and in the +presence of two or three thousand negroes and a large number of white +people,[19] burned him alive." This mention of negroes in attendance is in +sharp contrast with their palpable absence on similar occasions in later +decades. They were present, of course, as at legal executions, by the +command of their masters to receive a lesson of deterrence. The wisdom of +this policy, however, had already been gravely questioned. A Louisiana +editor, for example, had written in comment upon a local hanging: "The +practice of sending slaves to witness the execution of their fellows as +a terror to them has many advocates, but we are inclined to doubt its +efficacy. We took particular pains to notice on this occasion the effects +which this horrid spectacle would produce on their minds, and our +observation taught us that while a very few turned with loathing from the +scene, a large majority manifested that levity and curiosity superinduced +by witnessing a monkey show."[20] + +[Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1855.] + +[Footnote 20: _Caddo Gazette_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, April 5, +1845.] + +For another case of lynching, which occurred in White County, Tennessee, in +1858, there is available merely the court record of a suit brought by the +owners of the slave to recover pecuniary damages from those who had lynched +him. It is incidentally recited, with strong reprehension by the court, +that the negro was in legal custody under a charge of rape and murder when +certain citizens, part of whom had signed a written agreement to "stand by +each other," broke into the jail and hanged the prisoner.[21] + +[Footnote 21: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 336. For lynchings prompted by +other crimes than rape see below, p. 474, footnote 60.] + +In general the slaveholding South learned of crimes by individual negroes +with considerable equanimity. It was the news or suspicion of concerted +action by them which alone caused widespread alarm and uneasiness. That +actual deeds of rebellion by small groups were fairly common is suggested +by the numerous slaves convicted of murdering their masters and overseers +in Virginia, as well as by chance items from other quarters. Thus in 1797 +a planter in Screven County, Georgia, who had recently bought a batch of +newly imported Africans was set upon and killed by them, and his wife's +escape was made possible only by the loyalty of two other slaves.[22] +Likewise in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1844, when a Mr. Stewart +threatened one of his slaves, that one and two others turned upon him and +beat him to death;[23] and in Arkansas in 1845 an overseer who was attacked +under similar circumstances saved his life only with the aid of several +neighbors and through the use of powder and ball.[24] Such episodes were +likely to grow as the reports of them flew over the countryside. For +instance in 1856 when an unruly slave on a plantation shortly below New +Orleans upon being threatened with punishment seized an axe and was +thereupon shot by his overseer, the rumor of an insurrection quickly ran to +and through the city.[25] + +[Footnote 22: _Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser_ (Savannah, Ga.), +Feb. 24, 1797.] + +[Footnote 23: Paducah _Kentuckian_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, Apr. +3, 1844.] + +[Footnote 24: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 1, 1845, citing the Arkansas +_Southern Shield_.] + +[Footnote 25: New Orleans _Daily Tropic_, Feb. 16, 1846.] + +If all such rumors as this, many of which had equally slight basis, were +assembled, the catalogue would reach formidable dimensions. A large number +doubtless escaped record, for the newspapers esteemed them "a delicate +subject to touch";[26] and many of those which were recorded, we may be +sure, have not come to the investigator's notice. A survey of the revolts +and conspiracies and the rumors of such must nevertheless be attempted; for +their influence upon public thought and policy, at least from time to time, +was powerful. + +[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 23, 1856, +editorial.] + +Early revolts were of course mainly in the West Indies, for these were long +the chief plantation colonies. No more than twenty years after the first +blacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on the +plantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like number +from other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until they +were all cut down or captured.[27] In the English islands precedents of +conspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous. A plot +among the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed and +the ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had a +similar end.[29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar course +until 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number. The +governor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporary +wrote,[30] "for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, and +abundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest kept +in a more stricter manner." This quietude continued only until 1692 when +three negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy. One of these, on promise +of pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own participation +therein. The two others were condemned "to be hung in chains on a gibbet +till they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned." These +endured the torture "for four days without making any confession, but then +gave in and promised to confess on promise of life. One was accordingly +taken down on the day following. The other did not survive." The tale as +then gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form six +regiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the forts +and arsenal through bribery among their custodians. The governor when +reporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishment +of the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward to +future informers, would make the colony secure.[31] There seems to have +been no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 when +the blacks rose in great mass and burned more than sixty plantations, as +well as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived from +neighboring islands and suppressed them.[32] + +[Footnote 27: J.A. Saco, _Esclavitud en el Nuevo Mondo_ (Barcelona, 1879), +pp. 131-133.] + +[Footnote 28: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_, XXXV.] + +[Footnote 29: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] + +[Footnote 30: Charles Lincoln ed., _Narratives of the Indian Wars, +1675-1699_ (New York, 1913), pp. 71, 72.] + +[Footnote 31: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, +1689-1692_, pp. 732-734.] + +[Footnote 32: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 17, 1816.] + +In Jamaica a small outbreak in 1677[33] was followed by another, in +Clarendon Parish, in 1690. When these latter insurgents were routed by the +whites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearby +mountain fastnesses where, under the chieftainship of Cudjoe, they became +securely established as a community of marooned freemen. Welcoming runaway +slaves and living partly from depredations, they made themselves so +troublesome to the countryside that in 1733 the colonial government built +forts at the mouths of the Clarendon defiles and sent expeditions against +the Maroon villages. Cudjoe thereupon shifted his tribe to a new and better +buttressed vale in Trelawney Parish, whither after five years more spent in +forays and reprisals the Jamaican authorities sent overtures for peace. The +resulting treaty, signed in 1738, gave recognition to the Maroons, assigned +them lands and rights of hunting, travel and trade, pledged them to render +up runaway slaves and criminals in future, and provided for the residence +of an agent of the island government among the Maroons as their +superintendent. Under these terms peace prevailed for more than half a +century, while the Maroon population increased from 600 to 1400 souls. At +length Major James, to whom these blacks were warmly attached, was replaced +as superintendent by Captain Craskell whom they disliked and shortly +expelled. Tumults and forays now ensued, in 1795, the effect of which upon +the sentiment of the whites was made stronger by the calamitous occurrences +in San Domingo. Negotiations for a fresh accommodation fell through, +whereupon a conquest was undertaken by a joint force of British troops, +Jamaican militia and free colored auxiliaries. The prowess of the Maroons +and the ruggedness of their district held all these at bay, however, until +a body of Spanish hunters with trained dogs was brought in from Cuba. The +Maroons, conquered more by fright than by force, now surrendered, whereupon +they were transported first to Nova Scotia and thence at the end of the +century to the British protectorate in Sierra Leone.[34] Other Jamaican +troubles of some note were a revolt in St. Mary's Parish in 1765,[35] and +a more general one in 1832 in which property of an estimated value of +$1,800,000 was destroyed before the rebellion was put down at a cost of +some $700,000 more.[36] There were troubles likewise in various other +colonies, as with insurgents in Antigua in 1701[37] and[38] 1736 and +Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1752;[39] with maroons in Grenada in 1765,[40] +Dominica in 1785[41] and Demarara in[42] 1794; and with conspirators in +Cuba in 1825[43] and St. Croix[44] and Porto Rico in 1848.[45] + +[Footnote 33: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, +1689-1692_, p. 101.] + +[Footnote 34: R.C. Dallas, _History of the Maroons_ (London, 1803).] + +[Footnote 35: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXXVI, 135.] + +[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, XLIV, 124.] + +[Footnote 37: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies_, 1701, +pp. 721, 722.] + +[Footnote 38: _South Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Jan. 29, 1837.] + +[Footnote 39: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXII, 477.] + +[Footnote 40: _Ibid_., XXXV, 533.] + +[Footnote 41: Charleston, S.C., _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Jan. +26, 1786.] + +[Footnote 42: Henry Bolinbroke, _Voyage to the Demerary_ (Philadelphia, +1813), pp. 200-203.] + +[Footnote 43: _Louisiana Gazette_, Oct. 12, 1825.] + +[Footnote 44: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 7, 1848.] + +[Footnote 45: _Ibid_., Aug. 16 and Dec. 15, 1848.] + +Everything else of such nature, however, was eclipsed by the prodigious +upheaval in San Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution. Under the +flag of France the western end of that island had been converted in the +course of the eighteenth century from a nest of buccaneers into the most +thriving of plantation colonies. By 1788 it contained some 28,000 white +settlers, 22,000 free negroes and mulattoes, and 405,000 slaves. It had +nearly eight hundred sugar estates, many of them on a huge scale. The +soil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that on many fields the +sugar-cane would grow perennially from the same roots almost without end. +Exports of coffee and cotton were considerable, of sugar and molasses +enormous; and the volume was still rapidly swelling by reason of the great +annual importations of African slaves. The colony was by far the most +valued of the French overseas possessions. + +Some of the whites were descendants of the original freebooters, and +retained the temperament of their forbears; others were immigrant fortune +seekers. The white women were less than half as numerous as the men, and +black or yellow concubines were common substitutes for wives. The colony +was the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and more +self-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outside +control, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that the +colored freemen be kept passive. + +A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under the +old régime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projects +in France and to demand representation in the coming States General. But +the rapid progress of radical republicanism in that assembly threw most of +these into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still to +endorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_ +at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand the +National Assembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," together with its +decrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to free +persons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in the +northern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south. +When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative Assembly revoked +the former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring all +control over negro status to the colonial assemblies. Upon receiving news +of this the mulattoes and blacks, with the courage of despair, spread ruin +in every district. The whites, driven into the few fortified places, begged +succor from France; but the Jacobins, who were now in control at Paris, had +a programme of their own. By a decree of April 4, 1792, the Legislative +Assembly granted full political equality to colored freemen and provided +for the dispatch of Republican commissioners to establish the new régime. +The administration of the colony by these functionaries was a travesty. +Most of the surviving whites emigrated to Cuba and the American continent, +carrying such of their slaves as they could command. The free colored +people, who at first welcomed the commissioners, unexpectedly turned +against them because of a decree of August 29, 1793, abolishing slavery. + +At this juncture Great Britain, then at war with the French Republic, +intervened by sending an army to capture the colony. Most of the colored +freemen and the remaining whites rallied to the flag of these invaders; but +the slaves, now commanded by the famous Toussaint L'Ouverture, resisted +them effectually, while yellow fever decimated their ranks and paralyzed +their energies. By 1795 the two colored elements, the mulattoes who had +improvised a government on a slaveholding basis in the south, and the +negroes who dominated the north, each had the other alone as an active +enemy; and by the close of the century the mulattoes were either destroyed +or driven into exile; and Toussaint, while still acknowledging a nominal +allegiance to France, was virtual monarch of San Domingo. The peace of +Amiens at length permitted Bonaparte to send an army against the "Black +Napoleon." Toussaint soon capitulated, and in violation of the amnesty +granted him was sent to his death in a French dungeon. But pestilence again +aided the blacks, and the war was still raging when the breach of the peace +in Europe brought a British squadron to blockade and capture the remnant +of the French army. The new black leader, Dessalines, now proclaimed the +colony's independence, renaming it Hayti, and in 1804 he crowned himself +emperor. In the following year any further conflict with the local whites +was obviated by the systematic massacre of their small residue. In the +other French islands the developments, while on a much smaller scale, were +analogous.[46] + +[Footnote 46: T. Lothrop Stoddard, _The French Revolution in San Domingo_ +(Boston, 1914).] + +In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of 1712 +and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy of +the public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had been +recurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a mission +school by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagation +of the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroes +who had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable; +and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indians +or mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as they +contended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-three +provided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose the +dark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afire +and slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfire +caused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speed +that only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when the +plotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape capture; but +when the woods were beaten and the town searched next day and an emergency +court sat upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than the +whole conspiracy had comprised. The prosecuting officer, indeed, hounded +one of the prisoners through three trials, to win a final conviction after +two acquittals. The maxim that no one may twice be put in jeopardy for the +same offense evidently did not apply to slaves in that colony. Of those +convicted one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in chains; +nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake, one of these +being sentenced "to be burned with a slow fire, that he may continue in +torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in said fire until he +be dead and consumed to ashes"; and several others were saved only by the +royal governor's reprieve and the queen's eventual pardon. Such animosity +was exhibited by the citizens toward the "catechetical school" that for +some time its teacher hardly dared show himself on the streets. The furor +gradually subsided, however, and Mr. Neau continued his work for a dozen +years longer, and others carried it on after his death.[47] + +[Footnote 47: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Documents Relative to the Colonial +History of New York_, V, 341, 342, 346, 356, 357, 371; _New York +Genealogical and Biographical Record_, XXI, 162, 163; New Orleans _Daily +Delta_, April 1, 1849; J.A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America_ (New York, +1907), V, pp. 258, 259.] + +The commotion of 1741 was a panic among the whites of high and low degree, +prompted in sequel to a robbery and a series of fires by the disclosures of +Mary Burton, a young white servant concerning her master John Hughson, and +the confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of many aliases but +most commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputable +house and a prostitute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duress +that Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from the +negroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had already +effected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, the +supreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration in +bringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters.[48] +Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, and +likewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a +conspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either to +the gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of the +slaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives; +and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations of +detail which the increasingly fluent testimony of Mary Burton received. +Some of the confessions, however, were of no avail to those who made them. +Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror-stricken at the stake, made somewhat +stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay the +execution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of +tumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number of +sentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herself +by her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turn +out there was no guessing where or when there would be an end of +impeachments."[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot several +persons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religious +principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable +practices; at which the judges were very much astonished."[50] This +farcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stop +the tragic proceedings. + +[Footnote 48: Daniel Horsmanden, one of the magistrates who sat in these +trials, published in 1744 the _Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection +of the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro and +other slaves for burning the city of New York in America, and murdering +the Inhabitants_; and this, reprinted under the title, _The New York +Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot_ (New York, 1810), is the chief +source of knowledge in the premises. See also the contemporary letters of +Lieutenant-Governor Clarke in E.B. O'Callaghan, ed., _Documents Relative to +the Colonial History of New York_, VI, 186, 197, 198, 201-203.] + +[Footnote 49: _Ibid_., pp. 96-100.] + +[Footnote 50: _Ibid_., pp. 370-372.] + +In New Jersey in 1734 a slave at Raritan when jailed for drunkenness and +insolence professed to reveal a plot for insurrection, whereupon he and +a fellow slave were capitally convicted. One of them escaped before +execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a +negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt +and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration. +Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release +them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the +restoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were punished for arson.[52] + +[Footnote 51: MS. transcript in the New York Public Library from the New +York _Gazette_, Mch. 18, 1734.] + +[Footnote 52: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.] + +In the Southern colonies there were no outbreaks in the seventeenth century +and but two discoveries of plots, it seems, both in Virginia. The first +of these, 1663, in which indented white servants and negro slaves in +Gloucester County were said to be jointly involved, was betrayed by one of +the servants. The colonial assembly showed its gratification not only by +freeing the informer and giving him five thousand pounds of tobacco but by +resolving in commemoration of "so transcendant a favour as the preserving +all we have from so utter ruin," "that the 13th. of September be annually +kept holy, being the day those villains intended to put the plot in +execution."[53] The other plot, of slaves alone, in the "Northern Neck" of +the colony in 1687, appears to have been of no more than local concern.[54] +The punishments meted out on either occasion are unknown. + +[Footnote 53: Hening, _Virginia Statutes at Large_, II, 204.] + +[Footnote 54: J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, +1902), p. 79.] + +The eighteenth century, with its multiplication of slaves, saw somewhat +more frequent plots in its early decades. The discovery of one in Isle of +Wight County, Virginia, in 1709 brought thirty-nine lashes to each of +three slaves and fifty lashes to a free negro found to be cognizant, and +presumably more drastic punishments to two other slaves who were held as +ringleaders to await the governor's order. Still another slave who at +least for the time being escaped the clutches of the law was proclaimed +an outlaw.[55] The discovery of another plot in Gloucester and Middlesex +Counties of the same colony in 1723 prompted the assembly to provide for +the deportation to the West Indies of seven slave participants.[56] + +[Footnote 55: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, I, 129, 130.] + +[Footnote 56: _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1712-1726_, +p. 36.] + +In South Carolina, although depredations by runaways gave acute uneasiness +in 1711 and thereabouts, no conspiracy was discovered until 1720 when some +of the participants were burnt, some hanged and some banished.[57] Matters +were then quiet again until 1739 when on a September Sunday a score of +Angola blacks with one Jonny as their leader broke open a store, supplied +themselves with arms, and laid their course at once for Florida where they +had been told by Spanish emissaries welcome and liberty awaited them. +Marching to the beat of drums, slaughtering with ease the whites they came +upon, and drawing black recruits to several times their initial number, on +the Pon Pon road that day the rebels covered ten prosperous miles. But +when at evening they halted to celebrate their exploits with dancing and +plundered rum they were set upon by the whites whom couriers had collected. +Several were killed in the onslaught, and a few more were captured on the +spot. Most of the rest fled back to their cabins, but a squad of ten made +their way thirty miles farther on the route to Florida and sold their +lives in battle when overtaken. Of those captured on the field or in their +quarters some were shot but none were tortured. The toll of lives lost +numbered twenty-one whites and forty-four[58] blacks. + +[Footnote 57: Letter of June 24, 1720, among the MS. transcripts in the +state capitol at Columbia of documents in the British Public Record +Office.] + +[Footnote 58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, X, 127; South Carolina Historical +Society _Collections_, II, 270; Alexander Hewatt, _Historical Account of +South Carolina and Georgia_ (London, 1779), II, 72, 73. Joshua Coffin in +his _Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860) +listed a revolt at Savannah, Ga., in 1728. But Savannah was not founded +until 1733, and it contained virtually no negroes prior to 1750.] + +Following this and the New York panic of two years later, there was +remarkable quiet in race relations in general for a full half century. It +was not indeed until the spread of the amazing news from San Domingo and +the influx thence of white refugees and their slaves that a new series of +disturbances began on the continent. At Norfolk in 1792 some negroes were +arrested on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly discharged for lack +of evidence;[59] and close by at Portsmouth in the next year there were +such savage clashes between the newly come French blacks and those of the +Virginia stock that citizens were alarmed for their own safety.[60] In +Louisiana an uprising on the plantation of Julien Poydras in Pointe +Coupée Parish in 1796 brought the execution of a dozen or two negroes and +sentences to prison of several whites convicted as their accomplices;[61] +and as late as 1811 an outbreak in St. Charles and St. James Parishes was +traced in part to San Domingo slaves.[62] + +[Footnote 59: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 540, 541, 546.] + +[Footnote 60: _Ibid_., VI, 490, letter of a citizen who had just found four +strange negroes hanging from the branches of a tree near his door.] + +[Footnote 61: C.C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 244 ff.; E.P. +Puckett, "Free Negroes in Louisiana" (MS.).] + +[Footnote 62: M Puckett, _op. cit. Le Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New +Orleans), Feb. 11, 1811, has mention of the manumission of a mulatto slave +at this time on the ground of his recent valiant defence of his master's +house against attacking insurgents.] + +Gabriel's rising in the vicinity of Richmond, however, eclipsed all other +such events on the continent in this period. Although this affair was +of prodigious current interest its details were largely obscured by the +secrecy maintained by the court and the legislature in their dealings with +it. Reports in the newspapers of the time were copious enough but were +vague except as to the capture of the leading participants; and the +reminiscent journalism of after years was romantic to the point of +absurdity. It is fairly clear, however, that Gabriel and other slaves +on Thomas H. Prosser's plantation, which lay several miles distant from +Richmond, began to brew the conspiracy as early as June, 1800, and enlisted +some hundreds of confederates, perhaps more than a thousand, before +September 1, the date fixed for its maturity. Many of these were doubtless +residents of Richmond, and some it was said lived as far away as Norfolk. +The few muskets procured were supplemented by cutlasses made from scythe +blades and by plantation implements of other sorts; but the plan of +onslaught contemplated a speedy increase of this armament. From a +rendezvous six miles from Richmond eleven hundred men in three columns +under designated officers were to march upon the city simultaneously, one +to seize the penitentiary which then served also as the state arsenal, +another to take the powder magazine in another quarter of the town, and the +third to begin a general slaughter with such weapons as were already at +hand. + +Things progressed with very little hitch until the very eve of the day +set. But then two things occurred, either of which happening alone would +probably have foiled the project. On the one hand a slave on Moseley +Sheppard's plantation informed his master of the plot; on the other hand +there fell such a deluge of rain that the swelling of the streams kept most +of the conspirators from reaching the rendezvous. Meanwhile couriers had +roused the city, and the rebels assembled could only disperse. Scores of +them were taken, including eventually Gabriel himself who eluded pursuit +for several weeks and sailed to Norfolk as a stowaway. The magistrates, of +course, had busy sessions, but the number of death sentences was less than +might have been expected. Those executed comprised Gabriel and five other +Prosser slaves along with nineteen more belonging to other masters; and +ten others, in scattered ownership, were deported. To provide for a more +general riddance of suspected negroes the legislature made secret overtures +to the federal government looking to the creation of a territorial +reservation to receive such colonists; but for the time being this came +to naught. The legislature furthermore created a permanent guard for the +capitol, and it liberated at the state's expense Tom and Pharaoh, slaves of +the Sheppard family, as reward for their services in helping to foil the +plot.[63] + +[Footnote 63: T.W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat," in the _Atlantic +Monthly_, X, 337-345, reprinted in the same author's _Travellers and +Outlaws_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 185-214; J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in +Virginia_, p. 92; J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 65; MS. +vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments for +convicted slaves.] + +Set on edge by Gabriel's exploit, citizens far and wide were abnormally +alert for some time thereafter; and perhaps the slaves here and there were +unusually restive. Whether the one or the other of these conditions +was most responsible, revelations and rumors were for several years +conspicuously numerous. In 1802 there were capital convictions of fourteen +insurgent or conspiring slaves in six scattered counties of Virginia;[64] +and panicky reports of uprisings were sent out from Hartford and Bertie +Counties, North Carolina.[65] In July, 1804, the mayor of Savannah received +from Augusta "information highly important to the safety, peace and +security" of his town, and issued appropriate orders to the local +militia.[66] Among rumors flying about South Carolina in this period, one +on a December day in 1805 telling of risings above and below Columbia +led to the planting of cannon before the state house there and to the +instruction of the night patrols to seize every negro found at large. An +over-zealous patrolman thereupon shot a slave who was peacefully following +his own master, and was indicted next day for murder. The peaceful passing +of the night brought a subsidence of the panic with the coming of day.[67] + +[Footnote 64: Vouchers as above.] + +[Footnote 65: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, June 26, 1802.] + +[Footnote 66: Thomas Gamble, Jr., _History of the City Government of +Savannah_ [Savannah, 1900], p. 68.] + +[Footnote 67: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 881, 882.] + +In Virginia, again, there were disturbing rumors at one place or another +every year or two from 1809 to 1814,[68] but no occurrence of tangible +character until the Boxley plot of 1816 in Spottsylvania and Louisa +Counties. George Boxley, the white proprietor of a country store, was a +visionary somewhat of John Brown's type. Participating in the religious +gatherings of the negroes and telling them that a little white bird had +brought him a holy message to deliver his fellowmen from bondage, he +enlisted many blacks in his project for insurrection. But before the +plot was ripe it was betrayed by a slave woman, and several negroes were +arrested. Boxley thereupon marched with a dozen followers on a Quixotic +errand of release, but on the road the blacks fell away, and he, after some +time in hiding, surrendered himself. Six of the negroes after conviction +were hanged and a like number transported; but Boxley himself broke jail +and escaped.[69] + +[Footnote 68: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, X, 62, 63, 97, 368.] + +[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., X, 433-436; _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), Apr. +18 and 24 (Reprinting a report from the _Virginia Herald_ of Mch. 9), and +July 12, 1816; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public +payments for convicted slaves.] + +In the lower South a plot at Camden, South Carolina, in 1816[70] and +another at Augusta, Georgia,[71] three years afterward had like plans of +setting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of the +respective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Both +plots were betrayed, and several participants in each were executed. +These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot at +Charleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types involved, the +methods of persuasion used by the leading spirits and the sobriety of the +whites on the occasion is one of the most notable of such episodes on +record. + +[Footnote 70: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated +against the Southern and Western States, with historical notes of +insurrections_ (Charleston, 1822), pp. 75-77; H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy +of David R. Williams_, p. 131; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, pp. 151, 152.] + +[Footnote 71: News item from Augusta in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New +Orleans), June 15, 1819.] + +Denmark Vesey, brought from Africa in his youth, had bought his freedom +with part of a $1500 prize drawn by him in a lottery, and was in this +period an independent artisan. Harboring a deep resentment against the +whites, however, he began to plan his plot some four years before its +maturity. He familiarized himself with the Bible account of the deliverance +of the children of Israel, and collected pamphlet and newspaper material on +anti-slavery sentiment in England and the North and on occurrences in San +Domingo, with all of which on fit occasions he regaled the blacks with whom +he came into touch. Arguments based on such data brought concurrence of +negroes of the more intelligent sort, prominent among whom were certain +functionaries of the African Church who were already nursing grievances +on the score of the suppression of their ecclesiastical project by the +Charleston authorities.[72] The chief minister of that church, Morris +Brown, however, was carefully left out of the conspiracy. In appealing +to the more ignorant and superstitious element, on the other hand, the +services of Gullah Jack, so called because of his Angola origin, were +enlisted, for as a recognized conjuror he could bewitch the recalcitrant +and bestow charmed crabs' claws upon those joining the plot to make them +invulnerable. In the spring of 1822 things were put in train for the +outbreak. The Angolas, the Eboes and the Carolina-born were separately +organized under appropriate commanders; arrangements were made looking to +the support of the plantation slaves within marching distance of the city; +and letters were even sent by the negro cook on a vessel bound for San +Domingo with view apparently both to getting assistance from that island +and to securing a haven there in case the revolt should prove only +successful enough to permit the seizure of the ships in Charleston harbor. +Meanwhile the coachmen and draymen in the plot were told off to mobilize +the horses in their charge, pikes were manufactured, the hardware stores +and other shops containing arms were listed for special attention, and +plans were laid for the capture of the city's two arsenals as the first +stroke in the revolt. This was scheduled for midnight on Sunday, June 16. + +[Footnote 72: See above, p. 421.] + +On May 30 George, the body-servant of Mr. Wilson, told his master that Mr. +Paul's William had invited him to join a society which was to make a stroke +for freedom. William upon being seized and questioned by the city council +made something of a confession incriminating two other slaves, Mingo Harth +and Peter Poyas; but these were so staunch in their denials that they were +discharged, with confidential slaves appointed to watch them. William was +held for a week of solitary confinement, at the end of which he revealed +the extensive character of the plot and the date set for its maturity. The +city guard was thereupon strengthened; but the lapse of several days in +quiet was about to make the authorities incredulous, when another citizen +brought them word from another slave of information precisely like that +which had first set them on the _qui vive_. This caused the local militia +to be called out to stiffen the patrol. Then as soon as the appointed +Sunday night had passed, which brought no outbreak, the city council +created a special court as by law provided, comprising two magistrates +together with five citizens carefully selected for their substantial +character and distinguished position. These were William Drayton, Nathaniel +Heyward, James R. Pringle, James Legaré and Robert J. Turnbull. More +sagacious and responsible men could certainly not have been found. A +committee of vigilance was also appointed to assist the court. + +This court having first made its own rules that no negro was to be tried +except in the presence of his master or attorney, that everyone on trial +should be heard in his own defense, and that no one should be capitally +sentenced on the bare testimony of a single witness, proceeded to the trial +of Peter Poyas, Denmark Vesey and others against whom charges had then been +lodged. By eavesdropping those who were now convicted and confronting them +with their own words, confessions were procured implicating many others who +in turn were put on trial, including Gullah Jack whose necromancy could not +save him. In all 130 negroes were arrested, including nine colored freemen. +Of the whole number, twenty-five were discharged by the committee of +vigilance and 27 others by the court. Nine more were acquitted with +recommendations with which their masters readily complied, that they be +transported. Of those convicted, 34 were deported by public authority +and 35 were hanged. In addition four white men indicted for +complicity, comprising a German peddler, a Scotchman, a Spaniard and a +Charlestonian,[73] were tried by a regular court having jurisdiction over +whites and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to twelve months. + +[Footnote 73: _An Account of the late intended Insurrection among a portion +of the Blacks of this City. Published by the Authority of the Corporation +of Charleston_ (Charleston, 1822); Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker (the +presiding magistrates of the special court), _An Official Report of the +Trials of sundry Negroes charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection, +with a report of the trials of four white persons on indictments for +attempting to excite the slaves to insurrection_ (Charleston, 1822); T.D. +Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, 1909), pp. 130-136.] + +A number of Charleston citizens promptly memorialized the state assembly +recommending that all free negroes be expelled, that the penalties +applicable to whites conspiring with negroes be made more severe, and that +the control over the blacks be generally stiffened.[74] The legislature +complied except as to the proposal for expulsion. Charlestonians also +organized an association for the prevention of negro disturbances; but by +1825 the public seems to have begun to lose its ardor in the premises.[75] + +[Footnote 74: _Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and +House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, +1822), reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 103-116.] + +[Footnote 75: Address of the association, in the Charleston _City Gazette_, +Aug. 5, 1825.] + +The next salient occurrence in the series was the outbreak which brought +fame to Nat Turner and the devoted Virginia county of Southampton. Nat, +a slave who by the custom of the country had acquired the surname of his +first master, was the foreman of a small plantation, a Baptist exhorter +capable of reading the Bible, and a pronounced mystic. For some years, as +he told afterward when in custody, he had heard voices from the heavens +commanding him to carry on the work of Christ to make the last to be first +and the first last; and he took the sun's eclipse in February, 1831, as a +sign that the time was come. He then enlisted a few of his fellows in his +project, but proceeded to spend his leisure for several months in prayer +and brooding instead of in mundane preparation. When at length on Sunday +night, August 21, he began his revolt he had but a petty squad of +companions, with merely a hatchet and a broad-axe as weapons, and no +definite plan of campaign. First murdering his master's household and +seizing some additional equipment, he took the road and repeated the +process at whatever farmhouses he came upon. Several more negroes joined +the squad as it proceeded, though in at least one instance a slave resisted +them in defense of his master's family at the cost of his own life. The +absence of many whites from the neighborhood by reason of their attendance +at a camp-meeting across the nearby North Carolina line reduced the number +of victims, and on the other hand made the rally of the citizens less +expeditious and formidable when the alarm had been spread. By sunrise +the rebels numbered fifteen, part of whom were mounted, and their outfit +comprised a few firearms. Throughout the morning they continued their +somewhat aimless roving, slaughtering such white households as they +reached, enlisting recruits by persuasion or coercion, and heightening +their courage by draughts upon the apple-brandy in which the county, by +virtue of its many orchards and stills, abounded. By noon there were some +sixty in the straggling ranks, but when shortly afterward they met a squad +of eighteen rallying whites, armed like themselves mainly with fowling +pieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but a +score dispersed. The courage of these whites, however, was so outweighed +by their caution that Nat and his fellows were able to continue their +marauding course in a new direction, gradually swelling their numbers to +forty again. That night, however, a false alarm stampeded their bivouac and +again dispersed all the faint-hearted. Nat with his remaining squad then +attacked a homestead just before daybreak on Tuesday, but upon repulse +by the five white men and boys with several slave auxiliaries who were +guarding it they retreated only to meet a militia force which completed +the dispersal. All were promptly killed or taken except Nat who secreted +himself near his late master's home until his capture was accomplished six +weeks afterward. The whites slain by the rebels numbered ten men, fourteen +women and thirty-one children. + +The militia in scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and its +vindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks along +with the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads. The +magistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprising +all the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys for +the defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed his +appointed task. Forty-seven negroes all told were brought before the court. +As to the five free blacks included in this number the magistrates, who had +only preliminary jurisdiction in their cases, discharged one and remanded +four for trial by a higher court. Of the slaves four, and perhaps a fifth +regarding whom the record is blank, were discharged without trial, and +thirteen more were acquitted. Of those convicted seven were sentenced to +deportation, and seventeen with the ringleader among them, to death by +hanging. In addition there were several slaves convicted of complicity in +neighboring counties.[76] + +[Footnote 76: W.S. Drewry, _Slave Insurrections in Virginia, 1830-1865_ +(Washington, 1900), recounts this revolt in great detail, and gives a +bibliography. The vouchers in the Virginia archives record only eleven +executions and four deportations of Southampton slaves in this period. It +may be that the rest of those convicted were pardoned.] + +This extraordinary event, occurring as it did after a century's lapse since +last an appreciable number of whites on the continent had lost their lives +in such an outbreak, set nerves on edge throughout the South, and promptly +brought an unusually bountiful crop of local rumors. In North Carolina +early in September it was reported at Raleigh that the blacks of Wilmington +had burnt the town and slaughtered the whites, and that several thousand +of them were marching upon Raleigh itself.[77] This and similarly alarming +rumors from Edenton were followed at once by authentic news telling merely +that conspiracies had been discovered in Duplin and Sampson Counties and +also in the neighborhood of Edenton, with several convictions resulting in +each locality.[78] + +[Footnote 77: News item dated Warrenton, N.C., Sept. 15, 1831, in the New +Orleans _Mercantile Advertiser_, Oct. 4, 1831.] + +[Footnote 78: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Oct. 6, 1831, citing +the Fayetteville, N.C. _Observer_ of Sept. 14; _Niles' Register_, XLI, +266.] + +At Milledgeville, the village capital of Georgia where in the preceding +year the newspapers and the town authorities had been fluttered by the +discovery of incendiary pamphlets in a citizen's possession,[79] a rumor +spread on October 4, 1831, that a large number of slaves had risen a dozen +miles away and were marching upon the town to seize the weapons in the +state arsenal there. Three slaves within the town, and a free mulatto +preacher as well, were seized on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly +discharged for lack of evidence, and the city council soon had occasion, +because there had been "considerable danger in the late excitement ... +by persons carrying arms that were intoxicated" to order the marshal and +patrols to take weapons away from irresponsible persons and enforce the +ordinance against the firing of guns in the streets.[80] Upon the first +coming of the alarm the governor had appointed Captain J.A. Cuthbert, +editor of the _Federal Union_, to the military command of the town; and +Cuthbert, uniformed and armed to the teeth, dashed about the town all +day on his charger, distributing weapons and stationing guards. Upon the +passing of the baseless panic Seaton Grantland, customarily cool and +sardonic, ridiculed Cuthbert in the _Southern Recorder_ of which he was +editor. Cuthbert retorted in his own columns that Grantland's conduct in +the emergency had proved him a skulking coward.[81] No blood was shed, even +among the editors. + +[Footnote 79: _Federal Union_, Aug. 7, 1830; American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1904, I. 469.] + +[Footnote 80: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 469, +470.] + +[Footnote 81: _Federal Union_, Oct. 6 and 13 and Dec. 1, 1831.] + +There were doubtless episodes of such a sort in many other localities.[82] +It was evidently to this period that the reminiscences afterward collected +by Olmsted applied. "'Where I used to live,'" a backwoodsman formerly of +Alabama told the traveller, "'I remember when I was a boy--must ha' been +about twenty years ago--folks was dreadful frightened about the niggers. I +remember they built pens in the woods where they could hide, and Christmas +time they went and got into the pens, 'fraid the niggers was risin'.' 'I +remember the same time where we were in South Carolina,' said his wife, 'we +had all our things put up in bags, so we could tote 'em if we heerd they +was comin' our way.'"[83] + +[Footnote 82: The discovery of a plot at Shelbyville, Tennessee, was +reported at the end of 1832. _Niles' Register_, XLI, 340.] + +[Footnote 83: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1863), p. 203.] + +Another sort of sequel to the Southampton revolt was of course a plenitude +of public discussion and of repressive legislation. In Virginia a flood of +memorials poured upon the legislature. Petitions signed by 1,188 citizens +in twelve counties asked for provision for the expulsion of colored +freemen; others with 398 signatures from six counties proposed an amendment +to the United States Constitution empowering Congress to aid Virginia to +rid herself of all the blacks; others from two colonization societies +and 366 citizens in four counties proposed the removal first of the +free negroes and then of slaves to be emancipated by private or public +procedure; 27 men of Buckingham and Loudon Counties and others in +Albemarle, together with the Society of Friends in Hanover and 347 women, +prayed for the abolition of slavery, some on the _post nati_ plan and +others without specification of details.[84] The House of Delegates +responded by devoting most of its session of that winter to an +extraordinarily outspoken and wide-ranging debate on the many phases of the +negro problem, reflecting and elaborating all the sentiments expressed in +the petitions together with others more or less original with the members +themselves. The Richmond press reported the debate in great detail, and +many of the speeches were given a pamphlet circulation in addition.[85] +The only tangible outcome there and elsewhere, however, was in the form of +added legal restrictions upon the colored population, slave and free. But +when the fright and fervor of the year had passed, conditions normal to the +community returned. On the one hand the warnings of wiseacres impressed +upon the would-be problem solvers the maxim of the golden quality of +silence, particularly while the attacks of the Northern abolitionists upon +the general Southern régime were so active. On the other hand the new +severities of the law were promptly relegated, as the old ones had been, +to the limbo of things laid away, like pistols, for emergency use, out of +sight and out of mind in the daily routine of peaceful industry. + +[Footnote 84: _The Letter of Appomattox to the People of Virginia: +Exhibiting a connected view of the recent proceedings in the House of +Delegates on the subject of the abolition of slavery and a succinct account +of the doctrines broached by the friends of abolition in debate, and the +mischievous tendency of those proceedings and doctrines_ (Richmond, 1832). +These letters were first published in the Richmond _Enquirer_, February 4, +1832 et seqq.] + +[Footnote 85: The debate is summarized in Henry Wilson, _History of the +Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_ (Boston, 1872), I, 190-207.] + +In the remaining ante-bellum decades, though the actual outbreaks were +negligible except for John Brown's raid, the discoveries, true or false, +and the rumors, mostly unwarranted, were somewhat more frequent than +before. Revelations in Madison County, Mississippi, in 1835 shortly before +July 4, told of a conspiracy of whites and blacks scheduled for that day +as a ramification of the general plot of the Murrell gang recently +exposed.[86] A mass meeting thereupon appointed an investigating committee +of thirteen citizens with power to apply capital punishment; and several +whites together with ten or fifteen blacks were promptly put to death.[87] + +[Footnote 86: See above, pp. 381, 382.] + +[Footnote 87: _The Liberator_ (Boston, Mass.), Aug. 8, 1835, quoting the +Clinton, Miss., _Gazette_ of July 11.] + +Widespread rumors at the beginning of the following December that a general +uprising was in preparation for the coming holiday season caused the +summons of citizens in various Georgia counties to mass meetings which with +one accord recommended special precautions by masters, patrols and militia, +and appointed committees of vigilance. In this series the resolutions +adopted in Washington County are notable especially for the tone of their +preamble. Mentioning the method recently followed in Mississippi only to +disapprove it, this preamble ran: "We would fain hope that the soil of +Georgia may never be reddened or her people disgraced by the arbitrary +shedding of human blood; for if the people allow themselves but one +participation in such lawless proceedings, no human sagacity can foretell +where the overwhelming deluge will be staid or what portions of our state +may feel its desolating ruin. This course of protection unhinges every tie +of social and civil society, dissolves those guards which the laws throw +around property and life, and leaves every individual, no matter how +innocent, at the sport of popular passion, the probable object of popular +indignation, and liable to an ignominious death. Therefore we would +recommend to our fellow-citizens that if any facts should be elicited +implicating either white men or negroes in any insurrectionary or abolition +movements, that they be apprehended and delivered over to the legal +tribunals of the country for full and fair judicial trial."[88] At +Clarksville, Tennessee, uneasiness among the citizens on the score of the +negroes employed in the iron works thereabout was such that they procured a +shipment of arms from the state capital in preparation for special guard at +the Christmas season.[89] + +[Footnote 88: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 11, 1835. At +Darien on the Georgia coast Edwin C. Roberts, an Englishman by birth, was +committed for trial in the following August for having told slaves they +ought to be free and that half of the American people were in favor of +their freedom. The local editor remarked when reporting the occurrence: +"Mr. Roberts should thank his stars that he did not commence his crusade in +some quarters where Judge Lynch presides. Here the majesty of the law +is too highly respected to tolerate the jurisdiction of this despotic +dignitary." Darien _Telegraph_, Aug. 30, quoted in the _Federal Union_, +Sept. 6, 1836.] + +[Footnote 89: MS. petition with endorsement noting the despatch of arms, in +the state archives at Nashville.] + +In various parts of Louisiana in this period there was a succession of +plots discovered. The first of these, betrayed on Christmas Eve, 1835, +involved two white men, one of them a plantation overseer, along with forty +slaves or more. The whites were promptly hanged, and doubtless some of the +blacks likewise.[90] The next, exposed in the fall of 1837, was in the +neighborhood of Alexandria. Nine slaves and three free negroes were hanged +in punishment,[91] and the negro Lewis who had betrayed the conspiracy was +liberated at state expense and was voted $500 to provide for his security +in some distant community.[92] The third was in Lafayette and St. Landry +Parishes, betrayed in August, 1840, by a slave woman named Lecide who was +freed by her master in reward. Nine negroes were hanged. Four white men +who were implicated, but who could not be convicted under the laws which +debarred slave testimony against whites, were severely flogged under a +lynch-law sentence and ordered to leave the state.[93] Rumors of other +plots were spread in West Feliciana Parish in the summer of 1841,[94] in +several parishes opposite and above Natchez in the fall of 1842,[95] and at +Donaldsonville at the beginning of 1843;[96] but each of these in turn was +found to be virtually baseless. Meanwhile at Augusta, Georgia, several +negroes were arrested in February, 1841, and at least one of them was +sentenced to death. A petition was circulated for his respite as an +inducement for confession; but other citizens, disquieted by the testimony +already given, prepared a counter petition asking the governor to let the +law take its course. The plot as described contemplated the seizure of the +arsenal and the firing of the city in facilitation of massacre.[97] + +[Footnote 90: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 331.] + +[Footnote 91: _Ibid_., LIII, 129.] + +[Footnote 92: Louisiana, _Acts_ of 1838, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 93: _Niles' Register_, LXIX, 39, 88; E.P. Puckett, "Free Negroes +in Louisiana" (MS.).] + +[Footnote 94: New Orleans _Bee_, July 23, 29 and 31, 1841.] + +[Footnote 95: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 212.] + +[Footnote 96: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, +1843.] + +[Footnote 97: Letter of Mrs. S.A. Lamar, Augusta, Ga., Feb. 25, 1841, to +John B. Lamar at Macon. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, +Ga.] + +The rest of the 'forties and the first half of the 'fifties were a period +of comparative quiet; but in 1855 there were rumors in Dorchester and +Talbot Counties, Maryland,[98] and the autumn of 1856 brought widespread +disturbances which the Southern whites did not fail to associate with the +rise of the Republican Party. In the latter part of that year there were +rumors afloat from Williamsburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County in the +same state, from various quarters of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, from +New Orleans, and from Atlanta and Cassville, Georgia.[99] A typical episode +in the period was described by a schoolmaster from Michigan then sojourning +in Mississippi. One night about Christmas of 1858 when the plantation +homestead at which he was staying was filled with house guests, a courier +came in the dead of night bringing news that the blacks in the eastern part +of the county had risen in a furious band and were laying their murderous +course in this direction. The head of the house after scanning the +bulletin, calmly told his family and guests that they might get their guns +and prepare for defense, but if they would excuse him he would retire again +until the crisis came. The coolness of the host sent the guests back to bed +except for one who stood sentry. "The negroes never came."[100] + +[Footnote 98: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 97.] + +[Footnote 99: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Dec. 18 and 25, 1856. Some +details of the Texas disturbance, which brought death to several negroes, +is given in documents printed in F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, pp. +503. 504] + +[Footnote 100: A. DePuy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Sojourn in the South_ +(Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 121, 122] + +The shiver which John Brown's raid sent over the South was diminished by +the failure of the blacks to join him, and it was largely overcome by the +wave of fierce resentment against the abolitionists who, it was said, had +at last shown their true colors. The final disturbance on the score of +conspiracy among the negroes themselves was in the summer of 1860 at +Dallas, Texas, where in the preceding year an abolitionist preacher had +been whipped and driven away. Ten or more fires which occurred in one day +and laid much of the town in ruins prompted the seizure of many blacks and +the raising of a committee of safety. This committee reported to a public +meeting on July 24 that three ringleaders in the plot were to be hanged +that afternoon. Thereupon Judge Buford of the district court addressed the +gathering. "He stated in the outset that in any ordinary case he would +be as far from counselling mob law as any other man, but in the present +instance the people had a clear right to take the law in their own hands. +He counselled moderation, and insisted that the committee should execute +the fewest number compatible with the public safety." [101] + +[Footnote 101: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 21, 1860, quoting +the Nashville _Union_.] + +On the whole it is hardly possible to gauge precisely the degree of popular +apprehension in the premises. John Randolph was doubtless more picturesque +than accurate when he said, "the night bell never tolls for fire in +Richmond that the mother does not hug the infant more closely to her +bosom."[102] The general trend of public expressions laid emphasis upon the +need of safeguards but showed confidence that no great disasters were to be +feared. The revolts which occurred and the plots which were discovered were +sufficiently serious to produce a very palpable disquiet from time to time, +and the rumors were frequent enough to maintain a fairly constant undertone +of uneasiness. The net effect of this was to restrain that progress of +liberalism which the consideration of economic interest, the doctrines of +human rights and the spirit of kindliness all tended to promote. + +[Footnote 102: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_, I, 295.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE FORCE OF THE LAW + + +In many lawyers' briefs and court decisions it has been said that slavery +could exist only by force of positive legislation.[1] This is not +historically valid, for in virtually every American community where it +existed at all, the institution was first established by custom alone and +was merely recognized by statutes when these came to be enacted. Indeed the +chief purpose of the laws was to give sanction and assurance to the racial +and industrial adjustments already operative. + +[Footnote 1: The source of this error lies doubtless in Lord Mansfield's +famous but fallacious decision of 1772 in the Somerset case, which is +recorded in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, § 548. That decision is well +criticized in T.R.R. Cobb, _An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in +the United States of America_ (vol. I, all published, Philadelphia and +Savannah, 1858), pp. 163-175. + +Cobb's treatise, though dealing with slaves as persons only and not as +property, is the best of the general analyses of the legal phase of the +slaveholding régime. A briefer survey is in the _Cyclopedia of Law and +Procedure_, William Mack ed., XXXVI (New York, 1910), 465-495. The works +of G.M. Stroud, _A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several +States_ (Philadelphia, 1827), and William Goodell, _The American Slave Code +in Theory and Practice_ (New York, 1853), are somewhat vitiated by the +animus of their authors. + +The many statutes concerning slavery enacted in the several colonies, +territories and states are listed and many of them summarized in J.C. Hurd, +_The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States_ (Boston, 1858), I, +228-311; II, 1-218. Some hundreds of court decisions in the premises are +given in J.D. Wheeler, _A Practical Treatise on the Law of Slavery_ +(New York and New Orleans, 1837); and all the thousands of decisions of +published record are briefly digested in _The Century Edition of the +American Digest_, XLIV (St. Paul, 1903), 853-1152. + +The development of the slave code in Virginia is traced in J.C. Ballagh, +_A History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1902), supplemented by J.H. +Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913); and the legal +régime of slavery in South Carolina at the middle of the nineteenth century +is described by Judge J.B. O'Neall in _The Industrial Resources of the +Southern and Western States_, J.B.D. DeBow ed., II (New Orleans, 1853), +269-292.] + +As a rule each slaveholding colony or state adopted early in its career +a series of laws of limited scope to meet definite issues as they were +successively encountered. Then when accumulated experience had shown a +community that it had a general problem of regulation on its hands its +legislature commonly passed an act of many clauses to define the status of +slaves, to provide the machinery of their police, and to prescribe legal +procedure in cases concerning them whether as property or as persons. +Thereafter the recourse was again to specific enactments from time to +time to supplement this general or basic statute as the rise of new +circumstances or policies gave occasion. The likeness of conditions in the +several communities and the difficulty of devising laws to comply with +intricate custom and at the same time to guard against apprehended ills led +to much intercolonial and interstate borrowing of statutes. A perfect chain +of this sort, with each link a basic police law for slaves in a separate +colony or state, extended from Barbados through the southeastern trio of +commonwealths on the continent. The island of Barbados, as we have seen, +was the earliest of the permanent English settlements in the tropics and +one of the first anywhere to attain a definite régime of plantations +with negro labor. This made its assembly perforce a pioneer in slave +legislation. After a dozen minor laws had been enacted, beginning in 1644, +for the control of negroes along with white servants and for the recapture +of runaways, the culmination in a general statute came in 1688. Its +occasion, as recited in the preamble, was the dependence of plantation +industry upon great numbers of negro slaves whose "barbarous, wild and +savage nature ... renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the +laws, customs and practices of our nation," and the "absolutely necessary +consequence that such other constitutions, laws and orders should be in +this island framed and enacted for the good regulating and ordering of them +as may ... restrain the disorders, rapines and inhumanities to which they +are naturally prone and inclined, with such encouragements and allowances +as are fit and needful for their support, that ... this island through the +blessing of God thereon may be preserved, His Majesty's subjects in their +lives and fortunes secured, and the negroes and other slaves be well +provided for and guarded against the cruelties and insolences of themselves +or other ill-tempered people or owners." + +The statute itself met the purposes of the preamble unevenly. The slaves +were assured merely in annual suits of clothing, and the masters were given +claim for pecuniary compensation for slaves inveigled away or illegally +killed by other freemen; but the main concern of the statute was with +routine control and the punishment of slave malfeasances. No slaves were to +leave their masters' premises at any time unless in company with whites or +when wearing servants' livery or carrying written passes, and offenders +in this might be whipped and taken into custody by any white persons +encountering them. No slaves were to blow horns or beat drums; and masters +were to have their negro houses searched at frequent intervals for such +instruments, as well as for weapons, runaway slaves and stolen goods. +Runaways when caught were to be impounded, advertised and restored to their +masters upon payment of captors' and custodians' fees. Trading with slaves +was restricted for fear of encouraging theft. A negro striking a white +person, except in lawful defense of his master's person, family or goods, +was criminally punishable, though merely with lashes for a first offense; +and thefts to the value of more than a shilling, along with all other +serious infractions, were capital crimes. Negro transgressors were to be +tried summarily by courts comprising two justices of the peace and three +freeholders nearest the crime and were to be punished immediately upon +conviction. To dissuade masters from concealing the crimes of their negroes +the magistrates were to appraise each capitally convicted slave, within a +limit of £25, and to estimate also the damage to the person or property +injured by the commission of the crime. The colonial treasurer was then to +take the amount of the slave's appraisal from the public funds and after +making reimbursement for the injury done, pay the overplus, if any, to the +criminal's owner. If it appeared to the magistrates, however, that the +crime had been prompted by the master's neglect and the slave's consequent +necessity for sustenance, the treasurer was to pay the master nothing. A +master killing his own slave wantonly was to be fined £15, and any other +person killing a slave illegally was to pay the master double the slave's +value, to be fined £25, and to give bond for subsequent good behavior. If +a slave were killed by accident the slayer was liable only to suit by +the owner. The destruction of a slave's life or limb in the course of +punishment by his master constituted no legal offense, nor did the killing +of one by any person, when found stealing or attempting a theft by night. +Ascertained hiding places of runaway slaves were to be raided by constables +and posses, and these were to be rewarded for taking the runaways alive or +dead.[2] This act was thenceforward the basic law in the premises as long +as slavery survived in the island. + +[Footnote 2: Richard Hall ed., _Acts Passed in the Island of Barbados from +1643 to 1762 inclusive_ (London. 1764), pp. 112-121.] + +South Carolina, in a sense the daughter of Barbados and in frequent +communication with her, had enacted a series of specific laws of her own +devising, when the growth of her slave population prompted the adoption of +a general statute for negro police. Thereupon in 1712 her assembly copied +virtually verbatim the preamble and some of the ensuing clauses of the +Barbadian act of 1688, and added further provisions drawn from other +sources or devised for the occasion. This served as her basic law until +the shock of the Stono revolt in 1739 prompted the legislature to give the +statute a greater elaboration in the following year. The new clauses, aside +from one limiting the work which might be required by masters to fourteen +and fifteen hours per day in winter and summer respectively, and another +forbidding all but servants in livery to wear any but coarse clothing, +were concerned with the restraint of slaves, mainly with a view to the +prevention of revolt. No slaves were to be sold liquors without their +masters' approval; none were to be taught to write; no more than seven men +in a group were to travel on the high roads unless in company with white +persons; no houses or lands were to be rented to slaves, and no slaves were +to be kept on any plantation where no white person was resident.[3] + +[Footnote 3: Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at Large of South Carolina_, VII, +408 ff.] + +This act, supplemented by curfew and patrol laws and variously amended in +after years, as by the enhancement of penalties for negroes convicted of +striking white persons and by the requirement that masters provide adequate +food as well as clothing, was never repealed so long as slavery continued +to exist in South Carolina. Though its sumptuary clauses, along with +various others, were from first to last of no effect, the statute as a +whole so commended itself to the thought of slaveholding communities that +in 1770 Georgia made it the groundwork of her own slave police; Florida in +turn, by acts of 1822 and 1828, adopted the substance of the Georgia law +as revised to that period; and in lesser degree still other states gave +evidence of the same influence. Complementary legislation in all these +jurisdictions meanwhile recognized slaves as property, usually of chattel +character and with children always following the mother's condition, +debarred negro testimony in court in all cases where white persons were +involved, and declared the juridical incapacity of slaves in general except +when they were suing for freedom. Contemporaneously and by similar methods, +a parallel chain of laws, largely analogous to those here noted, was +extended from Virginia, herself a pioneer in slave legislation, to +Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina and in a fan-spread to the west as +far as Missouri and Texas.[4] + +[Footnote 4: The beginning of Virginia's pioneer slave code has been +sketched in chapter IV above; and the slave legislation of the Northern +colonies and states in chapters VI and VII.] + +Louisiana alone in all the Union, because of her origin and formative +experience as a Latin colony, had a scheme of law largely peculiar to +herself. The foundation of this lay in the _Code Noir_ decreed by Louis XV +for that colony in 1724. In it slaves were declared to be chattels, but +those of working age were not to be sold in execution of debt apart from +the lands on which they worked, and neither husbands and wives nor mothers +and young children were to be sold into separate ownership under any +circumstances. All slaves, furthermore, were to be baptized into the +Catholic church, and were to be exempt from field work on Sundays and +holidays; and their marriages were to be legally recognized. Children, +of course, were to follow the status and ownership of their mothers. +All slaves were to be adequately clothed and fed, under penalty of +confiscation, and the superannuated were to be maintained on the same +basis as the able-bodied. Slaves might make business contracts under their +masters' approval, but could not sue or be sued or give evidence against +whites, except in cases of necessity and where the white testimony was in +default. They might acquire property legally recognized as their own when +their masters expressly permitted them to work or trade on their personal +accounts, though not otherwise. Manumission was restricted only by the +requirement of court approval; and slaves employed by their masters in +tutorial capacity were declared _ipso facto_ free. In police regards, the +travel and assemblage of slaves were restrained, and no one was allowed to +trade with them without their masters' leave; slaves were forbidden to have +weapons except when commissioned by their masters to hunt; fugitives were +made liable to severe punishments, and free negroes likewise for harboring +them. Negroes whether slave or free, however, were to be tried by the same +courts and by the same procedure as white persons; and though masters were +authorized to apply shackles and lashes for disciplinary purpose, the +killing of slaves by them was declared criminal even to the degree of +murder.[5] + +[Footnote 5: This decree is printed in _Le Code Noir_ (Paris, 1742), pp. +318-358, and in the Louisiana Historical Society _Collections_, IV, 75-90. +The prior decree of 1685 establishing a slave code for the French West +Indies, upon which this for Louisiana was modeled, may be consulted in +L. Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_ (Paris, 1897), pp. +158-166.] + +Nearly all the provisions of this relatively liberal code were adopted +afresh when Louisiana became a territory and then a state of the Union. In +assimilation to Anglo-American practice, however, such recognition as had +been given to slave _peculium_ was now withdrawn, though on the other hand +slaves were granted by implication a legal power to enter contracts for +self-purchase. Slave marriages, furthermore, were declared void of all +civil effect; and jurisdiction over slave crimes was transferred to courts +of inferior grade and informal procedure. By way of reciprocation the state +of Alabama when framing a new slave code in 1852 borrowed in a weakened +form the Louisiana prohibition of the separate sale of mothers and their +children below ten years of age. This provision met the praise of citizens +elsewhere when mention of it chanced to be published; but no other +commonwealth appears to have adopted it.[6] + +[Footnote 6: _E. g_., Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Feb. 27, 1856.] + +The severity of the slave laws in the commonwealths of English origin, as +compared with the mildness of the Louisiana code, was largely due to +the historic possession by their citizens of the power of local +self-government. A distant autocrat might calmly decree such regulations as +his ministers deemed proper, undisturbed by the wishes and apprehensions of +the colonial whites; but assemblymen locally elected and responsive to the +fears as well as the hopes of their constituents necessarily reflected more +fully the desire of social control, and preferred to err on the side of +safety. If this should involve severity of legislative repression for +the blacks, that might be thought regrettable and yet be done without a +moment's qualm. On the eve of the American Revolution a West Indian writer +explained the régime. "Self preservation," said he, "that first and ruling +principle of human nature, alarming our fears, has made us jealous and +perhaps severe in our _threats_ against delinquents. Besides, if we attend +to the history of our penal laws relating to slaves, I believe we shall +generally find that they took their rise from some very atrocious attempts +made by the negroes on the property of their masters or after some +insurrection or commotion which struck at the very being of the colonies. +Under these circumstances it may very justly be supposed that our +legislatures when convened were a good deal inflamed, and might be induced +for the preservation of their persons and properties to pass severe laws +which they might hold over their heads to terrify and restrain them."[7] In +the next generation an American citizen wrote in similar strain and with +like truthfulness: "The laws of the slaveholding states do not furnish +a criterion for the character of their present white population or the +condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted for the most part in +seasons of particular alarm produced by attempts at insurrection, or when +the black inhabitants were doubly formidable by reason of the greater +proportion which they bore to the whites in number and the savage state and +unhappy mood in which they arrived from Africa. The real measure of danger +was not understood but after long experience, and in the interval the +precautions taken were naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. +That these have not all been repealed, or that some of them should be still +enforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of legislation, since +the evils against which they were intended to guard are yet the subject of +just apprehension."[8] + +[Footnote 7: _Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, or a Defence of the West +India Planters_. By a West Indian (Philadelphia, 1773), p. 18, note.] + +[Footnote 8: Robert Walsh, Jr., _An Appeal from the Judgments of Great +Britain respecting the United States of America_ (Philadelphia, 1819), p. +405.] + +Wherever colonial statutes were silent the laws of the mother country +filled the gap. It was under the common law of England, for example, that +the slaves Mark and Phillis were tried in Massachusetts in 1755 for +the poisoning of their master, duly convicted of petit treason, and +executed--the woman as the principal in the crime by being burned at the +stake, the man as an accessory by being hanged and his body thereafter +left for years hanging in chains on Charlestown common.[9] The severity of +Anglo-American legislation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, +furthermore, was in full accord with the tone of contemporary English +criminal law. It is not clear, however, that the great mitigation which +benefit of clergy gave in English criminal administration[10] was +commensurately applied in the colonies when slave crimes were concerned. +Even in England, indeed, servants were debarred in various regards, that of +petit treason, for example, from this avenue of relief. On the other hand +many American slaves were saved from death at the hands of the law by the +tolerant spirit of citizens toward them and by the consideration of the +pecuniary loss to be suffered through their execution. A Jamaican statute +of 1684 went so far as to prescribe that when several slaves were jointly +involved in a capital crime one only was to be executed as an example and +the loss caused by his death was to be apportioned among the owners of the +several.[11] More commonly the mitigation lay not in the laws themselves +but in the general disposition to leave to the discipline of the masters +such slave misdeeds as were not regarded as particularly heinous nor +menacing to the public security. + +[Footnote 9: A.C. Goodell, Jr., _The Trial and Execution for Petit Treason +of Mark and Phillis_ (Cambridge, 1883), reprinted from the Massachusetts +Historical Society _Proceedings_, XX, 132-157.] + +[Footnote 10: A.L. Cross, "Benefit of Clergy," in the _American Historical +Review_, XXII, 544-565.] + +[Footnote 11: _Abridgement of the Laws in Force in Her Majesty's +Plantations_ (London, 1704), pp. 104-108.] + +Burnings at the stake, breakings on the wheel and other ferocious methods +of execution which were occasionally inflicted by the colonial courts were +almost universally discontinued soon after the beginning of the nineteenth +century. The general trend of moderation discernible at that time, however, +was hampered then and thereafter by the series of untoward events beginning +with the San Domingo upheaval and ending with John Brown's raid. In +particular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuing +Nat Turner's revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislation +the whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes, +stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing the +already limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration, +however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to have +grown milder as the decades passed. + +The police ordinances of the several cities and other local jurisdictions +were in keeping with the state laws which they supplemented and in some +degree duplicated. At New Orleans an ordinance adopted in 1817 and little +changed thereafter forbade slaves to live off their masters' premises +without written permission, to make any clamorous noise, to show disrespect +to any white persons, to walk with canes on the streets unless on account +of infirmity, or to congregate except at church, at funerals, and at such +dances and other amusements as were permitted for them on Sundays alone and +in public places. Each offender was to be tried by the mayor or a justice +of the peace after due notice to his master, and upon conviction was to be +punished within a limit of twenty-five lashes unless his master paid a fine +for him instead.[12] + +[Footnote 12: D. Augustin, _A General Digest of the Ordinances and +Resolutions of the Corporation of New Orleans_ ([New Orleans], 1831), pp. +133-137.] + +At Richmond an ordinance effective in 1859 had provisions much like those +of New Orleans regarding residence, clamor, canes, assemblage and demeanor, +and also debarred slaves from the capitol square and other specified public +enclosures unless in attendance on white persons or on proper errands, +forbade them to ride in public hacks without the written consent of their +masters, or to administer medicine to any persons except at their masters' +residences and with the masters' consent. It further forbade all negroes, +whether bond or free, to possess offensive weapons or ammunition, to form +secret societies, or to loiter on the streets near their churches more than +half an hour after the conclusion of services; and it required them when +meeting, overtaking or being overtaken by white persons on the sidewalks to +pass on the outside, stepping off the walk if necessary to allow the whites +to pass. It also forbade all free persons to hire slaves to themselves, to +rent houses, rooms or grounds to them, to sell them liquors by retail, or +drugs without written permits from their masters, or to furnish offensive +weapons to negroes whether bond or free. Finally, it forbade anyone to beat +a slave unlawfully, under fine of not more than twenty dollars if a white +person, or of lashes or fine at the magistrate's discretion in case the +offender were a free person of color.[13] + +[Footnote 13: _The Charters and Ordinances of the City of Richmond_ +(Richmond, 1859), pp. 193-200.] + +Of rural ordinances, one adopted by the parish of West Baton Rouge, +Louisiana, in 1828 was concerned only with the organization and functions +of the citizens' patrol. As many chiefs of patrol were to be appointed +as the parish authorities might think proper, each to be in charge of a +specified district, with duties of listing all citizens liable to patrol +service, dividing them into proper details and appointing a commander for +each squad. Every commander in his turn, upon receiving notice from his +chief, was to cover the local beat on the night appointed, searching slave +quarters, though with as little disturbance as possible to the inmates, +arresting any free negroes or strange whites found where they had no proper +authority or business to be, whipping slaves encountered at large without +passes or unless on the way to or from the distant homes of their wives, +and seizing any arms and any runaway slaves discovered.[14] The police code +of the neighboring parish of East Feliciana in 1859 went on further to +prescribe trials and penalties for slaves insulting or abusing white +persons, to restrict their carrying of guns, and their assemblage, to +forbid all slaves but wagoners to keep dogs, to restrict citizens in their +trading with slaves, to require the seizure of self-styled free negroes not +possessing certificates, and to prescribe that all negroes or mulattoes +found on the railroad without written permits be deemed runaway slaves and +dealt with as the law regarding such directed.[15] + +[Footnote 14: _Police Regulations of the Parish of West Baton Rouge (La.), +passed at a regular meeting held at the Court House of said Parish on the +second and third days of June, A.D. 1828_ (Baton Rouge, 1828), pp. 8-11. +For a copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Professor W.L. Fleming of +Louisiana State University.] + +[Footnote 15: D.B. Sanford, _Police Jury Code of the Parish of East +Feliciana, Louisiana_ (Clinton, La., 1859), pp. 98-101.] + +In general, the letter of the law in slaveholding states at the middle of +the nineteenth century presumed all persons with a palpable strain of negro +blood to be slaves unless they could prove the contrary, and regarded the +possession of them by masters as presumptive evidence of legal ownership. +Property in slaves, though by some of the statutes assimilated to real +estate for certain technical purposes, was usually considered as of chattel +character. Its use and control, however, were hedged about with various +restraints and obligations. In some states masters were forbidden to +hire slaves to themselves or to leave them in any unusual way to their +self-direction; and everywhere they were required to maintain their slaves +in full sustenance whether young or old, able-bodied or incapacitated. +The manumission of the disabled was on grounds of public thrift nowhere +permitted unless accompanied with provision for their maintenance, and that +of slaves of all sorts was restricted in a great variety of ways. Generally +no consent by the slave was required in manumission, though in some +commonwealths he might lawfully reject freedom in the form bestowed.[16] +Masters might vest powers of agency in their slaves, but when so doing the +masters themselves became liable for any injuries or derelictions ensuing. +In criminal prosecutions, on the other hand, slaves were considered as +responsible persons on their own score and punishable under the laws +applicable to them. Where a crime was committed at the master's express +command, the master was liable and in some cases the slave also. Slave +offenders were commonly tried summarily by special inferior courts, though +for serious crimes in some states by the superior courts by regular +process. Since the slaves commonly had no funds with which to pay fines, +and no liberty of which to be deprived, the penalties imposed upon them +for crimes and misdemeanors were usually death, deportation or lashes. +Frequently in Louisiana, however, and more seldom elsewhere, convicted +slaves were given prison sentences. By the intent of the law their +punishments were generally more severe than those applied to white persons +for the same offenses. In civil transactions slaves had no standing as +persons in court except for the one purpose of making claim of freedom; +and even this must usually be done through some friendly citizen as a +self-appointed guardian bringing suit for trespass in the nature of +ravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted; +any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to their +masters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although the +wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of +their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally +stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person even in +self-defense unless his life or limb were endangered, nor might he in his +own person apply to the courts for the redress of injuries, nor generally +give evidence except where negroes alone were involved. All white persons +on the other hand were permitted, and in some regards required, to exercise +police power over the slaves; and their masters in particular were vested +with full disciplinary power over them in all routine concerns. If they +should flee from their masters' dominion, the force of the state and of +other states into which they might escape, and of the United States if +necessary, might be employed for their capture and resubjection; and any +suspected of being fugitives, though professing to be free, might be held +for long periods in custody and in the end, in default of proofs of freedom +and of masters' claims, be sold by the authorities at public auction. +Finally, affecting slaves and colored freemen somewhat alike, and +regardless as usual of any distinction of mulattoes or quadroons from the +full-blood negroes, there were manifold restraints of a social character +buttressing the predominance and the distinctive privileges of the +Caucasian caste. + +[Footnote 16: _E. g_., Jones, _North Carolina Supreme Court Reports_, VI. +272.] + +It may fairly be said that these laws for the securing of slave property +and the police of the colored population were as thorough and stringent as +their framers could make them, and that they left an almost irreducible +minimum of rights and privileges to those whose function and place were +declared to be service and subordination. But in fairness it must also +be said that in adopting this legislation the Southern community largely +belied itself, for whereas the laws were systematically drastic the +citizens in whose interest they were made and in whose hands their +enforcement lay were in practice quite otherwise. It would have required a +European bureaucracy to keep such laws fully effective; the individualistic +South was incapable of the task. If the regulations were seldom relaxed in +the letter they were as rarely enforced in the spirit. The citizens were +too fond of their own liberties to serve willingly as martinets in the +routine administration of their own laws;[17] and in consequence the +marchings of the patrol squads were almost as futile and farcical as the +musters of the militia. The magistrates and constables tended toward a +similar slackness;[18] while on the other hand the masters, easy-going as +they might be in other concerns, were jealous of any infringements of their +own dominion or any abuse of their slaves whether by private persons or +public functionaries. When in 1787, for example, a slave boy in Maryland +reported to his master that two strangers by the name of Maddox had whipped +him for killing a dog while Mr. Samuel Bishop had stood by and let them do +it, the master, who presumably had no means of reaching the two strangers, +wrote Bishop demanding an explanation of his conduct and intimating that +if this were not satisfactorily forthcoming by the next session of court, +proceedings would be begun against him[19]. While this complainant might +not have been able to procure a judgment against a merely acquiescent +bystander, the courts were quite ready to punish actual transgressors. +In sustaining the indictment of a private citizen for such offense the +chief-justice of North Carolina said in 1823: "For all purposes necessary +to enforce the obedience of the slave and render him useful as property the +law secures to the master a complete authority over him, and it will +not lightly interfere with the relation thus established. It is a more +effectual guarantee of his right of property when the slave is protected +from wanton abuse by those who have no power over him, for it cannot be +disputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master's +service when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violence +of every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by the +humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion +which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an +anomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated in +the verdict [the striking of a slave] were not indictable."[20] Likewise +the South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1850 endorsed the fining of a public +patrol which had whipped the slaves at a quilting party despite their +possession of written permission from their several masters. The Court said +of the quilting party: "The occasion was a perfectly innocent one, even +meritorious.... It would simply seem ridiculous to suppose that the safety +of the state or any of its inhabitants was implicated in such an assemblage +as this." And of the patrol's limitations: "A judicious freedom in the +administration of our police laws for the lower order must always have +respect for the confidence which the law reposes in the discretion of the +master."[21] + +[Footnote 17: _E. g_., Letter of "a citizen" in the Charleston _City +Gazette_, Aug. 17, 1825.] + +[Footnote 18: _E. g., L'Abeille_ (New Orleans), Aug. 15, 1841, editorial.] + +[Footnote 19: Letter signed "R.T.," Port Tobacco, Md., Aug. 19, 1787. MS. +in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 20: The State _v_. Hale, in Hawks, _North Carolina Reports_, V, +582. See similarly Munford, _Virginia Reports_, I, 288.] + +[Footnote 21: The State _v_. Boozer _et al_., in Strobhart, _South Carolina +Law Reports_, V, 21. This is quoted at some length in H.M. Henry, _Police +Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 146-148.] + +The masters were on their private score, however, prone to disregard the +law where it restrained their own prerogatives. They hired slaves to the +slaves themselves whether legally permitted or not; they sent them on +responsible errands to markets dozens of miles away, often without +providing them with passes; they sanctioned and encouraged assemblies under +conditions prohibited by law; they taught their slaves at will to read and +write, and used them freely in forbidden employments. Such practices as +these were often noted and occasionally complained of in the press, but +they were seldom obstructed. When outside parties took legal steps to +interfere in the master's routine administration, indeed, they were +prompted probably as often by personal animosity as by devotion to the +law. An episode of the sort, where the complainants were envious poorer +neighbors, was related with sarcasm and some philosophical moralizing by +W.B. Hodgson, of whose plantation something has been previously said, in +a letter to Senator Hammond: "I am somewhat 'riled' with Burke. The +benevolent neighbors have lately had me in court under indictment for cruel +treatment of my fat, lazy, rollicking sambos. For fifty years they have +eaten their own meat and massa's too; but inasmuch as rich massa did not +_buy_ meat, the _poor Benevolens_ indicted him. So was my friend Thomas +Foreman, executor of Governor Troup. My suit was withdrawn; he was +acquitted. I have some crude notions about that thing slavery in the end. +Its tendency, as with landed accumulations in England, or Aaron's rod, is +to swallow up other small rods, and inevitably to attract the benevolence +of the smaller ones. You may have two thousand acres of land in a body. +That is unfeeling--land is. But a body of a thousand negroes appeals to the +finer sentiments of the heart. The agrarian battle is hard to fight. But +'_les amis des noirs_' in our midst have the vantage ground, particularly +when rejected overseers come in as spies. _C'est un peu dégoutant, mon cher +ami_; but I can stand the racket."[22] + +[Footnote 22: Letter of W.B. Hodgson, Savannah, Ga., June 19, 1859, to J.H. +Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress. "Burke" +is the county in which Hodgson's plantation lay.] + +The courts exercising jurisdiction over slaves were of two sorts, those of +inferior grade and amateurish character which dealt with them as persons, +and those of superior rank and genuine magisterial quality which handled +them as property and sometimes, on appeal, as persons as well. These +lower courts for the trial of slave crimes had vices in plenty. They were +informal and largely ignorant of the law, and they were so quickly convened +after the discovery of a crime that the shock of the deed had no time to +wane. Such virtues as they sometimes had lay merely in their personnel. +The slaveholders of the vicinage who commonly comprised the court were +intimately and more or less tolerantly acquainted with negro nature in +general, and usually doubtless with the prisoner on trial. Their judgment +was therefore likely to be that of informed and interested neighbors, not +of jurors carefully selected for ignorance and indifference, a judgment +guided more by homely common sense than by the particularities of the law. +Their task was difficult, as anyone acquainted with the rambling, mumbling, +confused and baffling character of plantation negro testimony will easily +believe; and the convictions and acquittals were of course oftentimes +erroneous. The remodeling of the system was one of the reforms called for +by Southerners of the time but never accomplished. Mistaken acquittals by +these courts were beyond correction, for in the South slaves like freemen +could not be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Their convictions, +on the other hand, were sometimes set aside by higher courts on appeal, or +their sentences estopped from execution by the governor's pardon.[23] The +thoroughness with which some of the charges against negroes were considered +is illustrated in two cases tried before the county court at Newbern, North +Carolina, in 1826. In one of these a negro boy was acquitted of highway +robbery after the jury's deliberation of several hours; in the other the +jury on the case of a free negro woman charged with infanticide had been +out for forty-six hours without reaching a verdict when the newspaper +dispatch was written.[24] + +[Footnote 23: The working of these courts and the current criticisms of +them are illustrated in H.M. Henry _The Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, pp. 58-65.] + +[Footnote 24: News item from Newbern, N.C., in the Charleston _City +Gazette_, May 9, 1826.] + +The circuit and supreme courts of the several states, though the slave +cases which they tried were for the most part concerned only with such dry +questions as detinue, trover, bailment, leases, inheritance and reversions, +in which the personal quality of the negroes was largely ignored, +occasionally rendered decisions of vivid human interest even where matters +of mere property were nominally involved. An example occurred in the case +of Rhame _vs_. Ferguson and Dangerfield, decided by the South Carolina +Court of Appeals in 1839 in connection with a statute enacted by the +legislature of that state in 1800 restricting manumissions and prescribing +that any slaves illegally set free might be seized by any person as +derelicts. George Broad of St. John's Parish, Berkeley County, had died +without blood relatives in 1836, bequeathing fourteen slaves and their +progeny to his neighbor Dangerfield "in trust nevertheless and for this +purpose only that the said John R. Dangerfield, his executors and assigns +do permit and suffer the said slaves ... to apply and appropriate +their time and labor to their own proper use and behoof, without the +intermeddling or interference of any person or persons whomsoever further +than may be necessary for their protection under the laws of this state"; +and bequeathing also to Dangerfield all his other property in trust for the +use of these negroes and their descendants forever. These provisions were +being duly followed when on a December morning in 1837 Rebecca Rhame, the +remarried widow of Broad's late brother-in-law, descended upon the Broad +plantation in a buggy with John J. Singletary whom she had employed for the +occasion under power of attorney. Finding no white person at the residence, +Singletary ordered the negroes into the yard and told them they were seized +in Mrs. Rhame's behalf and must go with him to Charleston. At this juncture +Dangerfield, the trustee, came up and demanded Singletary's authority, +whereupon the latter showed him his power of attorney and read him the laws +under which he was proceeding. Dangerfield, seeking delay, said it would be +a pity to drag the negroes through the mud, and sent a boy to bring his +own wagon for them. While this vehicle was being awaited Colonel James +Ferguson, a dignitary of the neighborhood who had evidently been secretly +sent for by Dangerfield, galloped up, glanced over the power of attorney, +branded the whole affair as a cheat, and told Dangerfield to order +Singletary off the premises, driving him away with a whip if necessary, and +to shoot if the conspirators should bring reinforcements. "After giving +this advice, which he did apparently under great excitement, Ferguson rode +off." Singletary then said that for his part he had not come to take or +lose life; and he and his employer departed. Mrs. Rhame then sued Ferguson +and Dangerfield to procure possession of the negroes, claiming that she had +legally seized them on the occasion described. At the trial in the circuit +court, Singletary rehearsed the seizure and testified further that +Dangerfield had left the negroes customarily to themselves in virtually +complete freedom. In rebuttal, Dr. Theodore Gaillard testified that the +negroes, whom he described as orderly by habit, were kept under control +by the trustee and made to work. The verdict of the jury, deciding the +questions of fact in pursuance of the judge's charge as to the law, was in +favor of the defendants; and Mrs. Rhame entered a motion for a new trial. +This was in due course denied by the Court of Appeals on the ground that +Broad's will had clearly vested title to the slaves in Dangerfield, who +after Broad's death was empowered to do with them as he pleased. If he, who +was by the will merely trustee but by law the full owner, had given up +the practical dominion over the slaves and left them to their own +self-government they were liable to seizure under the law of 1800. This +question of fact, the court concluded, had properly been put to the jury +along with the issue as to the effectiveness of the plaintiff's seizure of +the slaves; and the verdict for the defendants was declared conclusive.[25] + +[Footnote 25: Rebecca Rhame _vs_. James Ferguson and John R. Dangerfield, +in Rice, _Law Reports of South Carolina_, I, 196-203.] + +This is the melodrama which the sober court record recites. The female +villain of the piece and her craven henchman were foiled by the sturdy +but wily trustee and the doughty Carolina colonel who, in headlong, +aristocratic championship of those threatened with oppression against +the moral sense of the community, charged upon the scene and counseled +slaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. And +in the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come to +judgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assured +the so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, the +decision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to prove +that negroes freed by will in South Carolina might be legally enslaved by +any person seizing them, and that the bequest of slaves in trust to an +executor as a merely nominal master was contrary to law;[26] and in later +times a historian has instanced the traveller's account in support of his +own statement that "Persons who had been set free for years and had no +reason to suppose that they were anything else might be seized upon for +defects in the legal process of manumission."[27] + +[Footnote 26: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States in America_, II, 32, 33.] + +[Footnote 27: A.B. Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_ (New York, 1906), p. 88.] + +Now according to the letter of certain statutes at certain times, these +assertions were severally more or less true; but if this particular case +and its outcome have any palpable meaning, it is that the courts connived +at thwarting such provisions by sanctioning, as a proprietorship valid +against the claim of a captor, what was in obvious fact a merely nominal +dominion. + +Another striking case in which the severity of the law was overridden by +the court in sanction of lenient custom was that of Jones _vs_. Allen, +decided on appeal by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1858. In the fall of +the preceding year Jones had called in his neighbors and their slaves to +a corn husking and had sent Allen a message asking him to send help. Some +twenty-five white men and seventy-five slaves gathered on the appointed +night, among them Allen's slave Isaac. After supper, about midnight, Jones +told the negroes to go home; but Isaac stayed a while with some others +wrestling in the back yard, during which, while Jones was not present, a +white man named Hager stabbed Isaac to death. Allen thereupon sued Jones +for damages on the ground that the latter had knowingly and unlawfully +suffered Isaac, without the legally required authorization, to come with +other slaves upon his premises, where he had been slain to his owner's +loss. The testimony showed that Allen had not received Jones' message and +had given Isaac no permission to go, but that Jones had not questioned +Isaac in this regard; that Jones had given spirituous liquors to the slaves +while at work, Isaac included, but that no one there was intoxicated except +Hager who had come drunk and without invitation. In the trial court, in +Rutherford County where the tragedy had occurred, the judge excluded +evidence that such corn huskings were the custom of the country without the +requirement of written permission for the slaves attending, and he charged +the jury that Jones' employment of Isaac and Isaac's death on his premises +made him liable to Allen for the value of the slave. But on Jones' appeal +the Supreme Court overruled this, asserting that "under our modified form +of slavery slaves are not mere chattels but are regarded in the two-fold +character of persons and property; that as persons they are considered by +our law as accountable moral agents; ... that certain rights have been +conferred upon them by positive law and judicial determination, and other +privileges and indulgences have been conceded to them by the universal +consent of their owners. By uniform and universal usage they are +constituted the agents of their owners and sent on business without written +authority. And in like manner they are sent to perform those neighborly +good offices common in every community.... The simple truth is, such +indulgences have been so long and so uniformly tolerated, the public +sentiment upon the subject has acquired almost the force of positive law." +The judgment of the lower court was accordingly reversed and Jones was +relieved of liability for his laxness.[28] + +[Footnote 28: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 627-639.] + +There were sharp limits, nevertheless, to the lenity of the courts. Thus +when one Brazeale of Mississippi carried with him to Ohio and there set +free a slave woman of his and a son whom he had begotten of her, and then +after taking them home again died bequeathing all his property to the +mulatto boy, the supreme court of the state, in 1838, declared the +manumission void under the laws and awarded the mother and son along with +all the rest of Brazeale's estate to his legitimate heirs who had brought +the suit.[29] In so deciding the court may have been moved by its +repugnance toward concubinage as well as by its respect for the statutes. + +[Footnote 29: Howard's _Mississippi Reports_, II, 837-844.] + +The killing or injury of a slave except under circumstances justified by +law rendered the offender liable both to the master's claim for damages +and to criminal prosecution; and the master's suit might be sustained even +where the evidence was weak, for as was said in a Louisiana decision, the +deed was "one rarely committed in presence of witnesses, and the most that +can be expected in cases of this kind are the presumptions that result from +circumstances."[30] The requirement of positive proof from white witnesses +in criminal cases caused many indictments to fail.[31] A realization of +this hindrance in the law deprived convicted offenders of some of the +tolerance which their crimes might otherwise have met. When in 1775, for +example, William Pitman was found guilty and sentenced by the Virginia +General Court to be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the +_Virginia Gazette_ said: "This man has justly incurred the penalties of +the law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning to +others to treat their slaves with more moderation."[32] In the nineteenth +century the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to be +felonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases where +the victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premises +the courts felt themselves free to remedy the defect.[33] + +[Footnote 30: Martin, _Louisiana Reports_, XV, 142.] + +[Footnote 31: H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, +pp. 69-79.] + +[Footnote 32: _Virginia Gazette_, Apr. 21, 1775, reprinted in the _William +and Mary College Quarterly_, VIII, 36.] + +[Footnote 33: The State _vs_. Jones, in Walker, _Mississippi Reports_, p. +83, reprinted in J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_, pp. 252-254.] + +Despite the ferocity of the statutes and the courts, the fewness and the +laxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies were +called into play. For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped in +Belle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious and +lasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgia +militia. On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employed +was obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcements +merely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while the +negroes themselves were safely in hiding. Not long afterward, however, +the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and Catawba +Indians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads.[34] The +Seminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as to +prompt invasions of their country by the United States army both before +and after the Florida purchase.[35] On lesser occasions raids were made by +citizen volunteers. The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, were +searched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, the +capture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as the +result.[36] + +[Footnote 34: _Georgia Colonial Records_, XII, 325, 326; _Georgia Gazette_ +(Savannah), Oct. 19, 1786; _Massachusetts Sentinel_ (Boston), June 13, +1787; _Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), June 16, +1787.] + +[Footnote 35: Joshua R. Giddings, _The Exiles of Florida_ (Columbus, Ohio, +1858).] + +[Footnote 36: Diary of Dr. Henry Ravenel, Jr., of St. John's Parish, +Berkeley County, S.C. MS. in private possession.] + +More frequent occasions for the creation of vigilance committees were the +rumors of plots among the blacks and the reports of mischievous doings by +whites. In the same Santee district of the Carolina lowlands, for instance, +a public meeting at Black Oak Church on January 3, 1860, appointed three +committees of five members each to look out for and dispose of any +suspicious characters who might be "prowling about the parish." Of the +sequel nothing is recorded by the local diarist of the time except the +following, under date of October 25: "Went out with a party of men to take +a fellow by the name of Andrews, who lived at Cantey's Hill and traded with +the negroes. He had been warned of our approach and run off. We went on and +broke up the trading establishment."[37] + +[Footnote 37: Diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, which is virtually a continuation +of the Diary just cited. MS. in private possession.] + +Such transactions were those of the most responsible and substantial +citizens, laboring to maintain social order in the face of the law's +desuetude. A mere step further in that direction, however, lay outright +lynch law. Lynchings, indeed, while far from habitual, were frequent enough +to link the South with the frontier West of the time. The victims were not +only rapists[38] but negro malefactors of sundry sorts, and occasionally +white offenders as well. In some cases fairly full accounts of such +episodes are available, but more commonly the record extant is laconic. +Thus the Virginia archives have under date of 1791 an affidavit reciting +that "Ralph Singo and James Richards had in January last, in Accomac +County, been hung by a band of disguised men, numbering from six to +fifteen";[39] and a Georgia newspaper in 1860 the following: "It is +reported that Mr. William Smith was killed by a negro on Saturday evening +at Bowling Green, in Oglethorpe County. He was stabbed sixteen times. The +negro made his escape but was arrested on Sunday, and on Monday morning +a number of citizens who had investigated the case burnt him at the +stake."[40] In at least one well-known instance the mob's violence was +directed against an abuser of slaves. This was at New Orleans in 1834 when +a rumor spread that Madame Lalaurie, a wealthy resident, was torturing her +negroes. A great crowd collected after nightfall, stormed her door, found +seven slaves chained and bearing marks of inhuman treatment, and gutted +the house. The woman herself had fled at the first alarm, and made her way +eventually to Paris.[41] Had she been brought before a modern court it may +be doubted whether she would have been committed to a penitentiary or to +a lunatic asylum. At the hands of the mob, however, her shrift would +presumably have been short and sure. + +[Footnote 38: For examples of these see above, pp. 460-463.] + +[Footnote 39: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 328.] + +[Footnote 40: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 14, 1860. Other +instances, gleaned mostly from _Niles' Register_ and the _Liberator_, are +given in J.E. Cutler, _Lynch Law_ (New York, 1905), pp. 90-136.] + +[Footnote 41: Harriett Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_ (London, +1838), I, 262-267; V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, +1841), p. 155; Alcée Fortier, _History of Louisiana_, III, 223.] + +The violence of city mobs is a thing peculiar to no time or place. Rural +Southern lynch law in that period, however, was in large part a special +product of the sparseness of population and the resulting weakness of legal +machinery, for as Olmsted justly remarked in the middle 'fifties, the whole +South was virtually still in a frontier condition.[42] In _post bellum_ +decades, on the other hand, an increase of racial antipathy has offset the +effect of the densification of settlement and has abnormally prolonged the +liability to the lynching impulse. + +[Footnote 42: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey in the Back Country_, p. 413.] + +While the records have no parallel for Madame Lalaurie in her systematic +and wholesale torture of slaves, there were thousands of masters and +mistresses as tolerant and kindly as she was fiendish; and these were +virtually without restraint of public authority in their benevolent rule. +Lawmakers and magistrates by personal status in their own plantation +provinces, they ruled with a large degree of consent and cooperation by the +governed, for indeed no other course was feasible in the long run by men +and women of normal type. Concessions and friendly services beyond the +countenance and contemplation of the statutes were habitual with those +whose name was legion. The law, for example, conceded no property rights +to the slaves, and some statutes forbade specifically their possession +of horses, but the following characteristic letter of a South Carolina +mistress to an influential citizen tells an opposite story: "I hope you +will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you on the subject of John, +the slave of Professor Henry, Susy his wife, and the orphan children of my +faithful servant Pompey, the first husband of Susy. In the first instance, +Pompey owned a horse which he exchanged for a mare, which mare I permitted +Susy to use after her marriage with John, but told them both I would sell +it and the young colt and give Susy a third of the money, reserving the +other two thirds for her children. Before I could do so, however, the +mare and the colt were exchanged and sent out of my way by this dishonest +couple. I then hoped at least to secure forty-five dollars for which +another colt was sold to Mr. Haskell, and sent my message to him to say +that Susy had no claim on the colt and that the money was to be paid to me +for the children of Pompey. A few days since I sent to Mr. Haskell again +who informed me that he had paid for the colt, and referred me to you. I do +assure you that whatever Susy may affirm, she has no right to the money. +It is not my intention to meddle with the law on the occasion, and I +infinitely prefer relying on you to do justice to the parties. My manager, +who will deliver this to you, is perfectly acquainted with all the +circumstances; and [if] after having a conversation with him you should +decide in favor of the children I shall be much gratified."[43] + +[Footnote 43: Letter of Caroline Raoul, Belleville, S.C., Dec. 26, 1829, to +James H. Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +Likewise where the family affairs of slaves were concerned the silence and +passiveness of the law gave masters occasion for eloquence and activity. +Thus a Georgian wrote to a neighbor: "I have a girl Amanda that has your +servant Phil for a husband. I should be very glad indeed if you would +purchase her. She is a very good seamstress, an excellent cook--makes cake +and preserves beautifully--and washes and irons very nicely, and cannot be +excelled in cleaning up a house. Her disposition is very amiable. I have +had her for years and I assure you that I have not exaggerated as regards +her worth.... I will send her down to see you at any time."[44] That offers +of purchase were no less likely than those of sale to be prompted by such +considerations is suggested by another Georgia letter: "I have made every +attempt to get the boy Frank, the son of James Nixon; and in order to +gratify James have offered as far as five hundred dollars for him--more +than I would pay for any negro child in Georgia were it not James' +son."[45] It was therefore not wholly in idyllic strain that a South +Carolinian after long magisterial service remarked: "Experience and +observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of +kindness from the master to the slave. With that ... slavery becomes a +family relation, next in its attachments to that of parent and child."[46] + +[Footnote 44: Letter of E.N. Thompson, Vineville, Ga. (a suburb of Macon), +to J.B. Lamar at Macon, Ga., Aug. 7, 1854. MS. in the possession of Mrs. +A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +[Footnote 45: Letter of Henry Jackson, Jan. 11, 1837, to Howell Cobb. MS. +in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +[Footnote 46: J.B. O'Neall in J.B.D. DeBow ed., _Industrial Resources of +the South and West_, II (New Orleans, 1852), 278.] + +On the whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the Old +South have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to their +abundance and accessibility. The statutes, copious and easily available, +describe a hypothetical régime, not an actual one. The court records are on +the one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions of +human adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisions +were themselves largely controlled by the statutes, perverse for ordinary +practical purposes as these often were. It is therefore to the letters, +journals and miscellaneous records of private persons dwelling in the +régime and by their practices molding it more powerfully than legislatures +and courts combined, that the main recourse for intimate knowledge must be +had. Regrettably fugitive and fragmentary as these are, enough it may be +hoped have been found and used herein to show the true nature of the living +order. + +The government of slaves was for the ninety and nine by men, and only for +the hundredth by laws. There were injustice, oppression, brutality and +heartburning in the régime,--but where in the struggling world are these +absent? There were also gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutual +loyalty to a degree hard for him to believe who regards the system with a +theorist's eye and a partisan squint. For him on the other hand who has +known the considerate and cordial, courteous and charming men and women, +white and black, which that picturesque life in its best phases produced, +it is impossible to agree that its basis and its operation were wholly +evil, the law and the prophets to the contrary notwithstanding. + + + + +INDEX + +Acklen, Joseph A.S., + plantation home of + rules of, for overseers +Africa, West, _see_ Guinea +Agriculture, _see_ cotton, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco + culture +Aiken, William, rice plantation of +Aime, Valcour, sugar plantation of +Amissa, enslaved and restored to Africa +Angolas, + tribal traits of + revolt of +Antipathy, racial, + Jefferson's views on + in Massachusetts + in North and South compared + Northern spokesmen of +Arabs, in the Guinea trade +Asiento +Azurara, Gomez E. + +Baltimore, negro churches in +Barbados, + emigration from, + to Carolina + to Jamaica + founding of + planters' committee of + slave laws of, + sugar culture in +Belmead plantation +Benin +Black codes, + administration of + attitude of citizens toward + local ordinances + origin of, + in Barbados + in the Northern colonies + in Louisiana + in South Carolina + in Virginia + tenor of, + in the North + in the South +Bobolinks, in rice fields +Bonny +Boré, Etienne de, sugar planter +Bosman, William, in the Guinea trade +Branding of slaves +Bristol, citizens of, in the slave trade +Burial societies, negro +Burnside, John, merchant and sugar planter +Butler, Pierce, + the younger, + slaves of, sold + +Cain, Elisha, overseer +Cairnes, J.E., views of, on slavery +Calabar, New +Calabar, Old +Cape Coast Castle +Capers, William, overseer +Capital, investment of, in slaves +Charleston, commerce of, + free negroes in + industrial census of + racial adjustments in, problem of + slave misdemeanors in + Denmark Vesey's plot +Churches, + racial adjustments in, + rural + urban +Clarkson, Thomas, views of, on the effects of closing the slave trade +Columbus, Christopher, policy of +Concubinage +Congoes, tribal traits of +Connecticut, + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Cooper, Thomas, views of, on the economics of slavery +Corbin, Richard, plantation rules of +Coromantees, conspiracy of, + tribal traits of +Corporations, ownership of slaves by +Cotton culture, + sea-island + introduction of, + methods and scale of + upland, + engrossment of thought and energy by + improvements in + methods and scale of + stimulates westward migration +Cotton gin, invention of +Cotton mills + slave operatives in +Cotton plantations, _see_ plantations, cotton +Cotton prices, sea-island, + upland, + chart facing +Cottonseed, + oil extracted from + used as fertilizer +Covington, Leonard, planter, migration of +Creoles, Louisiana +Criminality among free negroes + among slaves +Cuba + +Dabney, Thomas S., planter, migration of +Dahomeys +Dale, Sir Thomas +Davis, Joseph and Jefferson, plantation policy of +Delaware, + slaves and free negroes in + forbids export of slaves +Depression, financial, + in Mississippi + in Virginia +Dirt-eating, among Jamaica slaves +Discipline, of slaves +Diseases, + characteristic, + in Africa + among Jamaica slaves + venereal +Doctors, black, + in Jamaica + in South Carolina + in Virginia +"Doctoress," slave, in Georgia +Drivers (plantation foremen) +Driving of slaves to death, question of +Dutch, in the slave trade +Dutch West India Company + +Early, Peter, debates the closing of the foreign slave trade +East India Company, in the slave trade +Eboes, tribal traits of +El Mina +Elliott, William, planter + economic views of +Ellsworth, Oliver +Emancipation, _see_ manumission +Encomiendia system, in the Spanish West Indies +England, policy of, toward the slave trade +Epitaph of Peyton, a slave +Evans, Henry, negro preacher + +Factorage, in planters' dealings +Factorage, in the slave trade, + in American ports + in Guinea +Farmers, + free negro + white, + in the Piedmont + in the plantation colonies + segregation of + in the westward movement +Federal Convention +Festivities, of slaves +Fithian, Philip V., observations by +Foremen, plantation +Foulahs +Fowler, J.W., + cotton picking records of + plantation rules of +Franklin and Armfield, slave-dealers +Free negroes, + antipathy toward + criminality among + discriminations against + emigration projects of + endorsements of + kidnapping of + legal seizure of, attempts at + mob violence against + occupations of, in Augusta + in Charleston + in New Orleans and New York + prominent characters among + processes of procuring freedom by + qualities and status of + reënslavement of + secret societies among + slaveholding by +French, in the slave trade +Fugitive slaves, _see_ slaves, runaway, + rendition, in the Federal Constitution, + act of 1793 +Funerals, negro + +Gaboons, tribal traits of +Gabriel, insurrection led by +Gadsden, Christopher +Gambia, slave trade on the +Gang system, in plantation work +Genoese, in the slave trade +Georgia, founding of, + free negress visits + slave imports forbidden in, + permitted in + restricted by + uplands, development of +Gerry, Elbridge +Gibson, Arthur H., views of, on the economics of slavery +Godkin, Edwin L., on the migration of planters +Gold Coast +Goodloe, Daniel R., views of, on slavery +Gowrie, rice plantation +Grandy King George, African chief, wants of +Guiana, British, + invites free negro immigration + cotton culture in + Dutch +Guinea, + coastal explorations of + life and institutions in + slave exports from, beginnings of, + volume of + tribal traits in + _See also_ negroes and slave trade + +Hairston, Samuel, planter +Hammond, James H., planter and writer +Hampton, Wade, planter +Harrison, Jesse Burton, views of, on slavery +Hawkins, Sir John, adventures of, in the slave trade +Hayti (Hispaniola) +Hearn, Lafcadio, on sugar-cane harvesting +Helper, Hinton R., views of, on slavery +Hemp +Henry, Patrick +Henry, Prince, the Navigator +Heyward, Nathaniel, planter +Hodgson, W.B., planter +Holidays, of slaves, + plantation + urban +Hundley D.R., on slave traders + +Immigrants, in the South + _See also_ Irish +Importations of slaves + prohibition of +Indians, enslaved, + in New England + in South Carolina + in West Indies, subjugated by Spaniards +Indigo culture, + introduction of, + in Georgia + in South Carolina + methods of +Insurrection of slaves, _see_ slave plots +Irish, labor of, on plantations + +Jamaica, + capture and development of + maroons of + nabobs, absentee + plantations in + runaway slaves in, statistics of +Jefferson, Thomas, + on the foreign slave trade + on negroes and slavery +Jennison, Nathaniel, prosecution of +Job Ben Solomon, enslaved and restored to Africa +Joloffs + +Kentucky, settlement of +Kidnapping of free negroes +King, Rufus +Kingsley, Z., plantation experience of + +Lace, Ambrose, slave trader +Lalaurie, Madame +Lamar, John B., planter +Las Casas, Bartholomeo de la +Laurens, Henry, factor and planter +Liberia +Lincecum, Gideon, peregrinations of +Lindo, Moses, indigo merchant +Liverpool, + in the slave trade, + types of ships employed +Loango +Lodges, negro +London, in the slave trade +London Company +Loria, Achille, views of, on slavery economics +Louisiana, cotton culture in, + slave laws of + sugar culture in +L'Ouverture, Toussaint +Lucas, Eliza +Lynchings + +M'Culloch, J.R., views of, on slavery +McDonogh, John, manumission by, method of +Macon, Nathaniel +Madagascar, slaves procured from +Malaria, + in Africa + in South Carolina +Mandingoes, tribal traits of +Manigault, Charles, planter + rules of +Manors in Maryland +Manumission, of slaves +Maroons, negro, in Jamaica + on the Savannah River +Martinique +Maryland, + founding of + free negroes in + manors in + plantations in + slave imports prohibited by + slaveholdings in, scale of + slavery in, projects for the disestablishment of +Massachusetts, + in the slave trade + slavery in + abolition of +Matthews, Samuel, planter +Medical attention to slaves +Mercer, James, planter +Merolla, Jerom, missionary +Middle passage, _see_ slave trade, African +Midwives, slave +Migration +Mill, John Stuart, views of, on slavery +Miller, Phineas, partner of Eli Whitney +Misdemeanors of slaves, in Charleston +Missouri, + decline of slavery in + settlement of +Mississippi, + depression in + product of long-fibre cotton in + sale of slaves from +Mobs, violence of, toward free negroes +Mocoes, tribal traits of +Molasses +Moore, Francis, Royal African Company factor +Moors +Mulattoes +Mules + +Nagoes, tribal traits of +Negro traits, + American + Angola + Congo + Coromantee + Ebo + Gaboon + Mandingo + Nago + Paw Paw + Whydah +Negroes, _see_ antipathy, black codes, church adjustments, free + negroes, funerals, plantation labor, plantation life, slave plots + slave trade, slaveholdings, slavery, slaves +New England, + in the slave trade, + type of ships employed + slavery in, + disestablishment of +New Jersey, + slavery in, + disestablishment of +New Netherlands, slavery in +New Orleans, as a slave market, + free negroes in +New York, + negro plots in + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Nicholson, J.S., views of, on slavery +Nobility, English, as Jamaica plantation owners +North Carolina, + early conditions in + sentiment on slavery +Northrup, a kidnapped free negro, career of +Northwest Territory, prohibition of slavery in + +Oglethorpe, James, + administers the Royal African Company + founds Georgia + restores a slave to Africa +Olmsted, Frederick L., observations by +Overseers, plantation, functions, salaries, and experiences of + +Panics, financial, effects on slave prices +Park, Mungo, in Guinea +"Particular plantations," in Virginia +Paths, in Guinea, character of +Paw Paws, tribal traits of +Pennsylvania, slavery in, + disestablishment of +Peyton, a slave, epitaph of +Philips, Martin W., + planter and writer + slave epitaph by +Pickering, Timothy +_Plantation and Frontier_, citation of title in full +Plantation labor +Plantation life +Plantation management +Plantation mistress +Plantation rules +Plantation system, + cherishment of slaves in + as a civilizing agency + gang and task methods in + severity in, question of + soil exhaustion in + towns and factories hampered in growth by + westward spread of +Plantation tendencies +Plantations, cotton, sea island +Plantations, + cotton, + upland, + J.H. Hammond estate + Retreat + indigo + rice, + Butler's Island + Gowrie and East Hermitage + Jehossee Island + sugar, + in Barbados, + Drax Hall + in Jamaica, + Worthy Park + in Louisiana, + Valcour Aime's estate + tobacco, + Belmead + James Mercer's estate +Planters, + absenteeism among + concern of, for slaves + dietary of + exemplified, + in J.A.S. Acklen + in William Aiken + in John Burnside + in Robert Carter + in Christopher Codrington + in Thomas S. Dabney + in Jefferson and Joseph Davis + in Samuel Hairston + in James H. Hammond + in Wade Hampton + in Nathaniel Heywood + in W.B. Hodgson + in Z. Kingsley + in John B. Lamar + in Henry Laurens + in Charles Manigault + in Samuel Matthews + in James Mercer + in A.H. Pemberton + in Martin W. Philips + in George Washington + in David R. Williams + gentility of + homesteads of + innovations by + management by + migration of + purchases of slaves by + rules of + sales of slaves by + sports of + temper of +Poor whites, + in the South, + Cairnes' assertions concerning +Portugal, activities of, in Guinea, + an appandage of Spain + negroes in +Preachers, negro +Procter, Billy, a slave, letter of +Providence, "Old," a Puritan colony in the tropics, career of +Puritans, attitude of, toward slavery + +Quakers, relationship of, to slavery +Quincy, Josiah + +Railroad companies, slave ownership by +Randolph, Edmund, disrelishes slavery +Randolph, John, of Roanoke, + on the coasting trade in slaves + on depression in Virginia + manumits his slaves +Randolph, Richard, provides for the manumission of his slaves +Rape, by negroes in the ante-bellum South +Rats, a pest in Jamaica +Rattoons, of sugar cane +Religion, among slaves, + rural + urban +Retreat, cotton plantation +Revolution, American, + doctrines of + effects of, on slavery + Negroes in + radicalism of, waning of +Rhode Island, + in the slave trade + resolution advocating the stoppage of the slave trade + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Rice birds (bobolinks), damage from +Rice culture, + introduced into Georgia + into South Carolina + methods of + plantations in, + scale of +Rishworth, Samuel, early agitator against slavery +Rolfe, John, introduces tobacco culture into Virginia +Roustabouts, Irish, + qualities of + negro +Royal African Company +Ruffin, Edmund, + advocates agricultural reforms + views of, on slavery +Rum, + product of, in Jamaica + rations issued to slaves, + in Jamaica + in South Carolina + use of, in the Guinea trade +Runaway slaves, + general problem + of George Washington + in Georgia + in Jamaica + in Mississippi +Russell, Irwin, "Christmas in the Quarters," +Sabine Fields, rice plantation +Sahara, slave trade across +Saluda factory, slave operatives in +San Domingo, + emigration from, to Louisiana + revolution in +Say, J.B., views of, on slavery +Sea-island cotton, + introduced into the United States + methods and scale of culture +Seasoning of slaves, in Jamaica +Secret societies, negro +Senegal, slave trade in +Senegalese, tribal traits of +Senegambia +Serfdom +Servants, + white indentured, + in Barbados + in Connecticut + in Jamaica + in Maryland + in Massachusetts + in Pennsylvania + in South Carolina and Georgia + in Virginia + revolts by +Servitude, indentured, tendencies of +Shackles, used on slaves +Shenendoah Valley +Ships, types of, in the slave trade +Sierra' Leone +Slave Coast +Slave felons +Slave plots and insurrections, + general survey of + disquiet caused by + Gabriel's uprising + in "Old" Providence + in New York + proclivity of Coromantees toward + San Domingan revolution + Stono rebellion + Nat Turner's (Southampton), revolt + Denmark Vesey's conspiracy +Slave trade, African, + the asiento + barter in + chieftains active in + closing of, by various states, + by Congress + effects of + drain of funds by + Liverpool's prominence in + the middle passage + reopening, project of + Royal African Company + ships employed in, + types of + care and custody of slaves on + tricks of + Yankee traders in +Slave trade, + domestic, + beginnings of + effects of + methods in + to Louisiana + scale of +Slave traders, + domestic, + Franklin and Armfield + methods and qualities of + reputations of, blackened + maritime +Slaveholding, vicissitudes of +Slaveholdings, + by corporations + by free negroes, + scale of, in the cotton belt + in Jamaica + in Maryland + in New York + in towns + in Virginia + on the South Carolina coast +Slavery, + in Africa + in the American Revolution + in ancient Rome + in the British West Indies + in Europe + in Georgia + in Louisiana + in the North + disestablishment of + in South Carolina + in Spanish America + in Virginia + _See also_ black codes, negroes, and plantation labor, life + and management +Slaves, negro, + artizans among + as factory operatives + birth rates of + branding of + "breaking in" of + breeding, forced, question of + capital invested in + children, care and control of + church adjustments of + conspiracies of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections + crimes of + crops of, private + dealers in, _see_ slave traders + discipline of + diseases and death rates of + driving of, to death, question of + earnings of private + felons among, disposal of + festivities of + food and clothing of + foemen among + hiring of + to themselves + holidays of + hospitals for + labor of, schedule of + laws concerning + life insurance of + manumission of + marriages of + annulment of + medical and surgical care of + plots and insurrections of + police of + preachers among + prices of + property of + protection of, from strain and exposure + punishments of + purchases of + by themselves + drain of funds, caused by + quarters of + sanitation of + rape by + religion among + revolts of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections + rewards of + rum allowances to + running away by + sales of + shackling of + social stratification among + speculation in + stealing of + strikes by + suicide of + suits by, for freedom, + concerning + temper of + torture of + town adjustments of + undesirable types of + wages of + in the westward movement + women among, care and control of + work, rates of + working of, to death, question of +Smart, William, views of, on slavery +Smith, Adam, views of, on slavery +Smith, Captain John +Smith, Landgrave Thomas +Snelgrave, William, in the maritime slave trade +Soil exhaustion +Southampton insurrection +South Carolina, + closing and reopening of the foreign slave trade in + cotton culture in + emigration from + founding of + indigo culture in + rice culture in + slave imports, + prohibited by + reopened by + slave laws of + slaveholdings in, scale of + uplands, development of +Spain, + annexation of Portugal by + asiento instituted by + negroes in + police of American dominions by + policy of, toward Indians and negroes +Spaulding, Thomas, planter +Spinners, on plantations +Spratt, L.W., views of, on conditions in South Carolina +Staples, _see_ cotton, hemp, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture + and plantations +Steamboat laborers, + Irish + negro +Sugar culture, + in Barbados + in Jamaica + in Louisiana + methods and apparatus of + plantations in, + scale of + types of + in the Spanish West Indies + +Task system, in plantation industry +Taylor, John, of Caroline, agricultural writings of +Telfair, Alexander, + plantations of + rules of +Tennessee, settlement of +Texas +Thomas, E.S., bookseller, experience of +Thorpe, George, Virginia colonist +Tobacco culture, + in Maryland + method of + in North Carolina + plantations in, + scale of + types of + in the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia + in Virginia +Towns, Southern, + growth of, hampered + slaves in +Tucker, St. George, project of, for extinguishing slavery in Virginia +Turner, Nat, insurrection led by + +Utrecht, treaty of, grants the asiento to England + +Van Buren, A. de Puy, observations by +Venetians, in the Levantine slave trade +Vermont, prohibition of slavery by +Vesey, Denmark, conspiracy of +Vigilance committees +Virginia, + founding and early experience of + free negroes in + plantations in, + "particular" + private + servants, indentured, in + slave crimes in + slave imports, prohibited by + slave laws of + slave revolts in + slaveholdings in, scale of + slavery, + introduced in + disestablishment in, projects of + tobacco culture in + +Walker, Quork, suits concerning the freedom of +Washington, George + apprehensions of, concerning slave property + desires the gradual abolition of slavery + imports cotton + as a planter +West Indies, + British, + prosperity and decline in, progression of + servile plots and insurrections in + slave prices in, on the eve of abolition + Spanish, + colonization of + negro slavery in, introduction of +Weston, P.C., plantation rules of +Westward movement +Whitney, Eli, invents the cotton gin +Whydahs, tribal traits of +Williams, David R., planter +Williams, Francis, a free negro, career of +Women, slave, + care of, in pregnancy and childbirth + difficulties in controlling +Working of slaves to death, question of +Worthy Park, Jamaica plantation, records of + +Yeomanry, white, in the South + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's American Negro Slavery, by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11490 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41033a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11490 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11490) diff --git a/old/11490-8.txt b/old/11490-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dcc75a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11490-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19931 @@ +Project Gutenberg's American Negro Slavery, by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: American Negro Slavery + A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime + +Author: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11490] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard D Johnson and PG Distributed +Proofreaders + + + + + +ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS + + +AMERICAN + +NEGRO SLAVERY + +A Survey of the Supply, +Employment and Control +Of Negro Labor +As Determined by the Plantation Regime + +TO + +MY WIFE + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + I. THE EARLY EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA + II. THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE + III. THE SUGAR ISLANDS + IV. THE TOBACCO COLONIES + V. THE RICE COAST + VI. THE NORTHERN COLONIES + VII. REVOLUTION AND REACTION + VIII. THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE + IX. THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR + X. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT + XI. THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE + XII. THE COTTON RÉGIME + XIII. TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS + XIV. PLANTATION MANAGEMENT + XV. PLANTATION LABOR + XVI. PLANTATION LIFE + XVII. PLANTATION TENDENCIES +XVIII. ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE + LITERATURE + XIX. BUSINESS ASPECTS OF SLAVERY + XX. TOWN SLAVES + XXI. FREE NEGROES + XXII. SLAVE CRIME +XXIII. THE FORCE OF THE LAW +INDEX + + + + +AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA + + +The Portuguese began exploring the west coast of Africa shortly before +Christopher Columbus was born; and no sooner did they encounter negroes +than they began to seize and carry them in captivity to Lisbon. The court +chronicler Azurara set himself in 1452, at the command of Prince Henry, to +record the valiant exploits of the negro-catchers. Reflecting the spirit +of the time, he praised them as crusaders bringing savage heathen for +conversion to civilization and christianity. He gently lamented the +massacre and sufferings involved, but thought them infinitely outweighed by +the salvation of souls. This cheerful spirit of solace was destined long to +prevail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the colored +races. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observed +of the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, less +than a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they never +more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot all about their own country," +that "they were very loyal and obedient servants, without malice"; and that +"after they began to use clothing they were for the most part very fond of +display, so that they took great delight in robes of showy colors, and such +was their love of finery that they picked up the rags that fell from the +coats of other people of the country and sewed them on their own garments, +taking great pleasure in these, as though it were matter of some greater +perfection."[1] These few broad strokes would portray with equally happy +precision a myriad other black servants born centuries after the writer's +death and dwelling in a continent of whose existence he never dreamed. +Azurara wrote further that while some of the captives were not able to +endure the change and died happily as Christians, the others, dispersed +among Portuguese households, so ingratiated themselves that many were +set free and some were married to men and women of the land and acquired +comfortable estates. This may have been an earnest of future conditions in +Brazil and the Spanish Indies; but in the British settlements it fell out +far otherwise. + +[Footnote 1: Gomez Eannes de Azurara _Chronicle of the Discovery and +Conquest of Guinea_, translated by C.R. Beazley and E.P. Prestage, in the +Hakluyt Society _Publications_, XCV, 85.] + +As the fifteenth century wore on and fleets explored more of the African +coast with the double purpose of finding a passage to India and exploiting +any incidental opportunities for gain, more and more human cargoes were +brought from Guinea to Portugal and Spain. But as the novelty of the blacks +wore off they were held in smaller esteem and treated with less liberality. +Gangs of them were set to work in fields from which the Moorish occupants +had recently been expelled. The labor demand was not great, however, and +when early in the sixteenth century West Indian settlers wanted negroes +for their sugar fields, Spain willingly parted with some of hers. Thus did +Europe begin the coercion of African assistance in the conquest of the +American wilderness. + +Guinea comprises an expanse about a thousand miles wide lying behind +three undulating stretches of coast, the first reaching from Cape Verde +southeastward nine hundred miles to Cape Palmas in four degrees north +latitude, the second running thence almost parallel to the equator a +thousand miles to Old Calabar at the head of "the terrible bight of +Biafra," the third turning abruptly south and extending some fourteen +hundred miles to a short distance below Benguela where the southern desert +begins. The country is commonly divided into Upper Guinea or the Sudan, +lying north and west of the great angle of the coast, and Lower Guinea, +the land of the Bantu, to the southward. Separate zones may also be +distinguished as having different systems of economy: in the jungle belt +along the equator bananas are the staple diet; in the belts bordering this +on the north and south the growing of millet and manioc respectively, in +small clearings, are the characteristic industries; while beyond the edges +of the continental forest cattle contribute much of the food supply. The +banana, millet and manioc zones, and especially their swampy coastal +plains, were of course the chief sources of slaves for the transatlantic +trade. + +Of all regions of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst. The +climate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of each year +is excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoes +play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasional +blasts from the desert so dry and burning that all nature droops and is +grateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat stimulates +vegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany trees, and +multiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they mosquitoes, elephants +or boa constrictors. There would be abundant food but for the superabundant +creatures that struggle for it and prey upon one another. For mankind life +is at once easy and hard. Food of a sort may often be had for the plucking, +and raiment is needless; but aside from the menace of the elements human +life is endangered by beasts and reptiles in the forest, crocodiles and +hippopotami in the rivers, and sharks in the sea, and existence is made a +burden to all but the happy-hearted by plagues of insects and parasites. In +many districts tse-tse flies exterminate the cattle and spread the fatal +sleeping-sickness among men; everywhere swarms of locusts occasionally +destroy the crops; white ants eat timbers and any other useful thing, short +of metal, which may come in their way; giant cockroaches and dwarf +brown ants and other pests in great variety swarm in the dwellings +continuously--except just after a village has been raided by the great +black ants which are appropriately known as "drivers." These drivers march +in solid columns miles on miles until, when they reach food resources to +their fancy, they deploy for action and take things with a rush. To stay +among them is to die; but no human being stays. A cry of "Drivers!" will +depopulate a village instantly, and a missionary who at one moment has been +combing brown ants from his hair will in the next find himself standing +safely in the creek or the water barrel, to stay until the drivers have +taken their leave. Among less spectacular things, mosquitoes fly in crowds +and leave fevers in their wake, gnats and flies are always on hand, chigoes +bore and breed under toe-nails, hook-worms hang themselves to the walls of +the intestines, and other threadlike worms enter the eyeballs and the flesh +of the body. Endurance through generations has given the people large +immunity from the effects of hook-worm and malaria, but not from the +indigenous diseases, kraw-kraw, yaws and elephantiasis, nor of course from +dysentery and smallpox which the Europeans introduced. Yet robust health is +fairly common, and where health prevails there is generally happiness, for +the negroes have that within their nature. They could not thrive in Guinea +without their temperament. + +It is probable that no people ever became resident on or near the west +coast except under compulsion. From the more favored easterly regions +successive hordes have been driven after defeat in war. The Fangs on the +Ogowe are an example in the recent past. Thus the inhabitants of Guinea, +and of the coast lands especially, have survived by retreating and +adapting themselves to conditions in which no others wished to dwell. The +requirements of adaptation were peculiar. To live where nature supplies +Turkish baths without the asking necessitates relaxation. But since undue +physical indolence would unfit people for resistance to parasites and +hostile neighbors, the languid would perish. Relaxation of mind, however, +brought no penalties. The climate in fact not only discourages but +prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroes +have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless +generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of +nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some +of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others +calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the +dignitaries.[2] + +[Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African régime is J.A. +Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I. A fuller survey +is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of the +sources. Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularly +notable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture of +coast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincing +discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A.B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe- +and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along the +Gold Coast.] + +No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans the +forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive. To invest them +with spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was perhaps +an obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate system of +superstition. Not only did the wind and the rain have their gods but each +river and precipice, and each tribe and family and person, a tutelary +spirit. These might be kept benevolent by appropriate fetish ceremonies; +they might be used for evil by persons having specially great powers over +them. The proper course for common-place persons at ordinary times was to +follow routine fetish observances; but when beset by witch-work the only +escape lay in the services of witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices were +called for, and on the greatest occasions nothing short of human sacrifice +was acceptable. + +As to diet, vegetable food was generally abundant, but the negroes were not +willingly complete vegetarians. In the jungle game animals were scarce, and +everywhere the men were ill equipped for hunting. In lieu of better they +were often fain to satisfy their craving for flesh by eating locusts and +larvae, as tribes in the interior still do. In such conditions cannibalism +was fairly common. Especially prized was an enemy slain in war, for not +only would his body feed the hungry but fetish taught that his bravery +would pass to those who shared the feast. + +In African economy nearly all routine work, including agriculture, was +classed as domestic service and assigned to the women for performance. The +wife, bought with a price at the time of marriage, was virtually a slave; +her husband her master. Now one woman might keep her husband and children +in but moderate comfort. Two or more could perform the family tasks much +better. Thus a man who could pay the customary price would be inclined to +add a second wife, whom the first would probably welcome as a lightener of +her burdens. Polygamy prevailed almost everywhere. + +Slavery, too, was generally prevalent except among the few tribes who +gained their chief sustenance from hunting. Along with polygamy, it perhaps +originated, if it ever had a distinct beginning, from the desire to lighten +and improve the domestic service. [3] Persons became slaves through +capture, debt or malfeasance, or through the inheritance of the status. +While the ownership was absolute in the eyes of the law and captives +were often treated with great cruelty, slaves born in the locality were +generally regarded as members of their owner's family and were shown much +consideration. In the millet zone where there was much work to be done the +slaveholdings were in many cases very large and the control relatively +stringent; but in the banana districts an easy-going schedule prevailed for +all. One of the chief hardships of the slaves was the liability of being +put to death at their master's funeral in order that their spirits might +continue in his service. In such case it was customary on the Gold Coast +to give the victim notice of his approaching death by suddenly thrusting a +knife through each cheek with the blades crossing in his mouth so that he +might not curse his master before he died. With his hands tied behind him +he would then be led to the ceremonial slaughter. The Africans were in +general eager traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before the +time when the transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raiding +and trading, transformed the native economy and deranged the social order. + +[Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples has +been elaborately discussed by H.J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial +System: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900).] + +Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in Guinea +was wholly on a village basis, each community dwelling in its own clearing +and having very slight intercourse with its neighbors. Politically each +village was governed by its chief and its elders, oftentimes in complete +independence. In occasional instances, however, considerable states of +loose organization were under the rule of central authorities. Such states +were likely to be the creation of invaders from the eastward, the Dahomans +and Ashantees for example; but the kingdom of Benin appears to have arisen +indigenously. In many cases the subordination of conquered villages merely +resulted in their paying annual tribute. As to language, Lower Guinea spoke +multitudinous dialects of the one Bantu tongue, but in Upper Guinea there +were many dialects of many separate languages. + +Land was so abundant and so little used industrially that as a rule it +was not owned in severalty; and even the villages and tribes had little +occasion to mark the limits of their domains. For travel by land there were +nothing but narrow, rough and tortuous foot-paths, with makeshift bridges +across the smaller streams. The rivers were highly advantageous both as +avenues and as sources of food, for the negroes were expert at canoeing and +fishing. + +Intertribal wars were occasional, but a crude comity lessened their +frequency. Thus if a man of one village murdered one of another, the +aggrieved village if too weak to procure direct redress might save its +face by killing someone in a third village, whereupon the third must by +intertribal convention make common cause with the second at once, or else +coerce a fourth into the punitive alliance by applying the same sort of +persuasion that it had just felt. These later killings in the series were +not regarded as murders but as diplomatic overtures. The system was hard +upon those who were sacrificed in its operation, but it kept a check upon +outlawry. + +A skin stretched over the section of a hollow tree, and usually so +constructed as to have two tones, made an instrument of extraordinary use +in communication as well as in music. By a system long anticipating the +Morse code the Africans employed this "telegraph drum" in sending +messages from village to village for long distances and with great speed. +Differences of speech were no bar, for the tom tom code was interlingual. +The official drummer could explain by the high and low alternations of his +taps that a deed of violence just done was not a crime but a _pourparler_ +for the forming of a league. Every week for three months in 1800 the +tom toms doubtless carried the news throughout Ashantee land that King +Quamina's funeral had just been repeated and two hundred more slaves slain +to do him honor. In 1806 they perhaps reported the ending of Mungo Park's +travels by his death on the Niger at the hands of the Boussa people. Again +and again drummers hired as trading auxiliaries would send word along the +coast and into the country that white men's vessels lying at Lagos, Bonny, +Loango or Benguela as the case might be were paying the best rates in +calico, rum or Yankee notions for all slaves that might be brought. + +In music the monotony of the tom tom's tone spurred the drummers to +elaborate variations in rhythm. The stroke of the skilled performer could +make it mourn a funeral dirge, voice the nuptial joy, throb the pageant's +march, and roar the ambush alarm. Vocal music might be punctuated by tom +toms and primitive wind or stringed instruments, or might swell in solo +or chorus without accompaniment. Singing, however, appears not so +characteristic of Africans at home as of the negroes in America. On the +other hand garrulous conversation, interspersed with boisterous laughter, +lasted well-nigh the livelong day. Daily life, indeed, was far from dull, +for small things were esteemed great, and every episode was entertaining. +It can hardly be maintained that savage life is idyllic. Yet the question +remains, and may long remain, whether the manner in which the negroes were +brought into touch with civilization resulted in the greater blessing or +the greater curse. That manner was determined in part at least by the +nature of the typical negroes themselves. Impulsive and inconstant, +sociable and amorous, voluble, dilatory, and negligent, but robust, +amiable, obedient and contented, they have been the world's premium slaves. +Prehistoric Pharaohs, mediaeval Pashas and the grandees of Elizabethan +England esteemed them as such; and so great a connoisseur in household +service as the Czar Alexander added to his palace corps in 1810 two free +negroes, one a steward on an American merchant ship and the other a +body-servant whom John Quincy Adams, the American minister, had brought +from Massachusetts to St. Petersburg.[4] + +[Footnote 4: _Writings of John Quincy Adams_, Ford ed., III, 471, 472 (New +York, 1914).] + +The impulse for the enslavement of negroes by other peoples came from the +Arabs who spread over northern Africa in the eighth century, conquering and +converting as they went, and stimulating the trade across the Sahara until +it attained large dimensions. The northbound caravans carried the peculiar +variety of pepper called "grains of paradise" from the region later known +as Liberia, gold from the Dahomey district, palm oil from the lower Niger, +and ivory and slaves from far and wide. A small quantity of these various +goods was distributed in southern Europe and the Levant. And in the same +general period Arab dhows began to take slave cargoes from the east coast +of Africa as far south as Mozambique, for distribution in Arabia, Persia +and western India. On these northern and eastern flanks of Guinea where the +Mohammedans operated and where the most vigorous of the African peoples +dwelt, the natives lent ready assistance in catching and buying slaves in +the interior and driving them in coffles to within reach of the Moorish and +Arab traders. Their activities, reaching at length the very center of the +continent, constituted without doubt the most cruel of all branches of the +slave-trade. The routes across the burning Sahara sands in particular came +to be strewn with negro skeletons.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Jerome Dowd, "The African Slave Trade," in the _Journal of +Negro History_, II (1917), 1-20.] + +This overland trade was as costly as it was tedious. Dealers in Timbuctoo +and other centers of supply must be paid their price; camels must be +procured, many of which died on the journey; guards must be hired to +prevent escapes in the early marches and to repel predatory Bedouins in the +later ones; food supplies must be bought; and allowance must be made for +heavy mortality among the slaves on their terrible trudge over the burning +sands and the chilling mountains. But wherever Mohammedanism prevailed, +which gave particular sanction to slavery as well as to polygamy, the +virtues of the negroes as laborers and as eunuch harem guards were so +highly esteemed that the trade was maintained on a heavy scale almost if +not quite to the present day. The demand of the Turks in the Levant and the +Moors in Spain was met by exportations from the various Barbary ports. Part +of this Mediterranean trade was conducted in Turkish and Moorish vessels, +and part of it in the ships of the Italian cities and Marseilles and +Barcelona. Venice for example had treaties with certain Saracen rulers at +the beginning of the fourteenth century authorizing her merchants not only +to frequent the African ports, but to go in caravans to interior points and +stay at will. The principal commodities procured were ivory, gold, honey +and negro slaves.[6] + +[Footnote 6: The leading authority upon slavery and the slave-trade in the +Mediterranean countries of Europe is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud +desde los Tiempas mas remotas hasta nuestros Dias_ (Barcelona, 1877), vol. +III.] + +The states of Christian Europe, though little acquainted with negroes, +had still some trace of slavery as an inheritance from imperial Rome +and barbaric Teutondom. The chattel form of bondage, however, had quite +generally given place to serfdom; and even serfdom was disappearing in +many districts by reason of the growth of towns and the increase of rural +population to the point at which abundant labor could be had at wages +little above the cost of sustaining life. On the other hand so long as +petty wars persisted the enslavement of captives continued to be at least +sporadic, particularly in the south and east of Europe, and a considerable +traffic in white slaves was maintained from east to west on the +Mediterranean. The Venetians for instance, in spite of ecclesiastical +prohibitions, imported frequent cargoes of young girls from the countries +about the Black Sea, most of whom were doomed to concubinage and +prostitution, and the rest to menial service.[7] The occurrence of the +Crusades led to the enslavement of Saracen captives in Christendom as well +as of Christian captives in Islam. + +[Footnote 7: W.C. Hazlitt, _The Venetian Republic_(London, 1900), pp. 81, +82.] + +The waning of the Crusades ended the supply of Saracen slaves, and the +Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 destroyed the Italian trade on +the Black Sea. No source of supply now remained, except a trickle from +Africa, to sustain the moribund institution of slavery in any part of +Christian Europe east of the Pyrenees. But in mountain-locked Roussillon +and Asturias remnants of slavery persisted from Visigothic times to the +seventeenth century; and in other parts of the peninsula the intermittent +wars against the Moors of Granada supplied captives and to some extent +reinvigorated slavery among the Christian states from Aragon to Portugal. +Furthermore the conquest of the Canaries at the end of the fourteenth +century and of Teneriffe and other islands in the fifteenth led to the +bringing of many of their natives as slaves to Castille and the neighboring +kingdoms. + +Occasional documents of this period contain mention of negro slaves at +various places in the Spanish peninsula, but the number was clearly small +and it must have continued so, particularly as long as the supply was drawn +through Moorish channels. The source whence the negroes came was known to +be a region below the Sahara which from its yield of gold and ivory was +called by the Moors the land of wealth, "Bilad Ghana," a name which on the +tongues of European sailors was converted into "Guinea." To open a direct +trade thither was a natural effort when the age of maritime exploration +began. The French are said to have made voyages to the Gold Coast in the +fourteenth century, though apparently without trading in slaves. But in +the absence of records of their activities authentic history must confine +itself to the achievements of the Portuguese. + +In 1415 John II of Portugal, partly to give his five sons opportunity to +win knighthood in battle, attacked and captured the Moorish stronghold of +Ceuta, facing Gibraltar across the strait. For several years thereafter the +town was left in charge of the youngest of these princes, Henry, who there +acquired an enduring desire to gain for Portugal and Christianity the +regions whence the northbound caravans were coming. Returning home, he +fixed his residence at the promontory of Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, +and made his main interest for forty years the promotion of maritime +exploration southward.[8] His perseverance won him fame as "Prince +Henry the Navigator," though he was not himself an active sailor; and +furthermore, after many disappointments, it resulted in exploration as far +as the Gold Coast in his lifetime and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope +twenty-five years after his death. The first decade of his endeavor brought +little result, for the Sahara shore was forbidding and the sailors timid. +Then in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador and found its dangers +imaginary. Subsequent voyages added to the extent of coast skirted until +the desert began to give place to inhabited country. The Prince was now +eager for captives to be taken who might inform him of the country, and in +1441 Antam Gonsalvez brought several Moors from the southern edge of the +desert, who, while useful as informants, advanced a new theme of interest +by offering to ransom themselves by delivering on the coast a larger number +of non-Mohammedan negroes, whom the Moors held as slaves. Partly for the +sake of profit, though the chronicler says more largely to increase the +number of souls to be saved, this exchange was effected in the following +year in the case of two of the Moors, while a third took his liberty +without delivering his ransom. After the arrival in Portugal of these +exchanged negroes, ten in number, and several more small parcels of +captives, a company organized at Lagos under the direction of Prince Henry +sent forth a fleet of six caravels in 1444 which promptly returned with 225 +captives, the disposal of whom has been recounted at the beginning of this +chapter. + +[Footnote 8: The chief source for the early Portuguese voyages is Azurara's +_Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_, already cited.] + +In the next year the Lagos Company sent a great expedition of twenty-six +vessels which discovered the Senegal River and brought back many natives +taken in raids thereabout; and by 1448 nearly a thousand captives had been +carried to Portugal. Some of these were Moorish Berbers, some negroes, +but most were probably Jolofs from the Senegal, a warlike people of mixed +ancestry. Raiding in the Jolof country proved so hazardous that from about +1454 the Portuguese began to supplement their original methods by planting +"factories" on the coast where slaves from the interior were bought from +their native captors and owners who had brought them down in caravans +and canoes. Thus not only was missionary zeal eclipsed but the desire of +conquest likewise, and the spirit of exploration erelong partly subdued, by +commercial greed. By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460 Portugal was +importing seven or eight hundred negro slaves each year. From this time +forward the traffic was conducted by a succession of companies and +individual grantees, to whom the government gave the exclusive right for +short terms of years in consideration of money payments and pledges of +adding specified measures of exploration. As new coasts were reached +additional facilities were established for trade in pepper, ivory and gold +as well as in slaves. When the route round Africa to India was opened at +the end of the century the Guinea trade fell to secondary importance, but +it was by no means discontinued. + +Of the negroes carried to Portugal in the fifteenth century a large +proportion were set to work as slaves on great estates in the southern +provinces recently vacated by the Moors, and others were employed as +domestic servants in Lisbon and other towns. Some were sold into Spain +where they were similarly employed, and where their numbers were recruited +by a Guinea trade in Spanish vessels in spite of Portugal's claim of +monopoly rights, even though Isabella had recognized these in a treaty of +1479. In short, at the time of the discovery of America Spain as well as +Portugal had quite appreciable numbers of negroes in her population and +both were maintaining a system of slavery for their control. + +When Columbus returned from his first voyage in the spring of 1493 and +announced his great landfall, Spain promptly entered upon her career +of American conquest and colonization. So great was the expectation of +adventure and achievement that the problem of the government was not how +to enlist participants but how to restrain a great exodus. Under heavy +penalties emigration was restricted by royal decrees to those who procured +permission to go. In the autumn of the same year fifteen hundred men, +soldiers, courtiers, priests and laborers, accompanied the discoverer +on his second voyage, in radiant hopes. But instead of wealth and high +adventure these Argonauts met hard labor and sickness. Instead of the rich +cities of Japan and China sought for, there were found squalid villages of +Caribs and Lucayans. Of gold there was little, of spices none. + +Columbus, when planting his colony at Isabella, on the northern coast +of Hispaniola (Hayti), promptly found need of draught animals and other +equipment. He wrote to his sovereigns in January, 1494, asking for the +supplies needed; and he offered, pending the discovery of more precious +things, to defray expenses by shipping to Spain some of the island natives, +"who are a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned and very +intelligent, and who when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which +they have been accustomed will be better than any other kind of slaves."[9] +Though this project was discouraged by the crown, Columbus actually took a +cargo of Indians for sale in Spain on his return from his third voyage; +but Isabella stopped the sale and ordered the captives taken home and +liberated. Columbus, like most of his generation, regarded the Indians +as infidel foreigners to be exploited at will. But Isabella, and to some +extent her successors, considered them Spanish subjects whose helplessness +called for special protection. Between the benevolence of the distant +monarchs and the rapacity of the present conquerors, however, the fate of +the natives was in little doubt. The crown's officials in the Indies were +the very conquerors themselves, who bent their soft instructions to fit +their own hard wills. A native rebellion in Hispaniola in 1495 was crushed +with such slaughter that within three years the population is said to have +been reduced by two thirds. As terms of peace Columbus required annual +tribute in gold so great that no amount of labor in washing the sands could +furnish it. As a commutation of tribute and as a means of promoting the +conversion of the Indians there was soon inaugurated the encomienda system +which afterward spread throughout Spanish America. To each Spaniard +selected as an encomendero was allotted a certain quota of Indians bound to +cultivate land for his benefit and entitled to receive from him tutelage +in civilization and Christianity. The grantees, however, were not assigned +specified Indians but merely specified numbers of them, with power to seize +new ones to replace any who might die or run away. Thus the encomendero was +given little economic interest in preserving the lives and welfare of his +workmen. + +[Footnote 9: R.H. Major, _Select Letters of Columbus_, 2d. ed., 1890, p. +88.] + +In the first phase of the system the Indians were secured in the right of +dwelling in their own villages under their own chiefs. But the encomenderos +complained that the aloofness of the natives hampered the work of +conversion and asked that a fuller and more intimate control be authorized. +This was promptly granted and as promptly abused. Such limitations as the +law still imposed upon encomendero power were made of no effect by the lack +of machinery for enforcement. The relationship in short, which the law +declared to be one of guardian and ward, became harsher than if it had been +that of master and slave. Most of the island natives were submissive in +disposition and weak in physique, and they were terribly driven at their +work in the fields, on the roads, and at the mines. With smallpox and other +pestilences added to their hardships, they died so fast that before 1510 +Hispaniola was confronted with the prospect of the complete disappearance +of its laboring population.[10] Meanwhile the same régime was being carried +to Porto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba with similar consequences in its train. + +[Footnote 10: E. g. Bourne, _Spain in America_ (New York, 1904); Wilhelm +Roscher, _The Spanish Colonial System_, Bourne ed. (New York, 1904); Konrad +Habler, "The Spanish Colonial Empire," in Helmolt, _History of the World_, +vol I.] + +As long as mining remained the chief industry the islands failed to +prosper; and the reports of adversity so strongly checked the Spanish +impulse for adventure that special inducements by the government were +required to sustain any flow of emigration. But in 1512-1515 the +introduction of sugar-cane culture brought the beginning of a change in +the industrial situation. The few surviving gangs of Indians began to be +shifted from the mines to the fields, and a demand for a new labor supply +arose which could be met only from across the sea. + +Apparently no negroes were brought to the islands before 1501. In that +year, however, a royal decree, while excluding Jews and Moors, authorized +the transportation of negroes born in Christian lands; and some of these +were doubtless carried to Hispaniola in the great fleet of Ovando, the new +governor, in 1502. Ovando's reports of this experiment were conflicting. +In the year following his arrival he advised that no more negroes be sent, +because of their propensity to run away and band with and corrupt the +Indians. But after another year had elapsed he requested that more negroes +be sent. In this interim the humane Isabella died and the more callous +Ferdinand acceded to full control. In consequence a prohibition of the +negro trade in 1504 was rescinded in 1505 and replaced by orders that the +bureau in charge of colonial trade promote the sending of negroes from +Spain in large parcels. For the next twelve years this policy was +maintained--the sending of Christian negroes was encouraged, while the +direct slave trade from Africa to America was prohibited. The number of +negroes who reached the islands under this régime is not ascertainable. It +was clearly almost negligible in comparison with the increasing demand.[11] + +[Footnote 11: The chief authority upon the origin and growth of negro +slavery in the Spanish colonies is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud +de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los Paises +Americo-Hispanos_. (Barcelona, 1879.) This book supplements the same +author's _Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempos remotos_ previously +cited.] + +The policy of excluding negroes fresh from Africa--"bozal negroes" the +Spaniards called them--was of course a product of the characteristic +resolution to keep the colonies free from all influences hostile to +Catholic orthodoxy. But whereas Jews, Mohammedans and Christian heretics +were considered as champions of rival faiths, the pagan blacks came +increasingly to be reckoned as having no religion and therefore as a mere +passive element ready for christianization. As early as 1510, in fact, the +Spanish crown relaxed its discrimination against pagans by ordering the +purchase of above a hundred negro slaves in the Lisbon market for dispatch +to Hispaniola. To quiet its religious scruples the government hit upon +the device of requiring the baptism of all pagan slaves upon their +disembarkation in the colonial ports. + +The crown was clearly not prepared to withstand a campaign for supplies +direct from Africa, especially after the accession of the youth Charles I +in 1517. At that very time a clamor from the islands reached its climax. +Not only did many civil officials, voicing public opinion in their island +communities, urge that the supply of negro slaves be greatly increased as +a means of preventing industrial collapse, but a delegation of Jeronimite +friars and the famous Bartholomeo de las Casas, who had formerly been a +Cuban encomendero and was now a Dominican priest, appeared in Spain to +press the same or kindred causes. The Jeronimites, themselves concerned in +industrial enterprises, were mostly interested in the labor supply. But the +well-born and highly talented Las Casas, earnest and full of the milk +of human kindness, was moved entirely by humanitarian and religious +considerations. He pleaded primarily for the abolition of the encomienda +system and the establishment of a great Indian reservation under missionary +control, and he favored the increased transfer of Christian negroes from +Spain as a means of relieving the Indians from their terrible sufferings. +The lay spokesmen and the Jeronimites asked that provision be made for the +sending of thousands of negro slaves, preferably bozal negroes for the sake +of cheapness and plenty; and the supporters of this policy were able to +turn to their use the favorable impression which Las Casas was making, even +though his programme and theirs were different.[12] The outcome was that +while the settling of the encomienda problem was indefinitely postponed, +authorization was promptly given for a supply of bozal negroes. + +[Footnote 12: Las Casas, _Historio de las Indias_ (Madrid, 1875, 1876); +Arthur Helps, _Life of Las Casas_ (London, 1873); Saco, _op. cit_., pp. +62-104.] + +The crown here had an opportunity to get large revenues, of which it was in +much need, by letting the slave trade under contract or by levying taxes +upon it. The young king, however, freshly arrived from the Netherlands with +a crowd of Flemish favorites in his train, proceeded to issue gratuitously +a license for the trade to one of the Flemings at court, Laurent de +Gouvenot, known in Spain as Garrevod, the governor of Breza. This license +empowered the grantee and his assigns to ship from Guinea to the Spanish +islands four thousand slaves. All the historians until recently have placed +this grant in the year 1517 and have called it a contract (asiento); but +Georges Scelle has now discovered and printed the document itself which +bears the date August 18, 1518, and is clearly a license of grace bearing +none of the distinctive asiento features.[13] Garrevod, who wanted ready +cash rather than a trading privilege, at once divided his license into two +and sold them for 25,000 ducats to certain Genoese merchants domiciled at +Seville, who in turn split them up again and put them on the market where +they became an object of active speculation at rapidly rising prices. The +result was that when slaves finally reached the islands under Garrevod's +grant the prices demanded for them were so exorbitant that the purposes +of the original petitioners were in large measure defeated. Meanwhile the +king, in spite of the nominally exclusive character of the Garrevod grant, +issued various other licenses on a scale ranging from ten to four hundred +slaves each. For a decade the importations were small, however, and the +island clamor increased. + +[Footnote 13: Georges Scelle, _Histoire Politique de la Traité Négrière aux +Indes de Castille: Contrats et Traités d'Asíento_ (Paris, 1906), I, 755. +Book I, chapter 2 of the same volume is an elaborate discussion of the +Garrevod grant.] + +In 1528 a new exclusive grant was issued to two German courtiers at +Seville, Eynger and Sayller, empowering them to carry four thousand slaves +from Guinea to the Indies within the space of the following four years. +This differed from Garrevod's in that it required a payment of 20,000 +ducats to the crown and restricted the price at which the slaves were to +be sold in the islands to forty ducats each. In so far it approached the +asientos of the full type which became the regular recourse of the Spanish +government in the following centuries; but it fell short of the ultimate +plan by failing to bind the grantees to the performance of their +undertaking and by failing to specify the grades and the proportion of the +sexes among the slaves to be delivered. In short the crown's regard was +still directed more to the enrichment of courtiers than to the promotion of +prosperity in the islands. + +After the expiration of the Eynger and Sayller grant the king left the +control of the slave trade to the regular imperial administrative boards, +which, rejecting all asiento overtures for half a century, maintained a +policy of granting licenses for competitive trade in return for payments +of eight or ten ducats per head until 1560, and of thirty ducats or more +thereafter. At length, after the Spanish annexation of Portugal in 1580, +the government gradually reverted to monopoly grants, now however in the +definite form of asientos, in which by intent at least the authorities made +the public interest, with combined regard to the revenue and a guaranteed +labor supply, the primary consideration.[14] The high prices charged for +slaves, however, together with the burdensome restrictions constantly +maintained upon trade in general, steadily hampered the growth of Spanish +colonial industry. Furthermore the allurements of Mexico and Peru drained +the older colonies of virtually all their more vigorous white inhabitants, +in spite of severe penalties legally imposed upon emigration but never +effectively enforced. + +[Footnote 14: Scelle, I, books 1-3.] + +The agricultural régime in the islands was accordingly kept relatively +stagnant as long as Spain preserved her full West Indian domination. The +sugar industry, which by 1542 exported the staple to the amount of 110,000 +arrobas of twenty-five pounds each, was standardized in plantations of two +types--the _trapiche_ whose cane was ground by ox power and whose labor +force was generally thirty or forty negroes (each reckoned as capable of +the labor of four Indians); and the _inqenio_, equipped with a water-power +mill and employing about a hundred slaves.[15] Occasional slave revolts +disturbed the Spanish islanders but never for long diminished their +eagerness for slave recruits. The slave laws were relatively mild, the +police administration extremely casual, and the plantation managements +easy-going. In short, after introducing slavery into the new world the +Spaniards maintained it in sluggish fashion, chiefly in the islands, as an +institution which peoples more vigorous industrially might borrow and adapt +to a more energetic plantation régime. + +[Footnote 15: Saco, pp. 127, 128, 188; Oviedo, _Historia General de las +Indias_, book 4. chap. 8.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE + + +At the request of a slaver's captain the government of Georgia issued in +1772 a certificate to a certain Fenda Lawrence reciting that she, "a free +black woman and heretofore a considerable trader in the river Gambia on the +coast of Africa, hath voluntarily come to be and remain for some time in +this province," and giving her permission to "pass and repass unmolested +within the said province on her lawfull and necessary occations."[1] This +instance is highly exceptional. The millions of African expatriates went +against their own wills, and their transporters looked upon the business +not as passenger traffic but as trade in goods. Earnings came from selling +in America the cargoes bought in Africa; the transportation was but an item +in the trade. + +[Footnote 1: U.B. Phillips, _Plantation and Frontier Documents_, printed +also as vols. I and II of the _Documentary History of American Industrial +Society_ (Cleveland, O., 1909), II, 141, 142. This publication will be +cited hereafter as _Plantation and Frontier_.] + +The business bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the +Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the +active assistance of its respective sovereign. The preliminaries to the +commercial strife occurred in the Elizabethan age. French traders in gold +and ivory found the Portuguese police on the Guinea Coast to be negligible; +but poaching in the slave trade was a harder problem, for Spain held firm +control of her colonies which were then virtually the world's only slave +market. + +The test of this was made by Sir John Hawkins who at the beginning of his +career as a great English sea captain had informed himself in the Canary +Islands of the Afro-American opportunity awaiting exploitation. Backed by +certain English financiers, he set forth in 1562 with a hundred men in +three small ships, and after procuring in Sierra Leone, "partly by the +sword and partly by other means," above three hundred negroes he sailed to +Hispaniola where without hindrance from the authorities he exchanged them +for colonial produce. "And so, with prosperous success, and much gain to +himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the +month of September, 1563."[2] Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkins +again captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, and +proceeded to peddle them in the Spanish islands. When the authorities +interfered he coerced them by show of arms and seizure of hostages, and +when the planters demurred at his prices he brought them to terms through a +mixture of diplomacy and intimidation. After many adventures by the way he +reached home, as the chronicler concludes, "God be thanked! in safety: with +the loss of twenty persons in all the voyage; as with great profit to the +venturers in the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bringing +home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store. His name +therefore be praised for evermore! Amen." Before two years more had passed +Hawkins put forth for a third voyage, this time with six ships, two of them +among the largest then afloat. The cargo of slaves, procured by aiding a +Guinea tribe in an attack upon its neighbor, had been duly sold in the +Indies when dearth of supplies and stress of weather drove the fleet into +the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulloa. There a Spanish fleet of thirteen +ships attacked the intruders, capturing their treasure ship and three of +her consorts. Only the _Minion_ under Hawkins and the bark _Judith_ under +the young Francis Drake escaped to carry the harrowing tale to England. One +result of the episode was that it filled Hawkins and Drake with desire for +revenge on Spain, which was wreaked in due time but in European waters. +Another consequence was a discouragement of English slave trading for +nearly a century to follow. + +[Footnote 2: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, ed. 1589. This and the accounts of +Hawkins' later exploits in the same line are reprinted with a valuable +introduction in C.R. Beazley, ed., _Voyages and Travels_ (New York, 1903), +I, 29-126.] + +The defeat of the Armada in 1588 led the world to suspect the decline of +Spain's maritime power, but only in the lapse of decades did the suspicion +of her helplessness become a certainty. Meantime Portugal was for sixty +years an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at their +heroic labor for independence. Thus when the Dutch came to prevail at sea +in the early seventeenth century the Portuguese posts in Guinea fell their +prey, and in 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered to take them +over. Closely identified with the Dutch government, this company not +only founded the colony of New Netherland and endeavored to foster the +employment of negro slaves there, but in 1634 it seized the Spanish island +of Curaçao near the Venezuelan coast and made it a basis for smuggling +slaves into the Spanish dominions. And now the English, the French and the +Danes began to give systematic attention to the African and West Indian +opportunities, whether in the form of buccaneering, slave trading or +colonization. + +The revolt of Portugal in 1640 brought a turning point. For a +quarter-century thereafter the Spanish government, regarding the Portuguese +as rebels, suspended all trade relations with them, the asiento included. +But the trade alternatives remaining were all distasteful to Spain. The +English were heretics; the Dutch were both heretics and rebels; the French +and the Danes were too weak at sea to handle the great slave trading +contract with security; and Spain had no means of her own for large scale +commerce. The upshot was that the carriage of slaves to the Spanish +colonies was wholly interdicted during the two middle decades of the +century. But this gave the smugglers their highest opportunity. The Spanish +colonial police collapsed under the pressure of the public demand for +slaves, and illicit trading became so general and open as to be pseudo +legitimate. Such a boom came as was never felt before under Protestant +flags in tropical waters. The French, in spite of great exertions, were +not yet able to rival the Dutch and English. These in fact had such an +ascendency that when in 1663 Spain revived the asiento by a contract with +two Genoese, the contractors must needs procure their slaves by arrangement +with Dutch and English who delivered them at Curaçao and Jamaica. Soon +after this contract expired the asiento itself was converted from an item +of Spanish internal policy into a shuttlecock of international politics. It +became in fact the badge of maritime supremacy, possessed now by the Dutch, +now by the French in the greatest years of Louis XIV, and finally by the +English as a trophy in the treaty of Utrecht. + +By this time, however, the Spanish dominions were losing their primacy +as slave markets. Jamaica, Barbados and other Windward Islands under the +English; Hayti, Martinique and Guadeloupe under the French, and Guiana +under the Dutch were all more or less thriving as plantation colonies, +while Brazil, Virginia, Maryland and the newly founded Carolina were +beginning to demonstrate that slave labor had an effective calling without +as well as within the Caribbean latitudes. The closing decades of the +seventeenth century were introducing the heyday of the slave trade, and the +English were preparing for their final ascendency therein. + +In West African waters in that century no international law prevailed but +that of might. Hence the impulse of any new country to enter the Guinea +trade led to the project of a chartered monopoly company; for without +the resources of share capital sufficient strength could not be had, and +without the monopoly privilege the necessary shares could not be sold. The +first English company of moment, chartered in 1618, confined its trade to +gold and other produce. Richard Jobson while in its service on the Gambia +was offered some slaves by a native trader. "I made answer," Jobson +relates, "we were a people who did not deal in any such commodities; +neither did we buy or sell one another, or any that had our own shapes; at +which he seemed to marvel much, and told us it was the only merchandize +they carried down, and that they were sold to white men, who earnestly +desired them. We answered, they were another kind of people, different from +us; but for our part, if they had no other commodities, we would return +again."[3] This company speedily ending its life, was followed by another +in 1631 with a similarly short career; and in 1651 the African privilege +was granted for a time to the East India Company. + +[Footnote 3: Richard Jobson, _The Golden Trade_ (London 1623,), pp. 29, 87, +quoted in James Bandinel, _Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa_ +(London, 1842), p. 43.] + +Under Charles II activities were resumed vigorously by a company chartered +in 1662; but this promptly fell into such conflict with the Dutch that its +capital of £122,000 vanished. In a drastic reorganization its affairs were +taken over by a new corporation, the Royal African Company, chartered in +1672 with the Duke of York at its head and vested in its turn with monopoly +rights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Cape +of Good Hope.[4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, selling +some two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cash +dividends on its £100,000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300 +per cent. But now came reverses through European war and through the +competition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaves +legitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea. Now came also a +clamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and from +England also where oppression and abuses were charged against it by +would-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697 +restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea +upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent, +on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on +certain minor exports carried thence. + +[Footnote 4: The financial career of the company is described by W.R. +Scott, "The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of +England till 1720," in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259.] + +The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evil +practices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale at +reduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encourage +subscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all its +trade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyages +as compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stock +sold as low as 2-1/8 on the £100. A reorganization in 1712 however added +largely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it new +prosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate traders +of all dues, substituting a public grant of £10,000 a year toward the +maintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company, +managed in the early thirties by James Oglethorpe, kept up the unequal +contest until 1751 when it was dissolved. + +The company régime under the several flags was particularly dominant on the +coasts most esteemed in the seventeenth century; and in that century they +reached a comity of their own on the basis of live and let live. The French +were secured in the Senegal sphere of influence and the English on the +Gambia, while on the Gold Coast the Dutch and English divided the trade +between them. Here the two headquarters were in forts lying within sight +of each other: El Mina of the Dutch, and Cape Coast Castle of the English. +Each was commanded by a governor and garrisoned by a score or two of +soldiers; and each with its outlying factories had a staff of perhaps a +dozen factors, as many sub-factors, twice as many assistants, and a few +bookkeepers and auditors, as well as a corps of white artisans and an +abundance of native interpreters, boatmen, carriers and domestic servants. +The Dutch and English stations alternated in a series east and west, often +standing no further than a cannon-shot apart. Here and there one of them +had acquired a slight domination which the other respected; but in the case +of the Coromantees (or Fantyns) William Bosman, a Dutch company factor +about 1700, wrote that both companies had "equal power, that is none at +all. For when these people are inclined to it they shut up the passes so +close that not one merchant can come from the inland country to trade with +us; and sometimes, not content with this, they prevent the bringing of +provisions to us till we have made peace with them." The tribe was in fact +able to exact heavy tribute from both companies; and to stretch the treaty +engagements at will to its own advantage.[5] Further eastward, on the +densely populated Slave Coast, the factories were few and the trade +virtually open to all comers. Here, as was common throughout Upper Guinea, +the traits and the trading practices of adjacent tribes were likely to +be in sharp contrast. The Popo (or Paw Paw) people, for example, were so +notorious for cheating and thieving that few traders would go thither +unless prepared to carry things with a strong hand. The Portuguese alone +bore their grievances without retaliation, Bosman said, because their goods +were too poor to find markets elsewhere.[6]But Fidah (Whydah), next door, +was in Bosman's esteem the most agreeable of all places to trade in. The +people were honest and polite, and the red-tape requirements definite and +reasonable. A ship captain after paying for a license and buying the king's +private stock of slaves at somewhat above the market price would have the +news of his arrival spread afar, and at a given time the trade would be +opened with prices fixed in advance and all the available slaves herded +in an open field. There the captain or factor, with the aid of a surgeon, +would select the young and healthy, who if the purchaser were the Dutch +company were promptly branded to prevent their being confused in the crowd +before being carried on shipboard. The Whydahs were so industrious in the +trade, with such far reaching interior connections, that they could deliver +a thousand slaves each month.[7] + +[Footnote 5: Bosman's _Guinea_ (London, 1705), reprinted in Pinkerton's +_Voyages_, XVI, 363.] + +[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., XVI, 474-476.] + +[Footnote 7: _Ibid_., XVI, 489-491.] + +Of the operations on the Gambia an intimate view may be had from the +journal of Francis Moore, a factor of the Royal African Company from 1730 +to 1735.[8] Here the Jolofs on the north and the Mandingoes on the south +and west were divided into tribes or kingdoms fronting from five +to twenty-five leagues on the river, while tributary villages of +Arabic-speaking Foulahs were scattered among them. In addition there was +a small independent population of mixed breed, with very slight European +infusion but styling themselves Portuguese and using a "bastard language" +known locally as Creole. Many of these last were busy in the slave trade. +The Royal African headquarters, with a garrison of thirty men, were on an +island in the river some thirty miles from its mouth, while its trading +stations dotted the shores for many leagues upstream, for no native king +was content without a factory near his "palace." The slaves bought were +partly of local origin but were mostly brought from long distances inland. +These came generally in strings or coffles of thirty or forty, tied with +leather thongs about their necks and laden with burdens of ivory and corn +on their heads. Mungo Park when exploring the hinterland of this coast +in 1795-1797, traveling incidentally with a slave coffle on part of +his journey, estimated that in the Niger Valley generally the slaves +outnumbered the free by three to one.[9] But as Moore observed, the +domestic slaves were rarely sold in the trade, mainly for fear it would +cause their fellows to run away. When captured by their master's enemies +however, they were likely to be sent to the coast, for they were seldom +ransomed. + +[Footnote 8: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_ (London, 1738).] + +[Footnote 9: Mungo Park, _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_ (4th +ed., London, 1800), pp. 287, 428.] + +The diverse goods bartered for slaves were rated by units of value which +varied in the several trade centers. On the Gold Coast it was a certain +length of cowrie shells on a string; at Loango it was a "piece" which had +the value of a common gun or of twenty pounds of iron; at Kakongo it was +twelve- or fifteen-yard lengths of cotton cloth called "goods";[10] while +on the Gambia it was a bar of iron, apparently about forty pounds in +weight. But in the Gambia trade as Moore described it the unit or "bar" +in rum, cloth and most other things became depreciated until in some +commodities it was not above a shilling's value in English money. Iron +itself, on the other hand, and crystal beads, brass pans and spreadeagle +dollars appreciated in comparison. These accordingly became distinguished +as the "heads of goods," and the inclusion of three or four units of them +was required in the forty or fifty bars of miscellaneous goods making up +the price of a prime slave.[11] In previous years grown slaves alone had +brought standard prices; but in Moore's time a specially strong demand for +boys and girls in the markets of Cadiz and Lisbon had raised the prices of +these almost to a parity. All defects were of course discounted. Moore, for +example, in buying a slave with several teeth missing made the seller abate +a bar for each tooth. The company at one time forbade the purchase of +slaves from the self-styled Portuguese because they ran the prices up; but +the factors protested that these dealers would promptly carry their wares +to the separate traders, and the prohibition was at once withdrawn. + +[Footnote 10: The Abbé Proyart, _History of Loango_ (1776), in Pinkerton's +_Voyages_, XVI, 584-587.] + +[Footnote 11: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, p.45.] + +The company and the separate traders faced different problems. The latter +were less easily able to adjust their merchandise to the market. A Rhode +Island captain, for instance, wrote his owners from Anamabo in 1736, "heare +is 7 sails of us rume men, that we are ready to devour one another, for our +case is desprit"; while four years afterward another wrote after trading +at the same port, "I have repented a hundred times ye lying in of them dry +goods", which he had carried in place of the customary rum.[12] Again, a +veteran Rhode Islander wrote from Anamabo in 1752, "on the whole I never +had so much trouble in all my voiges", and particularized as follows: "I +have Gott on bord 61 Slaves and upards of thirty ounces of Goold, and have +Gott 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet Left on bord, and God noes when I shall Gett +Clear of it ye trade is so very Dull it is actuly a noof to make a man +Creasey my Cheef mate after making foor or five Trips in the boat was taken +Sick and Remains very bad yett then I sent Mr. Taylor, and he got not well, +and three more of my men has [been] sick.... I should be Glad I coold Com +Rite home with my slaves, for my vesiel will not Last to proceed farr +we can see Day Lite al Roond her bow under Deck.... heare Lyes Captains +hamlet, James, Jepson, Carpenter, Butler, Lindsay; Gardner is Due; Ferguson +has Gone to Leward all these is Rum ships."[13] + +[Footnote 12: _American Historical Record_, I (1872), 314, 317.] + +[Footnote 13: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 59, +60.] + +The separate traders also had more frequent quarrels with the natives. +In 1732 a Yankee captain was killed in a trade dispute and his crew set +adrift. Soon afterward certain Jolofs took another ship's officers captive +and required the value of twenty slaves as ransom. And in 1733 the natives +at Yamyamacunda, up the Gambia, sought revenge upon Captain Samuel Moore +for having paid them in pewter dollars on his previous voyage, and were +quieted through the good offices of a company factor.[14] The company +suffered far less from native disorders, for a threat of removing its +factory would bring any chief to terms. In 1731, however, the king of +Barsally brought a troop of his kinsmen and subjects to the Joar factory +where Moore was in charge, got drunk, seized the keys and rifled the +stores.[15] But the company's chief trouble was with its own factors. +The climate and conditions were so trying that illness was frequent and +insanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulent +practices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in the +reports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildew +and white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The expense +of the salary list, ship hire, provisions and merchandise was heavy and +continuous, while the returns were precarious to a degree. Not often did +such great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in +1726[16] and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734[17] to +glut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes. As a rule the company's +advantage of steady markets and friendly native relations appears to have +been more than offset by the freedom of the separate traders from fixed +charges and the necessity of dependence upon lazy and unfaithful employees. + +[Footnote 14: Moore, pp. 112, 164, 182.] + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., p. 82.] + +[Footnote 16: William Snelgrave, _A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and +the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. 8-32.] + +[Footnote 17: Moore, p. 157.] + +Instead of jogging along the coast, as many had been accustomed to do, and +casting anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by natives +who had slaves to sell,[18] the separate traders began before the close +of the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the +"castles," which were then a relic from the company régime. So advantageous +was this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared £500 +on her voyage, and next year the sloop _Adventure_, also of Newport, +Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade that after +losing by death one slave out of the ninety-five in her cargo she landed +the remainder in prime order at Barbados and sold them immediately in one +lot at £35 per head.[19] + +[Footnote 18: Snelgrave, introduction.] + +[Footnote 19: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 398, +429.] + +In Lower Guinea the Portuguese held an advantage, partly through the +influence of the Catholic priests. The Capuchin missionary Merolla, for +example, relates that while he was in service at the mouth of the Congo in +1685 word came that the college of cardinals had commanded the missionaries +in Africa to combat the slave trade. Promptly deciding this to be a +hopeless project, Merolla and his colleagues compromised with their +instructions by attempting to restrict the trade to ships of Catholic +nations and to the Dutch who were then supplying Spain under the asiento. +No sooner had the chiefs in the district agreed to this than a Dutch +trading captain set things awry by spreading Protestant doctrine among the +natives, declaring baptism to be the only sacrament required for salvation, +and confession to be superfluous. The priests then put all the Dutch under +the ban, but the natives raised a tumult saying that the Portuguese, the +only Catholic traders available, not only paid low prices in poor goods but +also aspired to a political domination. The crisis was relieved by a timely +plague of small-pox which the priests declared and the natives agreed was a +divinely sent punishment for their contumacy,--and for the time at least, +the exclusion of heretical traders was made effective.[20] The English +appear never to have excelled the Portuguese on the Congo and southward +except perhaps about the close of the eighteenth century. + +[Footnote 20: Jerom Merolla da Sorrente, _Voyage to Congo_ (translated from +the Italian), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 253-260.] + +The markets most frequented by the English and American separate traders +lay on the great middle stretches of the coast--Sierra Leone, the Grain +Coast (Liberia), the Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, the Oil Rivers as the +Niger Delta was then called, Cameroon, Gaboon and Loango. The swarm of +their ships was particularly great in the Gulf of Guinea upon whose shores +the vast fan-shaped hinterland poured its exiles along converging lines. + +The coffles came from distances ranging to a thousand miles or more, on +rivers and paths whose shore ends the European traders could see but +did not find inviting. These paths, always of single-file narrowness, +tortuously winding to avoid fallen trees and bad ground, never straightened +even when obstructions had rotted and gone, branching and crossing in +endless network, penetrating jungles and high-grass prairies, passing +villages that were and villages that had been, skirting the lairs of savage +beasts and the haunts of cannibal men, beset with drought and famine, storm +and flood, were threaded only by negroes, bearing arms or bearing burdens. +Many of the slaves fell exhausted on the paths and were cut out of the +coffles to die. The survivors were sorted by the purchasers on the coast +into the fit and the unfit, the latter to live in local slavery or to meet +either violent or lingering deaths, the former to be taken shackled on +board the strange vessels of the strange white men and carried to an +unknown fate. The only consolations were that the future could hardly be +worse than the recent past, that misery had plenty of company, and that +things were interesting by the way. The combination of resignation and +curiosity was most helpful. + +It was reassuring to these victims to see an occasional American negro +serving in the crew of a slaver and to know that a few specially favored +tribesmen had returned home with vivid stories from across the sea. On the +Gambia for example there was Job Ben Solomon who during a brief slavery +in Maryland attracted James Oglethorpe's attention by a letter written in +Arabic, was bought from his master, carried to England, presented at court, +loaded with gifts and sent home as a freeman in 1734 in a Royal African +ship with credentials requiring the governor and factors to show him every +respect. Thereafter, a celebrity on the river, he spread among his fellow +Foulahs and the neighboring Jolofs and Mandingoes his cordial praises of +the English nation.[21] And on the Gold Coast there was Amissa to testify +to British justice, for he had shipped as a hired sailor on a Liverpool +slaver in 1774, had been kidnapped by his employer and sold as a slave in +Jamaica, but had been redeemed by the king of Anamaboe and brought home +with an award by Lord Mansfield's court in London of £500 damages collected +from the slaving captain who had wronged him.[22] + +The bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 shifted the bulk of the +separate trading from London to the rival city of Bristol. But the removal +of the duties in 1730 brought the previously unimportant port of Liverpool +into the field with such vigor that ere long she had the larger half of +all the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessary +parsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions and +extra allowances they gave in their early years were nil.[23] By 1753 her +ships in the slave traffic numbered eighty-seven, totaling about eight +thousand tons burthen and rated to carry some twenty-five thousand slaves. +Eight of these vessels were trading on the Gambia, thirty-eight on the Gold +and Slave Coasts, five at Benin, three at New Calabar, twelve at Bonny, +eleven at Old Calabar, and ten in Angola.[24] For the year 1771 the number +of slavers bound from Liverpool was reported at one hundred and seven with +a capacity of 29,250 negroes, while fifty-eight went from London rated +to carry 8,136, twenty-five from Bristol to carry 8,810, and five from +Lancaster with room for 950. Of this total of 195 ships 43 traded in +Senegambia, 29 on the Gold Coast, 56 on the Slave Coast, 63 in the bights +of Benin and Biafra, and 4 in Angola. In addition there were sixty or +seventy slavers from North America and the West Indies, and these were +yearly increasing.[25] By 1801 the Liverpool ships had increased to 150, +with capacity for 52,557 slaves according to the reduced rating of five +slaves to three tons of burthen as required by the parliamentary act of +1788. About half of these traded in the Gulf of Guinea, and half in the +ports of Angola.[26] The trade in American vessels, particularly those of +New England, was also large. The career of the town of Newport in fact was +a small scale replied of Liverpool's. But acceptable statistics of the +American ships are lacking. + +[Footnote 21: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, pp. 69, 202-203.] + +[Footnote 22: Gomer Williams, _History of the Liverpool Privateers, with an +Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade_ (London, 1897), pp. 563, 564.] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid_., p. 471, quoting _A General and Descriptive History +of Liverpool_ (1795).] + +[Footnote 24: _Ibid_., p. 472 and appendix 7.] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), p. 492 +note.] + +[Footnote 26: Corner Williams, Appendix 13.] + +The ship captains in addition to their salaries generally received +commissions of "4 in 104," on the gross sales, and also had the privilege +of buying, transporting and selling specified numbers of slaves on their +private account. When surgeons were carried they also were allowed +commissions and privileges at a smaller rate, and "privileges" were often +allowed the mates likewise. The captains generally carried more or less +definite instructions. Ambrose Lace, for example, master of the Liverpool +ship _Marquis of Granby_ bound in 1762 for Old Calabar, was ordered to +combine with any other ships on the river to keep down rates, to buy +550 young and healthy slaves and such ivory as his surplus cargo would +purchase, and to guard against fire, fever and attack. When laden he was +to carry the slaves to agents in the West Indies, and thence bring home +according to opportunity sugar, cotton, coffee, pimento, mahogany and rum, +and the balance of the slave cargo proceeds in bills of exchange.[27] +Simeon Potter, master of a Rhode Island slaver about the same time, was +instructed by his owners: "Make yr Cheaf Trade with The Blacks and little +or none with the white people if possible to be avoided. Worter yr Rum as +much as possible and sell as much by the short mesuer as you can." And +again: "Order them in the Bots to worter thear Rum, as the proof will Rise +by the Rum Standing in ye Son."[28] As to the care of the slave cargo a +Massachusetts captain was instructed in 1785 as follows: "No people require +more kind and tender treatment: to exhilarate their spirits than the +Africans; and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, remember +that on the other hand too much circumspection cannot be observed by +yourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatment +by insurrection, etc. When you consider that on the health of your slaves +almost your whole voyage depends--for all other risques but mortality, +seizures and bad debts the underwriters are accountable for--you will +therefore particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her with +vinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and to +cleanliness among your own people as well as among the slaves."[29] + +[Footnote 27: Ibid., pp. 486-489.] + +[Footnote 28: W.B. Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_ +(Boston [1890]), II, 465.] + +[Footnote 29: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 66, 67, citing J.O. Felt, _Annals of +Salem_, 2d ed., II, 289, 290.] + +Ships were frequently delayed for many months on the pestilent coast, for +after buying their licenses in one kingdom and finding trade slack there +they could ill afford to sail for another on the uncertain chance of a more +speedy supply. Sometimes when weary of higgling the market, they tried +persuasion by force of arms; but in some instances as at Bonny, in +1757,[30] this resulted in the victory of the natives and the destruction +of the ships. In general the captains and their owners appreciated the +necessity of patience, expensive and even deadly as that might prove to be. + +[Footnote 30: Gomer Williams, pp. 481, 482.] + +The chiefs were eager to foster trade and cultivate good will, for it +brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy King +George" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace +a mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in," a gold +mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, +pewter plates, brass flagons, knives and forks, bullet and cannon-ball +molds, and sailcloth for his canoes, along with many other things for use +in trade.[31] + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 545-547.] + +The typical New England ship for the slave trade was a sloop, schooner or +barkentine of about fifty tons burthen, which when engaged in ordinary +freighting would have but a single deck. For a slaving voyage a second +flooring was laid some three feet below the regular deck, the space between +forming the slave quarters. Such a vessel was handled by a captain, two +mates, and from three to six men and boys. It is curious that a vessel of +this type, with capacity in the hold for from 100 to 120 hogsheads of rum +was reckoned by the Rhode Islanders to be "full bigg for dispatch,"[32] +while among the Liverpool slave traders such a ship when offered for +sale could not find a purchaser.[33] The reason seems to have been that +dry-goods and sundries required much more cargo space for the same value +than did rum. + +[Footnote 32: Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, LXIX, 524.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., 500.] + +The English vessels were generally twice as great of burthen and with twice +the height in their 'tween decks. But this did not mean that the slaves +could stand erect in their quarters except along the center line; for when +full cargoes were expected platforms of six or eight feet in width were +laid on each side, halving the 'tween deck height and nearly doubling the +floor space on which the slaves were to be stowed. Whatever the size of the +ship, it loaded slaves if it could get them to the limit of its capacity. +Bosnian tersely said, "they lie as close together as it is possible to be +crowded."[34] The women's room was divided from the men's by a bulkhead, +and in time of need the captain's cabin might be converted into a hospital. + +[Footnote 34: Bosnian's _Guinea_, in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 490.] + +While the ship was taking on slaves and African provisions and water the +negroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sake +of fresh air. But on departure for the "middle passage," as the trip to +America was called by reason of its being the second leg of the ship's +triangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and in +foul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air and +exercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters and +swabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant. The negro men were +usually kept shackled for the first part of the passage until the chances +of mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain's fears gave place +to confidence. On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to be +repelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense of +the vessel.[35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargo +was perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport of +poverty-stricken white emigrants. Henry Laurens, after withdrawing from +African factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted by +some of the participants in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw an +instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal +to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted +the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a +market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians +from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the +cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what +condition they were landed."[36] + +[Footnote 35: _E. g_., Gomer Williams, pp. 560, 561.] + +[Footnote 36: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_ (New York, 1915), pp. +67, 68. For the tragic sufferings of an English convict shipment in 1768 +see _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 372-373] + +William Snelgrave, long a ship captain in the trade, relates that he was +accustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through his +interpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and not +to be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complain +to the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if they +struck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to be +severely punished. Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies +in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he +never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, +"I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death +itself." In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified +by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of +an hour's time. "He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in him +to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I +should lose all the money I had paid for him.'" When the captain professed +himself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments assuring +his fellows that his life was safe.[37] + +[Footnote 37: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. +162-185. Snelgrave's book also contains vivid accounts of tribal wars, +human sacrifices, traders' negotiations and pirate captures on the Grain +and Slave Coasts.] + +The discomfort in the densely packed quarters of the slave ships may be +imagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added it +was wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water or +food ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and in +epidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limit +of human experience. The average voyage however was rapid and smooth +by virtue of the steadily blowing trade winds, the food if coarse was +generally plenteous and wholesome, and the sanitation fairly adequate. In +a word, under stern and often brutal discipline, and with the poorest +accommodations, the slaves encountered the then customary dangers and +hardships of the sea.[38] + +[Footnote 38: Voluminous testimony in regard to conditions on the middle +passage was published by Parliament and the Privy Council in 1789-1791. +Summaries from it may be found in T.F. Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and +the Remedy_ (London, 1840), part I, chap. 2; and in W.O. Blake, _History of +Slavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10.] + +Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West India +Company's ship _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in April +and May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barely +enough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island of +Amebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile bad +food had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died, +and the slave cargo was daily diminishing. Five weeks of sailing then +carried the ship across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refill +her leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near her +destination at Curaçao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally +a sloop sent by the Curaçao governor to remove the surviving slaves was +captured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprising +the cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and one +leaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 the +slave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as high +among the men as among the women.[39] About the same time, on the other +hand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher, +made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave.[40] The mortality on the +average ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or +ten per cent. + +[Footnote 39: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and +Arms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N.Y., 1867), pp. 1-13.] + +[Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515.] + +Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the New +England branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for a +projected voyage.[41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at £300 sterling, was +to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines +and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of £65, and provisioned for £50 more. +Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages +of £10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eight +thousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. per gallon and with forty-five +barrels, tierces and hogsheads of bread, flour, beef, pork, tar, tobacco, +tallow and sugar--all at an estimated cost of £775--it was to sail for the +Gold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some +35 slave men were to be bought at 100 gallons per head, 15 women at 85 +gallons, and 15 boys and girls at 65 gallons; and the residue of the rum +and miscellaneous cargo was expected to bring some seventy ounces of gold +in exchange as well as to procure food supplies for the westward voyage. +Recrossing the Atlantic, with an estimated death loss of a man, a woman and +two children, the surviving slaves were to be sold in Jamaica at about £21, +£18, and £14 for the respective classes. Of these proceeds about one-third +was to be spent for a cargo of 105 hogsheads of molasses at 8_d_. per +gallon, and the rest of the money remitted to London, whither the gold dust +was also to be sent. The molasses upon reaching Newport was expected to +bring twice as much as it had cost in the tropics. After deducting factor's +commissions of from 2-1/2 to 5 per cent. on all sales and purchases, and of +"4 in 104" on the slave sales as the captain's allowance, after providing +for insurance at four per cent. on ship and cargo for each leg of the +voyage, and for leakage of ten per cent. of the rum and five per cent. of +the molasses, and after charging off the whole cost of the ship's outfit +and one-third of her original value, there remained the sum of £357, 8s. +2d. as the expected profits of the voyage. + +[Footnote 41: "An estimate of a voyage from Rhode Island to the Coast of +Guinea and from thence to Jamaica and so back to Rhode Island for a sloop +of 60 Tons." The authorities of Yale University, which possesses the +manuscript, have kindly permitted the publication of these data. The +estimates in Rhode Island and Jamaica currencies, which were then +depreciated, as stated in the document, to twelve for one and seven for +five sterling respectively, are here changed into their approximate +sterling equivalents.] + +As to the gross volume of the trade, there are few statistics. As early as +1734 one of the captains engaged in it estimated that a maximum of seventy +thousand slaves a year had already been attained.[42] For the next half +century and more each passing year probably saw between fifty thousand and +a hundred thousand shipped. The total transportation from first to last may +well have numbered more than five million souls. Prior to the nineteenth +century far more negro than white colonists crossed the seas, though less +than one tenth of all the blacks brought to the western world appear to +have been landed on the North American continent. Indeed, a statistician +has reckoned, though not convincingly, that in the whole period before 1810 +these did not exceed 385,500[43] + +[Footnote 42: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_, p. 159.] + +[Footnote 43: H.C. Carey, _The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign_ +(Philadelphia, 1853), chap. 3.] + +In selling the slave cargoes in colonial ports the traders of course wanted +minimum delay and maximum prices. But as a rule quickness and high returns +were not mutually compatible. The Royal African Company tended to lay chief +stress upon promptness of sale. Thus at the end of 1672 it announced that +if persons would contract to receive whole cargoes upon their arrival and +to accept all slaves between twelve and forty years of age who were able to +go over the ship's side unaided they would be supplied at the rate of +£15 per head in Barbados, £16 in Nevis, £17 in Jamaica, and £18 in +Virginia.[44] The colonists were for a time disposed to accept this +arrangement where they could. For example Charles Calvert, governor of +Maryland, had already written Lord Baltimore in 1664: "I have endeavored to +see if I could find as many responsible men that would engage to take 100 +or 200 neigros every year from the Royall Company at that rate mentioned +in your lordship's letter; but I find that we are nott men of estates good +enough to undertake such a buisnesse, but could wish we were for we are +naturally inclined to love neigros if our purses could endure it."[45] But +soon complaints arose that the slaves delivered on contract were of the +poorest quality, while the better grades were withheld for other means of +sale at higher prices. Quarrels also developed between the company on the +one hand and the colonists and their legislatures on the other over the +rating of colonial moneys and the obstructions placed by law about the +collection of debts; and the colonists proceeded to give all possible +encouragement to the separate traders, legal or illegal as their traffic +might be.[46] + +[Footnote 44: E.D. Collins, "Studies in the Colonial Policy of England, +1672-1680," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1901, I, +158.] + +[Footnote 45: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_ no. 28, p. +249.] + +[Footnote 46: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_ (New York, 1912), part +I, vol. I, chap. 5.] + +Most of the sales, in the later period at least, were without previous +contract. A practice often followed in the British West Indian ports was to +advertise that the cargo of a vessel just arrived would be sold on board at +an hour scheduled and at a uniform price announced in the notice. At the +time set there would occur a great scramble of planters and dealers to grab +the choicest slaves. A variant from this method was reported in 1670 from +Guadeloupe, where a cargo brought in by the French African company was +first sorted into grades of prime men, (_pièces d'Inde_), prime women, boys +and girls rated at two-thirds of prime, and children rated at one-half. To +each slave was attached a ticket bearing a number, while a corresponding +ticket was deposited in one of four boxes according to the grade. At prices +then announced for the several grades, the planters bought the privilege of +drawing tickets from the appropriate boxes and acquiring thereby title to +the slaves to which the numbers they drew were attached.[47] + +[Footnote 47: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant +1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122, 123.] + +In the chief ports of the British continental colonies the maritime +transporters usually engaged merchants on shore to sell the slaves as +occasion permitted, whether by private sale or at auction. At Charleston +these merchants charged a ten per cent commission on slave sales, though +their factorage rate was but five per cent. on other sorts of merchandise; +and they had credits of one and two years for the remittance of the +proceeds.[48] The following advertisement, published at Charleston in 1785 +jointly by Ball, Jennings and Company, and Smiths, DeSaussure and Darrell +is typical of the factors' announcements: "GOLD COAST NEGROES. On Thursday, +the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the Exchange +(if not before disposed of by private contract) the remainder of the cargo +of negroes imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consisting +chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been +here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to this +climate. The conditions of the sale will be credit to the first of January, +1786, on giving bond with approved security where required--the negroes not +to be delivered till the terms are complied with."[49] But in such colonies +as Virginia where there was no concentration of trade in ports, the ships +generally sailed from place to place peddling their slaves, with notice +published in advance when practicable. The diseased or otherwise unfit +negroes were sold for whatever price they would bring. In some of the ports +it appears that certain physicians made a practise of buying these to sell +the survivors at a profit upon their restoration to health.[50] + +[Footnote 48: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 75.] + +[Footnote 49: _The Gazette of the State of South Carolina_, Mch. 10, 1785.] + +[Footnote 50: C. C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 170.] + +That by no means all the negroes took their enslavement grievously is +suggested by a traveler's note at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1806: "We +met ... a number of new negroes, some of whom had been in the country long +enough to talk intelligibly. Their likely looks induced us to enter into +a talk with them. One of them, a very bright, handsome youth of about +sixteen, could talk well. He told us the circumstances of his being caught +and enslaved, with as much composure as he would any common occurrence, +not seeming to think of the injustice of the thing nor to speak of it with +indignation.... He spoke of his master and his work as though all were +right, and seemed not to know he had a right to be anything but a +slave."[51] + +[Footnote 51: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1906, p. 882.] + +In the principal importing colonies careful study was given to the +comparative qualities of the several African stocks. The consensus +of opinion in the premises may be gathered from several contemporary +publications, the chief ones of which were written in Jamaica.[52] The +Senegalese, who had a strong Arabic strain in their ancestry, were +considered the most intelligent of Africans and were especially esteemed +for domestic service, the handicrafts and responsible positions. "They are +good commanders over other negroes, having a high spirit and a tolerable +share of fidelity; but they are unfit for hard work; their bodies are not +robust nor their constitutions vigorous." The Mandingoes were reputed to be +especially gentle in demeanor but peculiarly prone to theft. They easily +sank under fatigue, but might be employed with advantage in the distillery +and the boiling house or as watchmen against fire and the depredations of +cattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts as +hardy and stalwart of mind and body. Long calls them haughty, ferocious and +stubborn; Edwards relates examples of their Spartan fortitude; and it +was generally agreed that they were frequently instigators of slave +conspiracies and insurrections. Yet their spirit of loyalty made them the +most highly prized of servants by those who could call it forth. Of them +Christopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward Islands, wrote in 1701 to +the English Board of Trade: "The Corramantes are not only the best and +most faithful of our slaves, but are really all born heroes. There is a +differance between them and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possible +for your Lordships to conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of that +nation. Intrepid to the last degree, not a man of them but will stand to +be cut to pieces without a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kind +master, but implacably revengeful when ill-treated. My father, who had +studied the genius and temper of all kinds of negroes forty-five years with +a very nice observation, would say, noe man deserved a Corramante that +would not treat him like a friend rather than a slave."[53] + +[Footnote 52: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, 403, +404; Bryan Edwards, _History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, +various editions, book IV, chap. 3; and "A Professional Planter," +_Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves +in the Sugar Colonies_ (London, 1803), pp. 39-48. The pertinent portion of +this last is reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 127-133. For the +similar views of the French planters in the West Indies see Peytraud, +_L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_, pp. 87-90.] + +[Footnote 53: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West +Indies_, 1701, pp. 720, 721.] + +The Whydahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most +highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and +submissive. "That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel, +and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Pawpaws as the +chastisement of legal authority to which it is their duty to submit +patiently." As to the Eboes or Mocoes, described as having a sickly yellow +tinge in their complection, jaundiced eyes, and prognathous faces like +baboons, the women were said to be diligent but the men lazy, despondent +and prone to suicide. "They require therefore the gentlest and mildest +treatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence be +once obtained they manifest as great fidelity, affection and gratitude as +can reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery." + +The "kingdom of Gaboon," which straddled the equator, was the worst reputed +of all. "From thence a good negro was scarcely ever brought. They are +purchased so cheaply on the coast as to tempt many captains to freight with +them; but they generally die either on the passage or soon after +their arrival in the islands. The debility of their constitutions is +astonishing." From this it would appear that most of the so-called Gaboons +must have been in reality Pygmies caught in the inland equatorial forests, +for Bosman, who traded among the Gaboons, merely inveighed against their +garrulity, their indecision, their gullibility and their fondness for +strong drink, while as to their physique he observed: "they are mostly +large, robust well shaped men."[54] Of the Congoes and Angolas the Jamaican +writers had little to say except that in their glossy black they +were slender and sightly, mild in disposition, unusually honest, but +exceptionally stupid. + +[Footnote 54: Bosman in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 509, 510.] + +In the South Carolina market Gambia negroes, mainly Mandingoes, were the +favorites, and Angolas also found ready sale; but cargoes from Calabar, +which were doubtless comprised mostly of Eboes, were shunned because of +their suicidal proclivity. Henry Laurens, who was then a commission dealer +at Charleston, wrote in 1755 that the sale of a shipload from Calabar then +in port would be successful only if no other Guinea ships arrived before +its quarantine was ended, for the people would not buy negroes of that +stock if any others were to be had.[55] + +[Footnote 55: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 76, 77.] + +It would appear that the Congoes, Angolas and Eboes were especially prone +to run away, or perhaps particularly easy to capture when fugitive, for +among the 1046 native Africans advertised as runaways held in the Jamaica +workhouses in 1803 there were 284 Eboes and Mocoes, 185 Congoes and 259 +Angolas as compared with 101 Mandingoes, 60 Chambas (from Sierra Leone), 70 +Coromantees, 57 Nagoes and Pawpaws, and 30 scattering, along with a total +of 488 American-born negroes and mulattoes, and 187 unclassified.[56] + +[Footnote 56: These data were generously assembled for me by Professor +Chauncey S. Boucher of Washington University, St. Louis, from a file of the +_Royal Gazette_ of Kingston, Jamaica, for the year 1803, which is preserved +in the Charleston, S.C. Library.] + +This huge maritime slave traffic had great consequences for all the +countries concerned. In Liverpool it made millionaires,[57] and elsewhere +in England, Europe and New England it brought prosperity not only to ship +owners but to the distillers of rum and manufacturers of other trade goods. +In the American plantation districts it immensely stimulated the production +of the staple crops. On the other hand it kept the planters constantly +in debt for their dearly bought labor, and it left a permanent and +increasingly complex problem of racial adjustments. In Africa, it largely +transformed the primitive scheme of life, and for the worse. It created new +and often unwholesome wants; it destroyed old industries and it corrupted +tribal institutions. The rum, the guns, the utensils and the gewgaws were +irresistible temptations. Every chief and every tribesman acquired +a potential interest in slave getting and slave selling. Charges of +witchcraft, adultery, theft and other crimes were trumped up that the +number of convicts for sale might be swelled; debtors were pressed that +they might be adjudged insolvent and their persons delivered to the +creditors; the sufferings of famine were left unrelieved that parents might +be forced to sell their children or themselves; kidnapping increased until +no man or woman and especially no child was safe outside a village; and +wars and raids were multiplied until towns by hundreds were swept from the +earth and great zones lay void of their former teeming population.[58] + +[Footnote 57: Gomer Williams, chap. 6.] + +[Footnote 58: C.B. Wadstrom, _Observations on the Slave Trade_ (London, +1789); Lord Muncaster, _Historical Sketches of the Slave Trade and of its +Effects in Africa_ (London, 1792); Jerome Dowd, _The Negro Races_, vol. 3, +chap. 2 (MS).] + +The slave trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent. +But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting +got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were +quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors +who remained in the African jungle. The only participants who got +unquestionable profit were the English, European and Yankee traders and +manufacturers. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE SUGAR ISLANDS + + +As regards negro slavery the history of the West Indies is inseparable from +that of North America. In them the plantation system originated and reached +its greatest scale, and from them the institution of slavery was extended +to the continent. The industrial system on the islands, and particularly +on those occupied by the British, is accordingly instructive as an +introduction and a parallel to the continental régime. + +The early career of the island of Barbados gives a striking instance of +a farming colony captured by the plantation system. Founded in 1624 by a +group of unprosperous English emigrants, it pursued an even and commonplace +tenor until the Civil War in England sent a crowd of royalist refugees +thither, together with some thousands of Scottish and Irish prisoners +converted into indentured servants. Negro slaves were also imported to work +alongside the redemptioners in the tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigo +crops, and soon proved their superiority in that climate, especially when +yellow fever, to which the Africans are largely immune, decimated the white +population. In 1643, as compared with some five thousand negroes of all +sorts, there were about eighteen thousand white men capable of bearing +arms; and in the little island's area of 166 square miles there were nearly +ten thousand separate landholdings. Then came the introduction of +sugar culture, which brought the beginning of the end of the island's +transformation. A fairly typical plantation in the transition period was +described by a contemporary. Of its five hundred acres about two hundred +were planted in sugar-cane, twenty in tobacco, five in cotton, five in +ginger and seventy in provision crops; several acres were devoted to +pineapples, bananas, oranges and the like; eighty acres were in pasturage, +and one hundred and twenty in woodland. There were a sugar mill, a boiling +house, a curing house, a distillery, the master's residence, laborers' +cabins, and barns and stables. The livestock numbered forty-five oxen, +eight cows, twelve horses and sixteen asses; and the labor force comprised +ninety-eight "Christians," ninety-six negroes and three Indian women +with their children. In general, this writer said, "The slaves and their +posterity, being subject to their masters forever, are kept and preserved +with greater care than the (Christian) servants, who are theirs for but +five years according to the laws of the island.[1] So that for the time +being the servants have the worser lives, for they are put to very hard +labor, ill lodging and their dyet very light." + +[Footnote 1: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] + +As early as 1645 George Downing, then a young Puritan preacher recently +graduated from Harvard College but later a distinguished English diplomat, +wrote to his cousin John Winthrop, Jr., after a voyage in the West Indies: +"If you go to Barbados, you shal see a flourishing Iland, many able men. I +beleive they have bought this year no lesse than a thousand Negroes, and +the more they buie the better they are able to buye, for in a yeare and +halfe they will earne (with God's blessing) as much as they cost."[2] +Ten years later, with bonanza prices prevailing in the sugar market, the +Barbadian planters declared their colony to be "the most envyed of the +world" and estimated the value of its annual crops at a million pounds +sterling.[3] But in the early sixties a severe fall in sugar prices put an +end to the boom period and brought the realization that while sugar was the +rich man's opportunity it was the poor man's ruin. By 1666 emigration to +other colonies had halved the white population; but the slave trade had +increased the negroes to forty thousand, most of whom were employed on the +eight hundred sugar estates.[4] For the rest of the century Barbados held +her place as the leading producer of British sugar and the most esteemed +of the British colonies; but as the decades passed the fertility of her +limited fields became depleted, and her importance gradually fell secondary +to that of the growing Jamaica. + +[Footnote 2: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, series 4, vol. +6, p. 536.] + +[Footnote 3: G.L. Beer, _Origins of the British Colonial System_ (New York, +1908), P. 413.] + +[Footnote 4: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_, part I, vol. 2, pp. 9, +10.] + +The Barbadian estates were generally much smaller than those of Jamaica +came to be. The planters nevertheless not only controlled their community +wholly in their interest but long maintained a unique "planters' committee" +at London to make representations to the English government on behalf of +their class. They pleaded for the colony's freedom of trade, for example, +with no more vigor than they insisted that England should not interfere +with the Barbadian law to prohibit Quakers from admitting negroes to their +meetings. An item significant of their attitude upon race relations is +the following from the journal of the Crown's committee of trade and +plantations, Oct. 8, 1680: "The gentlemen of Barbados attend, ... who +declare that the conversion of their slaves to Christianity would not only +destroy their property but endanger the island, inasmuch as converted +negroes grow more perverse and intractable than others, and hence of less +value for labour or sale. The disproportion of blacks to white being great, +the whites have no greater security than the diversity of the negroes' +languages, which would be destroyed by conversion in that it would be +necessary to teach them all English. The negroes are a sort of people so +averse to learning that they will rather hang themselves or run away than +submit to it." The Lords of Trade were enough impressed by this argument to +resolve that the question be left to the Barbadian government.[5] + +[Footnote 5: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West +Indies_, 1677-1680, p. 611.] + +As illustrating the plantation régime in the island in the period of its +full industrial development, elaborate instructions are extant which were +issued about 1690 to Richard Harwood, manager or overseer of the Drax Hall +and Hope plantations belonging to the Codrington family. These included +directions for planting, fertilizing and cultivating the cane, for the +operation of the wind-driven sugar mill, the boiling and curing houses and +the distillery, and for the care of the live stock; but the main concern +was with the slaves. The number in the gangs was not stated, but the +expectation was expressed that in ordinary years from ten to twenty new +negroes would have to be bought to keep the ranks full, and it was advised +that Coromantees be preferred, since they had been found best for the work +on these estates. Plenty was urged in provision crops with emphasis upon +plantains and cassava,--the latter because of the certainty of its +harvest, the former because of the abundance of their yield in years of no +hurricanes and because the negroes especially delighted in them and +found them particularly wholesome as a dysentery diet. The services of a +physician had been arranged for, but the manager was directed to take great +care of the negroes' health and pay special attention to the sick. The +clothing was not definitely stated as to periods. For food each was +to receive weekly a pound of fish and two quarts of molasses, tobacco +occasionally, salt as needed, palm oil once a year, and home-grown +provisions in abundance. Offenses committed by the slaves were to be +punished immediately, "many of them being of the houmer of avoiding +punishment when threatened: to hang themselves." For drunkenness the stocks +were recommended. As to theft, recognized as especially hard to repress, +the manager was directed to let hunger give no occasion for it.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Original MS. in the Bodleian Library, A. 248, 3. Copy used +through the courtesy of Dr. F.W. Pitman of Yale University.] + +Jamaica, which lies a thousand miles west of Barbados and has twenty-five +times her area, was captured by the English in 1655 when its few hundreds +of Spaniards had developed nothing but cacao and cattle raising. English +settlement began after the Restoration, with Roundhead exiles supplemented +by immigrants from the Lesser Antilles and by buccaneers turned farmers. +Lands were granted on a lavish scale on the south side of the island where +an abundance of savannahs facilitated tillage; but the development of +sugar culture proved slow by reason of the paucity of slaves and the +unfamiliarity of the settlers with the peculiarities of the soil and +climate. With the increase of prosperity, and by the aid of managers +brought from Barbados, sugar plantations gradually came to prevail +all round the coast and in favorable mountain valleys, while smaller +establishments here and there throve more moderately in the production of +cotton, pimento, ginger, provisions and live stock. For many years the +legislature, prodded by occasional slave revolts, tried to stimulate the +increase of whites by requiring the planters to keep a fixed proportion of +indentured servants; but in the early eighteenth century this policy proved +futile, and thereafter the whites numbered barely one-tenth as many as +the negroes. The slaves were reported at 86,546 in 1734; 112,428 in 1744; +166,914 in 1768; and 210,894 in 1787. In addition there were at the last +date some 10,000 negroes legally free, and 1400 maroons or escaped slaves +dwelling permanently in the mountain fastnesses. The number of sugar +plantations was 651 in 1768, and 767 in 1791; and they contained about +three-fifths of all the slaves on the island. Throughout this latter part +of the century the average holding on the sugar estates was about 180 +slaves of all ages.[7] + +[Footnote 7: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_, I, 494, Bryan Edwards, +_History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, book II, appendix.] + +When the final enumeration of slaves in the British possessions was made +in the eighteen-thirties there were no single Jamaica holdings reported as +large as that of 1598 slaves held by James Blair in Guiana; but occasional +items were of a scale ranging from five to eight hundred each, and hundreds +numbered above one hundred each. In many of these instances the same +persons are listed as possessing several holdings, with Sir Edward Hyde +East particularly notable for the large number of his great squads. The +degree of absenteeism is indicated by the frequency of English nobles, +knights and gentlemen among the large proprietors. Thus the Earl of +Balcarres had 474 slaves; the Earl of Harwood 232; the Earl and Countess of +Airlie 59; Earl Talbot and Lord Shelborne jointly 79; Lord Seaford 70; Lord +Hatherton jointly with Francis Downing, John Benbow and the Right Reverend +H. Philpots, Lord Bishop of Exeter, two holdings of 304 and 236 slaves +each; and the three Gladstones, Thomas, William and Robert 468 slaves +jointly.[8] + +[Footnote 8: "Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims," in the British +official _Account: and Papers, 1837-1838_, vol. XLVIII.] + +Such an average scale and such a prevalence of absenteeism never prevailed +in any other Anglo-American plantation community, largely because none of +the other staples required so much manufacturing as sugar did in preparing +the crops for market. As Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793: "the business of +sugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages must +engage deeply.... It requires a capital of no less than thirty thousand +pounds sterling to embark in this employment with a fair prospect of +success." Such an investment, he particularized, would procure and +establish as a going concern a plantation of 300 acres in cane and 100 +acres each in provision crops, forage and woodland, together with the +appropriate buildings and apparatus, and a working force of 80 steers, 60 +mules and 250 slaves, at the current price for these last of £50 sterling +a head.[9] So distinctly were the plantations regarded as capitalistic +ventures that they came to be among the chief speculations of their time +for absentee investors. + +[Footnote 9: Bryan Edwards, _History of the West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] + +When Lord Chesterfield tried in 1767 to buy his son a seat in Parliament he +learned "that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for that +the rich East and West Indians had secured them all at the rate of three +thousand pounds at the least."[10] And an Englishman after traveling in the +French and British Antilles in 1825 wrote: "The French colonists, whether +Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast +no wistful looks toward France.... In our colonies it is quite different; +... every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging place where they +must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgages will let them live +elsewhere. They call England their home though many of them have never +been there.... The French colonist deliberately expatriates himself; the +Englishman never."[11] Absenteeism was throughout a serious detriment. Many +and perhaps most of the Jamaica proprietors were living luxuriously in +England instead of industriously on their estates. One of them, the +talented author "Monk" Lewis, when he visited his own plantation in +1815-1817, near the end of his life, found as much novelty in the doings of +his slaves as if he had been drawing his income from shares in the Banc of +England; but even he, while noting their clamorous good nature was chiefly +impressed by their indolence and perversity.[12] It was left for an invalid +traveling for his health to remark most vividly the human equation: "The +negroes cannot be silent; they talk in spite of themselves. Every passion +acts upon them with strange intensity, their anger is sudden and furious, +their mirth clamorous and excessive, their curiosity audacious, and their +love the sheer demand for gratification of an ardent animal desire. Yet +by their nature they are good-humored in the highest degree, and I know +nothing more delightful than to be met by a group of negro girls and to be +saluted with their kind 'How d'ye massa? how d'ye massa?'"[13] + +[Footnote 10: Lord Chesterfield, _Letters to his Son_ (London, 1774), II, +525.] + +[Footnote 11: H.N. Coleridge, _Six Months in the West Indies_, 4th ed. +(London, 1832), pp. 131, 132.] + +[Footnote 12: Matthew G. Lewis, _Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept +during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica_ (London, 1834).] + +[Footnote 13: H.N. Coleridge, p. 76.] + +On the generality of the plantations the tone of the management was too +much like that in most modern factories. The laborers were considered more +as work-units than as men, women and children. Kindliness and comfort, +cruelty and hardship, were rated at balance-sheet value; births and deaths +were reckoned in profit and loss, and the expense of rearing children was +balanced against the cost of new Africans. These things were true in some +degree in the North American slaveholding communities, but in the West +Indies they excelled. + +In buying new negroes a practical planter having a preference for those of +some particular tribal stock might make sure of getting them only by taking +with him to the slave ships or the "Guinea yards" in the island ports a +slave of the stock wanted and having him interrogate those for sale in +his native language to learn whether they were in fact what the dealers +declared them to be. Shrewdness was even more necessary to circumvent other +tricks of the trade, especially that of fattening up, shaving and oiling +the skins of adult slaves to pass them off as youthful. The ages most +desired in purchasing were between fifteen and twenty-five years. If these +were not to be had well grown children were preferable to the middle-aged, +since they were much less apt to die in the "seasoning," they would learn +English readily, and their service would increase instead of decreasing +after the lapse of the first few years. + +The conversion of new negroes into plantation laborers, a process called +"breaking in," required always a mingling of delicacy and firmness. Some +planters distributed their new purchases among the seasoned households, +thus delegating the task largely to the veteran slaves. Others housed and +tended them separately under the charge of a select staff of nurses and +guardians and with frequent inspection from headquarters. The mortality +rate was generally high under either plan, ranging usually from twenty to +thirty per cent, in the seasoning period of three or four years. The deaths +came from diseases brought from Africa, such as the yaws which was similar +to syphilis; from debilities and maladies acquired on the voyage; from the +change of climate and food; from exposure incurred in running away; from +morbid habits such as dirt-eating; and from accident, manslaughter and +suicide.[14] + +[Footnote 14: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 435; Edwards, _West Indies_, book +4, chap. 5; A Professional Planter, _Rules_, chap. 2; Thomas Roughley, +_Jamaica Planter's Guide_ (London, 1823), pp. 118-120.] + +The seasoned slaves were housed by families in separate huts grouped into +"quarters," and were generally assigned small tracts on the outskirts of +the plantation on which to raise their own provision crops. Allowances of +clothing, dried fish, molasses, rum, salt, etc., were issued them from the +commissary, together with any other provisions needed to supplement their +own produce. The field force of men and women, boys and girls was generally +divided according to strength into three gangs, with special details for +the mill, the coppers and the still when needed; and permanent corps were +assigned to the handicrafts, to domestic service and to various incidental +functions. The larger the plantation, of course, the greater the +opportunity of differentiating tasks and assigning individual slaves to +employments fitted to their special aptitudes. + +The planters put such emphasis upon the regularity and vigor of the routine +that they generally neglected other equally vital things. They ignored the +value of labor-saving devices, most of them even shunning so obviously +desirable an implement as the plough and using the hoe alone in breaking +the land and cultivating the crops. But still more serious was the passive +acquiescence in the depletion of their slaves by excess of deaths over +births. This decrease amounted to a veritable decimation, requiring the +frequent importation of recruits to keep the ranks full. Long estimated +this loss at about two per cent. annually, while Edwards reckoned that in +his day there were surviving in Jamaica little more than one-third as many +negroes as had been imported in the preceding career of the colony.[15] The +staggering mortality rate among the new negroes goes far toward accounting +for this; but even the seasoned groups generally failed to keep up their +numbers. The birth rate was notoriously small; but the chief secret of the +situation appears to have lain in the poor care of the newborn children. A +surgeon of long experience said that a third of the babies died in their +first month, and that few of the imported women bore children; and another +veteran resident said that commonly more than a quarter of the babies died +within the first nine days, of "jaw-fall," and nearly another fourth before +they passed their second year.[16] At least one public-spirited planter +advocated in 1801 the heroic measure of closing the slave trade in order +to raise the price of labor and coerce the planters into saving it both by +improving their apparatus and by diminishing the death rate.[17] But his +fellows would have none of his policy. + +[Footnote 15: Long, III, 432; Edwards, book 4, chap. 2.] + +[Footnote 16: _Abridgement of the evidence taken before a committee of the +whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), pp. 48, 80.] + +[Footnote 17: Clement Caines, _Letters on the Cultivation of the Otaheite +Cane_ (London, 1801), pp. 274-281.] + +While in the other plantation staples the crop was planted and reaped in +a single year, sugar cane had a cycle extending through several years. A +typical field in southside Jamaica would be "holed" or laid off in furrows +between March and June, planted in the height of the rainy season between +July and September, cultivated for fifteen months, and harvested in the +first half of the second year after its planting. Then when the rains +returned new shoots, "rattoons," would sprout from the old roots to yield +a second though diminished harvest in the following spring, and so on for +several years more until the rattoon or "stubble" yield became too small to +be worth while. The period of profitable rattooning ran in some specially +favorable districts as high as fourteen years, but in general a field was +replanted after the fourth crop. In such case the cycles of the several +fields were so arranged on any well managed estate that one-fifth of the +area in cane was replanted each year and four-fifths harvested. + +This coördination of cycles brought it about that oftentimes almost every +sort of work on the plantation was going on simultaneously. Thus on the +Lodge and Grange plantations which were apparently operated as a single +unit, the extant journal of work during the harvest month of May, 1801,[18] +shows a distribution of the total of 314 slaves as follows: ninety of the +"big gang" and fourteen of the "big gang feeble" together with fifty of +the "little gang" were stumping a new clearing, "holing" or laying off a +stubble field for replanting, weeding and filling the gaps in the field of +young first-year or "plant" cane, and heaping the manure in the ox-lot; +ten slaves were cutting, ten tying and ten more hauling the cane from +the fields in harvest; fifteen were in a "top heap" squad whose work was +conjecturally the saving of the green cane tops for forage and fertilizer; +nine were tending the cane mill, seven were in the boiling house, producing +a hogshead and a half of sugar daily, and two were at the two stills making +a puncheon of rum every four days; six watchmen and fence menders, twelve +artisans, eight stockminders, two hunters, four domestics, and two sick +nurses were at their appointed tasks; and eighteen invalids and pregnant +women, four disabled with sores, forty infants and one runaway were doing +no work. There were listed thirty horses, forty mules and a hundred oxen +and other cattle; but no item indicates that a single plow was in use. + +[Footnote 18: Printed by Clement Caines in a table facing p. 246 of his +_Letters_.] + +The cane-mill in the eighteenth century consisted merely of three +iron-sheathed cylinders, two of them set against the third, turned by +wind, water or cattle. The canes, tied into small bundles for greater +compression, were given a double squeezing while passing through the mill. +The juice expressed found its way through a trough into the boiling house +while the flattened stalks, called mill trash or megass in the British +colonies and bagasse in Louisiana, were carried to sheds and left to dry +for later use as fuel under the coppers and stills. + +In the boiling house the cane-juice flowed first into a large receptacle, +the clarifier, where by treatment with lime and moderate heat it was +separated from its grosser impurities. It then passed into the first +or great copper, where evaporation by boiling began and some further +impurities, rising in scum, were taken off. After further evaporation in +smaller coppers the thickened fluid was ladled into a final copper, the +teache, for a last boiling and concentration; and when the product of the +teache was ready for crystallization it was carried away for the curing. In +Louisiana the successive caldrons were called the grande, the propre, the +flambeau and the batterie, the last of these corresponding to the Jamaican +teache. + +The curing house was merely a timber framework with a roof above and a +great shallow sloping vat below. The sugary syrup from the teache was +generally potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, and +allowed to cool with occasional stirrings. Most of the sugar stayed in the +hogsheads, while some of it trickled with the mother liquor, molasses, +through perforations in the bottoms into the vat beneath. When the +hogsheads were full of the crudely cured, moist, and impure "muscovado" +sugar, they were headed up and sent to port. The molasses, the scum, and +the juice of the canes tainted by damage from rats and hurricanes were +carried to vats in the distillery where, with yeast and water added, the +mixture fermented and when distilled yielded rum. + +The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of a +certain degree of pageantry. Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaves +were freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopes +of Mont Pélée: "We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of +cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding +beyond an opening to the west.... Far down we can distinguish a line of +field-hands--the whole _atelier_, as it is called, of a plantation--slowly +descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go. There is a woman to every +two men, a binder (amarreuse): she gathers the canes as they are cut down, +binds them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, +and carries them away on her head;--the men wield their cutlasses so +beautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such +a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has +destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the islands, +with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march +of an army;--first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; +then the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the +_ka_, the drum,--with a paid _crieur_ or _crieuse_ to lead the song;--and +lastly the black Commandeur, for general."[19] + +[Footnote 19: Lafcadio Hearn, _Two Years in the French West Indies_ (New +York, 1890), p. 275.] + +After this bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may be +abundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation, +elaborated expressly for posterity's information. This estate, lying in +St. John's parish on the southern slope of the Jamaica mountain chain, +comprised not only the plantation proper, which had some 560 acres in sugar +cane and smaller fields in food and forage crops, but also Spring Garden, a +nearby cattle ranch, and Mickleton which was presumably a relay station for +the teams hauling the sugar and rum to Port Henderson. The records, which +are available for the years from 1792 to 1796 inclusive, treat the three +properties as one establishment.[20] + +[Footnote 20: These records have been analyzed in U.B. Phillips, "A Jamaica +Slave Plantation," in the _American Historical Review_, XIX, 543-558.] + +The slaves of the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, apparently +all seasoned negroes, of whom 150 were in the main field gang. But this +force was inadequate for the full routine, and in that year "jobbing gangs" +from outside were employed at rates from _2s. 6d_. to _3s_. per head per +day and at a total cost of £1832, reckoned probably in Jamaican currency +which stood at thirty per cent, discount. In order to relieve the need of +this outside labor the management began that year to buy new Africans on a +scale considered reckless by all the island authorities. In March five men +and five women were bought; and in October 25 men, 27 women, 16 boys, 16 +girls and 6 children, all new Congoes; and in the next year 51 males and 30 +females, part Congoes and part Coromantees and nearly all of them eighteen +to twenty years old. Thirty new huts were built; special cooks and nurses +were detailed; and quantities of special foodstuffs were bought--yams, +plantains, flour, fresh and salt fish, and fresh beef heads, tongues, +hearts and bellies; but it is not surprising to find that the next outlay +for equipment was for a large new hospital in 1794, costing £341 for +building its brick walls alone. Yaws became serious, but that was a trifle +as compared with dysentery; and pleurisy, pneumonia, fever and dropsy had +also to be reckoned with. About fifty of the new negroes were quartered +for several years in a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the +routine even for the able-bodied was much lighter than on Worthy Park. + +One of the new negroes died in 1792, and another in the next year. Then in +the spring of 1794 the heavy mortality began. In that year at least 31 of +the newcomers died, nearly all of them from the "bloody flux" (dysentery) +except two who were thought to have committed suicide. By 1795, however, +the epidemic had passed. Of the five deaths of the new negroes that year, +two were attributed to dirt-eating,[21] one to yaws, and two to ulcers, +probably caused by yaws. The three years of the seasoning period were now +ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still alive. The +loss was perhaps less than usual where such large batches were bought; but +it demonstrates the strength of the shock involved in the transplantation +from Africa, even after the severities of the middle passage had been +survived and after the weaklings among the survivors had been culled out at +the ports. The outlay for jobbing gangs on Worthy Park rapidly diminished. + +[Footnote 21: The "fatal habit of eating dirt" is described by Thomas +Roughley in his _Planter's Guide_ (London. 1823) pp. 118-120.] + +The list of slaves at the beginning of 1794 is the only one giving full +data as to ages, colors and health as well as occupations. The ages were of +course in many cases mere approximations. The "great house negroes" head +the list, fourteen in number. They comprised four housekeepers, one of +whom however was but eight years old, three waiting boys, a cook, two +washerwomen, two gardeners and a grass carrier, and included nominally +Quadroon Lizette who after having been hired out for several years to Peter +Douglass, the owner of a jobbing gang, was this year manumitted. + +The overseer's house had its proportionate staff of nine domestics with two +seamstresses added, and it was also headquarters both for the nursing corps +and a group engaged in minor industrial pursuits. The former, with a "black +doctor" named Will Morris at its head, included a midwife, two nurses for +the hospital, four (one of them blind) for the new negroes, two for the +children in the day nursery, and one for the suckling babies of the women +in the gangs. The latter comprised three cooks to the gangs, one of whom +had lost a hand; a groom, three hog tenders, of whom one was ruptured, +another "distempered" and the third a ten-year-old boy, and ten aged idlers +including Quashy Prapra and Abba's Moll to mend pads, Yellow's Cuba and +Peg's Nancy to tend the poultry house, and the rest to gather grass and hog +feed. + +Next were listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, to guard against +depredations of men, cattle and rats and against conflagrations which might +sweep the ripening cane-fields and the buildings. All of these were black +but the mulatto foreman, and only six were described as able-bodied. The +disabilities noted were a bad sore leg, a broken back, lameness, partial +blindness, distemper, weakness, and cocobees which was a malady of the +blood. + +A considerable number of the slaves already mentioned were in such +condition that little work might be expected of them. Those completely laid +off were nine superannuated ranging from seventy to eighty-five years old, +three invalids, and three women relieved of work as by law required for +having reared six children each. + +Among the tradesmen, virtually all the blacks were stated to be fit for +field work, but the five mulattoes and the one quadroon, though mostly +youthful and healthy, were described as not fit for the field. There were +eleven carpenters, eight coopers, four sawyers, three masons and twelve +cattlemen, each squad with a foreman; and there were two ratcatchers whose +work was highly important, for the rats swarmed in incredible numbers and +spoiled the cane if left to work their will. A Jamaican author wrote, for +example, that in five or six months on one plantation "not less than nine +and thirty thousand were caught."[22] + +[Footnote 22: William Beckford, _A Discriptive Account of Jamaica_ (London, +1790), I. 55, 56.] + +In the "weeding gang," in which most of the children from five to eight +years old were kept as much for control as for achievement, there were +twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had +borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were +too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of +these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house, +were manumitted in 1795. + +Fifty-five, all new negroes except Darby the foreman, and including Blossom +the infant daughter of one of the women, comprised the Spring Garden squad. +Nearly all of these were twenty or twenty-one years old. The men included +Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume and +Sheridan; the women Spring, Summer, July, Bashfull, Virtue, Frolic, +Gamesome, Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle and Cowslip. Seventeen of this +distinguished company died within the year. + +The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 64 men from nineteen +to sixty years old and 73 women from nineteen to fifty years, though but +four of the women and nine of the men, including Quashy the "head driver" +or foreman, were past forty years. The gang included a "head home wainman," +a "head road wainman," who appears to have been also the sole slave plowman +on the place, a head muleman, three distillers, a boiler, two sugar +potters, and two "sugar guards" for the wagons carrying the crop to port. +All of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied and black. A +considerable number in it were new negroes, but only seven of the whole +died in this year of heaviest mortality. + +The "second gang," employed in a somewhat lighter routine under Sharper as +foreman, comprised 40 women and 27 men ranging from fifteen to sixty years, +all black. While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, four +were ulcerated, one was "inclined to be bloated," one was "very weak," and +Pheba was "healthy but worthless." + +Finally in the third or "small gang," for yet lighter work under Baddy as +driveress with Old Robin as assistant, there were 68 boys and girls, all +black, mostly between twelve and fifteen years old. The draught animals +comprised about 80 mules and 140 oxen. + +Among the 528 slaves all told--284 males and 244 females--74, equally +divided between the sexes, were fifty years old and upwards. If the new +negroes, virtually all of whom were doubtless in early life, be subtracted +from the gross, it appears that one-fifth of the seasoned stock had reached +the half century, and one-eighth were sixty years old and over. This is a +good showing of longevity. + +About eighty of the seasoned women were within the age limits of +childbearing. The births recorded were on an average of nine for each of +the five years covered, which was hardly half as many as might have been +expected under favorable conditions. Special entry was made in 1795 of the +number of children each woman had borne during her life, the number +of these living at the time this record was made, and the number of +miscarriages each woman had had. The total of births thus recorded was 345; +of children then living 159; of miscarriages 75. Old Quasheba and Betty +Madge had each borne fifteen children, and sixteen other women had borne +from six to eleven each. On the other hand, seventeen women of thirty years +and upwards had had no children and no miscarriages. The childbearing +records of the women past middle age ran higher than those of the younger +ones to a surprising degree. Perhaps conditions on Worthy Park had been +more favorable at an earlier period, when the owner and his family may +possibly have been resident there. The fact that more than half of the +children whom these women had borne were dead at the time of the record +comports with the reputation of the sugar colonies for heavy infant +mortality. With births so infrequent and infant deaths so many it may well +appear that the notorious failure of the island-bred stock to maintain its +numbers was not due to the working of the slaves to death. The poor care +of the young children may be attributed largely to the absence of a white +mistress, an absence characteristic of Jamaica plantations. There appears +to have been no white woman resident on Worthy Park during the time of this +record. In 1795 and perhaps in other years the plantation had a contract +for medical service at the rate of £140 a year. + +"Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great Britain Esquire" was the +absentee owner of Worthy Park. His kinsman Rose Price Esquire who was in +active charge was not salaried but may have received a manager's commission +of six per cent, on gross crop sales as contemplated in the laws of the +colony. In addition there were an overseer at £200, later £300, a year, +four bookkeepers at £50 to £60, a white carpenter at £120, and a white +plowman at £56. The overseer was changed three times during the five years +of the record, and the bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. The +bachelor staff was most probably responsible for the mulatto and quadroon +offspring and was doubtless responsible also for the occasional manumission +of a woman or child. + +Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the "drivers" or gang +foremen. Each of these had for example every year a "doubled milled cloth +colored great coat" costing 11$. 6_d_ and a "fine bound hat with girdle and +buckle" costing 10$. 6_d_.As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quart +of rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, four +boilers, two head cattlemen, two head mulemen, the "stoke-hole boatswain," +and the black doctor, and to the foremen respectively of the sawyers, +coopers, blacksmiths, watchmen, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the +head home wainman, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's field +nurse. These allowances totaled about three hundred gallons yearly. But +a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at +Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were recorded of +"rum used for the negroes on the estate." Upon the birth of each child the +mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver dollar. + +No record of whippings appears to have been kept, nor of any offenses +except absconding. Of the runaways, reports were made to the parish vestry +of those lying out at the end of each quarter. At the beginning of the +record there were no runaways and at the end there were only four; but +during 1794 and 1795 there were eight or nine listed in each report, most +of whom were out for but a few months each, but several for a year or two; +and several furthermore absconded a second or third time after returning. +The runaways were heterogeneous in age and occupation, with more old +negroes among them than might have been expected. Most of them were men; +but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, and +the old pad-mender Abba's Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter. A +few of those recovered were returned through the public agency of the +workhouse. Some of the rest may have come back of their own accord. + +In the summer of 1795, when absconding had for some time been too common, +the recaptured runaways and a few other offenders were put for disgrace and +better surveillance into a special "vagabond gang." This comprised Billy +Scott, who was usually a mason and sugar guard, Oxford who as head cooper +had enjoyed a weekly quart of rum, Cesar a sawyer, and Moll the old +pad-mender, along with three men and two women from the main gangs, and +three half-grown boys. The vagabond gang was so wretchedly assorted for +industrial purposes that it was probably soon disbanded and its members +distributed to their customary tasks. For use in marking slaves a branding +iron was inventoried, but in the way of arms there were merely two muskets, +a fowling piece and twenty-four old guns without locks. Evidently no +turbulence was anticipated. Worthy Park bought nearly all of its hardware, +dry goods, drugs and sundries in London, and its herrings for the negroes +and salt pork and beef for the white staff in Cork. Corn was cultivated +between the rows in some of the cane fields on the plantation, and some +guinea-corn was bought from neighbors. The negroes raised their own yams +and other vegetables, and doubtless pigs and poultry as well; and plantains +were likely to be plentiful. + +Every October cloth was issued at the rate of seven yards of osnaburgs, +three of checks, and three of baize for each adult and proportionately for +children. The first was to be made into coats, trousers and frocks, the +second into shirts and waists, the third into bedclothes. The cutting and +sewing were done in the cabins. A hat and a cap were also issued to each +negro old enough to go into the field, and a clasp-knife to each one above +the age of the third gang. From the large purchases of Scotch rugs recorded +it seems probable that these were issued on other occasions than those of +childbirth. As to shoes, however, the record is silent. + +The Irish provisions cost annually about £300, and the English supplies +about £1000, not including such extra outlays as that of £1355 in 1793 for +new stills, worms, and coppers. Local expenditures were probably reckoned +in currency. Converted into sterling, the salary list amounted to about +£500, and the local outlay for medical services, wharfage, and petty +supplies came to a like amount. Taxes, manager's commissions, and the +depreciation of apparatus must have amounted collectively to £800. The +net death-loss of slaves, not including that from the breaking-in of new +negroes, averaged about two and a quarter per cent.; that of the mules and +oxen ten per cent. When reckoned upon the numbers on hand in 1796 when the +plantation with 470 slaves was operating with very little outside help, +these losses, which must be replaced by new purchases if the scale of +output was to be maintained, amounted to about £900. Thus a total of £4000 +sterling is reached as the average current expense in years when no mishaps +occurred. + +The crops during the years of the record averaged 311 hogsheads of sugar, +sixteen hundredweight each, and 133 puncheons of rum, 110 gallons each. +This was about the common average on the island, of two-thirds as many +hogsheads as there were slaves of all ages on a plantation.[23] If the +prices had been those current in the middle of the eighteenth century these +crops would have yielded the proprietor great profits. But at £15 per +hogshead and £10 per puncheon, the prices generally current in the island +in the seventeen-nineties, the gross return was but about £6000 sterling, +and the net earnings of the establishment accordingly not above £2000. The +investment in slaves, mules and oxen was about £28,000, and that in land, +buildings and equipment according to the island authorities, would reach a +like sum.[24] The net earnings in good years were thus less than four per +cent. on the investment; but the liability to hurricanes, earthquakes, +fires, epidemics and mutinies would bring the safe expectations +considerably lower. A mere pestilence which carried off about sixty mules +and two hundred oxen on Worthy Park in 1793-1794 wiped out more than a +year's earnings. + +[Footnote 23: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 433, 439.] + +[Footnote 24: Edwards, _West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] + +In the twenty years prior to the beginning of the Worthy Park record more +than one-third of all the sugar plantations in Jamaica had gone through +bankruptcy. It was generally agreed that, within the limits of efficient +operation, the larger an estate was, the better its prospect for net +earnings. But though Worthy Park had more than twice the number of slaves +that the average plantation employed, it was barely paying its way. + +In the West Indies as a whole there was a remarkable repetition of +developments and experiences in island after island, similar to that +which occurred in the North American plantation regions, but even more +pronounced. The career of Barbados was followed rapidly by the other Lesser +Antilles under the English and French flags; these were all exceeded by the +greater scale of Jamaica; she in turn yielded the primacy in sugar to Hayti +only to have that French possession, when overwhelmed by its great negro +insurrection, give the paramount place to the Spanish Porto Rico and Cuba. +In each case the opening of a fresh area under imperial encouragement would +promote rapid immigration and vigorous industry on every scale; the land +would be taken up first in relatively small holdings; the prosperity of the +pioneers would prompt a more systematic husbandry and the consolidation of +estates, involving the replacement of the free small proprietors by slave +gangs; but diminishing fertility and intensifying competition would in the +course of years more than offset the improvement of system. Meanwhile more +pioneers, including perhaps some of those whom the planters had bought out +in the original colonies, would found new settlements; and as these in turn +developed, the older colonies would decline and decay in spite of desperate +efforts by their plantation proprietors to hold their own through the +increase of investments and the improvement of routine.[25] + +[Footnote 25: Herman Merivale, _Colonisation and Colonies_ (London, 1841), +PP. 92,93.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE TOBACCO COLONIES + + +The purposes of the Virginia Company of London and of the English public +which gave it sanction were profit for the investors and aggrandizement +for the nation, along with the reduction of pauperism at home and the +conversion of the heathen abroad. For income the original promoters looked +mainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, and +the production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they were +on the alert for unexpected opportunities to be exploited. The following of +the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco +culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At +the outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, +Virginia was launched with varied hopes and vague expectations. The project +was on the knees of the gods, which for a time proved a place of extreme +discomfort and peril. + +The first comers in the spring of 1607, numbering a bare hundred men and +no women, were moved by the spirit of adventure. With a cumbrous and +oppressive government over them, and with no private ownership of land nor +other encouragement for steadygoing thrift, the only chance for personal +gain was through a stroke of discovery. No wonder the loss of time and +strength in futile excursions. No wonder the disheartening reaction in the +malaria-stricken camp of Jamestown. + +A second hundred men arriving early in 1608 found but forty of the first +alive. The combined forces after lading the ships with "gilded dirt" and +cedar logs, were left facing the battle with Indians and disease. The dirt +when it reached London proved valueless, and the cedar, of course, worth +little. The company that summer sent further recruits including two women +and several Poles and Germans to make soap-ashes, glass and pitch--"skilled +workmen from foraine parts which may teach and set ours in the way where we +may set thousands a work in these such like services."[1] At the same time +it instructed the captain of the ship to explore and find either a lump of +gold, the South Sea passage, or some of Raleigh's lost colonists, and it +sent the officials at Jamestown peremptory notice that unless the £2000 +spent on the present supply be met by the proceeds of the ship's return +cargo, the settlers need expect no further aid. The shrewd and redoubtable +Captain John Smith, now president in the colony, opposed the vain +explorings, and sent the council in London a characteristic "rude letter." +The ship, said he, kept nearly all the victuals for its crew, while the +settlers, "the one halfe sicke, the other little better," had as their diet +"a little meale and water, and not sufficient of that." The foreign experts +had been set at their assigned labors; but "it were better to give five +hundred pound a tun for those grosse commodities in Denmarke than send for +them hither till more necessary things be provided. For in over-toyling our +weake and unskilfull bodies to satisfie this desire of present profit we +can scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another.... As yet you +must not looke for any profitable returnes."[2] + +[Footnote 1: Alexander Brown, _The First Republic in America_ (Boston, +1898), p. 68.] + +[Footnote 2: Capt. John Smith, _Works_, Arber ed. (Birmingham, 1884), pp. +442-445. Smith's book, it should be said, is the sole source for this +letter.] + +This unwelcome advice while daunting all mercenary promoters gave spur to +strong-hearted patriots. The prospect of profits was gone; the hope of +an overseas empire survived. The London Company, with a greatly improved +charter, appealed to the public through sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, +and personal canvassing, with such success that subscriptions to its stock +poured in from "lords, knights, gentlemen and others," including the trade +guilds and the town corporations. In lieu of cash dividends the company +promised that after a period of seven years, during which the settlers were +to work on the company's account and any surplus earnings were to be spent +on the colony or funded, a dividend in land would be issued. In this the +settlers were to be embraced as if instead of emigrating each of them had +invested £12 10s. in a share of stock. Several hundred recruits were sent +in 1609, and many more in the following years; but from the successive +governors at Jamestown came continued reports of disease, famine and +prostration, and pleas ever for more men and supplies. The company, bravely +keeping up its race with the death rate, met all demands as best it could. + +To establish a firmer control, Sir Thomas Dale was sent out in 1611 as high +marshal along with Sir Thomas Gates as governor. Both of these were men +of military training, and they carried with them a set of stringent +regulations quite in keeping with their personal proclivities. These rulers +properly regarded their functions as more industrial than political. They +for the first time distributed the colonists into a series of settlements +up and down the river for farming and live-stock tending; they spurred the +willing workers by assigning them three-acre private gardens; and they +mercilessly coerced the laggard. They transformed the colony from a +distraught camp into a group of severely disciplined farms, owned by the +London Company, administered by its officials, and operated partly by its +servants, partly by its tenants who paid rent in the form of labor. That is +to say, Virginia was put upon a schedule of plantation routine, producing +its own food supply and wanting for the beginning of prosperity only a +marketable crop. This was promptly supplied through John Rolfe's experiment +in 1612 in raising tobacco. The English people were then buying annually +some £200,000 worth of that commodity, mainly from the Spanish West Indies, +at prices which might be halved or quartered and yet pay the freight and +yield substantial earnings; and so rapid was the resort to the staple in +Virginia that soon the very market place in Jamestown was planted in it. +The government in fact had to safeguard the food supply by forbidding +anyone to plant tobacco until he had put two acres in grain. + +When the Gates-Dale administration ended, the seven year period from 1609 +was on the point of expiry; but the temptation of earnings from tobacco +persuaded the authorities to delay the land dividend. Samuel Argall, the +new governor, while continuing the stringent discipline, robbed the company +for his own profit; and the news of his misdeeds reaching London in 1618 +discredited the faction in the company which had supported his régime. The +capture of control by the liberal element among the stockholders, led +by Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton, was promptly signalized by +measures for converting Virginia into a commonwealth. A land distribution +was provided on a generous scale, and Sir George Yeardley was dispatched as +governor with instructions to call a representative assembly of the people +to share in the making of laws. The land warrants were issued at the rate +of a hundred acres on each share of stock and a similar amount to each +colonist of the time, to be followed in either case by the grant of a +second hundred acres upon proof that the first had been improved; and fifty +acres additional in reward for the future importation of every laborer. + +While the company continued as before to send colonists on its own account, +notably craftsmen, indigent London children, and young women to become +wives for the bachelor settlers, it now offered special stimulus to its +members to supplement its exertions. To this end it provided that groups +of its stockholders upon organizing themselves into sub-companies or +partnerships might consolidate their several grants into large units called +particular plantations; and it ordered that "such captaines or leaders of +perticulerr plantations that shall goe there to inhabite by vertue of their +graunts and plant themselves, their tenants and servants in Virginia, +shall have liberty till a forme of government be here settled for them, +associatinge unto them divers of the gravest and discreetes of their +companies, to make orders, ordinances and constitutions for the better +orderinge and dyrectinge of their servants and buisines, provided they be +not repugnant to the lawes of England."[3] + +[Footnote 3: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. +(Washington, 1906), I, 303.] + +To embrace this opportunity some fifty grants for particular plantations +were taken out during the remaining life of the London Company. Among them +were Southampton Hundred and Martin's Hundred, to each of which two or +three hundred settlers were sent prior to 1620,[4] and Berkeley Hundred +whose records alone are available. The grant for this last was issued +in February, 1619, to a missionary enthusiast, George Thorpe, and his +partners, whose collective holdings of London Company stock amounted to +thirty-five shares. To them was given and promised land in proportion to +stock and settlers, together with a bonus of 1500 acres in view of their +project for converting the Indians. Their agent in residence was as usual +vested with public authority over the dwellers on the domain, limited +only by the control of the Virginia government in military matters and in +judicial cases on appeal.[5] After delays from bad weather, the initial +expedition set sail in September comprising John Woodleaf as captain and +thirty-four other men of diverse trades bound to service for terms ranging +from three to eight years at varying rates of compensation. Several of +these were designated respectively as officers of the guard, keeper of the +stores, caretaker of arms and implements, usher of the hall, and clerk +of the kitchen. Supplies of provisions and equipment were carried, and +instructions in detail for the building of houses, the fencing of land, +the keeping of watch, and the observances of religion. Next spring the +settlement, which had been planted near the mouth of the Appomattox River, +was joined by Thorpe himself, and in the following autumn by William Tracy +who had entered the partnership and now carried his own family together +with a preacher and some forty servants. Among these were nine women and +the two children of a man who had gone over the year before. As giving +light upon indented servitude in the period it may be noted that many of +those sent to Berkeley Hundred were described as "gentlemen," and that five +of them within the first year besought their masters to send them each +two indented servants for their use and at their expense. Tracy's vessel +however was too small to carry all whom it was desired to send. It was in +fact so crowded with plantation supplies that Tracy wrote on the eve of +sailing: "I have throw out mani things of my own yet is ye midill and upper +extre[m]li pestered so that ouer men will not lie like men and ye mareners +hath not rome to stir God is abel in ye gretest weknes to helpe we will +trust to marsi for he must help be yond hope." Fair winds appear to have +carried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly took +charge of the plantation, displacing Woodleaf whose services had given +dissatisfaction. Beyond this point the records are extremely scant; but +it may be gathered that the plantation was wrecked and most of its +inhabitants, including Thorpe, slain in the great Indian massacre of 1622. +The restoration of the enterprise was contemplated in an after year, but +eventually the land was sold to other persons. + +[Footnote 4: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. +(Washington, 1906), I, 350.] + +[Footnote 5: The records of this enterprise (the Smyth of Nibley papers) +have been printed in the New York Public Library _Bulletin_, III, 160-171, +208-233, 248-258, 276-295.] + +The fate of Berkeley Hundred was at the same time the fate of most others +of the same sort; and the extinction of the London Company in 1624 ended +the granting of patents on that plan. The owners of the few surviving +particular plantations, furthermore, found before long that ownership by +groups of absentees was poorly suited to the needs of the case, and that +the exercise of public jurisdiction was of more trouble than it was worth. +The particular plantation system proved accordingly but an episode, yet it +furnished a transition, which otherwise might not readily have been found, +from Virginia the plantation of the London Company, to Virginia the colony +of private plantations and farms. When settlement expanded afresh after the +Indians were driven away many private estates gradually arose to follow the +industrial routine of those which had been called particular. + +The private plantations were hampered in their development by dearth of +capital and labor and by the extremely low prices of tobacco which began at +the end of the sixteen-twenties as a consequence of overproduction. But +by dint of good management and the diversification of their industry the +exceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried. +Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirty +years standing," whose establishment was at Blunt Point on the lower James, +it was written in 1648: "He hath a fine house and all things answerable to +it; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; he +keeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, hath +eight shoemakers employed in this trade, hath forty negroe servants, brings +them up to trades in his house: he yeerly sowes abundance of wheat, barley, +etc. The wheat he selleth at four shillings the bushell; kills store of +beeves, and sells them to victuall the ships when they come thither; hath +abundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poltery. He +married the daughter of Sir Tho. Hinton, and in a word, keeps a good +house, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia. He is worthy of much +honour."[6] Many other planters were thriving more modestly, most of them +giving nearly all their attention to the one crop. The tobacco output was +of course increasing prodigiously. The export from Virginia in 1619 had +amounted to twenty thousand pounds; that from Virginia and Maryland in 1664 +aggregated fifty thousand hogsheads of about five hundred pounds each.[7] + +[Footnote 6: _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649), reprinted +in Peter Force _Tracts_, vol. II.] + +[Footnote 7: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth +Century_ (New York, 1896), I, 391.] + +The labor problem was almost wholly that of getting and managing bondsmen. +Land in the colony was virtually to be had for the taking; and in general +no freemen arriving in the colony would engage for such wages as employers +could afford to pay. Workers must be imported. Many in England were willing +to come, and more could be persuaded or coerced, if their passage were paid +and employment assured. To this end indentured servitude had already been +inaugurated by the London Company as a modification of the long used system +of apprenticeship. And following that plan, ship captains brought hundreds, +then thousands of laborers a year and sold their indentures to the planters +either directly or through dealers in such merchandize. The courts took +the occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts to +deportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisoners +during the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose the +supply was further swelled by the agency of professional kidnappers. + +The bondage varied as to its terms, with two years apparently the minimum. +The compensation varied also from mere transportation and sustenance to a +payment in advance and a stipulation for outfit in clothing, foodstuffs +and diverse equipment at the end of service. The quality of redemptioners +varied from the very dregs of society to well-to-do apprentice planters; +but the general run was doubtless fairly representative of the English +working classes. Even the convicts under the terrible laws of that century +were far from all being depraved. This labor in all its grades, however, +had serious drawbacks. Its first cost was fairly heavy; it was liable to an +acclimating fever with a high death rate; its term generally expired not +long after its adjustment and training were completed; and no sooner was +its service over than it set up for itself, often in tobacco production, to +compete with its former employers and depress the price of produce. If the +plantation system were to be perpetuated an entirely different labor supply +must be had. + +"About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty +negars." Thus wrote John Rolfe in a report of happenings in 1619;[8] and +thus, after much antiquarian dispute, the matter seems to stand as to the +first bringing of negroes to Virginia. The man-of-war, or more accurately +the privateer, had taken them from a captured slaver, and it seems to have +sold them to the colonial government itself, which in turn sold them to +private settlers. At the beginning of 1625, when a census of the colony was +made,[9] the negroes, then increased to twenty-three in a total population +of 1232 of which about one-half were white servants, were distributed in +seven localities along the James River. In 1630 a second captured cargo was +sold in the colony, and from 1635 onward small lots were imported nearly +every year.[10] Part of these came from England, part from New Netherland +and most of the remainder doubtless from the West Indies. In 1649 Virginia +was reckoned to have some three hundred negroes mingled with its fifteen +thousand whites.[11] After two decades of a somewhat more rapid importation +Governor Berkeley estimated the gross population in 1671 at forty thousand, +including six thousand white servants and two thousand negro slaves.[12] +Ere this there was also a small number of free negroes. But not until +near the end of the century, when the English government had restricted +kidnapping, when the Virginia assembly had forbidden the bringing in of +convicts, and when the direct trade from Guinea had reached considerable +dimensions, did the negroes begin to form the bulk of the Virginia +plantation gangs. + +[Footnote 8: John Smith _Works_, Arber ed., p. 541.] + +[Footnote 9: Tabulated in the _Virginia Magazine_, VII, 364-367.] + +[Footnote 10: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 72-77.] + +[Footnote 11: _A New Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649).] + +[Footnote 12: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, II, 515.] + +Thus for two generations the negroes were few, they were employed alongside +the white servants, and in many cases were members of their masters' +households. They had by far the best opportunity which any of their race +had been given in America to learn the white men's ways and to adjust +the lines of their bondage into as pleasant places as might be. Their +importation was, for the time, on but an experimental scale, and even their +legal status was during the early decades indefinite. + +The first comers were slaves in the hands of their maritime sellers; but +they were not fully slaves in the hands of their Virginian buyers, for +there was neither law nor custom then establishing the institution of +slavery in the colony. The documents of the times point clearly to a vague +tenure. In the county court records prior to 1661 the negroes are called +negro servants or merely negroes--never, it appears, definitely slaves. A +few were expressly described as servants for terms of years, and others +were conceded property rights of a sort incompatible with the institution +of slavery as elaborated in later times. Some of the blacks were in fact +liberated by the courts as having served out the terms fixed either by +their indentures or by the custom of the country. By the middle of the +century several had become free landowners, and at least one of them owned +a negro servant who went to court for his freedom but was denied it because +he could not produce the indenture which he claimed to have possessed. +Nevertheless as early as the sixteen-forties the holders of negroes were +falling into the custom of considering them, and on occasion selling them +along with the issue of the females, as servants for life and perpetuity. +The fact that negroes not bound for a term were coming to be appraised as +high as £30, while the most valuable white redemptioners were worth not +above £15 shows also the tendency toward the crystallization of slavery +before any statutory enactments declared its existence.[13] + +[Footnote 13: The substance of this paragraph is drawn mainly from the +illuminating discussion of J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ +(Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XXXI, no. 3, Baltimore, 1913), pp. +24-35.] + +Until after the middle of the century the laws did not discriminate in any +way between the races. The tax laws were an index of the situation. The +act of 1649, for example, confined the poll tax to male inhabitants of all +sorts above sixteen years old. But the act of 1658 added imported female +negroes, along with Indian female servants; and this rating of negro +women as men for tax purposes was continued thenceforward as a permanent +practice. A special act of 1668, indeed, gave sharp assertion to the policy +of using taxation as a token of race distinction: "Whereas some doubts have +arisen whether negro women set free were still to be accompted tithable +according to a former act, it is declared by this grand assembly that +negro women, though permitted to enjoy their freedome yet ought not in all +respects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and impunities +of the English, and are still liable to the payment of taxes."[14] + +[Footnote 14: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, I, 361, 454; +II, 267.] + +As to slavery itself, the earliest laws giving it mention did not establish +the institution but merely recognized it, first indirectly then directly, +as in existence by force of custom. The initial act of this series, passed +in 1656, promised the Indian tribes that when they sent hostages the +Virginians would not "use them as slaves."[15] The next, an act of +1660, removing impediments to trade by the Dutch and other foreigners, +contemplated specifically their bringing in of "negro slaves."[16] The +third, in the following year, enacted that if any white servants ran away +in company with "any negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by +addition of time," the white fugitives must serve for the time of the +negroes' absence in addition to suffering the usual penalties on their own +score.[17] A negro whose time of service could not be extended must needs +have been a servant for life--in other words a slave. Then in 1662 it was +enacted that "whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any +Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, ... all children born +in this colony shall be bond or free only according to the condition of the +mother."[18] Thus within six years from the first mention of slaves in the +Virginia laws, slavery was definitely recognized and established as the +hereditary legal status of such negroes and mulattoes as might be held +therein. Eighteen years more elapsed before a distinctive police law for +slaves was enacted; but from 1680 onward the laws for their control were as +definite and for the time being virtually as stringent as those which in +the same period were being enacted in Barbados and Jamaica. + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., I, 396.] + +[Footnote 16: _Ibid_., 540.] + +[Footnote 17: T Hening, II, 26.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., 170.] + +In the first decade or two after the London Company's end the plantation +and farm clearings broke the Virginian wilderness only in a narrow line on +either bank of the James River from its mouth to near the present site of +Richmond, and in a small district on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. +Virtually all the settlers were then raising tobacco, all dwelt at the +edge of navigable water, and all were neighbors to the Indians. As further +decades passed the similar shores of the parallel rivers to the northward, +the York, then the Rappahannock and the Potomac, were occupied in a similar +way, though with an increasing predominance of large landholdings. This +broadened the colony and gave it a shape conducive to more easy frontier +defence. It also led the way to an eventual segregation of industrial +pursuits, for the tidewater peninsulas were gradually occupied more or less +completely by the planters; while the farmers of less estate, weaned from +tobacco by its fall in price, tended to move west and south to new areas on +the mainland, where they dwelt in self-sufficing democratic neighborhoods, +and formed incidentally a buffer between the plantations on the seaboard +and the Indians round about. + +With the lapse of years the number of planters increased, partly through +the division of estates, partly through the immigration of propertied +Englishmen, and partly through the rise of exceptional yeomen to the +planting estate. The farmers increased with still greater speed; for the +planters in recruiting their gangs of indented laborers were serving +constantly as immigration agents and as constantly the redemptioners upon +completing their terms were becoming yeomen, marrying and multiplying. +Meanwhile the expansion of Maryland was extending an identical régime of +planters and farmers from the northern bank of the Potomac round the head +of the Chesapeake all the way to the eastern shore settlements of Virginia. + +In Maryland the personal proprietorship of Lord Baltimore and his desire to +found a Catholic haven had no lasting effect upon the industrial and social +development. The geographical conditions were so like those in Virginia and +the adoption of her system so obviously the road to success that no other +plans were long considered. Even the few variations attempted assimilated +themselves more or less promptly to the régime of the older colony. The +career of the manor system is typical. The introduction of that medieval +régime was authorized by the charter for Maryland and was provided for in +turn by the Lord Proprietor's instructions to the governor. Every grant of +one thousand, later two thousand acres, was to be made a manor, with its +appropriate court to settle differences between lord and tenant, to adjudge +civil cases between tenants where the issues involved did not exceed the +value of two pounds sterling, and to have cognizance of misdemeanors +committed on the manor. The fines and other profits were to go to the +manorial lord. + +Many of these grants were made, and in a few instances the manorial courts +duly held their sessions. For St. Clement's Manor, near the mouth of the +Potomac, for example, court records between 1659 and 1672 are extant. John +Ryves, steward of Thomas Gerard the proprietor, presided; Richard +Foster assisted as the elected bailiff; and the classified freeholders, +lease-holders, "essoines" and residents served as the "jury and homages." +Characteristic findings were "that Samuell Harris broke the peace with a +stick"; that John Mansell illegally entertained strangers; that land lines +"are at this present unperfect and very obscure"; that a Cheptico Indian +had stolen a shirt from Edward Turner's house, for which he is duly fined +"if he can be knowne"; "that the lord of the mannor hath not provided a +paire of stocks, pillory and ducking stoole--Ordered that these instruments +of justice be provided by the next court by a general contribution +throughout the manor"; that certain freeholders had failed to appear, "to +do their suit at the lord's court, wherefore they are amerced each man 50l. +of tobacco to the lord"; that Joshua Lee had injured "Jno. Hoskins his +hoggs by setting his doggs on them and tearing their eares and other hurts, +for which he is fined 100l. of tobacco and caske"; "that upon the death of +Mr. Robte Sly there is a reliefe due to the lord and that Mr. Gerard Sly is +his next heire, who hath sworne fealty accordingly,"[19] + +[Footnote 19: John Johnson, _Old Maryland Manors_ (Johns Hopkins University +_Studies_, I, no, 7, Baltimore, 1883), pp. 31-38.] + +St. Clement's was probably almost unique in its perseverance as a true +manor; and it probably discarded its medieval machinery not long after the +end of the existing record. In general, since public land was to be had +virtually free in reward for immigration whether in freedom or service, +most of the so-called manors doubtless procured neither leaseholders nor +essoines nor any other sort of tenants, and those of them which survived as +estates found their salvation in becoming private plantations with servant +and slave gangs tilling their tobacco fields. In short, the Maryland manors +began and ended much as the Virginia particular plantations had done before +them. Maryland on the whole assumed the features of her elder sister. Her +tobacco was of lower grade, partly because of her long delay in providing +public inspection; her people in consequence were generally less +prosperous, her plantations fewer in proportion to her farms, and her +labor supply more largely of convicts and other white servants and +correspondingly less of negroes. But aside from these variations in degree +the developments and tendencies in the one were virtually those of the +other. + +Before the end of the seventeenth century William Fitzhugh of Virginia +wrote that his plantations were being worked by "fine crews" of negroes, +the majority of whom were natives of the colony. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges +owned 108 slaves, John Carter 106, Ralph Wormeley 91, Robert Beverly 42, +Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., 40, and various other proprietors proportionate +numbers.[20] The conquest of the wilderness was wellnigh complete on +tidewater, and the plantation system had reached its full type for +the Chesapeake latitudes. Broad forest stretches divided most of the +plantations from one another and often separated the several fields on +the same estate; but the cause of this was not so much the paucity of +population as the character of the land and the prevalent industry. The +sandy expanses, and the occasional belts of clay likewise, had but a +surface fertility, and the cheapness of land prevented the conservation of +the soil. Hence the fields when rapidly exhausted by successive cropping in +tobacco were as a rule abandoned to broomsedge and scrub timber while new +and still newer grounds were cleared and cropped. Each estate therefore, if +its owner expected it to last a lifetime, must comprise an area in forestry +much larger than that at any one time in tillage. The great reaches of the +bay and the deep tidal rivers, furthermore, afforded such multitudinous +places of landing for ocean-going ships that all efforts to modify the +wholly rural condition of the tobacco colonies by concentrating settlement +were thwarted. It is true that Norfolk and Baltimore grew into consequence +during the eighteenth century; but the one throve mainly on the trade of +landlocked North Carolina, and the other on that of Pennsylvania. Not +until the plantation area had spread well into the piedmont hinterland did +Richmond and her sister towns near the falls on the rivers begin to focus +Virginia and Maryland trade; and even they had little influence upon life +on the tidewater peninsulas. + +[Footnote 20: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 88.] + +The third tobacco-producing colony, North Carolina, was the product of +secondary colonization. Virginia's expansion happened to send some of +her people across the boundary, where upon finding themselves under the +jurisdiction of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina they took pains to keep +that authority upon a strictly nominal basis. The first comers, about 1660, +and most of those who followed, were and continued to be small farmers; but +in the course of decades a considerable number of plantations arose in the +fertile districts about Albemarle Sound. Nearly everywhere in the lowlands, +however, the land was too barren for any distinct prosperity. The +settlements were quite isolated, the communications very poor, and the +social tone mostly that of the backwoods frontier. An Anglican missionary +when describing his own plight there in 1711 discussed the industrial +régime about him: "Men are generally of all trades and women the like +within their spheres, except some who are the posterity of old planters +and have great numbers of slaves who understand most handicraft. Men are +generally carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, coopers, butchers, tanners, +shoemakers, tallow-chandlers, watermen and what not; women, soap-makers, +starch-makers, dyers, etc. He or she that cannot do all these things, or +hath not slaves that can, over and above all the common occupations of both +sexes, will have but a bad time of it; for help is not to be had at any +rate, every one having business enough of his own. This makes tradesmen +turn planters, and these become tradesmen. No society one with another, but +all study to live by their own hands, of their own produce; and what they +can spare goes for foreign goods. Nay, many live on a slender diet to buy +rum, sugar and molasses, with other such like necessaries, which are sold +at such a rate that the planter here is but a slave to raise a provision +for other colonies, and dare not allow himself to partake of his own +creatures, except it be the corn of the country in hominy bread."[21] Some +of the farmers and probably all the planters raised tobacco according to +the methods prevalent in Virginia. Some also made tar for sale from the +abounding pine timber; but with most of the families intercourse with +markets must have been at an irreducible minimum. + +[Footnote 21: Letter of Rev. John Urmstone, July 7, 1711, to the secretary +of the Society for Propagating the Gospel, printed in F.L. Hawks, _History +of North Carolina_ (Fayetteville, N.C., 1857, 1858), II, 215, 216.] + +Tobacco culture, while requiring severe exertion only at a few crises, +involved a long painstaking routine because of the delicacy of the plant +and the difficulty of producing leaf of good quality, whether of the +original varieties, oronoko and sweet-scented, or of the many others later +developed. The seed must be sown in late winter or early spring in a +special bed of deep forest mold dressed with wood ashes; and the fields +must be broken and laid off by shallow furrows into hills three or four +feet apart by the time the seedlings were grown to a finger's length. Then +came the first crisis. During or just after an April, May or June rain the +young plants must be drawn carefully from their beds, distributed in the +fields, and each plant set in its hill. Able-bodied, expert hands could set +them at the rate of thousands a day; and every nerve must be strained for +the task's completion before the ground became dry enough to endanger the +seedlings' lives. Then began a steady repetition of hoeings and plowings, +broken by the rush after a rain to replant the hills whose first plants had +died or grown twisted. Then came also several operations of special tedium. +Each plant at the time of forming its flower bud must be topped at a height +to leave a specified number of leaves growing on the stalk, and each stalk +must have the suckers growing at the base of the leaf-stems pulled off; +and the under side of every leaf must be examined twice at least for the +destruction of the horn-worms. These came each year in two successive +armies or "gluts," the one when the plants were half grown, the other when +they were nearly ready for harvest. When the crop began to turn yellow the +stalks must be cut off close to the ground, and after wilting carried to +a well ventilated tobacco house and there hung speedily for curing. Each +stalk must hang at a proper distance from its neighbor, attached to laths +laid in tiers on the joists. There the crop must stay for some months, +with the windows open in dry weather and closed in wet. Finally came the +striking, sorting and prizing in weather moist enough to make the leaves +pliable. Part of the gang would lower the stalks to the floor, where the +rest working in trios would strip them, the first stripper taking the +culls, the second the bright leaves, the third the remaining ones of dull +color. Each would bind his takings into "hands" of about a quarter of a +pound each and throw them into assorted piles. In the packing or "prizing" +a barefoot man inside the hogshead would lay the bundles in courses, +tramping them cautiously but heavily. Then a second hogshead, without a +bottom, would be set atop the first and likewise filled, and then perhaps +a third, when the whole stack would be put under blocks and levers +compressing the contents into the one hogshead at the bottom, which when +headed up was ready for market. Oftentimes a crop was not cured enough for +prizing until the next crop had been planted. Meanwhile the spare time of +the gang was employed in clearing new fields, tending the subsidiary crops, +mending fences, and performing many other incidental tasks. With some +exaggeration an essayist wrote, "The whole circle of the year is one +scene of bustle and toil, in which tobacco claims a constant and chief +share."[22] + +[Footnote 22: C.W. Gooch, "Prize Essay on Agriculture in Virginia," in the +_Lynchburg Virginian_, July 14, 1833. More detailed is W.W. Bowie, "Prize +Essay on the Cultivation and Management of Tobacco," in the U.S. Patent +Office _Report_, 1849-1850, pp. 318-324. E.R. Billings, _Tobacco_ +(Hartford, 1875) is a good general treatise.] + +The general scale of slaveholdings in the tobacco districts cannot +be determined prior to the close of the American Revolution; but the +statistics then available may be taken as fairly representative for the +eighteenth century at large. A state census taken in certain Virginia +counties in 1782-1783[23] permits the following analysis for eight of them +selected for their large proportions of slaves. These counties, Amelia, +Hanover, Lancaster, Middlesex, New Kent, Richmond, Surry and Warwick, are +scattered through the Tidewater and the lower Piedmont. For each one of +their citizens, fifteen altogether, who held upwards of one hundred slaves, +there were approximately three who had from 50 to 99; seven with from 30 to +49; thirteen with from 20 to 29; forty with from 10 to 19; forty with from +5 to 9; seventy with from 1 to 4; and sixty who had none. In the three +chief plantation counties of Maryland, viz. Ann Arundel, Charles, and +Prince George, the ratios among the slaveholdings of the several scales, +according to the United States census of 1790, were almost identical +with those just noted in the selected Virginia counties, but the +non-slaveholders were nearly twice as numerous in proportion. In all these +Virginia and Maryland counties the average holding ranged between 8.5 +and 13 slaves. In the other districts in both commonwealths, where the +plantation system was not so dominant, the average slaveholding was +smaller, of course, and the non-slaveholders more abounding. + +[Footnote 23: Printed in lieu of the missing returns of the first U.S. +census, in _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: +Virginia_ (Washington, 1908).] + +The largest slaveholding in Maryland returned in the census of 1790 was +that of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, comprising 316 slaves. Among the +largest reported in Virginia in 1782-1783 were those of John Tabb, Amelia +County, 257; William Allen, Sussex County, 241; George Chewning, 224, and +Thomas Nelson, 208, in Hanover County; Wilson N. Gary, Fluvanna County, +200; and George Washington, Fairfax County, 188. Since the great planters +occasionally owned several scattered plantations it may be that the +censuses reported some of the slaves under the names of the overseers +rather than under those of the owners; but that such instances were +probably few is indicated by the fact that the holdings of Chewning and +Nelson above noted were each listed by the census takers in several +parcels, with the names of owners and overseers both given. + +The great properties were usually divided, even where the lands lay in +single tracts, into several plantations for more convenient operation, each +under a separate overseer or in some cases under a slave foreman. If the +working squads of even the major proprietors were of but moderate scale, +those in the multitude of minor holdings were of course lesser still. On +the whole, indeed, slave industry was organized in smaller units by far +than most writers, whether of romance or history, would have us believe. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE RICE COAST + + +The impulse for the formal colonization of Carolina came from Barbados, +which by the time of the Restoration was both overcrowded and torn with +dissension. Sir John Colleton, one of the leading planters in that little +island, proposed to several of his powerful Cavalier friends in England +that they join him in applying for a proprietary charter to the vacant +region between Virginia and Florida, with a view of attracting Barbadians +and any others who might come. In 1663 accordingly the "Merry Monarch" +issued the desired charter to the eight applicants as Lords Proprietors. +They were the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, Earl Craven, Lord +Ashley (afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury), Lord Berkeley, Sir George +Carteret, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir John Colleton. Most of these had no +acquaintance with America, and none of them had knowledge of Carolina or +purpose of going thither. They expected that the mere throwing open of the +region under their distinguished patronage would bring settlers in a rush; +and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offering +lands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popular +self-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlement +at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedingly +barren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile in +the more southerly region nothing was done beyond exploring the shore. + +Finding their passive policy of no avail, the Lords Proprietors bestirred +themselves in 1669 to the extent of contributing several hundred pounds +each toward planting a colony on their southward coast. At the same time +they adopted the "fundamental constitutions" which John Locke had framed +for the province. These contemplated land grants in huge parcels to a +provincial nobility, and a cumbrous oligarchical government with a minimum +participation of popular representatives. The grandiloquent feudalism of +the scheme appealed so strongly to the aristocratic Lords Proprietors +that in spite of their usual acumen in politics they were blinded to its +conflicts with their charter and to its utter top-heaviness. They rewarded +Locke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with it +a grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to the +fundamental constitutions, notwithstanding repeated rejections of them by +the colonists. + +The fund of 1669 was used in planting what proved a permanent settlement of +English and Barbadians on the shores of Charleston Harbor. Thereafter the +Lords Proprietors relapsed into passiveness, commissioning a new governor +now and then and occasionally scolding the colonists for disobedience. The +progress of settlement was allowed to take what course it might. + +The fundamental constitutions recognized the institution of negro slavery, +and some of the first Barbadians may have carried slaves with them +to Carolina. But in the early decades Indian trading, lumbering and +miscellaneous farming were the only means of livelihood, none of which gave +distinct occasion for employing negroes. The inhabitants, furthermore, had +no surplus income with which to buy slaves. The recruits who continued to +come from the West Indies doubtless brought some blacks for their service; +but the Huguenot exiles from France, who comprised the chief other +streamlet of immigration, had no slaves and little money. Most of the +people were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows. The Huguenots +in particular, settling mainly in the interior on the Cooper and Santee +Rivers, labored with extraordinary diligence and overcame the severest +handicaps. That many of the settlers whether from France or the West Indies +were of talented and sturdy stock is witnessed by the mention of the family +names of Legaré, Laurens, Marion and Ravenel among the Huguenots, Drayton, +Elliot, Gibbes and Middleton among the Barbadians, Lowndes and Rawlins +from St. Christopher's, and Pinckney from Jamaica. Some of the people were +sluggards, of course, but the rest, heterogeneous as they were, were living +and laboring as best they might, trying such new projects as they could, +building a free government in spite of the Lords Proprietors, and awaiting +the discovery of some staple resource from which prosperity might be won. + +Among the crops tried was rice, introduced from Madagascar by Landgrave +Thomas Smith about 1694, which after some preliminary failures proved so +great a success that from about the end of the seventeenth century its +production became the absorbing concern. Now slaves began to be imported +rapidly. An official account of the colony in 1708[1] reckoned the +population at about 3500 whites, of whom 120 were indentured servants, 4100 +negro slaves, and 1400 Indians captured in recent wars and held for the +time being in a sort of slavery. Within the preceding five years, while the +whites had been diminished by an epidemic, the negroes had increased by +about 1,100. The negroes were governed under laws modeled quite closely +upon the slave code of Barbados, with the striking exception that in this +period of danger from Spanish invasion most of the slave men were required +by law to be trained in the use of arms and listed as an auxiliary militia. + +[Footnote 1: Text printed in Edward McCrady, _South Carolina under the +Proprietary Government_ (New York, 1897). pp. 477-481.] + +During the rest of the colonial period the production of rice advanced at +an accelerating rate and the slave population increased in proportion, +while the whites multiplied somewhat more slowly. Thus in 1724 the whites +were estimated at 14,000, the slaves at 32,000, and the rice export was +about 4000 tons; in 1749 the whites were said to be nearly 25,000, the +slaves at least 39,000, and the rice export some 14,000 tons, valued at +nearly £100,000 sterling;[2] and in 1765 the whites were about 40,000, the +slaves about 90,000, and the rice export about 32,000 tons, worth some +£225,000.[3] Meanwhile the rule of the Lords Proprietors had been replaced +for the better by that of the crown, with South Carolina politically +separated from her northern sister; and indigo had been introduced as a +supplementary staple. The Charleston district was for several decades +perhaps the most prosperous area on the continent. + +[Footnote 2: Governor Glen, in B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of +South Carolina_ (New York, 1836), II, 218, 234, 266.] + +[Footnote 3: McCrady, _South Carolina under the Royal Government_ (New +York, 1899), pp. 389, 390, 807.] + +While rice culture did not positively require inundation, it was +facilitated by the periodical flooding of the fields, a practice which was +introduced into the colony about 1724. The best lands for this purpose were +level bottoms with a readily controllable water supply adjacent. During +most of the colonial period the main recourse was to the inland swamps, +which could be flooded only from reservoirs of impounded rain or brooks. +The frequent shortage of water in this régime made the flooding irregular +and necessitated many hoeings of the crop. Furthermore, the dearth of +watersheds within reach of the great cypress swamps on the river borders +hampered the use of these which were the most fertile lands in the colony. +Beginning about 1783 there was accordingly a general replacement of the +reservoir system by the new one of tide-flowing.[4] For this method tracts +were chosen on the flood-plains of streams whose water was fresh but whose +height was controlled by the tide. The land lying between the levels of +high and low tide was cleared, banked along the river front and on the +sides, elaborately ditched for drainage, and equipped with "trunks" or +sluices piercing the front embankment. On a frame above either end of each +trunk a door was hung on a horizontal pivot and provided with a ratchet. +When the outer door was raised above the mouth of the trunk and the inner +door was lowered, the water in the stream at high tide would sluice through +and flood the field, whereas at low tide the water pressure from the land +side would shut the door and keep the flood in. But when the elevation of +the doors was reversed the tide would be kept out and at low tide any water +collected in the ditches from rain or seepage was automatically drained +into the river. Occasional cross embankments divided the fields for greater +convenience of control. The tide-flow system had its own limitations and +handicaps. Many of the available tracts were so narrow that the cost of +embankment was very high in proportion to the area secured; and hurricanes +from oceanward sometimes raised the streams until they over-topped the +banks and broke them. If these invading waters were briny the standing crop +would be killed and the soil perhaps made useless for several years until +fresh water had leached out the salt. At many places, in fact, the water +for the routine flowing of the crop had to be inspected and the time +awaited when the stream was not brackish. + +[Footnote 4: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1809), +II, 201-206.] + +Economy of operation required cultivation in fairly large units. Governor +Glen wrote about 1760, "They reckon thirty slaves a proper number for a +rice plantation, and to be tended by one overseer."[5] Upon the resort to +tide-flowing the scale began to increase. For example, Sir James Wright, +governor of Georgia, had in 1771 eleven plantations on the Savannah, +Ogeechee and Canoochee Rivers, employing from 33 to 72 slaves each, +the great majority of whom were working hands.[6] At the middle of the +nineteenth century the single plantation of Governor Aiken on Jehossee +Island, South Carolina, of which more will be said in another chapter, had +some seven hundred slaves of all ages. + +[Footnote 5: Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, 202.] + +[Footnote 6: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, p. 445.] + +In spite of many variations in the details of cultivation, the tide-flow +system led to a fairly general standard of routine. After perhaps a +preliminary breaking of the soil in the preceding fall, operations began in +the early spring with smoothing the fields and trenching them with narrow +hoes into shallow drills about three inches wide at the bottom and twelve +or fourteen inches apart. In these between March and May the seed rice was +carefully strewn and the water at once let on for the "sprout flow." About +a week later the land was drained and kept so until the plants appeared +plentifully above ground. Then a week of "point flow" was followed by a +fortnight of dry culture in which the spaces between the rows were lightly +hoed and the weeds amidst the rice pulled up. Then came the "long flow" +for two or three weeks, followed by more vigorous hoeing, and finally +the "lay-by flow" extending for two or three months until the crop, then +standing shoulder high and thick with bending heads, was ready for harvest. +The flowings served a triple purpose in checking the weeds and grass, +stimulating the rice, and saving the delicate stalks from breakage and +matting by storms. + +A curious item in the routine just before the grain was ripe was the +guarding of the crop from destruction by rice birds. These bobolinks timed +their southward migration so as to descend upon the fields in myriads when +the grain was "in the milk." At that stage the birds, clinging to the +stalks, could squeeze the substance from within each husk by pressure of +the beak. Negroes armed with guns were stationed about the fields with +instructions to fire whenever a drove of the birds alighted nearby. This +fusillade checked but could not wholly prevent the bobolink ravages. To +keep the gunners from shattering the crop itself they were generally given +charges of powder only; but sufficient shot was issued to enable the guards +to kill enough birds for the daily consumption of the plantation. When +dressed and broiled they were such fat and toothsome morsels that in their +season other sorts of meat were little used. + +For the rice harvest, beginning early in September, as soon as a field was +drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting +a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to +sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day's +drying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief +curing. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed +the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. +In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for +threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the +husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice +flour" and broken grain, and barreled for market.[7] + +[Footnote 7: The best descriptions of the rice industry are Edmund Ruffin, +_Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ (Columbia, S.C. 1843); and R.F.W. +Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ (Charleston, 1854), which latter is +printed also in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615.] + +The ditches and pools in and about the fields of course bred swarms of +mosquitoes which carried malaria to all people subject. Most of the whites +were afflicted by that disease in the warmer half of the year, but the +Africans were generally immune. Negro labor was therefore at such a premium +that whites were virtually never employed on the plantations except as +overseers and occasionally as artisans. In colonial times the planters, +except the few quite wealthy ones who had town houses in Charleston, lived +on their places the year round; but at the close of the eighteenth century +they began to resort in summer to "pine land" villages within an hour or +two's riding distance from their plantations. In any case the intercourse +between the whites and blacks was notably less than in the tobacco region, +and the progress of the negroes in civilization correspondingly +slighter. The plantations were less of homesteads and more of business +establishments; the race relations, while often cordial, were seldom +intimate. + +The introduction of indigo culture was achieved by one of America's +greatest women, Eliza Lucas, afterward the wife of Charles Pinckney +(chief-justice of the province) and mother of the two patriot statesmen +Thomas and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Her father, the governor of the +British island of Antigua, had been prompted by his wife's ill health +to settle his family in South Carolina, where the three plantations he +acquired near Charleston were for several years under his daughter's +management. This girl while attending her father's business found time to +keep up her music and her social activities, to teach a class of young +negroes to read, and to carry on various undertakings in economic botany. +In 1741 her experiments with cotton, guinea-corn and ginger were defeated +by frost, and alfalfa proved unsuited to her soil; but in spite of two +preliminary failures that year she raised some indigo plants with success. +Next year her father sent a West Indian expert named Cromwell to manage her +indigo crop and prepare its commercial product. But Cromwell, in fear of +injuring the prosperity of his own community, purposely mishandled the +manufacturing. With the aid of a neighbor, nevertheless, Eliza not only +detected Cromwell's treachery but in the next year worked out the true +process. She and her father now distributed indigo seed to a number of +planters; and from 1744 the crop began to reach the rank of a staple.[8] +The arrival of Carolina indigo at London was welcomed so warmly that in +1748 Parliament established a bounty of sixpence a pound on indigo produced +in the British dominions. The Carolina output remained of mediocre quality +until in 1756 Moses Lindo, after a career in the indigo trade in London, +emigrated to Charleston and began to teach the planters to distinguish the +grades and manufacture the best.[9] At excellent prices, ranging generally +from four to six shillings a pound, the indigo crop during the rest of the +colonial period, reaching a maximum output of somewhat more than a million +pounds from some twenty thousand acres in the crop, yielded the community +about half as much gross income as did its rice. The net earnings of the +planters were increased in a still greater proportion than this, for the +work-seasons in the two crops could be so dovetailed that a single gang +might cultivate both staples. + +[Footnote 8: _Journal and Letters of Eliza Lucas_ (Wormesloe, Ga., 1850); +Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, _Eliza Pinckney_ (New York, 1896); _Plantation and +Frontier_, I, 265, 266.] + +[Footnote 9: B.A. Elzas, _The Jews of South Carolina_ (Philadelphia, 1905), +chap. 3.] + +Indigo grew best in the light, dry soil so common on the coastal plain. +From seed sown in the early spring the plant would reach its full growth, +from three to six feet high, and begin to bloom in June or early July. At +that stage the plants were cut off near the ground and laid under water in +a shallow vat for a fermentation which in the course of some twelve hours +took the dye-stuff out of the leaves. The solution then drawn into another +vat was vigorously beaten with paddles for several hours to renew and +complete the foaming fermentation. Samples were taken at frequent intervals +during the latter part of this process, and so soon as a blue tinge became +apparent lime water, in carefully determined proportions, was gently +stirred in to stop all further action and precipitate the "blueing." When +this had settled, the water was drawn off, the paste on the floor was +collected, drained in bags, kneaded, pressed, cut into cubes, dried in the +shade and packed for market.[10] A second crop usually sprang from the +roots of the first and was harvested in August or September. + +[Footnote 10: B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, +532-535.] + +Indigo production was troublesome and uncertain of results. Not only did +the furrows have to be carefully weeded and the caterpillars kept off the +plants, but when the stalks were being cut and carried to the vats great +pains were necessary to keep the bluish bloom on the leaves from being +rubbed off and lost, and the fermentation required precise control for +the sake of quality in the product.[11] The production of the blue staple +virtually ended with the colonial period. The War of Independence not only +cut off the market for the time being but ended permanently, of course, the +receipt of the British bounty. When peace returned the culture was revived +in a struggling way; but its vexations and vicissitudes made it promptly +give place to sea-island cotton.[12] + +[Footnote 11: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, +1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), pp. 187-189.] + +[Footnote 12: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_, II, 212; D.D. +Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 132.] + +The plantation of the rice-coast type had clearly shown its tendency to +spread into all the suitable areas from Winyah Bay to St. John's River, +when its southward progress was halted for a time by the erection of +the peculiar province of Georgia. The launching of this colony was the +beginning of modern philanthropy. Upon procuring a charter in 1732 +constituting them trustees of Georgia, James Oglethorpe and his colleagues +began to raise funds from private donations and parliamentary grants for +use in colonizing English debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates. The +beneficiaries, chosen because of their indigence, were transported at the +expense of the trust and given fifty-acre homesteads with equipment and +supplies. Instruction in agriculture was provided for them at Savannah, and +various regulations were established for making them soberly industrious on +a small-farming basis. The land could not be alienated, and neither slaves +nor rum could be imported. Persons immigrating at their own expense might +procure larger land grants, but no one could own more than five hundred +acres; and all settlers must plant specified numbers of grape vines and +mulberry trees with a view to establishing wine and silk as the staples of +the colony. + +In the first few years, while Oglethorpe was in personal charge at Savannah +and supplies from England were abundant, there was an appearance of +success, which soon proved illusory. Not only were the conditions unfit +for silk and wine, but the fertile tracts were malarial and the healthy +districts barren, and every industry suited to the climate had to meet the +competition of the South Carolinians with their slave labor and plantation +system. The ne'er-do-weels from England proved ne'er-do-weels again. They +complained of the soil, the climate, and the paternalistic regulations +under which they lived. They protested against the requirements of silk and +wine culture; they begged for the removal of all peculiar restrictions and +for the institution of self-government They bombarded the trustees with +petitions saying "rum punch is very wholesome in this climate," asking +fee-simple title to their lands, and demanding most vigorously the right of +importing slaves. But the trustees were deaf to complaints. They maintained +that the one thing lacking for prosperity from silk and wine was +perseverance, that the restriction on land tenure was necessary on the one +hand to keep an arms-bearing population in the colony and on the other +hand to prevent the settlers from contracting debts by mortgage, that the +prohibitions of rum and slaves were essential safeguards of sobriety and +industry, and that discontent under the benevolent care of the trustees +evidenced a perversity on the part of the complainants which would +disqualify them for self-government. Affairs thus reached an impasse. +Contributions stopped; Parliament gave merely enough money for routine +expenses; the trustees lost their zeal but not their crotchets; the colony +went from bad to worse. Out of perhaps five thousand souls in Georgia about +1737 so many departed to South Carolina and other free settlements that in +1741 there were barely more than five hundred left. This extreme depression +at length forced even the staunchest of the trustees to relax. First the +exclusion of rum was repealed, then the introduction of slaves on lease +was winked at, then in 1749 and 1750 the overt importation of slaves was +authorized and all restrictions on land tenure were canceled. Finally the +stoppage of the parliamentary subvention in 1751 forced the trustees in the +following year to resign their charter. + +Slaveholders had already crossed the Savannah River in appreciable +numbers to erect plantations on favorable tracts. The lapse of a few +more transition years brought Georgia to the status on the one hand of a +self-governing royal province and on the other of a plantation community +prospering, modestly for the time being, in the production of rice and +indigo. Her peculiarities under the trustee régime were gone but not +forgotten. The rigidity of paternalism, well meant though it had been, was +a lesson against future submission to outward control in any form; and +their failure as a peasantry in competition with planters across the river +persuaded the Georgians and their neighbors that slave labor was essential +for prosperity. + +It is curious, by the way, that the tender-hearted, philanthropic +Oglethorpe at the very time of his founding Georgia was the manager of the +great slave-trading corporation, the Royal African Company. The conflict of +the two functions cannot be relieved except by one of the greatest of all +reconciling considerations, the spirit of the time. Whatever else the +radicals of that period might wish to reform or abolish, the slave trade +was held either as a matter of course or as a positive benefit to the +people who constituted its merchandise. + +The narrow limits of the rice and indigo régime in the two colonies +made the plantation system the more dominant in its own area. Detailed +statistics are lacking until the first federal census, when indigo was +rapidly giving place to sea-island cotton; but the requirements of the new +staple differed so little from those of the old that the plantations near +the end of the century were without doubt on much the same scale as before +the Revolution. In the four South Carolina parishes of St. Andrew's, St. +John's Colleton, St. Paul's and St. Stephen's the census-takers of 1790 +found 393 slaveholders with an average of 33.7 slaves each, as compared +with a total of 28 non-slaveholding families. In these and seven more +parishes, comprising together the rural portion of the area known +politically as the Charleston District, there were among the 1643 heads of +families 1318 slaveholders owning 42,949 slaves. William Blake had 695; +Ralph Izard had 594 distributed on eight plantations in three parishes, +and ten more at his Charleston house; Nathaniel Heyward had 420 on his +plantations and 13 in Charleston; William Washington had 380 in the country +and 13 in town; and three members of the Horry family had 340, 229 and 222 +respectively in a single neighborhood. Altogether there were 79 separate +parcels of a hundred slaves or more, 156 of between fifty and ninety-nine, +318 of between twenty and forty-nine, 251 of between ten and nineteen, 206 +of from five to nine, and 209 of from two to four, 96 of one slave each, +and 3 whose returns in the slave column are illegible.[13] The statistics +of the Georgetown and Beaufort districts, which comprised the rest of the +South Carolina coast, show a like analysis except for a somewhat larger +proportion of non-slaveholders and very small slaveholders, who were, +of course, located mostly in the towns and on the sandy stretches of +pine-barren. The detailed returns for Georgia in that census have been +lost. Were those for her coastal area available they would surely show a +similar tendency toward slaveholding concentration. + +[Footnote 13: _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States, +1790: State of South Carolina_ (Washington, 1908); _A Century of Population +Growth_ (Washington, 1909), pp. 190, 191, 197, 198.] + +Avenues of transportation abundantly penetrated the whole district in the +form of rivers, inlets and meandering tidal creeks. Navigation on them was +so easy that watermen to the manner born could float rafts or barges for +scores of miles in any desired direction, without either sails or oars, by +catching the strong ebb and flow of the tides at the proper points. But +unlike the Chesapeake estuaries, the waterways of the rice coast were +generally too shallow for ocean-going vessels. This caused a notable +growth of seaports on the available harbors. Of those in South Carolina, +Charleston stood alone in the first rank, flanked by Georgetown and +Beaufort. In the lesser province of Georgia, Savannah found supplement in +Darien and Sunbury. The two leading ports were also the seats of government +in their respective colonies. Charleston was in fact so complete a focus +of commerce, politics and society that South Carolina was in a sense a +city-state. + +The towns were in sentiment and interest virtually a part of the plantation +community. The merchants were plantation factors; the lawyers and doctors +had country patrons; the wealthiest planters were town residents from time +to time; and many prospering townsmen looked toward plantation retirement, +carrying as it did in some degree the badge of gentility, as the crown of +their careers. Furthermore the urban negroes, more numerous proportionately +than anywhere else on the continent, kept the citizens as keenly alive +as the planters to the intricacies of racial adjustments. For example +Charleston, which in 1790 had 8089 whites, 7864 slaves and 586 free +negroes, felt as great anxiety as did the rural parishes at rumors of +slave conspiracies, and on the other hand she had a like interest in the +improvement of negro efficiency, morality and good will. + +The rice coast community was a small one. Even as measured in its number +of slaves it bulked only one-fourth as large, say in 1790, as the group of +tobacco commonwealths or the single sugar island of Jamaica. Nevertheless +it was a community to be reckoned with. Its people were awake to their +peculiar conditions and problems; it had plenty of talented citizens to +formulate policies; and it had excellent machinery for uniting public +opinion. In colonial times, plying its trade mainly with England and the +West Indies, it was in little touch with its continental neighbors, and it +developed a sense of separateness. As part of a loosely administered +empire its people were content in prosperity and self-government. But in a +consolidated nation of diverse and conflicting interests it would be likely +on occasion to assert its own will and resist unitedly anything savoring of +coercion. In a double sense it was of the _southern_ South. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE NORTHERN COLONIES + + +Had any American colony been kept wholly out of touch with both Indians +and negroes, the history of slavery therein would quite surely have been +a blank. But this was the case nowhere. A certain number of Indians were +enslaved in nearly every settlement as a means of disposing of captives +taken in war; and negro slaves were imported into every prosperous colony +as a mere incident of its prosperity. Among the Quakers the extent of +slaveholding was kept small partly, or perhaps mainly, by scruples of +conscience; in virtually all other cases the scale was determined by +industrial conditions. Here the plantation system flourished and slaves +were many; there the climate prevented profits from crude gang labor in +farming, and slaves were few. + +The nature and causes of the contrast will appear from comparing the +careers of two Puritan colonies launched at the same time but separated by +some thirty degrees of north latitude. The one was planted on the island +of Old Providence lying off the coast of Nicaragua, the other was on the +shores of Massachusetts bay. The founders of Old Providence were a score of +Puritan dignitaries, including the Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye and Sele, and +John Pym, incorporated into the Westminster Company in 1630 with a +combined purpose of erecting a Puritanic haven and gaining profits for +the investors. The soil of the island was known to be fertile, the nearby +Spanish Main would yield booty to privateers, and a Puritan government +would maintain orthodoxy. These enticements were laid before John Winthrop +and his companions; and when they proved steadfast in the choice of New +England, several hundred others of their general sort embraced the tropical +Providence alternative. Equipped as it was with all the apparatus of a "New +England Canaan," the founders anticipated a far greater career than seemed +likely of achievement in Massachusetts. Prosperity came at once in the form +of good crops and rich prizes taken at sea. Some of the latter contained +cargoes of negro slaves, as was of course expected, who were distributed +among the settlers to aid in raising tobacco; and when a certain Samuel +Rishworth undertook to spread ideas of liberty among them he was officially +admonished that religion had no concern with negro slavery and that +his indiscretions must stop. Slaves were imported so rapidly that the +outnumbered whites became apprehensive of rebellion. In the hope of +promoting the importation of white labor, so greatly preferable from the +public point of view, heavy impositions were laid upon the employment +of negroes, but with no avail. The apprehension of evils was promptly +justified. A number of the blacks escaped to the mountains where they dwelt +as maroons; and in 1638 a concerted uprising proved so formidable that the +suppression of it strained every resource of the government and the white +inhabitants. Three years afterward the weakened settlement was captured +by a Spanish fleet; and this was the end of the one Puritan colony in the +tropics.[1] + +[Footnote 1: A.P. Newton, _The Colonizing Activities of the English +Puritans_ (New Haven, 1914).] + +Massachusetts was likewise inaugurated by a corporation of Puritans, which +at the outset endorsed the institution of unfree labor, in a sense, by +sending over from England 180 indentured servants to labor on the company's +account. A food shortage soon made it clear that in the company's service +they could not earn their keep; and in 1630 the survivors of them were set +free.[2] Whether freedom brought them bread or whether they died of famine, +the records fail to tell. At any rate the loss of the investment in their +transportation, and the chagrin of the officials, materially hastened the +conversion of the colony from a company enterprise into an industrial +democracy. The use of unfree labor nevertheless continued on a private +basis and on a relatively small scale. Until 1642 the tide of Puritan +immigration continued, some of the newcomers of good estate bringing +servants in their train. The authorities not only countenanced this but +forbade the freeing of servants before the ends of their terms, and in at +least one instance the court fined a citizen for such a manumission.[3] +Meanwhile the war against the Pequots in 1637 yielded a number of +captives, whereupon the squaws and girls were distributed in the towns of +Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a parcel of the boys was shipped off +to the tropics in the Salem ship _Desire_. On its return voyage this +thoroughly Puritan vessel brought from Old Providence a cargo of tobacco, +cotton, and negroes.[4] About this time the courts began to take notice +of Indians as runaways; and in 1641 a "blackmore," Mincarry, procured the +inscription of his name upon the public records by drawing upon himself +an admonition from the magistrates.[5] This negro, it may safely be +conjectured, was not a freeman. That there were at least several other +blacks in the colony, one of whom proved unamenable to her master's +improper command, is told in the account of a contemporary traveler.[6] In +the same period, furthermore, the central court of the colony condemned +certain white criminals to become slaves to masters whom the court +appointed.[7] In the light of these things the pro-slavery inclination of +the much-disputed paragraph in the Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641, +admits of no doubt. The passage reads: "There shall never be any bond +slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull captives +taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or +are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages +which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doeth +morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged +thereto by authoritie."[8] + +[Footnote 2: Thomas Dudley, _Letter_ to the Countess of Lincoln, in Alex. +Young, _Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts Boy_ (Boston, +1846), p. 312.] + +[Footnote 3: _Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of +Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 135, 136.] + +[Footnote 4: Letter of John Winthrop to William Bradford, Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXXIII, 360; Winthrop, _Journal_ +(Original Narratives edition, New York, 1908), I, 260.] + +[Footnote 5: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 6: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 231.] + +[Footnote 7: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, pp. 78, 79, 86.] + +[Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 231.] + +On the whole it seems that the views expressed a few years later by Emanuel +Downing in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop were not seriously +out of harmony with the prevailing sentiment. Downing was in hopes of a war +with the Narragansetts for two reasons, first to stop their "worship of the +devill," and "2lie, If upon a just warre the Lord should deliver them into +our hands, we might easily have men, women and children enough to exchange +for Moores,[9] which wil be more gaynful pilladge for us than wee conceive, +for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee get into a stock of slaves +sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children's children will hardly +see this great continent filled with people, soe that our servants will +still desire freedome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie +great wages.[10] And I suppose you know verie well how we shall mayntayne +20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant." + +[Footnote 9: I. e. negroes.] + +[Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXXVI. 65.] + +When the four colonies, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, +created the New England Confederation in 1643 for joint and reciprocal +action in matters of common concern, they provided not only for the +intercolonial rendition of runaway servants, including slaves of course, +but also for the division of the spoils of Indian wars, "whether it be in +lands, goods or persons," among the participating colonies.[11] But perhaps +the most striking action taken by the Confederation in these regards was +a resolution adopted by its commissioners in 1646, in time of peace +and professedly in the interests of peace, authorizing reprisals for +depredations. This provided that if any citizen's property suffered injury +at the hands of an Indian, the offender's village or any other which +had harbored him might be raided and any inhabitants thereof seized in +satisfaction "either to serve or to be shipped out and exchanged for +negroes as the cause will justly beare."[12] Many of these captives were in +fact exported as merchandise, whether as private property or on the public +account of the several colonies.[13] The value of Indians for export was +greater than for local employment by reason of their facility in escaping +to their tribal kinsmen. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, +however, there was some importation of "Spanish Indians" as slaves.[14] + +[Footnote 11: _New Haven Colonial Records_, 1653-1665, pp. 562-566.] + +[Footnote 12: _Plymouth Records_, IX, 71.] + +[Footnote 13: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 30-48.] + +[Footnote 14: Cotton Mather, "Diary," in Massachusetts Historical Society +_Collections_, LXVII, 22, 203.] + +An early realization that the price of negroes also was greater than the +worth of their labor under ordinary circumstances in New England led the +Yankee participants in the African trade to market their slave cargoes in +the plantation colonies instead of bringing them home. Thus John Winthrop +entered in his journal in 1645: "One of our ships which went to the +Canaries with pipestaves in the beginning of November last returned now +and brought wine and sugar and salt, and some tobacco, which she had at +Barbadoes in exchange for Africoes which she carried from the Isle of +Maio."[15] In their domestic industry the Massachusetts people found +by experience that "many hands make light work, many hands make a full +fraught, but many mouths eat up all";[16] and they were shrewd enough to +apply the adage in keeping the scale of their industrial units within the +frugal requirements of their lives. + +[Footnote 15: Winthrop, _Journal_, II, 227.] + +[Footnote 16: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 332.] + +That the laws of Massachusetts were enforced with special severity against +the blacks is indicated by two cases before the central court in 1681, both +of them prosecutions for arson. Maria, a negress belonging to Joshua Lamb +of Roxbury, having confessed the burning of two dwellings, was sentenced by +the Governor "yt she should goe from the barr to the prison whence she +came and thence to the place of execution and there be burnt.--ye Lord be +mercifull to thy soule, sd ye Govr." The other was Jack, a negro belonging +to Samuel Wolcott of Weathersfield, who upon conviction of having set fire +to a residence by waving a fire brand about in search of victuals, was +condemned to be hanged until dead and then burned to ashes in the fire with +the negress Maria.[17] + +[Footnote 17: _Records of the Court of Assistants, 1630-1692_ (Boston, +1901), p. 198.] + +In this period it seems that Indian slaves had almost disappeared, and +the number of negroes was not great enough to call for special police +legislation. Governor Bradstreet, for example, estimated the "blacks or +slaves" in the colony in 1680 at "about one hundred or one hundred and +twenty."[18] But in 1708 Governor Dudley reckoned the number in Boston at +four hundred, one-half of whom he said had been born there, and those in +the rest of the colony at one hundred and fifty; and in the following +decades their number steadily mounted, as a concomitant of the colony's +increasing prosperity, until on the eve of the American Revolution they +were reckoned at well above five thousand. Although they never exceeded two +per cent. of the gross population, their presence prompted characteristic +legislation dating from about the beginning of the eighteenth century. +This on one hand taxed the importation of negros unless they were promptly +exported again on the other hand it forbade trading with slaves, restrained +manumission, established a curfew, provided for the whipping of any +negro or mulatto who should strike a "Christian," and prohibited the +intermarriage of the races. On the other hand it gave the slaves the +privilege of legal marriage with persons of their own race, though it did +not attempt to prevent the breaking up of such a union by the sale and +removal of the husband or wife.[19] Regarding the status of children there +was no law enacted, and custom ruled. The children born of Indian slave +mothers appear generally to have been liberated, for as willingly would a +man nurse a viper in his bosom as keep an aggrieved and able-bodied redskin +in his household. But as to negro children, although they were valued so +slightly that occasionally it is said they were given to any one who would +take them, there can be no reasonable doubt that by force of custom they +were the property of the owners of their mothers.[20] + +[Footnote 18: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 337.] + +[Footnote 19: Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 52-55.] + +[Footnote 20: _Ibid_., pp. 20-27.] + +The New Englanders were "a plain people struggling for existence in a +poor wilderness.... Their lives were to the last degree matter of +fact, realistic, hard." [21] Shrewd in consequence of their poverty, +self-righteous in consequence of their religion, they took their +slave-trading and their slaveholding as part of their day's work and as +part of God's goodness to His elect. In practical effect the policy of +colonial Massachusetts toward the backward races merits neither praise nor +censure; it was merely commonplace. + +[Footnote 21: C.F. Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_ +(Boston, 1893), p. 106.] + +What has been said in general of Massachusetts will apply with almost equal +fidelity to Connecticut.[22] The number of negroes in that colony was +hardly appreciable before 1720. In that year Governor Leete when replying +to queries from the English committee on trade and plantations took +occasion to emphasize the poverty of his people, and said as to bond labor: +"There are but fewe servants amongst us, and less slaves; not above 30, as +we judge, in the colony. For English, Scotts and Irish, there are so few +come in that we cannot give a certain acco[un]t. Some yeares come none; +sometimes a famaly or two in a year. And for Blacks, there comes sometimes +3 or 4 in a year from Barbadoes; and they are sold usually at the rate of +22l a piece, sometimes more and sometimes less, according as men can agree +with the master of vessels or merchants that bring them hither." Few +negroes had been born in the colony, "and but two blacks christened, as we +know of."[23] A decade later the development of a black code was begun by +an enactment declaring that any negro, mulatto, or Indian servant wandering +outside his proper town without a pass would be accounted a runaway and +might be seized by any person and carried before a magistrate for return to +his master. A free negro so apprehended without a pass must pay the court +costs. An act of 1702 discouraged manumission by ordering that if any +freed negroes should come to want, their former owners were to be held +responsible for their maintenance. Then came legislation forbidding the +sale of liquors to slaves without special orders from their masters, +prohibiting the purchase of goods from slaves without such orders, and +providing a penalty of not more than thirty lashes for any negro who should +offer to strike a white person; and finally a curfew law, in 1723, ordering +not above ten lashes for the negro, and a fine of ten shillings upon the +master, for every slave without a pass apprehended for being out of doors +after nine o'clock at night.[24] These acts, which remained in effect +throughout the colonial period, constituted a code of slave police which +differed only in degree and fullness from those enacted by the more +southerly colonies in the same generation. A somewhat unusual note, +however, was struck in an act of 1730 which while penalizing with stripes +the speaking by a slave of such words as would be actionable if uttered by +a free person provided that in his defence the slave might make the same +pleas and offer the same evidence as a freeman. The number of negroes in +the colony rose to some 6500 at the eve of the American Revolution. Most +of them were held in very small parcels, but at least one citizen, Captain +John Perkins of Norwich, listed fifteen slaves in his will. + +[Footnote 22: The scanty materials available are summarized in B.C. +Steiner, _History of Slavery in Connecticut_ (Johns Hopkins University +_Studies_, XI, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1893), pp. 9-23, 84. See also W.C. +Fowler, "The Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut," in the +_Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries_, III, 12-18, 81-85, 148-153, +260-266.] + +[Footnote 23: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, III, 298.] + +[Footnote 24: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, IV, 40, 376; +V, 52, 53; VI, 390, 391.] + +Rhode Island was distinguished from her neighbors by her diversity and +liberalism in religion, by her great activity in the African slave trade, +and by the possession of a tract of unusually fertile soil. This last, +commonly known as the Narragansett district and comprised in the two +so-called towns of North and South Kingstown, lay on the western shore of +the bay, in the southern corner of the colony. Prosperity from tillage, +and especially from dairying and horse-breeding, caused the rise in that +neighborhood of landholdings and slaveholdings on a scale more commensurate +with those in Virginia than with those elsewhere in New England. The +Hazards, Champlins, Robinsons, and some others accumulated estates ranging +from five to ten thousand acres in extent, each with a corps of bondsmen +somewhat in proportion. In 1730, for example, South Kingstown had a +population of 965 whites, 333 negroes and 233 Indians; and for a number +of years afterward those who may safely be assumed to have been bondsmen, +white, red and black, continued to be from a third to a half as many as the +free inhabitants.[25] It may be noted that the prevalent husbandry was not +such as generally attracted unfree labor in other districts, and that the +climate was poorly suited to a negro population. The question then arises, +Why was there so large a recourse to negro slave labor? The answer probably +lies in the proximity of Newport, the main focus of African trading in +American ships. James Browne wrote in 1737 from Providence, which was also +busy in the trade, to his brother Obadiah who was then in Southern waters +with an African cargo and who had reported poor markets: "If you cannot +sell all your slaves to your mind, bring some of them home; I believe they +will sell well." [26] This bringing of remainders home doubtless enabled +the nearby townsmen and farmers to get slaves from time to time at bargain +prices. The whole colony indeed came to have a relatively large proportion +of blacks. In 1749 there were 33,773 whites and 3077 negroes; in 1756 there +were 35,939 and 4697 respectively; and in 1774, 59,707 and 3668. Of this +last number Newport contained 1246, South Kingstown 440, Providence 303, +Portsmouth 122, and Bristol 114.[27] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_ (Johns Hopkins +University _Studies_, IV, no. 3, Baltimore, 1886).] + +[Footnote 26: Gertrude S. Kimball, _Providence in Colonial Times_ (Boston, +1912), p. 247.] + +[Footnote 27: W.D. Johnston, "Slavery in Rhode Island, 1755-1776," in Rhode +Island Historical Society _Publications_, new series, II, 126, 127.] + +The earliest piece of legislation in Rhode Island concerning negroes was of +an anti-slavery character. This was an act adopted by the joint government +of Providence and Warwick in 1652, when for the time being those towns were +independent of the rest. It required, under a penalty of £40, that all +negroes be freed after having rendered ten years of service.[28] This +act may be attributed partly perhaps to the liberal influence of Roger +Williams, and partly to the virtual absence of negroes in the towns near +the head of the bay. It long stood unrepealed, but it was probably never +enforced, for no sooner did negroes become numerous than a conservative +reaction set in which deprived this peculiar law of any public sanction it +may have had at the time of enactment. When in the early eighteenth century +legislation was resumed in regard to negroes, it took the form of a slave +code much like that of Connecticut but with an added act, borrowed perhaps +from a Southern colony, providing that slaves charged with theft be tried +by impromptu courts consisting of two or more justices of the peace or town +officers, and that appeal might be taken to a court of regular session only +at the master's request and upon his giving bond for its prosecution. Some +of the towns, furthermore, added by-laws of their own for more thorough +police. South Kingstown for instance adopted an order that if any slave +were found in the house of a free negro, both guest and host were to be +whipped.[29] The Rhode Island Quakers in annual meeting began as early as +1717 to question the propriety of importing slaves, and other persons from +time to time echoed their sentiments; but it was not until just before the +American Revolution that legislation began to interfere with the trade or +the institution. + +[Footnote 28: _Rhode Island Colonial Records_, I, 243.] + +[Footnote 29: Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_, p. 11.] + +The colonies of Plymouth and New Haven in the period of their separate +existence, and the colonies of Maine and New Hampshire throughout their +careers, are negligible in a general account of negro slavery because +their climate and their industrial requirements, along with their poverty, +prevented them from importing any appreciable number of negroes. + +New Netherland had the distinction of being founded and governed by a great +slave-trading corporation--the Dutch West India Company--which endeavored +to extend the market for its human merchandise whithersoever its influence +reached. This pro-slavery policy was not wholly selfish, for the directors +appear to have believed that the surest way to promote a colony's welfare +was to make slaves easy to buy. In the infancy of New Netherland, when it +consisted merely of two trading posts, the company delivered its first +batch of negroes at New Amsterdam. But to its chagrin, the settlers would +buy very few; and even the company's grant of great patroonship estates +failed to promote a plantation régime. Devoting their energies more to the +Indian trade than to agriculture, the people had little use for farm hands, +while in domestic service, if the opinion of the Reverend Jonas Michaelius +be a true index, the negroes were found "thievish, lazy and useless trash." +It might perhaps be surmised that the Dutch were too easy-going for success +in slave management, were it not that those who settled in Guiana became +reputed the severest of all plantation masters. The bulk of the slaves in +New Netherland, left on the company's hands, were employed now in building +fortifications, now in tillage. But the company, having no adequate means +of supervising them in routine, changed the status of some of the older +ones in 1644 from slavery to tribute-paying. That is to say, it gave eleven +of them their freedom on condition that each pay the company every year +some twenty-two bushels of grain and a hog of a certain value. At the same +time it provided, curiously, that their children already born or yet to be +born were to be the company's slaves. It was proposed at one time by some +of the inhabitants, and again by Governor Stuyvesant, that negroes be armed +with tomahawks and sent in punitive expeditions against the Indians, but +nothing seems to have come of that. + +The Dutch settlers were few, and the Dutch farmers fewer. But as years went +on a slender stream of immigration entered the province from New England, +settling mainly on Long Island and in Westchester; and these came to be +among the company's best customers for slaves. The villagers of Gravesend, +indeed, petitioned in 1651 that the slave supply might be increased. Soon +afterward the company opened the trade to private ships, and then sent +additional supplies on its own account to be sold at auction. It developed +hopes, even, that New Amsterdam might be made a slave market for the +neighboring English colonies. A parcel sold at public outcry in 1661 +brought an average price of 440 florins,[30] which so encouraged the +authorities that larger shipments were ordered. Of a parcel arriving in +the spring of 1664 and described by Stuyvesant as on the average old and +inferior, six men were reserved for the company's use in cutting timber, +five women were set aside as unsalable, and the remaining twenty-nine, of +both sexes, were sold at auction at prices ranging from 255 to 615 florins. +But a great cargo of two or three hundred slaves which followed in the same +year reached port only in time for the vessel to be captured by the English +fleet which took possession of New Netherland and converted it into the +province of New York.[31] + +[Footnote 30: The florin has a value of forty cents.] + +[Footnote 31: This account is mainly drawn from A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in +New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 246-254, +and from E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of +Amsterdam, with additional papers illustrative of the slave trade under the +Dutch_ (Albany, 1867), pp. 99-213.] + +The change of the flag was very slow in bringing any pronounced change in +the colony's general régime. The Duke of York's government was autocratic +and pro-slavery and the inhabitants, though for some decades they bought +few slaves, were nothing averse to the institution. After the colony was +converted into a royal province by the accession of James II to the English +throne popular self-government was gradually introduced and a light import +duty was laid upon slaves. But increasing prosperity caused the rise of +slave importations to an average of about one hundred a year in the first +quarter of the eighteenth century;[32] and in spite of the rapid increase +of the whites during the rest of the colonial period the proportion of the +negroes was steadily maintained at about one-seventh of the whole. They +became fairly numerous in all districts except the extreme frontier, but in +the counties fronting New York Harbor their ratio was somewhat above the +average.[33] In 1755 a special census was taken of slaves older than +fourteen years, and a large part of its detailed returns has been +preserved. These reports from some two-score scattered localities enumerate +2456 slaves, about one-third of the total negro population of the +specified age; and they yield unusually definite data as to the scale of +slaveholdings. Lewis Morris of Morrisania had twenty-nine slaves above +fourteen years old; Peter DeLancy of Westchester Borough had twelve; and +the following had ten each: Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, Martinus +Hoffman of Dutchess County, David Jones of Oyster Bay, Rutgert Van Brunt of +New Utrecht, and Isaac Willett of Westchester Borough. Seventy-two others +had from five to nine each, and 1048 had still smaller holdings.[34] The +average quota was two slaves of working age, and presumably the same number +of slave children. That is to say, the typical slaveholding family had a +single small family of slaves in its service. From available data it may be +confidently surmised, furthermore, that at least one household in every ten +among the eighty-three thousand white inhabitants of the colony held one or +more slaves. These two features--the multiplicity of slaveholdings and the +virtually uniform pettiness of their scale--constituted a régime never +paralleled in equal volume elsewhere. The economic interest in slave +property, nowhere great, was widely diffused. The petty masters, however, +maintained so little system in the management of their slaves that the +public problem of social control was relatively intense. It was a state +of affairs conducing to severe legislation, and to hysterical action in +emergencies. + +[Footnote 32: _Documentary History of New York_ (Albany, 1850), I, 482.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., I, 467-474.] + +[Footnote 34: _Documentary History of New York_, III, 505-521.] + +The first important law, enacted in 1702, repeated an earlier prohibition +against trading with slaves; authorized masters to chastise their slaves at +discretion; forbade the meeting of more than three slaves at any time or +place unless in their masters' service or by their consent; penalized with +imprisonment and lashes the striking of a "Christian" by a slave; made the +seductor or harborer of a runaway slave liable for heavy damages to the +owner; and excluded slave testimony from the courts except as against other +slaves charged with conspiracy. In order, however, that undue loss to +masters might be averted, it provided that if by theft or other trespass a +slave injured any person to the extent of not more than five pounds, the +slave was not to be sentenced to death as in some cases a freeman might +have been under the laws of England then current, but his master was to be +liable for pecuniary satisfaction and the slave was merely to be whipped. +Three years afterward a special act to check the fleeing to Canada provided +a death penalty for any slave from the city and county of Albany found +traveling more than forty miles north of that city, the master to be +compensated from a special tax on slave property in the district. And in +1706 an act, passed mainly to quiet any fears as to the legal consequences +of Christianization, declared that baptism had no liberating effect, and +that every negro or mulatto child should inherit the status of its mother. + +The murder of a white family by a quartet of slaves in conspiracy not only +led to their execution, by burning in one case, but prompted an enactment +in 1708 that slaves charged with the murder of whites might be tried +summarily by three justices of the peace and be put to death in such manner +as the enormity of their crimes might be deemed to merit, and that slaves +executed under this act should be paid for by the public. Thus stood the +law when a negro uprising in the city of New York in 1712 and a reputed +conspiracy there in 1741 brought atrociously numerous and severe +punishments, as will be related in another chapter.[35] On the former of +these occasions the royally appointed governor intervened in several cases +to prevent judicial murder. The assembly on the other hand set to work +at once on a more elaborate negro law which restricted manumissions, +prohibited free negroes from holding real estate, and increased the rigor +of slave control. Though some of the more drastic provisions were afterward +relaxed in response to the more sober sense of the community, the negro +code continued for the rest of the colonial period to be substantially as +elaborated between 1702 and 1712.[36] The disturbance of 1741 prompted +little new legislation and left little permanent impress upon the +community. When the panic passed the petty masters resumed their customary +indolence of control and the police officers, justly incredulous of public +danger, let the rigors of the law relapse into desuetude. + +[Footnote 35: Below, pp. 470, 471.] + +[Footnote 36: The laws are summarized and quoted in A.J. Northrup "Slavery +in New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 254-272. +_See also_ E.V. Morgan, "Slavery in New York," in the American Historical +Association _Papers_ (New York, 1891), V, 335-350.] + +As to New Jersey, the eastern half, settled largely from New England, was +like in conditions and close in touch with New York, while the western +half, peopled considerably by Quakers, had a much smaller proportion of +negroes and was in sentiment akin to Pennsylvania. As was generally the +case in such contrast of circumstances, that portion of the province which +faced the greater problem of control determined the legislation for +the whole. New Jersey, indeed, borrowed the New York slave code in all +essentials. The administration of the law, furthermore, was about as it was +in New York, in the eastern counties at least. An alleged conspiracy near +Somerville in 1734 while it cost the reputed ringleader his life, cost his +supposed colleagues their ears only. On the other hand sentences to burning +at the stake were more frequent as punishment for ordinary crimes; and on +such occasions the citizens of the neighborhood turned honest shillings +by providing faggots for the fire. For the western counties the published +annals concerning slavery are brief wellnigh to blankness.[37] + +[Footnote 37: H.S. Cooley, _A Study of Slavery in New Jersey_ (Johns +Hopkins University _Studios_, XIV, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1896).] + +Pennsylvania's place in the colonial slaveholding sisterhood was a little +unusual in that negroes formed a smaller proportion of the population than +her location between New York and Maryland might well have warranted. +This was due not to her laws nor to the type of her industry but to the +disrelish of slaveholding felt by many of her Quaker and German inhabitants +and to the greater abundance of white immigrant labor whether wage-earning +or indentured. Negroes were present in the region before Penn's colony was +founded. The new government recognized slavery as already instituted. Penn +himself acquired a few slaves; and in the first quarter of the eighteenth +century the assembly legislated much as New York was doing, though somewhat +more mildly, for the fuller control of the negroes both slave and free. The +number of blacks and mulattoes reached at the middle of the century +about eleven thousand, the great majority of them slaves. They were most +numerous, of course, in the older counties which lay in the southeastern +corner of the province, and particularly in the city of Philadelphia. +Occasional owners had as many as twenty or thirty slaves, employed either +on country estates or in iron-works, but the typical holding was on a petty +scale. There were no slave insurrections in the colony, no plots of any +moment, and no panics of dread. The police was apparently a little more +thorough than in New York, partly because of legislation, which the white +mechanics procured, lessening negro competition by forbidding masters to +hire out their slaves. From travelers' accounts it would appear that the +relation of master and slave in Pennsylvania was in general more kindly +than anywhere else on the continent; but from the abundance of newspaper +advertisements for runaways it would seem to have been of about average +character. The truth probably lies as usual in the middle ground, that +Pennsylvania masters were somewhat unusually considerate. The assembly +attempted at various times to check slave importations by levying +prohibitive duties, which were invariably disallowed by the English crown. +On the other hand, in spite of the endeavors of Sandiford, Lay, Woolman +and Benezet, all of them Pennsylvanians, it took no steps toward relaxing +racial control until the end of the colonial period.[38] + +[Footnote 38: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911); +R.R. Wright, Jr., _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, 1912).] + +In the Northern colonies at large the slaves imported were more generally +drawn from the West Indies than directly from Africa. The reasons were +several. Small parcels, better suited to the retail demand, might be +brought more profitably from the sugar islands whither New England, New +York and Pennsylvania ships were frequently plying than from Guinea whence +special voyages must be made. Familiarity with the English language and +the rudiments of civilization at the outset were more essential to petty +masters than to the owners of plantation gangs who had means for breaking +in fresh Africans by deputy. But most important of all, a sojourn in the +West Indies would lessen the shock of acclimatization, severe enough under +the best of circumstances. The number of negroes who died from it was +probably not small, and of those who survived some were incapacitated and +bedridden with each recurrence of winter. + +Slavery did not, and perhaps could not, become an important industrial +institution in any Northern community; and the problem of racial +adjustments was never as acute as it was generally thought to be. In not +more than two or three counties do the negroes appear to have numbered more +than one fifth of the population; and by reason of being distributed +in detail they were more nearly assimilated to the civilization of the +dominant race than in southerly latitudes where they were held in gross. +They nevertheless continued to be regarded as strangers within the gates, +by some welcomed because they were slaves, by others not welcomed even +though they were in bondage. By many they were somewhat unreasonably +feared; by few were they even reasonably loved. The spirit not of love but +of justice and the public advantage was destined to bring the end of their +bondage. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +REVOLUTION AND REACTION + + +After the whole group of colonies had long been left in salutary neglect +by the British authorities, George III and his ministers undertook the +creation of an imperial control; and Parliament was too much at the king's +command for opposing statesmen to stop the project. The Americans wakened +resentfully to the new conditions. The revived navigation laws, the stamp +act, the tea duty, and the dispatch of redcoats to coerce Massachusetts +were a cumulation of grievances not to be borne by high-spirited people. +For some years the colonial spokesmen tried to persuade the British +government that it was violating historic and constitutional rights; but +these efforts had little success. To the argument that the empire was +composed of parts mutually independent in legislation, it was replied that +Parliament had legislated imperially ever since the empire's beginning, and +that the colonial assemblies possessed only such powers as Parliament might +allow. The plea of no taxation without representation was answered by the +doctrine that all elements in the empire were virtually represented in +Parliament. The stress laid by the colonials upon their rights as Britons +met the administration's emphasis upon the duty of all British subjects +to obey British laws. This countering of pleas of exemption with +pronouncements of authority drove the complainants at length from proposals +of reform to projects of revolution. For this the solidarity of the +continent was essential, and that was to be gained only by the most +vigorous agitation with the aid of the most effective campaign cries. The +claim of historic immunities was largely discarded in favor of the more +glittering doctrines current in the philosophy of the time. The demands for +local self-government or for national independence, one or both of which +were the genuine issues at stake, were subordinated to the claim of the +inherent and inalienable rights of man. Hence the culminating formulation +in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be +self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by +their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, +liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The cause of the community was to be +won under the guise of the cause of individuals. + +In Jefferson's original draft of the great declaration there was a +paragraph indicting the king for having kept open the African slave trade +against colonial efforts to close it, and for having violated thereby the +"most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who never +offended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to +incur miserable death in their transportation thither." This passage, +according to Jefferson's account, "was struck out in complaisance to South +Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation +of slaves and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern +brethren also I believe," Jefferson continued, "felt a little tender under +these censures, for though their people have very few slaves themselves, +yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[1] By +reason of the general stress upon the inherent liberty of all men, however, +the question of negro status, despite its omission from the Declaration, +was an inevitable corollary to that of American independence. + +[Footnote 1: Herbert Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ (New +York, 1904), pp. 130, 272.] + +Negroes had a barely appreciable share in precipitating the Revolution +and in waging the war. The "Boston Massacre" was occasioned in part by an +insult offered by a slave to a British soldier two days before; and in that +celebrated affray itself, Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was one of the +five inhabitants of Boston slain. During the course of the war free negro +and slave enlistments were encouraged by law in the states where racial +control was not reckoned vital, and they were informally permitted in the +rest. The British also utilized this resource in some degree. As early as +November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the ousted royal governor of Virginia, +issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves "appertaining to +rebels" who would join him "for the more speedy reducing this colony to a +proper sense of their duty to his Majesty's crown and dignity."[2] In reply +the Virginia press warned the negroes against British perfidy; and the +revolutionary government, while announcing the penalties for servile +revolt, promised freedom to such as would promptly desert the British +standard. Some hundreds of negroes appear to have joined Dunmore, but they +did not save him from being driven away.[3] + +[Footnote 2: _American Archives_, Force ed., fourth series, III, 1385.] + +[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., III, 1387; IV, 84, 85; V, 160, 162.] + +When several years afterward military operations were transferred to the +extreme South, where the whites were few and the blacks many, the problem +of negro enlistments became at once more pressing and more delicate. Henry +Laurens of South Carolina proposed to General Washington in March, 1779, +the enrollment of three thousand blacks in the Southern department. +Hamilton warmly endorsed the project, and Washington and Madison more +guardedly. Congress recommended it to the states concerned, and pledged +itself to reimburse the masters and to set the slaves free with a payment +of fifty dollars to each of these at the end of the war. Eventually Colonel +John Laurens, the son of Henry, went South as an enthusiastic emissary of +the scheme, only to meet rebuff and failure.[4] Had the negroes in general +possessed any means of concerted action, they might conceivably have played +off the British and American belligerents to their own advantage. In +actuality, however, they were a passive element whose fate was affected +only so far as the master race determined. + +[Footnote 4: G.W. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_ (New +York [1882]), I, 353-362.] + +Some of the politicians who championed the doctrine of liberty inherent and +universal used it merely as a means to a specific and somewhat unrelated +end. Others endorsed it literally and with resolve to apply it wherever +consistency might require. How could they justly continue to hold men in +bondage when in vindication of their own cause they were asserting the +right of all men to be free? Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Edmund +Randolph and many less prominent slaveholders were disquieted by the +question. Instances of private manumission became frequent, and memorials +were fairly numerous advocating anti-slavery legislation. Indeed Samuel +Hopkins of Rhode Island in a pamphlet of 1776 declared that slavery in +Anglo-America was "without the express sanction of civil government," and +censured the colonial authorities and citizens for having connived in the +maintenance of the wrongful institution. + +As to public acts, the Vermont convention of 1777 when claiming statehood +for its community framed a constitution with a bill of rights asserting the +inherent freedom of all men and attaching to it an express prohibition of +slavery. The opposition of New York delayed Vermont's recognition until +1791 when she was admitted as a state with this provision unchanged. +Similar inherent-liberty clauses but without the expressed anti-slavery +application were incorporated into the bills of rights adopted severally by +Virginia in 1776, Massachusetts in 1780, and New Hampshire in 1784. In the +first of these the holding of slaves persisted undisturbed by this action; +and in New Hampshire the custom died from the dearth of slaves rather than +from the natural-rights clause. In Massachusetts likewise it is plain +from copious contemporary evidence that abolition was not intended by the +framers of the bill of rights nor thought by the people or the officials to +have been accomplished thereby.[5] One citizen, indeed, who wanted to keep +his woman slave but to be rid of her child soon to be born, advertised in +the _Independent Chronicle_ of Boston at the close of 1780: "A negro child, +soon expected, of a good breed, may be owned by any person inclining to +take it, and money with it."[6] The courts of the commonwealth, however, +soon began to reflect anti-slavery sentiment, as Lord Mansfield had done in +the preceding decade in England,[7] and to make use of the bill of rights +to destroy the masters' dominion. The decisive case was the prosecution of +Nathaniel Jennison of Worcester County for assault and imprisonment alleged +to have been committed upon his absconded slave Quork Walker in the process +of his recovery. On the trial in 1783 the jury responded to a strong +anti-slavery charge from Chief Justice Cushing by returning a verdict +against Jennison, and the court fined him £50 and costs. + +[Footnote 5: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_, pp. 181-209.] + +[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., p. 208. So far as the present writer's knowledge +extends, this item is without parallel at any other time or place.] + +[Footnote 7: The case of James Somerset on _habeas corpus_, in Howell's +_State Trials_, XX, §548.] + +This action prompted the negroes generally to leave their masters, though +some were deterred "on account of their age and infirmities, or because +they did not know how to provide for themselves, or for some pecuniary +consideration."[8] The former slaveholders now felt a double grievance: +they were deprived of their able-bodied negroes but were not relieved of +the legal obligation to support such others as remained on their hands. +Petitions for their relief were considered by the legislature but never +acted upon. The legal situation continued vague, for although an act of +1788 forbade citizens to trade in slaves and another penalized the sojourn +for more than two months in Massachusetts of negroes from other states,[9] +no legislation defined the status of colored residents. In the federal +census of 1790, however, this was the only state in which no slaves were +listed. + +[Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 386.] + +[Footnote 9: Moore, pp. 227-229.] + +Racial antipathy and class antagonism among the whites appear to +have contributed to this result. John Adams wrote in 1795, with some +exaggeration and incoherence: "Argument might have [had] some weight in +the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the +multiplication of labouring white people, who would no longer suffer the +rich to employ these sable rivals so much to their injury ... If the +gentlemen had been permitted by law to hold slaves, the common white people +would have put the negroes to death, and their masters too, perhaps ... +The common white people, or rather the labouring people, were the cause of +rendering negroes unprofitable servants. Their scoffs and insults, their +continual insinuations, filled the negroes with discontent, made them lazy, +idle, proud, vicious, and at length wholly useless to their masters, +to such a degree that the abolition of slavery became a measure of +economy."[10] + +[Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 402.] + +Slavery in the rest of the Northern states was as a rule not abolished, but +rather put in process of gradual extinction by legislation of a peculiar +sort enacted in response to agitations characteristic of the times. +Pennsylvania set the pattern in an act of 1780 providing that all children +born thereafter of slave mothers in the state were to be the servants of +their mothers' owners until reaching twenty-eight years of age, and then to +become free. Connecticut followed in 1784 with an act of similar purport +but with a specification of twenty-five years, afterward reduced to +twenty-one, as the age for freedom; and in 1840 she abolished her remnant +of slavery outright. In Rhode Island an act of the same year, 1784, enacted +that the children thereafter born of slave mothers were to be free at the +ages of twenty-one for males and eighteen for females, and that these +children were meanwhile to be supported and instructed at public expense; +but an amendment of the following year transferred to the mothers' owners +the burden of supporting the children, and ignored the matter of their +education. New York lagged until 1799, and then provided freedom for the +after-born only at twenty-eight and twenty-five years for males and females +respectively; but a further act of 1817 set the Fourth of July in 1827 as a +time for the emancipation for all remaining slaves in the state. New +Jersey fell into line last of all by an act of 1804 giving freedom to the +after-born at the ages of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females; +and in 1846 she converted the surviving slaves nominally into apprentices +but without materially changing their condition. Supplementary legislation +here and there in these states bestowed freedom upon slaves in military +service, restrained the import and export of slaves, and forbade the +citizens to ply the slave trade by land or sea.[11] + +[Footnote 11: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 77-85; B.C. +Steiner, _Slavery in Connecticut_, pp. 30-32; _Rhode Island Colonial +Records_, X, 132, 133; A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in New York," in the New +York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 286-298; H.S. Cooley, "Slavery +in New Jersey" (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XIV, nos. 9, 10), pp. +47-50; F.B. Lee, _New Jersey as a Colony and as a State_ (New York, 1912), +IV, 25-48.] + +Thus from Pennsylvania eastward the riddance of slavery was procured or put +in train, generally by the device of emancipating the _post nati_; and in +consequence the slave population in that quarter dwindled before the middle +of the nineteenth century to a negligible residue. To the southward the +tobacco states, whose industry had reached a somewhat stationary condition, +found it a simple matter to prohibit the further importation of slaves from +Africa. Delaware did this in 1776, Virginia in 1778, Maryland in 1783 and +North Carolina in 1794. But in these commonwealths as well as in their more +southerly neighbors, the contemplation of the great social and economic +problems involved in disestablishing slavery daunted the bulk of the +citizens and impelled their representatives to conservatism. The advocacy +of abolition, whether sudden or gradual, was little more than sporadic. +The people were not to be stampeded in the cause of inherent rights or +any other abstract philosophy. It was a condition and not a theory which +confronted them. + +In Delaware, however, the problem was hardly formidable, for at the time of +the first federal census there were hardly nine thousand slaves and a third +as many colored freemen in her gross population of some sixty thousand +souls. Nevertheless a bill for gradual abolition considered by the +legislature in 1786 appears not to have been brought to a vote,[12] and no +action in the premises was taken thereafter. The retention of slavery seems +to have been mainly due to mere public inertia and to the pressure of +political sympathy with the more distinctively Southern states. Because of +her border position and her dearth of plantation industry, the slaves in +Delaware steadily decreased to less than eighteen hundred in 1860, while +the free negroes grew to more than ten times as many. + +[Footnote 12: J.R. Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789," in J.F. +Jameson ed., _Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States, +1775-1789_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 300-302.] + +In Maryland various projects for abolition, presented by the Quakers +between 1785 and 1791 and supported by William Pinckney and Charles +Carroll, were successively defeated in the legislature; and efforts +to remove the legal restraints on private manumission were likewise +thwarted.[13] These restrictions, which applied merely to the freeing of +slaves above middle age, were in fact very slight. The manumissions indeed +were so frequent and the conditions of life in Maryland were so attractive +to free negroes, or at least so much less oppressive than in most other +states, that while the slave population decreased between 1790 and 1860 +from 103,036 to 87,189 souls the colored freemen multiplied from 8046 to +83,942, a number greater by twenty-five thousand than that in any other +commonwealth. + +[Footnote 13: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_ (Baltimore, 1899), pp. +52-64, 148-155.] + +Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1785 that anti-slavery men were as scarce to the +southward of Chesapeake Bay as they were common to the north of it, while +in Maryland, and still more in Virginia, the bulk of the people approved +the doctrine and a respectable minority were ready to adopt it in practice, +"a minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates against +the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of +a property which, however, keeps their conscience unquiet." Virginia, +he continued, "is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the +interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression, a +conflict in which the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx +into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the +principles of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to +them that I look with anxiety to turn the fate of the question."[14] +Jefferson had already tried to raise the issue by having a committee for +revising the Virginia laws, appointed in 1776 with himself a member, frame +a special amendment for disestablishing slavery. This contemplated a +gradual emancipation of the after-born children, their tutelage by the +state, their colonization at maturity, and their replacement in Virginia +by white immigrants.[15] But a knowledge that such a project would raise +a storm caused even its framers to lay it aside. The abolition of +primogeniture and the severance of church from state absorbed reformers' +energies at the expense of the slavery question. + +[Footnote 14: Jefferson, _Writings_, P.L. Ford ed., IV, 82-83.] + +[Footnote 15: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, various editions, query 14.] + +When writing his _Notes on Virginia_ in 1781 Jefferson denounced the +slaveholding system in phrases afterward classic among abolitionists: "With +what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one-half of +the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those +into despots and these into enemies ... And can the liberties of a nation +be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction +in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That +they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my +country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep +forever."[16] In the course of the same work, however, he deprecated +abolition unless it were to be accompanied with deportation: "Why not +retain and incorporate the blacks into the state...? Deep rooted prejudices +entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the +injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which +nature has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us into +parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the +extermination of the one or the other race ... This unfortunate difference +of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the +emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates while they wish to +vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve its +dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question 'What +further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those +who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans, emancipation +required but one effort. The slave when made free might mix without +staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary +unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of +mixture."[17] + +[Footnote 16: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, query 18.] + +[Footnote 17: _Ibid_., query 14.] + +George Washington wrote in 1786 that one of his chief wishes was that some +plan might be adopted "by which slavery may be abolished by slow, sure and +imperceptible degrees." But he noted in the same year that some abolition +petitions presented to the Virginia legislature had barely been given a +reading.[18] + +[Footnote 18: Washington, _Writings_, W.C. Ford ed., XI, 20, 62.] + +Seeking to revive the issue, Judge St. George Tucker, professor of law in +William and Mary College, inquired of leading citizens of Massachusetts in +1795 for data and advice, and undaunted by discouraging reports received in +reply or by the specific dissuasion of John Adams, he framed an intricate +plan for extremely gradual emancipation and for expelling the freedmen +without expense to the state by merely making their conditions of life +unbearable. This was presented to the legislature in a pamphlet of 1796 +at the height of the party strife between the Federalists and +Democratic-Republicans; and it was impatiently dismissed from +consideration.[19] Tucker, still nursing his project, reprinted his +"dissertation" as an appendix to his edition of Blackstone in 1803, where +the people and the politicians let it remain buried. In public opinion, the +problem as to the freedmen remained unsolved and insoluble. + +[Footnote 19: St. George Tucker, _A Dissertation on Slavery, with a +proposal for the gradual abolition of it in the State of Virginia_ +(Philadelphia, 1796, reprinted New York, 1860). Tucker's Massachusetts +correspondence is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society +_Collections_, XLIII (Belknap papers), 379-431.] + +Meanwhile the Virginia black code had been considerably moderated during +and after the Revolution; and in particular the previous almost iron-clad +prohibition of private manumission had been wholly removed in effect by an +act of 1782. In spite of restrictions afterward imposed upon manumission +and upon the residence of new freedmen in the state, the free negroes +increased on a scale comparable to that in Maryland. As compared with an +estimate of less than two thousand in 1782, there were 12,866 in 1790, +20,124 in 1800, and 30,570 in 1810. Thereafter the number advanced more +slowly until it reached 58,042, about one-eighth as many as the slaves +numbered, in 1860. + +In the more southerly states condemnation of slavery was rare. Among +the people of Georgia, the depressing experience of the colony under a +prohibition of it was too fresh in memory for them to contemplate with +favor a fresh deprivation. In South Carolina Christopher Gadsden had +written in 1766 likening slavery to a crime, and a decade afterward Henry +Laurens wrote: "You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery.... The day, I hope +is approaching when from principles of gratitude as well as justice every +man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the +golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my +negroes produce if sold at public auction tomorrow.... Nevertheless I am +devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail +of slavery. Great powers oppose me--the laws and customs of my country, +my own and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say if +I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not +insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest to +a better hand. I am not one of those ... who dare trust in Providence for +defence and security of their own liberty while they enslave and wish +to continue in slavery thousands who are as well entitled to freedom as +themselves. I perceive the work before me is great. I shall appear to many +as a promoter not only of strange but of dangerous doctrines; it will +therefore be necessary to proceed with caution."[20] Had either Gadsden +or Laurens entertained thoughts of launching an anti-slavery campaign, +however, the palpable hopelessness of such a project in their community +must have dissuaded them. The negroes of the rice coast were so +outnumbering and so crude that an agitation applying the doctrine of +inherent liberty and equality to them could only have had the effect of +discrediting the doctrine itself. Furthermore, the industrial prospect, +the swamps and forests calling for conversion into prosperous plantations, +suggested an increase rather than a diminution of the slave labor supply. +Georgia and South Carolina, in fact, were more inclined to keep open the +African slave trade than to relinquish control of the negro population. +Revolutionary liberalism had but the slightest of echoes there. + +[Footnote 20: Frank Moore ed., _Correspondence of Henry Laurens_ (New York, +1861), pp. 20, 21. The version of this letter given by Professor Wallace in +his _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 446, which varies from the present one, was +derived from a paraphrase by John Laurens to whom the original was written. +Cf. _South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine_, X. 49. For +related items in the Laurens correspondence _see_ D.D. Wallace, _Life of +Henry Laurens_, pp. 445, 447-455.] + +In North Carolina the prevailing lack of enterprise in public affairs had +no exception in regard to slavery. The Quakers alone condemned it. When in +1797 Nathaniel Macon, a pronounced individualist and the chief spokesman of +his state in Congress, discussed the general subject he said "there was not +a gentleman in North Carolina who did not wish there were no blacks in the +country. It was a misfortune--he considered it a curse; but there was no +way of getting rid of them." Macon put his emphasis upon the negro problem +rather than upon the question of slavery, and in so doing he doubtless +reflected the thought of his community.[21] The legislation of North +Carolina regarding racial control, like that of the period in South +Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, was more conservative than +liberal. + +[Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, VII, 661. American historians, through +preoccupation or inadvertence, have often confused anti-negro with +anti-slavery expressions. In reciting the speech of Macon here quoted +McMaster has replaced "blacks" with "slaves"; and incidentally he has made +the whole discussion apply to Georgia instead of North Carolina. Rhodes +in turn has implicitly followed McMaster in both errors. J.B. McMaster, +_History of the People of the United States_, II, 359; J.F. Rhodes, +_History of the United States_, I, 19.] + +The central government of the United States during the Revolution and the +Confederation was little concerned with slavery problems except in its +diplomatic affairs, where the question was merely the adjustment of +property in slaves, and except in regard to the western territories. +Proposals for the prohibition of slavery in these wilderness regions were +included in the first projects for establishing governments in them. +Timothy Pickering and certain military colleagues framed a plan in 1780 for +a state beyond the Ohio River with slavery excluded; but it was allowed +to drop out of consideration. In the next year an ordinance drafted by +Jefferson was introduced into Congress for erecting territorial governments +over the whole area ceded or to be ceded by the states, from the +Alleghanies to the Mississippi and from Canada to West Florida; and one of +its features was a prohibition of slavery after the year 1800 throughout +the region concerned. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress +could enact legislation only by the affirmative votes of seven state +delegations. When the ballot was taken on the anti-slavery clause the six +states from Pennsylvania eastward voted aye: Maryland, Virginia and South +Carolina voted no; and the other states were absent. Jefferson was not +alone in feeling chagrin at the defeat and in resolving to persevere. +Pickering expressed his own views in a letter to Rufus King: "To suffer the +continuance of slaves till they can be gradually emancipated, in states +already overrun with them, may be pardonable because unavoidable without +hazarding greater evils; but to introduce them into countries where none +already exist ... can never be forgiven." King in his turn introduced a +resolution virtually restoring the stricken clause, but was unable to bring +it to a vote. After being variously amended, the ordinance without this +clause was adopted. It was, however, temporary in its provision and +ineffectual in character; and soon the drafting of one adequate for +permanent purposes was begun. The adoption of this was hastened in July, +1787, by the offer of a New England company to buy from Congress a huge +tract of Ohio land. When the bill was put to the final vote it was +supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, +Abraham Yates. Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland +were present, and all of them voted aye. Its enactment gave to the country +a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to +the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. Applying +only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for +the erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed in +republican government, secured in the freedom of religion, jury trial and +all concomitant rights, endowed with public land for the support of schools +and universities, and while obligated to render fugitive slaves on claim +of their masters in the original states, shut out from the régime of +slaveholding itself.[22] "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary +servitude in the said territory," it prescribed, "otherwise than in +punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The +first Congress under the new constitution reënacted the ordinance, which +was the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government in +the period. + +[Footnote 22: A.C. McLaughlin, _The Confederation and the Constitution_ +(New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A. Hinsdale, _The Old Northwest_ (New York, +1888), chap. 15.] + +By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The +excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of +individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon +the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many +sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their +opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist +property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class +interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing +jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking +of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and +particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now +enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and +get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on the +principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old régime: matter-of-fact +reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. The +plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the +popular will to procure a general ratification. + +Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but +under local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, +its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it +continued to lie in the several state governments. The great convention +at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of +authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one +hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate +one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all +problems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignorance +by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in +another was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and the +secrecy of the convention's proceedings exempted it from any pressure of +anti-slavery sentiment from outside. + +On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises was +discredited. Roger Sherman of Connecticut "observed that the abolition of +slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense +of the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it." His +colleague Oliver Ellsworth said, "The morality or wisdom of slavery are +considerations belonging to the states themselves"; and again, "Let us not +intermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to +render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." +And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts "thought we had nothing to do with the +conduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any +sanction to it." The agreement was general that the convention keep its +hands off so far as might be; but positive action was required upon +incidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for the +institution itself. These issues concerned the apportionment of +representation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition of +fugitives. This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of a +clause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changed +in its phrasing to read: "No person held to service or labour in one state +under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any +law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but +shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour +may be due." After some jockeying, the other two questions were settled by +compromise. Representation in the lower house of Congress was apportioned +among the states "according to their several members, which shall be +determined by adding to the whole number of free persons ... three fifths +of all other persons." As to the foreign slave trade, Congress was +forbidden to prohibit it prior to the year 1808, and was merely permitted +meanwhile to levy an import duty upon slaves at a rate of not more than ten +dollars each. [23] + +[Footnote 23: Max Farrand ed., _The Records of the Federal Convention_ (New +Haven, 1911), _passim_] + +In the state conventions to which the Constitution was referred for +ratification the debates bore out a remark of Madison's at Philadelphia +that the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small +states but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. The +opponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slavery +instrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on the +ground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carried +and that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect of +a federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South the +opposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of the +African trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate, +while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmost +practicable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved. +Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifying +conventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered, +strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and still +were so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending to +establish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful to +the cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promote +and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of +slaves of every description."[24] The proposal seems to have received no +further attention at the time. + +[Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H.V. Ames, "Proposed Amendment +to the Constitution of the United States," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 208] + +In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of the +few debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positive +action. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was never +enacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly by +Quakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the close +of the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a more +concrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf of +some negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard of +legal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committee +reported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizance +alone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed, +the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned at all with slavery was +the act of 1793 empowering the master of an interstate fugitive to seize +him wherever found, carry him before any federal or state magistrate in the +vicinage, and procure a certificate warranting his removal to the state +from which he had fled. Proposals to supplement this rendition act on the +one hand by safeguarding free negroes from being kidnapped under fraudulent +claims and on the other hand by requiring employers of strange negroes to +publish descriptions of them and thus facilitate the recovery of runaways, +were each defeated in the House. + +On the whole the glamor of revolutionary doctrines was passing, and self +interest was regaining its wonted supremacy. While the rising cotton +industry was giving the blacks in the South new value as slaves, Northern +spokesmen were frankly stating an antipathy of their people toward negroes +in any capacity whatever.[25] The succession of disasters in San Domingo, +meanwhile, gave warning against the upsetting of racial adjustments in the +black belts, and the Gabriel revolt of 1800 in Virginia drove the lesson +home. On slavery questions for a period of several decades the policy +of each of the two sections was merely to prevent itself from being +overreached. The conservative trend, however, could not wholly remove the +Revolution's impress of philosophical liberalism from the minds of men. +Slavery was always a thing of appreciable disrelish in many quarters; and +the slave trade especially, whether foreign or domestic, bore a permanent +stigma. + +[Footnote 25: _E. g., Annals of Congress_, 1799-1801, pp. 230-246.] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE + + +The many attempts of the several colonies to restrict or prohibit the +importation of slaves were uniformly thwarted, as we have seen, by the +British government. The desire for prohibition, however, had been far from +constant or universal.[1] The first Continental Congress when declaring the +Association, on October 18, 1774, resolved: "We will neither import, nor +purchase any slave imported, after the first day of December next; after +which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither +be concerned in it ourselves nor will we hire our vessels nor sell our +commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[2] But even +this was mainly a political stroke against the British government; and the +general effect of the restraint lasted not more than two or three years.[3] +The ensuing war, of course, hampered the trade, and the legislatures of +several Northern states, along with Delaware and Virginia, took occasion +to prohibit slave importations. The return of peace, although followed by +industrial depression, revived the demand for slave labor. Nevertheless, +Maryland prohibited the import by an act of 1783; North Carolina laid a +prohibitive duty in 1787; and South Carolina in the spring of that year +enacted the first of a series of temporary laws which maintained a +continuous prohibition for sixteen years. Thus at the time when the framers +of the Federal Constitution were stopping congressional action for twenty +years, the trade was legitimate only in a few of the Northern states, all +of which soon enacted prohibitions, and in Georgia alone at the South. +The San Domingan cataclysm prompted the Georgia legislature in an act +of December 19, 1793, to forbid the importation of slaves from the West +Indies, the Bahamas and Florida, as well as to require free negroes to +procure magisterial certificates of industriousness and probity.[4] The +African trade was left open by that state until 1798, when it was closed +both by legislative enactment and by constitutional provision. + +[Footnote 1: The slave trade enactments by the colonies, the states and +the federal government are listed and summarized in W.E.B. DuBois, _The +Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638-1870_ +(New York, 1904), appendices.] + +[Footnote 2: W.C. Ford, ed., _Journals of the Continental Congress_ +(Washington, 1904), I, 75, 77.] + +[Footnote 3: DuBois, pp. 44-48.] + +[Footnote 4: The text of the act, which appears never to have been printed, +is in the Georgia archives. For a transcript I am indebted to the Hon. +Philip Cook, Secretary of State of Georgia.] + +The scale of the importation in the period when Georgia alone permitted +them appears to have been small. For the year 1796, for example, the +imports at Savannah were officially reported at 2084, including some who +had been brought coastwise from the northward for sale.[5] A foreign +traveler who visited Savannah in the period noted that the demand was light +because of the dearth of money and credit, that the prices were about three +hundred dollars per head, that the carriers were mainly from New England, +and that one third of each year's imports were generally smuggled into +South Carolina.[6] + +[Footnote 5: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, pp. 459, +460.] + +[Footnote 6: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ +(London, 1799), p. 605.] + +In the impulse toward the prohibitory acts the humanitarian motive was +obvious but not isolated. At the North it was supplemented, often in +the same breasts, by the inhumane feeling of personal repugnance toward +negroes. The anti-slave-trade agitation in England also had a contributing +influence; and there were no economic interests opposing the exclusion. +At the South racial repugnance was fainter, and humanitarianism though of +positive weight was but one of several factors. The distinctively Southern +considerations against the trade were that its continuance would lower the +prices of slaves already on hand, or at least prevent those prices from +rising; that it would so increase the staple exports as to spoil the +world's market for them; that it would drain out money and keep the +community in debt; that it would retard the civilization of the negroes +already on hand; and that by raising the proportion of blacks in the +population it would intensify the danger of slave insurrections. The +several arguments had varying degrees of influence in the several areas. +In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-going +comfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer districts the +settlers were more confident in their own alertness. Again, where +prosperity was declining the planters were fairly sure to favor anything +calculated to raise the prices of slaves which they might wish in future to +sell, while on the other hand the people in districts of rising industry +were tempted by programmes tending to cheapen the labor they needed. + +The arguments used in South Carolina for and against exclusion may be +gathered from scattering reports in the newspapers. In September, 1785, the +lower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governor +on the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committee +of fifteen on the state of the republic. In this committee there was a +vigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting +slave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it. Since the +peace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven thousand slaves +had been imported, which at £50 each would be trifling as a cause of the +existing stringency; and the closing of the ports would therefore fail to +relieve the distress[7] Thomas Pinckney supported Rutledge with an argument +that the exclusion of the trade from Charleston would at once drive +commerce in general to the ports of Georgia and North Carolina, and that +the advantage of low prices, which he said had fallen from a level of £90 +in 1783, would be lost to the planters. Judge Pendleton, on the other hand, +stressed the need of retrenchment. Planters, he said, no longer enjoyed the +long loans which in colonial times had protected them from distress; and +the short credits now alone available put borrowers in peril of bankruptcy +from a single season of short crops and low prices.[8] The committee +reported Izard's bill; but it was defeated in the House by a vote of 47 to +51, and an act was passed instead for an emission of bills of credit by the +state. The advocacy of the trade by Thomas Pinckney indicates that at this +time there was no unanimity of conservatives against it. + +[Footnote 7: Charleston _Evening Gazette_, Sept. 26 and 28, 1785.] + +[Footnote 8: _Ibid_., Oct. 1, 1785.] + +When two years later the stringency persisted, the radicals in the +legislature demanded a law to stay the execution of debts, while the now +unified conservatives proposed again the stoppage of the slave trade. In +the course of the debate David Ramsay "made a jocose remark that every +man who went to church last Sunday and said his prayers was bound by a +spiritual obligation to refuse the importation of slaves. They had devoutly +prayed not to be led into temptation, and negroes were a temptation too +great to be resisted."[9] The issue was at length adjusted by combining +the two projects of a stay-law and a prohibition of slave importations for +three years in a single bill. This was approved on March 28, 1787; and a +further act of the same day added a penalty of fine to that of forfeiture +for the illegal introduction of slaves. The exclusion applied to slaves +from every source, except those whose masters should bring them when +entering the state as residents.[10] + +[Footnote 9: Charleston _Morning Post_, March 23, 1787.] + +[Footnote 10: _Ibid_., March 29, 1787; Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at +Large of South Carolina_, VII, 430.] + +Early in the next year an attempt was made to repeal the prohibition. Its +leading advocate was Alexander Gillon, a populistic Charleston merchant +who had been made a commodore by the State of South Carolina but had never +sailed a ship. The opposition was voiced so vigorously by Edward Rutledge, +Charles Pinckney, Chancellor Matthews, Dr. Ramsay, Mr. Lowndes, and others +that the project was crushed by 93 votes to 40. The strongest weapon in +the hands of its opponents appears to have been a threat of repealing the +stay-law in retaliation.[11] At the end of the year the prohibitory act +had its life prolonged until the beginning of 1793; and continuation acts +adopted every two or three years thereafter extended the régime until the +end of 1803. The constitutionality of the prohibition was tested before the +judiciary of the state in January, 1802, when the five assembled judges +unanimously pronounced it valid.[12] + +[Footnote 11: _Georgia State Gazette_ (Savannah), Feb. 17, 1788.] + +[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Jan. 30, 1802.] + +But at last the advocates of the open trade had their innings. The governor +in a message of November 24, 1803, recited that his best exertions to +enforce the law had been of no avail. Inhabitants of the coast and the +frontier, said he, were smuggling in slaves abundantly, while the people of +the central districts were suffering an unfair competition in having to +pay high prices for their labor. He mentioned a recently enacted law of +Congress reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only to +pronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction; and he +dismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of smuggled slaves +as "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction in servitude."[13] +Having thus described the problem as insoluble by prohibitions, he left the +solution to the legislature. + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 5, 1803.] + +In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward by a +statement of William Lowndes in Congress,[14] there is reason to believe +that violations of the law had not been committed on a great scale. Slave +prices could not have become nearly doubled, as they did during the period +of legal prohibition, if African imports had been at all freely made. The +governor may quite possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view to +bringing the system of exclusion to an end. + +[Footnote 14: _Annals of Congress_, 1803-1804, p. 992.] + +However this may have been, a bill was promptly introduced in the Senate +to repeal all acts against importations. Mr. Barnwell opposed this on +the ground that the immense influx of slaves which might be expected in +consequence would cut in half the value of slave property, and that the +increase in the cotton output would lower the already falling prices of +cotton to disastrous levels. The resumption of the great war in Europe, +said he, had already diminished the supply of manufactured goods and raised +their prices. "Was it under these circumstances that we ought to lay +out the savings of our industry, the funds accumulated in many years of +prosperity and peace, to increase that produce whose value had already +fallen so much? He thought not. The permission given by the bill would lead +to ruinous speculations. Everyone would purchase negroes. It was well known +that those who dealt in this property would sell it at a very long credit. +Our citizens would purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate crops and +favorable markets for making their payments; and it would be found that +South Carolina would in a few years, if this trade continued open, be in +the same situation of debt, and subject to all misfortunes which that +situation had produced, as at the close of the Revolutionary war." The +newspaper closed its report of the speech by a concealment of its further +burden: "The Hon. member adduced in support of his opinion various other +arguments, still more cogent and impressive, which from reasons very +obvious we decline making public."[15] It may be surmised that the +suppressed remarks dealt with the danger of slave revolts. In the further +course of the debate, "Mr. Smith said he would agree to put a stop to the +importation of slaves, but he believed it impossible. For this reason he +would vote for the bill." The measure soon passed the Senate. + +[Footnote 15: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 26, 1803.] + +Meanwhile the lower house had resolved on December 8, in committee of the +whole, "that the laws prohibiting the importation of negroes and other +persons of colour in this state can be so amended as to prevent their +introduction amongst us," and had recommended that a select committee be +appointed to draft a bill accordingly.[16] Within the following week, +however, the sentiment of the House was swung to the policy of repeal, and +the Senate bill was passed. On the test vote the ayes were 55 and the +noes 46.[17] The act continued the exclusion of West Indian negroes, and +provided that slaves brought in from sister states of the Union must have +official certificates of good character; but as to the African trade it +removed all restrictions. In 1805 a bill to prohibit imports again was +introduced into the legislature, but after debate it was defeated.[18] + +[Footnote 16: _Ibid_., Dec. 20, 1803.] + +[Footnote 17: Charleston _City Gazette_, Dec. 22, 1803.] + +[Footnote 18: "Diary of Edward Hooker" in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] + +The local effect of the repeal is indicated in the experience of E.S. +Thomas, a Charleston bookseller of the time who in high prosperity had just +opened a new importation of fifty thousand volumes. As he wrote in after +years, the news that the legislature had reopened the slave trade "had not +been five hours in the city, before two large British Guineamen, that had +been lying on and off the port for several days expecting it, came up to +town; and from that day my business began to decline.... A great change at +once took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for the +coast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were bought +up with avidity, not only consuming the large funds that had been +accumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit +and mortgaging the slaves for payment.... For myself, I was upwards of five +years disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more than a half, in +all the principal towns from Augusta in Georgia to Boston."[19] + +[Footnote 19: E.S. Thomas, _Reminiscences_, II, 35, 36.] + +As reported at the end of the period, the importations amounted to 5386 +slaves in 1804; 6790 in 1805; 11,458 in 1806; and 15,676 in 1807.[20] +Senator William Smith of South Carolina upon examining the records at a +later time placed the total at 39,310, and analysed the statistics as +follows: slaves brought by British vessels, 19,449; by French vessels, +1078; by American vessels, operated mostly for the account of Rhode +Islanders and foreigners, 18,048.[21] If an influx no greater than this +could produce the effect which Thomas described, notwithstanding that many +of the slaves were immediately reshipped to New Orleans and many more +were almost as promptly sold into the distant interior, the scale of +the preceding illicit trade must have been far less than the official +statements and the apologies in Congress would indicate. + +[Footnote 20: _Virginia Argus_, Jan. 19, 1808.] + +[Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, 1821-1822, pp. 73-77.] + +South Carolina's opening of the trade promptly spread dismay in other +states. The North Carolina legislature, by a vote afterwards described as +virtually unanimous in both houses, adopted resolutions in December, 1804, +instructing the Senators from North Carolina and requesting her Congressmen +to use their utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procure +an amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at once to +prohibit the further importation of slaves and other persons of color +from Africa and the West Indies. Copies were ordered sent not only to the +state's delegation in Congress but to the governors of the other states for +transmission to the legislatures with a view to their concurrence.[22] In +the next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New +Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of the +time when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of the +Constitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme of +amendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for +the temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of +African importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at the +beginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on the general +question three years afterward. + +[Footnote 22: Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter of +Governor James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, in +the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.] + +[Footnote 23: H.V. Ames, _Proposed Amendments to the Constitution_, in the +American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 208, 209.] + +[Footnote 24: Printed from Senator Plumer's notes, in the _American +Historical Review_, XXII, 340-364.] + +In the winter of 1804-1805 bills were introduced in both Senate and House +to prohibit slave importations at large; but the one was postponed for a +year and the other was rejected,[25] doubtless because the time was not +near enough when they could take effect. At last the matter was formally +presented by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens," +he said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "on the approach of +the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to +withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation +in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued +on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the +reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to +proscribe. Although no law you can pass can take effect until the day of +the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening period +is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be +completed before that day."[26] Next day Senator Bradley of Vermont gave +notice of a bill which was shortly afterward introduced and which, after +an unreported discussion, was passed by the Senate on January 27. Its +conspicuous provisions were that after the close of the year 1807 the +importation of slaves was to be a felony punishable with death, and that +the interstate coasting trade in slaves should be illegal. + +[Footnote 25: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, p. +105.] + +The report of proceedings in the House was now full, now scant. The +paragraph of the President's message was referred on December 3 to a +committee of seven with Peter Early of Georgia as chairman and three other +Southerners in the membership. The committee's bill reported on December +15, proposed to prohibit slave importations, to penalize the fitting out of +vessels for the trade by fine and forfeiture, to lay fines and forfeitures +likewise upon the owners and masters found within the jurisdictional waters +of the United States with slaves from abroad on board, and empowered the +President to use armed vessels in enforcement. It further provided that if +slaves illegally introduced should be found within the United States they +should be forfeited, and any person wittingly concerned in buying or +selling them should be fined; it laid the burden of proof upon defendants +when charged on reasonable grounds of presumption with having violated the +act; and it prescribed that the slaves forfeited should, like other +goods in the same status, be sold at public outcry by the proper federal +functionaries.[27] + +[Footnote 26: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 14.] + +[Footnote 27 _Ibid_., pp. 167, 168.] + +Mr. Sloan of New Jersey instantly moved to amend by providing that the +forfeited slaves be entitled to freedom. Mr. Early replied that this would +rob the bill of all effect by depriving it of public sanction in the +districts whither slaves were likely to be brought. Those communities, he +said, would never tolerate the enforcement of a law which would set fresh +Africans at large in their midst. Mr. Smilie, voicing the sentiment and +indicating the dilemma of most of his fellow Pennsylvanians, declared +his unconquerable aversion to any measure which would make the federal +government a dealer in slaves, but confessed that he had no programme of +his own. Nathaniel Macon, the Speaker, saying that he thought the desire +to enact an effective law was universal, agreed with Early that Sloan's +amendment would defeat the purpose. Early himself waxed vehement, +prophesying the prompt extermination of any smuggled slaves emancipated in +the Southern states. The amendment was defeated by a heavy majority. + +Next day, however, Mr. Bidwell of Massachusetts renewed Sloan's attack by +moving to strike out the provision for the forfeiture of the slaves; but +his colleague Josiah Quincy, supported by the equally sagacious Timothy +Pitkin of Connecticut, insisted upon the necessity of forfeiture; and Early +contended that this was particularly essential to prevent the smuggling of +slaves across the Florida border where the ships which had brought them +would keep beyond the reach of congressional laws. The House finding itself +in an impasse referred the bill back to the same committee, which soon +reported it in a new form declaring the illegal importation of slaves +a felony punishable with death. Upon Early's motion this provision was +promptly stricken out in committee of the whole by a vote of 60 to 41; +whereupon Bidwell renewed his proposal to strike out the forfeiture of +slaves. He was numerously supported in speeches whose main burden was that +the United States government must not become the receiver of stolen goods. +The speeches in reply stressed afresh the pivotal quality of forfeiture in +an effective law; and Bidwell when pressed for an alternative plan could +only say that he might if necessary be willing to leave them to the +disposal of the several states, but was at any rate "opposed to disgracing +our statute book with a recognition of the principle of slavery." Quincy +replied that he wished Bidwell and his fellows "would descend from their +high abstract ground to the level of things in their own state--such +as have, do and will exist after your laws, and in spite of them." The +Southern members, said he, were anxious for nothing so much as a total +prohibition, and for that reason were insistent upon forfeiture. For the +sake of enforcing the law, and for the sake of controlling the future +condition of the smuggled slaves, forfeiture was imperative. Such a +provision would not necessarily admit that the importers had had a title +in the slaves before capture, but it and it alone would effectively divest +them of any color of title to which they might pretend. The amendment was +defeated by a vote of 36 to 63. + +When the bill with amendments was reported to the House by the committee of +the whole, on December 31, there was vigorous debate upon the question of +substituting imprisonment of from five to ten years in place of the death +penalty. Mr. Talmadge of Connecticut supported the provision of death with +a biblical citation; and Mr. Smilie said he considered it the very marrow +of the bill. Mr. Lloyd of Maryland thought the death penalty would be +out of proportion to the crime, and considered the extract from Exodus +inapplicable since few of the negroes imported had been stolen in Africa. +But Mr. Olin of Vermont announced that the man-stealing argument had +persuaded him in favor of the extreme penalty. Early now became furious, +and in his fury, frank. In a preceding speech he had pronounced slavery +"an evil regretted by every man in the country."[28] He now said: "A large +majority of the people in the Southern states do not ... believe it immoral +to hold human flesh in bondage. Many deprecate slavery as an evil; as a +political evil; but not as a crime. Reflecting men apprehend, at some +future day, evils, incalculable evils, from it; but it is a fact that +few, very few, consider it as a crime. It is best to be candid on this +subject.... I will tell the truth. A large majority of people in the +Southern states do not consider slavery as an evil. Let the gentleman go +and travel in that quarter of the Union; let him go from neighborhood to +neighborhood, and he will find that this is the fact. Some gentlemen appear +to legislate for the sake of appearances.... I should like to know what +honor you will derive from a law that will be broken every day of your +lives."[29] Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf of his +state of Rhode Island: "I wish the law made so strong as to prevent this +trade in future; but I cannot believe that a man ought to be hung for only +stealing a negro. Those who buy them are as bad as those who import them, +and deserve hanging quite as much." The yeas and nays recorded at the end +of the exhausting day showed 63 in favor and 53 against the substitution of +imprisonment. The North was divided, 29 to 37, with the nays coming mostly +from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut; the South, although South +Carolina as well as Kentucky was evenly divided, cast 34 yeas to 16 nays. +Virginia and Maryland, which might have been expected to be doubtful, +virtually settled the question by casting 17 yeas against 6 nays. + +[Footnote 28: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 174.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid_., pp. 238, 239.] + +When the consideration of the bill was resumed on January 7, Mr. Bidwell +renewed his original attack by moving to strike out the confiscation of +slaves; and when this was defeated by 39 to 77, he attempted to reach the +same end by a proviso "That no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of +this act," This was defeated only by the casting vote of the Speaker. Those +voting aye were all from Northern states, except Archer of Maryland, Broom +of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky and Williams of North Carolina. The noes +were all from the South except one from New Hampshire, ten from New York, +and one from Pennsylvania. The outcome was evidently unsatisfactory to the +bulk of the members, for on the next day a motion to recommit the bill to +a new committee of seventeen prevailed by a vote of 76 to 46. Among the +members who shifted their position over night were six of the ten from New +York, four from Maryland, three from Virginia, and two from North Carolina. +In the new committee Bedinger of Kentucky, who was regularly on the +Northern side, was chairman, and Early was not included. + +This committee reported in February a bill providing, as a compromise, that +forfeited negroes should be carried to some place in the United States +where slavery was either not permitted or was in course of gradual +extinction, and there be indentured or otherwise employed as the President +might deem best for them and the country. Early moved that for this there +be substituted a provision that the slaves be delivered to the several +states in which the captures were made, to be disposed of at discretion; +and he said that the Southern people would resist the indenture provision +with their lives. This reckless assertion suggests that Early was either +set against the framing of an effective law, or that he spoke in mere blind +rage. + +Before further progress was made the House laid aside its bill in favor of +the one which the Senate had now passed. An amendment to this, striking out +the death penalty, was adopted on February 12 by a vote of 67 to 48. The +North gave 31 ayes and 36 noes, quite evenly distributed among the states. +The South cast 37 ayes to 11 noes, five of the latter coming from Virginia, +two from North Carolina, and one each from Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and +South Carolina. A considerable shifting of votes appeared since the ballot +on the same question six weeks before. Knight of Rhode Island, Sailly and +Williams of New York, Helms of New Jersey and Wynns of North Carolina +changed in favor of the extreme penalty; but they were more than offset by +the opposite change of Bidwell of Massachusetts, Van Cortlandt of New York, +Lambert of New Jersey, Clay and Gray of Virginia and McFarland of North +Carolina. Numerous members from all quarters who voted on one of these +roll-calls were silent at the other, and this variation also had a net +result against the infliction of death. The House then filled the blank +it had made in the bill by defining the offense as a high misdemeanor and +providing a penalty of imprisonment of not less than five nor more than +ten years. John Randolph opposed even this as excessive, but found himself +unsupported. The House then struck out the prohibition of the coasting +trade in slaves, and returned the bill as amended to the Senate. The latter +concurred in all the changes except that as to the coastwise trade, and +sent the bill back to the House. + +John Randolph now led in the insistence that the House stand firm. If the +bill should pass without the amendment, said he, the Southern people would +set the law at defiance, and he himself would begin the violation of so +unconstitutional an infringement of the rights of property. The House voted +to insist upon its amendment, and sent the bill to conference where in +compromise the prohibition as to the coastwise carriage of slaves for sale +was made to apply only to vessels of less than forty tons burthen. The +Senate agreed to this. In the House Mr. Early opposed it as improper in law +and so easy of evasion that it would be perfectly futile for the prevention +of smuggling from Florida. John Randolph said: "The provision of the bill +touched the right of private property. He feared lest at a future period it +might be made the pretext of universal emancipation. He had rather lose the +bill, he had rather lose all the bills of the session, he had rather lose +every bill passed since the establishment of the government, than agree +to the provision contained in this slave bill. It went to blow up the +Constitution in ruins."[30] Concurrence was carried, nevertheless, by a +vote of 63 to 49, in which the North cast 51 ayes to 12 noes, and the South +12 ayes to 37 noes. The Southern ayes were four from Maryland, four +from North Carolina, two from Tennessee, and one each from Virginia and +Kentucky. The Northern noes were five from New York, two each from New +Hampshire and Vermont, and one each from Massachusetts, Connecticut and +Pennsylvania. + +[Footnote 30: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 626.] + +The bill then passed the House. Its variance from the original House bill +was considerable, for it made the importation of slaves from abroad a high +misdemeanor punishable with imprisonment; it prohibited the coastwise trade +by sea in vessels of less than forty tons, and required the masters of +larger vessels transporting negroes coastwise to deliver to the port +officials classified manifests of the negroes and certificates that to the +best of their knowledge and belief the slaves had not been imported since +the beginning of 1808; and instead of forfeiture to the United States it +provided that all smuggled slaves seized under the act should be subject to +such disposal as the laws of the state or territory in which the seizure +might be made should prescribe.[31] Randolph, still unreconciled, offered +an explanatory act, February 27, that nothing in the preceding act should +be construed to affect in any manner the absolute property right of masters +in their slaves not imported contrary to the law, and that such masters +should not be liable to any penalty for the coastwise transportation of +slaves in vessels of less than forty tons. In attempting to force this +measure through, he said that if it did not pass the House at once he hoped +the Virginia delegation would wait on the President and remonstrate against +his approving the act which had passed.[32] By a vote of 60 to 49 this bill +was made the order for the next day; but its further consideration was +crowded out by the rush of business at the session's close. The President +signed the prohibitory bill on March 2, without having received the +threatened Virginia visitation. + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 1266-1270.] + +[Footnote 32: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 637.] + +Among the votes in the House on which the yeas and nays were recorded in +the course of these complex proceedings, six may be taken as tests. They +were on striking out the death penalty, December 31; on striking out the +forfeiture of slaves, January 7; on the proviso that no person should +be sold by virtue of the act, January 7; on referring the bill to a new +committee, January 8; on striking out the death penalty from the Senate +bill, February 12; and on the prohibition of the coasting trade in slaves +in vessels of under forty tons, February 26. In each case a majority of +the Northern members voted on one side of the question, and a yet larger +majority of Southerners voted on the other. Twenty-two members voted in +every case on the side which the North tended to adopt. These comprised +seven from Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, three from Connecticut, +and one or two from each of the other Northern states except Rhode Island +and Ohio. They comprised also Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky, and +Morrow of Virginia; while Williams of North Carolina was almost equally +constant in opposing the policies advocated by the bulk of his fellow +Southerners. On the other hand the regulars on the Southern side comprised +not only ten Virginians, all of the six South Carolinians, except three of +their number on the punishment questions, all of the four Georgians, three +North Carolinians, two Marylanders and one Kentuckian, but in addition +Tenney of New Hampshire, Schuneman, Van Rensselaer and Verplanck of New +York on all but the punishment questions. + +On the whole, sectional divergence was fairly pronounced, but only on +matters of detail. The expressions from all quarters of a common desire +to make the prohibition of importations effective were probably sincere +without material exception. As regards the Virginia group of states, their +economic interest in high prices for slaves vouches for the genuine purpose +of their representatives, while that of the Georgians and South Carolinians +may at the most be doubted and not disproved. The South in general +wished to prevent any action which might by implication stigmatize the +slaveholding régime, and was on guard also against precedents tending to +infringe state rights. The North, on the other hand, was largely divided +between a resolve to stop the sanction of slavery and a desire to enact +an effective law in the premises directly at issue. The outcome was a law +which might be evaded with relative ease wherever public sanction was weak, +but which nevertheless proved fairly effective in operation. + +When slave prices rose to high levels after the war of 1812 systematic +smuggling began to prevail from Amelia Island on the Florida border, and on +a smaller scale on the bayous of the Barataria district below New Orleans; +but these operations were checked upon the passage of a congressional act +in 1818 increasing the rewards to informers. Another act in the following +year directed the President to employ armed vessels for police in both +African and American waters, and incidentally made provisions contemplating +the return of captured slaves to Africa. Finally Congress by an act of 1820 +declared the maritime slave trade to be piracy.[33] Smuggling thereafter +diminished though it never completely ceased. + +[Footnote 33: DuBois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, pp. 118-123.] + +As to the dimensions of the illicit importations between 1808 and 1860, +conjectures have placed the gross as high as two hundred and seventy +thousand.[34] Most of the documents in the premises, however, bear palpable +marks of unreliability. It may suffice to say that these importations were +never great enough to affect the labor supply in appreciable degree. So far +as the general economic régime was concerned, the foreign slave trade was +effectually closed in 1808. + +[Footnote 34: W.H. Collins, _The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern +States_ (New York [1904], pp. 12-20). _See also_ W.E.B. DuBois, +"Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1891, p. 173.] + +At that time, however, there were already in the United States about one +million slaves to serve as a stock from which other millions were to be +born to replenish the plantations in the east and to aid in the peopling of +the west. These were ample to maintain a chronic racial problem, and had no +man invented a cotton gin their natural increase might well have glutted +the market for plantation labor. Had the African source been kept freely +open, the bringing of great numbers to meet the demand in prosperous times +would quite possibly have so burdened the country with surplus slaves in +subsequent periods of severe depression that slave prices would have fallen +virtually to zero, and the slaveholding community would have been driven +to emancipate them wholesale as a means of relieving the masters from the +burden of the slaves' support. The foes of slavery had long reckoned that +the abolition of the foreign trade would be a fatal blow to slavery +itself. The event exposed their fallacy. Thomas Clarkson expressed the +disappointment of the English abolitionists in a letter of 1830: "We +certainly have been deceived in our first expectations relative to the +fruit of our exertions. We supposed that when by the abolition of the slave +trade the planters could get no more slaves, they would not only treat +better those whom they then had in their power, but that they would +gradually find it to their advantage to emancipate them. A part of our +expectations have been realized; ... but, alas! where the heart has been +desperately wicked, we have found no change. We did not sufficiently take +into account the effect of unlimited power on the human mind. No man likes +to part with power, and the more unbounded it is, the less he likes to +part with it. Neither did we sufficiently take into account the ignominy +attached to a black skin as the badge of slavery, and how difficult it +would be to make men look with a favourable eye upon what they had looked +[upon] formerly as a disgrace. Neither did we take sufficiently into +account the belief which every planter has, that such an unnatural state +as that of slavery can be kept up only by a system of rigour, and how +difficult therefore it would be to procure a relaxation from the ordinary +discipline of a slave estate."[35] + +[Footnote 35: MS. in private possession.] + +If such was the failure in the British West Indies, the change in +conditions in the United States was even greater; for the rise of the +cotton industry concurred with the prohibition of the African trade to +enhance immensely the preciousness of slaves and to increase in similar +degree the financial obstacle to a sweeping abolition. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR + + +The decade following the peace of 1783 brought depression in all the +plantation districts. The tobacco industry, upon which half of the Southern +people depended in greater or less degree, was entering upon a half century +of such wellnigh constant low prices that the opening of each new tract for +its culture was offset by the abandonment of an old one, and the export +remained stationary at a little less than half a million hogsheads. Indigo +production was decadent; and rice culture was in painful transition to the +new tide-flow system. Slave prices everywhere, like those of most other +investments, were declining in so disquieting a manner that as late as the +end of 1794 George Washington advised a friend to convert his slaves into +other forms of property, and said on his own account: "Were it not that I +am principled against selling negroes, as you would cattle in a market, I +would not in twelve months hence be possessed of a single one as a slave. +I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome +species of property ere many years have passed over our heads."[1] But at +that very time the addition of cotton and sugar to the American staples was +on the point of transforming the slaveholders' prospects. + +[Footnote 1: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, 1898, pp. 14, 15.] + +For centuries cotton had been among the world's materials for cloth, +though the dearth of supply kept it in smaller use than wool or flax. This +continued to be the case even when the original sources in the Orient were +considerably supplemented from the island of Bourbon and from the colonies +of Demarara, Berbice and Surinam which dotted the tropical South American +coast now known as Guiana. Then, in the latter half of the eighteenth +century, the great English inventions of spinning and Weaving machinery so +cheapened the manufacturing process that the world's demand for textiles +was immensely stimulated. Europe was eagerly inquiring for new fiber +supplies at the very time when the plantation states of America were under +the strongest pressure for a new source of income. + +The green-seed, short-staple variety of cotton had long been cultivated +for domestic use in the colonies from New Jersey to Georgia, but on such a +petty scale that spinners occasionally procured supplies from abroad. Thus +George Washington, who amid his many activities conducted a considerable +cloth-making establishment, wrote to his factor in 1773 that a bale of +cotton received from England had been damaged in transit.[2] The cutting +off of the foreign trade during the war for independence forced the +Americans to increase their cotton production to supply their necessities +for apparel. A little of it was even exported at the end of the war, eight +bags of which are said to have been seized by the customs officers at +Liverpool in 1784 on the ground that since America could not produce so +great a quantity the invoice must be fraudulent. But cotton was as yet kept +far from staple rank by one great obstacle, the lack of a gin. The fibers +of the only variety at hand clung to the seed as fast as the wool to the +sheep's back. It had to be cut or torn away; and because the seed-tufts +were so small, this operation when performed by hand was exceedingly slow +and correspondingly expensive. The preparation of a pound or two of lint a +day was all that a laborer could accomplish. + +[Footnote 2: MS. in the Library of Congress, Washington letter-books, XVII, +90.] + +The problem of the time had two possible solutions; the invention of a +machine for cleaning the lint from the seed of the sort already at hand, +or the introduction of some different variety whose lint was more lightly +attached. Both solutions were applied, and the latter first in point of +time though not in point of importance. + +About 1786 seed of several strains was imported from as many quarters +by planters on the Georgia-Carolina coast. Experiments with the Bourbon +variety, which yielded the finest lint then in the market, showed that +the growing season was too short for the ripening of its pods; but seed +procured from the Bahama Islands, of the sort which has ever since been +known as sea-island, not only made crops but yielded a finer fiber than +they had in their previous home. This introduction was accomplished by +the simultaneous experiments of several planters on the Georgia coast. Of +these, Thomas Spaulding and Alexander Bissett planted the seed in 1786 but +saw their plants fail to ripen any pods that year. But the ensuing winter +happened to be so mild that, although the cotton is not commonly a +perennial outside the tropics, new shoots grew from the old roots in the +following spring and yielded their crop in the fall.[3] Among those who +promptly adopted the staple was Richard Leake, who wrote from Savannah at +the end of 1788 to Tench Coxe: "I have been this year an adventurer, and +the first that has attempted on a large scale, in the article of cotton. +Several here as well as in Carolina have followed me and tried the +experiment. I shall raise about 5000 pounds in the seed from about eight +acres of land, and the next year I expect to plant from fifty to one +hundred acres."[4] + +[Footnote 3: Letter of Thomas Spaulding, Sapelo Island, Georgia, Jan. 20, +1844, to W.B. Scabrook, in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ +(New York, 1857), pp. 280-286.] + +[Footnote 4: E.J. Donnell, _Chronological and Statistical History of +Cotton_ (New York, 1872), p. 45.] + +The first success in South Carolina appears to have been attained by +William Elliott, on Hilton Head near Beaufort, in 1790. He bought five and +a half bushels of seed in Charleston at 14s per bushel, and sold his crop +at 10-1/2d per pound. In the next year John Screven of St. Luke's parish +planted thirty or forty acres, and sold his yield at from 1s. 2d. to 1s. +6d. sterling per pound. Many other planters on the islands and the adjacent +mainland now joined the movement. Some of them encountered failure, among +them General Moultrie of Revolutionary fame who planted one hundred and +fifty acres in St. John's Berkeley in 1793 and reaped virtually nothing.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, _Memoir on the Origin, Cultivation and +Uses of Cotton_ (Charleston, 1844), pp. 19, 20.] + +The English market came promptly to esteem the long, strong, silky +sea-island fiber as the finest of all cottons; and the prices at Liverpool +rose before the end of the century to as high as five shillings a pound. +This brought fortunes in South Carolina. Captain James Sinkler from a crop +of three hundred acres on his plantation, "Belvedere," in 1794 gathered +216 pounds to the acre, which at prices ranging from fifty to seventy-five +cents a pound brought him a gross return of $509 per laborer employed.[6] +Peter Gaillard of St. John's Berkeley received for his crop of the same +year an average of $340 per hand; and William Brisbane of St. Paul's earned +so much in the three years from 1796 to 1798 that he found himself rich +enough to retire from work and spend several years in travel at the North +and abroad. He sold his plantation to William Seabrook at a price which the +neighbors thought ruinously high, but Seabrook recouped the whole of it +from the proceeds of two years' crops.[7] + +[Footnote 6: Samuel DuBose, _Address delivered before the Black Oak +Agricultural Society, April 28, 1858_, in T.G. Thomas, _The Huguenots of +South Carolina_ (New York, 1887).] + +[Footnote 7: W.B. Seabrook, _Memoir on Cotton_, p. 20.] + +The methods of tillage were quickly systematized. Instead of being planted, +as at first, in separate holes, the seed came to be drilled and plants +grown at intervals of one or two feet on ridges five or six feet apart; +and the number of hoeings was increased. But the thinner fruiting of this +variety prevented the planters from attaining generally more than about +half the output per acre which their upland colleagues came to reap from +their crops of the shorter staple. A hundred and fifty pounds to the acre +and three or four acres to the hand was esteemed a reasonable crop on the +seaboard.[8] The exports of the sea-island staple rose by 1805 to nearly +nine million pounds, but no further expansion occurred until 1819 when an +increase carried the exports for a decade to about eleven million pounds a +year. In the course of the twenties Kinsey Burden and Hugh Wilson, both of +St. John's Colleton, began breeding superfine fiber through seed selection, +with such success that the latter sold two of his bales in 1828 at the +unequaled price of two dollars a pound. The practice of raising fancy +grades became fairly common after 1830, with the result, however, that for +the following decade the exports fell again to about eight million pounds a +year.[9] + +[Footnote 8: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. +132; J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 129, 131.] + +[Footnote 9: Seabrook, pp. 35-37, 53.] + +Sea-island cotton, with its fibers often measuring more than two inches in +length, had the advantages of easy detachment from its glossy black seed by +squeezing it between a pair of simple rollers, and of a price for even its +common grades ranging usually more than twice that of the upland staple. +The disadvantages were the slowness of the harvesting, caused by the +failure of the bolls to open wide; the smallness of the yield; and the +necessity of careful handling at all stages in preparing the lint for +market. Climatic requirements, furthermore, confined its culture within +a strip thirty or forty miles wide along the coast of South Carolina and +Georgia. In the first flush of the movement some of the rice fields were +converted to cotton;[10] but experience taught the community ere long that +the labor expense in the new industry absorbed too much of the gross return +for it to displace rice from its primacy in the district. + +[Footnote 10: F.A. Michaux, _Travels_, in R.G. Thwaites, ed., _Early +Western Travels_, III, 303.] + +In the Carolina-Georgia uplands the industrial and social developments +of the eighteenth century had been in marked contrast with those on the +seaboard. These uplands, locally known as the Piedmont, were separated from +the tide-water tract by a flat and sandy region, the "pine barrens," a +hundred miles or more in breadth, where the soil was generally too light +for prosperous agriculture before the time when commercial fertilizers came +into use. The Piedmont itself is a rolling country, extending without a +break from Virginia to Alabama and from the mountains of the Blue Ridge to +the line of the lowest falls on the rivers. The soil of mingled clay +and sand was originally covered with rich forest mold. The climate was +moderately suited to a great variety of crops; but nothing was found for +which it had a marked superiority until short-staple cotton was made +available. + +In the second half of the eighteenth century this region had come to +be occupied in scattered homesteads by migrants moving overland from +Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, extending their régime of frontier +farms until the stubborn Creek and Cherokee Indian tribes barred further +progress. Later comers from the same northeastward sources, some of them +bringing a few slaves, had gradually thickened the settlement without +changing materially its primitive system of life. Not many recruits had +entered from the rice coast in colonial times, for the régime there was not +such as to produce pioneers for the interior. The planters, unlike those of +Maryland and Virginia, had never imported appreciable numbers of indentured +servants to become in after years yeomen and fathers of yeomen; the slaves +begat slaves alone to continue at their masters' bidding; and the planters +themselves had for the time being little inducement to forsake the +lowlands. The coast and the Piedmont were unassociated except by a trickle +of trade by wagon and primitive river-boat across the barrens. The capture +of Savannah and Charleston by the British during the War for Independence, +however, doubtless caused a number of the nearby inhabitants to move into +the Piedmont as refugees, carrying their slaves with them. + +The commercial demands of the early settlers embraced hardly anything +beyond salt, ammunition and a little hardware. The forest and their +half-cleared fields furnished meat and bread; workers in the households +provided rude furniture and homespun; and luxuries, except home-made +liquors, were unknown. But the time soon came when zealous industry yielded +more grain and cattle than each family needed for its own supply. The +surplus required a market, which the seaboard was glad to furnish. The road +and river traffic increased, and the procurement of miscellaneous goods +from the ports removed the need of extreme diversity in each family's work. +This treeing of energy led in turn to a search for more profitable market +crops. Flax and hemp were tried, and tobacco with some success. Several new +villages were founded, indeed, on the upper courses of the rivers to serve +as stations for the inspection and shipment of tobacco; but their budding +hopes of prosperity from that staple were promptly blighted. The product +was of inferior grade, the price was low, and the cost of freightage high. +The export from Charleston rose from 2680 hogsheads in 1784 to 9646 in +1799, but rapidly declined thereafter. Tobacco, never more than a makeshift +staple, was gladly abandoned for cotton at the first opportunity.[11] + +[Footnote 11: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern +Cotton Belt to 1860_ (New York, 1908), pp. 46-55.] + +At the time of the federal census of 1790 there were in the main group of +upland counties of South Carolina, comprised then in the two "districts" of +Camden and Ninety-six, a total of 91,704 white inhabitants, divided into +15,652 families. Of these 3787 held slaves to the number of 19,934--an +average of 5-1/4 slaves in each holding. No more than five of these parcels +comprised as many as one hundred slaves each, and only 156 masters, about +four per cent, of the whole, had as many as twenty each. These larger +holdings, along with the 335 other parcels ranging from ten to nineteen +slaves each, were of course grouped mainly in the river counties in the +lower part of the Piedmont, while the smallest holdings were scattered far +and wide. That is to say, there was already discoverable a tendency toward +a plantation régime in the localities most accessible to market, while +among the farmers about one in four had one or more slaves to aid in the +family's work. The Georgia Piedmont, for which the returns of the early +censuses have been lost, probably had a somewhat smaller proportion of +slaves by reason of its closer proximity to the Indian frontier. + +A sprinkling of slaves was enough to whet the community's appetite for +opportunities to employ them with effect and to buy more slaves with the +proceeds. It is said that in 1792 some two or three million pounds +of short-staple cotton was gathered in the Piedmont,[12] perhaps in +anticipation of a practicable gin, and that the state of Georgia had +appointed a commission to promote the desired invention.[13] It is certain +that many of the citizens were discussing the problem when in the spring of +1793 young Eli Whitney, after graduating at Yale College, left his home in +Massachusetts intending to teach school in the South. While making a visit +at the home of General Greene's widow, near Savannah, he listened to a +conversation on the subject by visitors from upland Georgia, and he was +urged by Phineas Miller, the manager of the Greene estate, to apply his +Yankee ingenuity to the solution. When Miller offered to bear the expenses +of the project, Whitney set to work, and within ten days made a model which +met the essential requirements. This comprised a box with a slatted side +against which a wooden cylinder studded with wire points was made to play. +When seed cotton was fed into the box and the cylinder was revolved, the +sharp wires passing between the slats would engage the lint and pull it +through as they passed out in the further revolution of the cylinder. The +seed, which were too large to pass through the grating, would stay within +the hopper until virtually all the wool was torn off, whereupon they would +fall through a crevice on the further side. The minor problem which now +remained of freeing the cylinder's teeth from their congestion of lint +found a solution in Mrs. Greene's stroke with a hearth-broom. Whitney, +seizing the principle, equipped his machine with a second cylinder studded +with brushes, set parallel to the first but revolving in an opposite +direction and at a greater speed. This would sweep the teeth clean as fast +as they emerged lint-laden from the hopper. Thus was the famous cotton-gin +devised.[14] + +[Footnote 12: Letter of Phineas Miller to the Comptroller of South +Carolina, in the _American Historical Review_, III, 115.] + +[Footnote 13: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_ (New York, 1807), p. 23.] + +[Footnote 14: Denison Olmstead, _Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esq_. (New Haven, +1846), reprinted in J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. +297-320. M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, pp. 25, 26.] + +Miller, who now married Mrs. Greene, promptly entered into partnership with +Whitney not only to manufacture gins but also to monopolize the business +of operating them, charging one-third of the cotton as toll. They even +ventured into the buying and selling of the staple on a large scale. Miller +wrote Whitney in 1797, for example, that he was trying to raise money for +the purchase of thirty or forty thousand pounds of seed cotton at the +prevailing price of three cents, and was projecting a trade in the lint to +far-off Tennessee.[15] By this time the partners had as many as thirty gins +in operation at various points in Georgia; but misfortune had already begun +to pursue them. Their shop on the Greene plantation had been forced by a +mob even before their patent was procured in 1793, and Jesse Bull, Charles +M. Lin and Edward Lyons, collaborating near Wrightsboro, soon put forth an +improved gin in which saw-toothed iron discs replaced the wire points of +the Whitney model.[16] Whitney had now returned to New Haven to establish +a gin factory, and Miller wrote him in 1794 urging prompt shipments and +saying: "The people of the country are running mad for them, and much can +be said to justify their importunity. When the present crop is harvested +there will be a real property of at least fifty thousand dollars lying +useless unless we can enable the holders to bring it to market," But an +epidemic prostrated Whitney's workmen that year, and a fire destroyed his +factory in 1795. Meanwhile rival machines were appearing in the market, and +Whitney and Miller were beginning their long involvement in lawsuits. Their +overreaching policy of monopolizing the operation of their gins turned +public sentiment against them and inclined the juries, particularly in +Georgia, to decide in favor of their opponents. Not until 1807, when their +patent was on the point of expiring did they procure a vindication in the +Georgia courts. Meanwhile a grant of $50,000 from the legislature of South +Carolina to extinguish the patent right in that state, and smaller grants +from North Carolina and Tennessee did little more than counterbalance +expenses.[17] A petition which Whitney presented to Congress in 1812 for a +renewal of his expired patent was denied, and Whitney turned his talents to +the manufacture of muskets. + +[Footnote 15: _American Historical Review_. Ill, 104.] + +[Footnote 16: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 289, 290, +293-295.] + +[Footnote 17: M.B. Hammond, "Correspondence of Eli Whitney relating to the +Invention of the Cotton Gin," in the _American Historical Review_, III, +90-127.] + +In Georgia the contest of lawyers in the courts was paralleled by a battle +of advertisers in the newspapers. Thomas Spaulding offered to supply Joseph +Eve's gins from the Bahama Islands at fifty guineas each;[18] and Eve +himself shortly immigrated to Augusta to contend for his patent rights on +roller-gins, for some of his workmen had changed his model in such a way as +to increase the speed, and had put their rival gins upon the market.[19] +Among these may have been John Currie, who offered exclusive county rights +at $100 each for the making, using and vending of his type of gins,[20] +also William Longstreet of Augusta who offered to sell gins of his own +devising at $150 each,[21] and Robert Watkins of the short-lived town of +Petersburg, Georgia, who denounced Longstreet as an infringer of his patent +and advertised local non-exclusive rights for making and using his own +style of gins at the bargain rate of sixty dollars.[22] All of these were +described as roller gins; but all were warranted to gin upland as well as +sea-island cotton.[23] By the year 1800 Miller and Whitney had also +adopted the practice of selling licenses in Georgia, as is indicated by an +advertisement from their agent at Augusta. Meanwhile ginners were calling +for negro boys and girls ten or twelve years old on hire to help at the +machines;[24] and were offering to gin for a toll of one-fifth of the +cotton.[25] As years passed the rates were still further lowered. At +Augusta in 1809, for example, cotton was ginned and packed in square bales +of 350 pounds at a cost of $1.50 per hundredweight.[26] + +[Footnote 18: _Columbian Museum_ (Savannah, Ga.), April 26, 1796.] + +[Footnote 19: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 281.] + +[Footnote 20: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Dec. 10, 1796.] + +[Footnote 21: _Southern Sentinel_ (Augusta, Ga.), July 14, 1796.] + +[Footnote 22: _Ibid_., Feb. 7, 1797; Augusta _Chronicle_, June 10, 1797.] + +[Footnote 23: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 13, 1800.] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Sentinel_, April 23, 1795.] + +[Footnote 25: Augusta _Chronicle_, Jan. 16, 1796.] + +[Footnote 26: _Ibid_., Sept. 9, 1809.] + +The upland people of Georgia and the two Carolinas made prompt response to +the new opportunity. By 1800 even Tennessee had joined the movement, and +a gin of such excellence was erected near Nashville that the proprietors +exacted fees from visitors wishing to view it;[27] and by 1802 not only +were consignments being shipped to New Orleans for the European market, but +part of the crop was beginning to be peddled in wagons to Kentucky and in +pole-boats on the Ohio as far as Pittsburg, for the domestic making of +homespun.[28] In 1805 John Baird advertised at Nashville that, having +received a commission from correspondents at Baltimore, he was ready to +buy as much as one hundred thousand pounds of lint at fifteen cents a +pound.[29] In the settlements about Vicksburg in the Mississippi Territory, +cotton was not only the staple product by 1809, but was also for the time +being the medium of exchange, while in Arkansas the squatters were debarred +from the new venture only by the poverty which precluded them from getting +gins.[30] In Virginia also, in such of the southerly counties as had +summers long enough for the crop to ripen in moderate security, cotton +growing became popular. But for the time being these were merely an +out-lying fringe of cotton's principality. The great rush to cotton growing +prior to the war of 1812 occurred in the Carolina-Georgia Piedmont, with +its trend of intensity soon pointing south-westward. + +[Footnote 27: _Tennessee Gazette_ (Nashville, Tenn.), April 9, 1800.] + +[Footnote 28: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, +252.] + +[Footnote 29: _Tennessee Gazette_, March 27, 1805.] + +[Footnote 30: F. Cuming, _Tour to the Western Country_ (Pittsburg, 1810), +in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 272, 280, 298.] + +A shrewd contemporary observer found special reason to rejoice that the new +staple required no large capital and involved no exposure to disease. Rice +and indigo, said he, had offered the poorer whites, except the few employed +as overseers, no livelihood "without the degradation of working with +slaves"; but cotton, stimulating and elevating these people into the rank +of substantial farmers, tended "to fill the country with an independent +industrious yeomanry."[31] True as this was, it did not mean that producers +on a plantation scale were at a disadvantage. Settlers of every type, +in fact, adopted the crop as rapidly as they could get seed and ginning +facilities, and newcomers poured in apace to share the prosperity. + +[Footnote 31: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1808), +II, 448-9.] + +The exports mounted swiftly, but the world's market readily absorbed them +at rising prices until 1801 when the short-staple output was about forty +million pounds and the price at the ports about forty-four cents a pound. +A trade in slaves promptly arose to meet the eager demand for labor; and +migrants coming from the northward and the rice coast brought additional +slaves in their train. General Wade Hampton was the first conspicuous one +of these. With the masterful resolution which always characterized him, he +carried his great gang from the seaboard to the neighborhood of Columbia +and there in 1799 raised six hundred of the relatively light weight bales +of that day on as many acres.[32] His crop was reckoned to have a value of +some ninety thousand dollars.[33] + +[Footnote 32: Seabrook, pp. 16, 17.] + +[Footnote 33: Note made by L. C Draper from the Louisville, Ga., _Gazette_, +Draper MSS., series VV, vol. XVI, p. 84, Wisconsin Historical Society.] + +The general run of the upland cultivators, however, continued as always to +operate on a minor scale; and the high cost of transportation caused them +generally to continue producing miscellaneous goods to meet their domestic +needs. The diversified régime is pictured in Michaux's description of a +North Carolina plantation in 1802: "In eight hundred acres of which it is +composed, a hundred and fifty are cultivated in cotton, Indian corn, wheat +and oats, and dunged annually, which is a great degree of perfection in the +present state of agriculture in this part of the country. Independent of +this [the proprietor] has built in his yard several machines that the same +current of water puts in motion; they consist of a corn mill, a saw mill, +another to separate the cotton seeds, a tan-house, a tan-mill, a distillery +to make peach brandy, and a small forge where the inhabitants of the +country go to have their horses shod. Seven or eight negro slaves are +employed in the different departments, some of which are only occupied at +certain periods of the year. Their wives are employed under the direction +of the mistress in manufacturing cotton and linen for the use of the +family."[34] + +[Footnote 34: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, +292.] + +The speed of the change to a general slaveholding régime in the uplands may +easily be exaggerated. In those counties of South Carolina which lay wholly +within the Piedmont the fifteen thousand slaves on hand in 1790 formed +slightly less than one-fifth of the gross population there. By 1800 +the number of slaves increased by seventy per cent., and formed nearly +one-fourth of the gross; in the following decade they increased by ninety +per cent., until they comprised one-third of the whole; from 1810 to 1820 +their number grew at the smaller rate of fifty per cent, and reached +two-fifths of the whole; and by 1830, with a further increase of forty per +cent., the number of slaves almost overtook that of the whites. The slaves +were then counted at 101,982, the whites at 115,318, and the free negroes +at 2,115. In Georgia the slave proportion grew more rapidly than this +because it was much smaller at the outset; in North Carolina, on the +other hand, the rise was less marked because cotton never throve there so +greatly. + +In its industrial requirements cotton was much closer to tobacco than to +rice or sugar. There was no vital need for large units of production. On +soils of the same quality the farmer with a single plow, if his family did +the hoeing and picking, was on a similar footing with the greatest planter +as to the output per hand, and in similar case as to cost of production per +bale. The scale of cotton-belt slaveholdings rose not because free labor +was unsuited to the industry but because slaveholders from the outside +moved in to share the opportunity and because every prospering +non-slaveholder and small slaveholder was eager to enlarge his personal +scale of operations. Those who could save generally bought slaves with +their savings; those who could not, generally continued to raise cotton +nevertheless. + +The gross cotton output, in which the upland crop greatly and increasingly +outweighed that of the sea-island staple, rapidly advanced from about +forty-eight million pounds in 1801 to about eighty million in 1806; then it +was kept stationary by the embargo and the war of 1812, until the return +of peace and open trade sent it up by leaps and bounds again. The price +dropped abruptly from an average of forty-four cents in the New York market +in 1801 to nineteen cents in 1802, but there was no further decline until +the beginning of the war with Great Britain.[35] + +[Footnote 35: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, table following p. 357.] + +Cotton's absorption of the people's energies already tended to become +excessive. In 1790 South Carolina had sent abroad a surplus of corn from +the back country measuring well over a hundred thousand bushels. But by +1804 corn brought in brigs was being advertised in Savannah to meet the +local deficit;[36] and in the spring of 1807 there seems to have been a +dearth of grain in the Piedmont itself. At that time an editorial in the +_Augusta Chronicle_ ran as follows: "A correspondent would recommend to the +planters of Georgia, now the season is opening, to raise more corn and less +cotton ... The dear bought experience of the present season should teach us +to be more provident for the future." [37] Under the conditions of the time +this excess at the expense of grain was likely to correct itself at once, +for men and their draught animals must eat to work, and in the prevailing +lack of transportation facilities food could not be brought from a +distance at a price within reach. The systematic basis of industry was the +production, whether by planters or farmers, of such food as was locally +needed and such supplies of cloth together with such other outfit as it was +economical to make at home, and the devotion of all further efforts to the +making of cotton. + +[Footnote 36: Savannah _Museum_, April n, 1804.] + +[Footnote 37: Reprinted in the _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), April 11, +1807.] + +Coincident with the rise of cotton culture in the Atlantic states was that +of sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana. In this triangular +district, whose apex is the junction of the Red and Mississippi rivers, the +country is even more amphibious than the rice coast. Everywhere in fact the +soil is too waterlogged for tillage except close along the Father of Waters +himself and his present or aforetime outlets. Settlement must, therefore, +take the form of strings of plantations and farms on these elevated +riparian strips, with the homesteads fronting the streams and the fields +stretching a few hundred or at most a few thousand yards to the rear; and +every new establishment required its own levee against the flood. So long +as there were great areas of unrestricted flood-plain above Vicksburg to +impound the freshets and lower their crests, the levees below required no +great height or strength; but the tasks of reclamation were at best arduous +enough to make rapid expansion depend upon the spur of great expectations. + +The original colony of the French, whose descendants called themselves +Creoles, was clustered about the town of New Orleans. A short distance up +stream the river banks in the parishes of St. Charles and St. John the +Baptist were settled at an early period by German immigrants; thence the +settlements were extended after the middle of the eighteenth century, first +by French exiles from Acadia, next by Creole planters, and finally by +Anglo-Americans who took their locations mostly above Baton Rouge. As to +the westerly bayous, the initial settlers were in general Acadian small +farmers. Negro slaves were gradually introduced into all these districts, +though the Creoles, who were the most vigorous of the Latin elements, were +the chief importers of them. Their numbers at the close of the colonial +period equalled those of the whites, and more than a tenth of them had been +emancipated. + +The people in the later eighteenth century were drawing their livelihoods +variously from hunting, fishing, cattle raising and Indian trading, from +the growing of grain and vegetables for sale to the boatmen and townsmen, +and from the production of indigo on a somewhat narrow margin of profit as +the principal export crop. Attempts at sugar production had been made in +1725 and again in 1762, but the occurrence of winter frosts before the cane +was fully ripe discouraged the enterprise; and in most years no more cane +was raised than would meet the local demand for sirup and rum. In the +closing decades of the century, however, worm pests devoured the indigo +leaves with such thoroughness as to make harvesting futile; and thereby the +planters were driven to seek an alternative staple. Projects of cotton were +baffled by the lack of a gin, and recourse was once more had to sugar. A +Spaniard named Solis had built a small mill below New Orleans in 1791 and +was making sugar with indifferent success when, in 1794-1795, Etienne de +Boré, a prominent Creole whose estate lay just above the town, bought a +supply of seed cane from Solis, planted a large field with it, engaged a +professional sugar maker, and installed grinding and boiling apparatus +against the time of harvest. The day set for the test brought a throng of +onlookers whose joy broke forth at the sight of crystals in the cooling +fluid--for the good fortune of Boré, who received some $12,000 for his crop +of 1796, was an earnest of general prosperity. + +Other men of enterprise followed the resort to sugar when opportunity +permitted them to get seed cane, mills and cauldrons. In spite of a dearth +of both capital and labor and in spite of wartime restrictions on maritime +commerce, the sugar estates within nine years reached the number of +eighty-one, a good many of which were doubtless the property of San +Domingan refugees who were now pouring into the province with whatever +slaves and other movables they had been able to snatch from the black +revolution. Some of these had fled first to Cuba and after a sojourn there, +during which they found the Spanish government oppressive, removed afresh +to Louisiana. As late as 1809 the year's immigration from the two islands +was reported by the mayor of New Orleans to the governor of Louisiana at +2,731 whites and 3,102 free persons of color, together with 3,226 slaves +warranted as the property of the free immigrants.[38] The volume of the +San Domingan influx from first to last was great enough to double the +French-speaking population. The newcomers settled mainly in the New Orleans +neighborhood, the whites among them promptly merging themselves with the +original Creole population. By reason of their previous familiarity with +sugar culture they gave additional stimulus to that industry. + +[Footnote 38: _Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Mch. +24, 1810.] + +Meanwhile the purchase of Louisiana by the United States in 1803 had +transformed the political destinies of the community and considerably +changed its economic prospects. After prohibiting in 1804 the importation +into the territory of any slaves who had been brought from Africa since +1798, Congress passed a new act in 1805 which, though probably intended to +continue the prohibition, was interpreted by the attorney-general to permit +the inhabitants to bring in any slaves whatever from any place within the +United States.[39] This news was published with delight by the New Orleans +newspapers at the end of February, 1806;[40] and from that time until the +end of the following year their columns bristled with advertisements of +slaves from African cargoes "just arrived from Charleston." Of these the +following, issued by the firm of Kenner and Henderson, June 24, 1806, is +an example: "The subscribers offer for sale 74 prime slaves of the Fantee +nation on board the schooner _Reliance_, I. Potter master, from Charleston, +now lying opposite this city. The sales will commence on the 25th. inst. +at 9 o'clock A.M., and will continue from day to day until the whole is +sold.[41] Good endorsed notes will be taken in payment, payable the 1st. +of January, 1807. Also [for sale] the above mentioned schooner _Reliance_, +burthen about 60 tons, completely fitted for an African voyage." + +[Footnote 39: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, pp. +87-90. The acts of 1804 and 1805 are printed in B.P. Poore, _Charters and +Constitutions_ (Washington, 1877), I, 691-697.] + +[Footnote 40: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 28, 1806.] + +[Footnote 41: _Louisiana Gazette_, July 4, 1806.] + +Upon the prohibition of the African trade at large in 1808, the slave +demand of the sugar parishes was diverted to the Atlantic plantation states +where it served to advertise the Louisiana boom. Wade Hampton of South +Carolina responded in 1811 by carrying a large force of his slaves to +establish a sugar estate of his own at the head of Bayou Lafourche, and a +few others followed his example. The radical difference of the industrial +methods in sugar from those in the other staples, however, together with +the predominance of the French language, the Catholic religion and a +Creole social régime in the district most favorable for sugar, made +Anglo-Americans chary of the enterprise; and the revival of cotton prices +after 1815 strengthened the tendency of migrating planters to stay within +the cotton latitudes. Many of those who settled about Baton Rouge and on +the Red River with cotton as their initial concern shifted to sugar at the +end of the 'twenties, however, in response to the tariff of 1828 which +heightened sugar prices at a time when the cotton market was depressed. +This was in response, also, to the introduction of ribbon cane which +matured earlier than the previously used Malabar and Otaheite varieties and +could accordingly be grown in a somewhat higher latitude. + +The territorial spread was mainly responsible for the sudden advance of the +number of sugar estates from 308 operating in 1827, estimated as employing +21,000 able-bodied slaves and having a gross value of $34,000,000, to 691 +plantations in 1830,[42] with some 36,000 working slaves and a gross value +of $50,000,000. At this time the output was at the rate of about 75,000 +hogsheads containing 1,000 pounds of sugar each, together with some forty +or fifty gallons of molasses per hogshead as a by-product. Louisiana was at +this time supplying about half of the whole country's consumption of sugar +and bade fair to meet the whole demand ere long.[43] The reduction of +protective tariff rates, coming simultaneously with a rise of cotton +prices, then checked the spread of the sugar industry, and the substitution +of steam engines for horse power in grinding the cane caused some +consolidation of estates. In 1842 accordingly, when the slaves numbered +50,740 and the sugar crop filled 140,000 hogsheads, the plantations were +but 668.[44] The raising of the tariff anew in that year increased the +plantations to 762 in 1845 and they reached their maximum number of 1,536 +in 1849, when more than half of their mills were driven by steam[45] and +their slaves numbered probably somewhat more than a hundred thousand of +all ages.[46] Thereafter the recovery of the cotton market from the severe +depression of the early 'forties caused a strong advance in slave prices +which again checked the sugar spread, while the introduction of vacuum pans +and other improvements in apparatus[47] promoted further consolidations. +The number of estates accordingly diminished to 1,298 in 1859, on 987 of +which the mills were steam driven, and on 52 of which the extraction and +evaporation of the sugar was done by one sort or another of the newly +invented devices. The gross number of slaves in the sugar parishes was +nearly doubled between 1830 and 1850, but in the final ante-bellum decade +it advanced only at about the rate of natural increase.[48] The sugar +output advanced to 200,000 hogsheads in 1844 and to 450,000 in 1853. Bad +seasons then reduced it to 74,000 in 1856; and the previous maximum was not +equaled in the remaining ante-bellum years.[49] The liability of the +crop to damage from drought and early frost, and to destruction from the +outpouring of the Mississippi through crevasses in the levees, explains the +fluctuations in the yield. Outside of Louisiana the industry took no grip +except on the Brazos River in Texas, where in 1858 thirty-seven plantations +produced about six thousand hogsheads.[50] + +[Footnote 42: _DeBow's Review_, I, 55.] + +[Footnote 43: V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, 1851), +pp. 151 ff.] + +[Footnote 44: E.J. Forstall, _Agricultural Productions of Louisiana_ (New +Orleans, 1845).] + +[Footnote 45: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in +Louisiana_ (New Orleans, annual, 1848-1859).] + +[Footnote 46: DeBow, in the _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 94, +estimated the sugar plantation slaves at 150,000; but this is clearly an +overestimate.] + +[Footnote 47: Some of these are described by Judah P. Benjamin in _DeBow's +Review_, II, 322-345.] + +[Footnote 48: _I. e_. from 150,000 to 180,000.] + +[Footnote 49: The crop of 1853, indeed, was not exceeded until near the +close of the nineteenth century.] + +[Footnote 50: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop ... in +1858-1859_, p. 40.] + +In Louisiana in the banner year 1853, with perfect weather and no +crevasses, each of some 50,000 able-bodied field hands cultivated, besides +the incidental food crops, about five acres of cane on the average and +produced about nine hogsheads of sugar and three hundred gallons of +molasses per head. On certain specially favored estates, indeed, the +product reached as much as fifteen hogsheads per hand[51]. In the total of +1407 fully equipped plantations 103 made less than one hundred hogsheads +each, while forty produced a thousand hogsheads or more. That year's +output, however, was nearly twice the size of the average crop in the +period. A dozen or more proprietors owned two or more estates each, some of +which were on the largest scale, while at the other extreme several dozen +farmers who had no mills of their own sent cane from their few acres to be +worked up in the spare time of some obliging neighbor's mill. In general +the bulk of the crop was made on plantations with cane fields ranging from +rather more than a hundred to somewhat less than a thousand acres, and with +each acre producing in an ordinary year somewhat more than a hogshead of +sugar. + +[Footnote 51: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 199, 200.] + +Until about 1850 the sugar district as well as the cotton belt was calling +for labor from whatever source it might be had; but whereas the uplands had +work for people of both races and all conditions, the demand of the delta +lands, to which the sugar crop was confined, was almost wholly for negro +slaves. The only notable increase in the rural white population of the +district came through the fecundity of the small-farming Acadians who had +little to do with sugar culture. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT + + +The flow of population into the distant interior followed the lines of +least resistance and greatest opportunity. In the earlier decades these lay +chiefly in the Virginia latitudes. The Indians there were yielding, the +mountains afforded passes thither, and the climate permitted the familiar +tobacco industry. The Shenandoah Valley had been occupied mainly by +Scotch-Irish and German small farmers from Pennsylvania; but the glowing +reports, which the long hunters brought and the land speculators spread +from beyond the further mountains, made Virginians to the manner born +resolve to compete with the men of the backwoods for a share of the +Kentucky lands. During and after the war for independence they threaded +the gorges, some with slaves but most without. Here and there one found a +mountain glade so fertile that he made it his permanent home, while his +fellows pushed on to the greater promised land. Some of these emerging upon +a country of low and uniform hills, closely packed and rounded like the +backs of well-fed pigs crowding to the trough, staked out their claims, set +up their cabins, deadened their trees, and planted wheat. Others went on +to the gently rolling country about Lexington, let the luxuriant native +bluegrass wean them from thoughts of tobacco, and became breeders of horses +for evermore. A few, settling on the southerly edge of the bluegrass, +mainly in and about Garrard County, raised hemp on a plantation scale. The +rest, resisting all these allurements, pressed on still further to the +pennyroyal country where tobacco would have no rival. While thousands made +the whole journey overland, still more made use of the Ohio River for +the later stages. The adjutant at Fort Harmar counted in seven months of +1786-1787, 177 boats descending the Ohio, carrying 2,689 persons, 1,333 +horses, 766 cattle, 102 wagons and one phaëton, while still others passed +by night uncounted.[1] The family establishments in Kentucky were always +on a smaller scale, on an average, than those in Virginia. Yet the people +migrating to the more fertile districts tended to maintain and even to +heighten the spirit of gentility and the pride of type which they carried +as part of their heritage. The laws erected by the community were favorable +to the slaveholding régime; but after the first decades of the migration +period, the superior attractions of the more southerly latitudes for +plantation industry checked Kentucky's receipt of slaves. + +[Footnote 1: _Massachusetts Centinel_ (Boston), July 21, 1787.] + +The wilderness between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, meanwhile, was +attracting Virginia and Carolina emigrants as well as those from the +northerly states. The soil there was excellent, and some districts were +suited to tobacco culture. The Ordinance of 1787, however, though it was +not strictly enforced, made slaveholdings north of the Ohio negligible from +any but an antiquarian point of view. + +The settlement of Tennessee was parallel, though subsequent, to that of the +Shenandoah and Kentucky. The eastern intramontane valley, broad and fertile +but unsuited to the staple crops, gave homes to thousands of small farmers, +while the Nashville basin drew planters of both tobacco and cotton, and the +counties along the western and southern borders of the state made cotton +their one staple. The scale of slaveholdings in middle and western +Tennessee, while superior to that in Kentucky, was never so great as those +which prevailed in Virginia and the lower South. + +Missouri, whose adaptation to the southern staples was much poorer, came +to be colonized in due time partly by planters from Kentucky but mostly +by farmers from many quarters, including after the first decades a large +number of Germans, some of whom entered through the eastern ports and +others through New Orleans. + +This great central region as a whole acquired an agricultural régime +blending the features of the two national extremes. The staples were +prominent but never quite paramount. Corn and wheat, cattle and hogs were +produced regularly nearly everywhere, not on a mere home consumption basis, +but for sale in the cotton belt and abroad. This diversification caused +the region to wane in the esteem of the migrating planters as soon as the +Alabama-Mississippi country was opened for settlement. + +Preliminaries of the movement into the Gulf region had begun as early as +1768, when a resident of Pensacola noted that a group of Virginians had +been prospecting thereabouts with such favorable results that five of them +had applied for a large grant of lands, pledging themselves to bring in a +hundred slaves and a large number of cattle.[2] In 1777 William Bartram met +a group of migrants journeying from Georgia to settle on the lower course +of the Alabama River;[3] and in 1785 a citizen of Augusta wrote that "a +vast number" of the upland settlers were removing toward the Mississippi in +consequence of the relinquishment of Natchez by the Spaniards.[4] But these +were merely forerunners. Alabama in particular, which comprises for the +most part the basin draining into Mobile Bay, could have no safe market +for its produce until Spain was dispossessed of the outlet. The taking +of Mobile by the United States as an episode of the war of 1812, and the +simultaneous breaking of the Indian strength, removed the obstacles. The +influx then rose to immense proportions. The roads and rivers became +thronged, and the federal agents began to sell homesteads on a scale which +made the "land office business" proverbial.[5] + +[Footnote 2: Boston, Mass, _Chronicle_, Aug. 1-7, 1768.] + +[Footnote 3: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), p. 441.] + +[Footnote 4: _South Carolina Gazette_, May 26, 1785.] + +[Footnote 5: C.F. Emerick, "The Credit System and the Public Domain," +in the Vanderbilt University _Southern History Publications_, no. 3 +(Nashville, Tenn., 1899).] + +The Alabama-Mississippi population rose from 40,000 in round numbers in +1810 to 200,000 in 1820, 445,000 in 1830, 965,000 in 1840, 1,377,000 in +1850, and 1,660,000 in 1860, while the proportion of slaves advanced from +forty to forty-seven per cent. In the same period the tide flowed on into +the cotton lands of Arkansas and Louisiana and eventually into Texas. +Florida alone of the newer southern areas was left in relative neglect +by reason of the barrenness of her soil. The states and territories from +Alabama and Tennessee westward increased their proportion of the whole +country's cotton output from one-sixteenth in 1811 to one-third in 1820, +one-half before 1830, nearly two-thirds in 1840, and quite three-fourths in +1860; and all this was in spite of continued and substantial enlargements +of the eastern output. + +In the western cotton belt the lands most highly esteemed in the +ante-bellum period lay in two main areas, both of which had soils far more +fertile and lasting than any in the interior of the Atlantic states. One of +these formed a crescent across south-central Alabama, with its western horn +reaching up the Tombigbee River into northeastern Mississippi. Its soil of +loose black loam was partly forested, partly open, and densely matted with +grass and weeds except where limestone cropped out on the hill crests and +where prodigious cane brakes choked the valleys. The area was locally +known as the prairies or the black belt.[6] The process of opening it for +settlement was begun by Andrew Jackson's defeat of the Creeks in 1814 but +was not completed until some twenty years afterward. The other and greater +tract extended along both sides of the Mississippi River from northern +Tennessee and Arkansas to the mouth of the Red River. It comprised the +broad alluvial bottoms, together with occasional hill districts of rich +loam, especially notable among the latter of which were those lying about +Natchez and Vicksburg. The southern end of this area was made available +first, and the hills preceded the delta in popularity for cotton culture. +It was not until the middle thirties that the broadest expanse of the +bottoms, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, began to receive its great influx. +The rest of the western cotton belt had soils varying through much the same +range as those of Georgia and the Carolinas. Except in the bottoms, where +the planters themselves did most of the pioneering, the choicer lands of +the whole district were entered by a pellmell throng of great planters, +lesser planters and small farmers, with the farmers usually a little in +the lead and the planters ready to buy them out of specially rich lands. +Farmers refusing to sell might by their own thrift shortly rise into the +planter class; or if they sold their homesteads at high prices they might +buy slaves with the proceeds and remove to become planters in still newer +districts. + +[Footnote 6: This use of the term "black belt" is not to be confused with +the other and more general application of it to such areas in the South at +large as have a majority of negroes in their population.] + +The process was that which had already been exemplified abundantly in the +eastern cotton belt. A family arriving perhaps in the early spring with a +few implements and a small supply of food and seed, would build in a few +days a cabin of rough logs with an earthen floor and a roof of bark or of +riven clapboards. To clear a field they would girdle the larger trees and +clear away the underbrush. Corn planted in April would furnish roasting +ears in three months and ripe grain in six weeks more. Game was plenty; +lightwood was a substitute for candles; and housewifely skill furnished +homespun garments. Shelter, food and clothing and possibly a small cotton +crop or other surplus were thus had the first year. Some rested with this; +but the more thrifty would soon replace their cabins with hewn log or frame +houses, plant kitchen gardens and watermelon patches, set out orchards and +increase the cotton acreage. The further earnings of a year or two would +supply window glass, table ware, coffee, tea and sugar, a stock of poultry, +a few hogs and even perhaps a slave or two. The pioneer hardships decreased +and the homely comforts grew with every passing year of thrift. But the +orchard yield of stuff for the still, and the cotton field's furnishing +the wherewithal to buy more slaves, brought temptations. Distilleries and +slaves, a contemporary said, were blessings or curses according as they +were used or abused; for drunkenness and idleness were the gates of the +road to retrogression.[7] + +[Footnote 7: David Ramsay _History of South Carolina_, II, pp. 246 ff.] + +The pathetic hardships which some of the poorer migrants underwent in their +labors to reach the western opportunity are exemplified in a local item +from an Augusta newspaper in 1819: "Passed through this place from +Greenville District [South Carolina] bound for Chatahouchie, a man and his +wife, his son and his wife, with a cart but no horse. The man had a belt +over his shoulders and he drew in the shafts; the son worked by traces tied +to the end of the shafts and assisted his father to draw the cart; the +son's wife rode in the cart, and the old woman was walking, carrying +a rifle, and driving a cow."[8] This example, while extreme, was not +unique.[9] + +[Footnote 8: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 24, 1819, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 196.] + +[Footnote 9: _Niles' Register_, XX, 320.] + +The call of the west was carried in promoters' publications,[10] in +private letters, in newspaper reports, and by word of mouth. A typical +communication was sent home in 1817 by a Marylander who had moved to +Louisiana: "In your states a planter with ten negroes with difficulty +supports a family genteelly; here well managed they would be a fortune to +him. With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here the +crops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life never for a moment +causes the heart to ache--abundance spreads the table of the poor man, and +contentment smiles on every countenance."[11] Other accounts told glowingly +of quick fortunes made and to be made by getting lands cheaply in the early +stages of settlement and selling them at greatly enhanced prices when the +tide of migration arrived in force.[12] Such ebullient expressions were +taken at face value by thousands of the unwary; and other thousands of the +more cautious followed in the trek when personal inquiries had reinforced +the tug of the west. The larger planters generally removed only after +somewhat thorough investigation and after procuring more or less +acquiescence from their slaves; the smaller planters and farmers, with +lighter stake in their homes and better opportunity to sell them, with +lighter impedimenta for the journey, with less to lose by misadventure, +and with poorer facilities for inquiry, responded more readily to the +enticements. + +[Footnote 10: _E. g_., the Washington, Ky., _Mirror_, Sept. 30, 1797.] + +[Footnote 11: _Niles' Register_, XIII, 38.] + +[Footnote 12: _E. g., Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), March 11, 1836.] + +The fever of migration produced in some of the people an unconquerable +restlessness. An extraordinary illustration of this is given in the career +of Gideon Lincecum as written by himself. In 1802, when Gideon was ten +years old, his father, after farming successfully for some years in the +Georgia uplands was lured by letters from relatives in Tennessee to sell +out and remove thither. Taking the roundabout road through the Carolinas to +avoid the Cherokee country, he set forth with a wagon and four horses to +carry a bed, four chests, four white and four negro children, and his +mother who was eighty-eight years old. When but a few days on the road an +illness of the old woman caused a halt, whereupon Lincecum rented a nearby +farm and spent a year on a cotton crop. The journey was then resumed, but +barely had the Savannah River been crossed when another farm was rented and +another crop begun. Next year they returned to Georgia and worked a farm +near Athens. Then they set out again for Tennessee; but on the road in +South Carolina the wreck of the wagon and its ancient occupant gave +abundant excuse for the purchase of a farm there. After another crop, +successful as usual, the family moved back to Georgia and cropped still +another farm. Young Gideon now attended school until his father moved +again, this time southward, for a crop near Eatonton. Gideon then left his +father after a quarrel and spent several years as a clerk in stores here +and there, as a county tax collector and as a farmer, and began to read +medicine in odd moments. He now married, about the beginning of the year +1815, and rejoined his father who was about to cross the Indian country to +settle in Alabama. But they had barely begun this journey when the father, +while tipsy, bought a farm on the Georgia frontier, where the two families +settled and Gideon interspersed deer hunting with his medical reading. Next +spring the cavalcade crossed the five hundred miles of wilderness in six +weeks, and reached the log cabin village of Tuscaloosa, where Gideon built +a house. But provisions were excessively dear, and his hospitality to other +land seekers from Georgia soon consumed his savings. He began whipsawing +lumber, but after disablement from a gunpowder explosion he found lighter +employment in keeping a billiard room. He then set out westward again, +breaking a road for his wagon as he went. Upon reaching the Tombigbee River +he built a clapboard house in five days, cleared land from its canebrake, +planted corn with a sharpened stick, and in spite of ravages from bears and +raccoons gathered a hundred and fifty bushels from six acres. When the town +of Columbus, Mississippi, was founded nearby in 1819 he sawed boards to +build a house on speculation. From this he was diverted to the Indian +trade, bartering whiskey, cloth and miscellaneous goods for peltries. He +then became a justice of the peace and school commissioner at Columbus, +surveyed and sold town lots on public account, and built two school houses +with the proceeds. He then moved up the river to engage anew in the Indian +trade with a partner who soon proved a drunkard. He and his wife there +took a fever which after baffling the physicians was cured by his own +prescription. He then moved to Cotton Gin Port to take charge of a store, +but was invalided for three years by a sunstroke. Gradually recovering, +he lived in the woods on light diet until the thought occurred to him of +carrying a company of Choctaw ball players on a tour of the United States. +The tour was made, but the receipts barely covered expenses. Then in 1830, +Lincecum set himself up as a physician at Columbus. No sooner had he built +up a practice, however, than he became dissatisfied with allopathy and +went to study herb remedies among the Indians; and thereafter he practiced +botanic medicine. In 1834 he went as surgeon with an exploring party to +Texas and found that country so attractive that after some years further +at Columbus he spent the rest of his long life in Texas as a planter, +physician and student of natural history. He died there in 1873 at the age +of eighty years.[13] + +[Footnote 13: F.L. Riley, ed., "The Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum," in +the Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, VIII, 443-519.] + +The descriptions and advice which prospectors in the west sent home are +exemplified in a letter of F.X. Martin, written in New Orleans in 1911, +to a friend in eastern North Carolina. The lands, he said, were the most +remunerative in the whole country; a planter near Natchez was earning $270 +per hand each year. The Opelousas and Attakapas districts for sugar, +and the Red River bottoms for cotton, he thought, offered the best +opportunities because of the cheapness of their lands. As to the journey +from North Carolina, he advised that the start be made about the first of +September and the course be laid through Knoxville to Nashville. Traveling +thence through the Indian country, safety would be assured by a junction +with other migrants. Speed would be greater on horseback, but the route was +feasible for vehicles, and a traveler would find a tent and a keg of +water conducive to his comfort. The Indians, who were generally short of +provisions in spring and summer, would have supplies to spare in autumn; +and the prevailing dryness of that season would make the streams and swamps +in the path less formidable. An alternative route lay through Georgia; +but its saving of distance was offset by the greater expanse of Indian +territory to be crossed, the roughness of the road and the frequency of +rivers. The viewing of the delta country, he thought, would require three +or four months of inspection before a choice of location could safely be +made.[14] + +[Footnote 14: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 197-200.] + +The procedure of planters embarking upon long distance migration may be +gathered from the letters which General Leonard Covington of Calvert +County, Maryland, wrote to his brother and friends who had preceded him to +the Natchez district. In August, 1808, finding a prospect of selling +his Maryland lands, he formed a project of carrying his sixty slaves to +Mississippi and hiring out some of them there until a new plantation should +be ready for routine operation. He further contemplated taking with him ten +or fifteen families of non-slaveholding whites who were eager to migrate +under his guidance and wished employment by him for a season while they +cast about for farms of their own. Covington accordingly sent inquiries as +to the prevailing rates of hire and the customary feeding and treatment of +slaves. He asked whether they were commonly worked only from "sun to sun," +and explained his thought by saying, "It is possible that so much labor +may be required of hirelings and so little regard may be had for their +constitutions as to render them in a few years not only unprofitable but +expensive." He asked further whether the slaves there were contented, +whether they as universally took wives and husbands and as easily reared +children as in Maryland, whether cotton was of more certain yield and +sale than tobacco, what was the cost of clearing land and erecting rough +buildings, what the abundance and quality of fruit, and what the nature of +the climate. + +The replies he received were quite satisfactory, but a failure to sell part +of his Maryland lands caused him to leave twenty-six of his slaves in the +east. The rest he sent forward with a neighbor's gang. Three white men were +in charge, but one of the negroes escaped at Pittsburg and was apparently +not recaptured. Covington after detention by the delicacy of his wife's +health and by duties in the military service of the United States, set +out at the beginning of October, 1809, with his wife and five children, +a neighbor named Waters and his family, several other white persons, and +eleven slaves. He described his outfit as "the damnedest cavalcade that +ever man was burdened with; not less than seven horses compose my troop; +they convey a close carriage (Jersey stage), a gig and horse cart, so +that my family are transported with comfort and convenience, though at +considerable expense. All these odd matters and contrivances I design to +take with me to Mississippi if possible. Mr. Waters will also take down +his waggon and team." Upon learning that the Ohio was in low water he +contemplated journeying by land as far as Louisville; but he embarked at +Wheeling instead, and after tedious dragging "through shoals, sandbars and +ripples" he reached Cincinnati late in November. When the last letter on +the journey was written he was on the point of embarking afresh on a +boat so crowded, that in spite of his desire to carry a large stock of +provisions he could find room for but a few hundredweight of pork and a few +barrels of flour. He apparently reached his destination at the end of the +year and established a plantation with part of his negroes, leaving the +rest on hire. The approach of the war of 1812 brought distress; cotton was +low, bacon was high, and the sale of a slave or two was required in making +ends meet. Covington himself was now ordered by the Department of War to +take the field in command of dragoons, and in 1813 was killed in a battle +beyond the Canadian border. The fate of his family and plantation does not +appear in the records.[15] + +[Footnote 15: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 201-208.] + +A more successful migration was that of Col. Thomas S. Dabney in 1835. +After spending the years of his early manhood on his ancestral tide-water +estate, Elmington, in Gloucester County, Virginia, he was prompted to +remove by the prospective needs of his rapidly growing family. The justice +of his anticipations appears from the fact that his second wife bore him +eventually sixteen children, ten of whom survived her. After a land-looking +tour through Alabama and Louisiana, Dabney chose a tract in Hinds County, +Mississippi, some forty miles east of Vicksburg, where he bought the +property of several farmers as the beginning of a plantation which finally +engrossed some four thousand acres. Returning to Virginia, he was given a +great farewell dinner at Richmond, at which Governor Tyler presided and +many speakers congratulated Mississippi upon her gain of such a citizen +at Virginia's expense.[16] Several relatives and neighbors resolved to +accompany him in the migration. His brother-in-law, Charles Hill, took +charge of the carriages and the white families, while Dabney himself had +the care of the wagons and the many scores of negroes. The journey was +accomplished without mishap in two months of perfect autumn weather. Upon +arriving at the new location most of the log houses were found in ruins +from a recent hurricane; but new shelters were quickly provided, and in a +few months the great plantation, with its force of two hundred slaves, was +in routine operation. In the following years Dabney made it a practice to +clear about a hundred acres of new ground annually. The land, rich and +rolling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a general +failure of crops was never experienced--the bottoms would thrive in dry +seasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosper +them all. The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabney +at first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty of +his slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved while directing +their work, the beneficiary and his fellows were less grateful for the +service than offended at the undemocratic manner of its rendering. When +Dabney, furthermore, made no return calls for assistance, the restraint was +increased. The rich might patronize the poor in the stratified society +of old Virginia; in young Mississippi such patronage was an unpleasant +suggestion that stratification was beginning.[17] With the passage of years +and the continued influx of planters ready to buy their lands at good +prices, such fanners as did not thrive tended to vacate the richer soils. +The Natchez-Vicksburg district became largely consolidated into great +plantations,[18] and the tract extending thence to Tuscaloosa, as likewise +the district about Montgomery, Alabama, became occupied mostly by smaller +plantations on a scale of a dozen or two slaves each,[19] while the +non-slaveholders drifted to the southward pine-barrens or the western or +northwestern frontiers. + +[Footnote 16: _Richmond Enquirer_, Sept. 22, 1835, reprinted in Susan D. +Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (2d. ed., Baltimore, 1888), pp. +43-47.] + +[Footnote 17: Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 42-68.] + +[Footnote 18: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1860), pp. 20, 28] + +[Footnote 19: _Ibid_., pp. 160, 161; Robert Russell, _North America_ +(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 207.] + +The caravans of migrating planters were occasionally described by travelers +in the period. Basil Hall wrote of one which he overtook in South Carolina +in 1828: "It ... did not consist of above thirty persons in all, of whom +five-and-twenty at least were slaves. The women and children were stowed +away in wagons, moving slowly up a steep, sandy hill; but the curtains +being let down we could see nothing of them except an occasional glance of +an eye, or a row of teeth as white as snow. In the rear of all came a light +covered vehicle, with the master and mistress of the party. Along the +roadside, scattered at intervals, we observed the male slaves trudging in +front. At the top of all, against the sky line, two men walked together, +apparently hand in hand pacing along very sociably. There was something, +however, in their attitude, which seemed unusual and constrained. When +we came nearer, accordingly, we discovered that this couple were bolted +together by a short chain or bar riveted to broad iron clasps secured in +like manner round the wrists. 'What have you been doing, my boys,' said our +coachman in passing, 'to entitle you to these ruffles?' 'Oh, sir,' cried +one of them quite gaily, 'they are the best things in the world to travel +with.' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one of +the slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take the +matter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, it +appeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, not +to his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the female +not choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The +wretched husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man who +having no such tie to draw him back might be more safely trusted on the +journey."[20] + +[Footnote 20: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), +III, 128, 129. _See also_ for similar scenes, Adam Hodgson, _Letters from +North America_ (London, 1854), I, 113.] + +Timothy Flint wrote after observing many of these caravans: "The slaves +generally seem fond of their masters, and as much delighted and interested +in their migration as their masters. It is to me a very pleasing and +patriarchal sight."[21] But Edwin L. Godkin, who in his transit of a +Mississippi swamp in 1856 saw a company in distress, used the episode as a +peg on which to hang an anti-slavery sentiment: "I fell in with an emigrant +party on their way to Texas. Their mules had sunk in the mud, ... the +wagons were already embedded as far as the axles. The women of the party, +lightly clad in cotton, had walked for miles, knee-deep in water, through +the brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were now +crouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree.... The men +were making feeble attempts to light a fire.... 'Colonel,' said one of them +as I rode past, 'this is the gate of hell, ain't it?' ... The hardships the +negroes go through who are attached to one of these emigrant parties baffle +description.... They trudge on foot all day through mud and thicket without +rest or respite.... Thousands of miles are traversed by these weary +wayfarers without their knowing or caring why, urged on by the whip and in +the full assurance that no change of place can bring any change to them.... +Hard work, coarse food, merciless floggings, are all that await them, and +all that they can look to. I have never passed them, staggering along in +the rear of the wagons at the close of a long day's march, the weakest +furthest in the rear, the strongest already utterly spent, without +wondering how Christendom, which eight centuries ago rose in arms for a +sentiment, can look so calmly on at so foul and monstrous a wrong as this +American slavery."[22] If instead of crossing the Mississippi bottoms and +ascribing to slavery the hardships he observed, Godkin had been crossing +the Nevada desert that year and had come upon, as many others did, a train +of emigrants with its oxen dead, its women and children perishing +of thirst, and its men with despairing eyes turned still toward the +gold-fields of California, would he have inveighed against freedom as the +cause? Between Flint's impression of pleasure and Godkin's of gloom no +choice need be made, for either description was often exemplified. In +general the slaves took the fatigues and the diversions of the route merely +as the day's work and the day's play. + +[Footnote 21: Timothy Flint, _History and Geography of the Western States_ +(Cincinnati, 1828), p. 11.] + +[Footnote 22: Letter of E.L. Godkin to the _London News_, reprinted in the +_North American Review_, CLXXXV (1907), 46, 47.] + +Many planters whose points of departure and of destination were accessible +to deep water made their transit by sea. Thus on the brig _Calypso_ sailing +from Norfolk to New Orleans in April, 1819, Benjamin Ballard and Samuel T. +Barnes, both of Halifax County, North Carolina, carrying 30 and 196 slaves +respectively, wrote on the margins of their manifests, the one "The owner +of these slaves is moving to the parish of St. Landry near Opelousas where +he has purchased land and intends settling, and is not a dealer in human +flesh," the other, "The owner of these slaves is moving to Louisiana to +settle, and is not a dealer in human flesh." On the same voyage Augustin +Pugh of the adjoining Bertie County carried seventy slaves whose manifest, +though it bears no such asseveration, gives evidence that they likewise +were not a trader's lot; for some of the negroes were sixty years old, and +there were as many children as adults in the parcel. Lots of such sizes +as these were of course exceptional. In the packages of manifests now +preserved in the Library of Congress the lists of from one to a dozen +slaves outnumbered those of fifty or more by perhaps a hundred fold. + +The western cotton belt not only had a greater expanse and richer lands +than the eastern, but its cotton tended to have a longer fiber, ranging, +particularly in the district of the "bends" of the Mississippi north of +Vicksburg, as much as an inch and a quarter in length and commanding a +premium in the market. Its far reaching waterways, furthermore, made +freighting easy and permitted the planters to devote themselves the more +fully to their staple. The people in the main made their own food supplies; +yet the market demand of the western cotton belt and the sugar bowl for +grain and meat contributed much toward the calling of the northwestern +settlements into prosperous existence.[23] + +[Footnote 23: G.S. Callender in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, XVII, +111-162.] + +This thriving of the West, however, was largely at the expense of the older +plantation states.[24] In 1813 John Randolph wrote: "The whole country +watered by the rivers which fall into the Chesapeake is in a state of +paralysis...The distress is general and heavy, and I do not see how the +people can pay their taxes." And again: "In a few years more, those of us +who are alive will move off to Kaintuck or the Massissippi, where corn can +be had for sixpence a bushel and pork for a penny a pound. I do not wonder +at the rage for emigration. What do the bulk of the people get here that +they cannot have there for one fifth the labor in the western country?" +Next year, after a visit to his birthplace, he exclaimed: "What a spectacle +does our lower country present! Deserted and dismantled country-houses once +the seats of cheerfulness and plenty, and the temples of the Most High +ruinous and desolate, 'frowning in portentous silence upon the land,'" And +in 1819 he wrote from Richmond: "You have no conception of the gloom and +distress that pervade this place. There has been nothing like it since 1785 +when from the same causes (paper money and a general peace) there was a +general depression of everything."[25] + +[Footnote 24: Edmund Quincy, _Life of Josiah Quincy_ (Boston, 1869), p. +336.] + +[Footnote 25: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (Philadelphia, 1851), +II, 15; I, 2; II, 105.] + +The extreme depression passed, but the conditions prompting emigration were +persistent and widespread. News items from here and there continued for +decades to tell of movement in large volume from Tide-water and Piedmont, +from the tobacco states and the eastern cotton-belt, and even from Alabama +in its turn, for destinations as distant and divergent as Michigan, +Missouri and Texas. The communities which suffered cast about for both +solace and remedy. An editor in the South Carolina uplands remarked at the +beginning of 1833 that if emigration should continue at the rate of the +past year the state would become a wilderness; but he noted with grim +satisfaction that it was chiefly the "fire-eaters" that were moving +out.[26] In 1836 another South Carolinian wrote: "The spirit of emigration +is still rife in our community. From this cause we have lost many, and we +are destined, we fear, to lose more, of our worthiest citizens." Though +efforts to check it were commonly thought futile, he addressed himself to +suasion. The movement, said he, is a mistaken one; South Carolina planters +should let well enough alone. The West is without doubt the place for +wealth, but prosperity is a trial to character. In the West money is +everything. Its pursuit, accompanied as it is by baneful speculation, +lawlessness, gambling, sabbath-breaking, brawls and violence, prevents +moral attainment and mental cultivation. Substantial people should stay in +South Carolina to preserve their pristine purity, hospitality, freedom of +thought, fearlessness and nobility.[27] + +[Footnote 26: Sumterville, S.C., _Whig_, Jan. 5, 1833.] + +[Footnote 27: "The Spirit of Emigration," signed "A South Carolinian," in +the _Southern Literary Journal_, II, 259-262 (June, 1836).] + +An Alabama spokesman rejoiced in the manual industry of the white people in +his state, and said if the negroes were only thinned off it would become a +great and prosperous commonwealth.[28] But another Alabamian, A.B. Meek, +found reason to eulogize both emigration and slavery. He said the +roughness of manners prevalent in the haphazard western aggregation of +New Englanders, Virginians, Carolinians and Georgians would prove but +a temporary phase. Slavery would be of benefit through its tendency to +stratify society, ennoble the upper classes, and give even the poorer +whites a stimulating pride of race. "In a few years," said he, "owing to +the operation of this institution upon our unparalleled natural advantages, +we shall be the richest people beneath the bend of the rainbow; and then +the arts and the sciences, which always follow in the train of wealth, will +flourish to an extent hitherto unknown on this side of the Atlantic." [29] + +[Footnote 28: Portland, Ala., _Evening Advertiser_, April 12, 1833.] + +[Footnote 29: _Southern Ladies' Book_ (Macon, Ga.), April, 1840.] + +As a practical measure to relieve the stress of the older districts a +beginning was made in seed selection, manuring and crop rotation to +enhance the harvests; horses were largely replaced by mules, whose earlier +maturity, greater hardihood and longer lives made their use more economical +for plow and wagon work;[30] the straight furrows of earlier times gave +place in the Piedmont to curving ones which followed the hill contours +and when supplemented with occasional grass balks and ditches checked the +scouring of the rains and conserved in some degree the thin soils of the +region; a few textile factories were built to better the local market for +cotton and lower the cost of cloth as well as to yield profits to their +proprietors; the home production of grain and meat supplies was in some +measure increased; and river and highway improvements and railroad +construction were undertaken to lessen the expenses of distant +marketing.[31] Some of these recourses were promptly adopted in the newer +settlements also; and others proved of little avail for the time being. The +net effect of the betterments, however, was an appreciable offsetting +of the western advantage; and this, when added to the love of home, the +disrelish of primitive travel and pioneer life, and the dread of the costs +and risks involved in removal, dissuaded multitudes from the project of +migration. The actual depopulation of the Atlantic states was less than the +plaints of the time would suggest. The volume of emigration was undoubtedly +great, and few newcomers came in to fill the gaps. But the birth rate alone +in those generations of ample families more than replaced the losses year +by year in most localities. The sense of loss was in general the product +not of actual depletion but of disappointment in the expectation of +increase. + +[Footnote 30: H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New +York, 1916), pp. 166-168.] + +[Footnote 31: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern +Cotton Belt to 1860_.] + +The non-slaveholding backwoodsmen formed the vanguard of settlement on +each frontier in turn; the small slaveholders followed on their heels and +crowded each fertile district until the men who lived by hunting as well as +by farming had to push further westward; finally the larger planters with +their crowded carriages, their lumbering wagons and their trudging slaves +arrived to consolidate the fields of such earlier settlers as would sell. +It often seemed to the wayfarer that all the world was on the move. But in +the districts of durable soil thousands of men, clinging to their homes, +repelled every attack of the western fever. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE + + +In the New England town of Plymouth in November, 1729, a certain Thompson +Phillips who was about to sail for Jamaica exchanged a half interest in his +one-legged negro man for a similar share in Isaac Lathrop's negro boy who +was to sail with Phillips and be sold on the voyage. Lathrop was meanwhile +to teach the man the trade of cordwaining, and was to resell his share +to Phillips at the end of a year at a price of £40 sterling.[1] This +transaction, which was duly concluded in the following year, suggests the +existence of a trade in slaves on a small scale from north to south in +colonial times. Another item in the same connection is an advertisement in +the _Boston Gazette_ of August 17, 1761, offering for sale young slaves +just from Africa and proposing to take in exchange "any negro men, strong +and hearty though not of the best moral character, which are proper +subjects of transportation";[2] and a third instance appears in a letter of +James Habersham of Georgia in 1764 telling of his purchase of a parcel +of negroes at New York for work on his rice plantation.[3] That the +disestablishment of slavery in the North during and after the American +Revolution enhanced the exportation of negroes was recited in a Vermont +statute of 1787,[4] and is shown by occasional items in Southern archives. +One of these is the registry at Savannah of a bill of sale made at New +London in 1787 for a mulatto boy "as a servant for the term of ten years +only, at the expiration of which time he is to be free."[5] Another is a +report from an official at Norfolk to the Governor of Virginia, in 1795, +relating that the captain of a sloop from Boston with three negroes on +board pleaded ignorance of the Virginia law against the bringing in of +slaves.[6] + +[Footnote 1: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XXIV, 335, +336.] + +[Footnote 2: Reprinted in Joshua Coffin, _An Account of Some of the +Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860), p. 15.] + +[Footnote 3: "The Letters of James Habersham," in the Georgia Historical +Society _Collections_, VI, 22, 23.] + +[Footnote 4: _New England Register_, XXIX, 248, citing Vermont _Statutes_, +1787, p. 105.] + +[Footnote 5: U.B. Phillips, "Racial Problems, Adjustments and Disturbances +in the Ante-bellum South," in _The South in the Building of the Nation_, +IV, 218.] + +[Footnote 6: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, VIII, 255.] + +The federal census returns show that from 1790 onward the decline in the +number of slaves in the Northern states was more than counterbalanced by +the increase of their free negroes. This means either that the selling of +slaves to the southward was very slight, or that the statistical effect +of it was canceled by the northward flight of fugitive slaves and the +migration of negroes legally free. There seems to be no evidence that the +traffic across Mason and Dixon's line was ever of large dimensions, the +following curious item from a New Orleans newspaper in 1818 to the contrary +notwithstanding: "Jersey negroes appear to be peculiarly adapted to this +market--especially those that bear the mark of Judge Van Winkle, as it is +understood that they offer the best opportunity for speculation. We have +the right to calculate on large importations in future, from the success +which hitherto attended the sale."[7] + +[Footnote 7: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 22, 1818, quoting the New +Orleans _Chronicle_, July 14, 1818.] + +The internal trade at the South began to be noticeable about the end of the +eighteenth century. A man at Knoxville, Tennessee, in December, 1795, sent +notice to a correspondent in Kentucky that he was about to set out with +slaves for delivery as agreed upon, and would carry additional ones on +speculation; and he concluded by saying "I intend carrying on the business +extensively."[8] In 1797 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt met a "drove of +negroes" about one hundred in number,[9] whose owner had abandoned the +planting business in the South Carolina uplands and was apparently carrying +them to Charleston for sale. In 1799 there was discovered in the Georgia +treasury a shortage of some ten thousand dollars which a contemporary news +item explained as follows: Mr. Sims, a member of the legislature, having +borrowed the money from the treasurer, entrusted it to a certain Speers for +the purchase of slaves in Virginia. "Speers accordingly went and purchased +a considerable number of negroes; and on his way returning to this state +the negroes rose and cut the throats of Speers and another man who +accompanied him. The slaves fled, and about ten of them, I think, were +killed. In consequence of this misfortune Mr. Sims was rendered unable to +raise the money at the time the legislature met."[10] Another transaction +achieved record because of a literary effusion which it prompted. Charles +Mott Lide of South Carolina, having inherited a fortune, went to Virginia +early in 1802 to buy slaves, and began to establish a sea-island cotton +plantation in Georgia. But misfortune in other investments forced him next +year to sell his land, slaves and crops to two immigrants from the Bahama +Islands. Thereupon, wrote he, "I composed the following valedictory, which +breathes something of the tenderness of Ossian."[11] Callous history is not +concerned in the farewell to his "sweet asylum," but only in the fact that +he bought slaves in Virginia and carried them to Georgia. A grand jury +at Alexandria presented as a grievance in 1802, "the practice of persons +coming from distant parts of the United States into this district for the +purpose of purchasing slaves."[12] Such fugitive items as these make up the +whole record of the trade in its early years, and indeed constitute the +main body of data upon its career from first to last. + +[Footnote 8: Unsigned MS. draft in the Wisconsin Historical Society, Draper +collection, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 55, 56.] + +[Footnote 9: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_, p. +592.] + +[Footnote 10: Charleston, S.C., _City Gazette_, Dec. 21, 1799.] + +[Footnote 11: Alexander Gregg, _History of the Old Cheraws_ (New York, +1877), pp. 480-482.] + +[Footnote 12: Quoted in a speech in Congress in 1829, _Register of +Debates_, V, 177.] + +As soon as the African trade was closed, the interstate traffic began to +assume the aspect of a regular business though for some years it not only +continued to be of small scale but was oftentimes merely incidental in +character. That is to say, migrating planters and farmers would in some +cases carry extra slaves bought with a view to reselling them at western +prices and applying the proceeds toward the expense of their new +homesteads. The following advertisement by William Rochel at Natchez in +1810 gives an example of this: "I have upwards of twenty likely Virginia +born slaves now in a flat bottomed boat lying in the river at Natchez, for +sale cheaper than has been sold here in years.[13] Part of said negroes +I wish to barter for a small farm. My boat may be known by a large cane +standing on deck." + +[Footnote 13: Natchez, Miss., _Weekly Chronicle_, April 2, 1810.] + +The heyday of the trade fell in the piping times of peace and migration +from 1815 to 1860. Its greatest activity was just prior to the panic of +1837, for thereafter the flow was held somewhat in check, first by the +hard times in the cotton belt and then by an agricultural renaissance in +Virginia. A Richmond newspaper reported in the fall of 1836 that estimates +by intelligent men placed Virginia's export in the preceding year at +120,000 slaves, of whom at least two thirds had been carried by emigrating +owners, and the rest by dealers.[14] This was probably an exaggeration +for even the greatest year of the exodus. What the common volume of the +commercial transport was can hardly be ascertained from the available data. + +[Footnote 14: _Niles' Register_, LI, 83 (Oct. 8, 1836), quoting the +_Virginia Times_.] + +The slave trade was partly systematic, partly casual. For local sales every +public auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in each +city there were brokers buying them to sell again or handling them on +commission. One of these at New Orleans in 1854 was Thomas Foster who +advertised that he would pay the highest prices for sound negroes as +well as sell those whom merchants or private citizens might consign him. +Expecting to receive negroes throughout the season, he said, he would have +a constant stock of mechanics, domestics and field hands; and in addition +he would house as many as three hundred slaves at a time, for such as +were importing them from other states.[16] Similarly Clark and Grubb, of +Whitehall Street in Atlanta, when advertising their business as wholesale +grocers, commission merchants and negro brokers, announced that they kept +slaves of all classes constantly on hand and were paying the highest market +prices for all that might be offered.[16] At Nashville, William L. Boyd, +Jr., and R.W. Porter advertised as rival slave dealers in 1854;[17] and in +the directory of that city for 1860 E.S. Hawkins, G.H. Hitchings, and Webb, +Merrill and Company were also listed in this traffic. At St. Louis in 1859 +Corbin Thompson and Bernard M. Lynch were the principal slave dealers. The +rates of the latter, according to his placard, were 37-1/2 cents per day +for board and 2-1/2 per cent, commission on sales; and all slaves entrusted +to his care were to be held at their owners' risk.[18] + +[Footnote 15: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 163.] + +[Footnote 16: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Mch. 7, 1860.] + +[Footnote 17: _Southern Business Directory_, II, 131.] + +[Footnote 18: H.A. Trexler, _Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865_ (Baltimore, +1914), p. 49.] + +On the other hand a rural owner disposed to sell a slave locally would +commonly pass the word round among his neighbors or publish a notice in the +county newspaper. To this would sometimes be appended a statement that the +slave was not to be sent out of the state, or that no dealers need apply. +The following is one of many such Maryland items: "Will be sold for cash or +good paper, a negro woman, 22 years old, and her two female children. She +is sold for want of employment, and will not be sent out of the state. +Apply to the editor."[19] In some cases, whether rural or urban, the slave +was sent about to find his or her purchaser. In the city of Washington +in 1854, for example, a woman, whose husband had been sold South, was +furnished with the following document: "The bearer, Mary Jane, and her two +daughters, are for sale. They are sold for no earthly fault whatever. She +is one of the most ladylike and trustworthy servants I ever knew. She is +a first rate parlour servant; can arrange and set out a dinner or party +supper with as much taste as the most of white ladies. She is a pretty good +mantua maker; can cut out and make vests and pantaloons and roundabouts +and joseys for little boys in a first rate manner. Her daughters' ages are +eleven and thirteen years, brought up exclusively as house servants. The +eldest can sew neatly, both can knit stockings; and all are accustomed to +all kinds of house work. They would not be sold to speculators or traders +for any price whatever." The price for the three was fixed at $1800, but a +memorandum stated that a purchaser taking the daughters at $1000 might have +the mother on a month's trial. The girls were duly bought by Dr. Edward +Maynard, who we may hope took the mother also at the end of the stipulated +month.[20] In the cities a few slaves were sold by lottery. One Boulmay, +for example, advertised at New Orleans in 1819 that he would sell fifty +tickets at twenty dollars each, the lucky drawer to receive his girl +Amelia, thirteen years old.[21] + +[Footnote 19: Charleston, Md., _Telegraph_, Nov. 7, 1828.] + +[Footnote 20: MSS. in the New York Public Library, MSS. division, filed +under "slavery."] + +[Footnote 21: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Aug. 17, 1819.] + +The long distance trade, though open to any who would engage in it, appears +to have been conducted mainly by firms plying it steadily. Each of these +would have an assembling headquarters with field agents collecting slaves +for it, one or more vessels perhaps for the coastwise traffic, and a +selling agency at one of the centers of slave demand. The methods followed +by some of the purchasing agents, and the local esteem in which they were +held, may be gathered by an item written in 1818 at Winchester in the +Shenandoah Valley: "Several wretches, whose hearts must be as black as the +skins of the unfortunate beings who constitute their inhuman traffic, have +for several days been impudently prowling about the streets of this place +with labels on their hats exhibiting in conspicuous characters the words +'Cash for negroes,'"[22] That this repugnance was genuine enough to cause +local sellers to make large concessions in price in order to keep faithful +servants out of the hands of the long-distance traders is evidenced by +the following report in 1824 from Hillsborough on the eastern shore of +Maryland: "Slaves in this county, and I believe generally on this shore, +have always had two prices, viz. a neighbourhood or domestic and a foreign +or Southern price. The domestic price has generally been about a third less +than the foreign, and sometimes the difference amounts to one half."[23] + +[Footnote 22: _Virginia Northwestern Gazette_, Aug. 15, 1818.] + +[Footnote 23: _American Historical Review_, XIX, 818.] + +The slaves of whom their masters were most eager to be rid were the +indolent, the unruly, and those under suspicion. A Creole settler at Mobile +wrote in 1748, for example, to a friend living on the Mississippi: "I am +sending you l'Eveille and his wife, whom I beg you to sell for me at the +best price to be had. If however they will not bring 1,500 francs each, +please keep them on your land and make them work. What makes me sell them +is that l'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of some thirty +Mobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this; but since there is +rarely smoke without fire I think it well to take the precaution."[24] The +converse of this is a laconic advertisement at Charleston in 1800: +"Wanted to purchase one or two negro men whose characters will not be +required."[25] It is probable that offers were not lacking in response. + +[Footnote 24: MS. in private possession, here translated from the French.] + +[Footnote 25: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 8, 1800.] + +Some of the slaves dealt in were actually convicted felons sold by the +states in which their crimes had been committed. The purchasers of these +were generally required to give bond to transport them beyond the limits +of the United States; but some of the traders broke their pledges on the +chance that their breaches would not be discovered. One of these, a certain +W.H. Williams, when found offering his outlawed merchandize of twenty-four +convict slaves at New Orleans in 1841, was prosecuted and convicted. His +penalty included the forfeiture of the twenty-four slaves, a fine of $500 +to the state of Louisiana for each of the felons introduced, and the +forfeiture to the state of Virginia of his bond in the amount of $1,000 per +slave. The total was reckoned at $48,000.[26] + +[Footnote 26: _Niles' Register_, LX, 189, quoting the New Orleans +_Picayune_, May 2, 1841.] + +The slaves whom the dealers preferred to buy for distant sale were "likely +negroes from ten to thirty years old."[27] Faithfulness and skill in +husbandry were of minor importance, for the trader could give little proof +of them to his patrons. Demonstrable talents in artisanry would of course +enhance a man's value; and unusual good looks on the part of a young woman +might stimulate the bidding of men interested in concubinage. Episodes of +the latter sort were occasionally reported; but in at least one instance +inquiry on the spot showed that sex was not involved. This was the case of +the girl Sarah, who was sold to the highest bidder on the auction block in +the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel at New Orleans in 1841 at a price of +eight thousand dollars. The onlookers were set agog, but a newspaper man +promptly found that the sale had been made as a mere form in the course of +litigation and that the bidding bore no relation to the money which was to +change hands.[28] Among the thousands of bills of sale which the present +writer has scanned, in every quarter of the South, many have borne record +of exceptional prices for men, mostly artisans and "drivers"; but the few +women who brought unusually high prices were described in virtually every +case as fine seamstresses, parlor maids, laundresses, hotel cooks, and +the like. Another indication against the multiplicity of purchases for +concubinage is that the great majority of the women listed in these records +were bought in family groups. Concubinage itself was fairly frequent, +particularly in southern Louisiana; but no frequency of purchases for it as +a predominant purpose can be demonstrated from authentic records. + +[Footnote 27: Advertisement in the _Western Carolinian_ (Salisbury, N. C), +July 12, 1834.] + +[Footnote 28: New Orleans _Bee_, Oct. 16, 1841.] + +Some of the dealers used public jails, taverns and warehouses for the +assembling of their slaves, while others had stockades of their own. That +of Franklin and Armfield at Alexandria, managed by the junior member of +the firm, was described by a visitor in July, 1835. In addition to a brick +residence and office, it comprised two courts, for the men and women +respectively, each with whitewashed walls, padlocked gates, cleanly +barracks and eating sheds, and a hospital which at this time had no +occupants. In the men's yards "the slaves, fifty or sixty in number, were +standing or moving about in groups, some amusing themselves with rude +sports, and others engaged in conversation which was often interrupted +by loud laughter in all the varied tones peculiar to negroes." They were +mostly young men, but comprised a few boys of from ten to fifteen years +old. In the women's yard the ages ranged similarly, and but one woman had a +young child. The slaves were neatly dressed in clothes from a tailor shop +within the walls, and additional clothing was already stored ready to be +sent with the coffle and issued to its members at the end of the southward +journey. In a yard behind the stockade there were wagons and tents made +ready for the departure. Shipments were commonly made by the firm once +every two months in a vessel for New Orleans, but the present lot was to +march overland. Whether by land or sea, the destination was Natchez, where +the senior partner managed the selling end of the business. Armfield +himself was "a man of fine personal appearance, and of engaging and +graceful manners"; and his firm was said to have gained the confidence of +all the countryside by its honorable dealings and by its resolute efforts +to discourage kidnapping. It was said to be highly esteemed even among the +negroes.[29] + +[Footnote 29: E.A. Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the +United States_ (Boston, 1836), pp. 135, 143, 150.] + +Soon afterward this traveler made a short voyage on the Potomac with a +trader of a much more vulgar type who was carrying about fifty slaves, +mostly women with their children, to Fredericksburg and thence across the +Carolinas. Overland, the trader said, he was accustomed to cover some +twenty-five miles a day, with the able-bodied slaves on foot and the +children in wagons. The former he had found could cover these marches, +after the first few days, without much fatigue. His firm, he continued, had +formerly sent most of its slaves by sea, but one of the vessels carrying +them had been driven to Bermuda, where all the negroes had escaped to land +and obtained their freedom under the British flag.[30] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid_., pp. 145-149.] + +The scale of the coasting transit of slaves may be ascertained from the +ship manifests made under the requirements of the congressional act of +1808 and now preserved in large numbers in the manuscripts division of the +Library of Congress. Its volume appears to have ranged commonly, between +1815 and 1860, at from two to five thousand slaves a year. Several score of +these, or perhaps a few hundred, annually were carried as body servants by +their owners when making visits whether to southern cities or to New York +or Philadelphia. Of the rest about half were sent or carried without intent +of sale. Thus in 1831 James L. Pettigru and Langdon Cheves sent from +Charleston to Savannah 85 and 64 slaves respectively of ages ranging from +ninety and seventy years to infancy, with obvious purpose to develop newly +acquired plantations in Georgia. Most of the non-commercial shipments, +however, were in lots of from one to a dozen slaves each. The traders' +lots, on the other hand, which were commonly of considerable dimensions, +may be somewhat safely distinguished by the range of the negroes' ages, +with heavy preponderance of those between ten and thirty years, and by the +recurrence of shippers' and consignees' names. The Chesapeake ports were +the chief points of departure, and New Orleans the great port of entry. +Thus in 1819 Abner Robinson at Baltimore shipped a cargo of 99 slaves to +William Kenner and Co. at New Orleans, whereas by 1832 Robinson had himself +removed to the latter place and was receiving shipments from Henry King +at Norfolk. In the latter year Franklin and Armfield sent from Alexandria +_via_ New Orleans to Isaac Franklin at Natchez three cargoes of 109, 117 +and 134 slaves, mainly of course within the traders' ages; R.C. Ballard and +Co. sent batches from Norfolk to Franklin at Natchez and to John Hogan and +Co. at New Orleans; and William T. Foster, associated with William Rollins +who was master of the brig _Ajax_, consigned numerous parcels to various +New Orleans correspondents. About 1850 the chief shippers were Joseph +Donovan of Baltimore, B.M. and M.L. Campbell of the same place, David +Currie of Richmond and G.W. Apperson of Norfolk, each of whom sent each +year several shipments of several score slaves to New Orleans. The +principal recipients there were Thomas Boudar, John Hogan, W.F. Talbott, +Buchanan, Carroll and Co., Masi and Bourk, and Sherman Johnson. The outward +manifests from New Orleans show in turn a large maritime distribution from +that port, mainly to Galveston and Matagorda Bay. The chief bulk of this +was obviously migrant, not commercial; but a considerable dependence of all +the smaller Gulf ports and even of Montgomery upon the New Orleans labor +market is indicated by occasional manifests bulking heavily in the traders' +ages. In 1850 and thereabouts, it is curious to note, there were manifests +for perhaps a hundred slaves a year bound for Chagres _en route_ for San +Francisco. They were for the most part young men carried singly, and were +obviously intended to share their masters' adventures in the California +gold fields. + +Many slaves carried by sea were covered by marine insurance. Among a number +of policies issued by the Louisiana Insurance Company to William Kenner and +Company was one dated February 18, 1822, on slaves in transit in the brig +_Fame_. It was made out on a printed form of the standard type for the +marine insurance of goods, with the words "on goods" stricken out and "on +slaves" inserted. The risks, specified as assumed in the printed form were +those "of the sea, men of war, fire, enemies, pirates, rovers, thieves, +jettison, letters of mart and counter-mart, surprisals, taking at sea, +arrests, restraints and detainments of all kings, princes or people of what +nation, condition or quality soever, barratry of the master and mariners, +and all other perils, losses and misfortunes that have or shall come to the +hurt, detriment or damage of the said goods or merchandize, or any part +thereof." In manuscript was added: "This insurance is declared to be made +on one hundred slaves, valued at $40,000 and warranted by the insured to be +free from insurrection, elopement, suicide and natural death." The premium +was one and a quarter per cent, of the forty thousand dollars.[31] That +the insurers were not always free from serious risk is indicated by a New +Orleans news item in 1818 relating that two local insurance companies +had recently lost more than forty thousand dollars in consequence of the +robbery of seventy-two slaves out of a vessel from the Chesapeake by a +piratical boat off the Berry Islands.[32] + +[Footnote 31: Original in private possession.] + +[Footnote 32: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 23, 1818, quoting the +_Orleans Gazette_.] + +Overland coffles were occasionally encountered and described by travelers. +Featherstonhaugh overtook one at daybreak one morning in southwestern +Virginia bound through the Tennessee Valley and wrote of it as follows: "It +was a camp of negro slave drivers, just packing up to start. They had about +three hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding night +in chains in the woods. These they were conducting to Natchez on the +Mississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana. It +resembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had +a caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages for the purpose of +conducting the white people and any of the blacks that should fall lame.... +The female slaves, some of them sitting on logs of wood, while others were +standing, and a great many little black children, were warming themselves +at the fire of the bivouac. In front of them all, and prepared for the +march, stood in double files about two hundred men slaves, manacled and +chained to each other." The writer went on to ejaculate upon the horror of +"white men with liberty and equality in their mouths," driving black men +"to perish in the sugar mills of Louisiana, where the duration of life for +a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven years."[33] Sir Charles Lyell, +who was less disposed to moralize or to repeat slanders of the Louisiana +régime, wrote upon reaching the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, in January, +1846: "The first sight we saw there was a long line of negroes, men, women +and boys, well dressed and very merry, talking and laughing, who stopped to +look at our coach. On inquiry we were told that it was a gang of slaves, +probably from Virginia, going to the market to be sold."[34] Whether this +laughing company wore shackles the writer failed to say. + +[Footnote 33: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion through the Slave States_ +(London, 1844), I, 120.] + +[Footnote 34: Sir Charles Lyell, _A Second Visit to the United States_ (New +York, 1849), II, 35.] + +Some of the slaves in the coffles were peddled to planters and townsmen +along the route; the rest were carried to the main distributing centers and +there either kept in stock for sale at fixed prices to such customers as +might apply, or sold at auction. Oftentimes a family group divided for sale +was reunited by purchase. Johann Schoepf observed a prompt consummation of +the sort when a cooper being auctioned continually called to the bidders +that whoever should buy him must buy his son also, an injunction to which +his purchaser duly conformed.[35] Both hardness of heart and shortness +of sight would have been involved in the neglect of so ready a means of +promoting the workman's equanimity; and the good nature of the competing +bidders doubtless made the second purchase easy. More commonly the sellers +offered the slaves in family groups outright. By whatever method the sales +were made, the slaves of both sexes were subjected to such examination of +teeth and limbs as might be desired.[36] Those on the block oftentimes +praised their own strength and talents, for it was a matter of pride to +fetch high prices. On the other hand if a slave should bear a grudge +against his seller, or should hope to be bought only by someone who would +expect but light service, he might pretend a disability though he had it +not. The purchasers were commonly too shrewd to be deceived in either way; +yet they necessarily took risks in every purchase they made. If horse +trading is notoriously fertile in deception, slave trading gave opportunity +for it in as much greater degree as human nature is more complex and +uncertain than equine and harder to fathom from surface indications. + +[Footnote 35: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, +1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), I, 148.] + +[Footnote 36: The proceedings at typical slave auctions are narrated by +Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 143-145; and +by William Chambers, _Things as they are in America_ (2d edition, London, +1857), pp. 273-284.] + +There was also some risk of loss from defects of title. The negroes offered +might prove to be kidnapped freemen, or stolen slaves, or to have been +illegally sold by their former owners in defraud of mortgagees. The last +of these considerations was particularly disquieting in times of financial +stress, for suspicion of wholesale frauds then became rife. At the +beginning of 1840, for example, the offerings of slaves from Mississippi in +large numbers and at bargain prices in the New Orleans market prompted a +local editor to warn the citizens against buying cheap slaves who might +shortly be seized by the federal marshal at the suit of citizens in other +states. A few days afterward the same journal printed in its local news the +following: "Many slaves were put up this day at the St. Louis exchange. Few +if any were sold. It is very difficult now to find persons willing to buy +slaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears entertained that +such property may be already mortgaged to the banks of the above named +states. Our moneyed men and speculators are now wide awake. It will take a +pretty cunning child to cheat them."[37] + +[Footnote 37: _Louisiana Courier_, Feb. 12 and 15, 1840.] + +The disesteem in which the slavetraders were held was so great and general +in the Southern community as to produce a social ostracism. The prevailing +sentiment was expressed, with perhaps a little exaggeration, by D.R. +Hundley of Alabama in his analysis of Southern social types: "Preëminent in +villainy and a greedy love of filthy lucre stands the hard-hearted negro +trader.... Some of them, we do not doubt, are conscientious men, but the +number is few. Although honest and honorable when they first go into the +business, the natural result of their calling seems to corrupt them; for +they usually have to deal with the most refractory and brutal of the slave +population, since good and honest slaves are rarely permitted to fall into +the unscrupulous clutches of the speculator.... [He] is outwardly a coarse, +ill-bred person, provincial in speech and manners, with a cross-looking +phiz, a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking eyes, a dirty +tobacco-stained mouth, and shabby dress.... He is not troubled evidently +with a conscience, for although he habitually separates parent from child, +brother from sister, and husband from wife, he is yet one of the jolliest +dogs alive, and never evinces the least sign of remorse.... Almost every +sentence he utters is accompanied by an oath.... Nearly nine tenths of the +slaves he buys and sells are vicious ones sold for crimes and misdemeanors, +or otherwise diseased ones sold because of their worthlessness as property. +These he purchases for about one half what healthy and honest slaves would +cost him; but he sells them as both honest and healthy, mark you! So soon +as he has completed his 'gang' he dresses them up in good clothes, makes +them comb their kinky heads into some appearance of neatness, rubs oil on +their dusky faces to give them a sleek healthy color, gives them a dram +occasionally to make them sprightly, and teaches each one the part he or +she has to play; and then he sets out for the extreme South.... At every +village of importance he sojourns for a day or two, each day ranging his +'gang' in a line on the most busy street, and whenever a customer makes his +appearance the oily speculator button-holes him immediately and begins to +descant in the most highfalutin fashion upon the virtuous lot of darkeys he +has for sale. Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom was not a circumstance to any one of +the dozens he points out. So honest! so truthful! so dear to the hearts +of their former masters and mistresses! Ah! Messrs. stock-brokers of Wall +Street--you who are wont to cry up your rotten railroad, mining, steamboat +and other worthless stocks[38]--for ingenious lying you should take lessons +from the Southern negro trader!" Some of the itinerant traders were said, +however, and probably with truth, to have had silent partners among the +most substantial capitalists in the Southern cities.[39] + +[Footnote 38: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 139-142.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid_., p.145.] + +The social stigma upon slave dealing doubtless enhanced the profits of the +traders by diminishing the competition. The difference in the scales of +prices prevailing at any time in the cheapest and the dearest local markets +was hardly ever less than thirty per cent. From such a margin, however, +there had to be deducted not only the cost of feeding, clothing, +sheltering, guarding and transporting the slaves for the several months +commonly elapsing between purchase and sale in the trade, but also +allowances for such loss as might occur in transit by death, illness, +accident or escape. At some periods, furthermore, slave prices fell so +rapidly that the prospect of profit for the speculator vanished. At +Columbus, Georgia, in December, 1844, for example, it was reported that a +coffle from North Carolina had been marched back for want of buyers.[40] +But losses of this sort were more than offset in the long run by the upward +trend of prices which was in effect throughout the most of the ante-bellum +period. The Southern planters sometimes cut into the business of the +traders by going to the border states to buy and bring home in person the +slaves they needed.[41] The building of railways speeded the journeys and +correspondingly reduced the costs. The Central of Georgia Railroad +improved its service in 1858 by instituting a negro sleeping car [42]--an +accommodation which apparently no railroad has furnished in the post-bellum +decades. + +[Footnote 40: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 31, 1844.] + +[Footnote 41: Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade_, p.171.] + +While the traders were held in common contempt, the incidents and effects +of their traffic were viewed with mixed emotions. Its employment of +shackles was excused only on the ground of necessary precaution. Its +breaking up of families was generally deplored, although it was apologized +for by thick-and-thin champions of everything Southern with arguments that +negro domestic ties were weak at best and that the separations were no more +frequent than those suffered by free laborers at the North under the stress +of economic necessity. Its drain of money from the districts importing the +slaves was regretted as a financial disadvantage. On the other hand, the +citizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being +saved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at +seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even +these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, +by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen +materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young +workmen and women rather than culls who were being sold South, that white +immigration was not filling their gaps, and that accordingly land prices +were falling as slave prices rose.[45] + +[Footnote 42: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1859.] + +[Footnote 43: _National Intelligencer_ (Washington, D.C.), Jan. 19, 1833.] + +[Footnote 44: R.R. Howison, _History of Virginia_ (Richmond, Va., +1846-1848), II. 519, 520.] + +[Footnote 45: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in +_DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] + +Delaware alone among the states below Mason and Dixon's line appears to +have made serious effort to restrict the outgoing trade in slaves; but all +the states from Maryland and Kentucky to Louisiana legislated from time to +time for the prohibition of the inward trade.[46] The enforcement of these +laws was called for by citizen after citizen in the public press, as +demanded by "every principle of justice, humanity, policy and interest," +and particularly on the ground that if the border states were drained of +slaves they would be transferred from the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery +group in politics.[47] The state laws could not constitutionally debar +traders from the right of transit, and as a rule they did not prohibit +citizens from bringing in slaves for their own use. These two apertures, +together with the passiveness of the public, made the legislative obstacles +of no effect whatever. As to the neighborhood trade within each community, +no prohibition was attempted anywhere in the South. + +[Footnote 46: These acts are summarized in W.H. Collins, _Domestic Slave +Trade_, chap. 7.] + +[Footnote 47: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1818 and Jan. 29, 1823; +_Louisiana Courier_, Jan. 13, 1831; _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), +Dec. 4, 1821, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 67-70; _Federal +Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Feb. 6, 1847.] + +On the whole, instead of hampering migration, as serfdom would have done, +the institution of slavery made the negro population much more responsive +to new industrial opportunity than if it had been free. The long distance +slave trade found its principal function in augmenting the westward +movement. No persuasion of the ignorant and inert was required; the fiat of +one master set them on the road, and the fiat of another set them to new +tasks. The local branch of the trade had its main use in transferring labor +from impoverished employers to those with better means, from passive owners +to active, and from persons with whom relations might be strained to +others whom the negroes might find more congenial. That this last was not +negligible is suggested by a series of letters in 1860 from William Capers, +overseer on a Savannah River rice plantation, to Charles Manigault his +employer, concerning a slave foreman or "driver" named John. In the first +of these letters, August 5, Capers expressed pleasure at learning that +John, who had in previous years been his lieutenant on another estate, was +for sale. He wrote: "Buy him by all means. There is but few negroes +more competent than he is, and he was not a drunkard when under my +management.... In speaking with John he does not answer like a smart negro, +but he is quite so. You had better say to him who is to manage him on +Savannah." A week later Capers wrote: "John arrived safe and handed me +yours of the 9th inst. I congratulate you on the purchase of said negro. +He says he is quite satisfied to be here and will do as he has always done +'during the time I have managed him.' No drink will be offered him. All +on my part will be done to bring John all right." Finally, on October 15, +Capers reported: "I have found John as good a driver as when I left him on +Santee. Bad management was the cause of his being sold, and [I] am glad you +have been the fortunate man to get him."[48] + +[Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 337, 338.] + +Leaving aside for the present, as topics falling more fitly under the +economics of slavery, the questions of the market breeding of slaves in the +border states and the working of them to death in the lower South, as well +as the subject of inflations and depressions in slave prices, it remains +to mention the chief defect of the slave trade as an agency for the +distribution of labor. This lay in the fact that it dealt only in lifetime +service. Employers, it is true, might buy slaves for temporary employment +and sell them when the need for their labor was ended; but the fluctuations +of slave prices and of the local opportunity to sell those on hand would +involve such persons in slave trading risks on a scale eclipsing that of +their industrial earnings. The fact that slave hiring prevailed extensively +in all the Southern towns demonstrates the eagerness of short term +employers to avoid the toils of speculation. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE COTTON RÉGIME + + +It would be hard to overestimate the predominance of the special crops in +the industry and interest of the Southern community. For good or ill they +have shaped its development from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. +Each characteristic area had its own staple, and those districts which had +none were scorned by all typical Southern men. The several areas expanded +and contracted in response to fluctuations in the relative prices of their +products. Thus when cotton was exceptionally high in the early 'twenties +many Virginians discarded tobacco in its favor for a few years,[1] and on +the Louisiana lands from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, the planters from time +to time changed from sugar to cotton and back again.[2] There were local +variations also in scale and intensity; but in general the system in each +area tended to be steady and fairly uniform. The methods in the several +staples, furthermore, while necessarily differing in their details, were so +similar in their emphasis upon routine that each reinforced the influence +of the others in shaping the industrial organization of the South as a +whole. + +[Footnote 1: _Richmond Compiler_, Nov. 25, 1825, and _Alexandria Gazette_, +Feb. 11, 1826, quoted in the _Charleston City Gazette_, Dec. 1, 1825 and +Feb. 20, 1826; _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore, Dec. 29, 1825), VII, 299.] + +[Footnote 2: _Hunt's Merchant's Magazine_, IX, 149.] + +At the height of the plantation system's career, from 1815 to 1860, indigo +production was a thing of the past; hemp was of negligible importance; +tobacco was losing in the east what it gained in the west; rice and +sea-island cotton were stationary; but sugar was growing in local +intensity, and upland cotton was "king" of a rapidly expanding realm. +The culture of sugar, tobacco and rice has been described in preceding +chapters; that of the fleecy staple requires our present attention. + +The outstanding features of the landscape on a short-staple cotton +plantation were the gin house and its attendant baling press. The former +was commonly a weatherboarded structure some forty feet square, raised +about eight feet from the ground by wooden pillars. In the middle of the +space on the ground level, a great upright hub bore an iron-cogged pinion +and was pierced by a long horizontal beam some three feet from the ground. +Draught animals hitched to the ends of this and driven in a circular path +would revolve the hub and furnish power for transmission by cogs and belts +to the gin on the floor above. At the front of the house were a stair and a +platform for unloading seed cotton from the wagons; inside there were bins +for storage, as well as a space for operating the gin; and in the rear a +lean-to room extending to the ground level received the flying lint and let +it settle on the floor. The press, a skeleton structure nearby, had in the +center a stout wooden box whose interior length and width determined the +height and thickness of the bales but whose depth was more than twice as +great as the intended bale's width. The floor, the ends and the upper +halves of the sides of the box were built rigidly, but the lower sides were +hinged at the bottom, and the lid was a block sliding up and down according +as a great screw from above was turned to left or right. The screw, +sometimes of cast iron but preferably of wood as being less liable to break +under strain without warning, worked through a block mortised into a timber +frame above the box, and at its upper end it supported two gaunt beams +which sloped downward and outward to a horse path encircling the whole. +A cupola roof was generally built on the revolving apex to give a slight +shelter to the apparatus; and in some cases a second roof, with the screw +penetrating its peak, was built near enough the ground to escape the whirl +of the arms. When the contents of the lint room were sufficient for a bale, +a strip of bagging was laid upon the floor of the press and another was +attached to the face of the raised lid; the sides of the press were then +made fast, and the box was filled with cotton. The draught animals at the +beam ends were then driven round the path until the descent of the lid +packed the lint firmly; whereupon the sides were lowered, the edges of the +bagging drawn into place, ropes were passed through transverse slots in +the lid and floor and tied round the bale in its bagging, the pressure +was released, and the bale was ready for market. Between 1820 and 1860 +improvements in the apparatus promoted an increase in the average weight +of the bales from 250 to 400 pounds; while in still more recent times the +replacement of horse power by steam and the substitution of iron ties for +rope have caused the average bale to be yet another hundredweight heavier. +The only other distinctive equipment for cotton harvesting comprised cloth +bags with shoulder straps, and baskets of three or four bushels capacity +woven of white-oak splits to contain the contents of the pickers' bags +until carried to the gin house to be weighed at the day's end. + +Whether on a one-horse farm or a hundred-hand plantation, the essentials in +cotton growing were the same. In an average year a given force of laborers +could plant and cultivate about twice as much cotton as it could pick. The +acreage to be seeded in the staple was accordingly fixed by a calculation +of the harvesting capacity, and enough more land was put into other crops +to fill out the spare time of the hands in spring and summer. To this +effect it was customary to plant in corn, which required less than half as +much work, an acreage at least equal to that in cotton, and to devote the +remaining energy to sweet potatoes, peanuts, cow peas and small grain. In +1820 the usual crop in middle Georgia for each full hand was reported at +six acres of cotton and eight of corn;[3] but in the following decades +during which mules were advantageously substituted for horses and oxen, +and the implements of tillage were improved and the harvesters grew more +expert, the annual stint was increased to ten acres in cotton and ten in +corn. + +[Footnote 3: _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore), II, 359.] + +At the Christmas holiday when the old year's harvest was nearly or quite +completed, well managed plantations had their preliminaries for the new +crop already in progress. The winter months were devoted to burning +canebrakes, clearing underbrush and rolling logs in the new grounds, +splitting rails and mending fences, cleaning ditches, spreading manure, +knocking down the old cotton and corn stalks, and breaking the soil of the +fields to be planted. Some planters broke the fields completely each year +and then laid off new rows. Others merely "listed" the fields by first +running a furrow with a shovel plow where each cotton or corn row was to be +and filling it with a single furrow of a turn plow from either side; then +when planting time approached they would break out the remaining balks with +plows, turning the soil to the lists and broadening them into rounded plant +beds. This latter plan was advocated as giving a firm seed bed while making +the field clean of all grass at the planting. The spacing of the cotton +rows varied from three to five feet according to the richness of the soil. +The policy was to put them at such distance that the plants when full grown +would lightly interlace their branches across the middles. + +In March the corn fields were commonly planted, not so much because this +forehandedness was better for the crop as for the sake of freeing the +choicer month of April for the more important planting of cotton. In this +operation a narrow plow lightly opened the crests of the beds; cotton seed +were drilled somewhat thickly therein; and a shallow covering of earth was +given by means of a concave board on a plow stock, or by a harrow, a roller +or a small shallow plow. + +Within two or three weeks, as soon as the young plants had put forth three +or four leaves, thinning and cultivation was begun. Hoe hands, under +orders to chop carefully, stirred the crust along the rows and reduced the +seedlings to a "double stand," leaving only two plants to grow at each +interval of twelve or eighteen inches. The plows then followed, stirring +the soil somewhat deeply near the rows. In another fortnight the hoes gave +another chopping, cutting down the weaker of each pair of plants, thus +reducing the crop to a "single stand"; and where plants were missing they +planted fresh seed to fill the gaps. The plows followed again, with broad +wings to their shares, to break the crust and kill the grass throughout the +middles. Similar alternations of chipping and plowing then ensued until +near the end of July, each cultivation shallower than the last in order +that the roots of the cotton should not be cut.[4] + +[Footnote 4: Cotton Culture is described by M.W. Philips in the _American +Agriculturist_, II (New York, 1843), 51, 81, 117, 149; by various writers +in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ (New York, 1856), chap. +I; Harry Hammond, _The Cotton Plant_ (U.S. Department of Agriculture, +Experiment Station, _Bulletin_ 33, 1896); and in the U.S. Census, 1880, +vols. V and VI.] + +When the blossoms were giving place to bolls in midsummer, "lay-by time" +was at hand. Cultivation was ended, and the labor was diverted to other +tasks until in late August or early September the harvest began. The +corn, which had been worked at spare times previously, now had its blades +stripped and bundled for fodder; the roads were mended, the gin house and +press put in order, the premises in general cleaned up, and perhaps a few +spare days given to recreation. + +The cotton bolls ripened and opened in series, those near the center of the +plant first, then the outer ones on the lower branches, and finally the +top crop. If subjected unduly to wind and rain the cotton, drooping in the +bolls, would be blown to the ground or tangled with dead leaves or stained +with mildew. It was expedient accordingly to send the pickers through the +fields as early and as often as there was crop enough open to reward the +labor. + +Four or five compartments held the contents of each boll; from sixty to +eighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed; and three or four +pounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of lint. When a boll was wide +open a deft picker could empty all of its compartments by one snatch of +the fingers; and a specially skilled one could keep both hands flying +independently, and still exercise the small degree of care necessary to +keep the lint fairly free from the trash of the brittle dead calyxes. As +to the day's work, a Georgia planter wrote in 1830: "A hand will pick or +gather sixty to a hundred pounds of cotton in the seed, with ease, per day. +I have heard of some hands gathering a hundred and twenty pounds in a day. +The hands on a plantation ought to average sixty-five pounds," [5] But +actual records in the following decades made these early pickers appear +very inept. On Levin Covington's plantation near Natchez in 1844, in a +typical week of October, Bill averaged 220 pounds a day, Dred 205 pounds, +Aggy 215, and Delia 185; and on Saturday of that week all the twenty-eight +men and boys together picked an average of 160 pounds, and all the eighteen +women and girls an average of 125.[6] But these were dwarfed in turn by the +pickings on J.W. Fowler's Prairie plantation, Coahoma County, Mississippi, +at the close of the ante-bellum period. In the week of September 12 to 17, +1859, Sandy, Carver and Gilmore each averaged about three hundred pounds a +day, and twelve other men and five women ranged above two hundred, while +the whole gang of fifty-one men and women, boys and girls average 157 +pounds each.[7] + +[Footnote 5: _American Farmer_, II, 359.] + +[Footnote 6: MS. in the Mississippi Department of History and Archives, +Jackson, Miss.] + +[Footnote 7: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] + +The picking required more perseverance than strength. Dexterity was at a +premium, but the labors of the slow, the youthful and the aged were all +called into requisition. When the fields were white with their fleece and +each day might bring a storm to stop the harvesting, every boll picked +might well be a boll saved from destruction. Even the blacksmith was called +from his forge and the farmer's children from school to bend their backs in +the cotton rows. The women and children picked steadily unless rains drove +them in; the men picked as constantly except when the crop was fairly under +control and some other task, such as breaking in the corn, called the whole +gang for a day to another field or when the gin house crew had to clear the +bins by working up their contents to make room for more seed cotton. + +In the Piedmont where the yield was lighter the harvest was generally ended +by December; but in the western belt, particularly when rains interrupted +the work, it often extended far into the new year. Lucien Minor, for +example, wrote when traveling through the plantations of northern Alabama, +near Huntsville, in December, 1823: "These fields are still white with +cotton, which frequently remains unpicked until March or April, when the +ground is wanted to plant the next crop."[8] Planters occasionally noted in +their journals that for want of pickers the top crop was lost. + +[Footnote 8: _Atlantic Monthly_, XXVI, 175.] + +As to the yield, an adage was current, that cotton would promise more and +do less and promise less and do more than any other green thing that grew. +The plants in the earlier stages were very delicate. Rough stirring of the +clods would kill them; excess of rain or drought would be likewise fatal; +and a choking growth of grass would altogether devastate the field. +Improvement of conditions would bring quick recuperation to the surviving +stalks, which upon attaining their full growth became quite hardy; but +undue moisture would then cause a shedding of the bolls, and the first +frost of autumn would stop the further fruiting. The plants, furthermore, +were liable to many diseases and insect ravages. In infancy cut-worms might +sever the stalks at the base, and lice might sap the vitality; in the full +flush of blooming luxuriance, wilt and rust, the latter particularly on +older lands, might blight the leaves, or caterpillars in huge armies reduce +them to skeletons and blast the prospect; and even when the fruit was +formed, boll-worms might consume the substance within, or dry-rot prevent +the top crop from ripening. The ante-bellum planters, however, were exempt +from the Mexican boll-weevil, the great pest of the cotton belt in the +twentieth century. + +While every planter had his fat years and lean, and the yield of the belt +as a whole alternated between bumper crops and short ones, the industry was +in general of such profit as to maintain a continued expansion of its area +and a never ending though sometimes hesitating increase of its product. The +crop rose from eighty-five million pounds in 1810 to twice as much in 1820; +it doubled again by 1830 and more than doubled once more by 1840. Extremely +low prices for the staple in the early 'forties and again in 1849 prompted +a campaign for crop reduction; and in that decade the increase was only +from 830,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 pounds. But the return of good prices in +the 'fifties caused a fresh and huge enlargement to 2,300,000,000 pounds in +the final census year of the ante-bellum period. While this was little more +than one fourth as great as the crops of sixteen million bales in 1912 and +1915, it was justly reckoned in its time, at home and abroad, a prodigious +output. All the rest of the world then produced barely one third as much. +The cotton sent abroad made up nearly two thirds of the value of the gross +export trade of the United States, while the tobacco export had hardly a +tenth of the cotton's worth. In competition with all the other staples, +cotton engaged the services of some three fourths of all the country's +plantation labor, in addition to the labor of many thousands of white +farmers and their families. + +The production and sale of the staple engrossed no less of the people's +thought than of their work. A traveler who made a zig-zag journey from +Charleston to St. Louis in the early months of 1827, found cotton "a +plague." At Charleston, said he, the wharves were stacked and the stores +and ships packed with the bales, and the four daily papers and all +the patrons of the hotel were "teeming with cotton." At Augusta the +thoroughfares were thronged with groaning wagons, the warehouses were +glutted, the open places were stacked, and the steamboats and barges hidden +by their loads. On the road beyond, migrating planters and slaves bound +for the west, "'where the cotton land is not worn out,'" met cotton-laden +wagons townward bound, whereupon the price of the staple was the chief +theme of roadside conversation. Occasionally a wag would have his jest. The +traveler reported a tilt between two wagoners: "'What's cotton in Augusta?' +says the one with a load.... 'It's cotton,' says the other. 'I know that,' +says the first, 'but what is it?' 'Why,' says the other, 'I tell you it's +cotton. Cotton is cotton in Augusta and everywhere else that I ever heard +of,' 'I know that as well as you,' says the first, 'but what does cotton +bring in Augusta?' 'Why, it brings nothing there, but everybody brings +cotton,'" Whereupon the baffled inquirer appropriately relieved his +feelings and drove on. At his crossing of the Oconee River the traveler saw +pole-boats laden with bales twelve tiers high; at Milledgeville and Macon +cotton was the absorbing theme; in the newly opened lands beyond he "found +cotton land speculators thicker than locusts in Egypt"; in the neighborhood +of Montgomery cotton fields adjoined one another in a solid stretch for +fourteen miles along the road; Montgomery was congested beyond the capacity +of the boats; and journeying thence to Mobile he "met and overtook nearly +one hundred cotton waggons travelling over a road so bad that a state +prisoner could hardly walk through it to make his escape." As to Mobile, it +was "a receptacle monstrous for the article. Look which way you will you +see it, and see it moving; keel boats, steamboats, ships, brigs, schooners, +wharves, stores, and press-houses, all appeared to be full; and I believe +that in the three days I was there, boarding with about one hundred cotton +factors, cotton merchants and cotton planters, I must have heard the word +cotton pronounced more than three thousand times." New Orleans had a +similar glut. + +On the journey up the Mississippi the plaint heard by this traveler from +fellow passengers who lived at Natchitoches, was that they could not get +enough boats to bring the cotton down the Red. The descending steamers and +barges on the great river itself were half of them heavy laden with cotton +and at the head of navigation on the Tennessee, in northwestern Alabama, +bales enough were waiting to fill a dozen boats. "The Tennesseeans," said +he, "think that no state is of any account but their own; Kentucky, they +say, would be if it could grow cotton, but as it is, it is good for +nothing. They count on forty or fifty thousand bales going from Nashville +this season; that is, if they can get boats to carry it all." The fleet +on the Cumberland River was doing its utmost, to the discomfort of the +passengers; and it was not until the traveler boarded a steamer for +St. Louis at the middle of March, that he escaped the plague which had +surrounded him for seventy days and seventy nights. This boat, at last, +"had not a bale of cotton on board, nor did I hear it named more than twice +in thirty-six hours...I had a pretty tolerable night's sleep, though I +dreamed of cotton."[9] + +[Footnote 9: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Oct. 11, 1827, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, I, 283-289.] + +This obsession was not without its undertone of disquiet. Foresighted men +were apprehensive lest the one-crop system bring distress to the cotton +belt as it had to Virginia. As early as 1818 a few newspaper editors[10] +began to decry the régime; and one of them in 1821 rejoiced in a widespread +prevalence of rot in the crop of the preceding year as a blessing, in that +it staved off the rapidly nearing time when the staple's price would fall +below the cost of production.[11] A marked rise of the price to above +twenty cents a pound at the middle of the decade, however, silenced these +prophets until a severe decline in the later twenties prompted the sons of +Jeremiah to raise their voices again, and the political crisis procured +them a partial hearing. Politicians were advocating the home production +of cloth and foodstuffs as a demonstration against the protective tariff, +while the economists pleaded for diversification for the sake of permanent +prosperity, regardless of tariff rates. One of them wrote in 1827: "That we +have cultivated cotton, cotton, cotton and bought everything else, has long +been our opprobrium. It is time that we should be aroused by some means or +other to see that such a course of conduct will inevitably terminate in +our ultimate poverty and ruin. Let us manufacture, because it is our best +policy. Let us go more on provision crops and less on cotton, because we +have had everything about us poor and impoverished long enough.... We have +good land, unlimited water powers, capital in plenty, and a patriotism +which is running over in some places. If the tariff drives us to this, +we say, let the name be sacred in all future generations."[12] Next year +William Ellison of the South Carolina uplands welcomed even the low price +of cotton as a lever[13] which might pry the planters out of the cotton rut +and shift them into industries less exhausting to the soil. + +[Footnote 10: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 23, 1818.] + +[Footnote 11: _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville), June 5, 1821.] + +[Footnote 12: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), June 21, 1827.] + +[Footnote 13: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 13.] + +But in the breast of the lowlander, William Elliott, the depression of the +cotton market produced merely a querulous complaint that the Virginians, by +rushing into the industry several years before when the prices were high, +had spoiled the market. Each region, said he, ought to devote itself to +the staples best suited to its climate and soil; this was the basis of +profitable commerce. The proper policy for Virginia and most of North +Carolina was to give all their labor spared from tobacco to the growing of +corn which South Carolina would gladly buy of them if undisturbed in her +peaceful concentration upon cotton.[14] The advance of cotton prices +throughout most of the thirties suspended the discussion, and the régime +went on virtually unchanged. As an evidence of the specialization of the +Piedmont in cotton, it was reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbia +alone the purchases of bacon during the preceding year had amounted to +three and a half million pounds.[15] + +[Footnote 14: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 61.] + +[Footnote 15: _Niles' Register_, LI, 46.] + +The world-wide panic of 1837 began to send prices down, and the specially +intense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so thoroughly that for five +years afterward the producers had to take from five to seven cents a pound +for their crops. Planters by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously in +the inflated southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves afresh +to study the means of salvation. Edmund Ruffin, the Virginian enthusiast +for fertilizers, was employed by the authority of the South Carolina +legislature to make an agricultural survey of that state with a view to +recommending improvements. Private citizens made experiments on their +estates; and the newspapers and the multiplying agricultural journals +published their reports and advice. Most prominent among the cotton belt +planters who labored in the cause of reform were ex-Governor James H. +Hammond of South Carolina, Jethro V. Jones of Georgia, Dr. N.B. Cloud of +Alabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of Mississippi. Of these, Hammond was +chiefly concerned in swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase, +and livestock improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improved +strains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing; and Philips was +an all-round experimenter and propagandist. Hammond and Philips, who were +both spurred to experiments by financial stress, have left voluminous +records in print and manuscript. Their careers illustrate the handicaps +under which innovators labored. + +Hammond's estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, some +sixteen miles below Augusta. Impressed by the depletion of his upland +soils, he made a journey in 1838 through southwestern Georgia and the +adjacent portion of Florida in search of a new location; but finding land +prices inflated, he returned without making a purchase,[17] and for the +time being sought relief at home through the improvement of his methods. He +wrote in 1841: "I have tried almost all systems, and unlike most planters +do not like what is old. I hardly know anything old in corn or cotton +planting but what is wrong." His particular enthusiasm now was for plow +cultivation as against the hoe. The best planter within his acquaintance, +he said, was Major Twiggs, on the opposite bank of the Savannah, who ran +thirty-four plows with but fourteen hoes. Hammond's own plowmen were now +nearly as numerous as his full hoe hands, and his crops were on a scale of +twenty acres of cotton, ten of corn and two of oats to the plow. He was +fertilizing each year a third of his corn acreage with cotton seed, and a +twentieth of his cotton with barnyard manure; and he was making a surplus +of thirty or forty bushels of corn per hand for sale.[18] This would +perhaps have contented him in normal times, but the severe depression of +cotton prices drove him to new prognostications and plans. His confidence +in the staple was destroyed, he said, and he expected the next crop +to break the market forever and force virtually everyone east of the +Chattahoochee to abandon the culture. "Here and there," he continued, "a +plantation may be found; but to plant an acre that will not yield three +hundred pounds net will be folly. I cannot make more than sixty dollars +clear to the hand on my whole plantation at seven cents...The western +plantations have got fairly under way; Texas is coming in, and the game is +up with us." He intended to change his own activities in the main to the +raising of cattle and hogs; and he thought also of sending part of his +slaves to Louisiana or Texas, with a view to removing thither himself after +a few years if the project should prove successful.[19] In an address of +the same year before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, he +advised those to emigrate who intended to continue producing cotton, +and recommended for those who would stay in the Piedmont a diversified +husbandry including tobacco but with main emphasis upon cereals and +livestock.[20] Again at the end of 1849, he voiced similar views at the +first annual fair of the South Carolina Institute. The first phase of the +cotton industry, said he, had now passed; and the price henceforward would +be fixed by the cost of production, and would yield no great profits even +in the most fertile areas. The rich expanses of the Southwest, he thought, +could meet the whole world's demand at a cost of less than five cents a +pound, for the planters there could produce two thousand pounds of lint +per hand while those in the Piedmont could not exceed an average of twelve +hundred pounds. This margin of difference would deprive the slaves of their +value in South Carolina and cause their owners to send them West, unless +the local system of industry should be successfully revolutionized. +The remedies he proposed were the fertilization of the soil, the +diversification of crops, the promotion of commerce, and the large +development of cotton manufacturing.[21] + +[Footnote 16: Described in 1846 in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, 113, +114.] + +[Footnote 17: MS. diary, April 13 to May 14, 1838, in Hammond papers, +Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 18: Letters of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 27 and Mch. +9, 1841. Hammond's MS. drafts are in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 19: Letter to Isaac W. Hayne, Jan. 21, 1841.] + +[Footnote 20: MS. oration in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 21: James H. Hammond, _An Address delivered before the South +Carolina Institute, at the first annual Fair, on the 20th November, 1849_ +(Charleston. 1849).] + +Hammond found that not only the public but his own sons also, with the +exception of Harry, were cool toward his advice and example; and he himself +yielded to the temptation of the higher cotton prices in the 'fifties, and +while not losing interest in cattle and small grain made cotton and corn +his chief reliance. He appears to have salved his conscience in this +relapse by devoting part of his income to the reclamation of a great marsh +on his estate. He operated two plantations, the one at his home, "Silver +Bluff," the other, "Cathwood," near by. The field force on the former +comprised in 1850 sixteen plow hands, thirty-four full hoe hands, six +three-quarter hands, two half hands and a water boy, the whole rated at +fifty-five full hands. At Cathwood the force, similarly grouped, was rated +at seventy-one hands; but at either place the force was commonly subject to +a deduction of some ten per cent, of its rated strength, on the score of +the loss of time by the "breeders and suckers" among the women. In addition +to their field strength and the children, of whom no reckoning was made in +the schedule of employments, the two plantations together had five stable +men, two carpenters, a miller and job worker, a keeper of the boat landing, +three nurses and two overseers' cooks; and also thirty-five ditchers in the +reclamation work. + +At Silver Bluff, the 385 acres in cotton were expected to yield 330 bales +of 400 pounds each; the 400 acres in corn had an expectation of 9850 +bushels; and 10 acres of rice, 200 bushels. At Cathwood the plantings and +expectations were 370 acres in cotton to yield 280 bales, 280 in corn to +yield 5000 bushels, 15 in wheat to yield 100 bushels, 11 in rye to yield +50, and 2 in rice to yield 50. In financial results, after earning in 1848 +only $4334.91, which met barely half of his plantation and family expenses +for the year, his crop sales from 1849 to 1853 ranged from seven to twenty +thousand dollars annually in cotton and from one and a half to two and +a half thousand dollars in corn. His gross earnings in these five years +averaged $16,217.76, while his plantation expenses averaged $5393.87, and +his family outlay $6392.67, leaving an average "clear gain per annum," as +he called it, of $4431.10. The accounting, however, included no reckoning +of interest on the investment or of anything else but money income and +outgo. In 1859 Hammond put upon the market his 5500 acres of uplands with +their buildings, livestock, implements and feed supplies, together with 140 +slaves including 70 full hands. His purpose, it may be surmised, was to +confine his further operations to his river bottoms.[22] + +[Footnote 22: Hammond MSS., Library of Congress.] + +Philips, whom a dearth of patients drove early from the practice of +medicine, established in the 'thirties a plantation which he named Log +Hall, in Hinds County, Mississippi. After narrowly escaping the loss of his +lands and slaves in 1840 through his endorsement of other men's notes, +he launched into experimental farming and agricultural publication. He +procured various fancy breeds of cattle and hogs, only to have most of +them die on his hands. He introduced new sorts of grasses and unfamiliar +vegetables and field crops, rarely with success. Meanwhile, however, he +gained wide reputation through his many writings in the periodicals, and in +the 'fifties he turned this to some advantage in raising fancy strains +of cotton and selling their seed. His frequent attendance at fairs and +conventions and his devotion to his experiments and to his pen caused +him to rely too heavily upon overseers in the routine conduct of his +plantation. In consequence one or more slaves occasionally took to the +woods; the whole force was frequently in bad health; and his women, though +remarkably fecund, lost most of their children in infancy. In some degree +Philips justified the prevalent scorn of planters for "book farming."[23] + +[Footnote 23: M.W. Phillips, "Diary," F.L. Riley, ed., in the Mississippi +Historical Society _Publications_, X, 305-481; letters of Philips in the +_American Agriculturist, DeBow's Review_, etc., and in J.A. Turner, ed., +_The Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 98-123.] + +The newspapers and farm journals everywhere printed arguments in the +'forties in behalf of crop diversification, and _DeBow's Review_, founded +in 1846, joined in the campaign; but the force of habit, the dearth of +marketable substitutes and the charms of speculation conspired to make all +efforts of but temporary avail. The belt was as much absorbed in cotton in +the 'fifties as it had ever been before. + +Meanwhile considerable improvement had been achieved in cotton methods. +Mules, mainly bred in Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, largely replaced +the less effective horses and oxen; the introduction of horizontal plowing +with occasional balks and hillside ditches, checked the washing of the +Piedmont soils; the use of fertilizers became fairly common; and cotton +seed was better selected. These last items of manures and seed were the +subject of special campaigns. The former was begun as early as 1808 by the +Virginian John Taylor of Caroline in his "Arator" essays, and was furthered +by the publications of Edmund Ruffin and many others. But an adequate +available source of fertilizers long remained a problem without solution. +Taylor stressed the virtues of dung and rotation; but the dearth of forage +hampered the keeping of large stocks of cattle, and soiling crops were +thought commonly to yield too little benefit for the expense in labor. +Ruffin had great enthusiasm for the marl or phosphate rock of the Carolina +coast; but until the introduction in much later decades of a treatment by +sulphuric acid this was too little soluble to be really worth while as a +plant food. Lime was also praised; but there were no local sources of it in +the districts where it was most needed. + +Cotton seed, in fact, proved to be the only new fertilizer generally +available in moderate abundance prior to the building of the railroads. In +early years the seed lay about the gins as refuse until it became a public +nuisance. To abate it the village authorities of Sparta, Georgia, for +example, adopted in 1807 an ordinance "that the owner of each and every +cotton machine within the limits of said town shall remove before the first +day of May in each year all seed and damaged cotton that may be about such +machines, or dispose of such seed or cotton so as to prevent its unhealthy +putrefaction."[24] Soon after this a planter in St. Stephen's Parish, +South Carolina, wrote: "We find from experience our cotton seed one of the +strongest manures we make use of for our Indian corn; a pint of fresh seed +put around or in the corn hole makes the corn produce wonderfully",[25] +but it was not until the lapse of another decade or two that such practice +became widespread. In the thirties Harriet Martineau and J.S. Buckingham +noted that in Alabama the seed was being strewn as manure on a large +scale.[26] As an improvement of method the seed was now being given in many +cases a preliminary rotting in compost heaps, with a consequent speeding of +its availability as plant food;[27] and cotton seed rose to such esteem as +a fertilizer for general purposes that many planters rated it to be worth +from sixteen to twenty-five cents a bushel of twenty-five pounds.[28] As +early as 1830, furthermore a beginning was made in extracting cottonseed +oil for use both in painting and illumination, and also in utilizing the +by-product of cottonseed meal as a cattle feed.[29] By the 'fifties the oil +was coming to be an unheralded substitute for olive oil in table use; but +the improvements which later decades were to introduce in its extraction +and refining were necessary for the raising of the manufacture to the scale +of a substantial industry. + +[Footnote 24: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Jan. 31, 1807.] + +[Footnote 25: Letter of John Palmer. Dec. 3, 1808, to David Ramsay. MS. in +the Charleston Library.] + +[Footnote 26: Harriet Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_, (London, +1838), I, 218; I.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, +1842), I, 257.] + +[Footnote 27: D.R. Williams of South Carolina described his own practice to +this effect in an essay of 1825 contributed to the _American Farmer_ and +reprinted in H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New +York, 1916), pp. 226, 227.] + +[Footnote 28: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 99; Robert +Russell, _North America_, p. 269.] + +[Footnote 29: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 563; _American Farmer_, II, 98; +H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_, pp. 197-209.] + +The importation of fertilizers began with guano. This material, the dried +droppings of countless birds, was discovered in the early 'forties on +islands off the coast of Peru;[30] and it promptly rose to such high esteem +in England that, according to an American news item, Lloyd's listed for +1845 not less than a thousand British vessels as having sailed in search of +guano cargoes. The use of it in the United States began about that year; +and nowhere was its reception more eager than in the upland cotton belt. +Its price was about fifty dollars a ton in the seaports. To stimulate the +use of fertilizers, the Central of Georgia Railroad Company announced +in 1858 that it would carry all manures for any distance on its line in +carload lots at a flat rate of two dollars per ton; and the connecting +roads concurred in this policy. In consequence the Central of Georgia +carried nearly two thousand tons of guano in 1859, and more than nine +thousand tons in 1860, besides lesser quantities of lime, salt and bone +dust. The superintendent reported that while the rate failed to cover the +cost of transportation, the effect in increasing the amount of cotton to be +freighted, and in checking emigration, fully compensated the road.[31] A +contributor to the _North American Review_ in January, 1861, wrote: "The +use of guano is increasing. The average return for each pound used in the +cotton field is estimated to be a pound and a half of cotton; and the +planter who could raise but three bales to the hand on twelve acres of +exhausted soil has in some instances by this appliance realized ten bales +from the same force and area. In North Carolina guano is reported to +accelerate the growth of the plant, and this encourages the culture on +the northern border of the cotton-field, where early frosts have proved +injurious." + +[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, III, 283.] + +[Footnote 31: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Reports_, 1858-1860.] + +Widespread interest in agricultural improvement was reported by _DeBow's +Review_ in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local and general +fairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of Alabama, for example, +announced success in devising a cotton picking machine; but as in many +subsequent cases in the same premises, the proclamation was premature. + +As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to have begun +about 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results from seed newly +procured from Mexico. These were in a few years widely distributed under +the name of Petit Gulf cotton. Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began to +breed strains from selected seed; and others here and there followed his +example, most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The more dignified +of the planters who prided themselves on selling nothing but cotton, would +distribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fine +plants they might encounter in their fields, and make little ado about +it. Men of a more flamboyant sort, such as M.W. Philips, contemning such +"ruffle-shirt cant," would christen their strains with attractive names, +publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy seed for +sale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was in +vogue, selling at many places for five dollars a quart. In 1839 this was +eclipsed by the Alvarado strain, which its sponsors computed from an +instance of one heavily fruited stalk nine feet high and others not so +prodigious, might yield three thousand pounds per acre.[32] Single Alvarado +seeds were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160. In +the succeeding years Vick's Hundred Seed, Brown's, Pitt's, Prolific, Sugar +Loaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan's, Banana, Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, +Mammoth, Mastodon and many others competed for attention and sale. Some +proved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger +bolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate +weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test of +planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth the +cost of carriage. Extreme prices for seed of any strain were of course +obtainable only for the first year or two; and the temptation to make +fraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not always +resisted. Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the +succession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a certain Miller +of Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered by +chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton +per acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named +it Accidental Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad town +Atlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton," he wrote in a +public letter, "would run a three million bale crop up to more than four +millions; and this would reduce the price probably to four or five cents. +Don't you see, Mr. Miller, that we had better let you keep and plant your +seed? You say that you had rather plant your crop with them than take a +dollar a pint.... Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well--we might +do worse."[33] + +[Footnote 32: _Southern Banner_( Athens, Ga.), Sept. 20, 1839.] + +[Footnote 33: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 98-128.] + +In the sea-island branch of the cotton industry the methods differed +considerably from those in producing the shorter staple. Seed selection was +much more commonly practiced, and extraordinary care was taken in ginning +and packing the harvest. The earliest and favorite lands for this crop +were those of exceedingly light soil on the islands fringing the coast of +Georgia and South Carolina. At first the tangle of live-oak and palmetto +roots discouraged the use of the plow; and afterward the need of heavy +fertilization with swamp mud and seaweed kept the acreage so small in +proportion to the laborers that hoes continued to be the prevalent means of +tillage. Operations were commonly on the basis of six or seven acres to the +hand, half in cotton and the rest in corn and sweet potatoes. In the swamps +on the mainland into which this crop was afterwards extended, the use of +the plow permitted the doubling of the area per hand; but the product of +the swamp lands was apparently never of the first grade. + +The fields were furrowed at five-foot intervals during the winter, bedded +in early spring, planted in late April or early May, cultivated until the +end of July, and harvested from September to December. The bolls opened but +narrowly and the fields had to be reaped frequently to save the precious +lint from damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to have +averaged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The preparation for market +required the greatest painstaking of all. First the seed cotton was dried +on a scaffold; next it was whipped for the removal of trash and sand; then +it was carefully sorted into grades by color and fineness; then it went to +the roller gins, whence the lint was spread upon tables where women picked +out every stained or matted bit of the fiber; and finally when gently +packed into sewn bags it was ready for market. A few gin houses were +equipped in the later decades with steam power; but most planters retained +the system of a treadle for each pair of rollers as the surest safeguard +of the delicate filaments. A plantation gin house was accordingly a simple +barn with perhaps a dozen or two foot-power gins, a separate room for the +whipping, a number of tables for the sorting and moting, and a round hole +in the floor to hold open the mouth of the long bag suspended for the +packing.[34] In preparing a standard bale of three hundred pounds, it was +reckoned that the work required of the laborers at the gin house was as +follows: the dryer, one day; the whipper, two days; the sorters, at fifty +pounds of seed cotton per day for each, thirty days; the ginners, each +taking 125 pounds in the seed per day and delivering therefrom 25 pounds of +lint, twelve days; the moters, at 43 pounds, seven days; the inspector and +packer, two days; total fifty-four days. + +[Footnote 34: The culture and apparatus are described by W.B. Seabrook, +_Memoir on Cotton_, pp. 23-25; Thomas Spaulding in the _American +Agriculturist_, III, 244-246; R.F.W. Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ +(Charleston, 1854), reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615; J.A. +Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 131-136. The routine of +operations is illustrated in the diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, of Woodboo +plantation, 1847-1850, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 195-208.] + +The roller gin was described in a most untechnical manner by Basil Hall: +"It consists of two little wooden rollers, each about as thick as a man's +thumb, placed horizontally and touching each other. On these being put into +rapid motion, handfulls of the cotton are cast upon them, which of course +are immediately sucked in.... A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth ... is +made to wag up and down with considerable velocity in front of the rollers. +This rugged comb, which is equal in length to the rollers, lies parallel to +them, with the sharp ends of its teeth almost in contact with them. By +the quick wagging motion given to this comb by the machinery, the buds of +cotton cast upon the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to be +sucked in. The seeds, now released ... fly off like sparks to the right and +left, while the cotton itself passes between the rollers."[35] + +[Footnote 35: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), +III, 221, 222.] + +As to yields and proceeds, a planter on the Georgia seaboard analyzed his +experience from 1830 to 1847 as follows: the harvest average per acre +ranged from 68 pounds of lint in 1846 to 223 pounds in 1842, with a general +average for the whole period of 137 pounds; the crop's average price per +pound ranged from 14 cents in 1847 to 41 cents in 1838, with a general +average of 23 1/2 cents; and the net proceeds per hand were highest at +$137 in 1835, lowest at $41 in 1836, and averaged $83 for the eighteen +years.[36] + +[Footnote 36: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 128, 129.] + +In the cotton belt as a whole the census takers of 1850 enumerated 74,031 +farms and plantations each producing five bales or more,[37] and they +reckoned the crop at 2,445,793 bales of four hundred pounds each. Assuming +that five bales were commonly the product of one full hand, and leaving +aside a tenth of the gross output as grown perhaps on farms where the +cotton was not the main product, it appears that the cotton farms and +plantations averaged some thirty bales each, and employed on the average +about six full hands. That is to say, there were very many more small +farms than large plantations devoted to cotton; and among the plantations, +furthermore, it appears that very few were upon a scale entitling them +to be called great, for the nature of the industry did not encourage the +engrossment of more than sixty laborers under a single manager.[38] It is +true that some proprietors operated on a much larger scale than this. It +was reported in 1859, for example, that Joseph Bond of Georgia had marketed +2199 bales of his produce, that numerous Louisiana planters, particularly +about Concordia Parish, commonly exceeded that output; that Dr. Duncan of +Mississippi had a crop of 3000 bales; and that L.R. Marshall, who lived at +Natchez and had plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, was +accustomed to make more than four thousand bales.[39] The explanation lies +of course in the possession by such men of several more or less independent +plantations of manageable size. Bond's estate, for example, comprised not +less than six plantations in and about Lee County in southwestern Georgia, +while his home was in the town of Macon. The areas of these, whether +cleared or in forest, ranged from 1305 to 4756 acres.[40] But however large +may have been the outputs of exceptionally great planters, the fact remains +on the other hand that virtually half of the total cotton crop each year +was made by farmers whose slaves were on the average hardly more numerous +than the white members of their own families. The plantation system +nevertheless dominated the régime. + +[Footnote 37: _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 178] + +[Footnote 38: _DeBow's Review_, VIII, 16.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid_., XXVI, 581.] + +[Footnote 40: Advertisement of Bond's executors offering the plantations +for sale in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Nov. 8, 1859.] + +The British and French spinners, solicitous for their supply of material, +attempted at various times and places during the ante-bellum period to +enlarge the production of cotton where it was already established and to +introduce it into new regions. The result was a complete failure to lessen +the predominance of the United States as a source. India, Egypt and Brazil +might enlarge their outputs considerably if the rates in the market were +raised to twice or thrice their wonted levels; but so long as the price +held a moderate range the leadership of the American cotton belt could not +be impaired, for its facilities were unequaled. Its long growing season, +hot in summer by day and night, was perfectly congenial to the plant, its +dry autumns permitted the reaping of full harvests, and its frosty winters +decimated the insect pests. Its soil was abundant, its skilled managers +were in full supply, its culture was well systematized, and its labor +adequate for the demand. To these facilities there was added in the +Southern thought of the time, as no less essential for the permanence of +the cotton belt's primacy, the plantation system and the institution of +slavery. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS + + +The tone and method of a plantation were determined partly by the crop and +the lie of the land, partly by the characters of the master and his men, +partly by the local tradition. Some communities operated on the basis of +time-work, or the gang system; others on piece-work or the task system. The +former was earlier begun and far more widely spread, for Sir Thomas Dale +used it in drilling the Jamestown settlers at their work, it was adopted +in turn on the "particular" and private plantations thereabout, and it was +spread by the migration of the sons and grandsons of Virginia throughout +the middle and western South as far as Missouri and Texas. The task system, +on the other hand, was almost wholly confined to the rice coast. The gang +method was adaptable to operations on any scale. If a proprietor were of +the great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and his +sons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step for +step at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe. If there were a dozen +or two working hands, the master, and perhaps the son, instead of laboring +manually would superintend the work of the plow and hoe gangs. If the +slaves numbered several score the master and his family might live in +leisure comparative or complete, while delegating the field supervision to +an overseer, aided perhaps by one or more slave foremen. When an estate +was inherited by minor children or scattered heirs, or where a single +proprietor had several plantations, an overseer would be put into full +charge of an establishment so far as the routine work was concerned; and +when the plantations in one ownership were quite numerous or of a great +scale a steward might be employed to supervise the several overseers. Thus +in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall +on the Potomac had a steward to assist in the administration of his many +scattered properties, and Washington after dividing the Mount Vernon lands +into several units had an overseer upon each and a steward for the whole +during his own absence in the public service. The neighboring estate of +Gunston Hall, belonging to George Mason, was likewise divided into several +units for the sake of more detailed supervision. Even the 103 slaves of +James Mercer, another neighbor, were distributed on four plantations under +the management in 1771 of Thomas Oliver. Of these there were 54 slaves on +Marlborough, 19 on Acquia, 12 on Belviderra and 9 on Accokeek, besides 9 +hired for work elsewhere. Of the 94 not hired out, 64 were field workers. +Nearly all the rest, comprising the house servants, the young children, the +invalids and the superannuated, were lodged on Marlborough, which was of +course the owner's "home place." Each of the four units had its implements +of husbandry, and three of them had tobacco houses; but the barn and +stables were concentrated on Marlborough. This indicates that the four +plantations were parts of a single tract so poor in soil that only pockets +here and there would repay cultivation.[1] This presumption is reinforced +by an advertisement which Mercer published in 1767: "Wanted soon, ... a +farmer who will undertake the management of about 80 slaves, all settled +within six miles of each other, to be employed in making of grain."[2] In +such a case the superintendent would combine the functions of a regular +overseer on the home place with those of a "riding boss" inspecting the +work of the three small outlying squads from time to time. Grain crops +would facilitate this by giving more frequent intermissions than tobacco in +the routine. The Mercer estate might indeed be more correctly described +as a plantation and three subsidiary farms than as a group of four +plantations. The occurrence of tobacco houses in the inventory and of grain +crops alone in the advertisement shows a recent abandonment of the tobacco +staple; and the fact of Mercer's financial embarrassment[3] suggests, what +was common knowledge, that the plantation system was ill suited to grain +production as a central industry. + +[Footnote 1: Robert Carter's plantation affairs are noted in Philip V. +Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, N.J., 1900); the Gunston Hall +estate is described in Kate M. Rowland, _Life of George Mason_ (New York, +1892), I, 98-102; many documents concerning Mt. Vernon are among the George +Washington MSS. in the Library of Congress, and Washington's letters, +1793-179, to his steward are printed in the Long Island Historical Society +_Memoirs_ v. 4; of James Mercer's establishments an inventory taken in 1771 +is reproduced in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 249.] + +[Footnote 2: _Virginia Gazette_ (Williamsburg, Va.), Oct. 22, 1767, +reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 133.] + +[Footnote 3: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 286.] + +The organization and routine of the large plantations on the James River in +the period of an agricultural renaissance are illustrated in the inventory +and work journal of Belmead, in Powhatan County, owned by Philip St. George +Cocke and superintended by S.P. Collier.[4] At the beginning of 1854 the +125 slaves were scheduled as follows: the domestic staff comprised a +butler, two waiters, four housemaids, a nurse, a laundress, a seamstress, a +dairy maid and a gardener; the field corps had eight plowmen, ten male and +twelve female hoe hands, two wagoners and four ox drivers, with two cooks +attached to its service; the stable and pasture staff embraced a carriage +driver, a hostler, a stable boy, a shepherd, a cowherd and a hog herd; in +outdoor crafts there were two carpenters and five stone masons; in indoor +industries a miller, two blacksmiths, two shoemakers, five women spinners +and a woman weaver; and in addition there were forty-five children, one +invalid, a nurse for the sick, and an old man and two old women hired off +the place, and finally Nancy for whom no age, value or classification is +given. The classified workers comprised none younger than sixteen years +except the stable boy of eleven, a waiter of twelve, and perhaps some of +the housemaids and spinners whose ages are not recorded. At the other +extreme there were apparently no slaves on the plantation above sixty years +old except Randal, a stone mason, who in spite of his sixty-six years was +valued at $300, and the following who had no appraisable value: Old Jim the +shepherd, Old Maria the dairy maid, and perhaps two of the spinners. The +highest appraisal, $800, was given to Payton, an ox driver, twenty-eight +years old. The $700 class comprised six plowmen, five field hands, the +three remaining ox drivers, both wagoners, both blacksmiths, the carriage +driver, four stone masons, a carpenter, and Ned the twenty-eight year old +invalid whose illness cannot have been chronic. The other working men +ranged between $250 and $500 except the two shoemakers whose rating was +only $200 each. None of the women were appraised above $400, which was the +rating also of the twelve and thirteen year old boys. The youngest children +were valued at $100 each. These ratings were all quite conservative for +that period. The fact that an ox driver overtopped all others in appraisal +suggests that the artisans were of little skill. The masons, the carpenters +and various other specialists were doubtless impressed as field hands on +occasion. + +[Footnote 4: These records are in the possession of Wm. Bridges of +Richmond, Va. For copies of them, as well as for many other valuable items, +I am indebted to Alfred H. Stone of Dunleith, Miss.] + +The livestock comprised twelve mules, nine work horses, a stallion, a brood +mare, four colts, six pleasure horses and "William's team" of five head; +sixteen work oxen, a beef ox, two bulls, twenty-three cows, and twenty-six +calves; 150 sheep and 115 swine. The implements included two reaping +machines, three horse rakes, two wheat drills, two straw cutters, three +wheat fans, and a corn sheller; one two-horse and four four-horse wagons, +two horse carts and four ox carts; nine one-horse and twelve two-horse +plows, six colters, six cultivators, eight harrows, two earth scoops, and +many scythes, cradles, hoes, pole-axes and miscellaneous farm implements as +well as a loom and six spinning wheels. + +The bottom lands of Belmead appear to have been cultivated in a rotation +of tobacco and corn the first year, wheat the second and clover the third, +while the uplands had longer rotations with more frequent crops of clover +and occasional interspersions of oats. The work journal of 1854 shows +how the gang dovetailed the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of the +several crops and the general upkeep of the plantation. + +On specially moist days from January to the middle of April all hands were +called to the tobacco houses to strip and prize the cured crop; when the +ground was frozen they split and hauled firewood and rails, built fences, +hauled stone to line the ditches or build walls and culverts, hauled +wheat to the mill, tobacco and flour to the boat landing, and guano, land +plaster, barnyard manure and straw to the fields intended for the coming +tobacco crop; and in milder dry weather they spread and plowed in these +fertilizers, prepared the tobacco seed bed by heaping and burning brush +thereon and spading it mellow, and also sowed clover and oats in their +appointed fields. In April also the potato patch and the corn fields were +prepared, and the corn planted; and the tobacco bed was seeded at the +middle of the month. In early May the corn began to be plowed, and the soil +of the tobacco fields drawn by hoes into hills with additional manure in +their centers. From the end of May until as late as need be in July the +occurrence of every rain sent all hands to setting the tobacco seedlings in +their hills at top speed as long as the ground stayed wet enough to give +prospect of success in the process. In the interims the corn cultivation +was continued, hay was harvested in the clover fields and the meadows, and +the tobacco fields first planted began to be scraped with hoe and plow. The +latter half of June was devoted mainly to the harvesting of small grain +with the two reaping machines and the twelve cradles; and for the following +two months the main labor force was divided between threshing the wheat and +plowing, hoeing, worming and suckering the tobacco, while the expert Daniel +was day after day steadily topping the plants. In late August the plows +began breaking the fallow fields for wheat. Early in September the cutting +and housing of tobacco began, and continued at intervals in good weather +until the middle of October. Then the corn was harvested and the sowing of +wheat was the chief concern until the end of November when winter plowing +was begun for the next year's tobacco. Two days in December were devoted to +the housing of ice; and Christmas week, as well as Easter Monday and a +day or two in summer and fall, brought leisure. Throughout the year the +overseer inspected the negroes' houses and yards every Sunday morning and +regularly reported them in good order. + +The greatest of the tobacco planters in this period was Samuel Hairston, +whose many plantations lying in the upper Piedmont on both sides of the +Virginia-North Carolina boundary were reported in 1854 to have slave +populations aggregating some 1600 souls, and whose gardens at his homestead +in Henry County, Virginia, were likened to paradise. Of his methods +of management nothing more is known than that his overseers were +systematically superintended and that his negroes were commonly both fed +and clothed with the products of the plantations themselves.[5] + +[Footnote 5: William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ (London, +1857), pp. 194, 195, quoting a Richmond newspaper of 1854.] + +In the eastern cotton belt a notable establishment of earlier decades was +that of Governor David R. Williams, who began operations with about a +hundred slaves in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, near the beginning +of the nineteenth century and increased their number fivefold before his +death in 1830. While each of his four plantations gave adequate yields of +the staple as well as furnishing their own full supplies of corn and pork, +the central feature and the chief source of prosperity was a great bottom +tract safeguarded from the floods of the Pee Dee by a levee along the river +front. The building of this embankment was but one of many enterprises +which Williams undertook in the time spared from his varied political and +military services. Others were the improvement of manuring methods, the +breeding of mules, the building of public bridges, the erection and +management of a textile factory, the launching of a cottonseed oil mill, of +which his talents might have made a success even in that early time had not +his untimely death intervened. The prosperity of Williams' main business in +the face of his multifarious diversions proves that his plantation +affairs were administered in thorough fashion. His capable wife must have +supplemented the husband and his overseers constantly and powerfully in the +conduct of the routine. The neighboring plantation of a kinsman, Benjamin +F. Williams, was likewise notable in after years for its highly improved +upland fields as well as for the excellent specialized work of its slave +craftsmen.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Harvey T. Cooke, _The Life and Legacy of David Rogerson +Williams_ (New York, 1916), chaps. XIV, XVI, XIX, XX, XXV. This book, +though bearing a New York imprint, is actually published, as I have been at +pains to learn, by Mr. J.W. Norwood of Greenville, South Carolina.] + +In the fertile bottoms on the Congaree River not far above Columbia, lay +the well famed estate of Colonel Wade Hampton, which in 1846 had some +sixteen hundred acres of cotton and half as much of corn. The traveler, +when reaching it after long faring past the slackly kept fields and +premises common in the region, felt equal enthusiasm for the drainage and +the fencing, the avenues, the mansion and the mill, the stud of blooded +horses, the herd of Durham cattle, the flock of long-wooled sheep, and the +pens of Berkshire pigs.[7] Senator McDuffie's plantation in the further +uplands of the Abbeville district was likewise prosperous though on a +somewhat smaller scale. Accretions had enlarged it from three hundred acres +in 1821 to five thousand in 1847, when it had 147 slaves of all ages. Many +of these were devoted to indoor employments, and seventy were field workers +using twenty-four mules. The 750 acres in cotton commonly yielded crops of +a thousand pounds in the seed; the 325 acres in corn gave twenty-five or +thirty bushels; the 300 in oats, fifteen bushels; and ten acres in peas, +potatoes and squashes yielded their proportionate contribution.[8] + +[Footnote 7: Described by R.L. Allen in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, +20, 21.] + +[Footnote 8: _DeBow's Review_, VI, 149.] + +The conduct and earnings of a cotton plantation fairly typical among those +of large scale, may be gathered from the overseer's letters and factor's +accounts relating to Retreat, which lay in Jefferson County, Georgia. This +was one of several establishments founded by Alexander Telfair of Savannah +and inherited by his two daughters, one of whom became the wife of W.B. +Hodgson. For many years Elisha Cain was its overseer. The first glimpse +which the correspondence affords is in the fall of 1829, some years after +Cain had taken charge. He then wrote to Telfair that many of the negroes +young and old had recently been ill with fever, but most of them had +recovered without a physician's aid. He reported further that a slave named +John had run away "for no other cause than that he did not feel disposed to +be governed by the same rules and regulations that the other negroes on +the land are governed by." Shortly afterward John returned and showed +willingness to do his duty. But now Cain encountered a new sort of trouble. +He wrote Telfair in January, 1830: "Your negroes have a disease now among +them that I am fully at a loss to know what I had best to do. Two of them +are down with the venereal disease, Die and Sary. Doctor Jenkins has been +attending Die four weeks, and very little alteration as I can learn. It is +very hard to get the truth; but from what I can learn, Sary got it from +Friday." A note appended to this letter, presumably by Telfair, reads: +"Friday is the house servant sent to Retreat every summer. I have all the +servants examined before they leave Savannah." + +In a letter of February, 1831, Cain described his winter work and his +summer plans. The teams had hauled away nearly all the cotton crop of 205 +bales; the hog killing had yielded thirteen thousand pounds of pork, from +which some of the bacon and lard was to be sent to Telfair's town house; +the cotton seed were abundant and easily handled, but they were thought +good for fertilizing corn only; the stable and cowpen manure was +embarrassingly plentiful in view of the pressure of work for the mules and +oxen; and the encumbrance of logs and brush on the fields intended for +cotton was straining all the labor available to clear them. The sheep, he +continued, had not had many lambs; and many of the pigs had died in spite +of care and feeding; but "the negroes have been healthy, only colds, and +they have for some time now done their work in as much peace and have been +as obedient as I could wish." + +One of the women, however, Darkey by name, shortly became a pestilent +source of trouble. Cain wrote in 1833 that her termagant outbreaks among +her fellows had led him to apply a "moderate correction," whereupon she had +further terrorized her housemates by threats of poison. Cain could then +only unbosom himself to Telfair: "I will give you a full history of my +belief of Darkey, to wit: I believe her disposition as to temper is as bad +as any in the whole world. I believe she is as unfaithful as any I have +ever been acquainted with. In every respect I believe she has been more +injury to you in the place where she is than two such negroes would sell +for.... I have tryed and done all I could to get on with her, hopeing that +she would mend; but I have been disappointed in every instant. I can not +hope for the better any longer." + +The factor's record becomes available from 1834, with the death of Telfair. +The seventy-six pair of shoes entered that year tells roughly the number +of working hands, and the ninety-six pair in 1842 suggests the rate of +increase. Meanwhile the cotton output rose from 166 bales of about three +hundred pounds in 1834 to 407 bales of four hundred pounds in the fine +weather of 1841. In 1836 an autumn report from Cain is available, dated +November 20. Sickness among the negroes for six weeks past had kept +eight or ten of them in their beds; the resort to Petit Gulf seed had +substantially increased the cotton yield; and the fields were now white +with a crop in danger of ruin from storms. "My hands," he said, "have +picked well when they were able, and some of them appear to have a kind +of pride in making a good crop." A gin of sixty saws newly installed had +proved too heavy for the old driving apparatus, but it was now in operation +with shifts of four mules instead of two as formerly. This pressure, in +addition to the hauling of cotton to market had postponed the gathering of +the corn crop. The corn would prove adequate for the plantation's need, and +the fodder was plentiful, but the oats had been ruined by the blast. The +winter cloth supply had been spun and woven, as usual, on the place; but +Cain now advised that the cotton warp for the jeans in future be bought. +"The spinning business on this plantation," said he, "is very ungaining. In +the present arrangement there is eight hands regular imployed in spinning +and weaving, four of which spin warpe, and it could be bought at the +factory at 120 dollars annually. Besides, it takes 400 pounds of cotton +each year, leaveing 60 dollars only to the four hands who spin warp.... +These hands are not old negroes, not all of them. Two of Nanny's daughters, +or three I may say, are all able hands ... and these make neither corn nor +meat. Take out $20 to pay their borde, and it leaves them in debt. I give +them their task to spin, and they say they cannot do more. That is, they +have what is jenerly given as a task." + +In 1840 Cain raised one of the slaves to the rank of driver, whereupon +several of the men ran away in protest, and Cain was impelled to defend his +policy in a letter to Mary Telfair, explaining that the new functionary had +not been appointed "to lay off tasks and use the whip." The increase of the +laborers and the spread of the fields, he said, often required the working +of three squads, the plowmen, the grown hoe hands, and the younger hoe +hands. "These separate classes are frequently separate a considerable +distance from each other, and so soon as I am absent from either they are +subject to quarrel and fight, or to idle time, or beat and abuse the mules; +and when called to account each negro present when the misconduct took +place will deny all about the same. I therefore thought, and yet believe, +that for the good order of the plantation and faithful performance of their +duty, it was proper to have some faithful and trusty hand whose duty it +should be to report to me those in fault, and that is the only dread they +have of John, for they know he is not authorized to beat them. You mention +in your letter that you do not wish your negroes treated with severity. +I have ever thought my fault on the side of lenity; if they were treated +severe as many are, I should not be their overseer on any consideration." +In the same letter Cain mentioned that the pork made on the place the +preceding year had yielded eleven monthly allowances to the negroes at the +rate of 1050 pounds per month, and that the deficit for the twelfth month +had been filled as usual by a shipment from Savannah. + +From 407 bales in 1841 the cotton output fell rapidly, perhaps because of +restriction prompted by the low prices, to 198 bales in 1844. Then it rose +to the maximum of 438 bales in 1848. Soon afterwards Cain's long service +ended, and after two years during which I. Livingston was in charge, I.N. +Bethea was engaged and retained for the rest of the ante-bellum period. The +cotton crops in the 'fifties did not commonly exceed three hundred bales +of a weight increasing to 450 pounds, but they were supplemented to some +extent by the production of wheat and rye for market. The overseer's wages +were sometimes as low as $600, but were generally $1000 a year. In the +expense accounts the annual charges for shoes, blankets and oznaburgs were +no more regular than the items of "cotton money for the people." These +sums, averaging about a hundred dollars a year, were distributed among +the slaves in payment for the little crops of nankeen cotton which they +cultivated in spare time on plots assigned to the several families. Other +expense items mentioned salt, sugar, bacon, molasses, tobacco, wool and +cotton cards, loom sleighs, mules and machinery. Still others dealt with +drugs and doctor's bills. In 1837, for example, Dr. Jenkins was paid $90 +for attendance on Priscilla. In some years the physician's payment was a +round hundred dollars, indicating services on contract. In May, 1851, there +are debits of $16.16 for a constable's reward, a jail fee and a railroad +fare, and of $1.30 for the purchase of a pair of handcuffs, two padlocks +and a trace chain. These constitute the financial record of a runaway's +recapture. + +From 1834 to 1841 the gross earnings on Retreat ranged between eight and +fifteen thousand dollars, of which from seven to twelve thousand each year +was available for division between the owners. The gross then fell rapidly +to $4000 in 1844, of which more than half was consumed in expenses. It then +rose as rapidly to its maximum of $21,300 in 1847, when more than half of +it again was devoted to current expenses and betterments. Thereafter the +range of the gross was between $8000 and $17,000 except for a single +year of crop failure, 1856, when the 109 bales brought $5750. During the +'fifties the current expenses ranged usually between six and ten thousand +dollars, as compared with about one third as much in the 'thirties. This is +explained partly by the resolution of the owners to improve the fields, +now grown old, and to increase the equipment. For the crop of 1856, for +example, purchases were made of forty tons of Peruvian guano at $56 per +ton, and nineteen tons of Mexican guano at $25 a ton. In the following +years lime, salt and dried blood were included in the fertilizer purchases. +At length Hodgson himself gave over his travels and his ethnological +studies to take personal charge on Retreat. He wrote in June, 1859, to his +friend Senator Hammond, of whom we have seen something in the preceding +chapter, that he had seriously engaged in "high farming," and was spreading +huge quantities of fertilizers. He continued: "My portable steam engine +is the _delicia domini_ and of overseer too. It follows the reapers +beautifully in a field of wheat, 130 acres, and then in the rye fields. In +August it will be backed up to the gin house and emancipate from slavery +eighteen mules and four little nigger drivers."[9] + +[Footnote 9: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +The factor's books for this plantation continue their records into the war +time. From the crop of 1861 nothing appears to have been sold but a single +bale of cotton, and the year's deficit was $6,721. The proceeds from the +harvests of 1862 were $500 from nineteen bales of cotton, and some $10,000 +from fodder, hay, peanuts and corn. The still more diversified market +produce of 1863 comprised also wheat, which was impressed by the +Confederate government, syrup, cowpeas, lard, hams and vinegar. The +proceeds were $17,000 and the expenses about $9000, including the +overseer's wages at $1300 and the purchase of 350 bushels of peanuts from +the slaves at $1.50 per bushel. The reckonings in the war period were made +of course in the rapidly depreciating Confederate currency. The stoppage of +the record in 1864 was doubtless a consequence of Sherman's march through +Georgia.[10] + +[Footnote 10: The Retreat records are in the possession of the Georgia +Historical Society, trustee for the Telfair Academy of Art, Savannah, Ga. +The overseer's letters here used are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, +I, 314, 330-336, II, 39, 85.] + +In the western cotton belt the plantations were much like those of the +eastern, except that the more uniform fertility often permitted the fields +to lie in solid expanses instead of being sprawled and broken by waste +lands as in the Piedmont. The scale of operations tended accordingly to be +larger. One of the greatest proprietors in that region, unless his display +were far out of proportion to his wealth, was Joseph A.S. Acklen whose +group of plantations was clustered near the junction of the Red and +Mississippi Rivers. In 1859 he began to build a country house on the style +of a Gothic castle, with a great central hall and fifty rooms exclusive of +baths and closets.[11] The building was expected to cost $150,000, and +the furnishings $125,000 more. Acklen's rules for the conduct of his +plantations will be discussed in another connection;[12] but no description +of his estate or his actual operations is available. + +[Footnote 11: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 2, 1859.] + +[Footnote 12: Below, pp. 262 ff.] + +Olmsted described in detail a plantation in the neighborhood of Natchez. +Its thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of cotton, corn and incidental +crops were tilled by a plow gang of thirty and a hoe gang of thirty-seven, +furnished by a total of 135 slaves on the place. A driver cracked a whip +among the hoe hands, occasionally playing it lightly upon the shoulders +of one or another whom he thought would be stimulated by the suggestion. +"There was a nursery for sucklings at the quarters, and twenty women at +this time left their work four times a day, for half an hour, to nurse the +young ones, and whom the overseer counted as half hands--that is, expected +to do half an ordinary day's work." At half past nine every night the hoe +and plow foremen, serving alternately, sounded curfew on a horn, and half +an hour afterward visited each cabin to see that the households were at +rest and the fires safely banked. The food allowance was a peck of corn and +four pounds of pork weekly. Each family, furthermore, had its garden, fowl +house and pigsty; every Christmas the master distributed among them coffee, +molasses, tobacco, calico and "Sunday tricks" to the value of from a +thousand to fifteen hundred dollars; and every man might rive boards in the +swamp on Sundays to buy more supplies, or hunt and fish in leisure times to +vary his family's fare. Saturday afternoon was also free from the routine. +Occasionally a slave would run away, but he was retaken sooner or later, +sometimes by the aid of dogs. A persistent runaway was disposed of by +sale.[13] + +[Footnote 13: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1860), pp. 46-54.] + +Another estate in the same district, which Olmsted observed more cursorily, +comprised four adjoining plantations, each with its own stables and +quarter, each employing more than a hundred slaves under a separate +overseer, and all directed by a steward whom the traveler described as +cultured, poetic and delightful. An observation that women were at some +of the plows prompted Olmsted to remark that throughout the Southwest the +slaves were worked harder as a rule than in the easterly and northerly +slaveholding states. On the other hand he noted: "In the main the negroes +appeared to be well cared for 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 large loft. The remainder +lived in log huts, small and mean in appearance;[14] but those of their +overseers were little better, and preparations were being made to replace +all of these by neat boarded cottages." + +[Footnote 14: Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp. 72-92.] + +In the sugar district Estwick Evans when on his "pedestrious tour" in 1817 +found the shores of the Mississippi from a hundred miles above New Orleans +to twenty miles below the city in a high state of cultivation. +"The plantations within these limits," he said, "are superb beyond +description.... The dwelling houses of the planters are not inferior to any +in the United States, either with respect to size, architecture, or the +manner in which they are furnished. The gardens and yards contiguous to +them are formed and decorated with much taste. The cotton, sugar and ware +houses are very large, and the buildings for the slaves are well finished. +The latter buildings are in some cases forty or fifty in number, and each +of them will accommodate ten or twelve persons.... The planters here derive +immense profits from the cultivation of their estates.[15] The yearly +income from them is from twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars." + +[Footnote 15: Estwick Evans, _A Pedestrious Tour ... through the Western +States and Territories_ (Concord, N.H., 1817), p. 219, reprinted in R.G. +Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, VIII, 325, 326.] + +Gross proceeds running into the tens of thousands of dollars were indeed +fairly common then and afterward among Louisiana sugar planters, for the +conditions of their industry conduced strongly to a largeness of plantation +scale. Had railroad facilities been abundant a multitude of small +cultivators might have shipped their cane to central mills for manufacture, +but as things were the weight and the perishableness of the cane made +milling within the reach of easy cartage imperative. It was inexpedient +even for two or more adjacent estates to establish a joint mill, for the +imminence of frost in the harvest season would make wrangles over the +questions of precedence in the grinding almost inevitable. As a rule, +therefore, every unit in cane culture was also a unit in sugar manufacture. +Exceptions were confined to the scattering instances where some small farm +lay alongside a plantation which had a mill of excess capacity available +for custom grinding on slack days. + +The type of plantation organization in the sugar bowl was much like that +which has been previously described for Jamaica. Mules were used as draught +animals instead of oxen, however, on account of their greater strength +and speed, and all the seeding and most of the cultivation was done with +deep-running plows. Steam was used increasingly as years passed for driving +the mills, railways were laid on some of the greater estates for hauling +the cane, more suitable varieties of cane were introduced, guano was +imported soon after its discovery to make the rich fields yet more fertile, +and each new invention of improved mill apparatus was readily adopted for +the sake of reducing expenses. In consequence the acreage cultivated per +hand came to be several times greater than that which had prevailed in +Jamaica's heyday. But the brevity of the growing season kept the saccharine +content of the canes below that in the tropics, and together with the +mounting price of labor made prosperity depend in some degree upon +protective tariffs. The dearth of land available kept the sugar output +well below the domestic demand, though the molasses market was sometimes +glutted. + +A typical prosperous estate of which a description and a diary are +extant[16] was that owned by Valcour Aime, lying on the right bank of the +Mississippi about sixty miles above New Orleans. Of the 15,000 acres which +it comprised in 1852, 800 were in cane, 300 in corn, 150 in crops belonging +to the slaves, and most of the rest in swampy forest from which two or +three thousand cords of wood were cut each year as fuel for the sugar mill +and the boiling house. The slaves that year numbered 215 of all ages, half +of them field hands,[17] and the mules 64. The negroes were well housed, +clothed and fed; the hospital and the nursery were capacious, and the +stables likewise. The mill was driven by an eighty-horse-power steam +engine, and the vacuum pans and the centrifugals were of the latest types. +The fields were elaborately ditched, well manured, and excellently tended. +The land was valued at $360,000, the buildings at $100,000, the machinery +at $60,000, the slaves at $170,000, and the livestock at $11,000; +total, $701,000. The crop of 1852, comprising 1,300,000 pounds of white +centrifugal sugar at 6 cents and 60,000 gallons of syrup at 36 cents, +yielded a gross return of almost $100,000. The expenses included 4,629 +barrels of coal from up the river, in addition to the outlay for wages and +miscellaneous supplies. + +[Footnote 16: _Harper's Magasine_, VII, 758, 759 (November, 1853); +Valcour Aime, _Plantation Diary_ (New Orleans, 1878), partly reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, I, 214, 230.] + +[Footnote 17: According to the MS. returns of the U.S. census of 1850 +Aime's slaves at that time numbered 231, of whom 58 were below fifteen +years old, 164 were between 15 and 65, and 9 (one of them blind, another +insane) were from 66 to 80 years old. Evidently there was a considerable +number of slaves of working age not classed by him as field hands.] + +In the routine of work, each January was devoted mainly to planting fresh +canes in the fields from which the stubble canes or second rattoons had +recently been harvested. February and March gave an interval for cutting +cordwood, cleaning ditches, and such other incidentals as the building and +repair of the plantation's railroad. Warm weather then brought the corn +planting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of the +crops gave time for incidentals again. Corn and hay were now harvested, the +roads and premises put in order, the cordwood hauled from the swamp, the +coal unladen from the barges, and all things made ready for the rush of +the grinding season which began in late October. In the first phase of +harvesting the main gang cut and stripped the canes, the carters and the +railroad crew hauled them to the mill, and double shifts there kept up the +grinding and boiling by day and by night. As long as the weather continued +temperate the mill set the pace for the cutters. But when frost grew +imminent every hand who could wield a knife was sent to the fields to cut +the still standing stalks and secure them against freezing. For the first +few days of this phase, the stalks as fast as cut were laid, in their +leaves, in great mats with the tops turned south to prevent the entrance +of north winds, with the leaves of each layer covering the butts of that +below, and with a blanket of earth over the last butts in the mat. Here +these canes usually stayed until January when they were stripped and strewn +in the furrows of the newly plowed "stubble" field as the seed of a new +crop. After enough seed cane were "mat-layed," the rest of the cut was +merely laid lengthwise in the adjacent furrows to await cartage to the +mill.[18] In the last phase of the harvest, which followed this work of the +greatest emergency, these "windrowed" canes were stripped and hauled, with +the mill setting the pace again, until the grinding was ended, generally in +December. + +[Footnote 18: These processes of matlaying and windrowing are described in +L. Bouchereau, _Statement of the Sugar and Rice Crops made in Louisiana in +1870-71_ (New Orleans, 1871), p. xii.] + +Another typical sugar estate was that of Dr. John P.R. Stone, comprising +the two neighboring though not adjacent plantations called Evergreen and +Residence, on the right bank of the Mississippi in Iberville Parish. The +proprietor's diary is much like Aime's as regards the major crop routine +but is fuller in its mention of minor operations. These included the +mending and heightening of the levee in spring, the cutting of staves, +the shaving of hoops and the making of hogsheads in summer, and, in their +fitting interims, the making of bricks, the sawing of lumber, enlarging +old buildings, erecting new ones, whitewashing, ditching, pulling fodder, +cutting hay, and planting and harvesting corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, +peas and turnips. There is occasional remark upon the health of the slaves, +usually in the way of rejoicing at its excellence. Apparently no outside +help was employed except for an Irish carpenter during the construction of +a sugar house on Evergreen in 1850.[19] The slaves on Evergreen in 1850 +numbered 44 between the ages of 15 and 60 years and 26 children; on +Residence, 25 between 15 and 65 years and 6 children.[20] The joint crop +in 1850, ground in the Residence mill, amounted to 312 hogsheads of brown +sugar and sold for 4-3/4 to 5 cents a pound; that of the phenomenal year +1853, when the Evergreen mill was also in commission, reached 520 hogsheads +on that plantation and 179 on Residence, but brought only 3 cents a pound. +These prices were much lower than those of white sugar at the time; but as +Valcour Aime found occasion to remark, the refining reduced the weight of +the product nearly as much as it heightened the price, so that the chief +advantage of the centrifugals lay in the speed of their process. + +[Footnote 19: Diary of Dr. J.P.R. Stone. MS. in the possession of Mr. John +Stone Ware, White Castle, La. For the privilege of using the diary I +am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody of the University of Michigan, now +Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] + +[Footnote 20: MS. returns in the U.S. Census Bureau, data procured through +the courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Mr.(now +Lieutenant) V. Alton Moody.] + +All of the characteristic work in the sugar plantation routine called +mainly for able-bodied laborers. Children were less used than in tobacco +and cotton production, and the men and women, like the mules, tended to be +of sturdier physique. This was the result partly of selection, partly of +the vigorous exertion required. + +Among the fourteen hundred and odd sugar plantations of this period, the +average one had almost a hundred slaves of all ages, and produced average +crops of nearly three hundred hogsheads or a hundred and fifty tons. Most +of the Anglo-Americans among the planters lived about Baton Rouge and on +the Red River, where they or their fathers had settled with an initial +purpose of growing cotton. Their fellows who acquired estates in the Creole +parishes were perhaps as often as otherwise men who had been merchants and +not planters in earlier life. One of these had removed from New York in the +eighteenth century and had thriven in miscellaneous trade at Pensacola and +on the Mississippi. In 1821 he bought for $140,000 a plantation and its +complement of slaves on Bayou Lafourche, and he afterward acquired a second +one in Plaquemines Parish. In the conduct of his plantation business he +shrewdly bought blankets by the bale in Philadelphia, and he enlarged his +gang by commissioning agents to buy negroes in Virginia and Maryland. The +nature of the instructions he gave may be gathered from the results, for +there duly arrived in several parcels between 1828 and 1832, fully covered +by marine insurance for the coastwise voyage, fifty slaves, male and +female, virtually all of whom ranged between the ages of ten and +twenty-five years.[21] This planter prospered, and his children after him; +and while he may have had a rugged nature, his descendants to-day are among +the gentlest of Louisianians. Another was Duncan F. Kenner, who was long a +slave trader with headquarters at New Orleans before he became a planter in +Ascension Parish on a rapidly increasing scale. His crop advanced from 580 +hogsheads in 1849 to 1,370 hogsheads in 1853 and 2,002 hogsheads in 1858 +when he was operating two mills, one equipped with vacuum pans and the +other with Rillieux apparatus.[22] A third example was John Burnside, who +emigrated from the North of Ireland in his youth rose rapidly from grocery +clerk in upland Virginia to millionaire merchant in New Orleans, and then +in the fifties turned his talents to sugar growing. He bought the three +contiguous plantations of Col. J.S. Preston lying opposite Donaldsonville, +and soon added a fourth one to the group. In 1858 his aggregate crop was +3,701 hogsheads; and in 1861 his fields were described by William H. +Russell as exhibiting six thousand acres of cane in an unbroken tract. By +employing squads of immigrant Irishmen for ditching and other severe +work he kept his literally precious negroes, well housed and fed, in +fit condition for effective routine under his well selected staff of +overseers.[23] Even after the war Burnside kept on acquiring plantations, +and with free negro labor kept on making large sugar crops. At the end of +his long life, spent frugally as a bachelor and somewhat of a recluse, +he was doubtless by far the richest man in all the South. The number of +planters who had been merchants and the frequency of partnerships and +corporations operating sugar estates, as well as the magnitude of scale +characteristic of the industry, suggest that methods of a strictly business +kind were more common in sugar production than in that of cotton or +tobacco. Domesticity and paternalism were nevertheless by no means alien to +the sugar régime. + +[Footnote 21: MSS. in private possession, data from which were made +available through the kindness of Mr. V.A. Moody.] + +[Footnote 22: The yearly product of each sugar plantation in Louisiana +between 1849 and 1858 is reported in P.A. Champonier's _Annual Statement_ +of the crop. (New Orleans, 1850-1859).] + +[Footnote 23: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, +1863), pp. 268-279] + +Virtually all of the tobacco, short staple cotton and sugar plantations +were conducted on the gang system. The task system, on the other hand, was +instituted on the rice coast, where the drainage ditches checkering +the fields into half or quarter acre plots offered convenient units of +performance in the successive processes. The chief advantage of the task +system lay in the ease with which it permitted a planter or an overseer +to delegate much of his routine function to a driver. This official each +morning would assign to each field hand his or her individual plot, and +spend the rest of the day in seeing to the performance of the work. At +evening or next day the master could inspect the results and thereby keep +a check upon both the driver and the squad. Each slave when his day's task +was completed had at his own disposal such time as might remain. The driver +commonly gave every full hand an equal area to be worked in the same way, +and discriminated among them only in so far as varying conditions from plot +to plot would permit the assignment of the stronger and swifter workmen to +tracts where the work required was greater, and the others to plots where +the labor was less. Fractional hands were given fractional tasks, or were +combined into full hands for full tasks. Thus a woman rated at three +quarters might be helped by her own one quarter child, or two half-hand +youths might work a full plot jointly. The system gave some stimulus to +speed of work, at least from time to time, by its promise of afternoon +leisure in reward. But for this prospect to be effective the tasks had to +be so limited that every laborer might have the hope of an hour or two's +release as the fruit of diligence. The performance of every hand tended +accordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of the +weakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, was +almost equally strong in the gang system also. + +The task acre was commonly not a square of 210 feet, but a rectangle 300 +feet long and 150 feet broad, divided into square halves and rectangular +quarters, and further divisible into "compasses" five feet wide and 150 +feet long, making one sixtieth of an acre. The standard tasks for full +hands in rice culture were scheduled in 1843 as follows: plowing with two +oxen, with the animals changed at noon, one acre; breaking stiff land with +the hoe and turning the stubble under, ten compasses; breaking such land +with the stubble burnt off, or breaking lighter land, a quarter acre or +slightly more; mashing the clods to level the field, from a quarter to half +an acre; trenching the drills, if on well prepared land, three quarters of +an acre; sowing rice, from three to four half-acres; covering the drills, +three quarters; the first hoeing, half an acre, or slightly less if the +ground were lumpy and the drills hard to clear; second hoeing, half an +acre, or slightly less or more according to the density of the grass; third +hoeing with hand picking of the grass from the drills, twenty compasses; +fourth hoeing, half an acre; reaping with the sickle, three quarters, +or much less if the ground were new and cumbered or if the stalks were +tangled; and threshing with the flail, six hundred sheaves for the men, +five hundred for the women.[24] Much of the incidental work was also done +by tasks, such as ditching, cutting cordwood, squaring timber, splitting +rails, drawing staves and hoop poles, and making barrels. The scale of the +crop was commonly five acres of rice to each full hand, together with about +half as much in provision crops for home consumption. + +[Footnote 24: Edmund Ruffin, _Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ +(Columbia, 1843), p. 118.] + +Under the task system, Olmsted wrote: "most of the slaves work rapidly and +well...Custom has settled the extent of the task, and it is difficult to +increase it. The driver who marks it out has to remain on the ground until +it is finished, and has no interest in over-measuring it; and if it should +be systematically increased very much there is the danger of a general +stampede to the 'swamp'--a danger a slave can always hold before his +master's cupidity...It is the driver's duty to make the tasked hands do +their work well.[25] If in their haste to finish it they neglect to do it +properly he 'sets them back,' so that carelessness will hinder more than +it hastens the completion of their tasks." But Olmsted's view was for once +rose colored. A planter who lived in the régime wrote: "The whole task +system ... is one that I most unreservedly disapprove of, because it +promotes idleness, and that is the parent of mischief."[26] Again the truth +lies in the middle ground. The virtue or vice of the system, as with the +gang alternative, depended upon its use by a diligent master or its abuse +by an excessive delegation of responsibility. + +[Footnote 25: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 435, 436.] + +[Footnote 26: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 34.] + +That the tide when taken at the flood on the rice coast as elsewhere +would lead to fortune is shown by the career of the greatest of all rice +planters, Nathaniel Heyward. At the time of his birth, in 1766, his father +was a planter on an inland swamp near Port Royal. Nathaniel himself after +establishing a small plantation in his early manhood married Harriett +Manigault, an heiress with some fifty thousand dollars. With this, when +both lands and slaves were cheap, Heyward bought a tide-land tract and +erected four plantations thereon, and soon had enough accrued earnings to +buy the several inland plantations of the Gibbes brothers, who had fallen +into debt from luxurious living. With the proceeds of his large crops at +high prices during the great wars in Europe, he bought more slaves year +after year, preferably fresh Africans as long as that cheap supply remained +available, and he bought more land when occasion offered. Joseph Manigault +wrote of him in 1806: "Mr. Heyward has lately made another purchase of +land, consisting of 300 acres of tide swamp, joining one of his Combahee +plantations and belonging to the estate of Mrs. Bell. I believe he has made +a good bargain. It is uncleared and will cost him not quite £20 per acre. +I have very little doubt that he will be in a few years, if he lives, the +richest, as he is the best planter in the state. The Cooper River lands +give him many a long ride." Heyward was venturesome in large things, +conservative in small. He long continued to have his crops threshed by +hand, saying that if it were done by machines his darkies would have no +winter work; but when eventually he instituted mechanical threshers, no +one could discern an increase of leisure. In the matter of pounding +mills likewise, he clung for many years to those driven by the tides and +operating slowly and crudely; but at length he built two new ones driven by +steam and so novel and complete in their apparatus as to be the marvels of +the countryside. He necessarily depended much upon overseers; but his own +frequent visits of inspection and the assistance rendered by his sons kept +the scattered establishments in an efficient routine. The natural increase +of his slaves was reckoned by him to have ranged generally between one and +five per cent. annually, though in one year it rose to seven per cent. At +his death in 1851 he owned fourteen rice plantations with fields ranging +from seventy to six hundred acres in each, and comprising in all 4,390 +acres in cultivation. He had also a cotton plantation, much pine land and a +sawmill, nine residences in Charleston, appraised with their furniture at +$180,000; securities and cash to the amount of $200,000; $20,000 worth of +horses, mules and cattle; $15,000 worth of plate; and $3000 worth of old +wine. His slaves, numbering 2,087 and appraised at an average of $550, made +up the greater part of his two million dollar estate. His heirs continued +his policy. In 1855, for example, they bought a Savannah River plantation +called Fife, containing 500 acres of prime rice land at $150 per +acre, together with its equipment and 120 slaves, at a gross price of +$135,600.[27] + +[Footnote 27: MSS. in the possession of Mrs. Hawkins K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, +S.C., including a "Memoir of Nathaniel Heyward," written in 1895 by Gabriel +E. Manigault.] + +The history of the estate of James Heyward, Nathaniel's brother, was in +striking contrast with this. When on a tour in Ireland he met and married +an actress, who at his death in 1796 inherited his plantation and 214 +slaves. Two suitors for the widow's hand promptly appeared in Alexander +Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and Charles Baring, his cousin. Mrs. +Heyward married the latter, who increased the estate to seven or eight +hundred acres in rice, yielding crops worth from twelve to thirty thousand +dollars. But instead of superintending its work in person Baring bought +a large tract in the North Carolina mountains, built a house there, and +carried thither some fifty slaves for his service. After squandering the +income for nearly fifty years, he sold off part of the slaves and mortgaged +the land; and when the plantation was finally surrendered in settlement of +Baring's debts, it fell into Nathaniel Heyward's possession.[28] + +[Footnote 28: Notes by Louis Manigault of a conversation with Nathaniel +Heyward in 1846. M.S. in the collection above mentioned.] + +Another case of absentee neglect, made notorious through Fanny Kemble's +_Journal_, was the group of rice and sea-island cotton plantations founded +by Senator Pierce Butler on and about Butler's Island near the mouth of the +Altamaha River. When his two grandsons inherited the estate, they used it +as a source of revenue but not as a home. One of these was Pierce Butler +the younger, who lived in Philadelphia. When Fanny Kemble, with fame +preceding her, came to America in 1832, he became infatuated, followed +her troupe from city to city, and married her in 1834. The marriage was +a mistake. The slaveholder's wife left the stage for the time being, but +retained a militant English abolitionism. When in December, 1838, she and +her husband were about to go South for a winter on the plantations, she +registered her horror of slavery in advance, and resolved to keep a journal +of her experiences and observations. The resulting record is gloomy enough. +The swarms of negroes were stupid and slovenly, the cabins and hospitals +filthy, the women overdriven, the overseer callous, the master indifferent, +and the new mistress herself, repudiating the title, was more irritable and +meddlesome than helpful.[29] The short sojourn was long enough. A few years +afterward the ill-mated pair were divorced and Fanny Kemble resumed her +own name and career. Butler did not mend his ways. In 1859 his half of the +slaves, 429 in number, were sold at auction in Savannah to pay his debts. + +[Footnote 29: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal of a Residence on a Georgia +Plantation in 1838-1839_(London, 1863).] + +A pleasanter picture is afforded by the largest single unit in rice culture +of which an account is available. This was the plantation of William Aiken, +at one time governor of South Carolina, occupying Jehossee Island near the +mouth of the Edisto River. It was described in 1850 by Solon Robinson, an +Iowa farmer then on tour as correspondent for the _American Agriculturist_. +The two or three hundred acres of firm land above tide comprised the +homestead, the negro quarter, the stables, the stock yard, the threshing +mill and part of the provision fields. Of the land which could be flooded +with the tide, about fifteen hundred acres were diked and drained. About +two-thirds of this appears to have been cropped in rice each year, and the +rest in corn, oats and sweet potatoes. The steam-driven threshing apparatus +was described as highly efficient. The sheaves were brought on the heads of +the negroes from the great smooth stack yard, and opened in a shed where +the scattered grain might be saved. A mechanical carrier led thence to the +threshing machines on the second floor, whence the grain descended through +a winnowing fan. The pounding mill, driven by the tide, was a half mile +distant at the wharf, whence a schooner belonging to the plantation carried +the hulled and polished rice in thirty-ton cargoes to Charleston. The +average product per acre was about forty-five bushels in the husk, each +bushel yielding some thirty pounds of cleaned rice, worth about three cents +a pound. The provision fields commonly fed the force of slaves and mules; +and the slave families had their own gardens and poultry to supplement +their fare. The rice crops generally yielded some twenty-five +thousand dollars in gross proceeds, while the expenses, including the +two-thousand-dollar salary of the overseer, commonly amounted to some ten +thousand dollars. During the summer absence of the master, the overseer +was the only white man on the place. The engineers, smiths, carpenters +and sailors were all black. "The number of negroes upon the place," wrote +Robinson, "is just about 700, occupying 84 double frame houses, each +containing two tenements of three rooms to a family besides the +cockloft.... There are two common hospitals and a 'lying-in hospital,' and +a very neat, commodious church, which is well filled every Sabbath.... Now +the owner of all this property lives in a very humble cottage, embowered in +dense shrubbery and making no show.... He and his family are as plain and +unostentatious in their manners as the house they live in.... Nearly all +the land has been reclaimed and the buildings, except the house, erected +new within the twenty years that Governor Aiken has owned the island. I +fully believe that he is more concerned to make his people comfortable +and happy than he is to make money."[30] When the present writer visited +Jehossee in the harvest season sixty years after Robinson, the fields were +dotted with reapers, wage earners now instead of slaves, but still using +sickles on half-acre tasks; and the stack yard was aswarm with sable men +and women carrying sheaves on their heads and chattering as of old in a +dialect which a stranger can hardly understand. The ante-bellum hospital +and many of the cabins in their far-thrown quadruple row were still +standing. The site of the residence, however, was marked only by desolate +chimneys, a live-oak grove and a detached billiard room, once elegant but +now ruinous, the one indulgence which this planter permitted himself. + +[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 187, 188, reprinted in _DeBow's +Review_, IX, 201-203.] + +The ubiquitous Olmsted chose for description two rice plantations operated +as one, which he inspected in company with the owner, whom he calls "Mr. +X." Frame cabins at intervals of three hundred feet constituted the +quarters; the exteriors were whitewashed, the interiors lathed and +plastered, and each family had three rooms and a loft, as well as a chicken +yard and pigsty not far away. "Inside, the cabins appeared dirty and +disordered, which was rather a pleasant indication that their home life +was not much interfered with, though I found certain police regulations +enforced." Olmsted was in a mellow mood that day. At the nursery "a number +of girls eight or ten years old were occupied in holding and tending the +youngest infants. Those a little older--the crawlers--were in the pen, and +those big enough to toddle were playing on the steps or before the house. +Some of these, with two or three bigger ones, were singing and dancing +about a fire they had made on the ground.... The nurse was a kind-looking +old negro woman.... I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not a +baby of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three other +plantation nurseries which I have visited." The chief slave functionary was +a "gentlemanly-mannered mulatto who ... carried by a strap at his waist a +very large bunch of keys and had charge of all the stores of provisions, +tools and materials on the plantations, as well as of their produce before +it was shipped to market. He weighed and measured out all the rations of +the slaves and the cattle.... In all these departments his authority was +superior to that of the overseer; ... and Mr. X. said he would trust him +with much more than he would any overseer he had ever known." The master +explained that this man and the butler, his brother, having been reared +with the white children, had received special training to promote their +sense of dignity and responsibility. The brothers, Olmsted further +observed, rode their own horses the following Sunday to attend the same +church as their master, and one of them slipped a coin into the hand of the +boy who had been holding his mount. The field hands worked by tasks under +their drivers. "I saw one or two leaving the field soon after one o'clock, +several about two; and between three and four I met a dozen men and women +coming home to their cabins, having finished their day's work." As to +punishment, Olmsted asked how often it was necessary. The master replied: +"'Sometimes perhaps not once for two or three weeks; then it will seem as +if the devil had gotten into them all and there is a good deal of it.'" As +to matings: "While watching the negroes in the field, Mr. X. addressed a +girl who was vigorously plying a hoe near us: 'Is that Lucy?--Ah, Lucy, +what's this I hear about you?' The girl simpered, but did not answer or +discontinue her work. 'What is this I hear about you and Sam, eh?' The girl +grinned and still hoeing away with all her might whispered 'Yes, sir.' 'Sam +came to see me this morning,' 'If master pleases.' 'Very well; you may come +up to the house Saturday night, and your mistress will have something for +you.'"[31] We may hope that the pair whose prospective marriage was thus +endorsed with the promise of a bridal gift lived happily ever after. + +[Footnote 31: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_,418-448.] + +The most detailed record of rice operations available is that made by +Charles Manigault from the time of his purchase in 1833 of "Gowrie," on the +Savannah River, twelve miles above the city of Savannah.[32] The plantation +then had 220 acres in rice fields, 80 acres unreclaimed, a good pounding +mill, and 50 slaves. The price of $40,000 was analyzed by Manigault as +comprising $7500 for the mill, $70 per acre for the cleared, and $37 for +the uncleared, and an average of $300 for the slaves. His maintenance +expense per hand he itemized at a weekly peck of corn, $13 a year; summer +and winter clothes, $7; shoes, $1; meat at times, salt, molasses and +medical attention, not estimated. In reward for good service, however, +Manigault usually issued broken rice worth $2.50 per bushel, instead of +corn worth $1. Including the overseer's wages the current expense for the +plantation for the first six years averaged about $2000 annually. Meanwhile +the output increased from 200 barrels of rice in 1833 to 578 in 1838. The +crop in the latter year was particularly notable, both in its yield of +three barrels per acre, or 161-1/2 barrels per working hand, and its price +of four cents per pound or $24 per barrel. The net proceeds of the one crop +covered the purchase in 1839 of two families of slaves, comprising sixteen +persons, mostly in or approaching their prime, at a price of $640 each. + +[Footnote 32: The Manigault MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. H.K. +Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation +and Frontier_, I, 134-139 _et passim_.] + +Manigault and his family were generally absent every summer and sometimes +in winter, at Charleston or in Europe, and once as far away as China. His +methods of administration may be gathered from his letters, contracts and +memoranda. In January, 1848, he wrote from Naples to I.F. Cooper whom his +factor had employed at $250 a year as a new overseer on Gowrie: "My negroes +have the reputation of being orderly and well disposed; but like all +negroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to. I expect +the kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been a +principal thing with me. I never suffer them to work off the place, or +exchange work with any plantation....It has always been my plan to give out +allowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, because +this has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if they +received allowance on Saturday for instance some of them would be off with +it that same evening to the shops to trade, and perhaps would not get back +until Monday morning. I allow no strange negro to take a wife on my place, +and none of mine to keep a boat."[33] + +[Footnote 33: MS. copy in Manigault letter book.] + +A few years after this, Manigault bought an adjoining plantation, "East +Hermitage," and consolidated it with Gowrie, thereby increasing his rice +fields to 500 acres and his slaves to about 90 of all ages. His draught +animals appear to have comprised merely five or six mules. A new overseer, +employed in 1853 at wages of $500 together with corn and rice for his table +and the services of a cook and a waiting boy, was bound by a contract +stipulating the duties described in the letter to Cooper above quoted, +along with a few additional items. He was, for example, to procure a book +of medical instructions and a supply of the few requisite "plantation +medicines" to be issued to the nurses with directions as needed. In case of +serious injury to a slave, however, the sufferer was to be laid upon a door +and sent by the plantation boat to Dr. Bullock's hospital in Savannah. +Except when the work was very pressing the slaves were to be sent home for +the rest of the day upon the occurrence of heavy rains in the afternoon, +for Manigault had found by experience "that always after a complete +wetting, particularly in cold rainy weather in winter or spring, one +or more of them are made sick and lie up, and at times serious illness +ensues."[34] + +[Footnote 34: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 122-126.] + +In 1852 and again in 1854 storms and freshets heavily injured Manigault's +crops, and cholera decimated his slaves. In 1855 the fields were in +bad condition because of volunteer rice, and the overseer was dying of +consumption. The slaves, however, were in excellent health, and the crop, +while small, brought high prices because of the Crimean war. In 1856 a new +overseer named Venters handled the flooding inexpertly and made but half +a crop, yielding $12,660 in gross proceeds. For the next year Venters was +retained, on the maxim "never change an overseer if you can help it," +and nineteen slaves were bought for $11,850 to fill the gaps made by the +cholera. Furthermore a tract of pine forest was bought to afford summer +quarters for the negro children, who did not thrive on the malarial +plantation, and to provide a place of isolation for cholera cases. In 1857 +Venters made a somewhat better crop, but as Manigault learned and wrote at +the end of the year, "elated by a strong and very false religious feeling, +he began to injure the plantation a vast deal, placing himself on a par +with the negroes by even joining in with them at their prayer meetings, +breaking down long established discipline which in every case is so +difficult to preserve, favoring and siding in any difficulty with the +people against the drivers, besides causing numerous grievances." The +successor of the eccentric Venters in his turn proved grossly neglectful; +and it was not until the spring of 1859 that a reliable overseer was found +in William Capers, at a salary of $1000. Even then the year's experience +was such that at its end Manigault recorded the sage conclusion: "The truth +is, on a plantation, to attend to things properly it requires both master +and overseer." + +The affairs of another estate in the Savannah neighborhood, "Sabine +Fields," belonging to the Alexander Telfair estate, may be gleaned from +its income and expense accounts. The purchases of shoes indicate a +working force of about thirty hands. The purchases of woolen clothing and +waterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather; +but the scale of the doctor's bills suggest either epidemics or serious +occasional illnesses. The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeen +and eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the record +they included both rice and sea-island cotton. The gross receipts were +highest at $1,695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied from +a surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2,035 in the two years 1853 and +1854 for which the accounting was consolidated. Under E.S. Mell, who was +overseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until +1849, losses thereafter. The following items of expense in this latter +period, along with high doctor's bills, may explain the reverse: for taking +a negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of a +boy prosecuted for larceny, $9.26; jail fees of Cesar, $2.69; for the +apprehension of a runaway, $5; paid Jones for trying to capture a negro, +$5. In February, 1854, Mell was paid off, and a voucher made record of a +newspaper advertisement for another overseer. What happened to the new +incumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855: "Paid ... amount +Jones' bill for capturing negroes, $25. Expenses of Overseer Page's burial +as follows, Ferguson's bill, $25; Coroner's, $14; Dr. Kollock's, $5; total +$69." A further item in 1856 of twenty-five dollars paid for the arrest of +Bing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing of +the overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean that +disorders continued under Page's successor.[35] + +[Footnote 35: Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the Telfair +MSS. in the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.] + +Other lowland plantations on a scale similar to that of Sabine Fields +showed much better earnings. One of these, in Liberty County, Georgia, +belonged to the heirs of Dr. Adam Alexander of Savannah. It was devoted to +sea-island cotton in the 'thirties, but rice was added in the next decade. +While the output fluctuated, of course, the earnings always exceeded the +expenses and sometimes yielded as much as a hundred dollars per hand for +distribution among the owners.[36] + +[Footnote 36: The accounts for selected years are printed in _Plantation +and Frontier_, I, 150-165.] + +The system of rice production was such that plantations with less than +a hundred acres available for the staple could hardly survive in the +competition. If one of these adjoined another estate it was likely to be +merged therewith; but if it lay in isolation the course of years would +probably bring its abandonment. The absence of the proprietors every summer +in avoidance of malaria, and the consequent expense of overseer's wages, +hampered operations on a small scale, as did also the maintenance of +special functionaries among the slaves, such as drivers, boatswains, trunk +minders, bird minders, millers and coopers. In 1860 Louis Manigault listed +the forty-one rice plantations on the Savannah River and scheduled their +acreage in the crop. Only one of them had as little as one hundred acres +in rice, and it seems to have been an appendage of a larger one across the +river. On the other hand, two of them had crops of eleven hundred, and two +more of twelve hundred acres each. The average was about 425 acres per +plantation, expected to yield about 1200 pounds of rice per acre each +year.[37] A census tabulation in 1850, ignoring any smaller units, numbered +the plantations which produced annually upwards of 20,000 pounds of rice at +446 in South Carolina, 80 in Georgia, and 25 in North Carolina.[38] + +[Footnote 37: MS. in the possession of Mrs. H.K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C.] + +[Footnote 38: _Compendium of the Seventh U.S. Census_, p. 178.] + +Indigo and sea-island cotton fields had no ditches dividing them +permanently into task units; but the fact that each of these in its day was +often combined with rice on the same plantations, and that the separate +estates devoted to them respectively lay in the region dominated by the +rice régime, led to the prevalence of the task system in their culture +also. The soils used for these crops were so sandy and light, however, that +the tasks, staked off each day by the drivers, ranged larger than those in +rice. In the cotton fields they were about half an acre per hand, whether +for listing, bedding or cultivation. In the collecting and spreading of +swamp mud and other manures for the cotton the work was probably done +mostly by gangs rather than by task, since the units were hard to measure. +In cotton picking, likewise, the conditions of the crop were so variable +and the need of haste so great that time work, perhaps with special rewards +for unusually heavy pickings, was the common resort. Thus the lowland +cotton régime alternated the task and gang systems according to the work +at hand; and even the rice planters of course abandoned all thoughts of +stinted performance when emergency pressed, as in the mending of breaks in +the dikes, or when joint exertion was required, as in log rolling, or when +threshing and pounding with machinery to set the pace. + +That the task system was extended sporadically into the South Carolina +Piedmont, is indicated by a letter of a certain Thomas Parker of the +Abbeville district, in 1831,[39] which not only described his methods but +embodied an essential plantation precept. He customarily tasked his hoe +hands, he said, at rates determined by careful observation as just both to +himself and the workers. These varied according to conditions, but ranged +usually about three quarters of an acre. He continued: "I plant six acres +of cotton to the hand, which is about the usual quantity planted in my +neighborhood. I do not make as large crops as some of my neighbors. I am +content with three to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with my +provisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of my +neighbors made five bales to the hand. In such cases I have vanity enough, +however, to attribute this to better lands. I have no overseer, nor indeed +is there one in the neighborhood. We personally attend to our planting, +believing that as good a manure as any, if not the best we can apply to our +fields, is the print of the master's footstep." + +[Footnote 39: _Southern Agriculturist_, March. 1831, reprinted in the +_American Farmer_, XIII, 105, 106.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +PLANTATION MANAGEMENT + + +Typical planters though facile in conversation seldom resorted to their +pens. Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form of +instructions to their stewards and overseers. These counsels of perfection, +drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much in +detail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions. Their initial topic +was usually the care of the slaves. Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in +1759 for the guidance of his steward: "The care of negroes is the first +thing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wants +that they may be provided with all necessarys. The breeding wenches more +particularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to, +and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that will +be injurious to them, ... and the children to be well looked after, ... and +that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care." +P.C. Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856: "The proprietor, in the first +place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first +object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the +negroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may +proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty, +severity or want of care towards the negroes. For the well being, however, +of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and +discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed, +and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the +one hand or harshness on the other." Charles Manigault likewise required of +his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindness +and consideration in sickness and health." On J.W. Fowler's plantation in +the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter +such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed +in 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline and +obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency +of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being +indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable +dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about +the Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby +establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my +Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all +overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1] + +[Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are +printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 109-129.] + +Joseph A.S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of +applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2] +His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the +most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read in +part: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the +maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its +time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for +everything and everything done according to rule. In this way labor becomes +easy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he +himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage +negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of +his temper." + +[Footnote 2: They were also printed in _DeBow's Review_, XXII, 617-620, +XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).] + +[Footnote 3: _See above_, p. 239.] + +James H. Hammond's "plantation manual" which is the fullest of such +documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to +subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good crop +means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land, +mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which +must be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not be +merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but +as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value +of the rest of the property.... There should be an increase in number and +improvement in condition of negroes."[4] + +[Footnote 4: MS. bound volume, "Plantation Manual," among the Hammond +papers in the Library of Congress.] + +For the care of the sick, of course, all these planters were solicitous. +Acklen, Manigault and Weston provided that mild cases be prescribed for by +the overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness a +doctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwife +and general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks and +whites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey is +the doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, when +she thinks she can do no more for the sick, you will employ a physician." +Hammond, however, was such a devotee of homeopathy that in the lack of an +available physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote in +his manual: "No negro will be allowed to remain at his own house when sick, +but must be confined to the hospital. Every reasonable complaint must be +promptly attended to; and with any marked or general symptom of sickness, +however trivial, a negro may lie up a day or so at least.... Each case +has to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain the +disease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination; +... the directions for treatment, diet, etc., most implicitly followed; the +effects and changes cautiously observed.... In cases where there is the +slightest uncertainty, the books must be taken to the bedside and a careful +and thorough examination of the case and comparison of remedies made before +administering them. The overseer must record in the prescription book +every dose of medicine administered." Weston said he would never grudge a +doctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness under +pretence of illness. "Nothing," said he, "is so subversive of discipline, +or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposed +to do the work of the lazy." + +Pregnancy, childbirth and the care of children were matters of special +concern. Weston wrote: "The pregnant women are always to do some work up +to the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field and +staying there. If they are sick, they are to go to the hospital and stay +there until it is pretty certain their time is near." "Lying-in women are +to be attended by the midwife as long as is necessary, and by a woman put +to nurse them for a fortnight. They will remain at the negro houses for +four weeks, and then will work two weeks on the highland. In some cases, +however, it is necessary to allow them to lie up longer. The health of many +women has been ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond's rules +were as follows: "Sucklers are not required to leave their homes until +sunrise, when they leave their children at the children's house before +going to field. The period of suckling is twelve months. Their work lies +always within half a mile of the quarter. They are required to be cool +before commencing to suckle--to wait fifteen minutes at least in summer, +after reaching the children's house before nursing. It is the duty of the +nurse to see that none are heated when nursing, as well as of the overseer +and his wife occasionally to do so. They are allowed forty-five minutes at +each nursing to be with their children. They return three times a day until +their children are eight months old--in the middle of the forenoon, at +noon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twice +a day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only...The amount +of work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a full +hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months +are put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required of +them. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances as +full-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in +confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during +delivery. The confined woman lies up one month, and the midwife remains in +constant attendance for seven days. Each woman on confinement has a bundle +given her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of cloth +and rag, and some nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice and flour for the +mother." + +The instructions with one accord required that the rations issued to the +negroes be never skimped. Corbin wrote, "They ought to have their belly +full, but care must be taken with this plenty that no waste is committed." +Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, ordered his overseer to "see that +their necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing be good and +sufficient, their houses comfortable; and be kind and attentive to them in +sickness and old age." And further: "There will be stated hours for the +negroes to breakfast and dine [in the field], and those hours must be +regularly observed. The manager will frequently inspect the meals as they +are brought by the cook--see that they have been properly prepared, and +that vegetables be at all times served with the meat and bread." At the +same time he forbade his slaves to use ardent spirits or to have such about +their houses. Weston wrote: "Great care should be taken that the negroes +should never have less than their regular allowance. In all cases of doubt, +it should be given in favor of the largest quantity. The measure should +not be struck, but rather heaped up over. None but provisions of the best +quality should be used." Telfair specified as follows: "The allowance for +every grown negro, however old and good for nothing, and every young one +that works in the field, is a peck of corn each week and a pint of salt, +and a piece of meat, not exceeding fourteen pounds, per month...The +suckling children, and all other small ones who do not work in the field, +draw a half allowance of corn and salt....Feed everything plentifully, but +waste nothing." He added that beeves were to be killed for the negroes in +July, August and September. Hammond's allowance to each working hand was a +heaping peck of meal and three pounds of bacon or pickled pork every week. +In the winter, sweet potatoes were issued when preferred, at the rate of a +bushel of them in lieu of the peck of meal; and fresh beef, mutton or pork, +at increased weights, were to be substituted for the salt pork from time to +time. The ditchers and drivers were to have extra allowances in meat and +molasses. Furthermore, "Each ditcher receives every night, when ditching, a +dram (jigger) consisting of two-thirds whiskey and one-third water, with as +much asafoetida as it will absorb, and several strings of red peppers added +in the barrel. The dram is a large wine-glass full. In cotton picking time +when sickness begins to be prevalent, every field hand gets a dram in the +morning before leaving for the field. After a soaking rain all exposed to +it get a dram before changing their clothes; also those exposed to the +dust from the shelter and fan in corn shelling, on reaching the quarter at +night; or anyone at any time required to keep watch in the night. Drams are +not given as rewards, but only as medicinal. From the second hoeing, or +early in May, every work hand who uses it gets an occasional allowance of +tobacco, about one sixth of a pound, usually after some general operation, +as a hoeing, plowing, etc. This is continued until their crops are +gathered, when they can provide for themselves." The families, furthermore, +shared in the distribution of the plantation's peanut crop every fall. Each +child was allowed one third as much meal and meat as was given to each +field hand, and an abundance of vegetables to be cooked with their meat. +The cooking and feeding was to be done at the day nursery. For breakfast +they were to have hominy and milk and cold corn bread; for dinner, +vegetable soup and dumplings or bread; and cold bread or potatoes were to +be kept on hand for demands between meals. They were also to have molasses +once or twice a week. Each child was provided with a pan and spoon in +charge of the nurse. + +Hammond's clothing allowance was for each man in the fall two cotton +shirts, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket, and in the spring two +cotton shirts and two pairs of cotton pants, with privilege of substitution +when desired; for each woman six yards of woolen cloth and six yards of +cotton cloth in the fall, six yards of light and six of heavy cotton cloth +in the spring, with needles, thread and buttons on each occasion. Each +worker was to have a pair of stout shoes in the fall, and a heavy blanket +every third year. Children's cloth allowances were proportionate and their +mothers were required to dress them in clean clothes twice a week. + +In the matter of sanitation, Acklen directed the overseer to see that the +negroes kept clean in person, to inspect their houses at least once a week +and especially during the summer, to examine their bedding and see to its +being well aired, to require that their clothes be mended, "and everything +attended to which conduces to their comfort and happiness." In these +regards, as in various others, Fowler incorporated Acklen's rules in his +own, almost verbatim. Hammond scheduled an elaborate cleaning of the houses +every spring and fall. The houses were to be completely emptied and their +contents sunned, the walls and floors were to be scrubbed, the mattresses +to be emptied and stuffed with fresh hay or shucks, the yards swept and the +ground under the houses sprinkled with lime. Furthermore, every house was +to be whitewashed inside and out once a year; and the negroes must appear +once a week in clean clothes, "and every negro habitually uncleanly in +person must be washed and scrubbed by order of the overseer--the driver and +two other negroes officiating." + +As to schedules of work, the Carolina and Georgia lowlanders dealt in +tasks; all the rest in hours. Telfair wrote briefly: "The negroes to be +tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work, well +done--the task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength +of the negro." Weston wrote with more elaboration: "A task is as much work +as the meanest full hand can do in nine hours, working industriously.... +This task is never to be increased, and no work is to be done over task +except under the most urgent necessity; which over-work is to be reported +to the proprietor, who will pay for it. No negro is to be put into a task +which [he] cannot finish with tolerable ease. It is a bad plan to punish +for not finishing tasks; it is subversive of discipline to leave tasks +unfinished, and contrary to justice to punish for what cannot be done. In +nothing does a good manager so much excel a bad as in being able to discern +what a hand is capable of doing, and in never attempting to make him do +more." In Hammond's schedule the first horn was blown an hour before +daylight as a summons for work-hands to rise and do their cooking and other +preparations for the day. Then at the summons of the plow driver, at first +break of day, the plowmen went to the stables whose doors the overseer +opened. At the second horn, "just at good daylight," the hoe gang set out +for the field. At half past eleven the plowmen carried their mules to a +shelter house in the fields, and at noon the hoe hands laid off for dinner, +to resume work at one o'clock, except that in hot weather the intermission +was extended to a maximum of three and a half hours. The plowmen led the +way home by a quarter of an hour in the evening, and the hoe hands followed +at sunset. "No work," said Hammond, "must ever be required after dark." +Acklen contented himself with specifying that "the negroes must all rise at +the ringing of the first bell in the morning, and retire when the last +bell rings at night, and not leave their houses after that hour unless on +business or called." Fowler's rule was of the same tenor: "All hands should +be required to retire to rest and sleep at a suitable hour and permitted to +remain there until such time as it will be necessary to get out in time to +reach their work by the time they can see well how to work." + +Telfair, Fowler and Hammond authorized the assignment of gardens and +patches to such slaves as wanted to cultivate them at leisure times. To +prevent these from becoming a cloak for thefts from the planter's crops, +Telfair and Fowler forbade the growing of cotton in the slaves' private +patches, and Hammond forbade both cotton and corn. Fowler specifically +gave his negroes the privilege of marketing their produce and poultry "at +suitable leisure times." Hammond had a rule permitting each work hand to go +to Augusta on some Sunday after harvest; but for some reason he noted in +pencil below it: "This is objectionable and must be altered." Telfair +and Weston directed that their slaves be given passes on application, +authorizing them to go at proper times to places in the neighborhood. The +negroes, however, were to be at home by the time of the curfew horn about +nine o'clock each night. Mating with slaves on other plantations was +discouraged as giving occasion for too much journeying. + +"Marriage is to be encouraged," wrote Hammond, "as it adds to the comfort, +happiness and health of those who enter upon it, besides insuring a greater +increase. Permission must always be obtained from the master before +marriage, but no marriage will be allowed with negroes not belonging to the +master. When sufficient cause can be shewn on either side, a marriage may +be annulled; but the offending party must be severely punished. Where both +are in wrong, both must be punished, and if they insist on separating must +have a hundred lashes apiece. After such a separation, neither can marry +again for three years. For first marriage a bounty of $5.00, to be invested +in household articles, or an equivalent of articles, shall be given. If +either has been married before, the bounty shall be $2.50. A third marriage +shall be not allowed but in extreme cases, and in such cases, or where both +have been married before, no bounty will be given." + +"Christianity, humanity and order elevate all, injure none," wrote Fowler, +"whilst infidelity, selfishness and disorder curse some, delude others and +degrade all. I therefore want all of my people encouraged to cultivate +religious feeling and morality, and punished for inhumanity to their +children or stock, for profanity, lying and stealing." And again: "I would +that every human being have the gospel preached to them in its original +purity and simplicity. It therefore devolves upon me to have these +dependants properly instructed in all that pertains to the salvation of +their souls. To this end whenever the services of a suitable person can be +secured, have them instructed in these things. In view of the fanaticism +of the age, it behooves the master or overseer to be present on all +such occasions. They should be instructed on Sundays in the day time if +practicable; if not, then on Sunday night." Acklen wrote in his usual +peremptory tone: "No negro preachers but my own will be permitted to preach +or remain on any of my places. The regularly appointed minister for my +places must preach on Sundays during daylight, or quit. The negroes must +not be suffered to continue their night meetings beyond ten o'clock." +Telfair in his rules merely permitted religious meetings on Saturday nights +and Sunday mornings. Hammond encouraged his negroes to go to church on +Sundays, but permitted no exercises on the plantation beyond singing and +praying. He, and many others, encouraged his negroes to bring him their +complaints against drivers and overseers, and even against their own +ecclesiastical authorities in the matter of interference with recreations. + +Fighting among the negroes was a common bane of planters. Telfair +prescribed: "If there is any fighting on the plantation, whip all engaged +in it, for no matter what the cause may have been, all are in the wrong." +Weston wrote: "Fighting, particularly amongst women, and obscene or abusive +language, is to be always rigorously punished." + +"Punishment must never be cruel or abusive," wrote Acklen, closely followed +by Fowler, "for it is absolutely mean and unmanly to whip a negro from mere +passion and malice, and any man who can do so is utterly unfit to have +control of negroes; and if ever any of my negroes are cruelly or inhumanly +treated, bruised, maimed or otherwise injured, the overseer will be +promptly discharged and his salary withheld." Weston recommended the lapse +of a day between the discovery of an offense and the punishment, and he +restricted the overseer's power in general to fifteen lashes. He continued: +"Confinement (not in the stocks) is to be preferred to whipping; but the +stoppage of Saturday's allowance, and doing whole task on Saturday, will +suffice to prevent ordinary offenses. Special care must be taken to prevent +any indecency in punishing women. No driver or other negro is to be allowed +to punish any person in any way except by order of the overseer and in his +presence." And again: "Every person should be made perfectly to understand +what they are punished for, and should be made to perceive that they are +not punished in anger or through caprice. All abusive language or violence +of demeanor should be avoided; they reduce the man who uses them to a level +with the negro, and are hardly ever forgotten by those to whom they are +addressed." Hammond directed that the overseer "must never threaten a +negro, but punish offences immediately on knowing them; otherwise he will +soon have runaways." As a schedule he wrote: "The following is the order +in which offences must be estimated and punished: 1st, running away; 2d, +getting drunk or having spirits; 3d, stealing hogs; 4th, stealing; 5th, +leaving plantation without permission; 6th, absence from house after +horn-blow at night; 7th, unclean house or person; 8th, neglect of tools; +9th, neglect of work. The highest punishment must not exceed a hundred +lashes in one day, and to that extent only in extreme cases. The whip lash +must be one inch in width, or a strap of one thickness of leather 1-1/2 +inches in width, and never severely administered. In general fifteen to +twenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging. The hands in every case must +be secured by a cord. Punishment must always be given calmly, and never +when angry or excited." Telfair was as usual terse: "No negro to have +more than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime." +Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sent +special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You had +best think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the important +old plantation maxim, viz: 'never to threaten a negro,' or he will do as +you and I would when at school--he will run. But with such a one, ... if +you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and +give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for +three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again.... Mind then and tell +him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels +with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on +himself, for he now sees how easy it is to fix 'a bad disposed nigger.' +Then give my compliments to him and tell him that you wrote me of his +conduct, and say if he don't change for the better I'll sell him to a slave +trader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent several +of the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause." In one +case Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver brought +him up for punishment but allowed him to run before it was administered.[5] + +[Footnote 5: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 32, 94.] + +As to rewards, Hammond was the only one of these writers to prescribe them +definitely. His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driver +three dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each every +Christmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for every +actual increase of two on the place. Further, "for every infant thirteen +months old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, the +mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock." + +"The head driver," Hammond wrote, "is the most important negro on the +plantation, and is not required to work like other hands. He is to +be treated with more respect than any other negro by both master and +overseer....He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all +times; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to +punish it with discretion on the spot....He is a confidential servant, and +may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer." Weston, +forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer's +order and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance of +quiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slaves +to the fields each morning, the assignment and supervision of tasks, +and the inspection of "such things as the overseer only generally +superintends." Telfair informed his overseer: "I have no driver. You are to +task the negroes yourself, and each negro is responsible to you for his own +work, and nobody's else." + +Of the master's own functions Hammond wrote in another place: "A planter +should have all his work laid out, days, weeks, months, seasons and years +ahead, according to the nature of it. He must go from job to job without +losing a moment in turning round, and he must have all the parts of his +work so arranged that due proportion of attention may be bestowed upon each +at the proper time. More is lost by doing work out of season, and doing it +better or worse than is requisite, than can readily be supposed. Negroes +are harassed by it, too, instead of being indulged; so are mules, and +everything else. A halting, vacillating, undecided course, now idle, now +overstrained, is more fatal on a plantation than in any other kind of +business--ruinous as it is in any."[6] + +[Footnote 6: Letter of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 21, 1841, +from Hammond's MS. copy in the Library of Congress.] + +In the overseer all the virtues of a master were desired, with a deputy's +obedience added. Corbin enjoined upon his staff that they "attend their +business with diligence, keep the negroes in good order, and enforce +obedience by the example of their own industry, which is a more effectual +method in every respect than hurry and severity. The ways of industry," he +continued, "are constant and regular, not to be in a hurry at one time and +do nothing at another, but to be always usefully and steadily employed. +A man who carries on business in this manner will be prepared for every +incident that happens. He will see what work may be proper at the distance +of some time and be gradually and leisurely preparing for it. By this +foresight he will never be in confusion himself, and his business, instead +of a labor, will be a pleasure to him." Weston wrote: "The proprietor +wishes particularly to impress upon the overseer the criterions by which +he will judge of his usefullness and capacity. First, by the general +well-being of all the negroes; their cleanly appearance, respectful +manners, active and vigorous obedience; their completion of their tasks +well and early; the small amount of punishment; the excess of births over +deaths; the small number of persons in hospital; and the health of the +children. Secondly, the condition and fatness of the cattle and mules; the +good repair of all the fences and buildings, harness, boats, flats and +ploughs; more particularly the good order of the banks and trunks, and the +freedom of the fields from grass and volunteer [rice]. Thirdly, the amount +and quality of the rice and provision crops.... The overseer is expressly +forbidden from three things, viz.: bleeding, giving spirits to any negro +without a doctor's order, and letting any negro on the place have or keep +any gun, powder or shot." One of Acklen's prohibitions upon his overseers +was: "Having connection with any of my female servants will most certainly +be visited with a dismissal from my employment, and no excuse can or will +be taken." + +Hammond described the functions as follows: "The overseer will never be +expected to work in the field, but he must always be with the hands when +not otherwise engaged in the employer's business.... The overseer must +never be absent a single night, nor an entire day, without permission +previously obtained. Whenever absent at church or elsewhere he must be on +the plantation by sundown without fail. He must attend every night and +morning at the stables and see that the mules are watered, cleaned and fed, +and the doors locked. He must keep the stable keys at night, and all the +keys, in a safe place, and never allow anyone to unlock a barn, smoke-house +or other depository of plantation stores but himself. He must endeavor, +also, to be with the plough hands always at noon." He must also see that +the negroes are out promptly in the morning, and in their houses after +curfew, and must show no favoritism among the negroes. He must carry on all +experiments as directed by the employer, and use all new implements and +methods which the employer may determine upon; and he must keep a full +plantation diary and make monthly inventories. Finally, "The negroes must +be made to obey and to work, which may be done, by an overseer who attends +regularly to his business, with very little whipping. Much whipping +indicates a bad tempered or inattentive manager, and will not be allowed." +His overseer might quit employment on a month's notice, and might be +discharged without notice. Acklen's dicta were to the same general effect. + +As to the relative importance of the several functions of an overseer, all +these planters were in substantial agreement. As Fowler put it: "After +taking proper care of the negroes, stock, etc., the next most important +duty of the overseer is to make, if practicable, a sufficient quantity of +corn, hay, fodder, meat, potatoes and other vegetables for the consumption +of the plantation, and then as much cotton as can be made by requiring good +and reasonable labor of operatives and teams." Likewise Henry Laurens, +himself a prosperous planter of the earlier time as well as a statesman, +wrote to an overseer of whose heavy tasking he had learned: "Submit to +make less rice and keep my negroes at home in some degree of happiness in +preference to large crops acquired by rigour and barbarity to those poor +creatures." And to a new incumbent: "I have now to recommend to you the +care of my negroes in general, but particularly the sick ones. Desire Mrs. +White not to be sparing of red wine for those who have the flux or bad +loosenesses; let them be well attended night and day, and if one wench is +not sufficient add another to nurse them. With the well ones use gentle +means mixed with easy authority first--if that does not succeed, make +choice of the most stubborn one or two and chastise them severely but +properly and with mercy, that they may be convinced that the end of +correction is to be amendment," Again, alluding to one of his slaves +who had been gathering the pennies of his fellows: "Amos has a great +inclination to turn rum merchant. If his confederate comes to that +plantation, I charge you to discipline him with thirty-nine sound lashes +and turn him out of the gate and see that he goes quite off."[7] + +[Footnote 7: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 133, 192.] + +The published advice of planters to their fellows was quite in keeping with +these instructions to overseers. About 1809, for example, John Taylor, of +Caroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day, +wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows: "The addition of +comfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for the +advantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by a +ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniary +point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections +throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof +brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty +in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for +pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for +upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole +force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the +thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure +to inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations. "A daily +allowance of cyder," Taylor continued, "will extend the success of this +system for the management of slaves, and particularly its effect of +diminishing corporal punishments. But the reader is warned that a stern +authority, strict discipline and complete subordination must be combined +with it to gain any success at all."[8] + +[Footnote 8: John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, _Arator, Being +a Series of Agricultural Essays_ (2d ed., Georgetown, D. C, 1814), pp. +122-125.] + +Another Virginian's essay, of 1834, ran as follows: Virginia negroes are +generally better tempered than any other people; they are kindly, grateful, +attached to persons and places, enduring and patient in fatigue and +hardship, contented and cheerful. Their control should be uniform and +consistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity. Punishment for real +faults should be invariable but moderate. "The best evidence of the good +management of slaves is the keeping up of good discipline with little or +no punishment." The treatment should be impartial except for good conduct +which should bring rewards. Praise is often a better cure for laziness than +stripes. The manager should know the temper of each slave. The proud and +high spirited are easily handled: "Your slow and sulky negro, although he +may have an even temper, is the devil to manage. The negro women are all +harder to manage than the men. The only way to get along with them is by +kind words and flattery. If you want to cure a sloven, give her something +nice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she has +on anything tolerably decent." Eschew suspicion, for it breeds dishonesty. +Promote harmony and sound methods among your neighbors. "A good +disciplinarian in the midst of bad managers of slaves cannot do much; and +without discipline there cannot be profit to the master or comfort to the +slaves." Feed and clothe your slaves well. The best preventive of theft is +plenty of pork. Let them have poultry and gardens and fruit trees to attach +them to their houses and promote amenability. "The greatest bar to good +discipline in Virginia is the number of grog shops in every farmer's +neighborhood." There is no severity in the state, and there will be no +occasion for it again if the fanatics will only let us alone.[9] + +[Footnote 9: "On the Management of Negroes. Addressed to the Farmers and +Overseers of Virginia," signed "H. C," in the _Farmer's Register_, I, 564, +565 (February, 1834).] + +An essay written after long experience by Robert Collins, of Macon, +Georgia, which was widely circulated in the 'fifties, was in the same tone: +"The best interests of all parties are promoted by a kind and liberal +treatment on the part of the owner, and the requirement of proper +discipline and strict obedience on the part of the slave ... Every attempt +to force the slave beyond the limits of reasonable service by cruelty or +hard treatment, so far from extorting more work, only tends to make him +unprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation and a curse." The quarters should +be well shaded, the houses free of the ground, well ventilated, and large +enough for comfort; the bedding and blankets fully adequate. "In former +years the writer tried many ways and expedients to economize in the +provision of slaves by using more of the vegetable and cheap articles of +diet, and less of the costly and substantial. But time and experience have +fully proven the error of a stinted policy ... The allowance now given per +week to each hand ... is five pounds of good clean bacon and one quart of +molasses, with as much good bread as they require; and in the fall, or +sickly season of the year, or on sickly places, the addition of one pint of +strong coffee, sweetened with sugar, every morning before going to work." +The slaves may well have gardens, but the assignment of patches for market +produce too greatly "encourages a traffic on their own account, and +presents a temptation and opportunity, during the process of gathering, for +an unscrupulous fellow to mix a little of his master's produce with his +own. It is much better to give each hand whose conduct has been such as to +merit it an equivalent in money at the end of the year; it is much less +trouble, and more advantageous to both parties." Collins further advocated +plenty of clothing, moderate hours, work by tasks in cotton picking and +elsewhere when feasible, and firm though kindly discipline. "Slaves," he +said, "have no respect or affection for a master who indulges them over +much.... Negroes are by nature tyrannical in their dispositions, and if +allowed, the stronger will abuse the weaker, husbands will often abuse +their wives and mothers their children, so that it becomes a prominent duty +of owners and overseers to keep peace and prevent quarrelling and disputes +among them; and summary punishment should follow any violation of this +rule. Slaves are also a people that enjoy religious privileges. Many +of them place much value upon it; and to every reasonable extent that +advantage should be allowed them. They are never injured by preaching, but +thousands become wiser and better people and more trustworthy servants +by their attendance at church. Religious services should be provided and +encouraged on every plantation. A zealous and vehement style, both in +doctrine and manner, is best adapted to their temperament. They are good +believers in mysteries and miracles, ready converts, and adhere with much +pertinacity to their opinions when formed."[10] It is clear that Collins +had observed plantation negroes long and well. + +[Footnote 10: Robert Collins, "Essay on the Management of Slaves," +reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 421-426, and partly reprinted in F.L. +Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 692-697.] + +Advice very similar to the foregoing examples was also printed in the +form of manuals at the front of blank books for the keeping of plantation +records;[11] and various planters described their own methods in operation +as based on the same principles. One of these living at Chunnennuggee, +Alabama, signing himself "N.B.P.," wrote in 1852 an account of the problems +he had met and the solutions he had applied. Owning some 150 slaves, he had +lived away from his plantation until about a decade prior to this writing; +but in spite of careful selection he could never get an overseer combining +the qualities necessary in a good manager. "They were generally on +extremes; those celebrated for making large crops were often too severe, +and did everything by coercion. Hence turmoil and strife ensued. The +negroes were ill treated and ran away. On the other hand, when he employed +a good-natured man there was a want of proper discipline; the negroes +became unmanageable and, as a natural result, the farm was brought into +debt," The owner then entered residence himself and applied methods which +resulted in contentment, health and prolific increase among the slaves, and +in consistently good crops. The men were supplied with wives at home so far +as was practicable; each family had a dry and airy house to itself, with a +poultry house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly were +three and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, together +with a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nursery +were fed from the master's kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables and +bread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women were +given time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all hands +had to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; and +a clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday. The chief +distinction of this plantation, however, lay in its device for profit +sharing. To each slave was assigned a half-acre plot with the promise that +if he worked with diligence in the master's crop the whole gang would in +turn be set to work his crop. This was useful in preventing night and +Sunday work by the negroes. The proceeds of their crops, ranging from ten +to fifty dollars, were expended by the master at their direction for Sunday +clothing and other supplies.[12] On a sugar plantation visited by Olmsted +a sum of as many dollars as there were hogsheads in the year's crop was +distributed among the slaves every Christmas.[13] + +[Footnote 11: Pleasant Suit, _Farmer's Accountant and Instructions for +Overseers_ (Richmond, Va., 1828); _Affleck's Cotton Plantation Record and +Account Book_, reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVIII, 339-345, and in Thomas +W. Knox, _Campfire and Cotton Field_ (New York, 1865), pp. 358-364. _See +also_ for varied and interesting data as to rules, experience and advice; +Thomas S. Clay (of Bryan County, Georgia), _Detail of a Plan for the Moral +Improvement of Negroes on Plantations_ (1833); and _DeBow's Review_, XII, +291, 292; XIX, 358-363; XXI, 147-149, 277-279; XXIV, 321-326; XXV, 463; +XXVI, 579, 580; XXIX, 112-115, 357-368.] + +[Footnote 12: _Southern Quarterly Review_, XXI, 215, 216.] + +[Footnote 13: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 660.] + +Of overseers in general, the great variety in their functions, their +scales of operation and their personal qualities make sweeping assertions +hazardous. Some were at just one remove from the authority of a great +planter, as is suggested by the following advertisement: "Wanted, a manager +to superintend several rice plantations on the Santee River. As the +business is extensive, a proportionate salary will be made, and one or two +young men of his own selection employed under him.[14] A healthful summer +residence on the seashore is provided for himself and family." Others +were hardly more removed from the status of common field hands. Lawrence +Tompkins, for example, signed with his mark in 1779 a contract to oversee +the four slaves of William Allason, near Alexandria, and to work steadily +with them. He was to receive three barrels of corn and three hundred pounds +of pork as his food allowance, and a fifth share of the tobacco, hemp and +flax crops and a sixth of the corn; but if he neglected his work he might +be dismissed without pay of any sort.[15] Some overseers were former +planters who had lost their property, some were planters' sons working for +a start in life, some were English and German farmers who had brought their +talents to what they hoped might prove the world's best market, but most of +them were of the native yeomanry which abounded in virtually all parts +of the South. Some owned a few slaves whom they put on hire into their +employers' gangs, thereby hastening their own attainment of the means to +become planters on their own score.[16] + +[Footnote 14: _Southern Patriot_ (Charleston, S. C), Jan. 9, 1821.] + +[Footnote 15: MS. Letter book, 1770-1787, among the Allason papers in the +New York Public Library.] + +[Footnote 16: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 21, 135.] + +If the master lived on the plantation, as was most commonly the case, the +overseer's responsibilities were usually confined to the daily execution of +orders in supervising the slaves in the fields and the quarters. But when +the master was an absentee the opportunity for abuses and misunderstandings +increased. Jurisdiction over slaves and the manner of its exercise were the +grounds of most frequent complaint. On the score of authority, for example, +a Virginia overseer in the employ of Robert Carter wrote him in 1787 in +despair at the conduct of a woman named Suckey: "I sent for hir to Come in +the morning to help Secoure the foder, but She Sent me word that She would +not come to worke that Day, and that you had ordered her to wash hir +Cloaiths and goo to Any meeting She pleased any time in the weke without my +leafe, and on monday when I Come to Reken with hir about it She Said it was +your orders and She would do it in Defiance of me.... I hope if Suckey is +aloud that privilige more than the Rest, that she will bee moved to some +other place, and one Come in her Room."[17] On the score of abuses, Stancil +Barwick, an overseer in southwestern Georgia, wrote in 1855 to John B. +Lamar: "I received your letter on yesterday ev'ng. Was vary sorry to hear +that you had heard that I was treating your negroes so cruely. Now, sir, I +do say to you in truth that the report is false. Thear is no truth in it. +No man nor set of men has ever seen me mistreat one of the negroes on the +place." After declaring that miscarriages by two of the women had been due +to no requirement of work, he continued: "The reports that have been sent +must have been carried from this place by negroes. The fact is I have made +the negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, an +is the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found among +the negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, but +not cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on the +place. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed by +no man on earth,"[18] + +[Footnote 17: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 325.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., I, 312, 313.] + +To diminish the inducement for overdriving, the method of paying the +overseers by crop shares, which commonly prevailed in the colonial period, +was generally replaced in the nineteenth century by that of fixed salaries. +As a surer preventive of embezzlement, a trusty slave was in some cases +given the store-house keys in preference to the overseer; and sometimes +even when the master was an absentee an overseer was wholly dispensed with +and a slave foreman was given full charge. This practice would have been +still more common had not the laws discouraged it.[19] Some planters +refused to leave their slaves in the full charge of deputies of any kind, +even for short periods. For example, Francis Corbin in 1819 explained +to James Madison that he must postpone an intended visit because of the +absence of his son. "Until he arrives," Corbin wrote, "I dare not, in +common prudence, leave my affairs to the sole management of overseers, who +in these days are little respected by our intelligent negroes, many of whom +are far superior in mind, morals and manners to those who are placed in +authority over them."[20] + +[Footnote 19: Olmsted, _Seaboard States_, p. 206.] + +[Footnote 20: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 261.] + +Various phases of the problem of management are illustrated in a letter of +A.H. Pemberton of the South Carolina midlands to James H. Hammond at the +end of 1846. The writer described himself as unwilling to sacrifice his +agricultural reading in order to superintend his slaves in person, but as +having too small a force to afford the employment of an overseer pure and +simple. For the preceding year he had had one charged with the double +function of working in person and supervising the slaves' work also; but +this man's excess of manual zeal had impaired his managerial usefulness. +What he himself did was well done, said Pemberton, "and he would do _all_ +and leave the negroes to do virtually nothing; and as they would of course +take advantage of this, what he did was more than counterbalanced by what +they did not." Furthermore, this employee, "who worked harder than any man +I ever saw," used little judgment or foresight. "Withal, he has always been +accustomed to the careless Southern practice generally of doing things +temporarily and in a hurry, just to last for the present, and allowing the +negroes to leave plows and tools of all kinds just where they use them, +no matter where, so that they have to be hunted all over the place when +wanted. And as to stock, he had no idea of any more attention to them than +is common in the ordinarily cruel and neglectful habits of the South." +Pemberton then turned to lamentation at having let slip a recent +opportunity to buy at auction "a remarkably fine looking negro as to size +and strength, very black, about thirty-five or forty, and so intelligent +and trustworthy that he had charge of a separate plantation and eight or +ten hands some ten or twelve miles from home." The procuring of such a +foreman would precisely have solved Pemberton's problem; the failure to +do so left him in his far from hopeful search for a paragon manager and +workman combined.[21] + +[Footnote 21: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +On the whole, the planters were disposed to berate the overseers as a class +for dishonesty, inattention and self indulgence. The demand for new +and better ones was constant. For example, the editor of the _American +Agriculturist_, whose office was at New York, announced in 1846: "We are +almost daily beset with applications for properly educated managers +for farms and plantations--we mean for such persons as are up to the +improvements of the age, and have the capacity to carry them into +effect."[22] Youths occasionally offered themselves as apprentices. One of +them, in Louisiana, published the following notice in 1822: "A young man +wishing to acquire knowledge of cotton planting would engage for twelve +months as overseer and keep the accounts of a plantation.... Unquestionable +reference as to character will be given."[23] And a South Carolinian in +1829 proposed that the practice be systematized by the appointment of local +committees to bring intelligent lads into touch with planters willing to +take them as indentured apprentices.[24] The lack of system persisted, +however, both in agricultural education and in the procuring of managers. +In the opinion of Basil Hall and various others the overseers were commonly +better than the reputation of their class,[25] but this is not to say that +they were conspicuous either for expertness or assiduity. On the whole +they had about as much human nature, with its merits and failings, as the +planters or the slaves or anybody else. + +[Footnote 22: _American Agriculturist_, V, 24.] + +[Footnote 23: _Louisiana Herald_ (Alexandria, La.), Jan. 12, 1822, +advertisement.] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 271.] + +[Footnote 25: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_, III, 193.] + +It is notable that George Washington was one of the least tolerant +employers and masters who put themselves upon record.[26] This was +doubtless due to his own punctiliousness and thorough devotion to system as +well as to his often baffled wish to diversify his crops and upbuild his +fields. When in 1793 he engaged William Pearce as a new steward for the +group of plantations comprising the Mount Vernon estate, he enjoined strict +supervision of his overseers "to keep them from running about and to oblige +them to remain constantly with their people, and moreover to see at what +time they turn out in the morning--for," said he, "I have strong suspicions +that this with some of them is at a late hour, the consequences of which +to the negroes is not difficult to foretell." "To treat them civilly," +Washington continued, "is no more than what all men are entitled to; but my +advice to you is, keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow upon +familiarity in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not. Pass +by no faults or neglects, particularly at first, for overlooking one only +serves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some of +them, one in particular, will try at first what lengths he may go." +Particularizing as to the members of his staff, Washington described their +several characteristics: Stuart was intelligent and apparently honest and +attentive, but vain and talkative, and usually backward in his schedule; +Crow would be efficient if kept strictly at his duty, but seemed prone to +visiting and receiving visits. "This of course leaves his people too much +to themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side and +flogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfaction +which it creates, has in one or two instances been productive of serious +consequences." McKay was a "sickly, slothful and stupid sort of fellow," +too much disposed to brutality in the treatment of the slaves in his +charge; Butler seemed to have "no more authority over the negroes ... than +an old woman would have"; and Green, the overseer of the carpenters, was +too much on a level with the slaves for the exertion of control. Davy, the +negro foreman at Muddy Hole, was rated in his master's esteem higher than +some of his white colleagues, though Washington had suspicions concerning +the fate of certain lambs which had vanished while in his care. Indeed the +overseers all and several were suspected from time to time of drunkenness, +waste, theft and miscellaneous rascality. In the last of these categories +Washington seems to have included their efforts to secure higher wages. + +[Footnote 26: Voluminous plantation data are preserved in the Washington +MSS. in the Library of Congress. Those here used are drawn from the letters +of Washington published in the Long Island Historical Society _Memoirs_, +vol. IV; entitled _George Washington and Mount Vernon_. A map of the Mount +Vernon estate is printed in Washington's _Writings_ (W.C. Ford ed.), XII, +358.] + +The slaves in their turn were suspected of ruining horses by riding them at +night, and of embezzling grain issued for planting, as well as of lying and +malingering in general. The carpenters, Washington said, were notorious +piddlers; and not a slave about the mansion house was worthy of trust. +Pretences of illness as excuses for idleness were especially annoying. +"Is there anything particular in the cases of Ruth, Hannah and Pegg," +he enquired, "that they have been returned as sick for several weeks +together?... If they are not made to do what their age and strength will +enable them, it will be a very bad example to others, none of whom would +work if by pretexts they can avoid it." And again: "By the reports I +perceive that for every day Betty Davis works she is laid up two. If she +is indulged in this idleness she will grow worse and worse, for she has a +disposition to be one of the most idle creatures on earth, and is besides +one of the most deceitful." Pearce seems to have replied that he was at a +loss to tell the false from the true. Washington rejoined: "I never found +so much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in distinguishing between real +and feigned sickness, or when a person is much afflicted with pain. Nobody +can be very sick without having a fever, or any other disorder continue +long upon anyone without reducing them.... But my people, many of them, +will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible change in their +countenance nor the loss of an ounce of flesh is discoverable; and their +allowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them." Runaways were +occasional. Of one of them Washington directed: "Let Abram get his deserts +when taken, by way of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, for +I have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment in +all his corrections." Of another, whom he had previously described as an +idler beyond hope of correction: "Nor is it worth while, except for the +sake of example, ... to be at much trouble, or any expence over a trifle, +to hunt him up." Of a third, who was thought to have escaped in company +with a neighbor's slave: "If Mr. Dulany is disposed to pursue any measure +for the purpose of recovering his man, I will join him in the expence so +far as it may respect Paul; but I would not have my name appear in any +advertisement, or other measure, leading to it." Again, when asking that a +woman of his who had fled to New Hampshire be seized and sent back if it +could be done without exciting a mob: "However well disposed I might be to +gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of +people (if the latter was in itself practicable), at this moment it would +neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature +preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow +serv'ts who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than +herself of favor."[27] Finally: "The running off of my cook has been a most +inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeable +is that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by +purchase. But this resolution I fear I must break. I have endeavored to +hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied." As to provisions, the +slaves were given fish from Washington's Potomac fishery while the supply +lasted, "meat, fat and other things ... now and then," and of meal "as +much as they can eat without waste, and no more." The housing and clothing +appear to have been adequate. The "father of his country" displayed little +tenderness for his slaves. He was doubtless just, so far as a business-like +absentee master could be; but his only generosity to them seems to have +been the provision in his will for their manumission after the death of his +wife. + +[Footnote 27: Marion G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_( Boston, 1891), p. +36.] + +Lesser men felt the same stresses in plantation management. An owner of +ninety-six slaves told Olmsted that such was the trouble and annoyance +his negroes caused him, in spite of his having an overseer, and such the +loneliness of his isolated life, that he was torn between a desire to sell +out at once and a temptation to hold on for a while in the expectation of +higher prices. At the home of another Virginian, Olmsted wrote: "During +three hours or more in which I was in company with the proprietor I do +not think there were ten consecutive minutes uninterrupted by some of the +slaves requiring his personal direction or assistance. He was even obliged +three times to leave the dinner table. 'You see,' said he smiling, as he +came in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure,'" A +third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's +cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children, +infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate, +some fractious, and each class required different treatment. With the daily +wants of food, clothing and the like, "the poor man's time and thoughts, +indeed every faculty of mind, must be exercised on behalf of those who have +no minds of their own."[28] + +[Footnote 28: F.L. Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 44, 58, 718.] + +Harriet Martineau wrote on her tour of the South: "Nothing struck me +more than the patience of slave-owners ... with their slaves ... When I +considered how they love to be called 'fiery Southerners,' I could not but +marvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to which +they are liable in their homes. Persons from New England, France or +England, becoming slaveholders, are found to be the most severe masters +and mistresses, however good their tempers may always have appeared +previously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half an +hour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible +manner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, +their infants slighted,--themselves deluded by artifices--they cannot, like +the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled."[29] It is clear from +every sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negro +slaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnigh +necessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness and +patience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financial +ruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; the +possession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern not +vital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns were +turned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineau +and most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, wrote after a journey to +Charleston in 1855: "The change to a Northerner in coming South is always +a great one when he steps over the boundary of the free states; and the +farther you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness and +careless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution and +skilful management.... The outside first aspect of slavery has nothing +horrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about looking +unhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips and +chains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in the +free as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone ten +times as far, I dare say, without seeing the first sign of negro misery +or white tyranny."[30] If, indeed, the neatness of aspect be the test of +success, most plantations were failures; if the test of failure be the lack +of harmony and good will, it appears from the available evidence that most +plantations were successful. + +[Footnote 29: Harriet Martineau, _Society in America_ (London, 1837), II +315, 316.] + +[Footnote 30: Charles Eliot Norton, _Letters_ (Boston, 1913), I, 121.] + +The concerns and the character of a high-grade planter may be gathered from +the correspondence of John B. Lamar, who with headquarters in the town of +Macon administered half a dozen plantations belonging to himself and his +kinsmen scattered through central and southwestern Georgia and northern +Florida.[31] The scale of his operations at the middle of the nineteenth +century may be seen from one of his orders for summer cloth, presumably +at the rate of about five yards per slave. This was to be shipped from +Savannah to the several plantations as follows: to Hurricane, the property +of Howell Cobb, Lamar's brother-in-law, 760 yards; to Letohatchee, a trust +estate in Florida belonging to the Lamar family, 500 yards; and to Lamar's +own plantations the following: Swift Creek, 486; Harris Place, 360; Domine, +340; and Spring Branch, 229. Of his course of life Lamar wrote: "I am one +half the year rattling over rough roads with Dr. Physic and Henry, stopping +at farm houses in the country, scolding overseers in half a dozen counties +and two states, Florida and Georgia, and the other half in the largest +cities of the Union, or those of Europe, living on dainties and riding on +rail-cars and steamboats. When I first emerge from Swift Creek into the +hotels and shops on Broadway of a summer, I am the most economical body +that you can imagine. The fine clothes and expensive habits of the people +strike me forcibly.... In a week I become used to everything, and in a +month I forget my humble concern on Swift Creek and feel as much a nabob as +any of them.... At home where everything is plain and comfortable we look +on anything beyond that point as extravagant. When abroad where things are +on a greater scale, our ideas keep pace with them. I always find such to be +my case; and if I live to a hundred I reckon it will always be so." + +[Footnote 31: Lamar's MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, +Athens, Ga. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, +I, 167-183, 309-312, II, 38, 41.] + +Lamar could command strong words, as when a physician demanded five hundred +dollars for services at Hurricane in 1844, or when overseers were detected +in drunkenness or cruelty; but his most characteristic complaints were of +his own short-comings as a manager and of the crotchets of his relatives. +His letters were always cheery, and his repeated disappointments in +overseers never damped his optimism concerning each new incumbent. His +old lands contented him until he found new and more fertile ones to buy, +whereupon his jubilation was great. When cotton was low he called himself a +toad under the harrow; but rising markets would set him to counting bales +before the seed had more than sprouted and to building new plantations in +the air. In actual practice his log-cabin slave quarters gave place to +frame houses; his mules were kept in full force; his production of corn and +bacon was nearly always ample for the needs of each place; his slaves were +permitted to raise nankeen cotton on their private accounts; and his own +frequent journeys of inspection and stimulus, as he said, kept up an +_esprit du corps_. When an overseer reported that his slaves were down with +fever by the dozen and his cotton wasting in the fields, Lamar would hasten +thither with a physician and a squad of slaves impressed from another +plantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. He +redistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a better +balancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy as +far as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate the +families. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among his +slaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized them +to find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and good +nature made "Mas John" a favorite recourse. + +As to crops and management, Lamar indicated his methods in criticizing +those of a relative: "Uncle Jesse still builds air castles and blinds +himself to his affairs. Last year he tinkered away on tobacco and sugar +cane, things he knew nothing about.... He interferes with the arrangements +of his overseers, and has no judgment of his own.... If he would employ a +competent overseer and move off the plantation with his family he could +make good crops, as he has a good force of hands and good lands.... I have +found that it is unprofitable to undertake anything on a plantation out of +the regular routine. If I had a little place off to itself, and my business +would admit of it, I should delight in agricultural experiments." In his +reliance upon staple routine, as in every other characteristic, Lamar rings +true to the planter type. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +PLANTATION LABOR + + +WHILE produced only in America, the plantation slave was a product of +old-world forces. His nature was an African's profoundly modified but +hardly transformed by the requirements of European civilization. The wrench +from Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting his +ancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperament +than upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee, Ebo or Angola, +he became instead the American negro. The Caucasian was also changed by the +contact in a far from negligible degree; but the negro's conversion +was much the more thorough, partly because the process in his case was +coercive, partly because his genius was imitative. + +The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit reservation +as to limits, that a negro was what a white man made him. The molding, +however, was accomplished more by groups than by individuals. The purposes +and policies of the masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence the +negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the +predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagerness +for society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person, +dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness +toward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to +superstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for +praise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, a +healthy human repugnance toward overwork. "It don't do no good to hurry," +was a negro saying, "'caze you're liable to run by mo'n you overtake." +Likewise painstaking was reckoned painful; and tomorrow was always waiting +for today's work, while today was ready for tomorrow's share of play. On +the other hand it was a satisfaction to work sturdily for a hard boss, and +so be able to say in an interchange of amenities: "Go long, half-priced +nigger! You wouldn't fotch fifty dollars, an' I'm wuth a thousand!"[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Daily Tropic_ (New Orleans), May 18, 1846.] + +Contrasts were abundant. John B. Lamar, on the one hand, wrote: "My man Ned +the carpenter is idle or nearly so at the plantation. He is fixing gates +and, like the idle groom in Pickwick, trying to fool himself into the +belief that he is doing something.... He is an eye servant. If I was with +him I could have the work done soon and cheap; but I am afraid to trust him +off where there is no one he fears."[2] On the other hand, M.W. Philips +inscribed a page of his plantation diary as follows:[3] + +[Footnote 2: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 38.] + +[Footnote 3: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 444.] + + Sunday + July 10, 1853 + Peyton is no more + Aged 42 + Though he was a bad man in many respects + yet he was a most excellent field + hand, always at his + post. + On this place for 21 years. + Except the measles and its sequence, the + injury rec'd by the mule last Nov'r and its sequence, + he has not lost 15 days' work, I verily believe, in the + remaining 19 years. I wish we could hope for his + eternal state. + +Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the old-fashioned prime +negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch the +roustabouts at work--those chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging, +lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of New +Orleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made.[4] Ready +at every touching of the shore day and night, resting and sleeping only +between landings, they carry their loads almost at running speed, and when +returning for fresh burdens they "coonjine" by flinging their feet in +semi-circles at every step, or cutting other capers in rhythm to show their +fellows and the gallery that the strain of the cotton bales, the grain +sacks, the oil barrels and the timbers merely loosen their muscles and +lighten their spirits. + +[Footnote 4: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of +Economics, New Orleans, April 11th, 1911, on River Transportation and Its +Relation to New Orleans, Past, Present and Future_. [New Orleans, 1911.]] + +Such an exhibit would have been the despair of the average ante-bellum +planter, for instead of choosing among hundreds of applicants and rejecting +or discharging those who fell short of a high standard, he had to make +shift with such laborers as the slave traders chanced to bring or as his +women chanced to rear. His common problem was to get such income and +comfort as he might from a parcel of the general run; and the creation +of roustabout energy among them would require such vigor and such iron +resolution on his own part as was forthcoming in extremely few cases. + +Theoretically the master might be expected perhaps to expend the minimum +possible to keep his slaves in strength, to discard the weaklings and the +aged, to drive his gang early and late, to scourge the laggards hourly, to +secure the whole with fetters by day and with bolts by night, and to keep +them in perpetual terror of his wrath. But Olmsted, who seems to have gone +South with the thought of finding some such theory in application, wrote: +"I saw much more of what I had not anticipated and less of what I had in +the slave states than, with a somewhat extended travelling experience, in +any other country I ever visited";[5] and Nehemiah Adams, who went from +Boston to Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himself +laughing with the laughing ones instead.[6] + +[Footnote 5: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 179.] + +[Footnote 6: Nehemiah Adams. _A Southside View of Slavery, or Three Months +in the South in 1854_ (Boston, 1854), chap. 2.] + +The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was as strange to +the bulk of the planters as the doctrine and practice of moderation was to +those who viewed the régime from afar and with the mind's eye. A planter +in explaining his mildness might well have said it was due to his being +neither a knave nor a fool He refrained from the use of fetters not so much +because they would have hampered the slaves in their work as because the +general use of them never crossed his mind. And since chains and bolts were +out of the question, the whole system of control must be moderate; slaves +must be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might be by +loyalty, pride and the prospect of reward. + +Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional degree. A +certain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked success even when his whole +force was of fresh Africans. In a pamphlet of the late eighteen-twenties +he told of his method as follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settled +a plantation on St. John's River in Florida with about fifty new negroes, +many of whom I brought from the Coast myself. They were mostly fine young +men and women, and nearly in equal numbers. I never interfered in their +connubial concerns nor domestic affairs, but let them regulate these after +their own manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and what I +thought would add to their physical and moral happiness. I encouraged as +much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon +and night and Sunday morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] was +usually employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for the +week. Both men and women were very industrious. Many of them made twenty +bushels of corn to sell, and they vied with each other in dress and +dancing.... They were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared perfectly +happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had +to apply other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, the +punishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing their work +well. My object was to excite their ambition and attachment by kindness, +not to depress their spirits by fear and punishment.... Perfect confidence, +friendship and good understanding reigned between us." During the War of +1812 most of these negroes were killed or carried off in a Seminole raid. +When peace returned and Kingsley attempted to restore his Eden with a +mixture of African and American negroes, a serpent entered in the guise of +a negro preacher who taught the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sunday +and eating the catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves +"became poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was only to +do justice--to take what belonged to them, because I kept them in unjust +bondage." They came to believe "that all pastime or pleasure in this +iniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of sorrow and +repentance, and the sooner they were out of it the better; that they would +then go to a good country where they would experience no want of anything, +and have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful and would +pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and ask +forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to the +church, etc.... Finally myself and the overseer became completely divested +of all authority over the negroes.... Severity had no effect; it only made +it worse."[7] + +[Footnote 7: [Z. Kingsley] _A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society +as It exists ... under the Name of Slavery_. By an inhabitant of Florida. +Fourth edition (1834), pp. 21, 22. (Copy in the Library of Congress.)] + +This experience left Kingsley undaunted in his belief that liberalism +and profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the plantation régime. +To support this contention further he cited an experiment by a South +Carolinian who established four or five plantations in a group on Broad +River, with a slave foreman on each and a single overseer with very limited +functions over the whole. The cotton crop was the master's, while the hogs, +corn and other produce belonged to the slaves for their sustenance and the +sale of any surplus. The output proved large, "and the owner had no further +trouble nor expense than furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying the +overseer's wages, so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that he +could realize his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without paying +the customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on the operation +of his slaves." In Kingsley's opinion the system "answered extremely well, +and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivating +utility, local attachment and moral improvement among the slaves."[8] + +[Footnote 8: [Z. Kingsley] _Treatise_, p. 22.] + +The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government by slaves +is probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on their +plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi. There +the slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in every +way they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts +composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to be +inflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with his +power of pardon. The régime was maintained for a number of years in full +effect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9] + +[Footnote 9: W.L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro +Problem," in the _Sewanee Review_ (October, 1908).] + +These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend to +counterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme. +In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, the +relation of planter and slave was largely shaped by a sense of propriety, +proportion and cooperation. + +As to food, clothing and shelter, a few concrete items will reinforce the +indications in the preceding chapters that crude comfort was the rule. +Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776 that a Georgia slaveholder with +whom he stopped sold no dairy products from his forty cows in milk. The +proprietor explained this by saying: "I have a considerable family of black +people who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for Those I have +were either chosen for their good qualities or born in the family; and I +find from long experience and observation that the better they are fed, +clothed and treated, the more service and profit we may expect to derive +from their labour. In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or any +article of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best advantage +amongst my family and slaves." At another place Bartram noted the arrival +at a plantation of horse loads of wild pigeons taken by torchlight from +their roosts in a neighboring swamp.[10] + +[Footnote 10: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), pp. 307-310, 467, +468.] + +On Charles Cotesworth Pinckney's two plantations on the South Carolina +coast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a detail of four slaves was +shifted from the field work each week for a useful holiday in angling +for the huge drumfish which abounded in those waters; and their catches +augmented the fare of the white and black families alike.[11] Game and +fish, however, were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combined +the virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness. On +Fowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands numbered a little less +than half a hundred, the pork harvest throughout the eighteen-fifties, +except for a single year of hog cholera, yielded from eleven to +twenty-three hundred pounds; and when the yield was less than the normal, +northwestern bacon or barreled pork made up the deficit.[12] + +In the matter of clothing, James Habersham sent an order to London in 1764 +on behalf of himself and two neighbors for 120 men's jackets and breeches +and 80 women's gowns to be made in assorted sizes from strong and heavy +cloth. The purpose was to clothe their slaves "a little better than common" +and to save the trouble of making the garments at home.[13] In January, +1835, the overseer of one of the Telfair plantations reported that the +woolen weaving had nearly supplied the full needs of the place at the rate +of six or six and a half yards for each adult and proportionately for the +children.[14] In 1847, in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrote +from Paris to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroes +and see how many jackets and trousers you want for the men at Gowrie, ... +and then write to Messrs. Matthiessen and Co. of Charleston to send them to +you, together with the same quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and a +large woolen Scotch cap for each man and youth on the place.... Send back +anything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs. Habersham and +Son the twilled wool and cotton, called by some 'Hazzard's cloth,' for all +the women and children, and get two or three dozen handkerchiefs so as to +give each woman and girl one.... The shoes you will procure as usual from +Mr. Habersham by sending down the measures in time."[15] Finally, the +register of A.L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont contains +record of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a steady schedule. Every +spring each man drew two cotton shirts and two pair of homespun woolen +trousers, each woman a frock and chemises, and each child clothing or cloth +in proportion; and every fall the men drew shirts, trousers and coats, the +women shifts, petticoats, frocks and sacks, the children again on a similar +scale, and the several families blankets as needed.[16] + +[Footnote 11: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 203-208.] + +[Footnote 12: MS. records in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, +Miss.] + +[Footnote 13: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 293, 294.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., 192, 193.] + +[Footnote 15: MS. copy in Manigault's letter book.] + +[Footnote 16: MS. in the possession of Mrs. J.F. Minis, Savannah, Ga.] + +As for housing, the vestiges of the old slave quarters, some of which +have stood abandoned for half a century, denote in many cases a sounder +construction and greater comfort than most of the negroes in freedom have +since been able to command. + +With physical comforts provided, the birth-rate would take care of itself. +The pickaninnies were winsome, and their parents, free of expense and +anxiety for their sustenance, could hardly have more of them than they +wanted. A Virginian told Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fast +as they did on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and in +Georgia, Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits."[18] In Mississippi +M.W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when at the age of +thirty she was married by her master to a new husband, and had eight more +thereafter, including a set of triplets.[19] But the culminating instance +is the following as reported by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERY +REMARKABLE. There is now living in the vicinity of Campbell a negro +woman belonging to a gentleman by the name of Todd; this woman is in her +forty-second year and has had forty-one children and at this time is +pregnant with her forty-second child, and possibly with her forty-third, as +she has frequently had doublets."[20] Had childbearing been regulated +in the interest of the masters, Todd's woman would have had less than +forty-one and Amy less than her nineteen, for such excesses impaired the +vitality of the children. Most of Amy's, for example, died a few hours or +days after birth. + +[Footnote 17: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 57.] + +[Footnote 18: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 179.] + +[Footnote 19: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 439, 443, +447, 480.] + +[Footnote 20: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 11, 1822, quoting the +Lynchburg _Press_.] + +A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie." Virtually +all of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and wives except Caroline +who in twenty years bore ten children. Her husband was presumably the slave +of some other master. Tom and Milly had nine children in eighteen years; +Harry and Jainy had seven in twenty-two years; Fanny had five in seventeen +years with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa likewise had +five in nineteen years with Bob as the father of all but the first; and +Hector and Mary had five in seven years. On the other hand, two old couples +and one in their thirties had had no children, while eight young pairs had +from one to four each.[21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisiana +plantation called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole. The +slaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards comprised +thirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre des naissances" +showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859 distributed among +twenty-three women, two of whom were still in their teens when the record +ended. Rhodé bore six children between her seventeenth and thirty-fourth +years; Henriette bore six between twenty-one and forty; Esther six between +twenty-one and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two; +Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore from one +to three children each, including Celestine who had her first baby when +fifteen and her second two years after. None of the matings or paternities +appear in the record, though the christenings and the slave godparents are +registered.[22] + +[Footnote 21: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] + +[Footnote 22: MS. in the Howard Memorial Library, New Orleans.] + +The death rate was a subject of more active solicitude. This may be +illustrated from the journal for 1859-1860 of the Magnolia plantation, +forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its record of rations to 138 +hands, and of the occasional births, deaths, runaways and recaptures, and +of the purchase of a man slave for $2300, it contains the following summary +under date of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen months +over 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping cough, and then +the diphtheria, all of which we have gone through with but little loss save +in the whooping cough when we lost some twelve children." This entry was in +the spirit of rejoicing at escape from disasters. But on December 18 there +were two items of another tone. One of these was entered by an overseer +named Kellett: "[I] shot the negro boy Frank for attempting to cut at me +and three boys with his cane knife with intent to kill." The other, in a +different handwriting, recorded tersely: "J.A. Randall commenst buisnass +this mornung. J. Kellett discharged this morning." The owner could not +afford to keep an overseer who killed negroes even though it might be in +self defence.[23] + +[Footnote 23: MS. preserved on the plantation, owned by ex-Governor H.C. +War-moth.] + +Of epidemics, yellow fever was of minor concern as regards the slaves, for +negroes were largely immune to it; but cholera sometimes threatened to +exterminate the slaves and bankrupt their masters. After a visitation of +this in and about New Orleans in 1832, John McDonogh wrote to a friend: +"All that you have seen of yellow fever was nothing in comparison. It is +supposed that five or six thousand souls, black and white, were carried off +in fourteen days."[24] The pecuniary loss in Louisiana from slave deaths +in that epidemic was estimated at four million dollars.[25] Two years +afterward it raged in the Savannah neighborhood. On Mr. Wightman's +plantation, ten miles above the city, there were in the first week of +September fifty-three cases and eighteen deaths. The overseer then checked +the spread by isolating the afflicted ones in the church, the barn and the +mill. The neighboring planters awaited only the first appearance of the +disease on their places to abandon their crops and hurry their slaves to +lodges in the wilderness.[26] Plagues of smallpox were sometimes of similar +dimensions. + +[Footnote 24: William Allen, _Life of John McDonogh_ (Baltimore, 1886), p. +54.] + +[Footnote 25: _Niles' Register_, XLV, 84] + +[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Sept. 14 and 17 and +Oct. 22, 1834.] + +Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin. A series +of them drove M.W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation journal: "Oh! my +losses almost make me crazy. God alone can help." In short, planters must +guard their slaves' health and life as among the most vital of their own +interests; for while crops were merely income, slaves were capital. The +tendency appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrant +labor when available for such work as would involve strain and exposure. +The documents bearing on this theme are scattering but convincing. Thus +E.J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields, +said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantation +ditches;[27] T.B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippi +in 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planter +when describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were +hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usual +routine.[29] Olmsted noted on the Virginia seaboard that "Mr. W.... had an +Irish gang draining for him by contract." Olmsted asked, "why he should +employ Irishmen in preference to doing the work with his own hands. 'It's +dangerous work,' the planter replied, 'and a negro's life is too valuable +to be risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss you +know,'"[30] On a Louisiana plantation W.H. Russell wrote in 1860: "The +labor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands and hewing down the +forests is generally done by Irish laborers who travel about the country +under contractors or are engaged by resident gangsmen for the task. Mr. +Seal lamented the high prices of this work; but then, as he said, 'It was +much better to have Irish do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they +died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment,'" Russell +added on his own score: "There is a wonderful mine of truth in this +observation. Heaven knows how many poor Hibernians have been consumed and +buried in these Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshop +keeper and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the planter." +On another plantation the same traveller was shown the débris left by the +last Irish gang and was regaled by an account of the methods by which their +contractor made them work.[31] Robert Russell made a similar observation on +a plantation near New Orleans, and was told that even at high wages Irish +laborers were advisable for the work because they would do twice as +much ditching as would an equal number of negroes in the same time.[32] +Furthermore, A. de Puy Van Buren, noted as a common sight in the Yazoo +district, "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,' +straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chief +element among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.[33] +Likewise Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his boat with +cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at +the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the +wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division +of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise +confirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggers +are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, +or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chance +observations it may be added that many newspaper items and canal and +railroad company reports from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that the +construction gangs were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attracted +those whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor was +their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the lives +of their slaves. + +[Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, _The Agricultural Productions of +Louisiana_ (New Orleans, 1845).] + +[Footnote 28: _Harper's Magazine_, VII, 755.] + +[Footnote 29: _DeBoufs Review_, XI, 401.] + +[Footnote 30: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 90, 91.] + +[Footnote 31: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp +272, 273, 278.] + +[Footnote 32: Robert Russell, _North America, Its Agriculture and Chwate_ +(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 272.] + +[Footnote 33: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the +South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 84, 318.] + +[Footnote 34: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 550, 551.] + +Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease, disability +and death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better than +a slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on the +plantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely +took vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened +punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape from +bondage altogether. + +Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a protest against +severities. An episode of this sort was recounted in a letter of a Georgia +overseer to his absent employer: "Sir: I write you a few lines in order to +let you know that six of your hands has left the plantation--every man but +Jack. They displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a few +lashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were missing. I think +they are lying out until they can see you or your uncle Jack, as he is +expected daily. They may be gone off, or they may be lying round in this +neighbourhood, but I don't know. I blame Tom for the whole. I don't think +the rest would of left the plantation if Tom had not of persuaded them of +for some design. I give Tom but a few licks, but if I ever get him in my +power I will have satisfaction. There was a part of them had no cause for +leaving, only they thought if they would all go it would injure me moore. +They are as independent a set for running of as I have ever seen, and I +think the cause is they have been treated too well. They want more whipping +and no protecter; but if our country is so that negroes can quit their +homes and run of when they please without being taken they will have the +advantage of us. If they should come in I will write to you immediately and +let you know." [35] + +[Footnote 35: Letter of I.E.H. Harvey, Jefferson County, Georgia, April 16, +1837, to H.C. Flournoy, Athens, Ga. MS. in private possession. Punctuation +and capitals, which are conspicuously absent in the original, have here +been supplied for the sake of clarity.] + +Such a case is analogous to that of wage-earning laborers on strike for +better conditions of work. The slaves could not negotiate directly at such +a time, but while they lay in the woods they might make overtures to the +overseer through slaves on a neighboring plantation as to terms upon which +they would return to work, or they might await their master's posthaste +arrival and appeal to him for a redress of grievances. Humble as their +demeanor might be, their power of renewing the pressure by repeating their +flight could not be ignored. A happy ending for all concerned might be +reached by mutual concessions and pledges. That the conclusion might be +tragic is illustrated in a Louisiana instance where the plantation was in +charge of a negro foreman. Eight slaves after lying out for some weeks +because of his cruelty and finding their hardships in the swamp intolerable +returned home together and proposed to go to work again if granted amnesty. +When the foreman promised a multitude of lashes instead, they killed him +with their clubs. The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia, +told what they had done, and surrendered themselves. The coroner went to +the plantation and found the foreman dead according to specifications.[36] +The further history of the eight is unknown. + +[Footnote 36: _Daily Delta_ (New Orleans), April 17, 1849.] + +Most of the runaways went singly, but some of them went often. Such chronic +offenders were likely to be given exemplary punishment when recaptured. In +the earlier decades branding and shackling were fairly frequent. Some of +the punishments were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflicted +upon talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quite +as fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period the more common +resorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale. The menace of this last +was shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell +on earth of any district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise. +"They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave +refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the +slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for they +recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turn +blackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiable +purpose of keeping their own slaves content. + +Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered more +or less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper advertisements for +fugitives reinforces the impression that the need of deterrence was vital. +Whippings, instead of proving a cure, might bring revenge in the form of +sabotage, arson or murder. Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter might +prove of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical. The +preventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and festivities to +create lightness of heart; overtime and overtask payments to promote zeal +and satisfaction; kindliness and care to call forth loyalty in return; +and the special device of crop patches to give every hand a stake in the +plantation. This last raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaves +were allowed to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might be +stimulated more than industry and punishments become more necessary +than before. In the cotton belt a solution was found at last in nankeen +cotton.[37] This variety had been widely grown for domestic use as early as +the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was left largely in neglect +until when in the thirties it was hit upon for negro crops. While the +prices it brought were about the same as those of the standard upland +staple, its distinctive brown color prevented the admixture of the +planter's own white variety without certain detection when it reached +the gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations is +indicated by the proceeds of $1,969.65 in 1859 from the nankeen of the +negroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in Taylor County, Georgia.[38] Such +returns might be distributed in cash; but planters generally preferred for +the sake of sobriety that money should not be freely handled by the slaves. +Earnings as well as gifts were therefore likely to be issued in the form of +tickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed the following +to the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg in the Christmas season of +1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let the bearer George have ten dollars value in +anything he chooses"; and the merchants entered a memorandum that George +chose two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a pair +of hose, and six shillings in cash.[39] + +[Footnote 37: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. +128.] + +[Footnote 38: Macon, Ga., _Telegraph_, Feb. 3, 1859, quoted in _DeBow's +Review_, XXIX, 362, note.] + +[Footnote 39: MS. among the Allen and Ellis papers in the Library of +Congress.] + +In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to avoid the +occasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too heavy, the simplest +recourse was to reduce the schedule. If jobs were slackly done, +acquiescence was easier than correction. The easy-going and plausible +disposition of the blacks conspired with the heat of the climate to soften +the resolution of the whites and make them patient. Severe and unyielding +requirements would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied with +geniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization would make +plantation life not only tolerable but charming. + +In the actual régime severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness the +rule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote in 1820: "After travelling +through three slave states I am obliged to go back to theory to raise any +abhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an instance of +cruel treatment nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in +'the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and appear at +least as independent as their masters; in animal spirits they have greatly +the advantage."[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828: "I have no wish, God knows! +to defend slavery in the abstract; ... but ... nothing during my recent +journey gave me more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I was +gradually brought that the planters of the Southern states of America, +generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage their estates with +the least possible severity. I do not say that undue severity is nowhere +exercised; but the discipline, taken upon the average, as far as I could +learn, is not more strict than is necessary for the maintenance of a proper +degree of authority, without which the whole framework of society in that +quarter would be blown to atoms."[41] And Olmsted wrote: "The only whipping +of slaves that I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazy +children as they are being broke in to work."[42] + +[Footnote 40: Adlard Welby, _Visit to North America_ (London, 1821 ) +reprinted in Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, XII, 289] + +[Footnote 41: Basil Hall, _Travels in the United States_, III, 227, 228.] + +[Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 146.] + +As to the rate and character of the work, Hall said that in contrast with +the hustle prevailing on the Northern farms, "in Carolina all mankind +appeared comparatively idle."[43] Olmsted, when citing a Virginian's remark +that his negroes never worked enough to tire themselves, said on his own +account: "This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at +work--they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength +into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, +perhaps."[44] And Solon Robinson reported tersely from a rice plantation +that the negroes plied their hoes "at so slow a rate, the motion would have +given a quick-working Yankee convulsions."[45] + +[Footnote 43: Basil Hall, III, 117.] + +[Footnote 44: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 91.] + +[Footnote 45: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 93.] + +There was clearly no general prevalence of severity and strain in the +régime. There was, furthermore, little of that curse of impersonality +and indifference which too commonly prevails in the factories of the +present-day world where power-driven machinery sets the pace, where the +employers have no relations with the employed outside of work hours, where +the proprietors indeed are scattered to the four winds, where the directors +confine their attention to finance, and where the one duty of the +superintendent is to procure a maximum output at a minimum cost. No, the +planters were commonly in residence, their slaves were their chief property +to be conserved, and the slaves themselves would not permit indifference +even if the masters were so disposed. The generality of the negroes +insisted upon possessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectful +intimacy. While by no means every plantation was an Arcadia there were many +on which the industrial and racial relations deserved almost as glowing +accounts as that which the Englishman William Faux wrote in 1819 of the +"goodly plantation" of the venerable Mr. Mickle in the uplands of South +Carolina.[46] "This gentleman," said he, "appears to me to be a rare +example of pure and undefiled religion, kind and gentle in manners.... +Seeing a swarm, or rather herd, of young negroes creeping and dancing +about the door and yard of his mansion, all appearing healthy, happy and +frolicsome and withal fat and decently clothed, both young and old, I felt +induced to praise the economy under which they lived. 'Aye,' said he, 'I +have many black people, but I have never bought nor sold any in my life. +All that you see came to me with my estate by virtue of my father's will. +They are all, old and young, true and faithful to my interests. They need +no taskmaster, no overseer. They will do all and more than I expect them +to do, and I can trust them with untold gold. All the adults are well +instructed, and all are members of Christian churches in the neighbourhood; +and their conduct is becoming their professions. I respect them as my +children, and they look on me as their friend and father. Were they to be +taken from me it would be the most unhappy event of their lives,' This +conversation induced me to view more attentively the faces of the adult +slaves; and I was astonished at the free, easy, sober, intelligent and +thoughtful impression which such an economy as Mr. Mickle's had indelibly +made on their countenances." + +[Footnote 46: William Faux, _Memorable Days in America_ (London, 1823), p. +68, reprinted in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, XI, 87.] + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +PLANTATION LIFE + + +When Hakluyt wrote in 1584 his _Discourse of Western Planting_, his theme +was the project of American colonization; and when a settlement was planted +at Jamestown, at Boston or at Providence as the case might be, it was +called, regardless of the type, a plantation. This usage of the word in the +sense of a colony ended only upon the rise of a new institution to which +the original name was applied. The colonies at large came then to be known +as provinces or dominions, while the sub-colonies, the privately +owned village estates which prevailed in the South, were alone called +plantations. In the Creole colonies, however, these were known as +_habitations_--dwelling places. This etymology of the name suggests the +nature of the thing--an isolated place where people in somewhat peculiar +groups settled and worked and had their being. The standard community +comprised a white household in the midst of several or many negro families. +The one was master, the many were slaves; the one was head, the many were +members; the one was teacher, the many were pupils. + +The scheme of the buildings reflected the character of the group. The "big +house," as the darkies loved to call it, might be of any type from a double +log cabin to a colonnaded mansion of many handsome rooms, and its setting +might range from a bit of primeval forest to an elaborate formal garden. +Most commonly the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretense +to distinction without nor to luxury within. The two fairly constant +features were the hall running the full depth of the house, and the +verandah spanning the front. The former by day and the latter at evening +served in all temperate seasons as the receiving place for guests and the +gathering place for the household at all its leisure times. The house was +likely to have a quiet dignity of its own; but most of such beauty as the +homestead possessed was contributed by the canopy of live-oaks if on the +rice or sugar coasts, or of oaks, hickories or cedars, if in the uplands. +Flanking the main house in many cases were an office and a lodge, +containing between them the administrative headquarters, the schoolroom, +and the apartments for any bachelor overflow whether tutor, sons or +guests. Behind the house and at a distance of a rod or two for the sake of +isolating its noise and odors, was the kitchen. Near this, unless a spring +were available, stood the well with its two buckets dangling from the +pulley; and near this in turn the dairy and the group of pots and tubs +which constituted the open air laundry. Bounding the back yard there were +the smoke-house where bacon and hams were cured, the sweet potato pit, the +ice pit except in the southernmost latitudes where no ice of local origin +was to be had, the carriage house, the poultry house, the pigeon cote, and +the lodgings of the domestic servants. On plantations of small or medium +scale the cabins of the field hands generally stood at the border of the +master's own premises; but on great estates, particularly in the lowlands, +they were likely to be somewhat removed, with the overseer's house, the +smithy, and the stables, corn cribs and wagon sheds nearby. At other +convenient spots were the buildings for working up the crops--the tobacco +house, the threshing and pounding mills, the gin and press, or the sugar +house as the respective staples required. The climate conduced so strongly +to out of door life that as a rule each roof covered but a single unit of +residence, industry or storage. + +The fields as well as the buildings commonly radiated from the planter's +house. Close at hand were the garden, the orchards and the horse lot; and +behind them the sweet potato field, the watermelon patch and the forage +plots of millet, sorghum and the like. Thence there stretched the fields +of the main crops in a more or less solid expanse according to the local +conditions. Where ditches or embankments were necessary, as for sugar and +rice fields, the high cost of reclamation promoted compactness; elsewhere +the prevailing cheapness of land promoted dispersion. Throughout the +uplands, accordingly, the area in crops was likely to be broken by wood +lots and long-term fallows. The scale of tillage might range from a few +score acres to a thousand or two; the expanse of unused land need have no +limit but those of the proprietor's purse and his speculative proclivity. + +The scale of the orchards was in some degree a measure of the domesticity +prevailing. On the rice coast the unfavorable character of the soil and the +absenteeism of the planter's families in summer conspired to keep the fruit +trees few. In the sugar district oranges and figs were fairly plentiful. +But as to both quantity and variety in fruits the Piedmont was unequaled. +Figs, plums, apples, pears and quinces were abundant, but the peaches +excelled all the rest. The many varieties of these were in two main groups, +those of clear stones and soft, luscious flesh for eating raw, and those +of clinging stones and firm flesh for drying, preserving, and making pies. +From June to September every creature, hogs included, commonly had as many +peaches as he cared to eat; and in addition great quantities might be +carried to the stills. The abandoned fields, furthermore, contributed +dewberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild plums in summer, and +persimmons in autumn, when the forest also yielded its muscadines, fox +grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts and chinquapins, and along the +Gulf coast pecans. + +The resources for edible game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, +opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, +doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and +marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and +rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin +and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In +most localities it required little time for a household, slave or free, to +lay forest, field or stream under tribute. + +The planter's own dietary, while mostly home grown, was elaborate. Beef and +mutton were infrequent because the pastures were poor; Irish potatoes were +used only when new, for they did not keep well in the Southern climate; +and wheaten loaves were seldom seen because hot breads were universally +preferred. The standard meats were chicken in its many guises, ham and +bacon. Wheat flour furnished relays of biscuit and waffles, while corn +yielded lye hominy, grits, muffins, batter cakes, spoon bread, hoe cake +and pone. The gardens provided in season lettuce, cucumbers, radishes and +beets, mustard greens and turnip greens, string beans, snap beans and +butter beans, asparagus and artichokes, Irish potatoes, squashes, onions, +carrots, turnips, okra, cabbages and collards. The fields added green corn +for boiling, roasting, stewing and frying, cowpeas and black-eyed peas, +pumpkins and sweet potatoes, which last were roasted, fried or candied +for variation. The people of the rice coast, furthermore, had a special +fondness for their own pearly staple; and in the sugar district _strop de +batterie_ was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves and jellies were +in variety and quantity limited only by the almost boundless resources and +industry of the housewife and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breads +and relishes would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpected +guests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal than would +be taken away at the end, never to return. If ever tables had a habit of +groaning it was those of the planters. Frugality, indeed, was reckoned a +vice to be shunned, and somewhat justly so since the vegetables and eggs +were perishable, the bread and meat of little cost, and the surplus from +the table found sure disposal in the kitchen or the quarters. Lucky was the +man whose wife was the "big house" cook, for the cook carried a basket, and +the basket was full when she was homeward bound. + +The fare of the field hands was, of course, far more simple. Hoecake and +bacon were its basis and often its whole content. But in summer fruit +and vegetables were frequent; there was occasional game and fish at all +seasons; and the first heavy frost of winter brought the festival of +hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all +other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare +ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings +greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of +corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, +carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by brought +recreation, but the hog-killing brought fat satisfaction.[1] + +[Footnote 1: This account of plantation homesteads and dietary is drawn +mainly from the writer's own observations in post-bellum times in which, +despite the shifting of industrial arrangements and the decrease of wealth, +these phases have remained apparent. Confirmation may be had in Philip +Fithian _Journal_ (Princeton, 1900); A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a +Year's Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859); Susan D. Smedes, +_Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (Baltimore, 1887); Mary B. Chestnutt, _A +Diary from Dixie_ (New York, 1905); and many other memoirs and traveller's +accounts.] + +The warmth of the climate produced some distinctive customs. One was the +high seasoning of food to stimulate the appetite; another was the afternoon +siesta of summer; a third the wellnigh constant leaving of doors ajar even +in winter when the roaring logs in the chimney merely took the chill from +the draughts. Indeed a door was not often closed on the plantation except +those of the negro cabins, whose inmates were hostile to night air, and +those of the storerooms. As a rule, it was only in the locks of the latter +that keys were ever turned by day or night. + +The lives of the whites and the blacks were partly segregate, partly +intertwined. If any special link were needed, the children supplied it. +The whites ones, hardly knowing their mothers from their mammies or their +uncles by blood from their "uncles" by courtesy, had the freedom of the +kitchen and the cabins, and the black ones were their playmates in the +shaded sandy yard the livelong day. Together they were regaled with +folklore in the quarters, with Bible and fairy stories in the "big house," +with pastry in the kitchen, with grapes at the scuppernong arbor, with +melons at the spring house and with peaches in the orchard. The half-grown +boys were likewise almost as undiscriminating among themselves as the dogs +with which they chased rabbits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, when +the fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something +to envy in the freedom of their fellows' feet from the cramping weight of +shoes and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With +the approach of maturity came routine and responsibility for the whites, +routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each +race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, some +of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of +both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a somewhat +distinctive plantation type. + +In amusements and in religion the activities of the whites and blacks were +both mingled and separate. Fox hunts when occurring by day were as a rule +diversions only for the planters and their sons and guests, but when they +occurred by moonlight the chase was joined by the negroes on foot with +halloos which rivalled the music of the hounds. By night also the blacks, +with the whites occasionally joining in, sought the canny 'possum and the +embattled 'coon; in spare times by day they hied their curs after the +fleeing Brer Rabbit, or built and baited seductive traps for turkeys and +quail; and fishing was available both by day and by night. At the horse +races of the whites the jockeys and many of the spectators were negroes; +while from the cock fights and even the "crap" games of the blacks, white +men and boys were not always absent. + +Festivities were somewhat more separate than sports, though by no means +wholly so. In the gayeties of Christmas the members of each race were +spectators of the dances and diversions of the other. Likewise marriage +merriment in the great house would have its echo in the quarters; and +sometimes marriages among the slaves were grouped so as to give occasion +for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general +invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding +among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the +fiddle, the banjo and the bones were not seldom in requisition. + +[Footnote 2: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), April 20, 1858.] + +It was a matter of discomfort that in the evangelical churches dancing +and religion were held to be incompatible. At one time on Thomas Dabney's +plantation in Mississippi, for instance, the whole negro force fell captive +in a Baptist "revival" and forswore the double shuffle. "I done buss' my +fiddle an' my banjo, and done fling 'em away," the most music-loving +fellow on the place said to the preacher when asked for his religious +experiences.[3] Such a condition might be tolerable so long as it was +voluntary; but the planters were likely to take precautions against its +becoming coercive. James H. Hammond, for instance, penciled a memorandum +in his plantation manual: "Church members are privileged to dance on all +holyday occasions; and the class-leader or deacon who may report them shall +be reprimanded or punished at the discretion of the master."[4] The logic +with which sin and sanctity were often reconciled is illustrated in Irwin +Russell's remarkably faithful "Christmas in the Quarters." "Brudder Brown" +has advanced upon the crowded floor to "beg a blessin' on dis dance:" + +[Footnote 3: S.D. Smedes. _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 161, 162.] + +[Footnote 4: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + + O Mashr! let dis gath'rin' fin' a blessin' in yo' sight! + Don't jedge us hard fur what we does--you knows it's Chrismus night; + An' all de balunce ob de yeah we does as right's we kin. + Ef dancin's wrong, O Mashr! let de time excuse de sin! + + We labors in de vineya'd, wukin' hard and wukin' true; + Now, shorely you won't notus, ef we eats a grape or two, + An' takes a leetle holiday,--a leetle restin' spell,-- + Bekase, nex' week we'll start in fresh, an' labor twicet as well. + + Remember, Mashr,--min' dis, now,--de sinfulness ob sin + Is 'pendin' 'pon de sperrit what we goes an' does it in; + An' in a righchis frame ob min' we's gwine to dance an' sing, + A-feelin' like King David, when he cut de pigeon-wing. + + It seems to me--indeed it do--I mebbe mout be wrong-- + That people raly _ought_ to dance, when Chrismus comes along; + Des dance bekase dey's happy--like de birds hops in de trees, + De pine-top fiddle soundin' to de blowin' ob de breeze. + + We has no ark to dance afore, like Isrul's prophet king; + We has no harp to soun' de chords, to holp us out to sing; + But 'cordin' to de gif's we has we does de bes' we knows, + An' folks don't 'spise de vi'let-flower bekase it ain't de rose. + + You bless us, please, sah, eben ef we's doin' wrong tonight: + Kase den we'll need de blessin' more'n ef we's doin' right; + An' let de blessin' stay wid us, untel we comes to die, + An' goes to keep our Chrismus wid dem sheriffs in de sky! + + Yes, tell dem preshis anjuls we's a-gwine to jine 'em soon: + Our voices we's a-trainin' fur to sing de glory tune; + We's ready when you wants us, an' it ain't no matter when-- + O Mashr! call yo' chillen soon, an' take 'em home! Amen.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Irwin Russell, _Poems_ (New York [1888]), pp. 5-7.] + +The churches which had the greatest influence upon the negroes were those +which relied least upon ritual and most upon exhilaration. The Baptist and +Methodist were foremost, and the latter had the special advantage of the +chain of camp meetings which extended throughout the inland regions. At +each chosen spot the planters and farmers of the countryside would jointly +erect a great shed or "stand" in the midst of a grove, and would severally +build wooden shelters or "tents" in a great square surrounding it. When the +crops were laid by in August, the households would remove thither, their +wagons piled high with bedding, chairs and utensils to keep "open house" +with heavy-laden tables for all who might come to the meeting. With less +elaborate equipment the negroes also would camp in the neighborhood and +attend the same service as the whites, sitting generally in a section of +the stand set apart for them. The camp meeting, in short, was the chief +social and religious event of the year for all the Methodist whites and +blacks within reach of the ground and for such non-Methodists as cared +to attend. For some of the whites this occasion was highly festive, for +others, intensely religious; but for any negro it might easily be both at +once. Preachers in relays delivered sermons at brief intervals from +sunrise until after nightfall; and most of the sermons were followed by +exhortations for sinners to advance to the mourners' benches to receive +the more intimate and individual suasion of the clergy and their corps of +assisting brethren and sisters. The condition was highly hypnotic, and the +professions of conversion were often quite as ecstatic as the most fervid +ministrant could wish. The negroes were particularly welcome to the +preachers, for they were likely to give the promptest response to the +pulpit's challenge and set the frenzy going. A Georgia preacher, for +instance, in reporting from one of these camps in 1807, wrote: "The first +day of the meeting, we had a gentle and comfortable moving of the spirit of +the Lord among us; and at night it was much more powerful than before, and +the meeting was kept up all night without intermission. However, before +day the white people retired, and the meeting was continued by the black +people." It is easy to see who led the way to the mourners' bench. "Next +day," the preacher continued, "at ten o'clock the meeting was remarkably +lively, and many souls were deeply wrought upon; and at the close of the +sermon there was a general cry for mercy, and before night there were a +good many persons who professed to get converted. That night the meeting +continued all night, both by the white and black people, and many souls +were converted before day." The next day the stir was still more general. +Finally, "Friday was the greatest day of all. We had the Lord's Supper at +night, ... and such a solemn time I have seldom seen on the like occasion. +Three of the preachers fell helpless within the altar, and one lay a +considerable time before he came to himself. From that the work of +convictions and conversions spread, and a large number were converted +during the night, and there was no intermission until the break of day. At +that time many stout hearted sinners were conquered. On Saturday we had +preaching at the rising of the sun; and then with many tears we took leave +of each other."[6] + +[Footnote 6: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Aug. 8, 1807, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 285, 286.] + +The tone of the Baptist "protracted meetings" was much like that of the +Methodist camps. In either case the rampant emotionalism, effective enough +among the whites, was with the negroes a perfect contagion. With some of +these the conversion brought lasting change; with others it provided a +garment of piety to be donned with "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes" and +doffed as irksome on week days. With yet more it merely added to the joys +of life. The thrill of exaltation would be followed by pleasurable "sin," +to give place to fresh conversion when the furor season recurred. The +rivalry of the Baptist and Methodist churches, each striving by similar +methods to excel the other, tempted many to become oscillating proselytes, +yielding to the allurements first of the one and then of the other, and on +each occasion holding the center of the stage as a brand snatched from the +burning, a lost sheep restored to the fold, a cause and participant of +rapture. + +In these manifestations the negroes merely followed and enlarged upon the +example of some of the whites. The similarity of practices, however, +did not promote a permanent mingling of the two races in the same +congregations, for either would feel some restraint upon its rhapsody +imposed by the presence of the other. To relieve this there developed in +greater or less degree a separation of the races for purposes of worship, +white ministers preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantation +missions, and home talent among the negroes filling the intervals. While +some of the black exhorters were viewed with suspicion by the whites, +others were highly esteemed and unusually privileged. One of these at +Lexington, Kentucky, for example, was given the following pass duly signed +by his master: "Tom is my slave, and has permission to go to Louisville for +two or three weeks and return here after he has made his visit. Tom is a +preacher of the reformed Baptist church, and has always been a faithful +servant."[7] As a rule the greater the proportion of negroes in a district +or a church connection, the greater the segregation in worship. If the +whites were many and the negroes few, the latter would be given the gallery +or some other group of pews; but if the whites were few and the negroes +many, the two elements would probably worship in separate buildings. Even +in such case, however, it was very common for a parcel of black domestics +to flock with their masters rather than with their fellows. + +[Footnote 7: Dated Aug. 6, 1856, and signed E. McCallister. MS. in the New +York Public Library.] + +The general régime in the fairly typical state of South Carolina was +described in 1845 in a set of reports procured preliminary to a convention +on the state of religion among the negroes and the means of its betterment. +Some of these accounts were from the clergy of several denominations, +others from the laity; some treated of general conditions in the several +districts, others in detail of systems on the writers' own plantations. In +the latter group, N.W. Middleton, an Episcopalian of St. Andrew's parish, +wrote that he and his wife and sons were the only religious teachers of his +slaves, aside from the rector of the parish. He read the service and taught +the catechism to all every Sunday afternoon, and taught such as came +voluntarily to be instructed after family prayers on Wednesday nights. His +wife and sons taught the children "constantly during the week," chiefly in +the catechism. On the other hand R.F.W. Allston, a fellow Episcopalian of +Prince George, Winyaw, had on his plantation a place of worship open to all +denominations. A Methodist missionary preached there on alternate Sundays, +and the Baptists were less regularly cared for. Both of these sects, +furthermore, had prayer meetings, according to the rules of the plantation, +on two nights of each week. Thus while Middleton endeavored to school his +slaves in his own faith, Allston encouraged them to seek salvation by such +creed as they might choose. + +An Episcopal clergyman in the same parish with Allston wrote that he held +fortnightly services among the negroes on ten plantations, and enlisted +some of the literate slaves as lay readers. His restriction of these to the +text of the prayer book, however, seems to have shorn them of power. The +bulk of the slaves flocked to the more spontaneous exercises elsewhere; +and the clergyman could find ground for satisfaction only in saying that +frequently as many as two hundred slaves attended services at one of the +parish churches in the district. + +The Episcopal failure was the "evangelical" opportunity. Of the thirteen +thousand slaves in Allston's parish some 3200 were Methodists and 1500 +Baptists, as compared with 300 Episcopalians. In St. Peter's parish a +Methodist reported that in a total of 6600 slaves, 1335 adhered to his +faith, about half of whom were in mixed congregations of whites and blacks +under the care of two circuit-riders, and the rest were in charge of two +missionaries who ministered to negroes alone. Every large plantation, +furthermore, had one or more "so-called negro preachers, but more properly +exhorters." In St. Helena parish the Baptists led with 2132 communicants; +the Methodists followed with 314 to whom a missionary holding services on +twenty plantations devoted the whole of his time; and the Episcopalians as +usual brought up the rear with fifty-two negro members of the church at +Beaufort and a solitary additional one in the chapel on St. Helena island. + +Of the progress and effects of religion in the lowlands Allston and +Middleton thought well. The latter said, "In every respect I feel +encouraged to go on." The former wrote: "Of my own negroes and those in my +immediate neighborhood I may speak with confidence. They are attentive to +religious instruction and greatly improved in intelligence and morals, in +domestic relations, etc. Those who have grown up under religious training +are more intelligent and generally, though not always, more improved than +those who have received religious instruction as adults. Indeed the degree +of intelligence which as a class they are acquiring is worthy of deep +consideration." Thomas Fuller, the reporter from the Beaufort neighborhood, +however, was as much apprehensive as hopeful. While the negroes had greatly +improved in manners and appearance as a result of coming to worship in town +every Sunday, said he, the freedom which they were allowed for the purpose +was often misused in ways which led to demoralization. He strongly advised +the planters to keep the slaves at home and provide instruction there. + +From the upland cotton belt a Presbyterian minister in the Chester district +wrote: "You are all aware, gentlemen, that the relation and intercourse +between the whites and the blacks in the up-country are very different from +what they are in the low-country. With us they are neither so numerous nor +kept so entirely separate, but constitute a part of our households, and are +daily either with their masters or some member of the white family. From +this circumstance they feel themselves more identified with their owners +than they can with you. I minister steadily to two different congregations. +More than one hundred blacks attend.... The gallery, or a quarter of the +house, is appropriated to them in all our churches, and they enjoy the +preached gospel in common with the whites." Finally, from the Greenville +district, on the upper edge of the Piedmont, where the Methodists and +Baptists were completely dominant among whites and blacks alike, it was +reported: "About one fourth of the members in the churches are negroes. +In the years 1832, '3 and '4 great numbers of negroes joined the churches +during a period of revival. Many, I am sorry to say, have since been +excommunicated. As the general zeal in religion declined, they backslid." +There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer continued, who were +thought to do some good; but the general improvement in negro character, he +thought, was mainly due to the religious and moral training given by their +masters, and still more largely by their mistresses. From all quarters the +expression was common that the promotion of religion among the slaves was +not only the duty of masters but was to their interest as well in that it +elevated the morals of the workmen and improved the quality of the service +they rendered.[8] + +[Footnote 8: _Proceedings of the Meeting in Charleston, S.C., May 13-15, +1845, on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, together with the Report +of the Committee and the Address to the Public_ (Charleston, 1845). The +reports of the Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes in +Liberty County, Georgia, printed annually for a dozen years or more in the +'thirties and 'forties, relate the career of a particularly interesting +missionary work in that county on the rice coast, under the charge of the +Reverend C.C. Jones. The tenth report in the series (1845) summarizes the +work of the first decade, and the twelfth (1847) surveys the conditions +then prevalent. In C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ +(Nashville, [1857]) the ninth chapter is made up of reports on the mission +activities of that church among the negroes in various quarters of the +South.] + +In general, the less the cleavage of creed between master and man, the +better for both, since every factor conducing to solidarity of sentiment +was of advantage in promoting harmony and progress. When the planter went +to sit under his rector while the slave stayed at home to hear an exhorter, +just so much was lost in the sense of fellowship. It was particularly +unfortunate that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had no +co-religionists except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they had +more conflict than community of economic and sentimental interest. On +the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsible +religious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroes +everywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired by +consistent self-control in the performance of duty rather man by the +alternation of spasmodic reforms and relapses. + +Occasionally some hard-headed negro would resist the hypnotic suggestion +of his preacher, and even repudiate glorification on his death-bed. A +Louisiana physician recounts the final episode in the career of "Old Uncle +Caleb," who had long been a-dying. "Before his departure, Jeff, the negro +preacher of the place, gathered his sable flock of saints and sinners +around the bed. He read a chapter and prayed, after which they sang a +hymn.... Uncle Caleb lay motionless with closed eyes, and gave no sign. +Jeff approached and took his hand. 'Uncle Caleb,' said he earnestly, 'de +doctor says you are dying; and all de bredderin has come in for to see you +de last time. And now, Uncle Caleb, dey wants to hear from your own mouf de +precious words, dat you feels prepared to meet your God, and is ready and +willin' to go,' Old Caleb opened his eyes suddenly, and in a very peevish, +irritable tone, rebuffed the pious functionary in the following unexpected +manner: 'Jeff, don't talk your nonsense to me! You jest knows dat I an't +ready to go, nor willin' neder; and dat I an't prepared to meet nobody,' +Jeff expatiated largely not only on the mercy of God, but on the glories of +the heavenly kingdom, as a land flowing with milk and honey, etc. 'Dis ole +cabin suits me mon'sus well!' was the only reply he could elicit from the +old reprobate. And so he died."[9] + +[Footnote 9: William H. Holcombe, "Sketches of Plantation Life," in the +_Knickerbocker Magazine_, LVII, 631 (June, 1861).] + +The slaves not only had their own functionaries in mystic matters, +including a remnant of witchcraft, but in various temporal concerns also. +Foremen, chosen by masters with the necessary sanction of the slaves, had +industrial and police authority; nurses were minor despots in sick rooms +and plantation hospitals; many an Uncle Remus was an oracle in folklore; +and many an Aunt Dinah was arbitress of style in turbans and of elegancies +in general. Even in the practice of medicine a negro here and there gained +a sage's reputation. The governor of Virginia reported in 1729 that he had +"met with a negro, a very old man, who has performed many wonderful cures +of diseases. For the sake of his freedom he has revealed the medicine, a +concoction of roots and barks.... There is no room to doubt of its being +a certain remedy here, and of singular use among the negroes--it is well +worth the price (£60) of the negro's freedom, since it is now known how to +cure slaves without mercury."[10] And in colonial South Carolina a slave +named Caesar was particularly famed for his cure for poison, which was a +decoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rum +and lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in +case of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription +published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal which +printed it found its copies exhausted by the demand.[11] An example of more +common episodes appears in a letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, +to Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall, asking that "Brother Tom," Carter's +coachman, be sent to see a sick child in his quarter. Dawson continued: +"The black people at this place hath more faith in him as a doctor than any +white doctor; and as I wrote you in a former letter I cannot expect you to +lose your man's time, etc., for nothing, but am quite willing to pay for +same."[12] + +[Footnote 10: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913), +p. 53, note.] + +[Footnote 11: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1751.] + +[Footnote 12: MS. in the Carter papers, Virginia Historical Society.] + +Each plantation had a double head in the master and the mistress. The +latter, mother of a romping brood of her own and over-mother of the +pickaninny throng, was the chatelaine of the whole establishment. Working +with a never flagging constancy, she carried the indoor keys, directed the +household routine and the various domestic industries, served as head nurse +for the sick, and taught morals and religion by precept and example. +Her hours were long, her diversions few, her voice quiet, her influence +firm.[13] Her presence made the plantation a home; her absence would have +made it a factory. The master's concern was mainly with the able-bodied in +the routine of the crops. He laid the plans, guessed the weather, ordered +the work, and saw to its performance. He was out early and in late, +directing, teaching, encouraging, and on occasion punishing. Yet he found +time for going to town and for visits here and there, time for politics, +and time for sports. If his duty as he saw it was sometimes grim, and +his disappointments keen, hearty diversions were at hand to restore his +equanimity. His horn hung near and his hounds made quick response on +Reynard's trail, and his neighbors were ready to accept his invitations and +give theirs lavishly in return, whether to their houses or to their fields. +When their absences from home were long, as they might well be in the +public service, they were not unlikely upon return to meet such a reception +as Henry Laurens described: "I found nobody there but three of our old +domestics--Stepney, Exeter and big Hagar. These drew tears from me by their +humble and affectionate salutes. My knees were clasped, my hands kissed, +my very feet embraced, and nothing less than a very--I can't say fair, but +full--buss of my lips would satisfy the old man weeping and sobbing in my +face.... They ... held my hands, hung upon me; I could scarce get from +them. 'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never thought to see you again; now I am +happy; Ah, I never thought to see you again.'"[14] + +[Footnote 13: Emily J. Putnam, _The Lady_ (New York, 1910), pp. 282-323.] + +[Footnote 14: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 436.] + +Among the clearest views of plantation life extant are those of two +Northern tutors who wrote of their Southern sojourns. One was Philip +Fithian who went from Princeton in 1773 to teach the children of Colonel +Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall in the "Northern Neck" of Virginia, probably +the most aristocratic community of the whole South: the other was A. de Puy +Van Buren who left Battle Creek in the eighteen-fifties to seek health and +employment in Mississippi and found them both, and happiness too, amid the +freshly settled folk on the banks of the Yazoo River. Each of these made +jottings now and then of the work and play of the negroes, but both of them +were mainly impressed by the social régime in which they found themselves +among the whites. Fithian marveled at the evidences of wealth and the +stratification of society, but he reckoned that a well recommended +Princeton graduate, with no questions asked as to his family, fortune or +business, would be rated socially as on an equal footing with the owner +of a £10,000 estate, though this might be discounted one-half if he were +unfashionably ignorant of dancing, boxing, fencing, fiddling and cards.[15] +He was attracted by the buoyancy, the good breeding and the cordiality of +those whom he met, and particularly by the sound qualities of Colonel and +Mrs. Carter with whom he dwelt; but as a budding Presbyterian preacher he +was a little shocked at first by the easy-going conduct of the Episcopalian +planters on Sundays. The time at church, he wrote, falls into three +divisions: first, that before service, which is filled by the giving and +receiving of business letters, the reading of advertisements and the +discussion of crop prices and the lineage and qualities of favorite horses; +second, "in the church at service, prayrs read over in haste, a sermon +seldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound +morality or deep, studied metaphysicks;"[16] third, "after service is over, +three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the church among the +crowd, in which time you will be invited by several different gentlemen +home with them to dinner." + +[Footnote 15: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), +p. 287.] + +[Footnote 16: Fithian _Journal and Letters_, p. 296.] + +Van Buren found the towns in the Yazoo Valley so small as barely to be +entitled to places on the map; he found the planters' houses to be commonly +mere log structures, as the farmers' houses about his own home in Michigan +had been twenty years before; and he found the roads so bad that the mule +teams could hardly draw their wagons nor the spans of horses their chariots +except in dry weather. But when on his horseback errands in search of a +position he learned to halloo from the roadway and was regularly met at +each gate with an extended hand and a friendly "How do you do, sir? Won't +you alight, come in, take a seat and sit awhile?"; when he was invariably +made a member of any circle gathered on the porch and refreshed with cool +water from the cocoanut dipper or with any other beverages in circulation; +when he was asked as a matter of course to share any meal in prospect and +to spend the night or day, he discovered charms even in the crudities of +the pegs for hanging saddles on the porch and the crevices between the logs +of the wall for the keeping of pipes and tobacco, books and newspapers. +Finally, when the planter whose house he had made headquarters for two +months declined to accept a penny in payment, Van Buren's heart overflowed. +The boys whom he then began to teach he found particularly apt in +historical studies, and their parents with whom he dwelt were thorough +gentlefolk. + +Toward the end of his narrative, Van Buren expressed the thought that +Mississippi, the newly settled home of people from all the older Southern +states, exemplified the manners of all. He was therefore prompted to +generalize and interpret: "A Southern gentleman is composed of the same +material that a Northern gentleman is, only it is tempered by a Southern +clime and mode of life. And if in this temperament there is a little more +urbanity and chivalry, a little more politeness and devotion to the ladies, +a little more _suaviter in modo_, why it is theirs--be fair and acknowledge +it, and let them have it. He is from the mode of life he lives, especially +at home, more or less a cavalier; he invariably goes a-horseback. His boot +is always spurred, and his hand ensigned with the riding-whip. Aside from +this he is known by his bearing--his frankness and firmness." Furthermore +he is a man of eminent leisureliness, which Van Buren accounts for as +follows: "Nature is unloosed of her stays there; she is not crowded for +time; the word haste is not in her vocabulary. In none of the seasons is +she stinted to so short a space to perform her work as at the North. She +has leisure enough to bud and blossom--to produce and mature fruit, and do +all her work. While on the other hand in the North right the reverse is +true. Portions are taken off the fall and spring to lengthen out the +winter, making his reign nearly half the year. This crowds the work of +the whole year, you might say, into about half of it. This ... makes the +essential difference between a Northerner and a Southerner. They are +children of their respective climes; and this is why Southrons are so +indifferent about time; they have three months more of it in a year than we +have." [17] + +[Footnote 17: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the +South_, pp. 232-236.] + +A key to Van Buren's enthusiasm is given by a passage in the diary of +the great English reporter, William H. Russell: "The more one sees of a +planter's life the greater is the conviction that its charms come from a +particular turn of mind, which is separated by a wide interval from modern +ideas in Europe. The planter is a denomadized Arab;--he has fixed himself +with horses and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women with +Oriental care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tender +and hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming, +because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments of +womanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudeness +about it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents are +visible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, in +its decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery."[18] The Southerners +themselves took its incongruities much as a matter of course. The régime +was to their minds so clearly the best attainable under the circumstances +that its roughnesses chafed little. The plantations were homes to which, +as they were fond of singing, their hearts turned ever; and the negroes, +exasperating as they often were to visiting strangers, were an element +in the home itself. The problem of accommodation, which was the central +problem of the life, was on the whole happily solved. + +[Footnote 18: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, +1863), p. 285.] + +The separate integration of the slaves was no more than rudimentary. They +were always within the social mind and conscience of the whites, as the +whites in turn were within the mind and conscience of the blacks. The +adjustments and readjustments were mutually made, for although the masters +had by far the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by no +means devoid of influence. A sagacious employer has well said, after long +experience, "a negro understands a white man better than the white man +understands the negro."[19] This knowledge gave a power all its own. The +general régime was in fact shaped by mutual requirements, concessions +and understandings, producing reciprocal codes of conventional morality. +Masters of the standard type promoted Christianity and the customs of +marriage and parental care, and they instructed as much by example as +by precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences, and +permitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought the slaves could be +trusted not to abuse; they refrained from selling slaves except under +the stress of circumstances; they avoided cruel, vindictive and captious +punishments, and endeavored to inspire effort through affection rather +than through fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderate +industrial results. In short their despotism, so far as it might properly +be so called was benevolent in intent and on the whole beneficial in +effect. + +[Footnote 19: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of +Economics_ [New Orleans, 1911], p. 8.] + +Some planters there were who inflicted severe punishments for disobedience +and particularly for the offense of running away; and the community +condoned and even sanctioned a certain degree of this. Otherwise no planter +would have printed such descriptions of scars and brands as were fairly +common in the newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the recapture +of absconders.[20] When severity went to an excess that was reckoned as +positive cruelty, however, the law might be invoked if white witnesses +could be had; or the white neighbors or the slaves themselves might apply +extra-legal retribution. The former were fain to be content with inflicting +social ostracism or with expelling the offender from the district;[21] the +latter sometimes went so far as to set fire to the oppressor's house or to +accomplish his death by poison, cudgel, knife or bullet.[22] + +[Footnote 20: Examples are reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, +79-91.] + +[Footnote 21: An instance is given in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the +Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., [1914]), p. 75.] + +[Footnote 22: For instances _see Plantation and Frontier_, II, 117-121.] + +In the typical group there was occasion for terrorism on neither side. The +master was ruled by a sense of dignity, duty and moderation, and the +slaves by a moral code of their own. This embraced a somewhat obsequious +obedience, the avoidance of open indolence and vice, the attainment of +moderate skill in industry, and the cultivation of the master's good +will and affection. It winked at petty theft, loitering and other little +laxities, while it stressed good manners and a fine faithfulness in major +concerns. While the majority were notoriously easy-going, very many made +their master's interests thoroughly their own; and many of the masters had +perfect confidence in the loyalty of the bulk of their servitors. When on +the eve of secession Edmund Ruffin foretold[23] the fidelity which the +slaves actually showed when the war ensued, he merely voiced the faith of +the planter class. + +[Footnote 23: _Debowfs Review_, XXX, 118-120 (January, 1861).] + +In general the relations on both sides were felt to be based on pleasurable +responsibility. The masters occasionally expressed this in their letters. +William Allason, for example, who after a long career as a merchant at +Falmouth, Virginia, had retired to plantation life, declined his niece's +proposal in 1787 that he return to Scotland to spend his declining years. +In enumerating his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing which +in your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithful +slaves, which perhaps we have raised from their earliest breath. Even this, +however, some can do, as with horses, etc., but I must own that it is not +in my disposition."[24] + +[Footnote 24: Letter dated Jan. 22, 1787, in the Allason MS. mercantile +books, Virginia State Library.] + +Others were yet more expressive when they came to write their wills. +Thus[25] Howell Cobb of Houston County, Georgia, when framing his testament +in 1817 which made his body-servant "to be what he is really deserving, a +free man," and gave an annuity along with virtual freedom to another slave, +of an advanced age, said that the liberation of the rest of his slaves was +prevented by a belief that the care of generous and humane masters would +be much better for them than a state of freedom. Accordingly he bequeathed +these to his wife who he knew from her goodness of temper would treat them +with unflagging kindness. But should the widow remarry, thereby putting her +property under the control of a stranger, the slaves and the plantation +were at once to revert to the testator's brother who was recommended to +bequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he were deemed worthy of the +trust. "It is my most ardent desire that in whatsoever hands fortune +may place said negroes," the will enjoined, "that all the justice and +indulgence may be shown them that is consistent with a state of slavery. I +flatter myself with the hope that none of my relations or connections will +be so ungrateful to my memory as to treat or use them otherwise." Surely +upon the death of such a master the slaves might, with even more than usual +unction, raise their melodious refrain: + +[Footnote 25: MS. copy in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, +Ga. The nephew mentioned in the will was Howell Cobb of Confederate +prominence.] + + Down in de cawn fiel' + Hear dat mo'nful soun'; + All de darkies am aweepin', + Massa's in de col', col' ground. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +PLANTATION TENDENCIES + + +Every typical settlement in English America was in its first phase a bit +of the frontier. Commerce was rudimentary, capital scant, and industry +primitive. Each family had to suffice itself in the main with its own +direct produce. No one could afford to specialize his calling, for the +versatility of the individual was wellnigh a necessity of life. This phase +lasted only until some staple of export was found which permitted the rise +of external trade. Then the fruit of such energy as could be spared from +the works of bodily sustenance was exchanged for the goods of the outer +world; and finally in districts of special favor for staples, the bulk of +the community became absorbed in the special industry and procured most of +its consumption goods from without. + +In the hidden coves of the Southern Alleghanies the primitive régime has +proved permanent. In New England where it was but gradually replaced +through the influence first of the fisheries and then of manufacturing, it +survived long enough to leave an enduring spirit of versatile enterprise, +evidenced in the plenitude of "Yankee notions." In the Southern lowlands +and Piedmont, however, the pristine advantages of self-sufficing industry +were so soon eclipsed by the profits to be had from tobacco, rice, indigo, +sugar or cotton, that in large degree the whole community adopted a +stereotyped economy with staple production as its cardinal feature. +The earnings obtained by the more efficient producers brought an early +accumulation of capital, and at the same time the peculiar adaptability of +all the Southern staples to production on a large scale by unfree labor +prompted the devotion of most of the capital to the purchase of servants +and slaves. Thus in every district suited to any of these staples, the +growth of an industrial and social system like that of Europe and the +Northern States was cut short and the distinctive Southern scheme of things +developed instead. + +This régime was conditioned by its habitat, its products and the racial +quality of its labor supply, as well as by the institution of slavery and +the traditional predilections of the masters. The climate of the South was +generally favorable to one or another of the staples except in the elevated +tracts in and about the mountain ranges. The soil also was favorable except +in the pine barrens which skirted the seaboard. Everywhere but in the +alluvial districts, however, the land had only a surface fertility, and all +the staples, as well as their great auxiliary Indian corn, required the +fields to be kept clean and exposed to the weather; and the heavy rainfall +of the region was prone to wash off the soil from the hillsides and to +leach the fertile ingredients through the sands of the plains. But so +spacious was the Southern area that the people never lacked fresh fields +when their old ones were outworn. Hence, while public economy for the long +run might well have suggested a conservation of soil at the expense of +immediate crops, private economy for the time being dictated the opposite +policy; and its dictation prevailed, as it has done in virtually all +countries and all ages. Slaves working in squads might spread manure and +sow soiling crops if so directed, as well as freemen working individually; +and their failure to do so was fully paralleled by similar neglect at the +North in the same period. New England, indeed, was only less noted than the +South for exhausted fields and abandoned farms. The newness of the country, +the sparseness of population and the cheapness of land conspired with +crops, climate and geological conditions to promote exploitive methods. +The planters were by no means alone in shaping their program to fit these +circumstances.[1] The heightened speed of the consequences was in a sense +merely an unwelcome proof of their system's efficiency. Their laborers, by +reason of being slaves, must at word of command set forth on a trek of +a hundred or a thousand miles. No racial inertia could hinder nor local +attachments hold them. In the knowledge of this the masters were even more +alert than other men of the time for advantageous new locations; and they +were accordingly fain to be content with rude houses and flimsy fences in +any place of sojourn, and to let their hills remain studded with stumps as +well as to take the exhaustion of the soil as a matter of course.[2] + +[Footnote 1 Edmund Ruffin, _Address on the opposite results of exhausting +and fertilizing systems of agriculture. Read before the South Carolina +Institute, November 18, 1852_ (Charleston, 1853), pp. 12, 13.] + +[Footnote 2 W.L. Trenholm, "The Southern States, their social and +industrial history, conditions and needs," in the _Journal of Social +Science_, no. IX (January, 1878).] + +Migration produced a more or less thorough segregation of types, for +planters and farmers respectively tended to enter and remain in the +districts most favorable to them.[3] The monopolization of the rice and +sugar industries by the planters, has been described in previous chapters. +At the other extreme the farming régime was without a rival throughout the +mountain regions, in the Shenandoah and East Tennessee Valleys and in +large parts of Kentucky and Missouri where the Southern staples would not +flourish, and in great tracts of the pine barrens where the quality of +the soil repelled all but the unambitious. The tobacco and cotton belts +remained as the debatable ground in which the two systems might compete on +more nearly even terms, though in some cotton districts the planters had +always an overwhelming advantage. In the Mississippi bottoms, for example, +the solid spread of the fields facilitated the supervision of large gangs +at work, and the requirement of building and maintaining great levees on +the river front virtually debarred operations by small proprietors. The +extreme effects of this are illustrated in Issa-quena County, Mississippi, +and Concordia Parish, Louisiana, where in 1860 the slaveholdings averaged +thirty and fifty slaves each, and where except for plantation overseers +and their families there were virtually no non-slaveholders present. The +Alabama prairies, furthermore, showed a plantation predominance almost as +complete. In the six counties of Dallas, Greene, Lowndes, Macon, Perry, +Sumter and Wilcox, for example, the average slaveholdings ranged from +seventeen to twenty-one each, and the slaveholding families were from twice +to six times as numerous as the non-slaveholding ones. Even in the more +rugged parts of the cotton belt and in the tobacco zone as well, the same +tendency toward the engrossment of estates prevailed, though in milder +degree and with lesser effects. + +[Footnote 3 F.V. Emerson, "Geographical Influences in American Slavery," in +the American Geographical Society _Bulletin_, XLIII (1911), 13-26, 106-118, +170-181.] + +This widespread phenomenon did not escape the notice of contemporaries. Two +members of the South Carolina legislature described it as early as 1805 in +substance as follows: "As one man grows wealthy and thereby increases his +stock of negroes, he wants more land to employ them on; and being fully +able, he bids a large price for his less opulent neighbor's plantation, who +by selling advantageously here can raise money enough to go into the back +country, where he can be more on a level with the most forehanded, can get +lands cheaper, and speculate or grow rich by industry as he pleases."[4] +Some three decades afterward another South Carolinian spoke sadly "on the +incompatibleness of large plantations with neighboring farms, and their +uniform tendency to destroy the yeoman."[5] Similarly Dr. Basil Manly,[6] +president of the University of Alabama, spoke in 1841 of the inveterate +habit of Southern farmers to buy more land and slaves and plod on captive +to the customs of their ancestors; and C.C. Clay, Senator from Alabama, +said in 1855 of his native county of Madison, which lay on the Tennessee +border: "I can show you ... the sad memorials of the artless and exhausting +culture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking the cream off their +lands, unable to restore them by rest, manures or otherwise, are going +further west and south in search of other virgin lands which they may and +will despoil and impoverish in like manner. Our wealthier planters, with +greater means and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, +extending their plantations and adding to their slave force. The wealthy +few, who are able to live on smaller profits and to give their blasted +fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merely +independent.... In traversing that county one will discover numerous farm +houses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied +by slaves, or tenantless, deserted and dilapidated; he will observe +fields, once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those evil +harbingers fox-tail and broomsedge; he will see the moss growing on the +mouldering walls of once thrifty villages; and will find 'one only master +grasps the whole domain' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen white +families. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty years ago scarce +a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is already +exhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and +the Carolinas; the freshness of its agricultural glory is gone, the vigor +of its youth is extinct, and the spirit of desolation seems brooding over +it."[7] + +[Footnote 4: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] + +[Footnote 5: Quoted in Francis Lieber, _Slavery, Plantations and the +Yeomanry_ (Loyal Publication Society, no. 29, New York, 1863), p. 5.] + +[Footnote 6: _Tuscaloosa Monitor_, April 13, 1842.] + +[Footnote 7: _DeBow's Review_, XIX, 727.] + +The census returns for Madison County show that in 1830 when the gross +population was at its maximum the whites and slaves were equally numerous, +and that by 1860 while the whites had diminished by a fourth the slaves had +increased only by a twentieth. This suggests that the farmers were drawn, +not driven, away. + +The same trend may be better studied in the uplands of eastern Georgia +where earlier settlements gave a longer experience and where fuller +statistics permit a more adequate analysis. In the county of Oglethorpe, +typical of that area, the whites in the year 1800 were more than twice as +many as the slaves, the non-slaveholding families were to the slaveholders +in the ratio of 8 to 5, and slaveholders on the average had but 5 +slaves each. In 1820 the county attained its maximum population for the +ante-bellum period, and competition between the industrial types was +already exerting its full effect. The whites were of the same number as +twenty years before, but the slaves now exceeded them; the slaveholding +families also slightly exceeded those who had none, and the scale of the +average slaveholding had risen to 8.5. Then in the following forty years +while the whites diminished and the number of slaves remained virtually +constant, the scale of the average slaveholding rose to 12.2; the number of +slaveholders shrank by a third and the non-slaveholders by two thirds.[8] +The smaller slaveholders, those we will say with less than ten slaves each, +ought of course to be classed among the farmers. When this is done the +farmers of Oglethorpe appear to have been twice as many as the planters +even in 1860. But this is properly offset by rating the average plantation +there at four or five times the industrial scale of the average farm, which +makes it clear that the plantation régime had grown dominant. + +[Footnote 8: U.B. Phillips, "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black +Belts," in the _American Historical Review_, XI, 810-813 (July, 1906).] + +In such a district virtually everyone was growing cotton to the top of his +ability. When the price of the staple was high, both planters and farmers +prospered in proportion to their scales. Those whose earnings were greatest +would be eager to enlarge their fields, and would make offers for adjoining +lands too tempting for some farmers to withstand. These would sell out and +move west to resume cotton culture to better advantage than before. When +cotton prices were low, however, the farmers, feeling the stress most +keenly, would be inclined to forsake staple production. But in such case +there was no occasion for them to continue cultivating lands best fit for +cotton. The obvious policy would be to sell their homesteads to neighboring +planters and move to cheaper fields beyond the range of planters' +competition. Thus the farmers were constantly pioneering in districts of +all sorts, while the plantation régime, whether by the prosperity and +enlargement of the farms or by the immigration of planters, or both, was +constantly replacing the farming scale in most of the staple areas. + +In the oldest districts of all, however, the lowlands about the Chesapeake, +the process went on to a final stage in which the bulk of the planters, +after exhausting the soil for staple purposes, departed westward and were +succeeded in their turn by farmers, partly native whites and free negroes +and partly Northerners trickling in, who raised melons, peanuts, potatoes, +and garden truck for the Northern city markets. + +Throughout the Southern staple areas the plantations waxed and waned in a +territorial progression. The régime was a broad billow moving irresistibly +westward and leaving a trough behind. At the middle of the nineteenth +century it was entering Texas, its last available province, whose cotton +area it would have duly filled had its career escaped its catastrophic +interruption. What would have occurred after that completion, without the +war, it is interesting to surmise. Probably the crest of the billow would +have subsided through the effect of an undertow setting eastward again. +Belated immigrants, finding the good lands all engrossed, would have +returned to their earlier homes, to hold their partially exhausted soils +in higher esteem than before and to remedy the depletion by reformed +cultivation. That the billow did not earlier give place to a level flood +was partly due to the shortage of slaves; for the African trade was closed +too soon for the stock to fill the country in these decades. To the same +shortage was owing such opportunity as the white yeomanry had in staple +production. The world offered a market, though not at high prices, for a +greater volume of the crops than the plantation slaves could furnish; the +farmers supplied the deficit. + +Free workingmen in general, whether farmers, artisans or unskilled wage +earners, merely filled the interstices in and about the slave plantations. +One year in the eighteen-forties a planter near New Orleans, attempting to +dispense with slave labor, assembled a force of about a hundred Irish and +German immigrants for his crop routine. Things went smoothly until the +midst of the grinding season, when with one accord the gang struck for +double pay. Rejecting the demand the planter was unable to proceed with +his harvest and lost some ten thousand dollars worth of his crop.[9] The +generality of the planters realized, without such a demonstration, that +each year must bring its crop crisis during which an overindulgence by the +laborers in the privileges of liberty might bring ruin to the employers. +To secure immunity from this they were the more fully reconciled to the +limitations of their peculiar labor supply. Freemen white or black might +be convenient as auxiliaries, and were indeed employed in many instances +whether on annual contract as blacksmiths and the like or temporarily +as emergency helpers in the fields; but negro slaves were the standard +composition of the gangs. This brought it about that whithersoever the +planters went they carried with them crowds of negro slaves and all the +problems and influences to which the presence of negroes and the prevalence +of slavery gave rise. + +[Footnote 9: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_, +(London, 1850), II, 162, 163.] + +One of the consequences was to keep foreign immigration small. In the +colonial period the trade in indentured servants recruited the white +population, and most of those who came in that status remained as permanent +citizens of the South; but such Europeans as came during the nineteenth +century were free to follow their own reactions without submitting to a +compulsory adjustment. Many of them found the wage-earning opportunity +scant, for the slaves were given preference by their masters when steady +occupations were to be filled, and odd jobs were often the only recourse +for outsiders. This was an effect of the slavery system. Still more +important, however, was the repugnance which the newcomers felt at working +and living alongside the blacks; and this was a consequence not of the +negroes being slaves so much as of the slaves being negroes. It was +a racial antipathy which when added to the experience of industrial +disadvantage pressed the bulk of the newcomers northwestward beyond the +confines of the Southern staple belts, and pressed even many of the native +whites in the same direction. + +This intrenched the slave plantations yet more strongly in their local +domination, and by that very fact it hampered industrial development. Great +landed proprietors, it is true, have oftentimes been essential for making +beneficial innovations. Thus the remodeling of English agriculture which +Jethro Tull and Lord Townsend instituted in the eighteenth century could +not have been set in progress by any who did not possess their combination +of talent and capital.[10] In the ante-bellum South, likewise, it was the +planters, and necessarily so, who introduced the new staples of sea-island +cotton and sugar, the new devices of horizontal plowing and hillside +terracing, the new practice of seed selection, and the new resource of +commercial fertilizers. Yet their constant bondage to the staples debarred +the whole community in large degree from agricultural diversification, and +their dependence upon gangs of negro slaves kept the average of skill and +assiduity at a low level. + +[Footnote 10: R.E. Prothero, _English Farming, past and present_, (London, +1912), chap. 7.] + +The negroes furnished inertly obeying minds and muscles; slavery provided a +police; and the plantation system contributed the machinery of direction. +The assignment of special functions to slaves of special aptitudes would +enhance the general efficiency; the coördination of tasks would prevent +waste of effort; and the conduct of a steady routine would lessen the +mischiefs of irresponsibility. But in the work of a plantation squad no +delicate implements could be employed, for they would be broken; and no +discriminating care in the handling of crops could be had except at a cost +of supervision which was generally prohibitive. The whole establishment +would work with success only when the management fully recognized and +allowed for the crudity of the labor. + +The planters faced this fact with mingled resolution and resignation. The +sluggishness of the bulk of their slaves they took as a racial trait to +be conquered by discipline, even though their ineptitude was not to +be eradicated; the talents and vigor of their exceptional negroes and +mulattoes, on the other hand, they sought to foster by special training and +rewards. But the prevalence of slavery which aided them in the one policy +hampered them in the other, for it made the rewards arbitrary instead of +automatic and it restricted the scope of the laborers' employments and of +their ambitions as well. The device of hiring slaves to themselves, which +had an invigorating effect here and there in the towns, could find little +application in the country; and the paternalism of the planters could +provide no fully effective substitute. Hence the achievements of the +exceptional workmen were limited by the status of slavery as surely as +the progress of the generality was restricted by the fact of their being +negroes. + +A further influence of the plantation system was to hamper the growth of +towns. This worked in several ways. As for manufactures, the chronic demand +of the planters for means with which to enlarge their scales of operations +absorbed most of the capital which might otherwise have been available for +factory promotion. A few cotton mills were built in the Piedmont where +water power was abundant, and a few small ironworks and other industries; +but the supremacy of agriculture was nowhere challenged. As for commerce, +the planters plied the bulk of their trade with distant wholesale dealers, +patronizing the local shopkeepers only for petty articles or in emergencies +when transport could not be awaited; and the slaves for their part, while +willing enough to buy of any merchant within reach, rarely had either money +or credit. + +Towns grew, of course, at points on the seaboard where harbors were good, +and where rivers or railways brought commerce from the interior. Others +rose where the fall line marked the heads of river navigation, and on the +occasional bluffs of the Mississippi, and finally a few more at railroad +junctions. All of these together numbered barely three score, some of which +counted their population by hundreds rather than by thousands; and in the +wide intervals between there was nothing but farms, plantations and thinly +scattered villages. In the Piedmont, country towns of fairly respectable +dimensions rose here and there, though many a Southern county-seat could +boast little more than a court house and a hitching rack. Even as regards +the seaports, the currents of trade were too thin and divergent to permit +of large urban concentration, for the Appalachian water-shed shut off +the Atlantic ports from the commerce of the central basin; and even the +ambitious construction of railroads to the northwest, fostered by the +seaboard cities, merely enabled the Piedmont planters to get their +provisions overland, and barely affected the volume of the seaboard trade. +New Orleans alone had a location promising commercial greatness; but her +prospects were heavily diminished by the building of the far away Erie +Canal and the Northern trunk line railroads which diverted the bulk of +Northwestern trade from the Gulf outlet. + +As conditions were, the slaveholding South could have realized a +metropolitan life only through absentee proprietorships. In the Roman +_latifundia_, which overspread central and southern Italy after the +Hannibalic war, absenteeism was a chronic feature and a curse. The +overseers there were commonly not helpers in the proprietors' daily +routine, but sole managers charged with a paramount duty of procuring +the greatest possible revenues and transmitting them to meet the urban +expenditures of their patrician employers. The owners, having no more +personal touch with their great gangs of slaves than modern stockholders +have with the operatives in their mills, exploited them accordingly. Where +humanity and profits were incompatible, business considerations were likely +to prevail. Illustrations of the policy may be drawn from Cato the Elder's +treatise on agriculture. Heavy work by day, he reasoned, would not only +increase the crops but would cause deep slumber by night, valuable as a +safeguard against conspiracy; discord was to be sown instead of harmony +among the slaves, for the same purpose of hindering plots; capital +sentences when imposed by law were to be administered in the presence of +the whole corps for the sake of their terrorizing effect; while rations for +the able-bodied were not to exceed a fixed rate, those for the sick were to +be still more frugally stinted; and the old and sick slaves were to be +sold along with other superfluities.[11] Now, Cato was a moralist of wide +repute, a stoic it is true, but even so a man who had a strong sense of +duty. If such were his maxims, the oppressions inflicted by his fellow +proprietors and their slave drivers must have been stringent indeed. + +[Footnote 11: A.H.J. Greenidge, _History of Rome during the later Republic +and the early Principate_ (New York, 1905), I, 64-85; M. Porcius Cato, _De +Agri Cultura_, Keil ed. (Leipsig, 1882).] + +The heartlessness of the Roman _latifundiarii_ was the product partly of +their absenteeism, partly of the cheapness of their slaves which were +poured into the markets by conquests and raids in all quarters of the +Mediterranean world, and partly of the lack of difference between masters +and slaves in racial traits. In the ante-bellum South all these conditions +were reversed: the planters were commonly resident; the slaves were costly; +and the slaves were negroes, who for the most part were by racial quality +submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable +and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited +paternalism rather than repression. Many a city slave in Rome was the boon +companion of his master, sharing his intellectual pleasures and his revels, +while most of those on the _latifundia_ were driven cattle. It was hard to +maintain a middle adjustment for them. In the South, on the other hand, the +medium course was the obvious thing. The bulk of the slaves, because they +were negroes, because they were costly, and because they were in personal +touch, were pupils and working wards, while the planters were teachers and +guardians as well as masters and owners. There was plenty of coercion in +the South; but in comparison with the harshness of the Roman system the +American régime was essentially mild. + +Every plantation of the standard Southern type was, in fact, a school +constantly training and controlling pupils who were in a backward state of +civilization. Slave youths of special promise, or when special purposes +were in view, might be bound as apprentices to craftsmen at a distance. +Thus James H. Hammond in 1859 apprenticed a fourteen-year-old mulatto boy, +named Henderson, for four years to Charles Axt, of Crawfordville, Georgia, +that he might be taught vine culture. Axt agreed in the indenture to feed +and clothe the boy, pay for any necessary medical attention, teach him his +trade, and treat him with proper kindness. Before six months were ended +Alexander H. Stephens, who was a neighbor of Axt and a friend of Hammond, +wrote the latter that Henderson had run away and that Axt was unfit to have +the care of slaves, especially when on hire, and advised Hammond to take +the boy home. Soon afterward Stephens reported that Henderson had returned +and had been whipped, though not cruelly, by Axt.[12] The further history +of this episode is not ascertainable. Enough of it is on record, however, +to suggest reasons why for the generality of slaves home training was +thought best. + +[Footnote 12: MSS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +This, rudimentary as it necessarily was, was in fact just what the bulk of +the negroes most needed. They were in an alien land, in an essentially +slow process of transition from barbarism to civilization. New industrial +methods of a simple sort they might learn from precepts and occasional +demonstrations; the habits and standards of civilized life they could only +acquire in the main through examples reinforced with discipline. These the +plantation régime supplied. Each white family served very much the function +of a modern social settlement, setting patterns of orderly, well bred +conduct which the negroes were encouraged to emulate; and the planters +furthermore were vested with a coercive power, salutary in the premises, of +which settlement workers are deprived. The very aristocratic nature of the +system permitted a vigor of discipline which democracy cannot possess. On +the whole the plantations were the best schools yet invented for the mass +training of that sort of inert and backward people which the bulk of the +American negroes represented. The lack of any regular provision for the +discharge of pupils upon the completion of their training was, of course, a +cardinal shortcoming which the laws of slavery imposed; but even in view +of this, the slave plantation régime, after having wrought the initial and +irreparable misfortune of causing the negroes to be imported, did at +least as much as any system possible in the period could have done toward +adapting the bulk of them to life in a civilized community. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE + + +In barbaric society slavery is a normal means of conquering the isolation +of workers and assembling them in more productive coördination. Where +population is scant and money little used it is almost a necessity in the +conduct of large undertakings, and therefore more or less essential for +the advancement of civilization. It is a means of domesticating savage or +barbarous men, analogous in kind and in consequence to the domestication of +the beasts of the field.[1] It was even of advantage to some of the people +enslaved, in that it saved them from extermination when defeated in war, +and in that it gave them touch with more advanced communities than their +own. But this was counterbalanced by the stimulus which the profits of +slave catching gave to wars and raids with all their attendant injuries. +Any benefit to the slave, indeed, was purely incidental. The reason for the +institution's existence was the advantage which accrued to the masters. +So positive and pronounced was this reckoned to be, that such highly +enlightened people as the Greeks and Romans maintained it in the palmiest +days of their supremacies. + +[Footnote 1: This thought was expressed, perhaps for the first time, in +T.R. Dew's essay on slavery (1832); it is elaborated in Gabriel Tarde, _The +Laws of Imitation_ (Parsons tr., New York, 1903), pp. 278, 279.] + +Western Europe in primitive times was no exception. Slavery in a more or +less fully typical form was widespread. When the migrations ended in the +middle ages, however, the rise of feudalism gave the people a thorough +territorial regimentation. The dearth of commerce whether in goods or in +men led gradually to the conversion of the unfree laborers from slaves +into serfs or villeins attached for generations to the lands on which they +wrought. Finally, the people multiplied so greatly and the landless were +so pressed for livelihood that at the beginning of modern times European +society found the removal of bonds conducive to the common advantage. Serfs +freed from their inherited obligations could now seek employment wherever +they would, and landowners, now no longer lords, might employ whom they +pleased. Bondmen gave place to hirelings and peasant proprietors, +status gave place to contract, industrial society was enabled to make +redistributions and readjustments at will, as it had never been before. In +view of the prevailing traits and the density of the population a general +return whether to slavery or serfdom was economically unthinkable. An +intelligent Scotch philanthropist, Fletcher of Saltoun, it is true, +proposed at the end of the seventeenth century that the indigent and their +children be bound as slaves to selected masters as a means of relieving +the terrible distresses of unemployment in his times;[2] but his project +appears to have received no public sanction whatever. The fact that he +published such a plan is more a curious antiquarian item than one of +significance in the history of slavery. Not even the thin edge of a wedge +could possibly be inserted which might open a way to restore what everyone +was on virtually all counts glad to be free of. + +[Footnote 2: W.E.H. Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ +(New York, 1879), II, 43,44.] + +When the American mining and plantation colonies were established, however, +some phases of the most ancient labor problems recurred. Natural resources +invited industry in large units, but wage labor was not to be had. The +Spaniards found a temporary solution in impressing the tropical American +aborigines, and the English in a recourse to indented white immigrants. But +both soon resorted predominantly for plantation purposes to the importation +of Africans, for whom the ancient institution of slavery was revived. Thus +from purely economic considerations the sophisticated European colonists +of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved themselves and their +descendants, with the connivance of their home governments, in the toils of +a system which on the one hand had served their remote forbears with good +effect, but which on the other hand civilized peoples had long and almost +universally discarded as an incubus. In these colonial beginnings the +negroes were to be had so cheaply and slavery seemed such a simple and +advantageous device when applied to them, that no qualms as to the future +were felt. At least no expressions of them appear in the records of thought +extant for the first century and more of English colonial experience. +And when apprehensions did arise they were concerned with the dangers of +servile revolt, not with any deleterious effects to arise from the economic +nature of slavery in time of peace. + +Now, slavery and indented servitude are analogous to serfdom in that they +may yield to the employers all the proceeds of industry beyond what is +required for the sustenance of the laborers; but they have this difference, +immense for American purposes, that they permit labor to be territorially +shifted, while serfdom keeps it locally fixed. By choosing these +facilitating forms of bondage instead of the one which would have attached +the laborers to the soil, the founders of the colonial régime in industry +doubtless thought they had avoided all economic handicaps in the premises. +Their device, however, was calculated to meet the needs of a situation +where the choice was between bond labor and no labor. As generations passed +and workingmen multiplied in America, the system of indentures for white +immigrants was automatically dissolved; but slavery for the bulk of the +negroes persisted as an integral feature of economic life. Whether this +was conducive or injurious to the prosperity of employers and to the +community's welfare became at length a question to which students far and +wide applied their faculties. Some of the participants in the discussion +considered the problem as one in pure theory; others examined not only the +abstract ratio of slave and free labor efficiency but included in their +view the factor of negro racial traits and the prospects and probable +consequences of abolition under existing circumstances. On the one point +that an average slave might be expected to accomplish less in an hour's +work than an average free laborer, agreement was unanimous; on virtually +every other point the views published were so divergent as to leave the +public more or less distracted. Adam Smith, whose work largely shaped the +course of economic thought for a century following its publication in 1776, +said of slave labor merely that its cost was excessive by reason of its +lack of zest, frugality and inventiveness. The tropical climate of the +sugar colonies, he conceded, might require the labor of negro slaves, +but even there its productiveness would be enhanced by liberal policies +promoting intelligence among the slaves and assimilating their condition to +that of freemen.[3] To some of these points J.B. Say, the next economist to +consider the matter, took exception. Common sense must tell us, said he, +that a slave's maintenance must be less than that of a free workman, since +the master will impose a more drastic frugality than a freeman will adopt +unless a dearth of earnings requires it. The slave's work, furthermore, +is more constant, for the master will not permit so much leisure and +relaxation as the freeman customarily enjoys. Say agreed, however, that +slavery, causing violence and brutality to usurp the place of intelligence, +both hampered the progress of invention and enervated such free laborers as +were in touch with the régime.[4] + +[Footnote 3: Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_, various editions, book I, +chap. 8; book III, chap. 2; book IV, chaps. 7 and 9.] + +[Footnote 4: J.B. Say, _Traité d'Economie Politique_ (Paris, 1803), book I, +chap. 28; in various later editions, book I, chap. 19.] + +The translation of Say's book into English evoked a reply to his views on +slavery by Adam Hodgson, an Englishman with anti-slavery bent who had made +an American tour; but his essay, though fortified with long quotations, +was too rambling and ill digested to influence those who were not already +desirous of being convinced.[5] More substantial was an essay of 1827 by +a Marylander, James Raymond, who cited the experiences of his own +commonwealth to support his contentions that slavery hampered economy by +preventing seasonal shiftings of labor, by requiring employers to support +their operatives in lean years as well as fat, and by hindering the +accumulation of wealth by the laborers. The system, said he, could yield +profits to the masters only in specially fertile districts; and even there +it kept down the growth of population and of land values.[6] + +[Footnote 5: Adam Hodgson, _A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, on the +comparative expense of free and slave labour_ (Liverpool, 1823; New York, +1823).] + +[Footnote 6: James Raymond, _Prize Essay on the Comparative Economy of Free +and Slave Labor in Agriculture_ (Frederick [Md.], 1827), reprinted in the +_African Repository_, III, 97-110 (June, 1827).] + +About the same time Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, +wrote: "Slave labour is undoubtedly the dearest kind of labour; it is all +forced, and forced too from a class of human beings who have the least +propensity to voluntary labour even when it is to benefit themselves +alone." The cost of rearing a slave to the age of self support, he +reckoned, including insurance, at forty dollars a year for fifteen years. +The usual work of a slave field hand, he thought, was barely two-thirds of +what a white laborer at usual wages would perform, and from his earnings +about forty dollars a year must be deducted for his maintenance. When +interest on the investment and a proportion of an overseer's wages were +deducted in addition, he thought the prevalent rate, six to eight dollars +a month and board valued at forty or fifty dollars a year, for free white +farm hands in the Northern states gave a decisive advantage to those who +hired laborers over those who owned them. "Nothing will justify slave +labour in point of economy," he concluded, "but the nature of the soil and +climate which incapacitates a white man from labouring in the summer time, +as on the rich lands in Carolina and Georgia extending one hundred miles +from the seaboard."[7] + +[Footnote 7: Thomas Cooper, _Lectures on the Elements of Political +Economy_, (Columbia [S.C.], 1826), pp. 94, 95.] + +The economic vices of slavery as exemplified in Virginia were elaborated in +an essay printed in 1832 attributed to Jesse Burton Harrison of that state. +Slavery, said this essay, drives away free workmen by stigmatizing labor, +for "nothing but the most abject necessity would lead a white man to hire +himself to work in the fields under the overseer"; it causes exhaustion of +the soil by reason of the negligence it promotes in the workmen and +the stress which overseers are fain to put upon immediate returns; it +discourages all forms of industry but plantation tillage, furthermore, for +although it has not and perhaps cannot be proved that slaves may not be +successfully employed in manufactures, the community has gone and tends +still to go, on that assumption; it discourages mechanic skill, for the +slaves never acquire more than the rudiments of artisanry, and the planters +discourage white craftsmen by giving preference uniformly to their +own laborers. Slave labor is dearer than free, because of its lack of +incentive; the régime costs the community the services of the immigrants +who would otherwise enter; and finally it promotes waste instead of +frugality on the part of both masters and slaves. The only means by which +Virginia could procure profit from slaves, it concluded, was that of +raising them for sale to the lower South; but such profit could only be +gained systematically at a complete sacrifice of honor.[8] + +[Footnote 8: [Jesse Burton Harrison], _Review of the Slave Question, +extracted from the American Quarterly Review, Dec. 1832_. By a Virginian +(Richmond, 1833).] + +Daniel R. Goodloe of North Carolina wrote in 1846 in a similar tone but +with original arguments. Beginning with an exposition of the South's +comparative backwardness in economic development, he showed a twofold +working of the institution of slavery as the cause. For one thing it +lessened the vigor of industry by degrading labor in the estimation of the +poor and engendering pride in the rich; but far more important, it required +employers to sink large amounts of capital in the purchase of laborers +instead of permitting them to pay for work, as the wage system does, out +of current proceeds. It thereby particularly hampered the growth of +manufactures, for in such lines, as well as in commerce, "the fact that +slavery absorbs the bulk of Southern capital must always present an +obstacle to extensive operations." The holding of laborers as property, he +continued, can contribute nothing to production, for the destruction of the +property by the liberation of the slaves would not impair their laboring +efficiency. Hence all the individual wealth which has assumed that shape +has added nothing to the resources of the community. "Slavery merely serves +to appropriate the wages of labor--it distributes wealth, but cannot create +it." It involves expenditure in acquiring early population, then operates +to prevent land improvements and the diversification of industry, +restricting, indeed, even the range of agriculture. The monopoly which the +South has enjoyed in the production of the staples has palliated the evils +of slavery, but at the same time has expanded the system to the point of +great injury to the public. Goodloe accordingly advocated the riddance of +the institution, contending that both landowners and laborers would thereby +benefit. The continued maintenance of the institution, on the other hand, +would bring severe loss to the slaveholders, for within the coming decade +the demand of the Southwest for slaves would be sated, he thought, and +nothing but a great advancement of cotton prices and an unlimited supply of +fertile land for its production could sustain slave prices. "It is +evident that the Southern country approaches a period of great and sudden +depreciation in the value of slave property."[9] + +[Footnote 9: [D.R. Goodloe], _Inquiry into the Causes which have retarded +the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the +Southern States, in which the question of slavery is considered in a +politico-economic point of view. By a Carolinian_. (Washington, 1846.) +_See also_ a similar essay by the same author in the U.S. Commissioner of +Agriculture's _Report_ for 1865, pp. 102-135.] + +The statistical theme of the South's backwardness was used by many other +essayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding régime. With most +of these, however, exemplified saliently by H.R. Helper, logic was to such +extent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from the +proper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy. + +On the other hand, Thomas R. Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turn +of the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery, +attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of the +United States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency. +His central theme was the imperative necessity of maintaining the +enslavement of the negroes on hand until a sound plan was devised and made +applicable for their peaceful and prosperous disposal elsewhere. Among +Dew's disciples, William Harper of South Carolina admitted that slave labor +was dear and unskillful, though he thought it essential for productive +industry in the tropics and sub-tropics, and he considered coercion +necessary for the negroes elsewhere in civilized society. James H. Hammond, +likewise, agreed that "as a general rule ... free labor is cheaper than +slave labor," but in addition to the factor of race he stressed the +sparsity of population in the South as a contributing element in +economically necessitating the maintenance of slavery.[10] + +[Footnote 10: "Essay" (1832), Harper's "Memoir" (1838), and Hammond's +"Letters to Clarkson" (1845) are collected in the _Pro-Slavery Argument_ +(Philadelphia, 1852).] + +Most of the foregoing Southern writers were men of substantial position and +systematic reasoning. N.A. Ware, on the other hand who in 1844 issued in +the capacity of a Southern planter a slender volume of _Notes on Political +Economy_ was both obscure and irresponsible. Contending as his main theme +that protective tariffs were of no injury to the plantation interests, he +asserted that slave labor was incomparably cheaper than free, and attempted +to prove it by ignoring the cost of capital and by reckoning the price +of bacon at four cents a pound and corn at fifteen cents a bushel. Then, +curiously, he delivered himself of the following: "When slavery shall have +run itself out or yielded to the changes and ameliorations of the times, +the owners and all dependent upon it will stand appalled and prostrate, +as the sot whose liquor has been withheld, and nothing but the bad and +worthless habit left to remind the country of its ruinous effects. The +political economist, as well as all wise statesmen in this country, cannot +think of any measure going to discharge slavery that would not be a worse +state than its existence." His own remedy for the depression prevailing at +the time when he wrote, was to divert a large proportion of the slaves from +the glutted business of staple agriculture into manufacturing, for which he +thought them well qualified.[11] Equally fantastic were the ideas of H.C. +Carey of Pennsylvania who dealt here and there with slavery in the course +of his three stout volumes on political economy. His lucubrations are +negligible for the present survey. + +[Footnote 11: [N.A. Ware] _Notes on Political Economy as applicable to the +United States_. By a Southern Planter (New York, 1844), pp. 200-204.] + +All these American writers except Goodloe accomplished little of +substantial quality in the field of economic thought beyond adding details +to the doctrines of Adam Smith and Say. John Stuart Mill in turn did little +more than combine the philosophies of his predecessors. "It is a truism +to assert," said he, "that labour extorted by fear of punishment is +insufficient and unproductive"; yet some people can be driven by the +lash to accomplish what no feasible payment would have induced them to +undertake. In sparsely settled regions, furthermore, slavery may afford +the otherwise unobtainable advantages of labour combination, and it has +undoubtedly hastened industrial development in some American areas. Yet, +since all processes carried on by slave labour are conducted in the rudest +manner, virtually any employer may pay a considerably greater value in +wages to free labour than the maintenance of his slaves has cost him and be +a gainer by the change.[12] + +[Footnote 12: John Stuart Mill, _Principles of Political Economy_ (London, +1848, and later editions), book II, chap. 5.] + +Partly concurring and partly at variance with Mill's views were those which +Edmund Ruffin of Virginia published in a well reasoned essay of 1857, _The +Political Economy of Slavery_. "Slave labor in each individual case and for +each small measure of time," he said, "is more slow and inefficient than +the labor of a free man." On the other hand it is more continuous, for +hirelings are disposed to work fewer hours per day and fewer days per year, +except when wages are so low as to require constant exertion in the +gaining of a bare livelihood. Furthermore, the consolidation of domestic +establishments, which slavery promotes, permits not only an economy in the +purchase of supplies but also a great saving by the specialization of labor +in cooking, washing, nursing, and the care of children, thereby releasing +a large proportion of the women from household routine and rendering them +available for work in the field. An increasing density of population, +however, would depress the returns of industry to the point where slaves +would merely earn their keep, and free laborers would of necessity lengthen +their hours. Finally a still greater glut of labor might come, and indeed +had occurred in various countries of Europe, carrying wages so low that +only the sturdiest free laborers could support themselves and all the +weaker ones must enter a partial pauperism. At such a stage the employment +of slaves could only be continued at a steady deficit, to relieve +themselves from which the masters must resort to a general emancipation. In +the South, however, there were special public reasons, lying in the racial +traits of the slave population, which would make that recourse particularly +deplorable; for the industrial collapse ensuing upon emancipation in the +British West Indies on the one hand, and on the other the pillage and +massacre which occurred in San Domingo and the disorder still prevailing +there, were alternative examples of what might be apprehended from orderly +or revolutionary abolition as the case might be. The Southern people, in +short, might well congratulate themselves that no ending of their existing +régime was within visible prospect.[13] + +[Footnote 13: Edmund Ruffin, _The Political Economy of Slavery_ ([Richmond, +1857]).] + +About the same time a writer in _DeBow's Review_ elaborated the theme that +the comparative advantages of slavery and freedom depended wholly upon the +attainments of the laboring population concerned. "Both are necessarily +recurring types of social organization, and each suited to its peculiar +phase of society." "When a nation or society is in a condition unfit for +self-government, ... often the circumstance of contact with or subjection +by more enlightened nations has been the means of transition to a higher +development." "All that is now needed for the defence of United States +negro slavery and its entire exoneration from reproach is a thorough +investigation of fact; ... and political economy ... must ... pronounce our +system ... no disease, but the normal and healthy condition of a society +formed of such mixed material as ours." "The strong race and the weak, the +civilized and the savage," the one by nature master, the other slave, "are +here not only cast together, but have been born together, grown together, +lived together, worked together, each in his separate sphere striving for +the good of each.... These two races of men are mutually assistant to each +other and are contributing in the largest possible degree consistent with +their mutual powers to the good of each other and mankind." A general +emancipation therefore could bring nothing but a detriment.[14] + +[Footnote 14: _DeBow's Review_, XXI, 331-349, 443-467 (October and +November, 1856).] + +What proved to be the last work in the premises before the overthrow of +slavery in the United States was _The Slave Power, its Character, Career +and Probable Designs_, by J.E. Cairnes, professor of political economy in +the University of Dublin and in Queen's College, Galway. It was published +in 1862 and reissued with appendices in the following year. Cairnes at the +outset scouted the factors of climate and negro racial traits. The sole +economic advantage of slavery, said he, consists in its facilitation +of control in large units; its defects lay in its causing reluctance, +unskilfulness and lack of versatility. The reason for its prevalence in the +South he found in the high fertility and the immense abundance of soil on +the one hand, and on the other the intensiveness of staple cultivation. A +single operative, said he, citing as authority Robert Russell's erroneous +assertion, "might cultivate twenty acres in wheat or Indian corn, but could +not manage more than two in tobacco or three in cotton; therefore the +supervision of a considerable squad is economically feasible in these +though it would not be so in the cereals." These conditions might once have +made slave labor profitable, he conceded; but such possibility was now +doubtless a thing of the distant past. The persistence of the system did +not argue to the contrary, for it would by force of inertia persist as long +as it continued to be self-supporting. + +Turning to a different theme, Cairnes announced that slave labor, since it +had never been and never could be employed with success in manufacturing or +commercial pursuits, must find its whole use in agriculture; and even there +it required large capital, at the same time that the unthrifty habits +inculcated in the masters kept them from accumulating funds. The +consequence was that slaveholding society must necessarily be and remain +heavily in debt. The imperative confinement of slave labor to the most +fertile soils, furthermore, prevented the community from utilizing any +areas of inferior quality; for slaveholding society is so exclusive that it +either expels free labor from its vicinity or deprives it of all industrial +vigor. It is true that some five millions of whites in the South have no +slaves; but these "are now said to exist in this manner in a condition +little removed from savage life, eking out a wretched subsistence by +hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves for occasional jobs, by plunder." +These "mean whites ... are the natural growth of the slave system; ... +regular industry is only known to them as the vocation of slaves, and it is +the one fate which above all others they desire to avoid."[15] + +[Footnote 15: First American edition (New York, 1862), pp. 54, 78, 79.] + +"The constitution of a slave society," he says again, "resolves itself into +three classes, broadly distinguished from each other and connected by no +common interest--the slaves on whom devolves all the regular industry, the +slaveholders who reap all its fruits, and an idle and lawless rabble who +live dispensed over vast plains in a condition little removed from absolute +barbarism."[16] Nowhere can any factors be found which will promote any +progress of civilization so long as slavery persists. The non-slaveholders +will continue in "a life alternating between listless vagrancy and the +excitement of marauding expeditions." "If civilization is to spring up +among the negro race, it will scarcely be contended that this will happen +while they are still slaves; and if the present ruling class are ever to +rise above the existing type, it must be in some other capacity than +as slaveholders."[17] Even as a "probationary discipline" to prepare a +backward people for a higher form of civilized existence, slavery as it +exists in America cannot be justified; for that effect is vitiated by +reason of the domestic slave trade. "Considerations of economy, ... which +under a natural system afford some security for humane treatment by +identifying the master's interest with the slave's preservation, when once +trading in slaves is practised become reasons for racking to the utmost the +toil of the slave; for when his place can at once be supplied from foreign +preserves the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment than +its productiveness while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slave +management in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is +that which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the +utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth."[18] + +[Footnote 16: Ibid., p. 60.] + +[Footnote 17: Ibid., p. 83.] + +[Footnote 18: First American edition (New York, 1862), p. 73.] + +The force of circumstances gave this book a prodigious and lasting vogue. +Its confident and cogent style made skepticism difficult; the dearth of +contrary data prevented impeachment on the one side of the Atlantic, and +on the other side the whole Northern people would hardly criticise such a +vindication of their cause in war by a writer from whose remoteness might +be presumed fairness, and whose professional position might be taken as +giving a stamp of thoroughness and accuracy. Yet the very conditions and +method of the writer made his interpretations hazardous. An economist, +using great caution, might possibly have drawn the whole bulk of his data +from travelers' accounts, as Cairnes did, and still have reached fairly +sound conclusions; but Cairnes gave preference not to the concrete +observations of the travelers but to their generalizations, often biased +or amateurish, and on them erected his own. Furthermore, he ignored such +material as would conflict with his preconceptions. His conclusions, +accordingly, are now true, now false, and while always vivid are seldom +substantially illuminating. His picture of the Southern non-slaveholders, +which, be it observed, he applied in his first edition to five millions +or ten-elevenths of that whole white population, and which he restricted, +under stress of contemporary criticism, only to four million souls in the +second edition,[19] is merely the most extreme of his grotesqueries. The +book was, in short, less an exposition than an exposure. + +[Footnote 19: Ibid., second edition (London, 1863), appendix D.] + +These criticisms of Cairnes will apply in varying lesser degrees to all of +his predecessors in the field. Those who sought the truth merely were in +general short of data; those who could get the facts in any fullness were +too filled with partisan purpose. What was begun as a study was continued +as a dispute, necessarily endless so long as the political issue remained +active. Many data which would have been illuminating, such as plantation +records and slave price quotations, were never systematically assembled; +and the experience resulting from negro emancipation was then too slight +for use in substantial generalizations. The economist M'Culloch, for +example, concluded from the experience of San Domingo and Jamaica that +cane sugar production could not be sustained without slavery;[20] but the +industrial careers of Cuba, Porto Rico and Louisiana since his time have +refuted him. He, like virtually all his contemporaries in economic thought, +confused the several factors of slavery, race traits and the plantation +system; the consequent liability to error was inevitable. + +[Footnote 20: J.R. M'Culloch, _Principles of Political Economy_ (fourth +edition, Edinburgh, 1849), p. 439.] + +Economists of later times have nearly all been too much absorbed in current +problems to give attention to a discarded institution. Most of them have +ignored the subject of slavery altogether, and the concern of the rest with +it has been merely incidental. Nicholson, for example, alludes to it as[21] +"one of the earliest and one of the most enduring forms of poverty," and +again as "the original and universal form of bankruptcy." Smart deals with +it only as concerns the care of workingmen's children: "The one good thing +in slavery was the interest of the master in the future of his workers. +The children of the slaves were the master's property. They were always at +least a valuable asset.... But there is no such continuity in the +relation between the employer [of free labor] and his human cattle. The +best-intentioned employer cannot be expected to be much concerned about the +efficient upkeep of the workman's child when the child is free to go where +he likes.... The child's future is bound up with the father's wage. The +wage may be enough, even when low, to support the father's efficiency, but +it is not necessarily enough to keep up the efficiency of the young laborer +on which the future depends."[22] Loria deals more extensively with +slavery as affected by the valuation of labor,[23] and Gibson[24] examines +elaborately the nature of hypothetically absolute slavery in analyzing the +earnings of labor. The contributions of both Loria and Gibson will be used +below. The economic bearings of the institution in history still await +satisfactory analysis. + +[Footnote 21: J.S. Nicholson, _Principles of Political Economy_ (New York, +1898), I, 221, 391.] + +[Footnote 22: William Smart, _The Distribution of Income_ (London, 1899), +pp. 296, 297.] + +[Footnote 23: Achille Loria, _La Costitutione Economica Odierna_ (Turin, +1899), chap. 6, part 2.] + +[Footnote 24: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909).] + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +BUS + + +An expert accountant has well defined the property of a master in his slave +as an annuity extending throughout the slave's working life and amounting +to the annual surplus which the labor of the slave produced over and above +the cost of his maintenance.[1] Before any profit accrued to the master +in any year, however, various deductions had to be subtracted from this +surplus. These included interest on the slave's cost, regardless of +whether he had been reared by his owner or had been bought for a price; +amortization of the capital investment; insurance against the slave's +premature death or disability and against his escape from service; +insurance also for his support when incapacitated whether by illness, +accident or old age; taxes; and wages of superintendence. None of these +charges would any sound method of accounting permit the master to escape. + +[Footnote 1: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909), p. 202. +The substance of the present paragraph and the three following ones is +mostly in close accord with Gibson's analysis.] + +The maintenance of the slave at the full rate required for the preservation +of lusty physique was essential. The master could not reduce it below that +standard without impairing his property as well as lessening its immediate +return; and as a rule he could shift none of the charge to other shoulders, +for the public would grant his workmen no dole from its charity funds. On +the other hand, he was often induced to raise the scale above the minimum +standard in order to increase the zeal and efficiency of his corps. In any +case, medical attendance and the like was necessarily included in the cost +of maintenance. + +The capital investment in a slave reared by his master would include +charges for the insurance of the child's mother at the time of his birth +and for her deficit of routine work before and afterward; the food, +clothing, nurse's care and incidentals furnished in childhood; the surplus +of supplies over earnings in the period of youth while the slave was not +fully earning his own keep and his overhead charges; compound interest on +all of these until the slave reached adolescence or early manhood; and a +proportion of similar charges on behalf of other children in his original +group who had died in youth. In his teens the slave's earnings would +gradually increase until they covered all his current charges, including +the cost of supervision; and shortly before the age of twenty he would +perhaps begin to yield a net return to the owner. + +A slave's highest rate of earning would be reached of course when his +physical maturity and his training became complete, and would normally +continue until his bodily powers began to flag. This period would extend +in the case of male field hands from perhaps twenty-five to possibly fifty +years of age, and in the case of artizans from say thirty to fifty-five +years. The maximum valuation of the slave as property, however, would come +earlier, at the point when the investment in his production was first +complete and when his maximum earnings were about to begin; and his value +would thereafter decline, first slowly and then more swiftly with every +passing year, in anticipation of the decline and final cessation of his +earning power. Thus the ratio between the capital value of a slave and his +annual net earnings, far from remaining constant, would steadily recede +from the beginning to the end of his working life. At the age of twenty +it might well be as ten to one; at the age of fifty it would probably not +exceed four to one; at sixty-five it might be less than a parity. + +In the buying and selling of nearly all non-human commodities the cost of +production, or of reproduction, bears a definite relation to the market +price, in that it fixes a limit below which owners will not continue to +produce and sell. In the case of slaves, however, the cost of rearing had +no practical bearing upon the market price, for the reason that the owners +could not, or at least did not, increase or diminish the production at +will.[2] It has been said by various anti-slavery spokesmen that many +slaveowners systematically bred slaves for the market. They have adduced no +shred of supporting evidence however; and although the present writer has +long been alert for such data he has found but a single concrete item in +the premises. This one came, curiously enough, from colonial Massachusetts, +where John Josslyn recorded in 1636: "Mr. Maverick's negro woman came to my +chamber window and in her own country language and tune sang very loud and +shril. Going out to her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and +willingly would have expressed her grief in English. But I apprehended it +by her countenance and deportment, whereupon I repaired to my host to learn +of him the cause, for that I understood before that she had been a queen in +her own countrey, and observed a very humble and dutiful garb used towards +her by another negro who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a +breed of negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield to perswasions +to company with a negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, +will'd she nill'd she to go to bed to her--which was no sooner done than +she kickt him out again. This she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, +and this was the cause of her grief."[3] + +[Footnote 2: This is at variance with Gibson's thesis which, professedly +dealing always in pure hypothesis, assumes a state of "perfect" slavery in +which breeding is controlled on precisely the same basis as in the case of +cattle.] + +[Footnote 3: John Josslyn, "Account of two Voyages to New England," in the +Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections, XXIII_, 231.] + +As for the ante-bellum South, the available plantation instructions, +journals and correspondence contain no hint of such a practice. Jesse +Burton Harrison, a Virginian in touch with planters' conversation and +himself hostile to slavery,[4] went so far as to write, "It may be that +there is a small section of Virginia (perhaps we could indicate it) where +the theory of population is studied with reference to the yearly income +from the sale of slaves," but he went no further; and this, be it noted, is +not clearly to hint anything further than that the owners of multiplying +slaves reckoned their own gains from the unstimulated increase. If pressure +were commonly applied James H. Hammond would not merely have inserted the +characteristic provision in his schedule of rewards: "For every infant +thirteen months old and in sound health that has been properly attended to, +the mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock."[5] A planter here and +there may have exerted a control of matings in the interest of industrial +and commercial eugenics, but it is extremely doubtful that any appreciable +number of masters attempted any direct hastening of slave increase. The +whole tone of the community was hostile to such a practice. Masters were +in fact glad enough to leave the slaves to their own inclinations in all +regards so long as the day's work was not obstructed and good order was +undisturbed. They had of course everywhere and at all times an interest +in the multiplication of their slaves as well as the increase of their +industrial aptitudes. Thus William Lee wrote in 1778 concerning his +plantation in Virginia: "I wish particular attention may be paid to rearing +young negroes, and taking care of those grown up, that the number may be +increased as much as possible; also putting several of the most promising +and ingenious lads apprentices to different trades, such as carpenters, +coopers, wheelwrights, sawyers, shipwrights, bricklayers, plasterers, +shoemakers and blacksmiths; some women should also be taught to weave."[6] + +[Footnote 4: _Review of the Slave Question_ (Richmond, 1833), p. 17.] + +[Footnote 5: See above, p. 272.] + +[Footnote 6: W.C. Ford, ed., _Letters of William Lee_ (Brooklyn, 1891), II, +363, 364.] + +But even if masters had stimulated breeding on occasion, that would have +created but a partial and one-sided relationship between cost of production +and market price. To make the connection complete it would have been +requisite for them to check slave breeding when prices were low; and even +the abolitionists, it seems, made no assertion to that effect. No, the +market might decline indefinitely without putting an appreciable check upon +the birth rate; and the master had virtually no choice but to rear every +child in his possession. The cost of production, therefore, could not serve +as a nether limit for slave prices at any time. + +An upper limit to the price range was normally fixed by the reckoning of a +slave's prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance. The slave +may here be likened to a mine operated by a corporation leasing the +property. The slave's claim to his maintenance represents the prior claim +of the land-owner to his rent; the master's claim to the annual surplus +represents the equity of the stockholders in the corporation. But the ore +will some day be exhausted and the dividends cease. Purchasers of the stock +should accordingly consider amortization and pay only such price as will +be covered by the discounted value of the prospective dividends during the +life of the mine. The price of the output fluctuates, however, and the +rate of any year's earnings can only be conjectured. Precise reckoning is +therefore impracticable, and the stock will rise and fall in the market in +response to the play of conjectures as to the present value of the total +future earnings applicable to dividends. So also a planter entering the +slave market might have reckoned in advance the prospect of working life +which a slave of given age would have, and the average earnings above +maintenance which might be expected from his labor. By discounting each of +those annual returns at the prevailing rate of interest to determine their +present values, and adding up the resulting sums, he would ascertain the +price which his business prospects would justify him in paying. Having +bought a slave at such a price, an equally thoroughgoing caution would have +led him to take out a life, health and accident insurance policy on the +slave; but even then he must personally have borne the risk of the slave's +running away. In practice the lives of a few slaves engaged in steamboat +operation and other hazardous pursuits were insured,[7] but the total +number of policies taken on their lives, except as regards marine insurance +in the coasting slave trade, was very small. The planters as a rule carried +their own risks, and they generally dispensed with actuarial reckonings in +determining their bids for slaves. About 1850 a rule of thumb was current +that a prime hand was worth a hundred dollars for every cent in the current +price of a pound of cotton. In general, however, the prospective purchaser +merely "reckoned" in the Southern sense of conjecturing, at what price +he could employ an added slave with probable advantage, and made his bid +accordingly. + +[Footnote 7: J.C. Nott, in J.B.D. DeBow, ed., _Industrial Resources of the +Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 299; F.L. Hoffman, in +_The South in the Building of the Nation_ (Richmond, Va. [1909]), 638-655. +_DeBow's Review_, X, 241, contains an advertisement of a company offering +life and accident insurance on slaves. + +A typical policy is preserved in the MSS. division of the Library of +Congress. It was issued Dec. 31, 1851, by the Louisville agent of the +Mutual Benefit Fire and Life Insurance Company of Louisiana, to T.P. +Linthicum of Bairdstown, Ky., insuring for $650 each the lives of Jack, 26 +years old and Alexander, 31 years old, for one year, at the rates of 2 and +2-1/2 per cent, respectively, plus one per cent, for permission to employ +the slaves on steamboats during the first half of the period. They were +employed as waiters. Jack died Nov. 20, and the insurance was duly paid.] + +A slave's market price was affected by sex, age, physique, mental quality, +industrial training, temper, defects and vices, so far as each of these +could be ascertained. The laws of most of the states presumed a seller's +warrant of health at the time of sale, unless expressly withheld, and in +Louisiana this warrant extended to mental and moral soundness. The period +in which the buyer might apply for redress, however, was limited to a few +months, and the verdicts of juries were uncertain. On the whole, therefore, +if the buyer were unacquainted with the slave's previous career and with +his attitude toward the transfer of possession, he necessarily incurred +considerable risk in making each purchase. But in general the taking of +reasonable precautions would cause the loss through unsuspected vices in +one case to be offset by gains through unexpected virtues in another. + +The scale and the trend of slave prices are essential features of the +régime which most economists have ignored and for which the rest have had +too little data. For colonial times the quotations are scant. An historian +of the French West Indies, however, has ascertained from the archives +that whereas the prices ranged perhaps as low as 200 francs for imported +Africans there at the middle of the seventeenth century, they rose to +450 francs by the year 1700 and continued in a strong and steady advance +thereafter, except in war times, until the very eve of the French +Revolution. Typical prices for prime field hands in San Domingo were 650 +francs in 1716, 800 in 1728, 1,160 in 1750, 1,400 in 1755, 1,180 in 1764, +1,600 in 1769, 1,860 in 1772, 1,740 in 1777, and 2,200 francs in 1785.[8] + +[Footnote 8: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant +1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122-127.] + +In the British West Indies it is apparent from occasional documents that +the trend was similar. A memorial from Barbados in 1689, for example, +recited that in earlier years the planters had been supplied with Africans +at £7 sterling per head, of which forty shillings covered the Guinea cost +and £5 paid the freightage; but now since the establishment of the Royal +African company, "we buy negroes at the price of an engrossed commodity, +the common rate of a good negro on shipboard being twenty pound. And we are +forced to scramble for them in so shameful a manner that one of the great +burdens of our lives is the going to buy negroes. But we must have them; we +cannot be without them."[9] The overthrow of the monopoly, however, brought +no relief. In 1766 the price of new negroes in the West Indies ranged at +about £26;[10] and in 1788-1790 from £41 to £49. At this time the value +of a prime field hand, reared in the islands, was reported to be twice as +great as that of an imported African.[11] + +[Footnote 9: _Groans of the Plantations_ (1679), p. 5, quoted in W. +Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1892), +II, 278, note.] + +[Footnote 10: _Abridgement of the Evidence taken before a Committee of the +whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), p. 37.] + +[Footnote 11: "An Old Member of Parliament," _Doubts on the Abolition of +the Slave Trade_ (London, 1790), p. 72, quoting Dr. Adair's evidence in the +_Privy Council Report_, part 3, Antigua appendix no. II]. + +In Virginia the rise was proportionate. In 1671 a planter wrote of his +purchase of a negro for £26. 10_s_ and said he supposed the price was the +highest ever paid in those parts; but a few years afterward a lot of four +men brought £30 a head, two women the same rate, and two more women £25 +apiece; and before the end of the seventeenth century men were being +appraised at £40.[12] An official report from the colony in 1708 noted a +great increase of the slave supply in recent years, but observed that the +prices had nevertheless risen.[13] In 1754 George Washington paid £52 for a +man and nearly as much for a woman; in 1764 he bought a lot at £57 a head; +in 1768 he bought two mulattoes at £50 and £61.15_s_ respectively, a negro +for £66.10_s_, another at public vendue for £72, and a girl for £49.10_s_. +Finally in 1772 he bought five males, one of whom cost £50, another £65, a +third £75, and the remaining two £90 each;[14] and in the same year he was +offered £80 for a slave named Will Shagg whom his overseer described as an +incorrigible runaway.[15] + +[Footnote 12: P.A. Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth +Century_, II, 88-92.] + +[Footnote 13: _North Carolina Colonial Records_, I, 693.] + +[Footnote 14: W.C. Ford, _George Washington_ (Paris and New York, 1900), +I, 125-127; _Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor_ (Brooklyn, +1889).] + +[Footnote 15: S.M. Hamilton, ed., _Letters to Washington_. IV, 127.] + +Scattered items which might be cited from still other colonies make the +evidence conclusive that there was a general and substantially continuous +rise throughout colonial times. The advances which occurred in the +principal British West India islands and in Virginia, indeed, were a +consequence of advances elsewhere, for by the middle of the eighteenth +century all of these colonies were already passing the zenith of their +prosperity, whereas South Carolina, Georgia, San Domingo and Brazil, as +well as minor new British tropical settlements, were in course of rapid +plantation expansion. Prices in the several communities tended of course to +be equalized partly by a slender intercolonial slave trade but mainly by +the Guineamen's practice of carrying their wares to the highest of the many +competing markets. + +The war for American independence, bringing hard times, depressed all +property values, those of slaves included. But the return of peace brought +prompt inflation in response to exaggerated anticipations of prosperity to +follow. Wade Hampton, for example, wrote to his brother from Jacksonborough +in the South Carolina lowlands, January 30, 1782: "All attempts to purchase +negroes have been fruitless, owing to the flattering state of our affairs +in this quarter."[16] The sequel was sharply disappointing. The indigo +industry was virtually dead, and rice prices, like those of tobacco, did +not maintain their expected levels. The financial experience was described +in 1786 by Henry Pendleton, a judge on the South Carolina bench, in words +which doubtless would have been similarly justified in various other +states: "No sooner had we recovered and restored the country to peace and +order than a rage for running into debt became epidemical.... A happy +speculation was almost every man's object and pursuit.... What a load +of debt was in a short time contracted in the purchase of British +superfluities, and of lands and slaves for which no price was too high if +credit for the purchase was to be obtained!... How small a pittance of the +produce of the years 1783, '4, '5, altho' amounting to upwards of 400,000 +sterling a year on an average, hath been applied toward lessening old +burdens!... What then was the consequence? The merchants were driven to the +exportation of gold and silver, which so rapidly followed; ... a diminution +of the value of the capital as well as the annual produce of estates in +consequence of the fallen price; ... the recovery of new debts as well +as old in effect suspended, while the numerous bankruptcies which have +happened in Europe amongst the merchants trading to America, the reproach +of which is cast upon us, have proclaimed to all the trading nations +to guard against our laws and policy, and even against our moral +principles."[17] + +[Footnote 16: MS. among the Gibbes papers In the capitol at Columbia, S.C.] + +[Footnote 17: _Charleston Morning Post_, Dec. 13, 1786 quoted in the +_American Historical Review_, XIV, 537, 538] + +The depression continued with increasing severity into the following +decade, when it appears that many of the planters in the Charleston +district were saved from ruin only by the wages happily drawn from the +Santee Canal Company in payment for the work of their slaves in the canal +construction gangs.[18] The conditions and prospects in Virginia at the +same time are suggested by a remark of George Washington in 1794 on slave +investments: "I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a +very troublesome species of property ere many years have passed over our +heads."[19] + +[Footnote 18: Samuel DuBose, "Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish," in +T.G. Thomas, ed., _History of the Huguenots in South Carolina_ (New York, +1887), pp. 66-68.] + +[Footnote 19: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, II, 15. This letter has +been quoted at greater length at the beginning of chapter VIII above.] + +Prices in this period were so commonly stated in currency of uncertain +depreciation that a definite schedule by years may not safely be made. It +is clear, however, that the range in 1783 was little lower than it had been +on the eve of the war, while in 1795 it was hardly more than half as high. +For the first time in American history, in a period of peace, there was +a heavy and disquieting fall in slave prices. This was an earnest of +conditions in the nineteenth century when advances and declines alternated. +From about 1795 onward the stability of the currency and the increasing +abundance of authentic data permit the fluctuations of prices to be +measured and their causes and effects to be studied with some assurance. + +The materials extant comprise occasional travellers' notes, fairly numerous +newspaper items, and quite voluminous manuscript collections of appraisals +and bills of sale, all of which require cautious discrimination in their +analysis.[20] The appraisals fall mainly into two groups: the valuation of +estates in probate, and those for the purpose of public compensation to +the owners of slaves legally condemned for capital crimes. The former were +oftentimes purely perfunctory, and they are generally serviceable only as +aids in ascertaining the ratios of value between slaves of the diverse ages +and sexes. The appraisals of criminals, however, since they prescribed +actual payments on the basis of the market value each slave would have had +if his crime had not been committed, may be assumed under such laws as +Virginia maintained in the premises to be fairly accurate. A file of more +than a thousand such appraisals, with vouchers of payment attached, which +is preserved among the Virginia archives in the State Library at Richmond, +is particularly copious in regard to prices as well as in regard to crimes +and punishments. + +[Footnote 20: The difficulties to be encountered in ascertaining the values +at any time and place are exemplified in the documents pertaining to slave +prices in the various states in the year 1815, printed in the _American +Historical Review_, XIX, 813-838. In the gleaning of slave prices I have +been actively assisted by Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of +Georgia and Miss Lillie Richardson of New Orleans.] + +The bills of sale recording actual market transactions remain as the chief +and central source of information upon prices. Some thousands of these, +originating in the city of Charleston, are preserved in a single file among +the state archives of South Carolina at Columbia; other thousands are +scattered through the myriad miscellaneous notarial records in the court +house at New Orleans; many smaller accumulations are to be found in +county court houses far and wide, particularly in the cotton belt; and +considerable numbers are in private possession, along with plantation +journals and letters which sometimes contain similar data. + +Now these documents more often than otherwise record the sale of slaves +in groups. One of the considerations involved was that a gang already +organized would save its purchaser time and trouble in establishing a new +plantation as a going concern, and therefore would probably bring a higher +gross price than if its members were sold singly. Another motive was that +of keeping slave families together, which served doubly in comporting with +scruples of conscience and inducing to the greater contentment of slaves +in their new employ. The documents of the time demonstrate repeatedly the +appreciation of equanimity as affecting value. But group sales give slight +information upon individual prices; and even the bills of individual +sale yield much less than a statistician could wish. The sex is always +presumable from the slave's name, the color is usually stated or implied, +and occasionally deleterious proclivities are specified, as of a confirmed +drunkard or a persistent runaway; but specifications of age, strength and +talents are very often, one and all, omitted. The problem is how may these +bare quotations of price be utilized. To strike an average of all prices +in any year at any place would be fruitless, since an even distribution of +slave grades cannot be assumed when quotations are not in great volume: the +prices of young children are rarely ascertainable from the bills, since +they were hardly ever sold separately; the prices of women likewise are too +seldom segregated from those of their children to permit anything to be +established beyond a ratio to some ascertained standard; and the prices of +artizans varied too greatly with their skill to permit definite schedules +of them. The only market grade, in fact, for which basic price tabulations +can be made with any confidence is that of young male prime field hands, +for these alone may usually be discriminated even when ages and qualities +are not specified. The method here is to select in the group of bills for +any time and place such maximum quotations for males as occur with any +notable degree of frequency. Artizans, foremen and the like are thereby +generally excluded by the infrequency of their sales, while the +middle-aged, the old and the defective are eliminated by leaving aside the +quotations of lower range. The more scattering bills in which ages +and crafts are given will then serve, when supplemented from probate +appraisals, to establish valuation ratios between these able-bodied +unskilled young men and the several other classes of slaves. Thus, artizans +often brought twice as much as field hands of similar ages, prime women +generally brought three-fourths or four-fifths as much as prime men; boys +and girls entering their teens, and men and women entering their fifties, +brought about half of prime prices for their sexes; and infants were +generally appraised at about a tenth or an eighth of prime. The average +price for slaves of all ages and both sexes, furthermore, was generally +about one-half of the price for male prime field hands. The fluctuation +of prime prices, therefore, measures the rise and fall of slave values in +general. + +The accompanying chart will show the fluctuations of the average prices +of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in +middle Georgia, and at New Orleans, a£ well as the contemporary range of +average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, +that of New York. The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from +about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in +1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence of the initial +impulse of cotton and sugar production and of the contemporary prohibition +of the African slave trade by the several states. At those levels prices +remained virtually fixed, in most markets, for nearly a decade as an effect +of South Carolina's reopening of her ports and of the hampering of export +commerce by the Napoleonic war. The latter factor prevented even the +congressional stoppage of the foreign slave trade in 1808 from exerting +any strong effect upon slave prices for the time being except in the sugar +district. The next general movement was in fact a downward one of about +$100 a head caused by the War of 1812. At the return of peace the prices +leaped with parallel perpendicularity in all the markets from $400-$500 in +1814 to twice that range in 1818, only to be upset by the world-wide panic +of the following year and to descend to levels of $400 to $600 in 1823. +Then came a new rise in the cotton and sugar districts responding to a +heightened price of their staples, but for once not evoking a sympathetic +movement in the other markets. A small decline then ensuing gave place to +a soaring movement at New Orleans, in response to the great stimulus which +the protective tariff of 1828 gave to sugar production. The other markets +began in the early thirties to make up for the tardiness of their rise; and +as a feature of the general inflation of property values then prevalent +everywhere, slave prices rose to an apex in 1837 of $1,300 in the +purchasing markets and $1,100 in Virginia. The general panic of 1837 +began promptly to send them down; and though they advanced in 1839 as a +consequence of a speculative bolstering of the cotton market that year, +they fell all the faster upon the collapse of that project, finding new +levels of rest only at a range of $500-$700. A final advance then set in +at the middle of the forties which continued until the highest levels on +record were attained on the eve of secession and war. [Illustration: PRICES +OF SLAVES AND OF COTTON.] + +There are thus in the slave price diagram for the nineteenth century a +plateau, with a local peak rising from its level in the sugar district, and +three solid peaks--all of them separated by intervening valleys, and all +corresponding more or less to the elevations and depressions in the cotton +range. The plateau, 1803-1812, was prevented from producing a peak in the +eastern markets by the South Carolina repeal of the slave trade prohibition +and by the European imbroglio. The first common peak, 1818, and its ensuing +trough came promptly upon the establishment of the characteristic régime of +the ante-bellum period, in which the African reservoir could no longer +be drawn upon to mitigate labor shortages and restrain the speculative +enhancement of slave prices. The trough of the 'twenties was deeper and +broader in the upper and eastern South than elsewhere partly because the +panic of 1819 had brought a specially severe financial collapse there from +the wrecking of mushroom canal projects and the like.[21] It is remarkable +that so wide a spread of rates in the several districts prevailed for so +long a period as here appears. The statistics may of course be somewhat at +fault, but there is reason for confidence that their margin of error is not +great enough to vitiate them. + +[Footnote 21: _E. g., The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey_ (North Carolina +Historical Commission _Publications_, Raleigh, 1914), I, 93ff] + +The next peak, 1837-1839, was in most respects like the preceding one, and +the drop was quite as sudden and even more severe. The distresses of the +time in the district where they were the most intense were described in a +diary of 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in the +hope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrin +was promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster. "Speculation," +said he, "has been making poor men rich and rich men princes." But now "a +revulsion has taken place. Mississippi is ruined. Her rich men are poor, +and her poor men beggars.... We have seen hard times in North Carolina, +hard times in the east, hard times everywhere; but Mississippi exceeds them +all.... Lands ... that once commanded from thirty to fifty dollars per acre +may now be bought for three or five dollars, and that with considerable +improvements, while many have been sold at sheriff's sales at fifty cents +that were considered worth ten to twenty dollars. The people, too, are +running their negroes to Texas and to Alabama, and leaving their real +estate and perishable property to be sold, or rather sacrificed.... So +great is the panic and so dreadful the distress that there are a great many +farms prepared to receive crops, and some of them actually planted, and yet +deserted, not a human being to be found upon them. I had prepared myself to +see hard times here, but unlike most cases, the actual condition of affairs +is much worse than the report."[22] + +[Footnote 22: W.H. Wills, "Diary," in the Southern History Association +_Publications_, VIII (Washington, 1904), 35.] + +The fall of Mississippi slaves continued, accompanying that of cotton and +even anticipating it in the later phase of the movement, until extreme +depths were reached in the middle forties, though at New Orleans and in the +Georgia uplands the decline was arrested in 1842 at a level of about $700. +The sugar planters began prospering from the better prices established for +their staple by the tariff of that year, and were able to pay more than +panic prices for slaves; but as has been noted in an earlier chapter, +suspicion of fraud in the cases of slaves offered from Mississippi +militated against their purchase. A sugar planter would be willing to pay +considerably more for a neighbor's negro than for one who had come down the +river and who might shortly be seized on a creditor's attachment. + +At the middle of the forties, with a rising cotton market, there began +a strong and sustained advance, persisting throughout the fifties and +carrying slave prices to unexampled heights. By 1856 the phenomenon was +receiving comment in the newspapers far and wide. In the early months of +that year the _Republican_ of St. Louis reported field hand sales in +Pike County, Missouri, at from $1,215 to $1,642; the _Herald_ of Lake +Providence, Louisiana, recorded the auction of General L.C. Folk's slaves +at which "negro men ranged from $1,500 to $1,635, women and girls from +$1,250 to $1,550, children in proportion--all cash" and concluded: "Such a +sale, we venture to say, has never been equaled in the state of Louisiana." +In Virginia, likewise, the Richmond _Despatch_ in January told of the sale +of an estate in Halifax County at which "among other enormous prices, one +man brought $1,410 and another $1,425, and both were sold again privately +the same day at advances of $50. They were ordinary field hands, not +considered no. I. in any respect." In April the Lynchburg _Virginian_ +reported the sale of men in the auction of a large estate at from $1,120 to +$2,110, with most of the prices ranging midway between; and in August the +Richmond _Despatch_ noted that instead of the customary summer dullness in +the demand for slaves, it was unprecedentedly vigorous, with men's prices +ranging from $1,200 to $1,500.[23] + +The _Southern Banner_ of Athens, Georgia, said as early as January, 1855: +"Everybody except the owners of slaves must feel and know that the price +of slave labor and slave property at the South is at present too high when +compared with the prices of everything else. There must ere long be a +change; and ... we advise parties interested to 'stand from under!'"[24] +But the market belied the apprehensions. A neighboring journal noted at the +beginning of 1858, that in the face of the current panic, slave prices +as indicated in newspapers from all quarters of the South held up +astonishingly. "This argues a confidence on the part of the planters that +there is a good time coming. Well," the editor concluded with a hint of +his own persistent doubts, "we trust they may not be deceived in their +calculations."[25] + +The market continued deaf to the Cassandra school. When in March, 1859, +Pierce Butler's half of the slaves from the plantations which his quondam +wife made notorious were auctioned to defray his debts, bidders who +gathered from near and far offered prices which yielded an average rate +of $708 per head for the 429 slaves of all ages.[26] And in January and +February the still greater auction at Albany, Georgia, of the estate of +Joseph Bond, lately deceased, yielded $2,850 for one of the men, about +$1,900 as an average for such prime field hands as were sold separately, +and a price of $958.64 as a general average for the 497 slaves of all ages +and conditions.[27] Sales at similar prices were at about the same time +reported from various other quarters.[28] + +[Footnote 23: These items were reprinted in George M. Weston, _Who are and +who may be Slaves in the U.S._ [1856].] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Banner_, Jan. 11, 1855, endorsing an editorial of +similar tone in the New York _Express_.] + +[Footnote 25: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 21, 1858.] + +[Footnote 26: _What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation Auction +Sale of Slaves at Savannah, March 2d and 3d, 1859. A Sequel to Mrs. +Kemble's Journal_ [1863]. This appears to have been a reprint of an +article in the New York _Tribune_. The slaves were sold in family parcels +comprising from two to seven persons each.] + +[Footnote 27: MS. record in the Ordinary's office at Macon, Ga. Probate +Returns, vol. 9, pp. 2-7.] + +[Footnote 28: Edward Ingle, _Southern Sidelights_ (New York [1896]), p. +294. note.] + +Editorial warnings were now more vociferous than before. The _Federal +Union_ of Milledgeville said for example: "There is a perfect fever raging +in Georgia now on the subject of buying negroes.... Men are borrowing money +at exorbitant rates of interest to buy negroes at exorbitant prices. The +speculation will not sustain the speculators, and in a short time we shall +see many negroes and much land offered under the sheriff's hammer, with few +buyers for cash; and then this kind of property will descend to its real +value. The old rule of pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the +pound--that is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents a negro man is +worth $1,200.00, if at fifteen cents then $1,500.00--does not seem to be +regarded. Negroes are 25 per cent. higher now with cotton at ten and one +half cents than they were two or three years ago when it was worth fifteen +and sixteen cents. Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surely +come."[29] + +[Footnote 29: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Jan. 17, 1860, +reprinted with endorsement in the _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 26, +1860, and reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 73, 74.] + +The fever was likewise raging in the western South,[30] and it persisted +until the end of 1860. Indeed the peak of this price movement was evidently +cut off by the intervention of war. How great an altitude it might have +reached, and what shape its downward slope would have taken had peace +continued, it is idle to conjecture. But that a crash must have come is +beyond a reasonable doubt. + +[Footnote 30: Prices at Lebanon, Tenn., and Franklin, Ky., are given in +_Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XI, 774 (Dec., 1859).] + +The Charleston _Mercury_[31] attributed the advance of slave prices in the +fifties mainly to the demand of the railroads for labor. This was borne +out in some degree by the transactions of the railroad companies whose +headquarters were in that city. The president of the Charleston and +Savannah Railroad Company, endorsing the arguments which had been advanced +by a writer in _DeBows Review_,[32] recommended in his first annual report, +1855, an extensive purchase of slaves for the company's construction gangs, +reckoning that at the price of $1,000, with interest at 7 per cent. and +life insurance at 2-1/2 per cent. the annual charge would be little more +than half the current cost in wages at $180. The yearly cost of maintenance +and superintendence, reckoned at $20 for clothing, $15 for corn, molasses +and tobacco, $1 for physician's fees, $10 for overseer's wages and $15 for +tools and repairs, he said, would be the same whether the slaves were hired +or bought.[33] How largely the company adopted its president's plan is not +known. For the older and stronger South Carolina Railroad Company, however, +whose lines extended from Charleston to Augusta, Columbia and Camden, +detailed records in the premises are available. This company was created +in 1843 by the merging of two earlier corporations, one of which already +possessed eleven slaves. In February, 1845, the new company bought three +more slaves, two of which cost $400 apiece and the third $686. At the end +of the next year the superintendent reported: "After hands for many years +in the company's service have acquired the knowledge and skill necessary to +make them valuable, the company are either compelled to submit to higher +rates of wages imposed or to pass others at a lower rate of compensation +through the same apprenticeship, with all the hazard of a strike, in their +turn, by the owners."[34] The directors, after studying the problem thus +presented, launched upon a somewhat extensive slave-purchasing programme, +buying one in 1848 and seven in 1849 at uniform prices of $900; one in +1851 at $800 thirty-seven in 1852, all but two of which were procured in a +single purchase from J.C. Sproull and Company, at prices from $512.50 to +$1,004.50, but mostly ranging near $900; and twenty-eight more at various +times between 1853 and 1859, at prices rising to $1,500. Finally, when two +or three years of war had put all property, of however precarious a nature, +at a premium over Confederate currency, the company bought another slave +in August, 1863, for $2,050, and thirty-two more in 1864 at prices ranging +from $2,450 to $6,005.[35] All of these slaves were males. No ages or +trades are specified in the available records, and no statement of the +advantages actually experienced in owning rather than hiring slaves. + +[Footnote 31: Reprinted in William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ +(London, 1857), P. 207.] + +[Footnote 32: _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 76-82.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., XVIII, 404-406.] + +[Footnote 34: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_ +(New York, 1908), p. 205.] + +[Footnote 35: South Carolina Railroad Company _Reports_ for 1860 and 1865.] + +The Brandon Bank, at Brandon, Mississippi, which was virtually identical +with the Mississippi and Alabama Railroad Company, bought prior to 1839, +$159,000 worth of slaves for railroad employment, but it presumably lost +them shortly after that year when the bank and the railroad together went +bankrupt.[36] The state of Georgia had bought about 190 slaves in and +before 1830 for employment in river and road improvements, but it sold them +in 1834,[37] and when in the late 'forties and the 'fifties it built and +operated the Western and Atlantic Railroad it made no repetition of the +earlier experiment. In the 'fifties, indeed, the South Carolina Railroad +Company was almost unique in its policy of buying slaves for railroad +purposes. + +[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, LVI, 130 (April 27, 1839).] + +[Footnote 37: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_, +pp. 114, 115; W.C. Dawson, _Compilation of Georgia Laws_, p. 399; O.H. +Prince, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 742.] + +The most cogent reason against such a policy was not that the owned slaves +increased the current charges, but that their purchase involved the +diversion of capital in a way which none but abnormal circumstances could +justify. In the year 1846 when the superintendent of the South Carolina +company made his recommendation, slave prices were abnormally low and +cotton prices were leaping in such wise as to make probable a strong +advance in the labor market. By 1855, however, the price of slaves had +nearly doubled, and by 1860 it was clearly inordinate. The special occasion +for a company to divert its funds or increase its capital obligations had +accordingly vanished, and sound policy would have suggested the sale of +slaves on hand rather than the purchase of more. The state of Louisiana, +indeed, sold in 1860[38] the force of nearly a hundred slave men which it +had used on river improvements long enough for many of its members to have +grown old in the service.[39] + +[Footnote 38: Board of Public Works _Report_ for 1860 (Baton Rouge, 1861), +p. 7.] + +[Footnote 39: State Engineer's _Report_ for 1856 (New Orleans, 1857), p. +7.] + +Manufacturing companies here and there bought slaves to man their works, +but in so doing added seriously to the risks of their business. A news item +of 1849 reported that an outbreak of cholera at the Hillman Iron Works near +Clarksville, Tenn., had brought the death of four or five slaves and the +removal of the remainder from the vicinity until the epidemic should have +passed.[40] A more normal episode of mere financial failure was that which +wrecked the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company whose plant was located on Broad +River in South Carolina. To complete its works and begin operations this +company procured a loan of some $92,000 in 1837 from the Bank of the State +of South Carolina on the security of the land and buildings and a hundred +slaves owned by the company. After several years of operation during which +the purchase of additional slaves raised the number to 194, twenty-seven of +whom were mechanics, the company admitted its insolvency. When the mortgage +was foreclosed in 1845 the bank bought in virtually the whole property to +save its investment, and operated the works for several years until a new +company, with a manager imported from Sweden, was floated to take the +concern off its hands.[41] + +[Footnote 40: New Orleans _Delta_, Mch. 10, 1849.] + +[Footnote 41: _Report of the Special Joint Committee appointed to examine +the Bank of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1849); _Report of +the President and Directors of the Bank of the State of South Carolina, +November, 1850_ (Columbia, 1850).] + +Most of the cotton mills depended wholly upon white labor, though a few +made experiments with slave staffs. One of these was in operation in Maury +County, Tennessee, in 1827,[42] and another near Pensacola, Florida, twenty +years afterward. Except for their foremen, each of these was run by slave +operatives exclusively; and in the latter case, at least, all the slaves +were owned by the company. These comprised in 1847 some forty boys and +girls, who were all fed, and apparently well fed, at the company's +table.[43] The career of these enterprises is not ascertainable. A better +known case is that of the Saluda Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina. +When J. Graves came from New England in 1848 to assume the management of +this mill he found several negroes among the operatives, all of whom were +on hire. His first impulse was to replace all the negroes with whites; but +before this was accomplished the newcomer was quite converted by their +"activity and promptness," and he recommended that the number of black +operatives be increased instead of diminished. "They are easily trained +to habits of industry and patient endurance," he said, "and by the +concentration of all their faculties ... their imitative faculties become +cultivated to a very high degree, their muscles become trained and obedient +to the will, so that whatever they see done they are quick in learning to +do."[44] The company was impelled by Graves' enthusiasm to resort to slave +labor exclusively, partly on hire from their owners and partly by purchase. +At the height of this régime, in 1851, the slave operatives numbered +158.[45] But whether from the incapacity of the negroes as mill hands or +from the accumulation of debt through the purchase of slaves, the company +was forced into liquidation at the close of the following year.[46] + +[Footnote 42: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Apr. 24, 1828, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 258.] + +[Footnote 43: _DeBow's Review_, IV, 256.] + +[Footnote 44: Letter of J. Graves, May 15, 1849, in the Augusta, Ga., +_Chronicle_, June 1, 1849. Cf. also J.B. D Debow, _Industrial Resources of +the Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 339.] + +[Footnote 45: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 319, 320.] + +[Footnote 46: _Augusta Chronicle_, Jan. 5, 1853.] + +Corporations had reason at all times, in fact, to prefer free laborers over +slaves even on hire, for in so doing they escaped liabilities for injuries +by fellow servants. When a firm of contractors, for example, advertised +in 1833 for five hundred laborers at $15 per month to work on the Muscle +Shoals canal in northern Alabama, it deemed it necessary to say that in +cases of accidents to slaves it would assume financial responsibility "for +any injury or damage that may hereafter happen in the process of blasting +rock or of the caving of banks."[47] Free laborers, on the other hand, +carried their own risks. Except when some planter would take a contract for +grading in his locality, to be done under his own supervision in the spare +time of his gang, slaves were generally called for in canal and railroad +work only when the supply of free labor was inadequate. + +[Footnote 47: Reprinted in E.S. Abdy, _Journal of a Residence in the United +States_ (London, 1835), II, 109.] + +Slaveowners, on the other hand, were equally reluctant to hire their slaves +to such corporations or contractors except in times of special depression, +for construction camps from their lack of sanitation, discipline, +domesticity and stability were at the opposite pole from plantations as +places of slave residence. High wages were no adequate compensation for +the liability to contagious and other diseases, demoralization, and the +checking of the birth rate by the separation of husbands and wives. The +higher the valuation of slave property, the greater would be the strength +of these considerations. + +Slaves were a somewhat precarious property under all circumstances. Losses +were incurred not only through disease[48] and flight but also through +sudden death in manifold ways, and through theft. A few items will furnish +illustration. An early Charleston newspaper printed the following: "On the +ninth instant Mr. Edward North at Pon Pon sent a sensible negro fellow to +Moon's Ferry for a jug of rum, which is about two miles from his house; +and he drank to that excess in the path that he died within six or seven +hours."[49] From the Eutaws in the same state a correspondent wrote in 1798 +of a gin-house disaster: "I yesterday went over to Mr. Henry Middleton's +plantation to view the dreadful effects of a flash of lightning which the +day before fell on his machine house in which were about twenty negro men, +fourteen of which were killed immediately."[50] In 1828 the following +appeared in a newspaper at New Orleans: "Yesterday towards one o'clock +P.M., as one of the ferry boats was crossing the river with sixteen slaves +on board belonging to General Wade Hampton, with their baggage, a few rods +distant from the shore these negroes, being frightened by the motion of the +boat, all threw themselves on the same side, which caused the boat to fill; +and notwithstanding the prompt assistance afforded, four or five of these +unfortunates perished."[51] In 1839 William Lowndes Yancey, who was then a +planter in South Carolina, lost his whole gang through the poisoning of a +spring on his place, and was thereby bankrupted.[52] About 1858 certain +bandits in western Louisiana abducted two slaves from the home of the Widow +Bernard on Bayou Vermilion. After the lapse of several months they were +discovered in the possession of one Apcher, who was tried for the theft +but acquitted. The slaves when restored to their mistress were put in the +kitchen, bound together by their hands. But while the family was at dinner +the two ran from the house and drowned themselves in the bayou. The +narrator of the episode attributed the impulse for suicide to the taste for +vagabondage and the hatred for work which the negroes had acquired from the +bandit.[53] + +[Footnote 48: For the effect of epidemics _see_ above, pp. 300, 301.] + +[Footnote 49: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 12 to 19, 1741.] + +[Footnote 50: _Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Feb. 4, 1798, supplement.] + +[Footnote 51: _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 3, 1828.] + +[Footnote 52: J.W. DuBose, _Life of W.L. Yancey_ (Birmingham, Ala., 1892), +p. 39.] + +[Footnote 53: Alexandra Barbe, _Histoire des Comités de Vigilance aux +Attakapas_] (Louisiana, 1861), pp. 182-185. + +The governor of South Carolina reported the convictions of five white +men for the crime of slave stealing in the one year;[54] and in the +penitentiary lists of the several states the designation of slave stealers +was fairly frequent, in spite of the fact that the death penalty was +generally prescribed for the crime. One method of their operation was +described in a Georgia newspaper item of 1828 which related that two +wagoners upon meeting a slave upon the road persuaded him to lend a hand in +shifting their load. When the negro entered the wagon they overpowered him +and drove on. When they camped for the night they bound him to the wheel; +but while they slept he cut his thongs and returned to his master.[55] The +greatest activities in this line, however, were doubtless those of the +Murrell gang of desperadoes operating throughout the southwest in the early +thirties with a shrewd scheme for victimizing both whites and blacks. They +would conspire with a slave, promising him his freedom or some other reward +if he would run off with them and suffer himself to be sold to some unwary +purchaser and then escape to join them again.[56] Sometimes they repeated +this process over and over again with the same slave until a threat of +exposure from him led to his being silenced by murder. In the same period a +smaller gang with John Washburn as its leading spirit and with Natchez as +informal headquarters, was busy at burglary, highway and flatboat robbery, +pocket picking and slave stealing.[57] In 1846 a prisoner under arrest at +Cheraw, South Carolina, professed to reveal a new conspiracy for slave +stealing with ramifications from Virginia to Texas; but the details appear +not to have been published.[58] + +[Footnote 54: H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of the Slave in South +Carolina_ [1914], pp. 110-112.] + +[Footnote 55: _The Athenian_ (Athens, Ga.), Aug. 19, 1828.] + +[Footnote 56: H.R. Howard, compiler, _The History of Virgil A. Stewart and +his Adventure in capturing and exposing the great "Western Land Pirate" and +his Gang_ (New York, 1836), pp. 63-68, 104, _et passim_. The truth of these +accounts of slave stealings is vouched for in a letter to the editor of the +New Orleans _Bulletin_, reprinted in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, +Ga.), Nov. 5, 1835.] + +[Footnote 57: The manifold felonies of the gang were described by Washburn +in a dying confession after his conviction for a murder at Cincinnati. +Natchez _Courier_, reprinted in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Feb. +28, 1837. Other reports of the theft of slaves appear in the Charleston +_Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Nov. 2, 1786; _Southern Banner_ +(Athens, Ga.), July 19, 1834, advertisement; _Federal Union_ +(Milledgeville, Ga.), July 18, 1835; and the following New Orleans +journals: _Louisiana Gazette_, Apr. 1 and Sept. 10, 1819; _Mercantile +Advertiser_, Sept 29, 1831; _Bee_, Dec. 14, 1841; Mch. 10, 1845, and Aug. +1 and Nov. 11, 1848; _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 29 and Sept. 18, 1840; +_Picayune_, Aug. 21, 1845.] + +[Footnote 58: New Orleans _Commercial Times_, Aug. 26, 1846.] + +Certain hostile critics of slavery asserted that in one district or another +masters made reckonings favorable to such driving of slaves at their work +as would bring premature death. Thus Fanny Kemble wrote in 1838, when on +the Georgia coast: "In Louisiana ... the humane calculation was not only +made but openly and unhesitatingly avowed that the planters found it upon +the whole their most profitable plan to work off (kill with labour) their +whole number of slaves about once in seven years, and renew the whole +stock."[59] The English traveler Featherstonhaugh likewise wrote of +Louisiana in 1844, when he had come as close to it as East Tennessee, +that "the duration of life for a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven +years."[60] William Goodell supported a similar assertion of his own in +1853 by a series of citations. The first of these was to Theodore Weld as +authority, that "Professor Wright" had been told at New York by Dr. Deming +of Ashland, Ohio, a story that Mr. Dickinson of Pittsburg had been told by +Southern planters and slave dealers on an Ohio River steamboat. The tale +thus vouched for contained the assertion that sugar planters found that by +the excessive driving of slaves day and night in the grinding season they +could so increase their output that "they could afford to sacrifice one set +of hands in seven years," and "that this horrible system was now practised +to a considerable extent." The second citation was likewise to Weld for a +statement by Mr. Samuel Blackwell of Jersey City, whose testimonial lay in +the fact of his membership in the Presbyterian church, that while on a tour +in Louisiana "the planters generally declared to him that they were obliged +so to overwork their slaves during the sugar-making season (from eight to +ten weeks) as to use them up in seven or eight years." The third was to the +Rev. Mr. Reed of London who after a tour in Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky +in 1834 published the following: "I was told, confidentially, from +excellent authority, that recently at a meeting of planters in South +Carolina the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more +profitable to the owner if well fed, well clothed and worked lightly, or if +made the most of at once and exhausted in some eight years. The decision +was in favor of the last alternative"[61] An anonymous writer in 1857 +repeated this last item without indication of its date or authority but +with a shortening of the period of exhaustion to "some four or five +years."[62] + +[Footnote 59: Frances A. Kemble, _Journal_ (New York, 1863), p. 28.] + +[Footnote 60: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion Through the Slave States_ +(London, 1844), I, 120. Though Featherstonhaugh afterward visited New +Orleans his book does not recur to this topic.] + +[Footnote 61: William Goodell, _The American Slave Code in Theory and +Practise_ (New York, 1853), pp. 79-81, citing Theodore Weld, _Slavery as it +is_, p 39, and Mattheson, _Visit to the American Churches_, II, 173.] + +[Footnote 62: _The Suppressed Book about Slavery! Prepared for publication +in 1857, never published until the present time_ (New York, 1864), p. 211.] + +These assertions, which have been accepted by some historians as valid, +prompt a series of reflections. In the first place, anyone who has had +experience with negro labor may reasonably be skeptical when told that +healthy, well fed negroes, whether slave or free, can by any routine +insistence of the employer be driven beyond the point at which fatigue +begins to be injurious. In the second place, plantation work as a rule had +the limitation of daylight hours; in plowing, mules which could not +be hurried set the pace; in hoeing, haste would imperil the plants by +enhancing the proportion of misdirected strokes; and in the harvest of +tobacco, rice and cotton much perseverance but little strain was involved. +The sugar harvest alone called for heavy exertion and for night work in the +mill. But common report in that regard emphasized the sturdy sleekness as +well as the joviality of the negroes in the grinding season;[63] and even +if exhaustion had been characteristic instead, the brevity of the period +would have prevented any serious debilitating effect before the coming of +the more leisurely schedule after harvest. In fact many neighboring Creole +and Acadian farmers, fishermen and the like were customarily enlisted +on wages as plantation recruits in the months of stress.[64] The sugar +district furthermore was the one plantation area within easy reach of a +considerable city whence a seasonal supply of extra hands might be had to +save the regular forces from injury. The fact that a planter, as reported +by Sir Charles Lyell, failed to get a hundred recruits one year in the +midst of the grinding season[65] does not weaken this consideration. It may +well have been that his neighbors had forestalled him in the wage-labor +market, or that the remaining Germans and Irish in the city refused to take +the places of their fellows who were on strike. It is well established that +sugar planters had systematic recourse to immigrant labor for ditching and +other severe work.[66] It is incredible that they ignored the same recourse +if at any time the requirements of their crop threatened injury to their +property in slaves. The recommendation of the old Roman, Varro, that +freemen be employed in harvesting to save the slaves[67] would apply with +no more effect, in case of need, to the pressing of oil and wine than to +the grinding of sugar-cane. Two months' wages to a Creole, a "'Cajun" or +an Irishman would be cheap as the price of a slave's continued vigor, +even when slave prices were low. On the whole, however, the stress of the +grinding was not usually as great as has been fancied. Some of the regular +hands in fact were occasionally spared from the harvest at its height and +set to plow and plant for the next year's crop.[68] + +[Footnote 63: E. g., Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 668.] + +[Footnote 64: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 606.] + +[Footnote 65: _See_ above, p. 337.] + +[Footnote 66: See above, pp. 301, 302.] + +[Footnote 67: Varro, _De Re Rustica_, I, XVII, 2.] + +[Footnote 68: _E. g_., items for November, 1849, in the plantation diary of +Dr. John P.R. Stone, of Iberville Parish, Louisiana. For the use of this +document, the MS. of which is in the possession of Mr. John Stone Ware, +White-Castle, La., I am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody, of the University +of Michigan, now Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] + +The further question arises: how could a master who set himself to work a +slave to death in seven years make sure on the one hand that the demise +would not be precipitated within a few months instead, and on the other +that the consequence would not be merely the slave's incapacitation instead +of his death? In the one case a serious loss would be incurred at once; in +the other the stoppage of the slave's maintenance, which would be the only +conceivable source of gain in the premises, would not have been effected, +but the planter would merely have an invalid on his hands instead of a +worker. Still further, the slaves had recourses of their own, even aside +from appeals for legal redress. They might shoot or stab the oppressor, +burn his house, or run away, or resort to any of a dozen other forms of +sabotage. These possibilities the masters knew as well as the slaves. Mere +passive resistance, however, in cases where even that was needed, would +generally prove effective enough. + +Finally, if all the foregoing arguments be dismissed as fallacious, there +still remains the factor of slave prices as a deterrent in certain periods. +If when slaves were cheap and their produce dear it might be feasible and +profitable to exhaust the one to increase the other, the opportunity would +surely vanish when the price relations were reversed. The trend of the +markets was very strong in that direction. Thus at the beginning of the +nineteenth century a prime field hand in the upland cotton belt had the +value of about 1,500 pounds of middling cotton; by 1810 this value had +risen to 4,500 pounds; by 1820 to 5,500; by 1830 to 6,000; by 1840 to +8,300; from 1843 to 1853 it was currently about 10,000; and in 1860 it +reached about 16,000 pounds. Comparison of slave values as measured in the +several other staples would show quite similar trends, though these great +appreciations were accompanied by no remotely proportionate increase of +the slaves' industrial capacities. The figures tell their own tale of +the mounting preposterousness of any calculated exhaustion of the human +chattels. + +The tradition in anti-slavery circles was however too strong to die. +Various travelers touring the South, keen for corroborative evidence but +finding none, still nursed the belief that a further search would bring +reward. It was like the rainbow's end, always beyond the horizon. Thus the +two Englishmen, Marshall Hall and William H. Russell, after scrutinizing +many Southern localities and finding no slave exhaustion, asserted that it +prevailed either in a district or in a type of establishment which they had +not examined. Hall, who traveled far in the Southern states and then merely +touched at Havana on his way home, wrote: "In the United States the life of +the slave has been cherished and his offspring promoted. In Cuba the lives +of the slaves have been 'used up' by excessive labour, and increase in +number disregarded. It is said, indeed, that the slave-life did not extend +beyond eight or ten years."[69] Russell recorded his surprise at finding +that the Louisiana planters made no reckoning whatever of the cost of their +slaves' labor, that Irish gangs nevertheless did the ditching, and that the +slave children of from nine to eleven years were at play, "exempted from +that cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and +manufacturing districts of England"; and then upon glimpsing the homesteads +of some Creole small proprietors, he wrote: "It is among these men that, at +times, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that slaves are exposed to +the severest labor."[70] Johann Schoepf on the other hand while travelling +many years before on the Atlantic seaboard had written: "They who have the +largest droves [of slaves] keep them the worst, let them run naked mostly +or in rags, and accustom them as much as possible to hunger, but exact of +them steady work."[71] That no concrete observations were adduced in any +of these premises is evidence enough, under the circumstances, that the +charges were empty. + +[Footnote 69: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ +(London, 1854), p. 154.] + +[Footnote 70: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp. +274, 278.] + +[Footnote 71: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation_, A.J. +Morrisson, tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), II, 147. But _see ibid_., pp. 94, 116, +for observations of a general air of indolence among whites and blacks +alike.] + +The capital value of the slaves was an increasingly powerful insurance of +their lives and their health. In four days of June, 1836, Thomas Glover of +Lowndes County, Alabama, incurred a debt of $35 which he duly paid, for +three visits with mileage and prescriptions by Dr. Salley to his "wench +Rina";[72] and in the winter of 1858 Nathan Truitt of Troup County, +Georgia, had medical attendance rendered to a slave child of his to the +amount of $130.50.[73] These are mere chance items in the multitude which +constantly recur in probate records. Business prudence required expenditure +with almost a lavish hand when endangered property was to be saved. The +same consideration applied when famines occurred, as in Alabama in 1828[74] +and 1855.[75] Poverty-stricken freemen might perish, but slaveowners could +use the slaves themselves as security for credits to buy food at famine +prices to feed them.[76] As Olmsted said, comparing famine effects in the +South and in Ireland, "the slaves suffered no physical want--the peasant +starved."[77] The higher the price of slaves, the more stringent the +pressure upon the masters to safeguard them from disease, injury and risk +of every sort. + +[Footnote 72: MS. receipt in private possession.] + +[Footnote 73: MS. probate records at LaGrange, Ga.] + +[Footnote 74: Charleston, _City Gazette_, May 28, 1828.] + +[Footnote 75: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 707, 708, quoting +contemporary newspapers.] + +[Footnote 76: Cf. D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 429.] + +[Footnote 77: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 244.] + +Although this phase of the advancing valuation gave no occasion for regret, +other phases brought a spread of dismay and apprehension. In an essay of +1859 Edmund Ruffin analyzed the effects in Virginia. In the last fifteen +years, he said, the value of slaves had been doubled, solely because of +the demand from the lower South. The Virginians affected fell into three +classes. The first were those who had slaves to be sold, whether through +pressure of debt or in the legal division of estates or in the rare event +of liquidating a surplus of labor. These would receive advantage from high +prices. The second were those who wishing neither to buy nor sell slaves +desired merely to keep their estates intact. These were, of course, +unaffected by the fluctuations. The third were the great number of +enterprising planters and farmers who desired to increase the scale of +their industrial operations and who would buy slaves if conditions were +propitious but were debarred therefrom by the immoderate prices. When these +men stood aside in the bidding the manual force and the earning power of +the commonwealth were depleted. The smaller volume of labor then remaining +must be more thinly applied; land values must needs decline; and the +shrewdest employers must join the southward movement. The draining of +the slaves, he continued, would bring compensation in an inflow of white +settlers only when the removal of slave labor had become virtually complete +and had brought in consequence the most extreme prostration of land +prices and of the incomes of the still remaining remnant of the original +population. The exporting of labor, at whatever price it might be sold, he +likened to a farmer's conversion of his plow teams into cash instead of +using them in his work. According to these views, he concluded, "the +highest prices yet obtained from the foreign purchasers of our slaves have +never left a profit to the state or produced pecuniary benefit to general +interests. And even if prices should continue to increase, as there is good +reason to expect and to dread, until they reach $2000 or more for the best +laborers, or $1200 for the general average of ages and sexes, these prices, +though necessarily operating to remove every slave from Virginia, will +still cause loss to agricultural and general interests in every particular +sale, and finally render the state a desert and a ruin."[78] + +[Footnote 78: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in +_DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] + +At Charleston a similar plaint was voiced by L.W. Spratt. In early years +when the African trade was open and slaves were cheap, said he, in the +Carolina lowlands "enterprise found a profitable field, and necessarily +therefore the fortunes of the country bloomed and brightened. But when +the fertilizing stream of labor was cut off, when the opening West had +no further supply to meet its requisitions, it made demands upon the +accumulations of the seaboard. The limited amount became a prize to be +contended for. Land in the interior offered itself at less than one dollar +an acre. Land on the seaboard had been raised to fifty dollars per acre, +and labor, forced to elect between them, took the cheaper. The heirs who +came to an estate, or the men of capital who retired from business, sought +a location in the West. Lands on the seaboard were forced to seek for +purchasers; purchasers came to the seaboard to seek for slaves. Their +prices were elevated to their value not upon the seaboard where lands were +capital but in the interior where the interest upon the cost of labor was +the only charge upon production. Labor therefore ceased to be profitable +in the one place as it became profitable in the other. Estates which were +wealth to their original proprietors became a charge to the descendants +who endeavored to maintain them. Neglect soon came to the relief of +unprofitable care; decay followed neglect. Mansions became tenantless and +roofless. Trees spring in their deserted halls and wave their branches +through dismantled windows. Drains filled up; the swamps returned. Parish +churches in imposing styles of architecture and once attended by a goodly +company in costly equipages, are now abandoned. Lands which had ready sale +at fifty dollars per acre now sell for less than five dollars; and over +all these structures of wealth, with their offices of art, and over +these scenes of festivity and devotion, there now hangs the pall of an +unalterable gloom."[79] In a later essay the same writer dealt with +developments in the 'fifties in more sober phrases which are corroborated +by the census returns. Within the decade, he said, as many as ten thousand +slaves had been drawn from Charleston by the attractive prices of the west, +and the towns of the interior had suffered losses in the same way. The +slaves had been taken in large numbers from all manufacturing employments, +and were now being sold by thousands each year from the rice fields. "They +are as yet retained by cotton and the culture incident to cotton; but as +almost every negro offered in our markets is bid for by the West, the drain +is likely to continue." In the towns alone was the loss offset in any +degree by an inflow of immigration.[80] + +[Footnote 79: L.W. Spratt, _The Foreign Slave Trade, the source of +political power, of material progress, of social integrity and of social +emancipation to the South_ (Charleston, 1858), pp. 7, 8.] + +[Footnote 80: L.W. Spratt, "Letter to John Perkins of Louisiana," in the +Charleston _Mercury_, Feb. 13, 1861.] + +A similar trend as to slaves but with a sharply contrasting effect upon +prosperity was described by Gratz Brown as prevailing in Missouri. The +slave population, said he, is in process of rapid decline except in a dozen +central counties along the Missouri River. "Hemp is the only staple here +left that will pay for investment in negroes," and that can hardly hold +them against the call of the cotton belt. Already the planters of the +upland counties are beginning to send their slaves to southerly markets +in response to the prices there offered. In most parts of Missouri, he +continued, slavery could not be said to exist as a system. It accordingly +served, not as an appreciable industrial agency, but only as a deterrent +hampering the progress of immigration. Brown therefore advocated the +complete extirpation of the institution as a means of giving great impetus +to the state's prosperity.[81] + +[Footnote 81: B. Gratz Brown, _Speech in the Missouri Legislature, February +12, 1857 on gradual emancipation in Missouri_ (St. Louis, 1857).] + +These accounts are colored by the pro-slavery views of Ruffin and Spratt +and the opposite predilections of Brown. It is clear nevertheless that the +net industrial effects of the exportation of slaves were strikingly +diverse in the several regions. In Missouri, and in Delaware also, where +plantations had never been dominant and where negroes were few, the loss +of slaves was more than counterbalanced by the gain of freemen; in some +portions of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky the replacement of the one by +the other was at so evenly compensating a rate that the volume of industry +was not affected; but in other parts of those states and in the rural +districts of the rice coast the depletion of slaves was not in any +appreciable measure offset by immigration. This applies also to the older +portions of the eastern cotton belt. + +Throughout the northern and eastern South doubts had often been expressed +that slave labor was worth its price. Thus Philip Fithian recorded in his +Virginia diary in 1774 a conversation with Mrs. Robert Carter in which she +expressed an opinion, endorsed by Fithian, "that if in Mr. Carter's or in +any gentleman's estate all the negroes should be sold and the money put to +interest in safe hands, and let the land which the negroes now work lie +wholly uncultivated, the bare interest of the price of the negroes would be +a much greater yearly income than what is now received from their working +the lands, making no allowance at all for the trouble and risk of the +masters as to crops and negroes."[82] In 1824 John Randolph said: "It is +notorious that the profits of slave labor have been for a long time on the +decrease, and that on a fair average it scarcely reimburses the expense of +the slave," and concluded by prophesying that a continuance of the tendency +would bring it about "in case the slave shall not elope from his master, +that his master will run away from him."[83] In 1818 William Elliott +of Beaufort, South Carolina, had written that in the sea-island cotton +industry for a decade past the high valuations of lands and slaves had been +wholly unjustified. On the one hand, said he, the return on investments +was extremely small; on the other, it was almost impossible to relieve an +embarrassed estate by the sale of a part, for the reduction of the scale of +operations would cause a more than proportionate reduction of income.[84] + +[Footnote 82: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), +p. 145.] + +[Footnote 83: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (New York 1851), II, +215.] + +[Footnote 84: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 151-163.] + +The remorseless advance of slave prices as measured in their produce tended +to spread the adverse conditions noted by Elliott into all parts of the +South; and by the close of the 'fifties it is fairly certain that no +slaveholders but those few whose plantations lay in the most advantageous +parts of the cotton and sugar districts and whose managerial ability was +exceptionally great were earning anything beyond what would cover their +maintenance and carrying charges. + +Achille Loria has repeatedly expressed the generalization that slaves have +been systematically overvalued wherever the institution has prevailed, and +he has attempted to explain the phenomenon by reference to an economic law +of his own formulation that capitalists always and everywhere exploit labor +by devices peculiarly adapted to each régime in turn. His latest argument +in the premises is as follows: Man, who is by nature dispersively +individualistic, is brought into industrial coordination only by coercion. +Isolated labor if on exceptionally fertile soil or if equipped with +specially efficient apparatus or if supernormal in energy may produce a +surplus income, but ordinarily it can earn no more than a bare subsistence. +Associative labor yields so much greater returns that masters of one sort +or another emerge in every progressive society to replace dispersion with +concentration and to engross most of the accruing enhancement of produce +to themselves as captains of industry. This "persistent and continuous +coercion, compelling them to labour in conformity to a unitary plan or in +accordance with a concentrating design" is commonly in its earlier form +slavery, and slaveholders are thus the first possessors of capital. As +capitalists they become perpetually concerned with excluding the laborers +from the proprietorship of land and the other means of production. So long +as land is relatively abundant this can be accomplished only by keeping +labor enslaved, and enslavement cannot be maintained unless the slaves are +prevented from buying their freedom. This prevention is procured by the +heightening of slave prices at such a rate as to keep the cost of freedom +always greater than the generality of the slaves can pay with their own +accumulated savings or _peculia_. Slave prices in fact, whether in ancient +Rome or in modern America, advanced disproportionately to the advantage +which the owners could derive from the ownership. "This shows that an +element of speculation enters into the valuation of the slave, or that +there is a hypervaluation of the slave. _This is the central phenomenon of_ +_slavery_; and it is to this far more than to the indolence of slave labour +that is due the low productivity of slave states, the permanently unstable +equilibrium of the slaveholding enterprise, and its inevitable ruin." The +decline of earnings and of slave prices promotes a more drastic oppression, +as in Roman Sicily, to reduce the slave's _peculium_ and continue the +prevention of his self-purchase. When this device is about to fail of its +purpose the masters may foil the intention of the slaves by changing them +into serfs, attaching the lands to the laborers as an additional thing to +be purchased as a condition of freedom. The value of the man may now +be permitted to fall to its natural level. Finally, when the growth of +population has made land so dear that common laborers in freedom cannot +save enough to buy farms, the occasion for slavery and serfdom lapses. +Laborers may now be freed to become a wage-earning proletariat, to take +their own risks. An automatic coercion replaces the systematic; the labor +stimulus is intensified, but the stress of the employer is diminished. The +laborer does not escape from coercion, but merely exchanges one of its +forms for another.[85] + +[Footnote 85: Achille Loria, _The Economic Synthesis_, M. Eden Paul tr. +(London, 1914), PP. 23-26, 91-99.] + +Now Loria falls into various fallacies in other parts of his book, as when +he says that southern lands are generally more fertile than northern +and holds that alone, to the exclusion of climate and racial qualities, +responsible for the greater prevalence of slavery ancient and modern in +southerly latitudes; or when he follows Cairnes in asserting that upon the +American slave plantations "the only form of culture practised was spade +culture, merely agglomerating upon a single area of land a number of +isolated laborers"; or when he contends that either slavery or serfdom +since based on force and fraud "destroys the possibility of fiduciary +credit by cancelling the conditions [of trust and confidence] which alone +can foster it." [86] Such errors disturb one's faith. In the presentation +of his main argument, furthermore, he not only exaggerates the cleavage +between capitalists and laborers, the class consciousness of the two groups +and the rationality of capitalistic purpose, but he falls into calamitous +ambiguity and confusion. The central phenomenon of slavery, says he, is +speculation or the overvaluation of the slave. He thereupon assumes that +speculation always means overvaluation, ignoring its downward possibility, +and he accounts for the asserted universal and continuously increasing +overvaluation by reference to the desire of masters to prevent slaves from +buying their freedom. Here he ignores essential historic facts. In American +law a slave's _peculium_ had no recognition; and the proportion of slaves, +furthermore, who showed any firm disposition to accumulate savings for the +purpose of buying their freedom was very small. Where such efforts were +made, however, they were likely to be aided by the masters through +facilities for cash earnings, price concessions and honest accounting +of instalments, notwithstanding the lack of legal requirements in the +premises. Loria's explanation of the "central phenomenon" is therefore +hardly tenable. + +[Footnote 86: _Ibid_., pp. 26, 190, 260.] + +A far sounder basic doctrine is that of the accountant Gibson, recited +at the beginning of this chapter, that the valuation of a slave is +theoretically determined by the reckoning of his prospective earnings above +the cost of his maintenance. In the actual Southern régime, however, this +was interfered with by several influences. For one thing, the successful +proprietors of small plantations could afford to buy additional slaves at +somewhat more than the price reckoned on _per capita_ earnings, because the +advance of their establishments towards the scale of maximum efficiency +would reduce the proportionate cost of administration. Again, the scale of +slaveholdings was in some degree a measure of social rank, and men were +accordingly tempted by uneconomic motives to increase their trains of +retainers. Both of these considerations stimulated the bidding. On the +other hand conventional morality deterred many proprietors from selling +slaves except under special stress, and thereby diminished the offers in +the market. If the combination of these factors is not adequate as an +explanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a new +country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly +sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome +business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The +variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them +to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated +prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On the +other hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available as a +rule more tempting than slaves as investments. Corporation securities were +few and unseasoned; lands were liable to wear out and were painfully slow +in liquidation; but slaves were a self-perpetuating stock whose ownership +was a badge of dignity, whose management was generally esteemed a +pleasurable responsibility, whose labor would yield an income, and whose +value could be realized in cash with fair promptitude in time of need. No +calculated overvaluation by proprietors for the sake of keeping the slaves +enslaved need be invented. Loria's thesis is a work of supererogation. + +But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices did +rise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that in +virtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area had +been accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog upon +material progress. The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its making +labor mobile, regular and secure. These qualities accorded remarkably, so +far as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the one +hand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other. Its vices +were more numerous, and in part more subtle. + +The North was annually acquiring thousands of immigrants who came at their +own expense, who worked zealously for wages payable from current earnings, +and who possessed all the inventive and progressive potentialities of +European peoples. But aspiring captains of industry at the South could as +a rule procure labor only by remitting round sums in money or credit which +depleted their working capital and for which were obtained slaves fit only +for plantation routine, negroes of whom little initiative could be expected +and little contribution to the community's welfare beyond their mere +muscular exertions. The negroes were procured in the first instance mainly +because white laborers were not to be had; afterward when whites might +otherwise have been available the established conditions repelled them. The +continued avoidance of the South by the great mass of incoming Europeans in +post-bellum decades has now made it clear that it was the negro character +of the slaves rather than the slave status of the negroes which was chiefly +responsible. The racial antipathy felt by the alien whites, along with +their cultural repugnance and economic apprehensions, intrenched the +negroes permanently in the situation. The most fertile Southern areas when +once converted into black belts tended, and still tend as strongly as ever, +to be tilled only by inert negroes, the majority of whom are as yet perhaps +less efficient in freedom than their forbears were as slaves. + +The drain of funds involved in the purchase of slaves was impressive to +contemporaries. Thus Governor Spotswood wrote from Virginia to the British +authorities in 1711 explaining his assent to a £5 tax upon the importation +of slaves. The members of the legislature, said he, "urged what is really +true, that the country is already ruined by the great number of negros +imported of late years, that it will be impossible for them in many years +to discharge the debts already contracted for the purchase of those negroes +if fresh supplys be still poured upon them while their tobacco continues so +little valuable, but that the people will run more and more in debt."[87] +And in 1769 a Charleston correspondent wrote to a Boston journal: "A +calculation having been made of the amount of purchase money of slaves +effected here the present year, it is computed at £270,000 sterling, which +sum will by that means be drained off from this province."[88] + +[Footnote 87: Virginia Historical Society _Collections_, I, 52.] + +[Footnote 88: Boston _Chronicle_, Mch. 27, 1769.] + +An unfortunate fixation of capital was likewise remarked. Thus Sir Charles +Lyell noted at Columbus, Georgia, in 1846 that Northern settlers were +"struck with the difficulty experienced in raising money here by small +shares for the building of mills. 'Why,' say they, 'should all our cotton +make so long a journey to the North, to be manufactured there, and come +back to us at so high a price? It is because all spare cash is sunk here in +purchasing negroes.'" And again at another stage of his tour: "That slave +labour is more expensive than free is an opinion which is certainly gaining +ground in the higher parts of Alabama, and is now professed openly by some +Northerners who have settled there. One of them said to me, 'Half the +population of the South is employed in seeing that the other half do their +work, and they who do work accomplish half what they might do under a +better system.' 'We cannot,' said another,[89] 'raise capital enough for +new cotton factories because all our savings go to buy negroes, or as has +lately happened, to feed them when the crop is deficient." + +[Footnote 89: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_ +(London, 1850), II, 35, 84, 85.] + +The planters, who were the principal Southern capitalists, trod in a +vicious circle. They bought lands and slaves wherewith to grow cotton, +and with the proceeds ever bought more slaves to make more cotton; and +oftentimes they borrowed heavily on their lands and slaves as collateral in +order to enlarge their scale of production the more speedily. When slave +prices rose the possessors of those in the cotton belt seldom took profit +from the advance, for it was a rare planter who would voluntarily sell his +operating force. When crops failed or prices fell, however, the loans might +be called, the mortgages foreclosed, and the property sold out at panic +levels. Thus while the slaves had a guarantee of their sustenance, their +proprietors, themselves the guarantors, had a guarantee of nothing. By +virtue, or more properly by vice, of the heavy capitalization of the +control of labor which was a cardinal feature of the ante-bellum régime, +they were involved in excessive financial risks. + +The slavery system has often been said to have put so great a stigma on +manual labor as to have paralyzed the physical energies of the Southern +white population. This is a great exaggeration; and yet it is true that the +system militated in quite positive degree against the productivity of the +several white classes. Among the well-to-do it promoted leisure by giving +rise to an abnormally large number of men and women who whether actually +or nominally performing managerial functions, did little to bring sweat +to their brows. The proportion of white collars to overalls and of muslin +frocks to kitchen aprons was greater than in any other Anglo-Saxon +community of equal income. The contrast so often drawn between Southern +gentility and Northern thrift had a concrete basis in fact. At the other +extreme the enervation of the poor whites, while mainly due to malaria +and hookworm, had as a contributing cause the limitation upon their +wage-earning opportunity which the slavery system imposed. Upon the middle +class and the yeomanry, which were far more numerous and substantial[90] +than has been commonly realized, the slavery system exerted an economic +influence by limiting the availability of capital and by offering the +temptation of an unsound application of earnings. When a prospering farmer, +for example, wanted help for himself in his fields or for his wife indoors, +the habit of the community prompted him to buy or hire slaves at a greater +cost than free labor would normally have required.[91] The high price of +slaves, furthermore, prevented many a capable manager from exercising his +talents by debarring him from the acquisition of labor and the other means +of large-scale production. + +[Footnote 90: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 91-100, 193-303; John M. Aughey, _The Iron Furnace, or +Slavery and Secession_ (Philadelphia, 1863), p. 231.] + +[Footnote 91: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, p. 513.] + +Finally, the force of custom, together with the routine efficiency of slave +labor itself, caused the South to spoil the market for its distinctive +crops by producing greater quantities than the world would buy at +remunerative prices. To this the solicitude of the masters for the health +of their slaves contributed. The harvesting of wheat, for example, as a +Virginian planter observed in a letter to his neighbor James Madison, in +the days when harvesting machinery was unknown, required exertion much more +severe than the tobacco routine, and was accordingly, as he put it, "by +no means so conducive to the health of our negroes, upon whose increase +(_miserabile dictu_!) our principal profit depends."[92] The same +letter also said: "Where there is negro slavery there will be laziness, +carelessness and wastefulness. Nor is it possible to prevent them. Severity +increases the evil, and humanity does not lessen it." + +[Footnote 92: Francis Corbin to James Madison, Oct. 10, 1819, in the +Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 263.] + +On the whole, the question whether negro labor in slavery was more or less +productive than free negro labor would have been is not the crux of the +matter. The influence of the slaveholding régime upon the whites themselves +made it inevitable that the South should accumulate real wealth more slowly +than the contemporary North. The planters and their neighbors were in the +grip of circumstance. The higher the price of slaves the greater was the +absorption of capital in their purchase, the blacker grew the black belts, +the more intense was the concentration of wealth and talent in plantation +industry, the more complete was the crystallization of industrial society. +Were there any remedies available? Certain politicians masquerading as +economists advocated the territorial expansion of the régime as a means +of relief. Their argument, however, would not stand analysis. On one hand +virtually all the territory on the continent climatically available for the +staples was by the middle of the nineteenth century already incorporated +into slaveholding states; on the other hand, had new areas been available +the chief effects of their exploitation would have been to heighten the +prices of slaves and lower the prices of crops. Actual expansion had in +fact been too rapid for the best interests of society, for it had kept the +population too sparse to permit a proper development of schools and the +agencies of communications. + +With a view to increase the power of the South to expand, and for other +purposes mainly political, a group of agitators in the 'fifties raised a +vehement contention in favor of reopening the African slave trade in full +volume. This, if accomplished, would have lowered the cost of labor, but +its increase of the crops would have depressed staple prices in still +greater degree; its unsettling of the slave market would have hurt vested +interests; and its infusion of a horde of savage Africans would have +set back the progress of the negroes already on hand and have magnified +permanently the problems of racial adjustment. + +The prohibition of the interstate slave trade was another project for +modifying the situation. It was mooted in the main by politicians alien to +the régime. If accomplished it would have wrought a sharp differentiation +in the conditions within the several groups of Southern states. An analogy +may be seen in the British possessions in tropical America, where, +following the stoppage of the intercolonial slave trade in 1807, a royal +commission found that the average slave prices as gathered from sale +records between 1822 and 1830 varied from a range in the old and stagnant +colonies of £27 4_s_. 11-3/4_d_. in Bermuda, £29 18_s_. 9-3/4_d_. in the +Bahamas, £47 1_s_. in Barbados and £44 15_s_. 2-1/4_d_. in Jamaica, to £105 +4_s_., £114 11_s_. and £120 4_s_. 7-1/2_d_ respectively in the new and +buoyant settlements of Trinidad, Guiana and British Honduras.[93] If the +interstate transfer had been stopped, the Virginia, Maryland and Carolina +slave markets would have been glutted while the markets of every +southwestern state were swept bare. Slave prices in the former would have +fallen to such levels that masters would have eventually resorted to +manumission in self-defence, while in the latter all existing checks to the +inflation of prices would have been removed and all the evils consequent +upon the capitalization of labor intensified. + +[Footnote 93: _Accounts and Papers_ [of the British Government], 1837-1838, +vol. 48, [p. 329].] + +Another conceivable plan would have been to replace slavery at large by +serfdom. This would have attached the negroes to whatever lands they +chanced to occupy at the time of the legislation. By force of necessity it +would have checked the depletion of soils; but by preventing territorial +transfer it would have robbed the negroes and their masters of all +advantages afforded by the virginity of unoccupied lands. Serfdom could +hardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparsely +settled country such as the South then was. + +Finally the conversion of slaves into freemen by a sweeping emancipation +was a project which met little endorsement except among those who ignored +the racial and cultural complications. Financially it would work drastic +change in private fortunes, though the transfer of ownership from the +masters to the laborers themselves need not necessarily have great effect +for the time being upon the actual wealth of the community as a whole. +Emancipation would most probably, however, break down the plantation system +by making the labor supply unstable, and fill the country partly with +peasant farmers and partly with an unattached and floating negro +population. Exceptional negroes and mulattoes would be sure to thrive upon +their new opportunities, but the generality of the blacks could be counted +upon to relax into a greater slackness than they had previously been +permitted to indulge in. The apprehension of industrial paralysis, however, +appears to have been a smaller factor than the fear of social chaos as a +deterrent in the minds of the Southern whites from thoughts of abolition. + +The slaveholding régime kept money scarce, population sparse and land +values accordingly low; it restricted the opportunities of many men of both +races, and it kept many of the natural resources of the Southern country +neglected. But it kept the main body of labor controlled, provisioned and +mobile. Above all it maintained order and a notable degree of harmony in a +community where confusion worse confounded would not have been far to +seek. Plantation slavery had in strictly business aspects at least as many +drawbacks as it had attractions. But in the large it was less a business +than a life; it made fewer fortunes than it made men. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +TOWN SLAVES + + +Southern households in town as well as in country were commonly large, and +the dwellings and grounds of the well-to-do were spacious. The dearth of +gas and plumbing and the lack of electric light and central heating made +for heavy chores in the drawing of water, the replenishment of fuel and the +care of lamps. The gathering of vegetables from the kitchen garden, the +dressing of poultry and the baking of relays' of hot breads at meal times +likewise amplified the culinary routine. Maids of all work were therefore +seldom employed. Comfortable circumstances required at least a cook and +a housemaid, to which might be added as means permitted a laundress, a +children's nurse, a seamstress, a milkmaid, a butler, a gardener and a +coachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none but +the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the gross +population was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menial +employment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection of +householders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate services +and gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census of +Charleston in 1848,[94] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics as +compared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. The slaves were more +numerous than the free also in the semi-domestic employments of coachmen +and porters, and among the dray-men and the coopers and the unskilled +laborers in addition. + +[Footnote 94: J.L. Dawson and H.W. DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for +1848_ (Charleston, 1849), pp. 31-36. The city's population then comprised +some 20,000 whites, a like number of slaves, and about 3,500 free persons +of color. The statistics of occupations are summarized in the accompanying +table.] + +MANUAL OCCUPATIONS IN CHARLESTON, 1848 + + Slaves | Free Negroes| Whites + Men | Women Men |Women Men |Women +Domestic servants 1,888 | 3,384 9 | 28 13 | 100 +Cooks and +confectioners 7 | 12 18 | 18 ... | 5 +Nurses and midwives ...| 2 ... | 10 ... | 5 +Laundresses ...| 33 ... | 45 ... | ... +Seamstresses and +mantua makers ... | 24 ... | 196 ... | 125 +Milliners ... | ... ... | 7 ... | 44 +Fruiterers, hucksters +and pedlers ... | 18 6 | 5 46 | 18 +Gardeners 3 | ... ...| ... 5 | 1 +Coachmen 15 | ... 4 | ... 2 | ... +Draymen 67 | ... 11 | ... 13 | ... +Porters 35 | ... 5 | ... 8 | ... +Wharfingers and +stevedores 2 | ... 1 | ... 21 | ... +Pilots and sailors 50 | ... 1 | ... 176 | ... +Fishermen 11 | ... 14 | ... 10 | ... +Carpenters 120 | ... 27 | ... 119 | ... +Masons and +bricklayers 68 | ... 10 | ... 60 | ... +Painters and +plasterers 16 | ... 4 | ... 18 | ... +Tinners 3 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Ship carpenters +and joiners 51 | ... 6 | ... 52 | ... +Coopers 61 | ... 2 | ... 20 | ... +Coach makers and +wheelwrights 3 | ... 1 | ... 26 | ... +Cabinet makers 8 | ... ... | ... 26 | ... +Upholsterers 1 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Gun, copper and +locksmiths 2 | ... 1 | ... 16 | ... +Blacksmiths and +horseshoers 40 | ... 4 | ... 51 | ... +Millwrights ... | ... 5 | ... 4 | ... +Boot and shoemakers 6 | ... 17 | ... 30 | ... +Saddle and harness +makers 2 | ... 1 | ... 29 | ... +Tailors and cap makers 36 | ... 42 | 6 68 | 6 +Butchers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Millers ... | ... 1 | ... 14 | ... +Bakers 39 | ... 1 | ... 35 | 1 +Barbers and hairdressers 4 | ... 14 | ... ... | 6 +Cigarmakers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Bookbinders 3 | ... ... | ... 10 | ... +Printers 5 | ... ... | ... 65 | ... +Other mechanics [A] 45 | ... 2 | ... 182 | ... +Apprentices 43 | 8 14 | 7 55 | 5 +Unclassified, unskilled +laborers 838 | 378 19 | 2 192 | ... +Superannuated 38 | 54 1 | 5 ... | ... + +[Footnote A: The slaves and free negroes in this group were designated +merely as mechanics. The whites were classified as follows: 3 joiners, +1 plumber, 8 gas fitters, 7 bell hangers, 1 paper hanger, 6 carvers and +gilders, 9 sail makers, 5 riggers, 1 bottler, 8 sugar makers, 43 engineers, +10 machinists, 6 boilermakers, 7 stone cutters, 4 piano and organ builders, +23 silversmiths, 15 watchmakers, 3 hair braiders, 1 engraver, 1 cutler, 3 +molders, 3 pump and block makers, 2 turners, 2 wigmakers, 1 basketmaker, 1 +bleacher, 4 dyers, and 4 journeymen. + +In addition there were enumerated of whites in non-mechanical employments +in which the negroes did not participate, 7 omnibus drivers and 16 +barkeepers.] + +On the other hand, although Charleston excelled every other city in the +proportion of slaves in its population, free laborers predominated in all +the other industrial groups, though but slightly in the cases of the masons +and carpenters. The whites, furthermore, heavily outnumbered the free +negroes in virtually all the trades but that of barbering which they +shunned. Among women workers the free colored ranked first as seamstresses, +washerwomen, nurses and cooks, with white women competing strongly in the +sewing trades alone. A census of Savannah in the same year shows a similar +predominance of whites in all the male trades but that of the barbers, in +which there were counted five free negroes, one slave and no whites.[2] +From such statistics two conclusions are clear: first, that the repulsion +of the whites was not against manual work but against menial service; +second, that the presence of the slaves in the town trades was mainly due +to the presence of their fellows as domestics. + +[Footnote 2: Joseph Bancroft, _Census of the City of Savannah_ (Savannah, +1848).] + +Most of the slave mechanics and out-of-door laborers were the husbands and +sons of the cooks and chambermaids, dwelling with them on their masters' +premises, where the back yard with its crooning women and romping +vari-colored children was as characteristic a feature as on the +plantations. Town slavery, indeed, had a strong tone of domesticity, and +the masters were often paternalistically inclined. It was a townsman, for +example, who wrote the following to a neighbor: "As my boy Reuben has +formed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her for a wife, this +is to let you know that I am perfectly willing that he should, with your +consent, marry her. His character is good; he is honest, faithful and +industrious." The patriarchal relations of the country, however, which +depended much upon the isolation of the groups, could hardly prevail in +similar degree where the slaves of many masters intermingled. Even for +the care of the sick there was doubtless fairly frequent recourse to such +establishments as the "Surgical Infirmary for Negroes" at Augusta which +advertised its facilities in 1854,[3] though the more common practice, of +course, was for slave patients in town as well as country to be nursed +at home. A characteristic note in this connection was written by a young +Georgia townswoman: "No one is going to church today but myself, as we have +a little negro very sick and Mama deems it necessary to remain at home to +attend to him."[4] + +[Footnote 3: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 289, +advertisement. The building was described as having accommodations for +fifty or sixty patients. The charge for board, lodging and nursing was $10 +per month, and for surgical operations and medical attendance "the usual +rates of city practice."] + +[Footnote 4: Mary E. Harden to Mrs. Howell Cobb, Athens, Ga., Nov. 13, +1853. MS. in possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +The town régime was not so conducive to lifelong adjustments of masters +and slaves except as regards domestic service; for whereas a planter could +always expand his operations in response to an increase of his field hands +and could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he might +produce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire +out or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic +establishment. On the other hand a building contractor with an expanding +business could not await the raising of children but must buy or hire +masons and carpenters where he could find them. + +Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs. Thus William Elfe, a +Charleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial period, had title to +four sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and he managed to keep some of +their wives and children in his possession also by having a farm on the +further side of the harbor for their residence and employment.[5] William +Rouse, a Charleston leather worker who closed his business in 1825 when +the supply of tan bark ran short, had for sale four tanners, a currier and +seven shoemakers, with, however, no women or children;[6] and the seven +slaves of William Brockelbank, a plastering contractor of the same city, +sold after his death in 1850, comprised but one woman and no children.[7] +Likewise when the rope walk of Smith, Dorsey and Co. at New Orleans was +offered for sale in 1820, fourteen slave operatives were included without +mention of their families.[8] + +[Footnote 5: MS. account book of William Elfe, in the Charleston Library.] + +[Footnote 6: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 5, 1826, advertisement.] + +[Footnote 7: Charleston _Mercury_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. +5, 1850. This news item owed its publication to the "handsome prices" +realized. A plasterer 28 years old brought $2,135; another, 30, $1,805; a +third, 24, $1775; a fourth, 24, $1,100; and a fifth, 20, $730.] + +[Footnote 8: _Louisiana Advertiser_ (New Orleans), May 13, 1820, +advertisement.] + +Far more frequently such laborers were taken on hire. The following are +typical of a multitude of newspaper advertisements: Michael Grantland at +Richmond offered "good wages" for the year 1799 by piece or month for six +or eight negro coopers.[9] At the same time Edward Rumsey was calling for +strong negro men of good character at $100 per year at his iron works in +Botetourt County, Virginia, and inviting free laboring men also to take +employment with him.[10] In 1808 Daniel Weisinger and Company wanted three +or four negro men to work in their factory at Frankfort, Kentucky, saying +"they will be taught weaving, and liberal wages will be paid for their +services."[11] George W. Evans at Augusta in 1818 "Wanted to hire, eight or +ten white or black men for the purpose of cutting wood."[12] A citizen of +Charleston in 1821 called for eight good black carpenters on weekly or +monthly wages, and in 1825 a blacksmith and wheel-wright of the same city +offered to take black apprentices.[13] In many cases whites and blacks +worked together in the same employ, as in a boat-building yard on the Flint +River in 1836,[14] and in a cotton mill at Athens, Georgia, in 1839.[15] + +[Footnote 9: _Virginia Gazette_ (Richmond), Nov. 20, 1798.] + +[Footnote 10: Winchester, Va., _Gazette_, Jan. 30, 1799.] + +[Footnote 11: The _Palladium_ (Frankfort, Ky.), Dec. 1, 1808.] + +[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 1, 1818.] + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 22, 1825.] + +[Footnote 14: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 18, 1836, +reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 356.] + +[Footnote 15: J.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, +[1842]), II, 112.] + +In some cases the lessor of slaves procured an obligation of complete +insurance from the lessee. An instance of this was a contract between +James Murray of Wilmington in 1743, when he was departing for a sojourn in +Scotland, and his neighbor James Hazel. The latter was to take the three +negroes Glasgow, Kelso and Berwick for three years at an annual hire of £21 +sterling for the lot. If death or flight among them should prevent Hazel +from returning any of the slaves at the end of the term he was to reimburse +Murray at full value scheduled in the lease, receiving in turn a bill of +sale for any runaway. Furthermore if any of the slaves were permanently +injured by willful abuse at the hands of Hazel's overseer, Murray was to be +paid for the damage.[16] Leases of this type, however, were exceptional. +As a rule the owners appear to have carried all risks except in regard to +willful injury, and the courts generally so adjudged it where the contracts +of hire had no stipulations in the premises.[17] When the Georgia supreme +court awarded the owner a full year's hire of a slave who had died in the +midst of his term the decision was complained of as an innovation "signally +oppressive to the poorer classes of our citizens--the large majority--who +are compelled to hire servants."[18] + +[Footnote 16: Nina M. Tiffany ed., _Letters of James Murray, Loyalist_ +(Boston, 1901), pp. 67-69.] + +[Footnote 17: J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_ (New York, 1837), pp. +152-155.] + +[Footnote 18: Editorial in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. +12, 1854.] + +The main supply of slaves for hire was probably comprised of the husbands +and sons, and sometimes the daughters, of the cooks and housemaids of the +merchants, lawyers and the like whose need of servants was limited but who +in many cases made a point of owning their slaves in families. On the other +hand, many townsmen whose capital was scant or whose need was temporary +used hired slaves even for their kitchen work; and sometimes the filling of +the demand involved the transfer of a slave from one town to another. Thus +an innkeeper of Clarkesville, a summer resort in the Georgia mountains, +published in the distant newspapers of Athens and Augusta in 1838 his +offer of liberal wages for a first rate cook.[19] This hiring of domestics +brought periodic embarrassments to those who depended upon them. A Virginia +clergyman who found his wife and himself doing their own chores "in the +interval between the hegira of the old hirelings and the coming of the +new"[20] was not alone in his plight. At the same season, a Richmond editor +wrote: "The negro hiring days have come, the most woeful of the year! So +housekeepers think who do not own their own servants; and even this class +is but a little better off than the rest, for all darkeydom must have +holiday this week, and while their masters and mistresses are making fires +and cooking victuals or attending to other menial duties the negroes are +promenading the streets decked in their finest clothes."[21] Even the +tobacco factories, which were constantly among the largest employers of +hired slaves, were closed for lack of laborers from Christmas day until +well into January.[22] + +[Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1838, advertisement +ordering its own republication in the Augusta _Constitutionalist_.] + +[Footnote 20: T.C. Johnson, _Life of Robert L. Dabney_ (Richmond, 1905), p. +120.] + +[Footnote 21: Richmond _Whig_, quoted in the _Atlanta Intelligencer_, Jan. +5, 1859.] + +[Footnote 22: Robert Russell, _North America_ (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 151.] + +That the bargain of hire sometimes involved the consent of more than two +parties is suggested by a New Year's colloquy overheard by Robert Russell +on a Richmond street: "I was rather amused at the efforts of a market +gardener to hire a young woman as a domestic servant. The price her owner +put upon her services was not objected to by him, but they could not agree +about other terms. The grand obstacle was that she would not consent to +work in the garden, even when she had nothing else to do. After taking an +hour's walk in another part of town I again met the two at the old bargain. +Stepping towards them, I now learned that she was pleading for other +privileges--her friends and favourites must be allowed to visit her.[23] +At length she agreed to go and visit her proposed home and see how things +looked." That the scruples of proprietors occasionally prevented the +placing of slaves is indicated by a letter of a Georgia woman anent her +girl Betty and a free negro woman, Matilda: "I cannot agree for Betty to +be hired to Matilda--her character is too bad. I know her of old; she is a +drunkard, and is said to be bad in every respect. I would object her being +hired to any colored person no matter what their character was; and if she +cannot get into a respectable family I had rather she came home, and if she +can't work out put her to spinning and weaving. Her relations here beg she +may not be permitted to go to Matilda. She would not be worth a cent at the +end of the year."[24] + +The coördination of demand and supply was facilitated in some towns by +brokers. Thus J. de Bellievre of Baton Rouge maintained throughout 1826 a +notice in the local _Weekly Messenger_ of "Servants to hire by the day or +month," including both artizans and domestics; and in the Nashville city +directory of 1860 Van B. Holman advertised his business as an agent for the +hiring of negroes as well as for the sale and rental of real estate. + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid_.] + +[Footnote 24: Letter of Mrs. S.R. Cobb, Cowpens, Ga., Jan. 9 1843, to +her daughter-in-law at Athens. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, +Athens, Ga.] + +Slave wages, generally quoted for the year and most frequently for +unskilled able-bodied hands, ranged materially higher, of course, in the +cotton belt than in the upper South. Women usually brought about half +the wages of men, though they were sometimes let merely for the keep of +themselves and their children. In middle Georgia the wages of prime men +ranged about $100 in the first decade of the nineteenth century, dropped to +$60 or $75 during the war of 1812, and then rose to near $150 by 1818. The +panic of the next year sent them down again; and in the 'twenties they +commonly ranged between $100 and $125. Flush times then raised them in +such wise that the contractors digging a canal on the Georgia coast found +themselves obliged in 1838 to offer $18 per month together with the +customary weekly rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quarts +of corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitute +for life and health insurance.[25] The beginning of the distressful +'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville could get its +street gang on a scale of $125;[26] at the middle of the decade slaveowners +were willing to take almost any wages offered; and in its final year the +Georgia Railroad paid only $70 to $75 for section hands. In 1850, however, +this rate leaped to $100 and $110, and caused a partial substitution of +white laborers for the hired slaves;[27] but the brevity of any relief +procured by this recourse is suggested by a news item from Chattanooga in +1852 reporting that the commonest labor commanded a dollar a day, that +mechanics were all engaged far in advance, that much building was perforce +being postponed, and that all persons who might be seeking employment were +urged to answer the city's call.[28] By 1854 the continuing advance began +to discommode rural employers likewise. A Norfolk newspaper of the time +reported that the current wages of $150 for ordinary hands and $225 for +the best laborers, together with life insurance for the full value of +the slaves, were so high that prudent farmers were curtailing their +operations.[29] At the beginning of 1856 the wages in the Virginia tobacco +factories advanced some fifteen per cent. over the rates of the preceding +year;[30] and shortly afterward several of these establishments took refuge +in the employment of white women for their lighter processes.[31] In 1860 +there was a culmination of this rise of slave wages throughout the South, +contemporaneous with that of their purchase prices. First-rate hands +were engaged by the Petersburg tobacco factories at $225;[32] and in +northwestern Louisiana the prime field hands in a parcel of slaves hired +for the year brought from $300 to $360 each, and a blacksmith $430.[33] The +general average then prevalent for prime unskilled slaves, however, was +probably not much above two hundred dollars. While the purchase price of +slaves was wellnigh quadrupled in the three score years of the nineteenth +century, slave wages were little more than doubled, for these were of +course controlled not by the fluctuating hopes and fears of what the +distant future might bring but by the sober prospect of the work at hand. + +[Footnote 25: Advertisement in the Savannah newspapers, reprinted in J.S. +Buckingham, _Slave States_ (London, 1842), I, 137.] + +[Footnote 26: MS. minutes of the board of aldermen, in the town hall at +Milledgeville, Ga. Item dated Feb. 23, 1841.] + +[Footnote 27: Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1850, p. 13.] + +[Footnote 28: Chattanooga _Advertiser_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +June 6, 1852.] + +[Footnote 29: Norfolk _Argus_, quoted in _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), +Jan. 12, 1854.] + +[Footnote 30: Richmond _Dispatch_, Jan., 1856, quoted in G.M. Weston, _Who +are and who may be Slaves in the U.S._ (caption).] + +[Footnote 31: _Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XL, 522.] + +[Footnote 32: Petersburg _Democrat_, quoted by the Atlanta _Intelligencer_, +Jan., 1860.] + +[Footnote 33: _DeBow's Review_, XXIX, 374.] + +The proprietors of slaves for hire appear to have been generally as much +concerned with questions of their moral and physical welfare as with the +wages to be received, for no wage would compensate for the debilitation of +the slave or his conversion into an inveterate runaway. The hirers in their +turn had the problem, growing more intense with the advance of costs, of +procuring full work without resorting to such rigor of discipline as +would disquiet the owners of their employees. The tobacco factories found +solution in piece work with bonus for excess over the required stint. At +Richmond in the middle 'fifties this was commonly yielding the slaves from +two to five dollars a month for their own uses; and these establishments, +along with all other slave employers, suspended work for more than a week +at the Christmas season.[34] + +[Footnote 34: Robert Russell, _North America_, p. 152.] + +The hiring of slaves from one citizen to another did not meet all the needs +of the town industry, for there were many occupations in which the regular +supervision of labor was impracticable. Hucksters must trudge the streets +alone; and market women sit solitary in their stalls. If slaves were to +follow such callings at all, and if other slaves were to utilize their +talents in keeping cobbler and blacksmith shops and the like for public +patronage,[35] they must be vested with fairly full control of their own +activities. To enable them to compete with whites and free negroes in the +trades requiring isolated and occasional work their masters early and +increasingly fell into the habit of hiring many slaves to the slaves +themselves, granting to each a large degree of industrial freedom in return +for a stipulated weekly wage. The rates of hire varied, of course, with the +slave's capabilities and the conditions of business in their trades. The +practice brought friction sometimes between slaves and owners when wages +were in default. An instance of this was published in a Charleston +advertisement of 1800 announcing the auction of a young carpenter and +saying as the reason of the sale that he had absconded because of a deficit +in his wages.[36] Whether the sale was merely by way of punishment or +was because the proprietor could not give personal supervision to the +carpenter's work the record fails to say. The practice also injured the +interests of white competitors in the same trades, who sometimes bitterly +complained;[37] it occasionally put pressure upon the slaves to fill +out their wages by theft; and it gave rise in some degree to a public +apprehension that the liberty of movement might be perverted to purposes of +conspiracy. The law came to frown upon it everywhere; but the device was +too great a public and private convenience to be suppressed. + +[Footnote 35: _E. g_., "For sale: a strong, healthy Mulatto Man, about +24 years of age, by trade a blacksmith, and has had the management of a +blacksmith shop for upwards of two years" Advertisement in the Alexandria, +Va., _Times and Advertiser_, Sept. 26, 1797.] + +[Footnote 36: Charleston _City Gazette_, May 12, 1800.] + +[Footnote 37: _E. g., Plantation and Frontier_, II, 367.] + +To procure the enforcement of such laws a vigilance committee was proposed +at Natchez in 1824;[38] but if it was created it had no lasting effect. +With the same purpose newspaper campaigns were waged from time to time. +Thus in the spring of 1859 the _Bulletin_ of Columbia, South Carolina, said +editorially: "Despite the laws of the land forbidding under penalty the +hiring of their time by slaves, it is much to be regretted that the +pernicious practice still exists," and it censured the citizens who were +consciously and constantly violating a law enacted in the public interest. +The nearby Darlington _Flag_ endorsed this and proposed in remedy that +the town police and the rural patrols consider void all tickets issued by +masters authorizing their slaves to pass and repass at large, that all +slaves found hiring their time be arrested and punished, and that their +owners be indicted as by law provided. The editor then ranged further. +"There is another evil of no less magnitude," said he, "and perhaps the +foundation of the one complained of. It is that of transferring slave labor +from its legitimate field, the cultivation of the soil, into that of the +mechanic arts.... Negro mechanics are an ebony aristocracy into which +slaves seek to enter by teasing their masters for permission to learn a +trade. Masters are too often seduced by the prospect of gain to yield their +assent, and when their slaves have acquired a trade are forced to the +violation of the law to realize their promised gain. We should therefore +have a law to prevent slave mechanics going off their masters' premises to +work. Let such a law be passed, and ... there will no longer be need of a +law to prohibit slaves hiring their own time," The _Southern Watchman_ of +Athens, Georgia, reprinted all of this in turn, along with a subscriber's +communication entitled "free slaves." There were more negroes enjoying +virtual freedom in the town of Athens, this writer said, than there were +_bona fide_ free negroes in any ten counties of the district. "Everyone who +is at all acquainted with the character of the slave race knows that they +have great ideas of liberty, and in order to get the enjoyment of it they +make large offers for their time. And everyone who knows anything of the +negro knows that he won't work unless he is obliged to.... The negro thus +set free, in nine cases out of ten, idles away half of his time or gambles +away what he does make, and then relies on his ingenuity in stealing to +meet the demands pay day inevitably brings forth; and this is the way our +towns are converted into dens of rogues and thieves."[39] + +[Footnote 38: Natchez _Mississippian_, quoted in _Le Courrier de la +Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Aug. 25, 1854.] + +[Footnote 39: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Apr. 20, 1859.] + +These arguments had been answered long before by a citizen of Charleston. +The clamor, said he, was intended not so much to guard the community +against theft and insurrection as to diminish the competition of slaves +with white mechanics. The strict enforcement of the law would almost +wholly deprive the public of the services of jobbing slaves, which were +indispensable under existing circumstances. Let the statute therefore be +left in the obscurity of the lawyers' bookshelves, he concluded, to be +brought forth only in case of an emergency.[40] And so such laws were left +to sleep, despite the plaints of self-styled reformers. + +[Footnote 40: Letter to the editor in the Charleston _City Gazette_, Nov. +1, 1825. To similar effect was an editorial in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +Oct. 16, 1851.] + +That self-hire may often have led to self-purchase is suggested by an +illuminating letter of Billy Procter, a slave at Americus, Georgia, in 1854 +to Colonel John B. Lamar of whom something has been seen in a foregoing +chapter. The letter, presumably in the slave's own hand, runs as follows: +"As my owner, Mr. Chapman, has determined to dispose of all his Painters, I +would prefer to have you buy me to any other man. And I am anxious to get +you to do so if you will. You know me very well yourself, but as I wish +you to be fully satisfied I beg to refer you to Mr. Nathan C. Monroe, Dr. +Strohecker and Mr. Bogg. I am in distress at this time, and will be until I +hear from you what you will do. I can be bought for $1000--and I think that +you might get me for 50 Dolls less if you try, though that is Mr. Chapman's +price. Now Mas John, I want to be plain and honest with you. If you will +buy me I will pay you $600 per year untill this money is paid, or at any +rate will pay for myself in two years.... I am fearfull that if you do not +buy me, there is no telling where I may have to go, and Mr. C. wants me to +go where I would be satisfied,--I promise to serve you faithfully, and I +know that I am as sound and healthy as anyone you could find. You will +confer a great favour, sir, by Granting my request, and I would be +very glad to hear from you in regard to the matter at your earliest +convenience."[41] + +[Footnote 41: MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., +printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 41. The writer must have been +well advanced in years or else highly optimistic. Otherwise he could not +have expected to earn his purchase price within two years.] + +The hiring of slaves by one citizen to another prevailed to some extent +in country as well as town, and the hiring of them to themselves was +particularly notable in the forest labors of gathering turpentine and +splitting shingles[42]; but slave hire in both its forms was predominantly +an urban resort. On the whole, whereas the plantation system cherished +slavery as a wellnigh fundamental condition, town industry could tolerate +it only by modifying its features to make labor more flexibly responsive to +the sharply distinctive urban needs. + +[Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 153-155.] + +As to routine control, urban proprietors were less complete masters even +of slaves in their own employ than were those in the country. For example, +Morgan Brown of Clarksville, Tennessee, had occasion to publish the +following notice: "Whereas my negroes have been much in the habit of +working at night for such persons as will employ them, to the great injury +of their health and morals, I therefore forbid all persons employing them +without my special permission in writing. I also forbid trading with them, +buying from or selling to them, without my written permit stating the +article they may buy or sell. The law will be strictly enforced against +transgressors, without respect to persons[43]." + +[Footnote 43: _Town Gazette and Farmers' Register_ (Clarksville, Tenn.), +Aug. 9, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 45, 46.] + +When broils occurred in which slaves were involved, the masters were likely +to find themselves champions rather than judges. This may be illustrated by +two cases tried before the town commissioners of Milledgeville, Georgia, +in 1831. In the first of these Edward Gary was ordered to bring before the +board his slave Nathan to answer a charge of assault upon Richard Mayhorn, +a member of the town patrol, and show why punishment should not be +inflicted. On the day set Cary appeared without the negro and made a +counter charge supported by testimony that Mayhorn had exceeded his +authority under the patrol ordinance. The prosecution of the slave was +thereupon dropped, and the patrolman was dismissed from the town's employ. +The second case was upon a patrol charge against a negro named Hubbard, +whose master or whose master's attorney was one Wiggins, reciting an +assault upon Billy Woodliff, a slave apparently of Seaborn Jones. Billy +being sworn related that Hubbard had come to the door of his blacksmith +shop and "abused and bruised him with a rock." Other evidence revealed that +Hubbard's grievance lay in Billy's having taken his wife from him. "The +testimony having been concluded, Mr. Wiggins addressed the board in a +speech containing some lengthy, strengthy and depthy argument: whereupon +the board ordered that the negro man Hubbard receive from the marshall ten +lashes, moderately laid on, and be discharged."[44] Even in the maintenance +of household discipline masters were fain to apply chastisement vicariously +by having the town marshal whip their offending servants for a small fee. + +[Footnote 44: MS. archives in the town hall at Milledgeville, Ga., selected +items from which are printed in the American Historical Association +_Report_ for 1903, I, 468, 469.] + +The variety in complexion, status and attainment among town slaves led to a +somewhat elaborate gradation of colored society. One stratum comprised the +fairly numerous quadroons and mulattoes along with certain exceptional +blacks. The men among these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, +painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the +cast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread, +and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This element +was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or less +irked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could not +cross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes on the +other hand, with an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, the +women frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors, carrying +their burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying as great store in +their kerchief turbans as their paler cousins did in their beflowered +bonnets. The men of this class wore their shreds and patches with an +easy swing, doffed their wool hats to white men as they passed, called +themselves niggers or darkies as a matter of course, took the joys and +sorrows of the day as they came, improvised words to the music of their +work, and customarily murdered the Queen's English, all with a true if +humble nonchalance and a freedom from carking care. + +The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more than +rudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work days assumed +a grandiloquence of manner when they donned their holiday clothes. The +gayeties of the colored population were most impressive to visitors from +afar. Thus Adam Hodgson wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "I +was pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day in +their best attire, and was amused with their manners towards each other. +They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, and make the +most formal and particular inquiries after each other's families."[45] J.S. +Buckingham wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays, when the +slaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they move about in +every thoroughfare, and are generally more gaily dressed than the whites. +The females wear white muslin and light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets, +ribbons and feathers; some carry reticules on the arm and many are seen +with parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchief +before them in the most fashionable style. The young men among the +slaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed hats, and carry +walking-sticks; and from the bowings, curtseying and greetings in the +highway one might almost imagine one's self to be at Hayti and think that +the coloured people had got possession of the town and held sway, while the +whites were living among them by sufferance."[46] Olmsted in his turn found +the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the whites,[47] +and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia. The town ordinances, +while commonly strict in regard to the police of slaves for the rest of the +year, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festive +assemblies at Christmas tide. + +[Footnote 45: Adam Hodgson, _Letters from North America_, I, 97.] + +[Footnote 46: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States_, II, 427.] + +[Footnote 47: _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 101, 103. Cf. also _DeBow's +Review_, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199.] + +Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasional +complaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, among +matters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grog +shops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night, +in spite of the prohibitions of the law.[48] A citizen of Charleston +protested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form of +dissipation. "There are," said he, "sometimes every evening in the week, +funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes ... who +disturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of burying grounds in Pitt +street near Boundary street. It appears to be a jubilee for every slave in +the city. They are seen eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters, +and such is frequently the crowd and noise made by them that carriages +cannot safely be driven that way."[49] + +[Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 153.] + +[Footnote 49: Letter of a citizen in the _Southern Patriot_, quoted in H.M. +Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., 1914), +p. 144.] + +The operations of urban constables and police courts are exemplified in +some official statistics of Charleston. In the year ending September 1, +1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all, were followed in 138 cases +by prompt magisterial discharge, by fines in 309 cases, and by punishment +in the workhouse or by remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264 +of the remainder. The mayor said in summary: "Of the 573 slaves fined or +committed to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for being out at +night without tickets or being found in the dram shops or other unlawful +places. The fines imposed did not in general exceed $1, and where corporal +punishment was inflicted it was always moderate. It is worthy to remark +that of the 460 cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 were +prosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303 cases, and in +118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by a previous examination +421 suits." Arrests of colored freemen in the same period numbered 78, of +which 27 were followed by discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentence +to the workhouse, and 10 by remandment. + +In the second year following, the slave and free negro arrests for being +"out after the beating of the tattoo without tickets, fighting and rioting +in the streets, following military companies, walking on the battery +contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or other +violation of the city and state laws" advanced for some unexplained reason +to an aggregate of 1424. Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged +after examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted +or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines were +paid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners or guardians, 115 +were runaways who were duly returned to their masters or otherwise disposed +of according to law, and the remaining 252 were delivered on their owners' +orders.[50] + +[Footnote 50: Official reports quoted in H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of +Slaves in South Carolina_, pp. 49, 50.] + +At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the public whipping +of negro offenders at prominent points on the city streets, but +complaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[51] had brought its +discontinuance. For the punishment of misdemeanants under sentences to hard +labor a treadmill was instituted in the workhouse;[52] and the ensuing +substitution of labor for the lash met warm official commendation.[53] + +[Footnote 51: _Columbian Herald_ (Charleston), June 26, 1788.] + +[Footnote 52: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 2, 1826.] + +[Footnote 53: Grand jury presentments, _ibid_., May 15, 1826.] + +In church affairs the two races adhered to the same faiths, but their +worship tended slowly to segregate. A few negroes habitually participated +with the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal rituals, or listened to the +long and logical sermons of the Presbyterians. Larger numbers occupied the +pews appointed for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptist +whites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with their own +tastes. But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint. The +white preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing of +the negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptu +eloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when +dignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their own +manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemly +conduct.[54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding of separate +congregations to which the white ministers occasionally preached and in +which white laymen often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonly +filled by blacks alone. There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiar +talent for "'rousements" and the prayer leader might beseech the Almighty +in tones to reach His ears though afar off. There the sisters might sway +and croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur the +spokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. There +not only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead of +the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermon +would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm. + +[Footnote 54: A Methodist preacher wrote of an episode at Wilmington: "On +one occasion I took a summary process with a certain black woman who in +their love-feast, with many extravagant gestures, cried out that she was +'young King Jesus,' I bade her take her seat, and then publicly read her +out of membership, stating that we would not have such wild fanatics +among us, meantime letting them all know that such expressions were even +blasphemous. Poor Aunt Katy felt it deeply, repented, and in a month I took +her back again. The effect was beneficial, and she became a rational +and consistent member of the church." Joseph Travis, _Autobiography_ +(Nashville, 1855), pp. 71, 72.] + +In some cases the withdrawal of the blacks had the full character of +secession. An example in this line had been set in Philadelphia when +some of the negroes who had been attending white churches of various +denominations were prompted by the antipathy of the whites and by the +ambition of the colored leaders to found, in 1791, an African church with +a negro minister. In the course of a few years this was divided into +congregations of the several sects. Among these the Methodists prospered +to such degree that in 1816 they launched the African Methodist Episcopal +Church, with congregations in Baltimore and other neighboring cities +included within its jurisdiction.[55] Richard Allen as its first bishop +soon entered into communication with Morris Brown and other colored +Methodists of Charleston who were aggrieved at this time by the loss of +their autonomy. In former years the several thousand colored Methodists, +who outnumbered by tenfold the whites in the congregations there, had +enjoyed a quarterly conference of their own, with the custody of their +collections and with control over the church trials of colored members; but +on the ground of abuses these privileges were cancelled in 1815. A secret +agitation then ensued which led on the one hand to the increase of the +negro Methodists by some two thousand souls, and on the other to the visit +of two of their leaders to Philadelphia where they were formally ordained +for Charleston pastorates. When affairs were thus ripened, a dispute as +to the custody of one of their burial grounds precipitated their intended +stroke in 1818. Nearly all the colored class leaders gave up their papers +simultaneously, and more than three-quarters of their six thousand +fellows withdrew their membership from the white Methodist churches. "The +galleries, hitherto crowded, were almost completely deserted," wrote a +contemporary, "and it was a vacancy that could be _felt_. The absence of +their responses and hearty songs were really felt to be a loss to those so +long accustomed to hear them.... The schismatics combined, and after +great exertion succeeded in erecting a neat church building.... Their +organization was called the African Church," and one of its ministers was +constituted bishop. Its career, however, was to be short lived, for the +city authorities promptly proceeded against them, first by arresting a +number of participants at one of their meetings but dismissing them with a +warning that their conduct was violative of a statute of 1800 prohibiting +the assemblage of slaves and free negroes for mental instruction without +the presence of white persons; next by refusing, on the grounds that both +power and willingness were lacking, a plea by the colored preachers for a +special dispensation; and finally by the seizure of all the attendants at +another of their meetings and the sentencing of the bishop and a dozen +exhorters, some to a month's imprisonment or departure from the state, +others to ten lashes or ten dollars' fine. The church nevertheless +continued in existence until 1822 when in consequence of the discovery of a +plot for insurrection among the Charleston negroes the city government had +the church building demolished. Morris Brown moved to Philadelphia, where +he afterward became bishop of the African Church, and the whole Charleston +project was ended.[56] The bulk of the blacks returned to the white +congregations, where they soon overflowed the galleries and even the +"boxes" which were assigned them at the rear on the main floors. Some of +the older negroes by special privilege then took seats forward in the main +body of the churches, and others not so esteemed followed their example in +such numbers that the whites were cramped for room. After complaints on +this score had failed for several years to bring remedy, a crisis came +in Bethel Church on a Sunday in 1833 when Dr. Capers was to preach. More +whites came than could be seated the forward-sitting negroes refused +to vacate their seats for them; and a committee of young white members +forcibly ejected these blacks At a "love-feast" shortly afterward one of +the preachers criticized the action of the committee thereby giving the +younger element of the whites great umbrage. Efforts at reconciliation +failing, nine of the young men were expelled from membership, whereupon +a hundred and fifty others followed them into a new organization which +entered affiliation with the schismatic Methodist Protestant Church.[57] +Race relations in the orthodox congregations were doubtless thereafter more +placid. + +[Footnote 55: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911), +pp. 134-136.] + +[Footnote 56: Charleston _Courier_, June 9, 1818; Charleston _City +Gazette_, quoted in the _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), July 10, 1818; +J.L.E.W. Shecut, _Medical and Philosophical Essays_ (Charleston, 1819), +p. 34; C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ (Nashville +[1857]), pp. 212-214, 232; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, p. 142.] + +[Footnote 57: C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_, pp. +215-217.] + +In most of the permanent segregations the colored preachers were ordained +and their congregations instituted under the patronage of the whites. +At Savannah as early as 1802 the freedom of the slave Henry Francis was +purchased by subscription, and he was ordained by white ministers at the +African Baptist Church. After a sermon by the Reverend Jesse Peter of +Augusta, the candidate "underwent a public examination respecting his faith +in the leading doctrines of Christianity, his call to the sacred ministry +and his ideas of church government. Giving entire satisfaction on these +important points, he kneeled down, when the ordination prayer with +imposition of hands was made by Andrew Bryant The ordained ministers +present then gave the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Francis, who was +forthwith presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by Mr. +Holcombe."[58] The Methodists were probably not far behind the Baptists in +this policy. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with much smaller numbers +of negro co-religionists to care for, followed the same trend in later +decades. Thus the presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of +$7,700, a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregation +to be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian Church of the +city. The building had a T shape, the transepts appropriated to the use of +white persons. The Sunday school of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirty +white men and women as its teaching staff.[59] + +[Footnote 58: Henry Holcombe ed., _The Georgia Analytical Repository_ (a +Baptist magazine of Savannah, 1802), I, 20, 21. For further data concerning +Francis and other colored Baptists of his time see the _Journal of Negro +History_, I, 60-92.] + +[Footnote 59: J.H. Thornwell, D.D., _The Rights and Duties of Masters: a +sermon preached at the dedication of a church erected at Charleston, S.C. +for the benefit and instruction of the colored population_ (Charleston, +1850).] + +Such arrangements were not free from objection, however, as the +Episcopalians of Charleston learned about this time. To relieve the +congestion of the negro pews in St. Michael's and St. Philip's, a separate +congregation was organized with a few whites included in its membership. +While it was yet occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mob +demolished Calvary Church which was being built for its accommodation. When +the proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further use of his premises +the congregation dispersed. The mob's action was said to be in protest +against the doings of the "bands" or burial societies among the Calvary +negroes.[60] + +[Footnote 60: _Public Proceedings relating to Calvary Church and the +Religious Instruction of Slaves_ (Charleston, 1850).] + +The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave and free was +obstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that it might be perverted +to insurrectionary purposes. Thus when at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two free +negroes petitioned the Virginia legislature on behalf of themselves and +several hundred slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by the +whites had not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanction +for the creation of a "Baptist African Church," the legislature withheld +its permission. In 1841, however, this purpose was in effect accomplished +when it was found that a negro church would not be in violation of the law +provided it had a white pastor. At that time the First Baptist Church +of Richmond, having outgrown its quarters, erected a new building to +accommodate its white members and left its old one to the negroes. The +latter were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white minister +and with the choice of its deacons vested in a white committee. In 1855, +when this congregation had grown to three thousand members, the +Ebenezer church was established as an offshoot, with a similar plan of +government.[61] + +[Footnote 61: J.B. Earnest, _The Religious Development of the Negro in +Virginia_ (Charlottesville, 1914), pp. 72-83. For the similar trend of +church segregation in the Northern cities see J.W. Cromwell, _The Negro in +American History_ (Washington, 1914). pp. 61-70.] + +At Baltimore there were in 1835 ten colored congregations, with slave and +free membership intermingled, several of which had colored ministers;[62] +and by 1847 the number of churches had increased to thirteen or more, +ten of which were Methodist.[63] In 1860 there were two or more colored +congregations at Norfolk; at Savannah three colored churches were paying +salaries of $800 to $1000 to their colored ministers,[64] and in Atlanta +a subscription was in progress for the enlargement of the negro church +building to relieve its congestion.[65] By this time a visitor in virtually +any Southern city might have witnessed such a scene as William H. Russell +described at Montgomery:[66] "As I was walking ... I perceived a crowd +of very well-dressed negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brick +building which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into which +white people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, or +persons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated much +comfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all were slaves. One of my +companions went up to a woman in a straw hat, with bright red and green +ribbon trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and +a rainbow-like gown blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious +crinoline, and asked her 'Whom do you belong to?' She replied, 'I b'long to +Massa Smith, sar.'" + +[Footnote 62: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] + +[Footnote 63: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 206.] + +[Footnote 64: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 350, 351.] + +[Footnote 65: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, July 13, 1859, editorial commending +the purpose.] + +[Footnote 66: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), p. +167.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +FREE NEGROES + + +In the colonial period slaves were freed as a rule only when generous +masters rated them individually deserving of liberty or when the negroes +bought themselves. Typical of the time were the will of Thomas Stanford of +New Jersey in 1722 directing that upon the death of the testator's wife +his negro man should have his freedom if in the opinion of three neighbors +named he had behaved well,[1] and a deed signed by Robert Daniell of +South Carolina in 1759 granting freedom to his slave David Wilson in +consideration of his faithful service and of £600 currency in hand paid.[2] +So long as this condition prevailed, in which the ethics of slaveholding +were little questioned, the freed element remained extremely small. + +[Footnote 1: _New Jersey Archives_, XXIII, 438.] + +[Footnote 2: MS. among the probate records at Charleston.] + +The liberal philosophy of the Revolution, persisting thereafter in spite of +reaction, not only wrought the legal disestablishment of slavery throughout +the North, but prompted private manumissions far and wide.[3] Thus Philip +Graham of Maryland made a deed in 1787 reciting his realization that the +holding of his "fellow men in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the +golden law of God and the unalienable right of mankind as well as to +every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place in +America," and converting his slaves into servants for terms, the adults +to become free at the close of that year and the children as they reached +maturity.[4] In the same period, upon his coming of age, Richard Randolph, +brother of the famous John, wrote to his guardian: "With regard to the +division of the estate, I have only to say that I want not a single negro +for any other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every +individual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say +nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant an +animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."[5] +The Randolph estate, however, was so cumbered with debts that the desired +manumissions could not then be made. At Richard's death in 1796 he left a +will of the expected tenor, providing for a wholesale freeing as promptly +as it could legally be accomplished by the clearance of the mortgage.[6] In +1795 John Stratton of Norfolk, asserting his "full persuassion that freedom +is the natural right of all men," set free his able-bodied slave, Peter +Wakefield.[7] Robert K. Moore of Louisville mingled thrift with liberalism +by setting free in 1802 two pairs of married slaves because of his +conviction that involuntary servitude was wrong, and at the same time +binding them by indenture to serve him for some fourteen years longer in +consideration of certain small payments in advance and larger ones at the +ends of their terms.[8] + +[Footnote 3: These were restricted for a time in North Carolina, however, +by an act of 1777 which recited the critical and alarming state of public +affairs as its occasion.] + +[Footnote 4: MS. transcript in the file of powers of attorney, I, 243, +among the county records at Louisville, Ky.] + +[Footnote 5: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph of Roanoke_ (New York, +1851), I, 63.] + +[Footnote 6: _DeBow's Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] + +[Footnote 7: MS. along with many similar documents among the deed files at +Norfolk, Va.] + +[Footnote 8: MSS. in the powers of attorney files, II, 118, 122, 127, at +Louisville, Ky.] + +Manumissions were in fact so common in the deeds and wills of the men of +'76 that the number of colored freemen in the South exceeded thirty-five +thousand in 1790 and was nearly doubled in each of the next two decades. +The greater caution of their successors, reinforced by the rise of slave +prices, then slackened the rate of increase to twenty-five and finally to +ten per cent. per decade. Documents in this later period, reverting to the +colonial basis, commonly recited faithful service or self purchase rather +than inherent rights as the grounds for manumission. Liberations on a large +scale, nevertheless, were not wholly discontinued. John Randolph's will set +free nearly four hundred in 1833;[9] Monroe Edwards of Louisiana manumitted +160 by deed in 1840;[10] and George W.P. Custis of Virginia liberated his +two or three hundred at his death in 1857.[11] + +[Footnote 9: Garland, _Life of Randolph_, II, 150, 151.] + +[Footnote 10: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 245.] + +Still other large proprietors while not bestowing immediate liberty made +provisions to bring it after the lapse of years. Prominent among these were +three Louisianians. Julien Poydras, who died in 1824, ordered his executors +to sell his six plantations with their respective staffs under contracts to +secure the manumission of each slave after twenty-five years of service +to the purchaser, together with an annual pension of $25 to each of those +above sixty years of age; and years afterward a nephew of the testator +procured an injunction from the supreme court of the state estopping the +sale of some of the slaves by one of their purchasers in such way as would +hazard the fulfilment of the purpose.[12] Stephen Henderson, a Scotch +immigrant who had acquired several sugar plantations, provided as follows, +by will made in 1837 and upheld by the courts: ten and twenty slaves +respectively were to be chosen by lot at periods five and ten years after +his death to be freed and sent to Liberia, and at the end of twenty-five +years the rest were to fare likewise, but any who refused to be deported +were to be kept as apprentices on the plantations.[13] John McDonogh, the +most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, made a unique bargain with +his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively to +earn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by the overtime work of +Saturday afternoons. This labor was to be done in McDonogh's own service, +and he was to keep account of their earnings. They were entitled to draw +upon this fund upon approved occasions; but since the contract was with the +whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash the others must +draw theirs _pro rata_, thereby postponing the common day of liberation. +Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the +master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of the +rest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule, and after some delay +in embarkation they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, with +their late master's benediction. In concluding his public narration in the +premises McDonogh wrote: "They have now sailed for Liberia, the land of +their fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more +virtuous people does not exist in any country."[14] + +[Footnote 11: _Daily True Delta_ (New Orleans), Dec. 19, 1857.] + +[Footnote 12: Poydras _vs_. Mourrain, in _Louisiana Reports_, IX, 492. The +will is quoted in the decision.] + +[Footnote 13: _Niles' Register_, LXVIII, 361. The original MS. is filed in +will book no. 6 in the New Orleans court house.] + +[Footnote 14: J.T. Edwards ed., _Some Interesting Papers of John McDonogh_ +(McDonoghville, Md., 1898), pp. 49-58.] + +Among more romantic liberations was that of Pierre Chastang of Mobile who, +in recognition of public services in the war of 1812 and the yellow fever +epidemic of 1819 was bought and freed by popular subscription;[15] that of +Sam which was provided by a special act of the Georgia legislature in 1834 +at a cost of $1,800 in reward for his having saved the state capitol from +destruction by fire;[16] and that of Prince which was attained through the +good offices of the United States government. Prince, after many years as +a Mississippi slave, wrote a letter in Arabic to the American consul at +Tangier in which he recounted his early life as a man of rank among the +Timboo people and his capture in battle and sale overseas. This led Henry +Clay on behalf of the Adams administration to inquire at what cost he +might be bought for liberation and return. His master thereupon freed him +gratuitously, and the citizens of Natchez raised a fund for the purchase of +his wife, with a surplus for a flowing Moorish costume in which Prince +was promptly arrayed. The pair then departed, in 1828, for Washington _en +route_ for Morocco, Prince avowing that he would soon send back money for +the liberation of their nine children.[17] + +[Footnote 15: D.W. Mitchell, _Ten Years in the United States_ (London, +1862), p. 235.] + +[Footnote 16: Georgia Senate _Journal_ for 1834, p. 25. At a later period +the Georgia legislature had occasion to reward another slave, Ransom by +name, who while hired from his master by the state had heroically saved +the Western and Atlantic Railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee River +from destruction by fire. Since official sentiment was now hostile to +manumission, it was resolved in 1849 that he be bought by the state and +ensured a permanent home; and in 1853 a further resolution directed the +chief engineer of the state-owned railroad to pay him just wages during +good behavior. Georgia _Acts, 1849-1850_, pp. 416, 417; _1853-1854_, pp. +538, 539. Old citizens relate that a house was built for Ransom on the +Western and Atlantic right of way in Atlanta which he continued to occupy +until his death many years after the Civil War. For these data I am +indebted to Mr. J. Groves Cohen, Secretary of the Western and Atlantic +Railroad Commission, Atlanta, Ga.] + +[Footnote 17: "Letter from a Gentleman of Natchez to a Lady of Cincinnati," +in the _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), May 22, 1828. For a similar instance in +colonial Maryland see the present work, p. 31.] + +Most of the negroes who procured freedom remained in the United States, +though all of those who gained it by flight and many of those manumitted +had to shift their location at the time of changing their status. At least +one of the fugitives, however, made known his preference for his native +district in a manner which cost him his liberty. After two years in Ohio +and Canada he returned to the old plantation in Georgia, where he was +welcomed with a command to take up the hoe. Rejecting this implement, he +proposed to buy himself if a thousand dollars would suffice. When his +master, declining to negotiate, ordered him into custody he stabbed one of +the negroes who seized him. At the end of the episode the returned wanderer +lay in jail; but where his money was, or whether in truth he had any, is +not recorded.[18] Among some of those manumitted and sent out of their +original states as by law required, disappointment and homesickness were +distressingly keen. A group of them who had been carried to New York in +1852 under the will of a Mr. Cresswell of Louisiana, found themselves in +such misery there that they begged the executor to carry them back, saying +he might keep them as slaves or sell them--that they had been happy before +but were wretched now.[19] + +[Footnote 18: Cassville, Ga., _Standard_, May 31, 1858, reprinted in the +_Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), June 8, 1858.] + +[Footnote 19: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 90.] + +The slaves manumitted for meritorious service and those who bought +themselves formed together an element of substantial worth in the Southern +free colored population. Testamentary endorsement like that which Abel +P. Upshur gave on freeing his man David Rich--"I recommend him in the +strongest manner to the respect, esteem and confidence of any community in +which he may live"[20]--are sufficiently eloquent in the premises. Those +who bought themselves were similarly endorsed in many instances, and the +very fact of their self purchase was usually a voucher of thrift and +sobriety. Many of those freed on either of these grounds were of mixed +blood; and to them were added the mulatto and quadroon children set free by +their white fathers, with particular frequency in Louisiana, who by virtue +oftentimes of gifts in lands, goods and moneys were in the propertied class +from the time of their manumission. The recruits joining the free colored +population through all of these channels tended, together with their +descendants, to be industrious, well-mannered and respected members of +society. + +[Footnote 20: William C. Nell, _The Colored Patriots of the American +Revolution_ (Boston, 1855), pp. 215, 216. For a similar item see Garland's +_Randolph_, p. 151.] + +Each locality was likely to have some outstanding figure among these. In +Georgia the most notable was Austin Dabney, who as a mulatto youth served +in the Revolutionary army and attached himself ever afterward to the white +family who saved his life when he had been wounded in battle. The Georgia +legislature by special act gave him a farm; he was welcomed in the tavern +circle of chatting lawyers whenever his favorite Judge Dooly held court +at his home village; and once when the formality of drawing his pension +carried him to Savannah the governor of the state, seeing him pass, dragged +him from his horse and quartered him as a guest in his house.[21] John +Eady of the South Carolina lowlands by a like service in the War for +Independence earned a somewhat similar recognition which he retained +throughout a very long life.[22] + +[Footnote 21: George R. Giltner, _Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of +Upper Georgia_ (New York, 1855), pp. 212-215.] + +[Footnote 22: Diary of Thomas P. Porcher. MS. in private possession.] + +Others were esteemed rather for piety and benevolence than for heroic +services. "Such," wrote Bishop Capers of the Southern Methodist Church, +"were my old friends Castile Selby and John Bouquet of Charleston, Will +Campbell and Harry Myrick of Wilmington, York Cohen of Savannah, and others +I might name. These I might call remarkable for their goodness. But I use +the word in a broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the father +of the Methodist church, white and black, in Fayetteville, and the best +preacher of his time in that quarter." Evans, a free-born full-blooded +black, as Capers went on to relate, had been a shoemaker and licensed +preacher in Virginia, but while journeying toward Charleston in search +of better employment he had been so struck by the lack of religion and +morality among the negroes in Fayetteville that he determined upon their +conversion as his true mission in life. When the town authorities dispersed +his meetings he shifted his rude pulpit into the woods outside their +jurisdiction and invited surveillance by the whites to prove his lack +of offence. The palpable improvement in the morals of his followers led +erelong to his being invited to preach within the town again, where the +white people began to be numerous among his hearers. A regular congregation +comprising members of both races was organized and a church building +erected. But the white attendance grew so large as to threaten the crowding +out of the blacks. To provide room for these the side walls of the +church were torn off and sheds built on either flank; and these were the +conditions when Capers himself succeeded the aged negro in its pulpit in +1810 and found him on his own score an inspiration. Toward the ruling race, +Capers records, Evans was unfailingly deferential, "never speaking to a +white but with his hat under his arm; never allowing himself to be seated +in their houses.... 'The whites are kind to me and come to hear me preach,' +he would say, 'but I belong to my own sort and must not spoil them.' And +yet Henry Evans was a Boanerges; and in his duty feared not the face of +man." [23] + +[Footnote 23: W.W. Wightman, _Life of William Capers_ (Nashville, 1858), +pp. 124-129.] + +In the line of intellectual attainment and the like the principal +figures lived in the eighteenth century. One of them was described in a +contemporary news item which suggests that some journalists then were akin +to their successors of more modern times. "There is a Mr. St. George, +a Creole, son to the French governor of St. Domingo, now at Paris, who +realizes all the accomplishments attributed by Boyle and others to the +Admirable Creighton of the Scotch. He is so superior at the sword that +there is an edict of the Parliament of Paris to make his engagement in any +duel actual death. He is the first dancer (even before the Irish Singsby) +in the world. He plays upon seven instruments of music, beyond any other +individual. He speaks twenty-six languages, and maintains public thesises +in each. He walks round the various circles of science like the master of +each; and strange to be mentioned to white men, this Mr. St. George is a +mulatto, the son of an African mother."[24] Less happy was the career of +Francis Williams of Jamaica, a plaything of the human gods. Born of negro +parents who had earned special privilege in the island, he was used by the +Duke of Montague in a test of negro mental capacity and given an education +in an English grammar school and at Cambridge University. Upon his return +to Jamaica his patron sought his appointment as a member of the governor's +council but without success; and he then became a schoolmaster and a poet +on occasion in the island capital. Williams described himself with some +pertinence as "a white man acting under a black skin." His contempt for +his fellow negroes and particularly for the mulattoes made him lonely, +eccentric, haughty and morose. A Latin panegyric which is alone available +among his writings is rather a language exercise than a poem.[25] On +the continent Benjamin Banneker was an almanac maker and somewhat of an +astronomer, and Phyllis Wheatley of Boston a writer of verses. Both +were doubtless more noted for their sable color than for their positive +qualities. The wonder of them lay in their ambition and enterprise, not in +their eminence among scientific and literary craftsmen at large.[26] Such +careers as these had no equivalent in the nineteenth century until its +closing decades when Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar and W.E.B. +DuBois set new paces in their several courses of endeavor. + +[Footnote 24: News item dated Philadelphia, Mch. 28, in the _Georgia State +Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), May 19, 1787.] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, +447-485; T.H. MacDermott, "Francis Williams," in the _Journal of Negro +History_, II, 147-159. The Latin poem is printed in both of these +accounts.] + +[Footnote 26: John W. Cromwell, _The Negro in American History_ +(Washington, 1914), pp. 77-97.] + +Of a more normal but less conspicuous type was Jehu Jones, the colored +proprietor of one of Charleston's most popular hotels who lived in the same +manner as his white patrons, accumulated property to the value of some +forty thousand dollars, and maintained a reputation for high business +talent and integrity.[27] At New Orleans men of such a sort were quite +numerous. Prominent among them by reason of his wealth and philanthropy was +Thomy Lafon, a merchant and money lender who systematically accumulated +houses and lots during a lifetime extending both before and after the +Civil War and whose possessions when he died at the age of eighty-two were +appraised at nearly half a million dollars.[28] Prosperity and good repute, +however, did not always go hand in hand. The keeper of the one good tavern +in the Louisiana village of Bayou Sara in 1831 was a colored woman of whom +Anne Royall wrote: "This _nigger_ or mulatto was rich, owned the tavern and +several slaves, to whom she was a great tyrant. She owned other valuable +property and a great deal of money, as report said; and doubtless it is +true. She was very insolent, and, I think, drank. It seems one Tague [an +Irishman], smitten with her charms and her property, made love to her +and it was returned, and they live together as man and wife. She was the +ugliest wench I ever saw, and, if possible, he was uglier, so they were +well matched."[29] One might ascribe the tone of this description to the +tartness of Mrs. Royall's pen were it not that she recorded just afterward +that a body-servant of General Ripley who was placed at her command in St. +Francisville was "certainly the most accomplished servant I ever saw."[30] + +[Footnote 27: W.C. Nell, _Colored Patriots_, pp. 244, 245.] + +[Footnote 28: New Orleans _Picayune_, Dec. 23, 1893. His many charitable +bequests are scheduled in the _Picayune_ of a week later.] + +[Footnote 29: Anne Royall, _Southern Tour_ (Washington, 1831), pp. 87-89.] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid_., p. 91.] + +The property of colored freemen oftentimes included slaves. Such instances +were quite numerous in pre-revolutionary San Domingo; and some in +the British West Indies achieved notoriety through the exposure of +cruelties.[31] On the continent a negro planter in St. Paul's Parish, South +Carolina, was reported before the close of the eighteenth century to have +two hundred slaves as well as a white wife and son-in-law, and the returns +of the first federal census appear to corroborate it.[32] In Louisiana +colored planters on a considerable scale became fairly numerous. Among them +were Cyprien Ricard who bought at a sheriff's sale in 1851 an estate in +Iberville Parish along with its ninety-one slaves for nearly a quarter of +a million dollars; Marie Metoyer of Natchitoches Parish had fifty-eight +slaves and more than two thousand acres of land when she died in 1840; +Charles Roques of the same parish died in 1854 leaving forty-seven slaves +and a thousand acres; and Martin Donato of St. Landry dying in 1848 +bequeathed liberty to his slave wife and her seven children and left them +eighty-nine slaves and 4,500 arpents of land as well as notes and mortgages +to a value of $46,000.[33] In rural Virginia and Maryland also there were +free colored slaveholders in considerable numbers.[34] + +[Footnote 31: Reverend Charles Peters, _Two Sermons Preached at Dominica, +with an appendix containing minutes of evidence of three trials_ (London, +1802), pp. 36-49.] + +[Footnote 32: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ +(London, 1799), p. 602, giving the negro's name as Pindaim. The census +returns of 1790 give no such name, but they list James Pendarvis in a group +comprising a white man, a free colored person and 123 slaves, and also a +Mrs. Persons, free colored, with 136 slaves. She may have been Pindaim's +(or Pendarvis') mulatto daughter, while the white man listed in the +Pendarvis item was perhaps her husband or an overseer. _Heads of Families +at the First Census of the United States: South Carolina_ (Washington, +1908), pp. 35, 37.] + +[Footnote 33: For these and other data I am indebted to Professor E.P. +Puckett of Central College, Fayette, Mo., who has permitted me to use his +monograph, "_Free Negroes in Louisiana_," in manuscript. The arpent was the +standard unit of area in the Creole parishes of Louisiana, the acre in the +parishes of Anglo-American settlement.] + +[Footnote 34: Calvin D. Wilson, "Black Masters," in the _North American +Review_, CLXXXI, 685-698, and "Negroes who owned Slaves," in the _Popular +Science Monthly_, LXXXI, 483-494; John H. Russell, "Colored Freemen as +Slave Owners in Virginia," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 233-242.] + +Slaveholdings by colored townsmen were likewise fairly frequent. Among the +360 colored taxpayers in Charleston in 1860, for example, 130, including +nine persons described as of Indian descent, were listed as possessing 390 +slaves.[35] The abundance of such holdings at New Orleans is evidenced by +the multiplicity of applications from colored proprietors for authority +to manumit slaves, with exemption from the legal requirement that the new +freedmen must leave the state.[36] A striking example of such petitions was +that presented in 1832 by Marie Louise Bitaud, free woman of color, +which recited that in the preceding year she had bought her daughter and +grandchild at a cost of $700; that a lawyer had now told her that in view +of her lack of free relatives to inherit her property, in case of death +intestate her slaves would revert to the state; that she had become alarmed +at this prospect; and she accordingly begged permission to manumit them +without their having to leave Louisiana. The magistrates gave their consent +on condition that the petitioner furnish a bond of $500 to insure the +support and education of the grandson until his coming of age. This was +duly done and the formalities completed.[37] + +[Footnote 35: _List of the Taxpayers of Charleston for 1860_(Charleston, +1861), part 2.] + +[Footnote 36: Many of these are filed in the record books of manumissions +in the archive rooms of the New Orleans city hall. Some were denied on the +ground that proof was lacking that the slaves concerned were natives of +the state or that they would be self-supporting in freedom; others were +granted.] + +[Footnote 37: For the use of this MS. petition with its accompanying +certificates I am indebted to Mr. J.F. Schindler of New York.] + +Evidence of slaveholdings by colored freemen occurs also in the bills of +sale filed in various public archives. One of these records that a citizen +of Charleston sold in 1828 a man slave to the latter's free colored sister +at a price of one dollar, "provided he is kindly treated and is never sold, +he being an unfortunate individual and requiring much attention." In the +same city a free colored man bought a slave sailmaker for $200.[38] At +Savannah in 1818 Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800 +to Alex Hunter, guardian of the colored freeman Louis Mirault, in trust for +him; and in 1833 Anthony Ordingsell, free colored, having obtained through +his guardian an order of court, sold a slave woman to the highest bidder +for $385.[39] + +[Footnote 38: MSS. in the files of slave sales in the South Carolina +archives at Columbia.] + +[Footnote 39: MSS. among the county archives at Savannah, Ga.] + +It is clear that aside from the practice of holding slave relatives as a +means of giving them virtual freedom, an appreciable number of colored +proprietors owned slaves purely as a productive investment. It was +doubtless a group of these who sent a joint communication to a New Orleans +newspaper when secession and war were impending: "The free colored +population (native) of Louisiana ... own slaves, and they are dearly +attached to their native land, ... and they are ready to shed their blood +for her defence. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the +North, but they have plenty for Louisiana.... They will fight for her in +1861 as they fought in 1814-'15.... If they have made no demonstration it +is because they have no right to meddle with politics, but not because they +are not well disposed. All they ask is to have a chance, and they will +be worthy sons of Louisiana."[40] Oral testimony gathered by the present +writer from old residents in various quarters of the South supports the +suggestion of this letter that many of the well-to-do colored freemen +tended to prize their distinctive position so strongly as to deplore any +prospect of a general emancipation for fear it would submerge them in the +great black mass. + +[Footnote 40: Letter to the editor, signed "A large number of them," in the +New Orleans _Daily Delta_, Dec. 28, 1860. Men of this element had indeed +rendered service under Jackson in the defence of the city against Pakenham, +as Louisianians well knew.] + +The types discussed thus far were exceptional. The main body of the free +negroes were those who whether in person or through their mothers had been +liberated purely from sentiment and possessed no particular qualifications +for self-directed careers. The former slaves of Richard Randolph who were +colonized in accordance with his will as petty landed proprietors near +Farmville, Virginia, proved commonly thriftless for half a century +afterward;[41] and Olmsted observed of the Virginia free negroes in general +that their poverty was not due to the lack of industrial opportunity.[42] +Many of those in the country were tenants. George Washington found one of +them unprofitable as such;[43] and Robert Carter in 1792 rented farms to +several in spite of his overseer's remonstrance that they had no adequate +outfit of tools and teams, and against his neighbors' protests.[44] Not a +few indeed were mere squatters on waste lands. A Georgia overseer reported +in 1840 that several such families had made clearings in the woods of +the plantation under his charge, and proposed that rent be required of +them;[45] and travellers occasionally came upon negro cabins in fields +which had been abandoned by their proprietors.[46] The typical rural family +appears to have tilled a few acres on its own account, and to have been +willing to lend a hand to the whites for wages when they needed service. +It was this readiness which made their presence in many cases welcome in a +neighborhood. A memorial signed by thirty-eight citizens of Essex County, +Virginia, in 1842 in behalf of a freedman might be paralleled from the +records of many another community: "We would be glad if he could be +permitted to remain with us and have his freedom, as he is a well disposed +person and a very useful man in many respects. He is a good carpenter, a +good cooper, a coarse shoemaker, a good hand at almost everything that is +useful to us farmers."[47] Among the free negroes on the seaboard there was +a special proclivity toward the water pursuits of boating, oystering and +the like.[48] In general they found a niche in industrial society much on +a level with the slaves but as free as might be from the pressure of +systematic competition. + +[Footnote 41: F.N. Watkins, "The Randolph Emancipated Slaves," in _DeBow's +Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] + +[Footnote 42: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 126.] + +[Footnote 43: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 239.] + +[Footnote 44: Carter MSS. in the Virginia Historical Society.] + +[Footnote 45: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 155.] + +[Footnote 46: _E. g_., F. Cumming, _Tour to the West_, reprinted in +Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 336.] + +[Footnote 47: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 153.] + +[Footnote 48: _Ibid_., p. 150.] + +Urban freemen had on the average a somewhat higher level of attainment than +their rural fellows, for among them was commonly a larger proportion of +mulattoes and quadroons and of those who had demonstrated their capacity +for self direction by having bought their own freedom. Recruits of some +skill in the crafts, furthermore, came in from the country, because of +the advantages which town industry, in sharp contrast with that of the +plantations, gave to free labor. A characteristic state of affairs is shown +by the official register of free persons of color in Richmond County, +Georgia, wherein lay the city of Augusta, for the year 1819[49]. Of the +fifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, only +seven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specific +trades or employments. The prosperity of the group must have been but +moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers +at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and +although an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its minister +must have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for no +designation of a preacher appears in the list. At Charleston, likewise, +according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a total +of 239 listed in manual occupations were unclassified laborers, while the +great majority were engaged in the shop and building trades. The women +again were very numerous in sewing and washing employments, and an +appreciable number of them were domestic servants outright.[50] + +[Footnote 49: _Augusta Chronicle_, Mch. 13, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 143-147.] + +[Footnote 50: Dawson and DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for 1848_, +summarized in the table given on p. 403 of the present work.] + +In the compendium of the United States census of 1850 there are printed in +parallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored males +above fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans. In +the Northern metropolis there were 3337 enumerated, and in the Southern +1792. The former had 4 colored lawyers and 3 colored druggists while the +latter had none of either; and the colored preachers and doctors were 21 +to 1 and 9 to 4 in New York's favor. But New Orleans had 4 colored +capitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 brokers and 2 collectors, with +none of any of these at New York; and 64 merchants, 5 jewelers and 61 +clerks to New York's 3, 3 and 7 respectively, and 12 colored teachers to 8. +New York had thrice New Orleans' number of colored barbers, and twice as +many butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrasted +with 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers, +tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not in +much better proportion. One-third of all New York's colored men, indeed, +were unskilled laborers and another quarter were domestic servants, not to +mention the many cooks, coachmen and other semi-domestic employees, whereas +at New Orleans the unskilled were but a tenth part of the whole and no male +domestics were listed. This showing, which on the whole is highly favorable +to New Orleans, is partly attributable to the more than fourfold excess +of mulattoes over the blacks in its free population, in contrast with a +reversed proportion at New York; for the men of mixed blood filled all the +places above the rank of artisan at New Orleans, and heavily preponderated +in virtually all the classes but that of unskilled laborers. New York's +poor showing as regards colored craftsmen, however, was mainly due to the +greater discrimination which its white people applied against all who had a +strain of negro blood. + +This antipathy and its consequent industrial repression was palpably more +severe at the North in general than in the South. De Tocqueville remarked +that "the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in +proportion as they are emancipated." Fanny Kemble, in her more vehement +style, wrote of the negroes in the North: "They are not slaves indeed, +but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own +despised race, scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not +tolerated even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free +certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the +offscouring of the very dregs of your society.... All hands are extended to +thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, the +most vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turn +the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach."[51] Marshall +Hall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of that +prejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, a +prejudice unknown in the South, where the domestic relations between the +African and the European are so much more intimate."[52] Olmsted recorded +a conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red River +steamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "He +said that colored people could associate with whites much more easily +and comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason he +preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from +white people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North than +in Louisiana."[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who after +buying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but had +promptly returned. When questioned by his former owner this man said: "Oh, +I don't like dat Philadelphy, massa; an't no chance for colored folks dere. +Spec' if I'd been a runaway de wite folks dere take care o' me; but I +couldn't git anythin' to do, so I jis borrow ten dollar of my broder an' +cum back to old Virginny."[54] In Ohio, John Randolph's freedmen were +prevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors had +bought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in the +state;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a public +meeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place would +not be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke up +the school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for colored +girls. The legislatures of various Northern states, furthermore, excluded +free immigrants as well as discriminating sharply against those who were +already inhabitants. Wherever the negroes clustered numerously, from Boston +to Philadelphia and Cincinnati, they were not only brow-beaten and excluded +from the trades but were occasionally the victims of brutal outrage whether +from mobs or individual persecutors.[56] + +[Footnote 51: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal_ (London, 1863), p. 7.] + +[Footnote 52: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ +(London, 1854), p. 17.] + +[Footnote 53: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 636.] + +[Footnote 54: _Ibid_., p. 104.] + +[Footnote 55: F.U. Quillin, _The Color Line in Ohio_ (Ann Arbor, Mich.), p. +20; _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 143.] + +[Footnote 56: J.P. Gordy, _Political History of the United States_ (New +York, 1902), II, 404, 405; John Daniels, _In Freedom's Birthplace_ (Boston, +1914), pp. 25-29; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, +1911), pp. 143-168, 195-204, containing many details; F.U. Quillin, _The +Color Line in Ohio_, pp. 11-87; C.G. Woodson, "The Negroes of Cincinnati +Prior to the Civil War," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 1-22; N.D. +Harris, _Negro Slavery in Illinois_ (Chicago, 1906), pp. 226-240.] + +In the South, on the other hand, the laws were still more severe but the +practice of the white people was much more kindly. Racial antipathy was +there mitigated by the sympathetic tie of slavery which promoted an +attitude of amiable patronage even toward the freedmen and their +descendants.[57] The tone of the memorials in which many Southern townsmen +petitioned for legal exemptions to permit specified free negroes to remain +in their communities[58] found no echo from the corresponding type of +commonplace unromantic citizens of the North. A few Southern petitions were +of a contrasting tenor, it is true, one for example presented to the city +council of Atlanta in 1859: "We feel aggrieved as Southern citizens that +your honorable body tolerates a negro dentist (Roderick Badger) in our +midst; and in justice to ourselves and the community it ought to be abated. +We, the residents of Atlanta, appeal to you for justice."[59] But it may +readily be guessed that these petitioners were more moved by the interest +of rival dentists than by their concern as Southern citizens. Southern +protests of another class, to be discussed below, against the toleration +of colored freedmen in general, were prompted by considerations of public +security, not by personal dislike. + +[Footnote 57: Cf. N.S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 166, +186-191.] + +[Footnote 58: _E. g_., J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. +152-155.] + +[Footnote 59: J.H. Martin, _Atlanta and its Builders_ ([Atlanta,] 1902), I, +145.] + +Although the free colored numbers varied greatly from state to state, +their distribution on the two sides of Mason and Dixon's line maintained +a remarkable equality throughout the antebellum period. The chief +concentration was in the border states of either section. At the one +extreme they were kept few by the chill of the climate; at the other +by stringency of the law and by the high prices of slave labor which +restrained the practice of manumission. Wherever they dwelt, they lived +somewhat precariously upon the sufferance of the whites, and in a more or +less palpable danger of losing their liberty. + +Not only were escaped slaves liable to recapture anywhere within the United +States, but those who were legally free might be seized on fraudulent +claims and enslaved in circumvention of the law, or they might be kidnapped +outright. One of those taken by fraud described his experience and +predicament as follows in a letter from "Boonvill Missouria" to the +governor of Georgia: "Mr. Coob Dear Sir I have Embrast this oppertuniny of +Riting a few Lines to you to inform you that I am sold as a Slave for 14 +hundard dolars By the man that came to you Last may and told you a Pack +of lies to get you to Sine the warrant that he Brought that warrant was a +forged as I have heard them say when I was Coming on to this Countrey and +Sir I thought that I would write and see if I could get you to do any thing +for me in the way of Getting me my freedom Back a Gain if I had some Papers +from the Clarkes office in the City of Milledgeville and a little Good +addvice in a Letter from you or any kind friend that I could get my freedom +a Gain and my name can Be found on the Books of the Clarkes office Mr Bozal +Stulers was Clarke when I was thear last and Sir a most any man can City +that I Charles Covey is lawfuley a free man ... But at the same time I do +not want you to say any thing about this to any one that may acquaint my +Preseant mastear of these things as he would quickly sell me and there +fore I do not want this known and the men that came after me Carried me to +Mempears tenessee and after whiping me untill my Back was Raw from my rump +to the Back of my neck sent me to this Place and sold me Pleas to ancer +this as soon as you Can and Sir as soon as I can Get my time Back I will +pay you all charges if you will Except of it yours in beast Charles Covey +Borned and Raized in the City of Milledgeville and a Blacksmith by trade +and James Rethearfurd in the City of Macon is my Laller [lawyer?] and can +tell you all about these things."[60] + +[Footnote 60: Letter of Charles Covey to Howell Cobb, Nov. 30, 1853. MS. in +the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., for the use of which I am +indebted to Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia. For +another instance in which Cobb's aid was asked see the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1911, II, 331-334.] + +In a few cases claims of ownership were resurrected after a long lapse. +That of Alexander Pierre, a New Orleans negro who had always passed as +free-born, was the consequence of an affray in which he had worsted another +black. In revenge the defeated combatant made the fact known that Pierre +was the son of a blind girl who because of her lack of market value had +been left by her master many years before to shift for herself when he had +sold his other slaves and gone to France. Thereupon George Heno, the heir +of the departed and now deceased proprietor, laid claim to the whole Pierre +group, comprising the blind mother, Alexander himself, his sister, and +that sister's two children. Whether Heno's proceedings at law to procure +possession succeeded or failed is not told in the available record.[61] In +a kindred case not long afterward, however, the cause of liberty triumphed. +About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupée Parish had permitted his slave +Eulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; and +thereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtual +freedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to get +official sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring and +desiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominal +sale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this man +proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and +the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for +freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state +supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in +strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall +suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in +this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of +action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be +a runaway or fugitive."[62] + +[Footnote 61: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, May 25, 1849.] + +[Footnote 62: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the +New Orleans _True Delta_, Dec. 16, 1854.] + +Kidnappings without pretense of legal claim were done so furtively that +they seldom attained record unless the victims had recourse to the courts; +and this was made rare by the helplessness of childhood in some cases and +in others by the fear of lashes. Indeed when complexion gave presumption of +slave status, as it did, and custody gave color of ownership, the prospect +of redress through the law was faint unless the services of some white +friend could be enlisted. Two cases made conspicuous by the publication of +elaborate narratives were those of Peter Still and Solomon Northrup. The +former, kidnapped in childhood near Philadelphia, served as a slave some +forty years in Kentucky and northern Alabama, until with his own savings he +bought his freedom and returned to his boyhood home. The problem which he +then faced of liberating his wife and three children was taken off his +hands for a time by Seth Concklin, a freelance white abolitionist who +volunteered to abduct them. This daring emancipator duly went to Alabama +in 1851, embarked the four negroes on a skiff and carried them down the +Tennessee and up the Ohio and the Wabash until weariness at the oars drove +the company to take the road for further travel. They were now captured +and the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; but +Concklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohio +by the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procured +endorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of New +York and New England by which he raised funds enough to buy his family's +freedom. At the conclusion of the narrative of their lives Peter and his +wife were domestics in a New Jersey boardinghouse, one of their two +sons was a blacksmith's apprentice in a neighboring town, the other had +employment in a Pennsylvania village, and the daughter was at school in +Philadelphia.[63] + +[Footnote 63: Kate E.R. Pickard, _The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, being the +personal recollections of Peter Still and his wife Vina after forty years +of slavery_ (Syracuse, 1856). The dialogue in which the book abounds is, +of course, fictitious, but the outlines of the narrative and the documents +quoted are presumably authentic.] + +Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until +in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers +offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington. +Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free +papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans. +Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, +lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter +had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's +commission from the governor of New York. With the assistance of the local +authorities Northrup's identity was promptly established, his liberty +procured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to his +wife and children at Saratoga.[64] + +[Footnote 64: [David Wilson ed.], _Narrative of Solomon Northrup_ (New +York, 1853). Though the books of this class are generally of dubious value +this one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantation +life and labor are of particular interest.] + +A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William +Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had +come from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had +been offered passage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de +Blanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had +ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his +papers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston was +sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring +merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houston +accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold +to one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of title, refused +payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F. +Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the +British consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed +his whole narrative that it might "assist the plaintiff to prove his +freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave."[65] + +[Footnote 65: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, June 1, 1850.] + +Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping +and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among +which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66] +Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally; +but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential +value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many +thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 there +were 83,942 of this class in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North +Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large. + +[Footnote 66: Alexandria, Va., _Advertiser_, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of the +society's quarterly meeting; J.D. Paxton, _Letters on Slavery_ (Lexington, +Ky., 1833), p. 30, note.] + +A few free negroes were reduced by public authority to private servitude, +whether for terms or for life, in punishment for crime. In Maryland under +an act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following two +years, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictions +ranging from arson to petty larceny.[67] Some others were sold in various +states under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even to +default of jail fees during imprisonment as fugitive suspects. + +[Footnote 67: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, pp. 231, 232.] + +A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who +had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state +petitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was +doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband +"from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering +as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds +William Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859, +reciting "That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom +he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied +man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, +committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives +a thousand times harder and in more destitution than the slaves of many +planters in this district." He accordingly asked permission by special act +to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive +him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such +occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted +laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at +their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to +enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia +law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any +creditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during which +protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master +to pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginia +archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely +scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from +$300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations +of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years +old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature. +An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July, +1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five +hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free +wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer +escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears +to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio +than among the whites. + +[Footnote 68: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 161, 162.] + +[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., II, 163, 164.] + +[Footnote 70: In the absence of permissive laws the self-enslavement of +negroes was invalid. Texas Supreme Court _Reports_, XXIV, 560. And a negro +who had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retain +his free status, though the contract between him and his employer was not +thereby voided. North Carolina Supreme Court _Reports_, LX, 434.] + +[Footnote 71: MSS. in the Virginia State Library.] + +[Footnote 72: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, p. 577.] + +[Footnote 73: An instance is given in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New +Orleans), Aug. 26, 1830, and another in the New Orleans _Commercial +Advertiser_, Oct. 25, 1831. The motives are not stated.] + +Invitations to American free negroes to try their fortunes in other lands +were not lacking. Facilities for emigration to Liberia were steadily +maintained by the Colonization Society from 1819 onward;[74] the Haytian +government under President Boyer offered special inducements from that +republic in 1824;[75] in 1840 an immigration society in British Guiana +proffered free transportation for such as would remove thither;[76] and in +1859 Hayti once more sent overtures, particularly to the French-speaking +colored people of Louisiana, promising free lands to all who would come as +well as free transportation to such as could not pay their passage.[77] But +these opportunities were seldom embraced. With the great bulk of those to +whom they were addressed the dread of an undiscovered country from whose +bourne few travellers had returned puzzled their wills, as it had done +Hamlet's, and made them rather bear those ills they had than to fly to +others that they knew not of. + +[Footnote 74: J.H.T. McPherson, _History of Liberia_ (Johns Hopkins +University _Studies_, IX, no. 10).] + +[Footnote 75: _Correspondence relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the +Free People of Colour in the United States, together with the instructions +to the agent sent out by President Boyer_ (New York, 1824); _Plantation and +Frontier_, II, 155-157.] + +[Footnote 76: _Inducements to the Colored People of the United States +to Emigrate to British Guiana, compiled from statements and documents +furnished by Mr. Edward Carberry, agent of the immigration society of +British Guiana and a proprietor in that colony_. By "A friend to the +Colored People" (Boston, 1840); The _Liberator_ (Boston), Feb. 28, 1840, +advertisement.] + +[Footnote 77: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the +New Orleans _Picayune_, July 16, 1859, and Oct. 21 and 23, 1860.] + +Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generally +at the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from the +white schools and poorly provided with schools of their own.[78] Exclusion +of the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close of +the war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was made +complete by the action of the constitutional convention of North Carolina +in 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807 +and 1838,[79] was a more palpable grievance against which a convention +of colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested.[80] +Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites was +likewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in the +North as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required license +and registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions upon +movement, education and occupations; and several of them required the +procurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for good +behavior. + +[Footnote 78: The schooling facilities are elaborately and excellently +described and discussed in C.G. Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior +to 1861_ (New York, 1915).] + +[Footnote 79: Emil Olbrich, _The Development of Sentiment for Negro +Suffrage to 1860_ (University of Wisconsin _Bulletin_, Historical Series, +III, no, I).] + +[Footnote 80: _Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of +the People of Colour, held in Philadelphia from the sixth to the eleventh +of June_, 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831).] + +These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressions +which they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment which +colored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that some +of them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularly +when white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent. +Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excess +among the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the colored +inmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratio +to the free colored population but half as high as did the corresponding +prisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios were +about six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northern +whites respectively.[81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess of +actual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for the +discriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables, +magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negro +was doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth under +circumstances in which white men went free. The more severe industrial +discrimination at the North, which drove large numbers to an alternative of +destitution or crime, was furthermore contributive to the special excess of +negro criminality there. + +[Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10,000 of the respective +populations was about 2.2 for the whites and 13.0 for the free colored +(with slave convicts included) at the South, and 2.5 for the whites and +28.7 for the free colored at the North. _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, +p. 166. See also _Southern Literary Messenger_, IX, 340-352; _DeBow's +Review_, XIV, 593-595; David Christy, _Cotton Is King_ (Cincinnati, 1855), +p. 153; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 155-158.] + +In some instances the violence of mobs was added to the might of the law. +Such was the case at Washington in 1835 when following on the heels of a +man's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and his +trial within the jail as a precaution to keep him from the mob's clutches, +a new report was spread that Beverly Snow, the free mulatto proprietor of +a saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken in +slurring terms of the wives and daughters of white mechanics as a class. +"In a very short time he had more customers than both Brown and Gadsby--but +the landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made all +through the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increased +number of guests, but Snow was still absent." The mob then began to search +the houses of his associates for him. In that of James Hutton, another free +mulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to a +magistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held an +organized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee was +appointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council held +session, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out. +Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negro +hut and breaking the windows of a negro church.[82] Such outrages appear to +have been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racial +subordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter. + +[Footnote 82: Washington _Globe_, about August 14, reprinted in the _North +Carolina Standard_, Aug. 27, 1835.] + +Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatly +refrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freeman +was one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. They +submitted to the régime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course, +because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because there +were solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes had +reason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carry +themselves with a quiet conservative dignity. The less prosperous blacks, +together with such of their mulatto confrères as were similarly inert, +had the satisfaction at least of not being slaves; and those in the South +commonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic of +both African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends among +the whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay in +fairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarly +their own. + +The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stress +upon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they were +doubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among the +whites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of these +institutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers. +There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless +slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the +colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and +conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual +aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of +them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership +confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free +blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings +of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent +cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits +of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a +free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were +thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from +thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85] + +[Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, +1909), p. 6.] + +[Footnote 84: _Ibid_., pp. 68, 69.] + +[Footnote 85: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] + +The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the +constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New +Orleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officers +were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and +six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month. +Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to +its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow +members, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love," and to +wear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrears +of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a +subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was the +duty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of the +official mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was to +see to the washing of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work from +the lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to have +charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members +as might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extent +of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule. +Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of +a member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpse +and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge +was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, +hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all +told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify +that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as +sociable as an Irish wake. + +[Footnote 86: _The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society of +Orleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace_ (Caption).] + +Doubtless to some extent in their lodges, and certainly to a great degree +in their daily affairs, the lives of the free colored and the slaves +intermingled. Colored freemen, except in the highest of their social +strata, took free or slave wives almost indifferently. Some indeed appear +to have preferred the unfree, either because in such case the husband would +not be responsible for the support of the family or because he might engage +the protection of his wife's master in time of need.[87] On the other hand +the free colored women were somewhat numerously the prostitutes, or in more +favored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereabouts +particularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon balls," was +a systematized practice.[88] When this had persisted for enough generations +to produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtless +cut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful though +clandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions of +some of those who to this day take the seats assigned to colored passengers +in the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossing +the line" has not in all such breasts been a mastering ambition. + +[Footnote 87: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 130-133.] + +[Footnote 88: Albert Phelps, _Louisiana_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 212, 213.] + +The Southern whites were of several minds regarding the free colored +element in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealously +disposed on the ground of their competition, the interest and inclination +of citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon those +whose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, these +men shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, the +freedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services were +enlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. One +of the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoes +and the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousness +of the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety and +contending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove allies +of the whites.[89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. The +general discussion at the South in the premises did not concern the +virtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as the +influence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connection +that the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the ground +of their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was more +than matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. A +citizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91] +"It is a melancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities of +Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equality +with the whites, ... they are chiefly noted for their aversion to labor +and proneness to villainy. Men of this class are peculiarly dangerous in +a community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness of +their manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wicked +and deep laid plots." + +[Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated +against the Southern and Western States respecting the institution and +existence of Slavery among them_. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1822), +pp. 84, 85.] + +[Footnote 90: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 158.] + +[Footnote 91: Letter to the editor in the _Louisiana Gazette_, Aug. 12, +1819.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +SLAVE CRIME + + +The negroes were in a strange land, coercively subjected to laws and +customs far different from those of their ancestral country; and by being +enslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprived +of that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope of +individual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected that +their conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whites +who were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks, +however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and the +reckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole well +founded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave no +special concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt. + +Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they were +commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and +often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences +of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the +penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of serious +infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict +slave régime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for +investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in the +premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials +of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812 +Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 Fannie +Micklejohn, charged with the murder of an infant was acquitted; and Tom, +convicted of murdering a fellow slave was sentenced to branding on each +cheek with the letter M and to thirty-nine lashes on his bare back on each +of three successive days, after which he was to be discharged. In 1816 +John, a slave of William McGeehee, convicted of the theft of a $100 bill +was sentenced to whipping in similar fashion. In 1818 Aleck was found +guilty of an assault with intent to murder, and received sentence of fifty +lashes on three days in succession. In 1819 Rodney was capitally sentenced +for arson. In 1821 Peter, charged with murdering a slave, was convicted of +manslaughter and ordered to be branded with M on the right cheek and to be +given the customary three times thirty-nine lashes; and Edmund, charged +with involuntary manslaughter, was dismissed on the ground that the court +had no cognizance of such offense. In 1822 Davis was convicted of assault +upon a white person with intent to kill, but his sentence is not recorded. +In or about the same year John, a slave of William Robertson, convicted of +burglary but recommended to mercy, was sentenced to be branded with T on +the right cheek and to receive three times thirty-nine lashes; and on the +same day the same slave was sentenced to death for assault upon a white +man with intent to kill. In 1825 John Ponder's George when convicted of +burglary was recommended by the jury to the mercy of the court but received +sentence of death nevertheless; and Stephen was sentenced likewise for +murderous assault upon a white man. In 1826 Elleck, charged with assault +with intent of murder and rape, was convicted on the first part of the +charge only, but received sentence of death. In 1828 Elizabeth Smith's +George was acquitted of larceny from the house; and next year Caroline was +likewise acquitted on a charge of maiming a white person. Finally, in 1832 +Martin, upon pleading guilty to a charge of murderous assault, was given a +whipping sentence of the customary thirty-nine lashes on three successive +days.[2] + +[Footnote 1: W.E.B. DuBois, in the _Annals of the Academy of Political and +Social Science_, XVIII, 132.] + +[Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of Baldwin +County on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences." MS. in the +court house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac American +Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 123-125.] + +A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave +circumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as +the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy +as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became +skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the +whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro +midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time +a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was +missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its +two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky, +charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to +receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of +four days.[3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because the +law declared them to be such when committed by persons of that class. The +striking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them are +examples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were of +sorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of the +perpetrators. + +[Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 1, 1864.] + +In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume of +criminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact that +in the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slave +convicts at a cost of £15,538 for the compensation of their masters,[4] and +that in 1816 some forty such were deported from New York to New Orleans, +much to the disquiet of the Louisiana authorities.[5] As for the South, +state-wide statistical views with any approach to adequacy are available +for two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that the +laws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerable +impartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In its +penitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmates +comprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All the +slaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving life +terms.[6] Classed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3 +for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 for +poisoning, 5 for attempts to poison, 7 for assault with intent to kill, 2 +for stabbing, 3 for shooting, 20 for striking or wounding a white person, +1 for wounding a child, 4 for attempts to rape, and 3 for insurrection.[7] +This catalogue is notable for its omissions as well as for its content. +While there were four white inmates of the prison who stood convicted of +rape, there were no negroes who had accomplished that crime. Likewise as +compared with 52 whites and 4 free negroes serving terms for larceny, there +were no slave prisoners in that category. Doubtless on the one hand the +negro rapists had been promptly put to death, and on the other hand the +slaves committing mere theft had been let off with whippings. Furthermore +there were no slaves committed for counterfeiting or forgery, horse +stealing, slave stealing or aiding slaves to escape. + +[Footnote 4: _Royal Gazette_ (Kingston, Jamaica), Jan. 29, 1803.] + +[Footnote 5: Message of Governor Claiborne in the _Journal_ of the +Louisiana House of Representatives, 3d legislature, 1st session, p, 22. For +this note I am indebted to Mr. V.A. Moody.] + +[Footnote 6: Under an act of 1854, effective at this time, the owner of any +slave executed or imprisoned was to receive indemnity from the state to the +extent of two-thirds of the slave's appraised value.] + +[Footnote 7: _Report of the Board of Control of the Louisiana Penitentiary, +January, 1861_ (Baton Rouge, 1861). Among the 22 pardoned in 1860 were 2 +slaves who had been sentenced for murder, 2 for arson, and 1 for assault +with intent to kill.] + +The uniquely full view which may be had of the trend of serious crimes +among the Virginia slaves is due to the preservation of vouchers filed in +pursuance of a law of that state which for many decades required appraisal +and payment by the public for all slaves capitally convicted and sentenced +to death or deportation. The file extends virtually from 1780 to 1864, +except for a gap of three years in the late 1850's.[8] The volume of crime +rose gradually decade by decade to a maximum of 242 in the 1820's, and +tended to decline slowly thereafter. The gross number of convictions was +1,418, all but 91 of which were of males. For arson there were 90 slaves +convicted, including 29 women. For burglary there were 257, with but one +woman among them. The highway robbers numbered 15, the horse thieves 20, +and the thieves of other sorts falling within the purview of the vouchers +24, with no women in these categories. It would be interesting to know how +the slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but this +the vouchers fail to tell. + +[Footnote 8: The MS. vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia State +Library. They have been statistically analyzed by the present writer, +substantially as here follows, in the _American Historical Review_, XX, +336-340.] + +For murder there were 346, discriminated as having been committed upon the +master 56, the mistress 11, the overseer 11; upon other white persons 120; +upon free negroes 7; upon slaves 85, including 12 children all of whom were +killed by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of the +murderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison, +including the administering of ground glass, 40 men and 16 women were +convicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman for +administering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous assault there +were 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon male +offenders and only two of which were described as having been directed +against colored victims. + +For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This total +of 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but the +territorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewater +district than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slave +crime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; and +its notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to the +contemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroes +among them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at least +two cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, if +one be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicion +of rape," they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentioned +among the victims is of course far from proving that these were never +violated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the private +cognizance of the masters.[9] A Delaware instance of the sort attained +record through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had run +away after being punished. + +[Footnote 9: Elkton (Md.) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertisement, reprinted +in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122.] + +For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them in +Henrico County in 1800 for participation in Gabriel's revolt, 17 in 1831, +mainly in Southampton County as followers of Nat Turner, and the rest +mostly scattering. Among miscellaneous and unclassified cases there was one +slave convicted of forgery, another of causing the printing of anti-slavery +writings, and 301 sentenced without definite specification of their crimes. +Among the vouchers furthermore are incidental records of the killing of a +slave in 1788 who had been proclaimed an outlaw, and of the purchase and +manumission by the commonwealth of Tom and Pharaoh in 1801 for services +connected with the suppression of Gabriel's revolt. + +As to punishments, the vouchers of the eighteenth century are largely +silent, though one of them contains the only unusual sentence to be found +in the whole file. This directed that the head of a slave who had murdered +a fellow slave be cut off and stuck on a pole at the forks of the road. +In the nineteenth century only about one-third of the vouchers record +execution. The rest give record of transportation whether under the +original sentences or upon commutation by the governor, except for the +cases which from 1859 to 1863 were more numerous than any others where the +commutations were to labor on the public works. + +The statistics of rape in Virginia, and the Georgia cases already given, +refute the oft-asserted Southern tradition that negroes never violated +white women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may be +drawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester, +Massachusetts in 1768.[10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned to +death, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt at +rape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governor +issued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, a +slave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in +1844 a jury in Habersham County, after testimony by the victim and others, +found a slave named Dave guilty of rape upon Hester An Dobbs, "a free white +female in the peace of God and state of Georgia," and the criminal was duly +hanged by the sheriff.[12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rape +at Tuscaloosa,[13] and another in Washington County confessed after capture +that while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from her +horse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circumstances +too horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben was +sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.[15] In +Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into the +woods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. The +criminal had been caught when the report went to press.[16] + +[Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by a +contemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Man +who was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed on +the body of one Deborah Metcalfe_" (Boston, 1768).] + +[Footnote 11: Augusta _Chronicle_, Mch. 29, 1811.] + +[Footnote 12: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 579, +580.] + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _Observer_, Nov. 24, 1827.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., Nov. 10, 1827.] + +[Footnote 15: New Orleans _Delta_, June 23, 1849.] + +[Footnote 16: New Orleans _Bee_, Sept. 27, 1842, reprinted in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 121, 122.] + +Other examples will show that lynchings were not altogether lacking +in those days in sequel to such crimes. Near the village of Gallatin, +Mississippi, in 1843, two slave men entered a farmer's house in his absence +and after having gotten liquor from his wife by threats, "they forcibly +took from her arms the infant babe and rudely throwing it upon the floor, +they threw her down, and while one of them accomplished the fiendish design +of a ravisher the other, pointing the muzzle of a loaded gun at her head, +said he would blow out her brains if she resisted or made any noise." The +miscreants then loaded a horse with plunder from the house and made off, +but they were shortly caught by pursuing citizens and hanged. The local +editor said on his own score when recounting the episode: "We have ever +been and now are opposed to any kind of punishment being administered +under the statutes of Judge Lynch; but ... a due regard for candor and the +preservation of all that is held most sacred and all that is most dear to +man in the domestic circles of life impels us to acknowledge the fact that +if the perpetrators of this excessively revolting crime had been burned +alive, as was at first decreed, their fate would have been too good for +such diabolical and inhuman wretches."[17] + +[Footnote 17: Gallatin, Miss., _Signal_, Feb. 27, 1843, reprinted in the +_Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Mch. 1, 1843.] + +An editorial in the _Sentinel_ of Columbus, Georgia, described and +discussed a local occurrence of August 12, 1851,[18] in a different tone: + +[Footnote 18: Columbus _Sentinel_, reprinted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +Aug. 17, 1851. This item, which is notable in more than one regard, was +kindly furnished by Prof. R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia.] + +"Our community has just been made to witness the most high-handed and +humiliating act of violence that it has ever been our duty to chronicle.... +At the May term of the Superior Court a negro man was tried and condemned +on the charge of having attempted to commit rape upon a little white girl +in this county. His trial was a fair one, his counsel was the best our +bar afforded, his jury was one of the most intelligent that sat upon the +criminal side of our court, and on patient and honest hearing he was found +guilty and sentenced to be hung on Tuesday, the 12th inst. This, by the +way, was the second conviction. The negro had been tried and convicted +before, but his counsel had moved and obtained a new trial, which we have +seen resulted like the first in a conviction. + +"Notwithstanding his conviction, it was believed by some that the negro was +innocent. Those who believed him innocent, in a spirit of mercy, undertook +a short time since to procure his pardon; and a petition to that effect was +circulated among our citizens and, we believe, very numerously signed. This +we think was a great error.... It is dangerous for the people to undertake +to meddle with the majesty of the jury trial; and strange as it may sound +to some people, we regard the unfortunate denouement of this case as but +the extreme exemplification of the very principle which actuated those who +originated this petition. Each proceeded from a spirit of discontent with +the decisions of the authorized tribunals; the difference being that in the +one case peaceful means were used for the accomplishment of mistaken mercy, +and in the other violence was resorted to for the attainment of mistaken +justice. + +"The petition was sent to Governor Towns, and on Monday evening last the +messenger returned with a full and free pardon to the criminal. In the +meantime the people had begun to flock in from the country to witness the +execution; and when it was announced that a pardon had been received, the +excitement which immediately pervaded the streets was indescribable. Monday +night passed without any important demonstration. Tuesday morning the crowd +in the streets increased, and the excitement with it. A large and excited +multitude gathered early in the morning at the market house, and after +numerous violent harangues a leader was chosen, and resolutions passed to +the effect that the mob should demand the prisoner at four o'clock in the +afternoon, and if he should not be given up he was to be taken by force +and executed. After this decision the mob dispersed, and early in the +afternoon, upon the ringing of the market bell, it reassembled and +proceeded to the jail. The sheriff of the county of course refused to +surrender the negro, when he was overpowered, the prison doors broken open, +and the unfortunate culprit dragged forth and hung. + +"These are the facts, briefly and we believe accurately, stated. We do +not feel now inclined to comment upon them. We leave them to the public, +praying in behalf of our injured community all the charity which can be +extended to an act so outraging, so unpardonable." + +A similar occurrence in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1855 was reported with +no expression of regret. A negro who had raped and murdered a young girl +there was brought before the superior court in regular session. "When the +case was called for trial a motion for change of venue to the county of +Greene was granted. This so exasperated the citizens of Sumter (many of +whom were in favor of summary punishment in the outset) that a large number +of them collected on the 23d. ult., took him out of prison, chained him +to a stake on the very spot where the murder was committed, and in the +presence of two or three thousand negroes and a large number of white +people,[19] burned him alive." This mention of negroes in attendance is in +sharp contrast with their palpable absence on similar occasions in later +decades. They were present, of course, as at legal executions, by the +command of their masters to receive a lesson of deterrence. The wisdom of +this policy, however, had already been gravely questioned. A Louisiana +editor, for example, had written in comment upon a local hanging: "The +practice of sending slaves to witness the execution of their fellows as +a terror to them has many advocates, but we are inclined to doubt its +efficacy. We took particular pains to notice on this occasion the effects +which this horrid spectacle would produce on their minds, and our +observation taught us that while a very few turned with loathing from the +scene, a large majority manifested that levity and curiosity superinduced +by witnessing a monkey show."[20] + +[Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1855.] + +[Footnote 20: _Caddo Gazette_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, April 5, +1845.] + +For another case of lynching, which occurred in White County, Tennessee, in +1858, there is available merely the court record of a suit brought by the +owners of the slave to recover pecuniary damages from those who had lynched +him. It is incidentally recited, with strong reprehension by the court, +that the negro was in legal custody under a charge of rape and murder when +certain citizens, part of whom had signed a written agreement to "stand by +each other," broke into the jail and hanged the prisoner.[21] + +[Footnote 21: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 336. For lynchings prompted by +other crimes than rape see below, p. 474, footnote 60.] + +In general the slaveholding South learned of crimes by individual negroes +with considerable equanimity. It was the news or suspicion of concerted +action by them which alone caused widespread alarm and uneasiness. That +actual deeds of rebellion by small groups were fairly common is suggested +by the numerous slaves convicted of murdering their masters and overseers +in Virginia, as well as by chance items from other quarters. Thus in 1797 +a planter in Screven County, Georgia, who had recently bought a batch of +newly imported Africans was set upon and killed by them, and his wife's +escape was made possible only by the loyalty of two other slaves.[22] +Likewise in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1844, when a Mr. Stewart +threatened one of his slaves, that one and two others turned upon him and +beat him to death;[23] and in Arkansas in 1845 an overseer who was attacked +under similar circumstances saved his life only with the aid of several +neighbors and through the use of powder and ball.[24] Such episodes were +likely to grow as the reports of them flew over the countryside. For +instance in 1856 when an unruly slave on a plantation shortly below New +Orleans upon being threatened with punishment seized an axe and was +thereupon shot by his overseer, the rumor of an insurrection quickly ran to +and through the city.[25] + +[Footnote 22: _Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser_ (Savannah, Ga.), +Feb. 24, 1797.] + +[Footnote 23: Paducah _Kentuckian_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, Apr. +3, 1844.] + +[Footnote 24: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 1, 1845, citing the Arkansas +_Southern Shield_.] + +[Footnote 25: New Orleans _Daily Tropic_, Feb. 16, 1846.] + +If all such rumors as this, many of which had equally slight basis, were +assembled, the catalogue would reach formidable dimensions. A large number +doubtless escaped record, for the newspapers esteemed them "a delicate +subject to touch";[26] and many of those which were recorded, we may be +sure, have not come to the investigator's notice. A survey of the revolts +and conspiracies and the rumors of such must nevertheless be attempted; for +their influence upon public thought and policy, at least from time to time, +was powerful. + +[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 23, 1856, +editorial.] + +Early revolts were of course mainly in the West Indies, for these were long +the chief plantation colonies. No more than twenty years after the first +blacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on the +plantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like number +from other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until they +were all cut down or captured.[27] In the English islands precedents of +conspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous. A plot +among the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed and +the ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had a +similar end.[29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar course +until 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number. The +governor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporary +wrote,[30] "for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, and +abundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest kept +in a more stricter manner." This quietude continued only until 1692 when +three negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy. One of these, on promise +of pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own participation +therein. The two others were condemned "to be hung in chains on a gibbet +till they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned." These +endured the torture "for four days without making any confession, but then +gave in and promised to confess on promise of life. One was accordingly +taken down on the day following. The other did not survive." The tale as +then gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form six +regiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the forts +and arsenal through bribery among their custodians. The governor when +reporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishment +of the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward to +future informers, would make the colony secure.[31] There seems to have +been no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 when +the blacks rose in great mass and burned more than sixty plantations, as +well as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived from +neighboring islands and suppressed them.[32] + +[Footnote 27: J.A. Saco, _Esclavitud en el Nuevo Mondo_ (Barcelona, 1879), +pp. 131-133.] + +[Footnote 28: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_, XXXV.] + +[Footnote 29: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] + +[Footnote 30: Charles Lincoln ed., _Narratives of the Indian Wars, +1675-1699_ (New York, 1913), pp. 71, 72.] + +[Footnote 31: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, +1689-1692_, pp. 732-734.] + +[Footnote 32: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 17, 1816.] + +In Jamaica a small outbreak in 1677[33] was followed by another, in +Clarendon Parish, in 1690. When these latter insurgents were routed by the +whites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearby +mountain fastnesses where, under the chieftainship of Cudjoe, they became +securely established as a community of marooned freemen. Welcoming runaway +slaves and living partly from depredations, they made themselves so +troublesome to the countryside that in 1733 the colonial government built +forts at the mouths of the Clarendon defiles and sent expeditions against +the Maroon villages. Cudjoe thereupon shifted his tribe to a new and better +buttressed vale in Trelawney Parish, whither after five years more spent in +forays and reprisals the Jamaican authorities sent overtures for peace. The +resulting treaty, signed in 1738, gave recognition to the Maroons, assigned +them lands and rights of hunting, travel and trade, pledged them to render +up runaway slaves and criminals in future, and provided for the residence +of an agent of the island government among the Maroons as their +superintendent. Under these terms peace prevailed for more than half a +century, while the Maroon population increased from 600 to 1400 souls. At +length Major James, to whom these blacks were warmly attached, was replaced +as superintendent by Captain Craskell whom they disliked and shortly +expelled. Tumults and forays now ensued, in 1795, the effect of which upon +the sentiment of the whites was made stronger by the calamitous occurrences +in San Domingo. Negotiations for a fresh accommodation fell through, +whereupon a conquest was undertaken by a joint force of British troops, +Jamaican militia and free colored auxiliaries. The prowess of the Maroons +and the ruggedness of their district held all these at bay, however, until +a body of Spanish hunters with trained dogs was brought in from Cuba. The +Maroons, conquered more by fright than by force, now surrendered, whereupon +they were transported first to Nova Scotia and thence at the end of the +century to the British protectorate in Sierra Leone.[34] Other Jamaican +troubles of some note were a revolt in St. Mary's Parish in 1765,[35] and +a more general one in 1832 in which property of an estimated value of +$1,800,000 was destroyed before the rebellion was put down at a cost of +some $700,000 more.[36] There were troubles likewise in various other +colonies, as with insurgents in Antigua in 1701[37] and[38] 1736 and +Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1752;[39] with maroons in Grenada in 1765,[40] +Dominica in 1785[41] and Demarara in[42] 1794; and with conspirators in +Cuba in 1825[43] and St. Croix[44] and Porto Rico in 1848.[45] + +[Footnote 33: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, +1689-1692_, p. 101.] + +[Footnote 34: R.C. Dallas, _History of the Maroons_ (London, 1803).] + +[Footnote 35: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXXVI, 135.] + +[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, XLIV, 124.] + +[Footnote 37: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies_, 1701, +pp. 721, 722.] + +[Footnote 38: _South Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Jan. 29, 1837.] + +[Footnote 39: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXII, 477.] + +[Footnote 40: _Ibid_., XXXV, 533.] + +[Footnote 41: Charleston, S.C., _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Jan. +26, 1786.] + +[Footnote 42: Henry Bolinbroke, _Voyage to the Demerary_ (Philadelphia, +1813), pp. 200-203.] + +[Footnote 43: _Louisiana Gazette_, Oct. 12, 1825.] + +[Footnote 44: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 7, 1848.] + +[Footnote 45: _Ibid_., Aug. 16 and Dec. 15, 1848.] + +Everything else of such nature, however, was eclipsed by the prodigious +upheaval in San Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution. Under the +flag of France the western end of that island had been converted in the +course of the eighteenth century from a nest of buccaneers into the most +thriving of plantation colonies. By 1788 it contained some 28,000 white +settlers, 22,000 free negroes and mulattoes, and 405,000 slaves. It had +nearly eight hundred sugar estates, many of them on a huge scale. The +soil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that on many fields the +sugar-cane would grow perennially from the same roots almost without end. +Exports of coffee and cotton were considerable, of sugar and molasses +enormous; and the volume was still rapidly swelling by reason of the great +annual importations of African slaves. The colony was by far the most +valued of the French overseas possessions. + +Some of the whites were descendants of the original freebooters, and +retained the temperament of their forbears; others were immigrant fortune +seekers. The white women were less than half as numerous as the men, and +black or yellow concubines were common substitutes for wives. The colony +was the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and more +self-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outside +control, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that the +colored freemen be kept passive. + +A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under the +old régime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projects +in France and to demand representation in the coming States General. But +the rapid progress of radical republicanism in that assembly threw most of +these into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still to +endorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_ +at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand the +National Assembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," together with its +decrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to free +persons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in the +northern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south. +When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative Assembly revoked +the former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring all +control over negro status to the colonial assemblies. Upon receiving news +of this the mulattoes and blacks, with the courage of despair, spread ruin +in every district. The whites, driven into the few fortified places, begged +succor from France; but the Jacobins, who were now in control at Paris, had +a programme of their own. By a decree of April 4, 1792, the Legislative +Assembly granted full political equality to colored freemen and provided +for the dispatch of Republican commissioners to establish the new régime. +The administration of the colony by these functionaries was a travesty. +Most of the surviving whites emigrated to Cuba and the American continent, +carrying such of their slaves as they could command. The free colored +people, who at first welcomed the commissioners, unexpectedly turned +against them because of a decree of August 29, 1793, abolishing slavery. + +At this juncture Great Britain, then at war with the French Republic, +intervened by sending an army to capture the colony. Most of the colored +freemen and the remaining whites rallied to the flag of these invaders; but +the slaves, now commanded by the famous Toussaint L'Ouverture, resisted +them effectually, while yellow fever decimated their ranks and paralyzed +their energies. By 1795 the two colored elements, the mulattoes who had +improvised a government on a slaveholding basis in the south, and the +negroes who dominated the north, each had the other alone as an active +enemy; and by the close of the century the mulattoes were either destroyed +or driven into exile; and Toussaint, while still acknowledging a nominal +allegiance to France, was virtual monarch of San Domingo. The peace of +Amiens at length permitted Bonaparte to send an army against the "Black +Napoleon." Toussaint soon capitulated, and in violation of the amnesty +granted him was sent to his death in a French dungeon. But pestilence again +aided the blacks, and the war was still raging when the breach of the peace +in Europe brought a British squadron to blockade and capture the remnant +of the French army. The new black leader, Dessalines, now proclaimed the +colony's independence, renaming it Hayti, and in 1804 he crowned himself +emperor. In the following year any further conflict with the local whites +was obviated by the systematic massacre of their small residue. In the +other French islands the developments, while on a much smaller scale, were +analogous.[46] + +[Footnote 46: T. Lothrop Stoddard, _The French Revolution in San Domingo_ +(Boston, 1914).] + +In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of 1712 +and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy of +the public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had been +recurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a mission +school by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagation +of the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroes +who had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable; +and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indians +or mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as they +contended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-three +provided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose the +dark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afire +and slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfire +caused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speed +that only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when the +plotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape capture; but +when the woods were beaten and the town searched next day and an emergency +court sat upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than the +whole conspiracy had comprised. The prosecuting officer, indeed, hounded +one of the prisoners through three trials, to win a final conviction after +two acquittals. The maxim that no one may twice be put in jeopardy for the +same offense evidently did not apply to slaves in that colony. Of those +convicted one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in chains; +nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake, one of these +being sentenced "to be burned with a slow fire, that he may continue in +torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in said fire until he +be dead and consumed to ashes"; and several others were saved only by the +royal governor's reprieve and the queen's eventual pardon. Such animosity +was exhibited by the citizens toward the "catechetical school" that for +some time its teacher hardly dared show himself on the streets. The furor +gradually subsided, however, and Mr. Neau continued his work for a dozen +years longer, and others carried it on after his death.[47] + +[Footnote 47: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Documents Relative to the Colonial +History of New York_, V, 341, 342, 346, 356, 357, 371; _New York +Genealogical and Biographical Record_, XXI, 162, 163; New Orleans _Daily +Delta_, April 1, 1849; J.A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America_ (New York, +1907), V, pp. 258, 259.] + +The commotion of 1741 was a panic among the whites of high and low degree, +prompted in sequel to a robbery and a series of fires by the disclosures of +Mary Burton, a young white servant concerning her master John Hughson, and +the confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of many aliases but +most commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputable +house and a prostitute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duress +that Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from the +negroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had already +effected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, the +supreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration in +bringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters.[48] +Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, and +likewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a +conspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either to +the gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of the +slaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives; +and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations of +detail which the increasingly fluent testimony of Mary Burton received. +Some of the confessions, however, were of no avail to those who made them. +Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror-stricken at the stake, made somewhat +stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay the +execution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of +tumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number of +sentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herself +by her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turn +out there was no guessing where or when there would be an end of +impeachments."[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot several +persons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religious +principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable +practices; at which the judges were very much astonished."[50] This +farcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stop +the tragic proceedings. + +[Footnote 48: Daniel Horsmanden, one of the magistrates who sat in these +trials, published in 1744 the _Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection +of the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro and +other slaves for burning the city of New York in America, and murdering +the Inhabitants_; and this, reprinted under the title, _The New York +Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot_ (New York, 1810), is the chief +source of knowledge in the premises. See also the contemporary letters of +Lieutenant-Governor Clarke in E.B. O'Callaghan, ed., _Documents Relative to +the Colonial History of New York_, VI, 186, 197, 198, 201-203.] + +[Footnote 49: _Ibid_., pp. 96-100.] + +[Footnote 50: _Ibid_., pp. 370-372.] + +In New Jersey in 1734 a slave at Raritan when jailed for drunkenness and +insolence professed to reveal a plot for insurrection, whereupon he and +a fellow slave were capitally convicted. One of them escaped before +execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a +negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt +and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration. +Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release +them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the +restoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were punished for arson.[52] + +[Footnote 51: MS. transcript in the New York Public Library from the New +York _Gazette_, Mch. 18, 1734.] + +[Footnote 52: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.] + +In the Southern colonies there were no outbreaks in the seventeenth century +and but two discoveries of plots, it seems, both in Virginia. The first +of these, 1663, in which indented white servants and negro slaves in +Gloucester County were said to be jointly involved, was betrayed by one of +the servants. The colonial assembly showed its gratification not only by +freeing the informer and giving him five thousand pounds of tobacco but by +resolving in commemoration of "so transcendant a favour as the preserving +all we have from so utter ruin," "that the 13th. of September be annually +kept holy, being the day those villains intended to put the plot in +execution."[53] The other plot, of slaves alone, in the "Northern Neck" of +the colony in 1687, appears to have been of no more than local concern.[54] +The punishments meted out on either occasion are unknown. + +[Footnote 53: Hening, _Virginia Statutes at Large_, II, 204.] + +[Footnote 54: J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, +1902), p. 79.] + +The eighteenth century, with its multiplication of slaves, saw somewhat +more frequent plots in its early decades. The discovery of one in Isle of +Wight County, Virginia, in 1709 brought thirty-nine lashes to each of +three slaves and fifty lashes to a free negro found to be cognizant, and +presumably more drastic punishments to two other slaves who were held as +ringleaders to await the governor's order. Still another slave who at +least for the time being escaped the clutches of the law was proclaimed +an outlaw.[55] The discovery of another plot in Gloucester and Middlesex +Counties of the same colony in 1723 prompted the assembly to provide for +the deportation to the West Indies of seven slave participants.[56] + +[Footnote 55: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, I, 129, 130.] + +[Footnote 56: _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1712-1726_, +p. 36.] + +In South Carolina, although depredations by runaways gave acute uneasiness +in 1711 and thereabouts, no conspiracy was discovered until 1720 when some +of the participants were burnt, some hanged and some banished.[57] Matters +were then quiet again until 1739 when on a September Sunday a score of +Angola blacks with one Jonny as their leader broke open a store, supplied +themselves with arms, and laid their course at once for Florida where they +had been told by Spanish emissaries welcome and liberty awaited them. +Marching to the beat of drums, slaughtering with ease the whites they came +upon, and drawing black recruits to several times their initial number, on +the Pon Pon road that day the rebels covered ten prosperous miles. But +when at evening they halted to celebrate their exploits with dancing and +plundered rum they were set upon by the whites whom couriers had collected. +Several were killed in the onslaught, and a few more were captured on the +spot. Most of the rest fled back to their cabins, but a squad of ten made +their way thirty miles farther on the route to Florida and sold their +lives in battle when overtaken. Of those captured on the field or in their +quarters some were shot but none were tortured. The toll of lives lost +numbered twenty-one whites and forty-four[58] blacks. + +[Footnote 57: Letter of June 24, 1720, among the MS. transcripts in the +state capitol at Columbia of documents in the British Public Record +Office.] + +[Footnote 58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, X, 127; South Carolina Historical +Society _Collections_, II, 270; Alexander Hewatt, _Historical Account of +South Carolina and Georgia_ (London, 1779), II, 72, 73. Joshua Coffin in +his _Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860) +listed a revolt at Savannah, Ga., in 1728. But Savannah was not founded +until 1733, and it contained virtually no negroes prior to 1750.] + +Following this and the New York panic of two years later, there was +remarkable quiet in race relations in general for a full half century. It +was not indeed until the spread of the amazing news from San Domingo and +the influx thence of white refugees and their slaves that a new series of +disturbances began on the continent. At Norfolk in 1792 some negroes were +arrested on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly discharged for lack +of evidence;[59] and close by at Portsmouth in the next year there were +such savage clashes between the newly come French blacks and those of the +Virginia stock that citizens were alarmed for their own safety.[60] In +Louisiana an uprising on the plantation of Julien Poydras in Pointe +Coupée Parish in 1796 brought the execution of a dozen or two negroes and +sentences to prison of several whites convicted as their accomplices;[61] +and as late as 1811 an outbreak in St. Charles and St. James Parishes was +traced in part to San Domingo slaves.[62] + +[Footnote 59: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 540, 541, 546.] + +[Footnote 60: _Ibid_., VI, 490, letter of a citizen who had just found four +strange negroes hanging from the branches of a tree near his door.] + +[Footnote 61: C.C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 244 ff.; E.P. +Puckett, "Free Negroes in Louisiana" (MS.).] + +[Footnote 62: M Puckett, _op. cit. Le Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New +Orleans), Feb. 11, 1811, has mention of the manumission of a mulatto slave +at this time on the ground of his recent valiant defence of his master's +house against attacking insurgents.] + +Gabriel's rising in the vicinity of Richmond, however, eclipsed all other +such events on the continent in this period. Although this affair was +of prodigious current interest its details were largely obscured by the +secrecy maintained by the court and the legislature in their dealings with +it. Reports in the newspapers of the time were copious enough but were +vague except as to the capture of the leading participants; and the +reminiscent journalism of after years was romantic to the point of +absurdity. It is fairly clear, however, that Gabriel and other slaves +on Thomas H. Prosser's plantation, which lay several miles distant from +Richmond, began to brew the conspiracy as early as June, 1800, and enlisted +some hundreds of confederates, perhaps more than a thousand, before +September 1, the date fixed for its maturity. Many of these were doubtless +residents of Richmond, and some it was said lived as far away as Norfolk. +The few muskets procured were supplemented by cutlasses made from scythe +blades and by plantation implements of other sorts; but the plan of +onslaught contemplated a speedy increase of this armament. From a +rendezvous six miles from Richmond eleven hundred men in three columns +under designated officers were to march upon the city simultaneously, one +to seize the penitentiary which then served also as the state arsenal, +another to take the powder magazine in another quarter of the town, and the +third to begin a general slaughter with such weapons as were already at +hand. + +Things progressed with very little hitch until the very eve of the day +set. But then two things occurred, either of which happening alone would +probably have foiled the project. On the one hand a slave on Moseley +Sheppard's plantation informed his master of the plot; on the other hand +there fell such a deluge of rain that the swelling of the streams kept most +of the conspirators from reaching the rendezvous. Meanwhile couriers had +roused the city, and the rebels assembled could only disperse. Scores of +them were taken, including eventually Gabriel himself who eluded pursuit +for several weeks and sailed to Norfolk as a stowaway. The magistrates, of +course, had busy sessions, but the number of death sentences was less than +might have been expected. Those executed comprised Gabriel and five other +Prosser slaves along with nineteen more belonging to other masters; and +ten others, in scattered ownership, were deported. To provide for a more +general riddance of suspected negroes the legislature made secret overtures +to the federal government looking to the creation of a territorial +reservation to receive such colonists; but for the time being this came +to naught. The legislature furthermore created a permanent guard for the +capitol, and it liberated at the state's expense Tom and Pharaoh, slaves of +the Sheppard family, as reward for their services in helping to foil the +plot.[63] + +[Footnote 63: T.W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat," in the _Atlantic +Monthly_, X, 337-345, reprinted in the same author's _Travellers and +Outlaws_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 185-214; J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in +Virginia_, p. 92; J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 65; MS. +vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments for +convicted slaves.] + +Set on edge by Gabriel's exploit, citizens far and wide were abnormally +alert for some time thereafter; and perhaps the slaves here and there were +unusually restive. Whether the one or the other of these conditions +was most responsible, revelations and rumors were for several years +conspicuously numerous. In 1802 there were capital convictions of fourteen +insurgent or conspiring slaves in six scattered counties of Virginia;[64] +and panicky reports of uprisings were sent out from Hartford and Bertie +Counties, North Carolina.[65] In July, 1804, the mayor of Savannah received +from Augusta "information highly important to the safety, peace and +security" of his town, and issued appropriate orders to the local +militia.[66] Among rumors flying about South Carolina in this period, one +on a December day in 1805 telling of risings above and below Columbia +led to the planting of cannon before the state house there and to the +instruction of the night patrols to seize every negro found at large. An +over-zealous patrolman thereupon shot a slave who was peacefully following +his own master, and was indicted next day for murder. The peaceful passing +of the night brought a subsidence of the panic with the coming of day.[67] + +[Footnote 64: Vouchers as above.] + +[Footnote 65: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, June 26, 1802.] + +[Footnote 66: Thomas Gamble, Jr., _History of the City Government of +Savannah_ [Savannah, 1900], p. 68.] + +[Footnote 67: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 881, 882.] + +In Virginia, again, there were disturbing rumors at one place or another +every year or two from 1809 to 1814,[68] but no occurrence of tangible +character until the Boxley plot of 1816 in Spottsylvania and Louisa +Counties. George Boxley, the white proprietor of a country store, was a +visionary somewhat of John Brown's type. Participating in the religious +gatherings of the negroes and telling them that a little white bird had +brought him a holy message to deliver his fellowmen from bondage, he +enlisted many blacks in his project for insurrection. But before the +plot was ripe it was betrayed by a slave woman, and several negroes were +arrested. Boxley thereupon marched with a dozen followers on a Quixotic +errand of release, but on the road the blacks fell away, and he, after some +time in hiding, surrendered himself. Six of the negroes after conviction +were hanged and a like number transported; but Boxley himself broke jail +and escaped.[69] + +[Footnote 68: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, X, 62, 63, 97, 368.] + +[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., X, 433-436; _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), Apr. +18 and 24 (Reprinting a report from the _Virginia Herald_ of Mch. 9), and +July 12, 1816; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public +payments for convicted slaves.] + +In the lower South a plot at Camden, South Carolina, in 1816[70] and +another at Augusta, Georgia,[71] three years afterward had like plans of +setting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of the +respective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Both +plots were betrayed, and several participants in each were executed. +These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot at +Charleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types involved, the +methods of persuasion used by the leading spirits and the sobriety of the +whites on the occasion is one of the most notable of such episodes on +record. + +[Footnote 70: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated +against the Southern and Western States, with historical notes of +insurrections_ (Charleston, 1822), pp. 75-77; H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy +of David R. Williams_, p. 131; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, pp. 151, 152.] + +[Footnote 71: News item from Augusta in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New +Orleans), June 15, 1819.] + +Denmark Vesey, brought from Africa in his youth, had bought his freedom +with part of a $1500 prize drawn by him in a lottery, and was in this +period an independent artisan. Harboring a deep resentment against the +whites, however, he began to plan his plot some four years before its +maturity. He familiarized himself with the Bible account of the deliverance +of the children of Israel, and collected pamphlet and newspaper material on +anti-slavery sentiment in England and the North and on occurrences in San +Domingo, with all of which on fit occasions he regaled the blacks with whom +he came into touch. Arguments based on such data brought concurrence of +negroes of the more intelligent sort, prominent among whom were certain +functionaries of the African Church who were already nursing grievances +on the score of the suppression of their ecclesiastical project by the +Charleston authorities.[72] The chief minister of that church, Morris +Brown, however, was carefully left out of the conspiracy. In appealing +to the more ignorant and superstitious element, on the other hand, the +services of Gullah Jack, so called because of his Angola origin, were +enlisted, for as a recognized conjuror he could bewitch the recalcitrant +and bestow charmed crabs' claws upon those joining the plot to make them +invulnerable. In the spring of 1822 things were put in train for the +outbreak. The Angolas, the Eboes and the Carolina-born were separately +organized under appropriate commanders; arrangements were made looking to +the support of the plantation slaves within marching distance of the city; +and letters were even sent by the negro cook on a vessel bound for San +Domingo with view apparently both to getting assistance from that island +and to securing a haven there in case the revolt should prove only +successful enough to permit the seizure of the ships in Charleston harbor. +Meanwhile the coachmen and draymen in the plot were told off to mobilize +the horses in their charge, pikes were manufactured, the hardware stores +and other shops containing arms were listed for special attention, and +plans were laid for the capture of the city's two arsenals as the first +stroke in the revolt. This was scheduled for midnight on Sunday, June 16. + +[Footnote 72: See above, p. 421.] + +On May 30 George, the body-servant of Mr. Wilson, told his master that Mr. +Paul's William had invited him to join a society which was to make a stroke +for freedom. William upon being seized and questioned by the city council +made something of a confession incriminating two other slaves, Mingo Harth +and Peter Poyas; but these were so staunch in their denials that they were +discharged, with confidential slaves appointed to watch them. William was +held for a week of solitary confinement, at the end of which he revealed +the extensive character of the plot and the date set for its maturity. The +city guard was thereupon strengthened; but the lapse of several days in +quiet was about to make the authorities incredulous, when another citizen +brought them word from another slave of information precisely like that +which had first set them on the _qui vive_. This caused the local militia +to be called out to stiffen the patrol. Then as soon as the appointed +Sunday night had passed, which brought no outbreak, the city council +created a special court as by law provided, comprising two magistrates +together with five citizens carefully selected for their substantial +character and distinguished position. These were William Drayton, Nathaniel +Heyward, James R. Pringle, James Legaré and Robert J. Turnbull. More +sagacious and responsible men could certainly not have been found. A +committee of vigilance was also appointed to assist the court. + +This court having first made its own rules that no negro was to be tried +except in the presence of his master or attorney, that everyone on trial +should be heard in his own defense, and that no one should be capitally +sentenced on the bare testimony of a single witness, proceeded to the trial +of Peter Poyas, Denmark Vesey and others against whom charges had then been +lodged. By eavesdropping those who were now convicted and confronting them +with their own words, confessions were procured implicating many others who +in turn were put on trial, including Gullah Jack whose necromancy could not +save him. In all 130 negroes were arrested, including nine colored freemen. +Of the whole number, twenty-five were discharged by the committee of +vigilance and 27 others by the court. Nine more were acquitted with +recommendations with which their masters readily complied, that they be +transported. Of those convicted, 34 were deported by public authority +and 35 were hanged. In addition four white men indicted for +complicity, comprising a German peddler, a Scotchman, a Spaniard and a +Charlestonian,[73] were tried by a regular court having jurisdiction over +whites and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to twelve months. + +[Footnote 73: _An Account of the late intended Insurrection among a portion +of the Blacks of this City. Published by the Authority of the Corporation +of Charleston_ (Charleston, 1822); Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker (the +presiding magistrates of the special court), _An Official Report of the +Trials of sundry Negroes charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection, +with a report of the trials of four white persons on indictments for +attempting to excite the slaves to insurrection_ (Charleston, 1822); T.D. +Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, 1909), pp. 130-136.] + +A number of Charleston citizens promptly memorialized the state assembly +recommending that all free negroes be expelled, that the penalties +applicable to whites conspiring with negroes be made more severe, and that +the control over the blacks be generally stiffened.[74] The legislature +complied except as to the proposal for expulsion. Charlestonians also +organized an association for the prevention of negro disturbances; but by +1825 the public seems to have begun to lose its ardor in the premises.[75] + +[Footnote 74: _Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and +House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, +1822), reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 103-116.] + +[Footnote 75: Address of the association, in the Charleston _City Gazette_, +Aug. 5, 1825.] + +The next salient occurrence in the series was the outbreak which brought +fame to Nat Turner and the devoted Virginia county of Southampton. Nat, +a slave who by the custom of the country had acquired the surname of his +first master, was the foreman of a small plantation, a Baptist exhorter +capable of reading the Bible, and a pronounced mystic. For some years, as +he told afterward when in custody, he had heard voices from the heavens +commanding him to carry on the work of Christ to make the last to be first +and the first last; and he took the sun's eclipse in February, 1831, as a +sign that the time was come. He then enlisted a few of his fellows in his +project, but proceeded to spend his leisure for several months in prayer +and brooding instead of in mundane preparation. When at length on Sunday +night, August 21, he began his revolt he had but a petty squad of +companions, with merely a hatchet and a broad-axe as weapons, and no +definite plan of campaign. First murdering his master's household and +seizing some additional equipment, he took the road and repeated the +process at whatever farmhouses he came upon. Several more negroes joined +the squad as it proceeded, though in at least one instance a slave resisted +them in defense of his master's family at the cost of his own life. The +absence of many whites from the neighborhood by reason of their attendance +at a camp-meeting across the nearby North Carolina line reduced the number +of victims, and on the other hand made the rally of the citizens less +expeditious and formidable when the alarm had been spread. By sunrise +the rebels numbered fifteen, part of whom were mounted, and their outfit +comprised a few firearms. Throughout the morning they continued their +somewhat aimless roving, slaughtering such white households as they +reached, enlisting recruits by persuasion or coercion, and heightening +their courage by draughts upon the apple-brandy in which the county, by +virtue of its many orchards and stills, abounded. By noon there were some +sixty in the straggling ranks, but when shortly afterward they met a squad +of eighteen rallying whites, armed like themselves mainly with fowling +pieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but a +score dispersed. The courage of these whites, however, was so outweighed +by their caution that Nat and his fellows were able to continue their +marauding course in a new direction, gradually swelling their numbers to +forty again. That night, however, a false alarm stampeded their bivouac and +again dispersed all the faint-hearted. Nat with his remaining squad then +attacked a homestead just before daybreak on Tuesday, but upon repulse +by the five white men and boys with several slave auxiliaries who were +guarding it they retreated only to meet a militia force which completed +the dispersal. All were promptly killed or taken except Nat who secreted +himself near his late master's home until his capture was accomplished six +weeks afterward. The whites slain by the rebels numbered ten men, fourteen +women and thirty-one children. + +The militia in scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and its +vindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks along +with the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads. The +magistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprising +all the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys for +the defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed his +appointed task. Forty-seven negroes all told were brought before the court. +As to the five free blacks included in this number the magistrates, who had +only preliminary jurisdiction in their cases, discharged one and remanded +four for trial by a higher court. Of the slaves four, and perhaps a fifth +regarding whom the record is blank, were discharged without trial, and +thirteen more were acquitted. Of those convicted seven were sentenced to +deportation, and seventeen with the ringleader among them, to death by +hanging. In addition there were several slaves convicted of complicity in +neighboring counties.[76] + +[Footnote 76: W.S. Drewry, _Slave Insurrections in Virginia, 1830-1865_ +(Washington, 1900), recounts this revolt in great detail, and gives a +bibliography. The vouchers in the Virginia archives record only eleven +executions and four deportations of Southampton slaves in this period. It +may be that the rest of those convicted were pardoned.] + +This extraordinary event, occurring as it did after a century's lapse since +last an appreciable number of whites on the continent had lost their lives +in such an outbreak, set nerves on edge throughout the South, and promptly +brought an unusually bountiful crop of local rumors. In North Carolina +early in September it was reported at Raleigh that the blacks of Wilmington +had burnt the town and slaughtered the whites, and that several thousand +of them were marching upon Raleigh itself.[77] This and similarly alarming +rumors from Edenton were followed at once by authentic news telling merely +that conspiracies had been discovered in Duplin and Sampson Counties and +also in the neighborhood of Edenton, with several convictions resulting in +each locality.[78] + +[Footnote 77: News item dated Warrenton, N.C., Sept. 15, 1831, in the New +Orleans _Mercantile Advertiser_, Oct. 4, 1831.] + +[Footnote 78: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Oct. 6, 1831, citing +the Fayetteville, N.C. _Observer_ of Sept. 14; _Niles' Register_, XLI, +266.] + +At Milledgeville, the village capital of Georgia where in the preceding +year the newspapers and the town authorities had been fluttered by the +discovery of incendiary pamphlets in a citizen's possession,[79] a rumor +spread on October 4, 1831, that a large number of slaves had risen a dozen +miles away and were marching upon the town to seize the weapons in the +state arsenal there. Three slaves within the town, and a free mulatto +preacher as well, were seized on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly +discharged for lack of evidence, and the city council soon had occasion, +because there had been "considerable danger in the late excitement ... +by persons carrying arms that were intoxicated" to order the marshal and +patrols to take weapons away from irresponsible persons and enforce the +ordinance against the firing of guns in the streets.[80] Upon the first +coming of the alarm the governor had appointed Captain J.A. Cuthbert, +editor of the _Federal Union_, to the military command of the town; and +Cuthbert, uniformed and armed to the teeth, dashed about the town all +day on his charger, distributing weapons and stationing guards. Upon the +passing of the baseless panic Seaton Grantland, customarily cool and +sardonic, ridiculed Cuthbert in the _Southern Recorder_ of which he was +editor. Cuthbert retorted in his own columns that Grantland's conduct in +the emergency had proved him a skulking coward.[81] No blood was shed, even +among the editors. + +[Footnote 79: _Federal Union_, Aug. 7, 1830; American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1904, I. 469.] + +[Footnote 80: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 469, +470.] + +[Footnote 81: _Federal Union_, Oct. 6 and 13 and Dec. 1, 1831.] + +There were doubtless episodes of such a sort in many other localities.[82] +It was evidently to this period that the reminiscences afterward collected +by Olmsted applied. "'Where I used to live,'" a backwoodsman formerly of +Alabama told the traveller, "'I remember when I was a boy--must ha' been +about twenty years ago--folks was dreadful frightened about the niggers. I +remember they built pens in the woods where they could hide, and Christmas +time they went and got into the pens, 'fraid the niggers was risin'.' 'I +remember the same time where we were in South Carolina,' said his wife, 'we +had all our things put up in bags, so we could tote 'em if we heerd they +was comin' our way.'"[83] + +[Footnote 82: The discovery of a plot at Shelbyville, Tennessee, was +reported at the end of 1832. _Niles' Register_, XLI, 340.] + +[Footnote 83: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1863), p. 203.] + +Another sort of sequel to the Southampton revolt was of course a plenitude +of public discussion and of repressive legislation. In Virginia a flood of +memorials poured upon the legislature. Petitions signed by 1,188 citizens +in twelve counties asked for provision for the expulsion of colored +freemen; others with 398 signatures from six counties proposed an amendment +to the United States Constitution empowering Congress to aid Virginia to +rid herself of all the blacks; others from two colonization societies +and 366 citizens in four counties proposed the removal first of the +free negroes and then of slaves to be emancipated by private or public +procedure; 27 men of Buckingham and Loudon Counties and others in +Albemarle, together with the Society of Friends in Hanover and 347 women, +prayed for the abolition of slavery, some on the _post nati_ plan and +others without specification of details.[84] The House of Delegates +responded by devoting most of its session of that winter to an +extraordinarily outspoken and wide-ranging debate on the many phases of the +negro problem, reflecting and elaborating all the sentiments expressed in +the petitions together with others more or less original with the members +themselves. The Richmond press reported the debate in great detail, and +many of the speeches were given a pamphlet circulation in addition.[85] +The only tangible outcome there and elsewhere, however, was in the form of +added legal restrictions upon the colored population, slave and free. But +when the fright and fervor of the year had passed, conditions normal to the +community returned. On the one hand the warnings of wiseacres impressed +upon the would-be problem solvers the maxim of the golden quality of +silence, particularly while the attacks of the Northern abolitionists upon +the general Southern régime were so active. On the other hand the new +severities of the law were promptly relegated, as the old ones had been, +to the limbo of things laid away, like pistols, for emergency use, out of +sight and out of mind in the daily routine of peaceful industry. + +[Footnote 84: _The Letter of Appomattox to the People of Virginia: +Exhibiting a connected view of the recent proceedings in the House of +Delegates on the subject of the abolition of slavery and a succinct account +of the doctrines broached by the friends of abolition in debate, and the +mischievous tendency of those proceedings and doctrines_ (Richmond, 1832). +These letters were first published in the Richmond _Enquirer_, February 4, +1832 et seqq.] + +[Footnote 85: The debate is summarized in Henry Wilson, _History of the +Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_ (Boston, 1872), I, 190-207.] + +In the remaining ante-bellum decades, though the actual outbreaks were +negligible except for John Brown's raid, the discoveries, true or false, +and the rumors, mostly unwarranted, were somewhat more frequent than +before. Revelations in Madison County, Mississippi, in 1835 shortly before +July 4, told of a conspiracy of whites and blacks scheduled for that day +as a ramification of the general plot of the Murrell gang recently +exposed.[86] A mass meeting thereupon appointed an investigating committee +of thirteen citizens with power to apply capital punishment; and several +whites together with ten or fifteen blacks were promptly put to death.[87] + +[Footnote 86: See above, pp. 381, 382.] + +[Footnote 87: _The Liberator_ (Boston, Mass.), Aug. 8, 1835, quoting the +Clinton, Miss., _Gazette_ of July 11.] + +Widespread rumors at the beginning of the following December that a general +uprising was in preparation for the coming holiday season caused the +summons of citizens in various Georgia counties to mass meetings which with +one accord recommended special precautions by masters, patrols and militia, +and appointed committees of vigilance. In this series the resolutions +adopted in Washington County are notable especially for the tone of their +preamble. Mentioning the method recently followed in Mississippi only to +disapprove it, this preamble ran: "We would fain hope that the soil of +Georgia may never be reddened or her people disgraced by the arbitrary +shedding of human blood; for if the people allow themselves but one +participation in such lawless proceedings, no human sagacity can foretell +where the overwhelming deluge will be staid or what portions of our state +may feel its desolating ruin. This course of protection unhinges every tie +of social and civil society, dissolves those guards which the laws throw +around property and life, and leaves every individual, no matter how +innocent, at the sport of popular passion, the probable object of popular +indignation, and liable to an ignominious death. Therefore we would +recommend to our fellow-citizens that if any facts should be elicited +implicating either white men or negroes in any insurrectionary or abolition +movements, that they be apprehended and delivered over to the legal +tribunals of the country for full and fair judicial trial."[88] At +Clarksville, Tennessee, uneasiness among the citizens on the score of the +negroes employed in the iron works thereabout was such that they procured a +shipment of arms from the state capital in preparation for special guard at +the Christmas season.[89] + +[Footnote 88: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 11, 1835. At +Darien on the Georgia coast Edwin C. Roberts, an Englishman by birth, was +committed for trial in the following August for having told slaves they +ought to be free and that half of the American people were in favor of +their freedom. The local editor remarked when reporting the occurrence: +"Mr. Roberts should thank his stars that he did not commence his crusade in +some quarters where Judge Lynch presides. Here the majesty of the law +is too highly respected to tolerate the jurisdiction of this despotic +dignitary." Darien _Telegraph_, Aug. 30, quoted in the _Federal Union_, +Sept. 6, 1836.] + +[Footnote 89: MS. petition with endorsement noting the despatch of arms, in +the state archives at Nashville.] + +In various parts of Louisiana in this period there was a succession of +plots discovered. The first of these, betrayed on Christmas Eve, 1835, +involved two white men, one of them a plantation overseer, along with forty +slaves or more. The whites were promptly hanged, and doubtless some of the +blacks likewise.[90] The next, exposed in the fall of 1837, was in the +neighborhood of Alexandria. Nine slaves and three free negroes were hanged +in punishment,[91] and the negro Lewis who had betrayed the conspiracy was +liberated at state expense and was voted $500 to provide for his security +in some distant community.[92] The third was in Lafayette and St. Landry +Parishes, betrayed in August, 1840, by a slave woman named Lecide who was +freed by her master in reward. Nine negroes were hanged. Four white men +who were implicated, but who could not be convicted under the laws which +debarred slave testimony against whites, were severely flogged under a +lynch-law sentence and ordered to leave the state.[93] Rumors of other +plots were spread in West Feliciana Parish in the summer of 1841,[94] in +several parishes opposite and above Natchez in the fall of 1842,[95] and at +Donaldsonville at the beginning of 1843;[96] but each of these in turn was +found to be virtually baseless. Meanwhile at Augusta, Georgia, several +negroes were arrested in February, 1841, and at least one of them was +sentenced to death. A petition was circulated for his respite as an +inducement for confession; but other citizens, disquieted by the testimony +already given, prepared a counter petition asking the governor to let the +law take its course. The plot as described contemplated the seizure of the +arsenal and the firing of the city in facilitation of massacre.[97] + +[Footnote 90: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 331.] + +[Footnote 91: _Ibid_., LIII, 129.] + +[Footnote 92: Louisiana, _Acts_ of 1838, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 93: _Niles' Register_, LXIX, 39, 88; E.P. Puckett, "Free Negroes +in Louisiana" (MS.).] + +[Footnote 94: New Orleans _Bee_, July 23, 29 and 31, 1841.] + +[Footnote 95: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 212.] + +[Footnote 96: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, +1843.] + +[Footnote 97: Letter of Mrs. S.A. Lamar, Augusta, Ga., Feb. 25, 1841, to +John B. Lamar at Macon. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, +Ga.] + +The rest of the 'forties and the first half of the 'fifties were a period +of comparative quiet; but in 1855 there were rumors in Dorchester and +Talbot Counties, Maryland,[98] and the autumn of 1856 brought widespread +disturbances which the Southern whites did not fail to associate with the +rise of the Republican Party. In the latter part of that year there were +rumors afloat from Williamsburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County in the +same state, from various quarters of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, from +New Orleans, and from Atlanta and Cassville, Georgia.[99] A typical episode +in the period was described by a schoolmaster from Michigan then sojourning +in Mississippi. One night about Christmas of 1858 when the plantation +homestead at which he was staying was filled with house guests, a courier +came in the dead of night bringing news that the blacks in the eastern part +of the county had risen in a furious band and were laying their murderous +course in this direction. The head of the house after scanning the +bulletin, calmly told his family and guests that they might get their guns +and prepare for defense, but if they would excuse him he would retire again +until the crisis came. The coolness of the host sent the guests back to bed +except for one who stood sentry. "The negroes never came."[100] + +[Footnote 98: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 97.] + +[Footnote 99: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Dec. 18 and 25, 1856. Some +details of the Texas disturbance, which brought death to several negroes, +is given in documents printed in F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, pp. +503. 504] + +[Footnote 100: A. DePuy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Sojourn in the South_ +(Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 121, 122] + +The shiver which John Brown's raid sent over the South was diminished by +the failure of the blacks to join him, and it was largely overcome by the +wave of fierce resentment against the abolitionists who, it was said, had +at last shown their true colors. The final disturbance on the score of +conspiracy among the negroes themselves was in the summer of 1860 at +Dallas, Texas, where in the preceding year an abolitionist preacher had +been whipped and driven away. Ten or more fires which occurred in one day +and laid much of the town in ruins prompted the seizure of many blacks and +the raising of a committee of safety. This committee reported to a public +meeting on July 24 that three ringleaders in the plot were to be hanged +that afternoon. Thereupon Judge Buford of the district court addressed the +gathering. "He stated in the outset that in any ordinary case he would +be as far from counselling mob law as any other man, but in the present +instance the people had a clear right to take the law in their own hands. +He counselled moderation, and insisted that the committee should execute +the fewest number compatible with the public safety." [101] + +[Footnote 101: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 21, 1860, quoting +the Nashville _Union_.] + +On the whole it is hardly possible to gauge precisely the degree of popular +apprehension in the premises. John Randolph was doubtless more picturesque +than accurate when he said, "the night bell never tolls for fire in +Richmond that the mother does not hug the infant more closely to her +bosom."[102] The general trend of public expressions laid emphasis upon the +need of safeguards but showed confidence that no great disasters were to be +feared. The revolts which occurred and the plots which were discovered were +sufficiently serious to produce a very palpable disquiet from time to time, +and the rumors were frequent enough to maintain a fairly constant undertone +of uneasiness. The net effect of this was to restrain that progress of +liberalism which the consideration of economic interest, the doctrines of +human rights and the spirit of kindliness all tended to promote. + +[Footnote 102: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_, I, 295.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE FORCE OF THE LAW + + +In many lawyers' briefs and court decisions it has been said that slavery +could exist only by force of positive legislation.[1] This is not +historically valid, for in virtually every American community where it +existed at all, the institution was first established by custom alone and +was merely recognized by statutes when these came to be enacted. Indeed the +chief purpose of the laws was to give sanction and assurance to the racial +and industrial adjustments already operative. + +[Footnote 1: The source of this error lies doubtless in Lord Mansfield's +famous but fallacious decision of 1772 in the Somerset case, which is +recorded in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, § 548. That decision is well +criticized in T.R.R. Cobb, _An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in +the United States of America_ (vol. I, all published, Philadelphia and +Savannah, 1858), pp. 163-175. + +Cobb's treatise, though dealing with slaves as persons only and not as +property, is the best of the general analyses of the legal phase of the +slaveholding régime. A briefer survey is in the _Cyclopedia of Law and +Procedure_, William Mack ed., XXXVI (New York, 1910), 465-495. The works +of G.M. Stroud, _A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several +States_ (Philadelphia, 1827), and William Goodell, _The American Slave Code +in Theory and Practice_ (New York, 1853), are somewhat vitiated by the +animus of their authors. + +The many statutes concerning slavery enacted in the several colonies, +territories and states are listed and many of them summarized in J.C. Hurd, +_The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States_ (Boston, 1858), I, +228-311; II, 1-218. Some hundreds of court decisions in the premises are +given in J.D. Wheeler, _A Practical Treatise on the Law of Slavery_ +(New York and New Orleans, 1837); and all the thousands of decisions of +published record are briefly digested in _The Century Edition of the +American Digest_, XLIV (St. Paul, 1903), 853-1152. + +The development of the slave code in Virginia is traced in J.C. Ballagh, +_A History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1902), supplemented by J.H. +Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913); and the legal +régime of slavery in South Carolina at the middle of the nineteenth century +is described by Judge J.B. O'Neall in _The Industrial Resources of the +Southern and Western States_, J.B.D. DeBow ed., II (New Orleans, 1853), +269-292.] + +As a rule each slaveholding colony or state adopted early in its career +a series of laws of limited scope to meet definite issues as they were +successively encountered. Then when accumulated experience had shown a +community that it had a general problem of regulation on its hands its +legislature commonly passed an act of many clauses to define the status of +slaves, to provide the machinery of their police, and to prescribe legal +procedure in cases concerning them whether as property or as persons. +Thereafter the recourse was again to specific enactments from time to +time to supplement this general or basic statute as the rise of new +circumstances or policies gave occasion. The likeness of conditions in the +several communities and the difficulty of devising laws to comply with +intricate custom and at the same time to guard against apprehended ills led +to much intercolonial and interstate borrowing of statutes. A perfect chain +of this sort, with each link a basic police law for slaves in a separate +colony or state, extended from Barbados through the southeastern trio of +commonwealths on the continent. The island of Barbados, as we have seen, +was the earliest of the permanent English settlements in the tropics and +one of the first anywhere to attain a definite régime of plantations +with negro labor. This made its assembly perforce a pioneer in slave +legislation. After a dozen minor laws had been enacted, beginning in 1644, +for the control of negroes along with white servants and for the recapture +of runaways, the culmination in a general statute came in 1688. Its +occasion, as recited in the preamble, was the dependence of plantation +industry upon great numbers of negro slaves whose "barbarous, wild and +savage nature ... renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the +laws, customs and practices of our nation," and the "absolutely necessary +consequence that such other constitutions, laws and orders should be in +this island framed and enacted for the good regulating and ordering of them +as may ... restrain the disorders, rapines and inhumanities to which they +are naturally prone and inclined, with such encouragements and allowances +as are fit and needful for their support, that ... this island through the +blessing of God thereon may be preserved, His Majesty's subjects in their +lives and fortunes secured, and the negroes and other slaves be well +provided for and guarded against the cruelties and insolences of themselves +or other ill-tempered people or owners." + +The statute itself met the purposes of the preamble unevenly. The slaves +were assured merely in annual suits of clothing, and the masters were given +claim for pecuniary compensation for slaves inveigled away or illegally +killed by other freemen; but the main concern of the statute was with +routine control and the punishment of slave malfeasances. No slaves were to +leave their masters' premises at any time unless in company with whites or +when wearing servants' livery or carrying written passes, and offenders +in this might be whipped and taken into custody by any white persons +encountering them. No slaves were to blow horns or beat drums; and masters +were to have their negro houses searched at frequent intervals for such +instruments, as well as for weapons, runaway slaves and stolen goods. +Runaways when caught were to be impounded, advertised and restored to their +masters upon payment of captors' and custodians' fees. Trading with slaves +was restricted for fear of encouraging theft. A negro striking a white +person, except in lawful defense of his master's person, family or goods, +was criminally punishable, though merely with lashes for a first offense; +and thefts to the value of more than a shilling, along with all other +serious infractions, were capital crimes. Negro transgressors were to be +tried summarily by courts comprising two justices of the peace and three +freeholders nearest the crime and were to be punished immediately upon +conviction. To dissuade masters from concealing the crimes of their negroes +the magistrates were to appraise each capitally convicted slave, within a +limit of £25, and to estimate also the damage to the person or property +injured by the commission of the crime. The colonial treasurer was then to +take the amount of the slave's appraisal from the public funds and after +making reimbursement for the injury done, pay the overplus, if any, to the +criminal's owner. If it appeared to the magistrates, however, that the +crime had been prompted by the master's neglect and the slave's consequent +necessity for sustenance, the treasurer was to pay the master nothing. A +master killing his own slave wantonly was to be fined £15, and any other +person killing a slave illegally was to pay the master double the slave's +value, to be fined £25, and to give bond for subsequent good behavior. If +a slave were killed by accident the slayer was liable only to suit by +the owner. The destruction of a slave's life or limb in the course of +punishment by his master constituted no legal offense, nor did the killing +of one by any person, when found stealing or attempting a theft by night. +Ascertained hiding places of runaway slaves were to be raided by constables +and posses, and these were to be rewarded for taking the runaways alive or +dead.[2] This act was thenceforward the basic law in the premises as long +as slavery survived in the island. + +[Footnote 2: Richard Hall ed., _Acts Passed in the Island of Barbados from +1643 to 1762 inclusive_ (London. 1764), pp. 112-121.] + +South Carolina, in a sense the daughter of Barbados and in frequent +communication with her, had enacted a series of specific laws of her own +devising, when the growth of her slave population prompted the adoption of +a general statute for negro police. Thereupon in 1712 her assembly copied +virtually verbatim the preamble and some of the ensuing clauses of the +Barbadian act of 1688, and added further provisions drawn from other +sources or devised for the occasion. This served as her basic law until +the shock of the Stono revolt in 1739 prompted the legislature to give the +statute a greater elaboration in the following year. The new clauses, aside +from one limiting the work which might be required by masters to fourteen +and fifteen hours per day in winter and summer respectively, and another +forbidding all but servants in livery to wear any but coarse clothing, +were concerned with the restraint of slaves, mainly with a view to the +prevention of revolt. No slaves were to be sold liquors without their +masters' approval; none were to be taught to write; no more than seven men +in a group were to travel on the high roads unless in company with white +persons; no houses or lands were to be rented to slaves, and no slaves were +to be kept on any plantation where no white person was resident.[3] + +[Footnote 3: Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at Large of South Carolina_, VII, +408 ff.] + +This act, supplemented by curfew and patrol laws and variously amended in +after years, as by the enhancement of penalties for negroes convicted of +striking white persons and by the requirement that masters provide adequate +food as well as clothing, was never repealed so long as slavery continued +to exist in South Carolina. Though its sumptuary clauses, along with +various others, were from first to last of no effect, the statute as a +whole so commended itself to the thought of slaveholding communities that +in 1770 Georgia made it the groundwork of her own slave police; Florida in +turn, by acts of 1822 and 1828, adopted the substance of the Georgia law +as revised to that period; and in lesser degree still other states gave +evidence of the same influence. Complementary legislation in all these +jurisdictions meanwhile recognized slaves as property, usually of chattel +character and with children always following the mother's condition, +debarred negro testimony in court in all cases where white persons were +involved, and declared the juridical incapacity of slaves in general except +when they were suing for freedom. Contemporaneously and by similar methods, +a parallel chain of laws, largely analogous to those here noted, was +extended from Virginia, herself a pioneer in slave legislation, to +Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina and in a fan-spread to the west as +far as Missouri and Texas.[4] + +[Footnote 4: The beginning of Virginia's pioneer slave code has been +sketched in chapter IV above; and the slave legislation of the Northern +colonies and states in chapters VI and VII.] + +Louisiana alone in all the Union, because of her origin and formative +experience as a Latin colony, had a scheme of law largely peculiar to +herself. The foundation of this lay in the _Code Noir_ decreed by Louis XV +for that colony in 1724. In it slaves were declared to be chattels, but +those of working age were not to be sold in execution of debt apart from +the lands on which they worked, and neither husbands and wives nor mothers +and young children were to be sold into separate ownership under any +circumstances. All slaves, furthermore, were to be baptized into the +Catholic church, and were to be exempt from field work on Sundays and +holidays; and their marriages were to be legally recognized. Children, +of course, were to follow the status and ownership of their mothers. +All slaves were to be adequately clothed and fed, under penalty of +confiscation, and the superannuated were to be maintained on the same +basis as the able-bodied. Slaves might make business contracts under their +masters' approval, but could not sue or be sued or give evidence against +whites, except in cases of necessity and where the white testimony was in +default. They might acquire property legally recognized as their own when +their masters expressly permitted them to work or trade on their personal +accounts, though not otherwise. Manumission was restricted only by the +requirement of court approval; and slaves employed by their masters in +tutorial capacity were declared _ipso facto_ free. In police regards, the +travel and assemblage of slaves were restrained, and no one was allowed to +trade with them without their masters' leave; slaves were forbidden to have +weapons except when commissioned by their masters to hunt; fugitives were +made liable to severe punishments, and free negroes likewise for harboring +them. Negroes whether slave or free, however, were to be tried by the same +courts and by the same procedure as white persons; and though masters were +authorized to apply shackles and lashes for disciplinary purpose, the +killing of slaves by them was declared criminal even to the degree of +murder.[5] + +[Footnote 5: This decree is printed in _Le Code Noir_ (Paris, 1742), pp. +318-358, and in the Louisiana Historical Society _Collections_, IV, 75-90. +The prior decree of 1685 establishing a slave code for the French West +Indies, upon which this for Louisiana was modeled, may be consulted in +L. Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_ (Paris, 1897), pp. +158-166.] + +Nearly all the provisions of this relatively liberal code were adopted +afresh when Louisiana became a territory and then a state of the Union. In +assimilation to Anglo-American practice, however, such recognition as had +been given to slave _peculium_ was now withdrawn, though on the other hand +slaves were granted by implication a legal power to enter contracts for +self-purchase. Slave marriages, furthermore, were declared void of all +civil effect; and jurisdiction over slave crimes was transferred to courts +of inferior grade and informal procedure. By way of reciprocation the state +of Alabama when framing a new slave code in 1852 borrowed in a weakened +form the Louisiana prohibition of the separate sale of mothers and their +children below ten years of age. This provision met the praise of citizens +elsewhere when mention of it chanced to be published; but no other +commonwealth appears to have adopted it.[6] + +[Footnote 6: _E. g_., Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Feb. 27, 1856.] + +The severity of the slave laws in the commonwealths of English origin, as +compared with the mildness of the Louisiana code, was largely due to +the historic possession by their citizens of the power of local +self-government. A distant autocrat might calmly decree such regulations as +his ministers deemed proper, undisturbed by the wishes and apprehensions of +the colonial whites; but assemblymen locally elected and responsive to the +fears as well as the hopes of their constituents necessarily reflected more +fully the desire of social control, and preferred to err on the side of +safety. If this should involve severity of legislative repression for +the blacks, that might be thought regrettable and yet be done without a +moment's qualm. On the eve of the American Revolution a West Indian writer +explained the régime. "Self preservation," said he, "that first and ruling +principle of human nature, alarming our fears, has made us jealous and +perhaps severe in our _threats_ against delinquents. Besides, if we attend +to the history of our penal laws relating to slaves, I believe we shall +generally find that they took their rise from some very atrocious attempts +made by the negroes on the property of their masters or after some +insurrection or commotion which struck at the very being of the colonies. +Under these circumstances it may very justly be supposed that our +legislatures when convened were a good deal inflamed, and might be induced +for the preservation of their persons and properties to pass severe laws +which they might hold over their heads to terrify and restrain them."[7] In +the next generation an American citizen wrote in similar strain and with +like truthfulness: "The laws of the slaveholding states do not furnish +a criterion for the character of their present white population or the +condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted for the most part in +seasons of particular alarm produced by attempts at insurrection, or when +the black inhabitants were doubly formidable by reason of the greater +proportion which they bore to the whites in number and the savage state and +unhappy mood in which they arrived from Africa. The real measure of danger +was not understood but after long experience, and in the interval the +precautions taken were naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. +That these have not all been repealed, or that some of them should be still +enforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of legislation, since +the evils against which they were intended to guard are yet the subject of +just apprehension."[8] + +[Footnote 7: _Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, or a Defence of the West +India Planters_. By a West Indian (Philadelphia, 1773), p. 18, note.] + +[Footnote 8: Robert Walsh, Jr., _An Appeal from the Judgments of Great +Britain respecting the United States of America_ (Philadelphia, 1819), p. +405.] + +Wherever colonial statutes were silent the laws of the mother country +filled the gap. It was under the common law of England, for example, that +the slaves Mark and Phillis were tried in Massachusetts in 1755 for +the poisoning of their master, duly convicted of petit treason, and +executed--the woman as the principal in the crime by being burned at the +stake, the man as an accessory by being hanged and his body thereafter +left for years hanging in chains on Charlestown common.[9] The severity of +Anglo-American legislation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, +furthermore, was in full accord with the tone of contemporary English +criminal law. It is not clear, however, that the great mitigation which +benefit of clergy gave in English criminal administration[10] was +commensurately applied in the colonies when slave crimes were concerned. +Even in England, indeed, servants were debarred in various regards, that of +petit treason, for example, from this avenue of relief. On the other hand +many American slaves were saved from death at the hands of the law by the +tolerant spirit of citizens toward them and by the consideration of the +pecuniary loss to be suffered through their execution. A Jamaican statute +of 1684 went so far as to prescribe that when several slaves were jointly +involved in a capital crime one only was to be executed as an example and +the loss caused by his death was to be apportioned among the owners of the +several.[11] More commonly the mitigation lay not in the laws themselves +but in the general disposition to leave to the discipline of the masters +such slave misdeeds as were not regarded as particularly heinous nor +menacing to the public security. + +[Footnote 9: A.C. Goodell, Jr., _The Trial and Execution for Petit Treason +of Mark and Phillis_ (Cambridge, 1883), reprinted from the Massachusetts +Historical Society _Proceedings_, XX, 132-157.] + +[Footnote 10: A.L. Cross, "Benefit of Clergy," in the _American Historical +Review_, XXII, 544-565.] + +[Footnote 11: _Abridgement of the Laws in Force in Her Majesty's +Plantations_ (London, 1704), pp. 104-108.] + +Burnings at the stake, breakings on the wheel and other ferocious methods +of execution which were occasionally inflicted by the colonial courts were +almost universally discontinued soon after the beginning of the nineteenth +century. The general trend of moderation discernible at that time, however, +was hampered then and thereafter by the series of untoward events beginning +with the San Domingo upheaval and ending with John Brown's raid. In +particular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuing +Nat Turner's revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislation +the whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes, +stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing the +already limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration, +however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to have +grown milder as the decades passed. + +The police ordinances of the several cities and other local jurisdictions +were in keeping with the state laws which they supplemented and in some +degree duplicated. At New Orleans an ordinance adopted in 1817 and little +changed thereafter forbade slaves to live off their masters' premises +without written permission, to make any clamorous noise, to show disrespect +to any white persons, to walk with canes on the streets unless on account +of infirmity, or to congregate except at church, at funerals, and at such +dances and other amusements as were permitted for them on Sundays alone and +in public places. Each offender was to be tried by the mayor or a justice +of the peace after due notice to his master, and upon conviction was to be +punished within a limit of twenty-five lashes unless his master paid a fine +for him instead.[12] + +[Footnote 12: D. Augustin, _A General Digest of the Ordinances and +Resolutions of the Corporation of New Orleans_ ([New Orleans], 1831), pp. +133-137.] + +At Richmond an ordinance effective in 1859 had provisions much like those +of New Orleans regarding residence, clamor, canes, assemblage and demeanor, +and also debarred slaves from the capitol square and other specified public +enclosures unless in attendance on white persons or on proper errands, +forbade them to ride in public hacks without the written consent of their +masters, or to administer medicine to any persons except at their masters' +residences and with the masters' consent. It further forbade all negroes, +whether bond or free, to possess offensive weapons or ammunition, to form +secret societies, or to loiter on the streets near their churches more than +half an hour after the conclusion of services; and it required them when +meeting, overtaking or being overtaken by white persons on the sidewalks to +pass on the outside, stepping off the walk if necessary to allow the whites +to pass. It also forbade all free persons to hire slaves to themselves, to +rent houses, rooms or grounds to them, to sell them liquors by retail, or +drugs without written permits from their masters, or to furnish offensive +weapons to negroes whether bond or free. Finally, it forbade anyone to beat +a slave unlawfully, under fine of not more than twenty dollars if a white +person, or of lashes or fine at the magistrate's discretion in case the +offender were a free person of color.[13] + +[Footnote 13: _The Charters and Ordinances of the City of Richmond_ +(Richmond, 1859), pp. 193-200.] + +Of rural ordinances, one adopted by the parish of West Baton Rouge, +Louisiana, in 1828 was concerned only with the organization and functions +of the citizens' patrol. As many chiefs of patrol were to be appointed +as the parish authorities might think proper, each to be in charge of a +specified district, with duties of listing all citizens liable to patrol +service, dividing them into proper details and appointing a commander for +each squad. Every commander in his turn, upon receiving notice from his +chief, was to cover the local beat on the night appointed, searching slave +quarters, though with as little disturbance as possible to the inmates, +arresting any free negroes or strange whites found where they had no proper +authority or business to be, whipping slaves encountered at large without +passes or unless on the way to or from the distant homes of their wives, +and seizing any arms and any runaway slaves discovered.[14] The police code +of the neighboring parish of East Feliciana in 1859 went on further to +prescribe trials and penalties for slaves insulting or abusing white +persons, to restrict their carrying of guns, and their assemblage, to +forbid all slaves but wagoners to keep dogs, to restrict citizens in their +trading with slaves, to require the seizure of self-styled free negroes not +possessing certificates, and to prescribe that all negroes or mulattoes +found on the railroad without written permits be deemed runaway slaves and +dealt with as the law regarding such directed.[15] + +[Footnote 14: _Police Regulations of the Parish of West Baton Rouge (La.), +passed at a regular meeting held at the Court House of said Parish on the +second and third days of June, A.D. 1828_ (Baton Rouge, 1828), pp. 8-11. +For a copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Professor W.L. Fleming of +Louisiana State University.] + +[Footnote 15: D.B. Sanford, _Police Jury Code of the Parish of East +Feliciana, Louisiana_ (Clinton, La., 1859), pp. 98-101.] + +In general, the letter of the law in slaveholding states at the middle of +the nineteenth century presumed all persons with a palpable strain of negro +blood to be slaves unless they could prove the contrary, and regarded the +possession of them by masters as presumptive evidence of legal ownership. +Property in slaves, though by some of the statutes assimilated to real +estate for certain technical purposes, was usually considered as of chattel +character. Its use and control, however, were hedged about with various +restraints and obligations. In some states masters were forbidden to +hire slaves to themselves or to leave them in any unusual way to their +self-direction; and everywhere they were required to maintain their slaves +in full sustenance whether young or old, able-bodied or incapacitated. +The manumission of the disabled was on grounds of public thrift nowhere +permitted unless accompanied with provision for their maintenance, and that +of slaves of all sorts was restricted in a great variety of ways. Generally +no consent by the slave was required in manumission, though in some +commonwealths he might lawfully reject freedom in the form bestowed.[16] +Masters might vest powers of agency in their slaves, but when so doing the +masters themselves became liable for any injuries or derelictions ensuing. +In criminal prosecutions, on the other hand, slaves were considered as +responsible persons on their own score and punishable under the laws +applicable to them. Where a crime was committed at the master's express +command, the master was liable and in some cases the slave also. Slave +offenders were commonly tried summarily by special inferior courts, though +for serious crimes in some states by the superior courts by regular +process. Since the slaves commonly had no funds with which to pay fines, +and no liberty of which to be deprived, the penalties imposed upon them +for crimes and misdemeanors were usually death, deportation or lashes. +Frequently in Louisiana, however, and more seldom elsewhere, convicted +slaves were given prison sentences. By the intent of the law their +punishments were generally more severe than those applied to white persons +for the same offenses. In civil transactions slaves had no standing as +persons in court except for the one purpose of making claim of freedom; +and even this must usually be done through some friendly citizen as a +self-appointed guardian bringing suit for trespass in the nature of +ravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted; +any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to their +masters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although the +wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of +their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally +stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person even in +self-defense unless his life or limb were endangered, nor might he in his +own person apply to the courts for the redress of injuries, nor generally +give evidence except where negroes alone were involved. All white persons +on the other hand were permitted, and in some regards required, to exercise +police power over the slaves; and their masters in particular were vested +with full disciplinary power over them in all routine concerns. If they +should flee from their masters' dominion, the force of the state and of +other states into which they might escape, and of the United States if +necessary, might be employed for their capture and resubjection; and any +suspected of being fugitives, though professing to be free, might be held +for long periods in custody and in the end, in default of proofs of freedom +and of masters' claims, be sold by the authorities at public auction. +Finally, affecting slaves and colored freemen somewhat alike, and +regardless as usual of any distinction of mulattoes or quadroons from the +full-blood negroes, there were manifold restraints of a social character +buttressing the predominance and the distinctive privileges of the +Caucasian caste. + +[Footnote 16: _E. g_., Jones, _North Carolina Supreme Court Reports_, VI. +272.] + +It may fairly be said that these laws for the securing of slave property +and the police of the colored population were as thorough and stringent as +their framers could make them, and that they left an almost irreducible +minimum of rights and privileges to those whose function and place were +declared to be service and subordination. But in fairness it must also +be said that in adopting this legislation the Southern community largely +belied itself, for whereas the laws were systematically drastic the +citizens in whose interest they were made and in whose hands their +enforcement lay were in practice quite otherwise. It would have required a +European bureaucracy to keep such laws fully effective; the individualistic +South was incapable of the task. If the regulations were seldom relaxed in +the letter they were as rarely enforced in the spirit. The citizens were +too fond of their own liberties to serve willingly as martinets in the +routine administration of their own laws;[17] and in consequence the +marchings of the patrol squads were almost as futile and farcical as the +musters of the militia. The magistrates and constables tended toward a +similar slackness;[18] while on the other hand the masters, easy-going as +they might be in other concerns, were jealous of any infringements of their +own dominion or any abuse of their slaves whether by private persons or +public functionaries. When in 1787, for example, a slave boy in Maryland +reported to his master that two strangers by the name of Maddox had whipped +him for killing a dog while Mr. Samuel Bishop had stood by and let them do +it, the master, who presumably had no means of reaching the two strangers, +wrote Bishop demanding an explanation of his conduct and intimating that +if this were not satisfactorily forthcoming by the next session of court, +proceedings would be begun against him[19]. While this complainant might +not have been able to procure a judgment against a merely acquiescent +bystander, the courts were quite ready to punish actual transgressors. +In sustaining the indictment of a private citizen for such offense the +chief-justice of North Carolina said in 1823: "For all purposes necessary +to enforce the obedience of the slave and render him useful as property the +law secures to the master a complete authority over him, and it will +not lightly interfere with the relation thus established. It is a more +effectual guarantee of his right of property when the slave is protected +from wanton abuse by those who have no power over him, for it cannot be +disputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master's +service when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violence +of every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by the +humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion +which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an +anomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated in +the verdict [the striking of a slave] were not indictable."[20] Likewise +the South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1850 endorsed the fining of a public +patrol which had whipped the slaves at a quilting party despite their +possession of written permission from their several masters. The Court said +of the quilting party: "The occasion was a perfectly innocent one, even +meritorious.... It would simply seem ridiculous to suppose that the safety +of the state or any of its inhabitants was implicated in such an assemblage +as this." And of the patrol's limitations: "A judicious freedom in the +administration of our police laws for the lower order must always have +respect for the confidence which the law reposes in the discretion of the +master."[21] + +[Footnote 17: _E. g_., Letter of "a citizen" in the Charleston _City +Gazette_, Aug. 17, 1825.] + +[Footnote 18: _E. g., L'Abeille_ (New Orleans), Aug. 15, 1841, editorial.] + +[Footnote 19: Letter signed "R.T.," Port Tobacco, Md., Aug. 19, 1787. MS. +in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 20: The State _v_. Hale, in Hawks, _North Carolina Reports_, V, +582. See similarly Munford, _Virginia Reports_, I, 288.] + +[Footnote 21: The State _v_. Boozer _et al_., in Strobhart, _South Carolina +Law Reports_, V, 21. This is quoted at some length in H.M. Henry, _Police +Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 146-148.] + +The masters were on their private score, however, prone to disregard the +law where it restrained their own prerogatives. They hired slaves to the +slaves themselves whether legally permitted or not; they sent them on +responsible errands to markets dozens of miles away, often without +providing them with passes; they sanctioned and encouraged assemblies under +conditions prohibited by law; they taught their slaves at will to read and +write, and used them freely in forbidden employments. Such practices as +these were often noted and occasionally complained of in the press, but +they were seldom obstructed. When outside parties took legal steps to +interfere in the master's routine administration, indeed, they were +prompted probably as often by personal animosity as by devotion to the +law. An episode of the sort, where the complainants were envious poorer +neighbors, was related with sarcasm and some philosophical moralizing by +W.B. Hodgson, of whose plantation something has been previously said, in +a letter to Senator Hammond: "I am somewhat 'riled' with Burke. The +benevolent neighbors have lately had me in court under indictment for cruel +treatment of my fat, lazy, rollicking sambos. For fifty years they have +eaten their own meat and massa's too; but inasmuch as rich massa did not +_buy_ meat, the _poor Benevolens_ indicted him. So was my friend Thomas +Foreman, executor of Governor Troup. My suit was withdrawn; he was +acquitted. I have some crude notions about that thing slavery in the end. +Its tendency, as with landed accumulations in England, or Aaron's rod, is +to swallow up other small rods, and inevitably to attract the benevolence +of the smaller ones. You may have two thousand acres of land in a body. +That is unfeeling--land is. But a body of a thousand negroes appeals to the +finer sentiments of the heart. The agrarian battle is hard to fight. But +'_les amis des noirs_' in our midst have the vantage ground, particularly +when rejected overseers come in as spies. _C'est un peu dégoutant, mon cher +ami_; but I can stand the racket."[22] + +[Footnote 22: Letter of W.B. Hodgson, Savannah, Ga., June 19, 1859, to J.H. +Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress. "Burke" +is the county in which Hodgson's plantation lay.] + +The courts exercising jurisdiction over slaves were of two sorts, those of +inferior grade and amateurish character which dealt with them as persons, +and those of superior rank and genuine magisterial quality which handled +them as property and sometimes, on appeal, as persons as well. These +lower courts for the trial of slave crimes had vices in plenty. They were +informal and largely ignorant of the law, and they were so quickly convened +after the discovery of a crime that the shock of the deed had no time to +wane. Such virtues as they sometimes had lay merely in their personnel. +The slaveholders of the vicinage who commonly comprised the court were +intimately and more or less tolerantly acquainted with negro nature in +general, and usually doubtless with the prisoner on trial. Their judgment +was therefore likely to be that of informed and interested neighbors, not +of jurors carefully selected for ignorance and indifference, a judgment +guided more by homely common sense than by the particularities of the law. +Their task was difficult, as anyone acquainted with the rambling, mumbling, +confused and baffling character of plantation negro testimony will easily +believe; and the convictions and acquittals were of course oftentimes +erroneous. The remodeling of the system was one of the reforms called for +by Southerners of the time but never accomplished. Mistaken acquittals by +these courts were beyond correction, for in the South slaves like freemen +could not be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Their convictions, +on the other hand, were sometimes set aside by higher courts on appeal, or +their sentences estopped from execution by the governor's pardon.[23] The +thoroughness with which some of the charges against negroes were considered +is illustrated in two cases tried before the county court at Newbern, North +Carolina, in 1826. In one of these a negro boy was acquitted of highway +robbery after the jury's deliberation of several hours; in the other the +jury on the case of a free negro woman charged with infanticide had been +out for forty-six hours without reaching a verdict when the newspaper +dispatch was written.[24] + +[Footnote 23: The working of these courts and the current criticisms of +them are illustrated in H.M. Henry _The Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, pp. 58-65.] + +[Footnote 24: News item from Newbern, N.C., in the Charleston _City +Gazette_, May 9, 1826.] + +The circuit and supreme courts of the several states, though the slave +cases which they tried were for the most part concerned only with such dry +questions as detinue, trover, bailment, leases, inheritance and reversions, +in which the personal quality of the negroes was largely ignored, +occasionally rendered decisions of vivid human interest even where matters +of mere property were nominally involved. An example occurred in the case +of Rhame _vs_. Ferguson and Dangerfield, decided by the South Carolina +Court of Appeals in 1839 in connection with a statute enacted by the +legislature of that state in 1800 restricting manumissions and prescribing +that any slaves illegally set free might be seized by any person as +derelicts. George Broad of St. John's Parish, Berkeley County, had died +without blood relatives in 1836, bequeathing fourteen slaves and their +progeny to his neighbor Dangerfield "in trust nevertheless and for this +purpose only that the said John R. Dangerfield, his executors and assigns +do permit and suffer the said slaves ... to apply and appropriate +their time and labor to their own proper use and behoof, without the +intermeddling or interference of any person or persons whomsoever further +than may be necessary for their protection under the laws of this state"; +and bequeathing also to Dangerfield all his other property in trust for the +use of these negroes and their descendants forever. These provisions were +being duly followed when on a December morning in 1837 Rebecca Rhame, the +remarried widow of Broad's late brother-in-law, descended upon the Broad +plantation in a buggy with John J. Singletary whom she had employed for the +occasion under power of attorney. Finding no white person at the residence, +Singletary ordered the negroes into the yard and told them they were seized +in Mrs. Rhame's behalf and must go with him to Charleston. At this juncture +Dangerfield, the trustee, came up and demanded Singletary's authority, +whereupon the latter showed him his power of attorney and read him the laws +under which he was proceeding. Dangerfield, seeking delay, said it would be +a pity to drag the negroes through the mud, and sent a boy to bring his +own wagon for them. While this vehicle was being awaited Colonel James +Ferguson, a dignitary of the neighborhood who had evidently been secretly +sent for by Dangerfield, galloped up, glanced over the power of attorney, +branded the whole affair as a cheat, and told Dangerfield to order +Singletary off the premises, driving him away with a whip if necessary, and +to shoot if the conspirators should bring reinforcements. "After giving +this advice, which he did apparently under great excitement, Ferguson rode +off." Singletary then said that for his part he had not come to take or +lose life; and he and his employer departed. Mrs. Rhame then sued Ferguson +and Dangerfield to procure possession of the negroes, claiming that she had +legally seized them on the occasion described. At the trial in the circuit +court, Singletary rehearsed the seizure and testified further that +Dangerfield had left the negroes customarily to themselves in virtually +complete freedom. In rebuttal, Dr. Theodore Gaillard testified that the +negroes, whom he described as orderly by habit, were kept under control +by the trustee and made to work. The verdict of the jury, deciding the +questions of fact in pursuance of the judge's charge as to the law, was in +favor of the defendants; and Mrs. Rhame entered a motion for a new trial. +This was in due course denied by the Court of Appeals on the ground that +Broad's will had clearly vested title to the slaves in Dangerfield, who +after Broad's death was empowered to do with them as he pleased. If he, who +was by the will merely trustee but by law the full owner, had given up +the practical dominion over the slaves and left them to their own +self-government they were liable to seizure under the law of 1800. This +question of fact, the court concluded, had properly been put to the jury +along with the issue as to the effectiveness of the plaintiff's seizure of +the slaves; and the verdict for the defendants was declared conclusive.[25] + +[Footnote 25: Rebecca Rhame _vs_. James Ferguson and John R. Dangerfield, +in Rice, _Law Reports of South Carolina_, I, 196-203.] + +This is the melodrama which the sober court record recites. The female +villain of the piece and her craven henchman were foiled by the sturdy +but wily trustee and the doughty Carolina colonel who, in headlong, +aristocratic championship of those threatened with oppression against +the moral sense of the community, charged upon the scene and counseled +slaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. And +in the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come to +judgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assured +the so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, the +decision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to prove +that negroes freed by will in South Carolina might be legally enslaved by +any person seizing them, and that the bequest of slaves in trust to an +executor as a merely nominal master was contrary to law;[26] and in later +times a historian has instanced the traveller's account in support of his +own statement that "Persons who had been set free for years and had no +reason to suppose that they were anything else might be seized upon for +defects in the legal process of manumission."[27] + +[Footnote 26: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States in America_, II, 32, 33.] + +[Footnote 27: A.B. Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_ (New York, 1906), p. 88.] + +Now according to the letter of certain statutes at certain times, these +assertions were severally more or less true; but if this particular case +and its outcome have any palpable meaning, it is that the courts connived +at thwarting such provisions by sanctioning, as a proprietorship valid +against the claim of a captor, what was in obvious fact a merely nominal +dominion. + +Another striking case in which the severity of the law was overridden by +the court in sanction of lenient custom was that of Jones _vs_. Allen, +decided on appeal by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1858. In the fall of +the preceding year Jones had called in his neighbors and their slaves to +a corn husking and had sent Allen a message asking him to send help. Some +twenty-five white men and seventy-five slaves gathered on the appointed +night, among them Allen's slave Isaac. After supper, about midnight, Jones +told the negroes to go home; but Isaac stayed a while with some others +wrestling in the back yard, during which, while Jones was not present, a +white man named Hager stabbed Isaac to death. Allen thereupon sued Jones +for damages on the ground that the latter had knowingly and unlawfully +suffered Isaac, without the legally required authorization, to come with +other slaves upon his premises, where he had been slain to his owner's +loss. The testimony showed that Allen had not received Jones' message and +had given Isaac no permission to go, but that Jones had not questioned +Isaac in this regard; that Jones had given spirituous liquors to the slaves +while at work, Isaac included, but that no one there was intoxicated except +Hager who had come drunk and without invitation. In the trial court, in +Rutherford County where the tragedy had occurred, the judge excluded +evidence that such corn huskings were the custom of the country without the +requirement of written permission for the slaves attending, and he charged +the jury that Jones' employment of Isaac and Isaac's death on his premises +made him liable to Allen for the value of the slave. But on Jones' appeal +the Supreme Court overruled this, asserting that "under our modified form +of slavery slaves are not mere chattels but are regarded in the two-fold +character of persons and property; that as persons they are considered by +our law as accountable moral agents; ... that certain rights have been +conferred upon them by positive law and judicial determination, and other +privileges and indulgences have been conceded to them by the universal +consent of their owners. By uniform and universal usage they are +constituted the agents of their owners and sent on business without written +authority. And in like manner they are sent to perform those neighborly +good offices common in every community.... The simple truth is, such +indulgences have been so long and so uniformly tolerated, the public +sentiment upon the subject has acquired almost the force of positive law." +The judgment of the lower court was accordingly reversed and Jones was +relieved of liability for his laxness.[28] + +[Footnote 28: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 627-639.] + +There were sharp limits, nevertheless, to the lenity of the courts. Thus +when one Brazeale of Mississippi carried with him to Ohio and there set +free a slave woman of his and a son whom he had begotten of her, and then +after taking them home again died bequeathing all his property to the +mulatto boy, the supreme court of the state, in 1838, declared the +manumission void under the laws and awarded the mother and son along with +all the rest of Brazeale's estate to his legitimate heirs who had brought +the suit.[29] In so deciding the court may have been moved by its +repugnance toward concubinage as well as by its respect for the statutes. + +[Footnote 29: Howard's _Mississippi Reports_, II, 837-844.] + +The killing or injury of a slave except under circumstances justified by +law rendered the offender liable both to the master's claim for damages +and to criminal prosecution; and the master's suit might be sustained even +where the evidence was weak, for as was said in a Louisiana decision, the +deed was "one rarely committed in presence of witnesses, and the most that +can be expected in cases of this kind are the presumptions that result from +circumstances."[30] The requirement of positive proof from white witnesses +in criminal cases caused many indictments to fail.[31] A realization of +this hindrance in the law deprived convicted offenders of some of the +tolerance which their crimes might otherwise have met. When in 1775, for +example, William Pitman was found guilty and sentenced by the Virginia +General Court to be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the +_Virginia Gazette_ said: "This man has justly incurred the penalties of +the law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning to +others to treat their slaves with more moderation."[32] In the nineteenth +century the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to be +felonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases where +the victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premises +the courts felt themselves free to remedy the defect.[33] + +[Footnote 30: Martin, _Louisiana Reports_, XV, 142.] + +[Footnote 31: H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, +pp. 69-79.] + +[Footnote 32: _Virginia Gazette_, Apr. 21, 1775, reprinted in the _William +and Mary College Quarterly_, VIII, 36.] + +[Footnote 33: The State _vs_. Jones, in Walker, _Mississippi Reports_, p. +83, reprinted in J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_, pp. 252-254.] + +Despite the ferocity of the statutes and the courts, the fewness and the +laxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies were +called into play. For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped in +Belle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious and +lasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgia +militia. On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employed +was obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcements +merely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while the +negroes themselves were safely in hiding. Not long afterward, however, +the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and Catawba +Indians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads.[34] The +Seminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as to +prompt invasions of their country by the United States army both before +and after the Florida purchase.[35] On lesser occasions raids were made by +citizen volunteers. The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, were +searched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, the +capture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as the +result.[36] + +[Footnote 34: _Georgia Colonial Records_, XII, 325, 326; _Georgia Gazette_ +(Savannah), Oct. 19, 1786; _Massachusetts Sentinel_ (Boston), June 13, +1787; _Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), June 16, +1787.] + +[Footnote 35: Joshua R. Giddings, _The Exiles of Florida_ (Columbus, Ohio, +1858).] + +[Footnote 36: Diary of Dr. Henry Ravenel, Jr., of St. John's Parish, +Berkeley County, S.C. MS. in private possession.] + +More frequent occasions for the creation of vigilance committees were the +rumors of plots among the blacks and the reports of mischievous doings by +whites. In the same Santee district of the Carolina lowlands, for instance, +a public meeting at Black Oak Church on January 3, 1860, appointed three +committees of five members each to look out for and dispose of any +suspicious characters who might be "prowling about the parish." Of the +sequel nothing is recorded by the local diarist of the time except the +following, under date of October 25: "Went out with a party of men to take +a fellow by the name of Andrews, who lived at Cantey's Hill and traded with +the negroes. He had been warned of our approach and run off. We went on and +broke up the trading establishment."[37] + +[Footnote 37: Diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, which is virtually a continuation +of the Diary just cited. MS. in private possession.] + +Such transactions were those of the most responsible and substantial +citizens, laboring to maintain social order in the face of the law's +desuetude. A mere step further in that direction, however, lay outright +lynch law. Lynchings, indeed, while far from habitual, were frequent enough +to link the South with the frontier West of the time. The victims were not +only rapists[38] but negro malefactors of sundry sorts, and occasionally +white offenders as well. In some cases fairly full accounts of such +episodes are available, but more commonly the record extant is laconic. +Thus the Virginia archives have under date of 1791 an affidavit reciting +that "Ralph Singo and James Richards had in January last, in Accomac +County, been hung by a band of disguised men, numbering from six to +fifteen";[39] and a Georgia newspaper in 1860 the following: "It is +reported that Mr. William Smith was killed by a negro on Saturday evening +at Bowling Green, in Oglethorpe County. He was stabbed sixteen times. The +negro made his escape but was arrested on Sunday, and on Monday morning +a number of citizens who had investigated the case burnt him at the +stake."[40] In at least one well-known instance the mob's violence was +directed against an abuser of slaves. This was at New Orleans in 1834 when +a rumor spread that Madame Lalaurie, a wealthy resident, was torturing her +negroes. A great crowd collected after nightfall, stormed her door, found +seven slaves chained and bearing marks of inhuman treatment, and gutted +the house. The woman herself had fled at the first alarm, and made her way +eventually to Paris.[41] Had she been brought before a modern court it may +be doubted whether she would have been committed to a penitentiary or to +a lunatic asylum. At the hands of the mob, however, her shrift would +presumably have been short and sure. + +[Footnote 38: For examples of these see above, pp. 460-463.] + +[Footnote 39: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 328.] + +[Footnote 40: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 14, 1860. Other +instances, gleaned mostly from _Niles' Register_ and the _Liberator_, are +given in J.E. Cutler, _Lynch Law_ (New York, 1905), pp. 90-136.] + +[Footnote 41: Harriett Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_ (London, +1838), I, 262-267; V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, +1841), p. 155; Alcée Fortier, _History of Louisiana_, III, 223.] + +The violence of city mobs is a thing peculiar to no time or place. Rural +Southern lynch law in that period, however, was in large part a special +product of the sparseness of population and the resulting weakness of legal +machinery, for as Olmsted justly remarked in the middle 'fifties, the whole +South was virtually still in a frontier condition.[42] In _post bellum_ +decades, on the other hand, an increase of racial antipathy has offset the +effect of the densification of settlement and has abnormally prolonged the +liability to the lynching impulse. + +[Footnote 42: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey in the Back Country_, p. 413.] + +While the records have no parallel for Madame Lalaurie in her systematic +and wholesale torture of slaves, there were thousands of masters and +mistresses as tolerant and kindly as she was fiendish; and these were +virtually without restraint of public authority in their benevolent rule. +Lawmakers and magistrates by personal status in their own plantation +provinces, they ruled with a large degree of consent and cooperation by the +governed, for indeed no other course was feasible in the long run by men +and women of normal type. Concessions and friendly services beyond the +countenance and contemplation of the statutes were habitual with those +whose name was legion. The law, for example, conceded no property rights +to the slaves, and some statutes forbade specifically their possession +of horses, but the following characteristic letter of a South Carolina +mistress to an influential citizen tells an opposite story: "I hope you +will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you on the subject of John, +the slave of Professor Henry, Susy his wife, and the orphan children of my +faithful servant Pompey, the first husband of Susy. In the first instance, +Pompey owned a horse which he exchanged for a mare, which mare I permitted +Susy to use after her marriage with John, but told them both I would sell +it and the young colt and give Susy a third of the money, reserving the +other two thirds for her children. Before I could do so, however, the +mare and the colt were exchanged and sent out of my way by this dishonest +couple. I then hoped at least to secure forty-five dollars for which +another colt was sold to Mr. Haskell, and sent my message to him to say +that Susy had no claim on the colt and that the money was to be paid to me +for the children of Pompey. A few days since I sent to Mr. Haskell again +who informed me that he had paid for the colt, and referred me to you. I do +assure you that whatever Susy may affirm, she has no right to the money. +It is not my intention to meddle with the law on the occasion, and I +infinitely prefer relying on you to do justice to the parties. My manager, +who will deliver this to you, is perfectly acquainted with all the +circumstances; and [if] after having a conversation with him you should +decide in favor of the children I shall be much gratified."[43] + +[Footnote 43: Letter of Caroline Raoul, Belleville, S.C., Dec. 26, 1829, to +James H. Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +Likewise where the family affairs of slaves were concerned the silence and +passiveness of the law gave masters occasion for eloquence and activity. +Thus a Georgian wrote to a neighbor: "I have a girl Amanda that has your +servant Phil for a husband. I should be very glad indeed if you would +purchase her. She is a very good seamstress, an excellent cook--makes cake +and preserves beautifully--and washes and irons very nicely, and cannot be +excelled in cleaning up a house. Her disposition is very amiable. I have +had her for years and I assure you that I have not exaggerated as regards +her worth.... I will send her down to see you at any time."[44] That offers +of purchase were no less likely than those of sale to be prompted by such +considerations is suggested by another Georgia letter: "I have made every +attempt to get the boy Frank, the son of James Nixon; and in order to +gratify James have offered as far as five hundred dollars for him--more +than I would pay for any negro child in Georgia were it not James' +son."[45] It was therefore not wholly in idyllic strain that a South +Carolinian after long magisterial service remarked: "Experience and +observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of +kindness from the master to the slave. With that ... slavery becomes a +family relation, next in its attachments to that of parent and child."[46] + +[Footnote 44: Letter of E.N. Thompson, Vineville, Ga. (a suburb of Macon), +to J.B. Lamar at Macon, Ga., Aug. 7, 1854. MS. in the possession of Mrs. +A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +[Footnote 45: Letter of Henry Jackson, Jan. 11, 1837, to Howell Cobb. MS. +in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +[Footnote 46: J.B. O'Neall in J.B.D. DeBow ed., _Industrial Resources of +the South and West_, II (New Orleans, 1852), 278.] + +On the whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the Old +South have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to their +abundance and accessibility. The statutes, copious and easily available, +describe a hypothetical régime, not an actual one. The court records are on +the one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions of +human adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisions +were themselves largely controlled by the statutes, perverse for ordinary +practical purposes as these often were. It is therefore to the letters, +journals and miscellaneous records of private persons dwelling in the +régime and by their practices molding it more powerfully than legislatures +and courts combined, that the main recourse for intimate knowledge must be +had. Regrettably fugitive and fragmentary as these are, enough it may be +hoped have been found and used herein to show the true nature of the living +order. + +The government of slaves was for the ninety and nine by men, and only for +the hundredth by laws. There were injustice, oppression, brutality and +heartburning in the régime,--but where in the struggling world are these +absent? There were also gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutual +loyalty to a degree hard for him to believe who regards the system with a +theorist's eye and a partisan squint. For him on the other hand who has +known the considerate and cordial, courteous and charming men and women, +white and black, which that picturesque life in its best phases produced, +it is impossible to agree that its basis and its operation were wholly +evil, the law and the prophets to the contrary notwithstanding. + + + + +INDEX + +Acklen, Joseph A.S., + plantation home of + rules of, for overseers +Africa, West, _see_ Guinea +Agriculture, _see_ cotton, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco + culture +Aiken, William, rice plantation of +Aime, Valcour, sugar plantation of +Amissa, enslaved and restored to Africa +Angolas, + tribal traits of + revolt of +Antipathy, racial, + Jefferson's views on + in Massachusetts + in North and South compared + Northern spokesmen of +Arabs, in the Guinea trade +Asiento +Azurara, Gomez E. + +Baltimore, negro churches in +Barbados, + emigration from, + to Carolina + to Jamaica + founding of + planters' committee of + slave laws of, + sugar culture in +Belmead plantation +Benin +Black codes, + administration of + attitude of citizens toward + local ordinances + origin of, + in Barbados + in the Northern colonies + in Louisiana + in South Carolina + in Virginia + tenor of, + in the North + in the South +Bobolinks, in rice fields +Bonny +Boré, Etienne de, sugar planter +Bosman, William, in the Guinea trade +Branding of slaves +Bristol, citizens of, in the slave trade +Burial societies, negro +Burnside, John, merchant and sugar planter +Butler, Pierce, + the younger, + slaves of, sold + +Cain, Elisha, overseer +Cairnes, J.E., views of, on slavery +Calabar, New +Calabar, Old +Cape Coast Castle +Capers, William, overseer +Capital, investment of, in slaves +Charleston, commerce of, + free negroes in + industrial census of + racial adjustments in, problem of + slave misdemeanors in + Denmark Vesey's plot +Churches, + racial adjustments in, + rural + urban +Clarkson, Thomas, views of, on the effects of closing the slave trade +Columbus, Christopher, policy of +Concubinage +Congoes, tribal traits of +Connecticut, + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Cooper, Thomas, views of, on the economics of slavery +Corbin, Richard, plantation rules of +Coromantees, conspiracy of, + tribal traits of +Corporations, ownership of slaves by +Cotton culture, + sea-island + introduction of, + methods and scale of + upland, + engrossment of thought and energy by + improvements in + methods and scale of + stimulates westward migration +Cotton gin, invention of +Cotton mills + slave operatives in +Cotton plantations, _see_ plantations, cotton +Cotton prices, sea-island, + upland, + chart facing +Cottonseed, + oil extracted from + used as fertilizer +Covington, Leonard, planter, migration of +Creoles, Louisiana +Criminality among free negroes + among slaves +Cuba + +Dabney, Thomas S., planter, migration of +Dahomeys +Dale, Sir Thomas +Davis, Joseph and Jefferson, plantation policy of +Delaware, + slaves and free negroes in + forbids export of slaves +Depression, financial, + in Mississippi + in Virginia +Dirt-eating, among Jamaica slaves +Discipline, of slaves +Diseases, + characteristic, + in Africa + among Jamaica slaves + venereal +Doctors, black, + in Jamaica + in South Carolina + in Virginia +"Doctoress," slave, in Georgia +Drivers (plantation foremen) +Driving of slaves to death, question of +Dutch, in the slave trade +Dutch West India Company + +Early, Peter, debates the closing of the foreign slave trade +East India Company, in the slave trade +Eboes, tribal traits of +El Mina +Elliott, William, planter + economic views of +Ellsworth, Oliver +Emancipation, _see_ manumission +Encomiendia system, in the Spanish West Indies +England, policy of, toward the slave trade +Epitaph of Peyton, a slave +Evans, Henry, negro preacher + +Factorage, in planters' dealings +Factorage, in the slave trade, + in American ports + in Guinea +Farmers, + free negro + white, + in the Piedmont + in the plantation colonies + segregation of + in the westward movement +Federal Convention +Festivities, of slaves +Fithian, Philip V., observations by +Foremen, plantation +Foulahs +Fowler, J.W., + cotton picking records of + plantation rules of +Franklin and Armfield, slave-dealers +Free negroes, + antipathy toward + criminality among + discriminations against + emigration projects of + endorsements of + kidnapping of + legal seizure of, attempts at + mob violence against + occupations of, in Augusta + in Charleston + in New Orleans and New York + prominent characters among + processes of procuring freedom by + qualities and status of + reënslavement of + secret societies among + slaveholding by +French, in the slave trade +Fugitive slaves, _see_ slaves, runaway, + rendition, in the Federal Constitution, + act of 1793 +Funerals, negro + +Gaboons, tribal traits of +Gabriel, insurrection led by +Gadsden, Christopher +Gambia, slave trade on the +Gang system, in plantation work +Genoese, in the slave trade +Georgia, founding of, + free negress visits + slave imports forbidden in, + permitted in + restricted by + uplands, development of +Gerry, Elbridge +Gibson, Arthur H., views of, on the economics of slavery +Godkin, Edwin L., on the migration of planters +Gold Coast +Goodloe, Daniel R., views of, on slavery +Gowrie, rice plantation +Grandy King George, African chief, wants of +Guiana, British, + invites free negro immigration + cotton culture in + Dutch +Guinea, + coastal explorations of + life and institutions in + slave exports from, beginnings of, + volume of + tribal traits in + _See also_ negroes and slave trade + +Hairston, Samuel, planter +Hammond, James H., planter and writer +Hampton, Wade, planter +Harrison, Jesse Burton, views of, on slavery +Hawkins, Sir John, adventures of, in the slave trade +Hayti (Hispaniola) +Hearn, Lafcadio, on sugar-cane harvesting +Helper, Hinton R., views of, on slavery +Hemp +Henry, Patrick +Henry, Prince, the Navigator +Heyward, Nathaniel, planter +Hodgson, W.B., planter +Holidays, of slaves, + plantation + urban +Hundley D.R., on slave traders + +Immigrants, in the South + _See also_ Irish +Importations of slaves + prohibition of +Indians, enslaved, + in New England + in South Carolina + in West Indies, subjugated by Spaniards +Indigo culture, + introduction of, + in Georgia + in South Carolina + methods of +Insurrection of slaves, _see_ slave plots +Irish, labor of, on plantations + +Jamaica, + capture and development of + maroons of + nabobs, absentee + plantations in + runaway slaves in, statistics of +Jefferson, Thomas, + on the foreign slave trade + on negroes and slavery +Jennison, Nathaniel, prosecution of +Job Ben Solomon, enslaved and restored to Africa +Joloffs + +Kentucky, settlement of +Kidnapping of free negroes +King, Rufus +Kingsley, Z., plantation experience of + +Lace, Ambrose, slave trader +Lalaurie, Madame +Lamar, John B., planter +Las Casas, Bartholomeo de la +Laurens, Henry, factor and planter +Liberia +Lincecum, Gideon, peregrinations of +Lindo, Moses, indigo merchant +Liverpool, + in the slave trade, + types of ships employed +Loango +Lodges, negro +London, in the slave trade +London Company +Loria, Achille, views of, on slavery economics +Louisiana, cotton culture in, + slave laws of + sugar culture in +L'Ouverture, Toussaint +Lucas, Eliza +Lynchings + +M'Culloch, J.R., views of, on slavery +McDonogh, John, manumission by, method of +Macon, Nathaniel +Madagascar, slaves procured from +Malaria, + in Africa + in South Carolina +Mandingoes, tribal traits of +Manigault, Charles, planter + rules of +Manors in Maryland +Manumission, of slaves +Maroons, negro, in Jamaica + on the Savannah River +Martinique +Maryland, + founding of + free negroes in + manors in + plantations in + slave imports prohibited by + slaveholdings in, scale of + slavery in, projects for the disestablishment of +Massachusetts, + in the slave trade + slavery in + abolition of +Matthews, Samuel, planter +Medical attention to slaves +Mercer, James, planter +Merolla, Jerom, missionary +Middle passage, _see_ slave trade, African +Midwives, slave +Migration +Mill, John Stuart, views of, on slavery +Miller, Phineas, partner of Eli Whitney +Misdemeanors of slaves, in Charleston +Missouri, + decline of slavery in + settlement of +Mississippi, + depression in + product of long-fibre cotton in + sale of slaves from +Mobs, violence of, toward free negroes +Mocoes, tribal traits of +Molasses +Moore, Francis, Royal African Company factor +Moors +Mulattoes +Mules + +Nagoes, tribal traits of +Negro traits, + American + Angola + Congo + Coromantee + Ebo + Gaboon + Mandingo + Nago + Paw Paw + Whydah +Negroes, _see_ antipathy, black codes, church adjustments, free + negroes, funerals, plantation labor, plantation life, slave plots + slave trade, slaveholdings, slavery, slaves +New England, + in the slave trade, + type of ships employed + slavery in, + disestablishment of +New Jersey, + slavery in, + disestablishment of +New Netherlands, slavery in +New Orleans, as a slave market, + free negroes in +New York, + negro plots in + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Nicholson, J.S., views of, on slavery +Nobility, English, as Jamaica plantation owners +North Carolina, + early conditions in + sentiment on slavery +Northrup, a kidnapped free negro, career of +Northwest Territory, prohibition of slavery in + +Oglethorpe, James, + administers the Royal African Company + founds Georgia + restores a slave to Africa +Olmsted, Frederick L., observations by +Overseers, plantation, functions, salaries, and experiences of + +Panics, financial, effects on slave prices +Park, Mungo, in Guinea +"Particular plantations," in Virginia +Paths, in Guinea, character of +Paw Paws, tribal traits of +Pennsylvania, slavery in, + disestablishment of +Peyton, a slave, epitaph of +Philips, Martin W., + planter and writer + slave epitaph by +Pickering, Timothy +_Plantation and Frontier_, citation of title in full +Plantation labor +Plantation life +Plantation management +Plantation mistress +Plantation rules +Plantation system, + cherishment of slaves in + as a civilizing agency + gang and task methods in + severity in, question of + soil exhaustion in + towns and factories hampered in growth by + westward spread of +Plantation tendencies +Plantations, cotton, sea island +Plantations, + cotton, + upland, + J.H. Hammond estate + Retreat + indigo + rice, + Butler's Island + Gowrie and East Hermitage + Jehossee Island + sugar, + in Barbados, + Drax Hall + in Jamaica, + Worthy Park + in Louisiana, + Valcour Aime's estate + tobacco, + Belmead + James Mercer's estate +Planters, + absenteeism among + concern of, for slaves + dietary of + exemplified, + in J.A.S. Acklen + in William Aiken + in John Burnside + in Robert Carter + in Christopher Codrington + in Thomas S. Dabney + in Jefferson and Joseph Davis + in Samuel Hairston + in James H. Hammond + in Wade Hampton + in Nathaniel Heywood + in W.B. Hodgson + in Z. Kingsley + in John B. Lamar + in Henry Laurens + in Charles Manigault + in Samuel Matthews + in James Mercer + in A.H. Pemberton + in Martin W. Philips + in George Washington + in David R. Williams + gentility of + homesteads of + innovations by + management by + migration of + purchases of slaves by + rules of + sales of slaves by + sports of + temper of +Poor whites, + in the South, + Cairnes' assertions concerning +Portugal, activities of, in Guinea, + an appandage of Spain + negroes in +Preachers, negro +Procter, Billy, a slave, letter of +Providence, "Old," a Puritan colony in the tropics, career of +Puritans, attitude of, toward slavery + +Quakers, relationship of, to slavery +Quincy, Josiah + +Railroad companies, slave ownership by +Randolph, Edmund, disrelishes slavery +Randolph, John, of Roanoke, + on the coasting trade in slaves + on depression in Virginia + manumits his slaves +Randolph, Richard, provides for the manumission of his slaves +Rape, by negroes in the ante-bellum South +Rats, a pest in Jamaica +Rattoons, of sugar cane +Religion, among slaves, + rural + urban +Retreat, cotton plantation +Revolution, American, + doctrines of + effects of, on slavery + Negroes in + radicalism of, waning of +Rhode Island, + in the slave trade + resolution advocating the stoppage of the slave trade + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Rice birds (bobolinks), damage from +Rice culture, + introduced into Georgia + into South Carolina + methods of + plantations in, + scale of +Rishworth, Samuel, early agitator against slavery +Rolfe, John, introduces tobacco culture into Virginia +Roustabouts, Irish, + qualities of + negro +Royal African Company +Ruffin, Edmund, + advocates agricultural reforms + views of, on slavery +Rum, + product of, in Jamaica + rations issued to slaves, + in Jamaica + in South Carolina + use of, in the Guinea trade +Runaway slaves, + general problem + of George Washington + in Georgia + in Jamaica + in Mississippi +Russell, Irwin, "Christmas in the Quarters," +Sabine Fields, rice plantation +Sahara, slave trade across +Saluda factory, slave operatives in +San Domingo, + emigration from, to Louisiana + revolution in +Say, J.B., views of, on slavery +Sea-island cotton, + introduced into the United States + methods and scale of culture +Seasoning of slaves, in Jamaica +Secret societies, negro +Senegal, slave trade in +Senegalese, tribal traits of +Senegambia +Serfdom +Servants, + white indentured, + in Barbados + in Connecticut + in Jamaica + in Maryland + in Massachusetts + in Pennsylvania + in South Carolina and Georgia + in Virginia + revolts by +Servitude, indentured, tendencies of +Shackles, used on slaves +Shenendoah Valley +Ships, types of, in the slave trade +Sierra' Leone +Slave Coast +Slave felons +Slave plots and insurrections, + general survey of + disquiet caused by + Gabriel's uprising + in "Old" Providence + in New York + proclivity of Coromantees toward + San Domingan revolution + Stono rebellion + Nat Turner's (Southampton), revolt + Denmark Vesey's conspiracy +Slave trade, African, + the asiento + barter in + chieftains active in + closing of, by various states, + by Congress + effects of + drain of funds by + Liverpool's prominence in + the middle passage + reopening, project of + Royal African Company + ships employed in, + types of + care and custody of slaves on + tricks of + Yankee traders in +Slave trade, + domestic, + beginnings of + effects of + methods in + to Louisiana + scale of +Slave traders, + domestic, + Franklin and Armfield + methods and qualities of + reputations of, blackened + maritime +Slaveholding, vicissitudes of +Slaveholdings, + by corporations + by free negroes, + scale of, in the cotton belt + in Jamaica + in Maryland + in New York + in towns + in Virginia + on the South Carolina coast +Slavery, + in Africa + in the American Revolution + in ancient Rome + in the British West Indies + in Europe + in Georgia + in Louisiana + in the North + disestablishment of + in South Carolina + in Spanish America + in Virginia + _See also_ black codes, negroes, and plantation labor, life + and management +Slaves, negro, + artizans among + as factory operatives + birth rates of + branding of + "breaking in" of + breeding, forced, question of + capital invested in + children, care and control of + church adjustments of + conspiracies of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections + crimes of + crops of, private + dealers in, _see_ slave traders + discipline of + diseases and death rates of + driving of, to death, question of + earnings of private + felons among, disposal of + festivities of + food and clothing of + foemen among + hiring of + to themselves + holidays of + hospitals for + labor of, schedule of + laws concerning + life insurance of + manumission of + marriages of + annulment of + medical and surgical care of + plots and insurrections of + police of + preachers among + prices of + property of + protection of, from strain and exposure + punishments of + purchases of + by themselves + drain of funds, caused by + quarters of + sanitation of + rape by + religion among + revolts of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections + rewards of + rum allowances to + running away by + sales of + shackling of + social stratification among + speculation in + stealing of + strikes by + suicide of + suits by, for freedom, + concerning + temper of + torture of + town adjustments of + undesirable types of + wages of + in the westward movement + women among, care and control of + work, rates of + working of, to death, question of +Smart, William, views of, on slavery +Smith, Adam, views of, on slavery +Smith, Captain John +Smith, Landgrave Thomas +Snelgrave, William, in the maritime slave trade +Soil exhaustion +Southampton insurrection +South Carolina, + closing and reopening of the foreign slave trade in + cotton culture in + emigration from + founding of + indigo culture in + rice culture in + slave imports, + prohibited by + reopened by + slave laws of + slaveholdings in, scale of + uplands, development of +Spain, + annexation of Portugal by + asiento instituted by + negroes in + police of American dominions by + policy of, toward Indians and negroes +Spaulding, Thomas, planter +Spinners, on plantations +Spratt, L.W., views of, on conditions in South Carolina +Staples, _see_ cotton, hemp, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture + and plantations +Steamboat laborers, + Irish + negro +Sugar culture, + in Barbados + in Jamaica + in Louisiana + methods and apparatus of + plantations in, + scale of + types of + in the Spanish West Indies + +Task system, in plantation industry +Taylor, John, of Caroline, agricultural writings of +Telfair, Alexander, + plantations of + rules of +Tennessee, settlement of +Texas +Thomas, E.S., bookseller, experience of +Thorpe, George, Virginia colonist +Tobacco culture, + in Maryland + method of + in North Carolina + plantations in, + scale of + types of + in the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia + in Virginia +Towns, Southern, + growth of, hampered + slaves in +Tucker, St. George, project of, for extinguishing slavery in Virginia +Turner, Nat, insurrection led by + +Utrecht, treaty of, grants the asiento to England + +Van Buren, A. de Puy, observations by +Venetians, in the Levantine slave trade +Vermont, prohibition of slavery by +Vesey, Denmark, conspiracy of +Vigilance committees +Virginia, + founding and early experience of + free negroes in + plantations in, + "particular" + private + servants, indentured, in + slave crimes in + slave imports, prohibited by + slave laws of + slave revolts in + slaveholdings in, scale of + slavery, + introduced in + disestablishment in, projects of + tobacco culture in + +Walker, Quork, suits concerning the freedom of +Washington, George + apprehensions of, concerning slave property + desires the gradual abolition of slavery + imports cotton + as a planter +West Indies, + British, + prosperity and decline in, progression of + servile plots and insurrections in + slave prices in, on the eve of abolition + Spanish, + colonization of + negro slavery in, introduction of +Weston, P.C., plantation rules of +Westward movement +Whitney, Eli, invents the cotton gin +Whydahs, tribal traits of +Williams, David R., planter +Williams, Francis, a free negro, career of +Women, slave, + care of, in pregnancy and childbirth + difficulties in controlling +Working of slaves to death, question of +Worthy Park, Jamaica plantation, records of + +Yeomanry, white, in the South + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's American Negro Slavery, by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY *** + +***** This file should be named 11490-8.txt or 11490-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11490/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard D Johnson and PG Distributed +Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: American Negro Slavery + A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime + +Author: Ulrich Bonnell Phillips + +Release Date: March 7, 2004 [EBook #11490] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard D Johnson and PG Distributed +Proofreaders + + + + + +ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS + + +AMERICAN + +NEGRO SLAVERY + +A Survey of the Supply, +Employment and Control +Of Negro Labor +As Determined by the Plantation Regime + +TO + +MY WIFE + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + I. THE EARLY EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA + II. THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE + III. THE SUGAR ISLANDS + IV. THE TOBACCO COLONIES + V. THE RICE COAST + VI. THE NORTHERN COLONIES + VII. REVOLUTION AND REACTION + VIII. THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE + IX. THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR + X. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT + XI. THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE + XII. THE COTTON REGIME + XIII. TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS + XIV. PLANTATION MANAGEMENT + XV. PLANTATION LABOR + XVI. PLANTATION LIFE + XVII. PLANTATION TENDENCIES +XVIII. ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE + LITERATURE + XIX. BUSINESS ASPECTS OF SLAVERY + XX. TOWN SLAVES + XXI. FREE NEGROES + XXII. SLAVE CRIME +XXIII. THE FORCE OF THE LAW +INDEX + + + + +AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA + + +The Portuguese began exploring the west coast of Africa shortly before +Christopher Columbus was born; and no sooner did they encounter negroes +than they began to seize and carry them in captivity to Lisbon. The court +chronicler Azurara set himself in 1452, at the command of Prince Henry, to +record the valiant exploits of the negro-catchers. Reflecting the spirit +of the time, he praised them as crusaders bringing savage heathen for +conversion to civilization and christianity. He gently lamented the +massacre and sufferings involved, but thought them infinitely outweighed by +the salvation of souls. This cheerful spirit of solace was destined long to +prevail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the colored +races. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observed +of the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, less +than a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they never +more tried to fly, but rather in time forgot all about their own country," +that "they were very loyal and obedient servants, without malice"; and that +"after they began to use clothing they were for the most part very fond of +display, so that they took great delight in robes of showy colors, and such +was their love of finery that they picked up the rags that fell from the +coats of other people of the country and sewed them on their own garments, +taking great pleasure in these, as though it were matter of some greater +perfection."[1] These few broad strokes would portray with equally happy +precision a myriad other black servants born centuries after the writer's +death and dwelling in a continent of whose existence he never dreamed. +Azurara wrote further that while some of the captives were not able to +endure the change and died happily as Christians, the others, dispersed +among Portuguese households, so ingratiated themselves that many were +set free and some were married to men and women of the land and acquired +comfortable estates. This may have been an earnest of future conditions in +Brazil and the Spanish Indies; but in the British settlements it fell out +far otherwise. + +[Footnote 1: Gomez Eannes de Azurara _Chronicle of the Discovery and +Conquest of Guinea_, translated by C.R. Beazley and E.P. Prestage, in the +Hakluyt Society _Publications_, XCV, 85.] + +As the fifteenth century wore on and fleets explored more of the African +coast with the double purpose of finding a passage to India and exploiting +any incidental opportunities for gain, more and more human cargoes were +brought from Guinea to Portugal and Spain. But as the novelty of the blacks +wore off they were held in smaller esteem and treated with less liberality. +Gangs of them were set to work in fields from which the Moorish occupants +had recently been expelled. The labor demand was not great, however, and +when early in the sixteenth century West Indian settlers wanted negroes +for their sugar fields, Spain willingly parted with some of hers. Thus did +Europe begin the coercion of African assistance in the conquest of the +American wilderness. + +Guinea comprises an expanse about a thousand miles wide lying behind +three undulating stretches of coast, the first reaching from Cape Verde +southeastward nine hundred miles to Cape Palmas in four degrees north +latitude, the second running thence almost parallel to the equator a +thousand miles to Old Calabar at the head of "the terrible bight of +Biafra," the third turning abruptly south and extending some fourteen +hundred miles to a short distance below Benguela where the southern desert +begins. The country is commonly divided into Upper Guinea or the Sudan, +lying north and west of the great angle of the coast, and Lower Guinea, +the land of the Bantu, to the southward. Separate zones may also be +distinguished as having different systems of economy: in the jungle belt +along the equator bananas are the staple diet; in the belts bordering this +on the north and south the growing of millet and manioc respectively, in +small clearings, are the characteristic industries; while beyond the edges +of the continental forest cattle contribute much of the food supply. The +banana, millet and manioc zones, and especially their swampy coastal +plains, were of course the chief sources of slaves for the transatlantic +trade. + +Of all regions of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst. The +climate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of each year +is excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoes +play havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasional +blasts from the desert so dry and burning that all nature droops and is +grateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat stimulates +vegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany trees, and +multiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they mosquitoes, elephants +or boa constrictors. There would be abundant food but for the superabundant +creatures that struggle for it and prey upon one another. For mankind life +is at once easy and hard. Food of a sort may often be had for the plucking, +and raiment is needless; but aside from the menace of the elements human +life is endangered by beasts and reptiles in the forest, crocodiles and +hippopotami in the rivers, and sharks in the sea, and existence is made a +burden to all but the happy-hearted by plagues of insects and parasites. In +many districts tse-tse flies exterminate the cattle and spread the fatal +sleeping-sickness among men; everywhere swarms of locusts occasionally +destroy the crops; white ants eat timbers and any other useful thing, short +of metal, which may come in their way; giant cockroaches and dwarf +brown ants and other pests in great variety swarm in the dwellings +continuously--except just after a village has been raided by the great +black ants which are appropriately known as "drivers." These drivers march +in solid columns miles on miles until, when they reach food resources to +their fancy, they deploy for action and take things with a rush. To stay +among them is to die; but no human being stays. A cry of "Drivers!" will +depopulate a village instantly, and a missionary who at one moment has been +combing brown ants from his hair will in the next find himself standing +safely in the creek or the water barrel, to stay until the drivers have +taken their leave. Among less spectacular things, mosquitoes fly in crowds +and leave fevers in their wake, gnats and flies are always on hand, chigoes +bore and breed under toe-nails, hook-worms hang themselves to the walls of +the intestines, and other threadlike worms enter the eyeballs and the flesh +of the body. Endurance through generations has given the people large +immunity from the effects of hook-worm and malaria, but not from the +indigenous diseases, kraw-kraw, yaws and elephantiasis, nor of course from +dysentery and smallpox which the Europeans introduced. Yet robust health is +fairly common, and where health prevails there is generally happiness, for +the negroes have that within their nature. They could not thrive in Guinea +without their temperament. + +It is probable that no people ever became resident on or near the west +coast except under compulsion. From the more favored easterly regions +successive hordes have been driven after defeat in war. The Fangs on the +Ogowe are an example in the recent past. Thus the inhabitants of Guinea, +and of the coast lands especially, have survived by retreating and +adapting themselves to conditions in which no others wished to dwell. The +requirements of adaptation were peculiar. To live where nature supplies +Turkish baths without the asking necessitates relaxation. But since undue +physical indolence would unfit people for resistance to parasites and +hostile neighbors, the languid would perish. Relaxation of mind, however, +brought no penalties. The climate in fact not only discourages but +prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroes +have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless +generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of +nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some +of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others +calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the +dignitaries.[2] + +[Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African regime is J.A. +Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I. A fuller survey +is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of the +sources. Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularly +notable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture of +coast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincing +discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A.B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe- +and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along the +Gold Coast.] + +No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans the +forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive. To invest them +with spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was perhaps +an obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate system of +superstition. Not only did the wind and the rain have their gods but each +river and precipice, and each tribe and family and person, a tutelary +spirit. These might be kept benevolent by appropriate fetish ceremonies; +they might be used for evil by persons having specially great powers over +them. The proper course for common-place persons at ordinary times was to +follow routine fetish observances; but when beset by witch-work the only +escape lay in the services of witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices were +called for, and on the greatest occasions nothing short of human sacrifice +was acceptable. + +As to diet, vegetable food was generally abundant, but the negroes were not +willingly complete vegetarians. In the jungle game animals were scarce, and +everywhere the men were ill equipped for hunting. In lieu of better they +were often fain to satisfy their craving for flesh by eating locusts and +larvae, as tribes in the interior still do. In such conditions cannibalism +was fairly common. Especially prized was an enemy slain in war, for not +only would his body feed the hungry but fetish taught that his bravery +would pass to those who shared the feast. + +In African economy nearly all routine work, including agriculture, was +classed as domestic service and assigned to the women for performance. The +wife, bought with a price at the time of marriage, was virtually a slave; +her husband her master. Now one woman might keep her husband and children +in but moderate comfort. Two or more could perform the family tasks much +better. Thus a man who could pay the customary price would be inclined to +add a second wife, whom the first would probably welcome as a lightener of +her burdens. Polygamy prevailed almost everywhere. + +Slavery, too, was generally prevalent except among the few tribes who +gained their chief sustenance from hunting. Along with polygamy, it perhaps +originated, if it ever had a distinct beginning, from the desire to lighten +and improve the domestic service. [3] Persons became slaves through +capture, debt or malfeasance, or through the inheritance of the status. +While the ownership was absolute in the eyes of the law and captives +were often treated with great cruelty, slaves born in the locality were +generally regarded as members of their owner's family and were shown much +consideration. In the millet zone where there was much work to be done the +slaveholdings were in many cases very large and the control relatively +stringent; but in the banana districts an easy-going schedule prevailed for +all. One of the chief hardships of the slaves was the liability of being +put to death at their master's funeral in order that their spirits might +continue in his service. In such case it was customary on the Gold Coast +to give the victim notice of his approaching death by suddenly thrusting a +knife through each cheek with the blades crossing in his mouth so that he +might not curse his master before he died. With his hands tied behind him +he would then be led to the ceremonial slaughter. The Africans were in +general eager traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before the +time when the transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raiding +and trading, transformed the native economy and deranged the social order. + +[Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples has +been elaborately discussed by H.J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial +System: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900).] + +Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in Guinea +was wholly on a village basis, each community dwelling in its own clearing +and having very slight intercourse with its neighbors. Politically each +village was governed by its chief and its elders, oftentimes in complete +independence. In occasional instances, however, considerable states of +loose organization were under the rule of central authorities. Such states +were likely to be the creation of invaders from the eastward, the Dahomans +and Ashantees for example; but the kingdom of Benin appears to have arisen +indigenously. In many cases the subordination of conquered villages merely +resulted in their paying annual tribute. As to language, Lower Guinea spoke +multitudinous dialects of the one Bantu tongue, but in Upper Guinea there +were many dialects of many separate languages. + +Land was so abundant and so little used industrially that as a rule it +was not owned in severalty; and even the villages and tribes had little +occasion to mark the limits of their domains. For travel by land there were +nothing but narrow, rough and tortuous foot-paths, with makeshift bridges +across the smaller streams. The rivers were highly advantageous both as +avenues and as sources of food, for the negroes were expert at canoeing and +fishing. + +Intertribal wars were occasional, but a crude comity lessened their +frequency. Thus if a man of one village murdered one of another, the +aggrieved village if too weak to procure direct redress might save its +face by killing someone in a third village, whereupon the third must by +intertribal convention make common cause with the second at once, or else +coerce a fourth into the punitive alliance by applying the same sort of +persuasion that it had just felt. These later killings in the series were +not regarded as murders but as diplomatic overtures. The system was hard +upon those who were sacrificed in its operation, but it kept a check upon +outlawry. + +A skin stretched over the section of a hollow tree, and usually so +constructed as to have two tones, made an instrument of extraordinary use +in communication as well as in music. By a system long anticipating the +Morse code the Africans employed this "telegraph drum" in sending +messages from village to village for long distances and with great speed. +Differences of speech were no bar, for the tom tom code was interlingual. +The official drummer could explain by the high and low alternations of his +taps that a deed of violence just done was not a crime but a _pourparler_ +for the forming of a league. Every week for three months in 1800 the +tom toms doubtless carried the news throughout Ashantee land that King +Quamina's funeral had just been repeated and two hundred more slaves slain +to do him honor. In 1806 they perhaps reported the ending of Mungo Park's +travels by his death on the Niger at the hands of the Boussa people. Again +and again drummers hired as trading auxiliaries would send word along the +coast and into the country that white men's vessels lying at Lagos, Bonny, +Loango or Benguela as the case might be were paying the best rates in +calico, rum or Yankee notions for all slaves that might be brought. + +In music the monotony of the tom tom's tone spurred the drummers to +elaborate variations in rhythm. The stroke of the skilled performer could +make it mourn a funeral dirge, voice the nuptial joy, throb the pageant's +march, and roar the ambush alarm. Vocal music might be punctuated by tom +toms and primitive wind or stringed instruments, or might swell in solo +or chorus without accompaniment. Singing, however, appears not so +characteristic of Africans at home as of the negroes in America. On the +other hand garrulous conversation, interspersed with boisterous laughter, +lasted well-nigh the livelong day. Daily life, indeed, was far from dull, +for small things were esteemed great, and every episode was entertaining. +It can hardly be maintained that savage life is idyllic. Yet the question +remains, and may long remain, whether the manner in which the negroes were +brought into touch with civilization resulted in the greater blessing or +the greater curse. That manner was determined in part at least by the +nature of the typical negroes themselves. Impulsive and inconstant, +sociable and amorous, voluble, dilatory, and negligent, but robust, +amiable, obedient and contented, they have been the world's premium slaves. +Prehistoric Pharaohs, mediaeval Pashas and the grandees of Elizabethan +England esteemed them as such; and so great a connoisseur in household +service as the Czar Alexander added to his palace corps in 1810 two free +negroes, one a steward on an American merchant ship and the other a +body-servant whom John Quincy Adams, the American minister, had brought +from Massachusetts to St. Petersburg.[4] + +[Footnote 4: _Writings of John Quincy Adams_, Ford ed., III, 471, 472 (New +York, 1914).] + +The impulse for the enslavement of negroes by other peoples came from the +Arabs who spread over northern Africa in the eighth century, conquering and +converting as they went, and stimulating the trade across the Sahara until +it attained large dimensions. The northbound caravans carried the peculiar +variety of pepper called "grains of paradise" from the region later known +as Liberia, gold from the Dahomey district, palm oil from the lower Niger, +and ivory and slaves from far and wide. A small quantity of these various +goods was distributed in southern Europe and the Levant. And in the same +general period Arab dhows began to take slave cargoes from the east coast +of Africa as far south as Mozambique, for distribution in Arabia, Persia +and western India. On these northern and eastern flanks of Guinea where the +Mohammedans operated and where the most vigorous of the African peoples +dwelt, the natives lent ready assistance in catching and buying slaves in +the interior and driving them in coffles to within reach of the Moorish and +Arab traders. Their activities, reaching at length the very center of the +continent, constituted without doubt the most cruel of all branches of the +slave-trade. The routes across the burning Sahara sands in particular came +to be strewn with negro skeletons.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Jerome Dowd, "The African Slave Trade," in the _Journal of +Negro History_, II (1917), 1-20.] + +This overland trade was as costly as it was tedious. Dealers in Timbuctoo +and other centers of supply must be paid their price; camels must be +procured, many of which died on the journey; guards must be hired to +prevent escapes in the early marches and to repel predatory Bedouins in the +later ones; food supplies must be bought; and allowance must be made for +heavy mortality among the slaves on their terrible trudge over the burning +sands and the chilling mountains. But wherever Mohammedanism prevailed, +which gave particular sanction to slavery as well as to polygamy, the +virtues of the negroes as laborers and as eunuch harem guards were so +highly esteemed that the trade was maintained on a heavy scale almost if +not quite to the present day. The demand of the Turks in the Levant and the +Moors in Spain was met by exportations from the various Barbary ports. Part +of this Mediterranean trade was conducted in Turkish and Moorish vessels, +and part of it in the ships of the Italian cities and Marseilles and +Barcelona. Venice for example had treaties with certain Saracen rulers at +the beginning of the fourteenth century authorizing her merchants not only +to frequent the African ports, but to go in caravans to interior points and +stay at will. The principal commodities procured were ivory, gold, honey +and negro slaves.[6] + +[Footnote 6: The leading authority upon slavery and the slave-trade in the +Mediterranean countries of Europe is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud +desde los Tiempas mas remotas hasta nuestros Dias_ (Barcelona, 1877), vol. +III.] + +The states of Christian Europe, though little acquainted with negroes, +had still some trace of slavery as an inheritance from imperial Rome +and barbaric Teutondom. The chattel form of bondage, however, had quite +generally given place to serfdom; and even serfdom was disappearing in +many districts by reason of the growth of towns and the increase of rural +population to the point at which abundant labor could be had at wages +little above the cost of sustaining life. On the other hand so long as +petty wars persisted the enslavement of captives continued to be at least +sporadic, particularly in the south and east of Europe, and a considerable +traffic in white slaves was maintained from east to west on the +Mediterranean. The Venetians for instance, in spite of ecclesiastical +prohibitions, imported frequent cargoes of young girls from the countries +about the Black Sea, most of whom were doomed to concubinage and +prostitution, and the rest to menial service.[7] The occurrence of the +Crusades led to the enslavement of Saracen captives in Christendom as well +as of Christian captives in Islam. + +[Footnote 7: W.C. Hazlitt, _The Venetian Republic_(London, 1900), pp. 81, +82.] + +The waning of the Crusades ended the supply of Saracen slaves, and the +Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 destroyed the Italian trade on +the Black Sea. No source of supply now remained, except a trickle from +Africa, to sustain the moribund institution of slavery in any part of +Christian Europe east of the Pyrenees. But in mountain-locked Roussillon +and Asturias remnants of slavery persisted from Visigothic times to the +seventeenth century; and in other parts of the peninsula the intermittent +wars against the Moors of Granada supplied captives and to some extent +reinvigorated slavery among the Christian states from Aragon to Portugal. +Furthermore the conquest of the Canaries at the end of the fourteenth +century and of Teneriffe and other islands in the fifteenth led to the +bringing of many of their natives as slaves to Castille and the neighboring +kingdoms. + +Occasional documents of this period contain mention of negro slaves at +various places in the Spanish peninsula, but the number was clearly small +and it must have continued so, particularly as long as the supply was drawn +through Moorish channels. The source whence the negroes came was known to +be a region below the Sahara which from its yield of gold and ivory was +called by the Moors the land of wealth, "Bilad Ghana," a name which on the +tongues of European sailors was converted into "Guinea." To open a direct +trade thither was a natural effort when the age of maritime exploration +began. The French are said to have made voyages to the Gold Coast in the +fourteenth century, though apparently without trading in slaves. But in +the absence of records of their activities authentic history must confine +itself to the achievements of the Portuguese. + +In 1415 John II of Portugal, partly to give his five sons opportunity to +win knighthood in battle, attacked and captured the Moorish stronghold of +Ceuta, facing Gibraltar across the strait. For several years thereafter the +town was left in charge of the youngest of these princes, Henry, who there +acquired an enduring desire to gain for Portugal and Christianity the +regions whence the northbound caravans were coming. Returning home, he +fixed his residence at the promontory of Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, +and made his main interest for forty years the promotion of maritime +exploration southward.[8] His perseverance won him fame as "Prince +Henry the Navigator," though he was not himself an active sailor; and +furthermore, after many disappointments, it resulted in exploration as far +as the Gold Coast in his lifetime and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope +twenty-five years after his death. The first decade of his endeavor brought +little result, for the Sahara shore was forbidding and the sailors timid. +Then in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador and found its dangers +imaginary. Subsequent voyages added to the extent of coast skirted until +the desert began to give place to inhabited country. The Prince was now +eager for captives to be taken who might inform him of the country, and in +1441 Antam Gonsalvez brought several Moors from the southern edge of the +desert, who, while useful as informants, advanced a new theme of interest +by offering to ransom themselves by delivering on the coast a larger number +of non-Mohammedan negroes, whom the Moors held as slaves. Partly for the +sake of profit, though the chronicler says more largely to increase the +number of souls to be saved, this exchange was effected in the following +year in the case of two of the Moors, while a third took his liberty +without delivering his ransom. After the arrival in Portugal of these +exchanged negroes, ten in number, and several more small parcels of +captives, a company organized at Lagos under the direction of Prince Henry +sent forth a fleet of six caravels in 1444 which promptly returned with 225 +captives, the disposal of whom has been recounted at the beginning of this +chapter. + +[Footnote 8: The chief source for the early Portuguese voyages is Azurara's +_Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea_, already cited.] + +In the next year the Lagos Company sent a great expedition of twenty-six +vessels which discovered the Senegal River and brought back many natives +taken in raids thereabout; and by 1448 nearly a thousand captives had been +carried to Portugal. Some of these were Moorish Berbers, some negroes, +but most were probably Jolofs from the Senegal, a warlike people of mixed +ancestry. Raiding in the Jolof country proved so hazardous that from about +1454 the Portuguese began to supplement their original methods by planting +"factories" on the coast where slaves from the interior were bought from +their native captors and owners who had brought them down in caravans +and canoes. Thus not only was missionary zeal eclipsed but the desire of +conquest likewise, and the spirit of exploration erelong partly subdued, by +commercial greed. By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460 Portugal was +importing seven or eight hundred negro slaves each year. From this time +forward the traffic was conducted by a succession of companies and +individual grantees, to whom the government gave the exclusive right for +short terms of years in consideration of money payments and pledges of +adding specified measures of exploration. As new coasts were reached +additional facilities were established for trade in pepper, ivory and gold +as well as in slaves. When the route round Africa to India was opened at +the end of the century the Guinea trade fell to secondary importance, but +it was by no means discontinued. + +Of the negroes carried to Portugal in the fifteenth century a large +proportion were set to work as slaves on great estates in the southern +provinces recently vacated by the Moors, and others were employed as +domestic servants in Lisbon and other towns. Some were sold into Spain +where they were similarly employed, and where their numbers were recruited +by a Guinea trade in Spanish vessels in spite of Portugal's claim of +monopoly rights, even though Isabella had recognized these in a treaty of +1479. In short, at the time of the discovery of America Spain as well as +Portugal had quite appreciable numbers of negroes in her population and +both were maintaining a system of slavery for their control. + +When Columbus returned from his first voyage in the spring of 1493 and +announced his great landfall, Spain promptly entered upon her career +of American conquest and colonization. So great was the expectation of +adventure and achievement that the problem of the government was not how +to enlist participants but how to restrain a great exodus. Under heavy +penalties emigration was restricted by royal decrees to those who procured +permission to go. In the autumn of the same year fifteen hundred men, +soldiers, courtiers, priests and laborers, accompanied the discoverer +on his second voyage, in radiant hopes. But instead of wealth and high +adventure these Argonauts met hard labor and sickness. Instead of the rich +cities of Japan and China sought for, there were found squalid villages of +Caribs and Lucayans. Of gold there was little, of spices none. + +Columbus, when planting his colony at Isabella, on the northern coast +of Hispaniola (Hayti), promptly found need of draught animals and other +equipment. He wrote to his sovereigns in January, 1494, asking for the +supplies needed; and he offered, pending the discovery of more precious +things, to defray expenses by shipping to Spain some of the island natives, +"who are a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned and very +intelligent, and who when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which +they have been accustomed will be better than any other kind of slaves."[9] +Though this project was discouraged by the crown, Columbus actually took a +cargo of Indians for sale in Spain on his return from his third voyage; +but Isabella stopped the sale and ordered the captives taken home and +liberated. Columbus, like most of his generation, regarded the Indians +as infidel foreigners to be exploited at will. But Isabella, and to some +extent her successors, considered them Spanish subjects whose helplessness +called for special protection. Between the benevolence of the distant +monarchs and the rapacity of the present conquerors, however, the fate of +the natives was in little doubt. The crown's officials in the Indies were +the very conquerors themselves, who bent their soft instructions to fit +their own hard wills. A native rebellion in Hispaniola in 1495 was crushed +with such slaughter that within three years the population is said to have +been reduced by two thirds. As terms of peace Columbus required annual +tribute in gold so great that no amount of labor in washing the sands could +furnish it. As a commutation of tribute and as a means of promoting the +conversion of the Indians there was soon inaugurated the encomienda system +which afterward spread throughout Spanish America. To each Spaniard +selected as an encomendero was allotted a certain quota of Indians bound to +cultivate land for his benefit and entitled to receive from him tutelage +in civilization and Christianity. The grantees, however, were not assigned +specified Indians but merely specified numbers of them, with power to seize +new ones to replace any who might die or run away. Thus the encomendero was +given little economic interest in preserving the lives and welfare of his +workmen. + +[Footnote 9: R.H. Major, _Select Letters of Columbus_, 2d. ed., 1890, p. +88.] + +In the first phase of the system the Indians were secured in the right of +dwelling in their own villages under their own chiefs. But the encomenderos +complained that the aloofness of the natives hampered the work of +conversion and asked that a fuller and more intimate control be authorized. +This was promptly granted and as promptly abused. Such limitations as the +law still imposed upon encomendero power were made of no effect by the lack +of machinery for enforcement. The relationship in short, which the law +declared to be one of guardian and ward, became harsher than if it had been +that of master and slave. Most of the island natives were submissive in +disposition and weak in physique, and they were terribly driven at their +work in the fields, on the roads, and at the mines. With smallpox and other +pestilences added to their hardships, they died so fast that before 1510 +Hispaniola was confronted with the prospect of the complete disappearance +of its laboring population.[10] Meanwhile the same regime was being carried +to Porto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba with similar consequences in its train. + +[Footnote 10: E. g. Bourne, _Spain in America_ (New York, 1904); Wilhelm +Roscher, _The Spanish Colonial System_, Bourne ed. (New York, 1904); Konrad +Habler, "The Spanish Colonial Empire," in Helmolt, _History of the World_, +vol I.] + +As long as mining remained the chief industry the islands failed to +prosper; and the reports of adversity so strongly checked the Spanish +impulse for adventure that special inducements by the government were +required to sustain any flow of emigration. But in 1512-1515 the +introduction of sugar-cane culture brought the beginning of a change in +the industrial situation. The few surviving gangs of Indians began to be +shifted from the mines to the fields, and a demand for a new labor supply +arose which could be met only from across the sea. + +Apparently no negroes were brought to the islands before 1501. In that +year, however, a royal decree, while excluding Jews and Moors, authorized +the transportation of negroes born in Christian lands; and some of these +were doubtless carried to Hispaniola in the great fleet of Ovando, the new +governor, in 1502. Ovando's reports of this experiment were conflicting. +In the year following his arrival he advised that no more negroes be sent, +because of their propensity to run away and band with and corrupt the +Indians. But after another year had elapsed he requested that more negroes +be sent. In this interim the humane Isabella died and the more callous +Ferdinand acceded to full control. In consequence a prohibition of the +negro trade in 1504 was rescinded in 1505 and replaced by orders that the +bureau in charge of colonial trade promote the sending of negroes from +Spain in large parcels. For the next twelve years this policy was +maintained--the sending of Christian negroes was encouraged, while the +direct slave trade from Africa to America was prohibited. The number of +negroes who reached the islands under this regime is not ascertainable. It +was clearly almost negligible in comparison with the increasing demand.[11] + +[Footnote 11: The chief authority upon the origin and growth of negro +slavery in the Spanish colonies is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud +de la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los Paises +Americo-Hispanos_. (Barcelona, 1879.) This book supplements the same +author's _Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempos remotos_ previously +cited.] + +The policy of excluding negroes fresh from Africa--"bozal negroes" the +Spaniards called them--was of course a product of the characteristic +resolution to keep the colonies free from all influences hostile to +Catholic orthodoxy. But whereas Jews, Mohammedans and Christian heretics +were considered as champions of rival faiths, the pagan blacks came +increasingly to be reckoned as having no religion and therefore as a mere +passive element ready for christianization. As early as 1510, in fact, the +Spanish crown relaxed its discrimination against pagans by ordering the +purchase of above a hundred negro slaves in the Lisbon market for dispatch +to Hispaniola. To quiet its religious scruples the government hit upon +the device of requiring the baptism of all pagan slaves upon their +disembarkation in the colonial ports. + +The crown was clearly not prepared to withstand a campaign for supplies +direct from Africa, especially after the accession of the youth Charles I +in 1517. At that very time a clamor from the islands reached its climax. +Not only did many civil officials, voicing public opinion in their island +communities, urge that the supply of negro slaves be greatly increased as +a means of preventing industrial collapse, but a delegation of Jeronimite +friars and the famous Bartholomeo de las Casas, who had formerly been a +Cuban encomendero and was now a Dominican priest, appeared in Spain to +press the same or kindred causes. The Jeronimites, themselves concerned in +industrial enterprises, were mostly interested in the labor supply. But the +well-born and highly talented Las Casas, earnest and full of the milk +of human kindness, was moved entirely by humanitarian and religious +considerations. He pleaded primarily for the abolition of the encomienda +system and the establishment of a great Indian reservation under missionary +control, and he favored the increased transfer of Christian negroes from +Spain as a means of relieving the Indians from their terrible sufferings. +The lay spokesmen and the Jeronimites asked that provision be made for the +sending of thousands of negro slaves, preferably bozal negroes for the sake +of cheapness and plenty; and the supporters of this policy were able to +turn to their use the favorable impression which Las Casas was making, even +though his programme and theirs were different.[12] The outcome was that +while the settling of the encomienda problem was indefinitely postponed, +authorization was promptly given for a supply of bozal negroes. + +[Footnote 12: Las Casas, _Historio de las Indias_ (Madrid, 1875, 1876); +Arthur Helps, _Life of Las Casas_ (London, 1873); Saco, _op. cit_., pp. +62-104.] + +The crown here had an opportunity to get large revenues, of which it was in +much need, by letting the slave trade under contract or by levying taxes +upon it. The young king, however, freshly arrived from the Netherlands with +a crowd of Flemish favorites in his train, proceeded to issue gratuitously +a license for the trade to one of the Flemings at court, Laurent de +Gouvenot, known in Spain as Garrevod, the governor of Breza. This license +empowered the grantee and his assigns to ship from Guinea to the Spanish +islands four thousand slaves. All the historians until recently have placed +this grant in the year 1517 and have called it a contract (asiento); but +Georges Scelle has now discovered and printed the document itself which +bears the date August 18, 1518, and is clearly a license of grace bearing +none of the distinctive asiento features.[13] Garrevod, who wanted ready +cash rather than a trading privilege, at once divided his license into two +and sold them for 25,000 ducats to certain Genoese merchants domiciled at +Seville, who in turn split them up again and put them on the market where +they became an object of active speculation at rapidly rising prices. The +result was that when slaves finally reached the islands under Garrevod's +grant the prices demanded for them were so exorbitant that the purposes +of the original petitioners were in large measure defeated. Meanwhile the +king, in spite of the nominally exclusive character of the Garrevod grant, +issued various other licenses on a scale ranging from ten to four hundred +slaves each. For a decade the importations were small, however, and the +island clamor increased. + +[Footnote 13: Georges Scelle, _Histoire Politique de la Traite Negriere aux +Indes de Castille: Contrats et Traites d'Asiento_ (Paris, 1906), I, 755. +Book I, chapter 2 of the same volume is an elaborate discussion of the +Garrevod grant.] + +In 1528 a new exclusive grant was issued to two German courtiers at +Seville, Eynger and Sayller, empowering them to carry four thousand slaves +from Guinea to the Indies within the space of the following four years. +This differed from Garrevod's in that it required a payment of 20,000 +ducats to the crown and restricted the price at which the slaves were to +be sold in the islands to forty ducats each. In so far it approached the +asientos of the full type which became the regular recourse of the Spanish +government in the following centuries; but it fell short of the ultimate +plan by failing to bind the grantees to the performance of their +undertaking and by failing to specify the grades and the proportion of the +sexes among the slaves to be delivered. In short the crown's regard was +still directed more to the enrichment of courtiers than to the promotion of +prosperity in the islands. + +After the expiration of the Eynger and Sayller grant the king left the +control of the slave trade to the regular imperial administrative boards, +which, rejecting all asiento overtures for half a century, maintained a +policy of granting licenses for competitive trade in return for payments +of eight or ten ducats per head until 1560, and of thirty ducats or more +thereafter. At length, after the Spanish annexation of Portugal in 1580, +the government gradually reverted to monopoly grants, now however in the +definite form of asientos, in which by intent at least the authorities made +the public interest, with combined regard to the revenue and a guaranteed +labor supply, the primary consideration.[14] The high prices charged for +slaves, however, together with the burdensome restrictions constantly +maintained upon trade in general, steadily hampered the growth of Spanish +colonial industry. Furthermore the allurements of Mexico and Peru drained +the older colonies of virtually all their more vigorous white inhabitants, +in spite of severe penalties legally imposed upon emigration but never +effectively enforced. + +[Footnote 14: Scelle, I, books 1-3.] + +The agricultural regime in the islands was accordingly kept relatively +stagnant as long as Spain preserved her full West Indian domination. The +sugar industry, which by 1542 exported the staple to the amount of 110,000 +arrobas of twenty-five pounds each, was standardized in plantations of two +types--the _trapiche_ whose cane was ground by ox power and whose labor +force was generally thirty or forty negroes (each reckoned as capable of +the labor of four Indians); and the _inqenio_, equipped with a water-power +mill and employing about a hundred slaves.[15] Occasional slave revolts +disturbed the Spanish islanders but never for long diminished their +eagerness for slave recruits. The slave laws were relatively mild, the +police administration extremely casual, and the plantation managements +easy-going. In short, after introducing slavery into the new world the +Spaniards maintained it in sluggish fashion, chiefly in the islands, as an +institution which peoples more vigorous industrially might borrow and adapt +to a more energetic plantation regime. + +[Footnote 15: Saco, pp. 127, 128, 188; Oviedo, _Historia General de las +Indias_, book 4. chap. 8.] + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE + + +At the request of a slaver's captain the government of Georgia issued in +1772 a certificate to a certain Fenda Lawrence reciting that she, "a free +black woman and heretofore a considerable trader in the river Gambia on the +coast of Africa, hath voluntarily come to be and remain for some time in +this province," and giving her permission to "pass and repass unmolested +within the said province on her lawfull and necessary occations."[1] This +instance is highly exceptional. The millions of African expatriates went +against their own wills, and their transporters looked upon the business +not as passenger traffic but as trade in goods. Earnings came from selling +in America the cargoes bought in Africa; the transportation was but an item +in the trade. + +[Footnote 1: U.B. Phillips, _Plantation and Frontier Documents_, printed +also as vols. I and II of the _Documentary History of American Industrial +Society_ (Cleveland, O., 1909), II, 141, 142. This publication will be +cited hereafter as _Plantation and Frontier_.] + +The business bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on the +Atlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with the +active assistance of its respective sovereign. The preliminaries to the +commercial strife occurred in the Elizabethan age. French traders in gold +and ivory found the Portuguese police on the Guinea Coast to be negligible; +but poaching in the slave trade was a harder problem, for Spain held firm +control of her colonies which were then virtually the world's only slave +market. + +The test of this was made by Sir John Hawkins who at the beginning of his +career as a great English sea captain had informed himself in the Canary +Islands of the Afro-American opportunity awaiting exploitation. Backed by +certain English financiers, he set forth in 1562 with a hundred men in +three small ships, and after procuring in Sierra Leone, "partly by the +sword and partly by other means," above three hundred negroes he sailed to +Hispaniola where without hindrance from the authorities he exchanged them +for colonial produce. "And so, with prosperous success, and much gain to +himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the +month of September, 1563."[2] Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkins +again captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, and +proceeded to peddle them in the Spanish islands. When the authorities +interfered he coerced them by show of arms and seizure of hostages, and +when the planters demurred at his prices he brought them to terms through a +mixture of diplomacy and intimidation. After many adventures by the way he +reached home, as the chronicler concludes, "God be thanked! in safety: with +the loss of twenty persons in all the voyage; as with great profit to the +venturers in the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bringing +home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store. His name +therefore be praised for evermore! Amen." Before two years more had passed +Hawkins put forth for a third voyage, this time with six ships, two of them +among the largest then afloat. The cargo of slaves, procured by aiding a +Guinea tribe in an attack upon its neighbor, had been duly sold in the +Indies when dearth of supplies and stress of weather drove the fleet into +the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulloa. There a Spanish fleet of thirteen +ships attacked the intruders, capturing their treasure ship and three of +her consorts. Only the _Minion_ under Hawkins and the bark _Judith_ under +the young Francis Drake escaped to carry the harrowing tale to England. One +result of the episode was that it filled Hawkins and Drake with desire for +revenge on Spain, which was wreaked in due time but in European waters. +Another consequence was a discouragement of English slave trading for +nearly a century to follow. + +[Footnote 2: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, ed. 1589. This and the accounts of +Hawkins' later exploits in the same line are reprinted with a valuable +introduction in C.R. Beazley, ed., _Voyages and Travels_ (New York, 1903), +I, 29-126.] + +The defeat of the Armada in 1588 led the world to suspect the decline of +Spain's maritime power, but only in the lapse of decades did the suspicion +of her helplessness become a certainty. Meantime Portugal was for sixty +years an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at their +heroic labor for independence. Thus when the Dutch came to prevail at sea +in the early seventeenth century the Portuguese posts in Guinea fell their +prey, and in 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered to take them +over. Closely identified with the Dutch government, this company not +only founded the colony of New Netherland and endeavored to foster the +employment of negro slaves there, but in 1634 it seized the Spanish island +of Curacao near the Venezuelan coast and made it a basis for smuggling +slaves into the Spanish dominions. And now the English, the French and the +Danes began to give systematic attention to the African and West Indian +opportunities, whether in the form of buccaneering, slave trading or +colonization. + +The revolt of Portugal in 1640 brought a turning point. For a +quarter-century thereafter the Spanish government, regarding the Portuguese +as rebels, suspended all trade relations with them, the asiento included. +But the trade alternatives remaining were all distasteful to Spain. The +English were heretics; the Dutch were both heretics and rebels; the French +and the Danes were too weak at sea to handle the great slave trading +contract with security; and Spain had no means of her own for large scale +commerce. The upshot was that the carriage of slaves to the Spanish +colonies was wholly interdicted during the two middle decades of the +century. But this gave the smugglers their highest opportunity. The Spanish +colonial police collapsed under the pressure of the public demand for +slaves, and illicit trading became so general and open as to be pseudo +legitimate. Such a boom came as was never felt before under Protestant +flags in tropical waters. The French, in spite of great exertions, were +not yet able to rival the Dutch and English. These in fact had such an +ascendency that when in 1663 Spain revived the asiento by a contract with +two Genoese, the contractors must needs procure their slaves by arrangement +with Dutch and English who delivered them at Curacao and Jamaica. Soon +after this contract expired the asiento itself was converted from an item +of Spanish internal policy into a shuttlecock of international politics. It +became in fact the badge of maritime supremacy, possessed now by the Dutch, +now by the French in the greatest years of Louis XIV, and finally by the +English as a trophy in the treaty of Utrecht. + +By this time, however, the Spanish dominions were losing their primacy +as slave markets. Jamaica, Barbados and other Windward Islands under the +English; Hayti, Martinique and Guadeloupe under the French, and Guiana +under the Dutch were all more or less thriving as plantation colonies, +while Brazil, Virginia, Maryland and the newly founded Carolina were +beginning to demonstrate that slave labor had an effective calling without +as well as within the Caribbean latitudes. The closing decades of the +seventeenth century were introducing the heyday of the slave trade, and the +English were preparing for their final ascendency therein. + +In West African waters in that century no international law prevailed but +that of might. Hence the impulse of any new country to enter the Guinea +trade led to the project of a chartered monopoly company; for without +the resources of share capital sufficient strength could not be had, and +without the monopoly privilege the necessary shares could not be sold. The +first English company of moment, chartered in 1618, confined its trade to +gold and other produce. Richard Jobson while in its service on the Gambia +was offered some slaves by a native trader. "I made answer," Jobson +relates, "we were a people who did not deal in any such commodities; +neither did we buy or sell one another, or any that had our own shapes; at +which he seemed to marvel much, and told us it was the only merchandize +they carried down, and that they were sold to white men, who earnestly +desired them. We answered, they were another kind of people, different from +us; but for our part, if they had no other commodities, we would return +again."[3] This company speedily ending its life, was followed by another +in 1631 with a similarly short career; and in 1651 the African privilege +was granted for a time to the East India Company. + +[Footnote 3: Richard Jobson, _The Golden Trade_ (London 1623,), pp. 29, 87, +quoted in James Bandinel, _Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa_ +(London, 1842), p. 43.] + +Under Charles II activities were resumed vigorously by a company chartered +in 1662; but this promptly fell into such conflict with the Dutch that its +capital of L122,000 vanished. In a drastic reorganization its affairs were +taken over by a new corporation, the Royal African Company, chartered in +1672 with the Duke of York at its head and vested in its turn with monopoly +rights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Cape +of Good Hope.[4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, selling +some two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cash +dividends on its L100,000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300 +per cent. But now came reverses through European war and through the +competition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaves +legitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea. Now came also a +clamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and from +England also where oppression and abuses were charged against it by +would-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697 +restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guinea +upon paying to the company for the maintenance of its forts ten per cent, +on the value of the cargoes they carried thither and a percentage on +certain minor exports carried thence. + +[Footnote 4: The financial career of the company is described by W.R. +Scott, "The Constitution and Finances of the Royal African Company of +England till 1720," in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259.] + +The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evil +practices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale at +reduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encourage +subscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all its +trade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyages +as compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stock +sold as low as 2-1/8 on the L100. A reorganization in 1712 however added +largely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it new +prosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate traders +of all dues, substituting a public grant of L10,000 a year toward the +maintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company, +managed in the early thirties by James Oglethorpe, kept up the unequal +contest until 1751 when it was dissolved. + +The company regime under the several flags was particularly dominant on the +coasts most esteemed in the seventeenth century; and in that century they +reached a comity of their own on the basis of live and let live. The French +were secured in the Senegal sphere of influence and the English on the +Gambia, while on the Gold Coast the Dutch and English divided the trade +between them. Here the two headquarters were in forts lying within sight +of each other: El Mina of the Dutch, and Cape Coast Castle of the English. +Each was commanded by a governor and garrisoned by a score or two of +soldiers; and each with its outlying factories had a staff of perhaps a +dozen factors, as many sub-factors, twice as many assistants, and a few +bookkeepers and auditors, as well as a corps of white artisans and an +abundance of native interpreters, boatmen, carriers and domestic servants. +The Dutch and English stations alternated in a series east and west, often +standing no further than a cannon-shot apart. Here and there one of them +had acquired a slight domination which the other respected; but in the case +of the Coromantees (or Fantyns) William Bosman, a Dutch company factor +about 1700, wrote that both companies had "equal power, that is none at +all. For when these people are inclined to it they shut up the passes so +close that not one merchant can come from the inland country to trade with +us; and sometimes, not content with this, they prevent the bringing of +provisions to us till we have made peace with them." The tribe was in fact +able to exact heavy tribute from both companies; and to stretch the treaty +engagements at will to its own advantage.[5] Further eastward, on the +densely populated Slave Coast, the factories were few and the trade +virtually open to all comers. Here, as was common throughout Upper Guinea, +the traits and the trading practices of adjacent tribes were likely to +be in sharp contrast. The Popo (or Paw Paw) people, for example, were so +notorious for cheating and thieving that few traders would go thither +unless prepared to carry things with a strong hand. The Portuguese alone +bore their grievances without retaliation, Bosman said, because their goods +were too poor to find markets elsewhere.[6]But Fidah (Whydah), next door, +was in Bosman's esteem the most agreeable of all places to trade in. The +people were honest and polite, and the red-tape requirements definite and +reasonable. A ship captain after paying for a license and buying the king's +private stock of slaves at somewhat above the market price would have the +news of his arrival spread afar, and at a given time the trade would be +opened with prices fixed in advance and all the available slaves herded +in an open field. There the captain or factor, with the aid of a surgeon, +would select the young and healthy, who if the purchaser were the Dutch +company were promptly branded to prevent their being confused in the crowd +before being carried on shipboard. The Whydahs were so industrious in the +trade, with such far reaching interior connections, that they could deliver +a thousand slaves each month.[7] + +[Footnote 5: Bosman's _Guinea_ (London, 1705), reprinted in Pinkerton's +_Voyages_, XVI, 363.] + +[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., XVI, 474-476.] + +[Footnote 7: _Ibid_., XVI, 489-491.] + +Of the operations on the Gambia an intimate view may be had from the +journal of Francis Moore, a factor of the Royal African Company from 1730 +to 1735.[8] Here the Jolofs on the north and the Mandingoes on the south +and west were divided into tribes or kingdoms fronting from five +to twenty-five leagues on the river, while tributary villages of +Arabic-speaking Foulahs were scattered among them. In addition there was +a small independent population of mixed breed, with very slight European +infusion but styling themselves Portuguese and using a "bastard language" +known locally as Creole. Many of these last were busy in the slave trade. +The Royal African headquarters, with a garrison of thirty men, were on an +island in the river some thirty miles from its mouth, while its trading +stations dotted the shores for many leagues upstream, for no native king +was content without a factory near his "palace." The slaves bought were +partly of local origin but were mostly brought from long distances inland. +These came generally in strings or coffles of thirty or forty, tied with +leather thongs about their necks and laden with burdens of ivory and corn +on their heads. Mungo Park when exploring the hinterland of this coast +in 1795-1797, traveling incidentally with a slave coffle on part of +his journey, estimated that in the Niger Valley generally the slaves +outnumbered the free by three to one.[9] But as Moore observed, the +domestic slaves were rarely sold in the trade, mainly for fear it would +cause their fellows to run away. When captured by their master's enemies +however, they were likely to be sent to the coast, for they were seldom +ransomed. + +[Footnote 8: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_ (London, 1738).] + +[Footnote 9: Mungo Park, _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_ (4th +ed., London, 1800), pp. 287, 428.] + +The diverse goods bartered for slaves were rated by units of value which +varied in the several trade centers. On the Gold Coast it was a certain +length of cowrie shells on a string; at Loango it was a "piece" which had +the value of a common gun or of twenty pounds of iron; at Kakongo it was +twelve- or fifteen-yard lengths of cotton cloth called "goods";[10] while +on the Gambia it was a bar of iron, apparently about forty pounds in +weight. But in the Gambia trade as Moore described it the unit or "bar" +in rum, cloth and most other things became depreciated until in some +commodities it was not above a shilling's value in English money. Iron +itself, on the other hand, and crystal beads, brass pans and spreadeagle +dollars appreciated in comparison. These accordingly became distinguished +as the "heads of goods," and the inclusion of three or four units of them +was required in the forty or fifty bars of miscellaneous goods making up +the price of a prime slave.[11] In previous years grown slaves alone had +brought standard prices; but in Moore's time a specially strong demand for +boys and girls in the markets of Cadiz and Lisbon had raised the prices of +these almost to a parity. All defects were of course discounted. Moore, for +example, in buying a slave with several teeth missing made the seller abate +a bar for each tooth. The company at one time forbade the purchase of +slaves from the self-styled Portuguese because they ran the prices up; but +the factors protested that these dealers would promptly carry their wares +to the separate traders, and the prohibition was at once withdrawn. + +[Footnote 10: The Abbe Proyart, _History of Loango_ (1776), in Pinkerton's +_Voyages_, XVI, 584-587.] + +[Footnote 11: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, p.45.] + +The company and the separate traders faced different problems. The latter +were less easily able to adjust their merchandise to the market. A Rhode +Island captain, for instance, wrote his owners from Anamabo in 1736, "heare +is 7 sails of us rume men, that we are ready to devour one another, for our +case is desprit"; while four years afterward another wrote after trading +at the same port, "I have repented a hundred times ye lying in of them dry +goods", which he had carried in place of the customary rum.[12] Again, a +veteran Rhode Islander wrote from Anamabo in 1752, "on the whole I never +had so much trouble in all my voiges", and particularized as follows: "I +have Gott on bord 61 Slaves and upards of thirty ounces of Goold, and have +Gott 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet Left on bord, and God noes when I shall Gett +Clear of it ye trade is so very Dull it is actuly a noof to make a man +Creasey my Cheef mate after making foor or five Trips in the boat was taken +Sick and Remains very bad yett then I sent Mr. Taylor, and he got not well, +and three more of my men has [been] sick.... I should be Glad I coold Com +Rite home with my slaves, for my vesiel will not Last to proceed farr +we can see Day Lite al Roond her bow under Deck.... heare Lyes Captains +hamlet, James, Jepson, Carpenter, Butler, Lindsay; Gardner is Due; Ferguson +has Gone to Leward all these is Rum ships."[13] + +[Footnote 12: _American Historical Record_, I (1872), 314, 317.] + +[Footnote 13: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 59, +60.] + +The separate traders also had more frequent quarrels with the natives. +In 1732 a Yankee captain was killed in a trade dispute and his crew set +adrift. Soon afterward certain Jolofs took another ship's officers captive +and required the value of twenty slaves as ransom. And in 1733 the natives +at Yamyamacunda, up the Gambia, sought revenge upon Captain Samuel Moore +for having paid them in pewter dollars on his previous voyage, and were +quieted through the good offices of a company factor.[14] The company +suffered far less from native disorders, for a threat of removing its +factory would bring any chief to terms. In 1731, however, the king of +Barsally brought a troop of his kinsmen and subjects to the Joar factory +where Moore was in charge, got drunk, seized the keys and rifled the +stores.[15] But the company's chief trouble was with its own factors. +The climate and conditions were so trying that illness was frequent and +insanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulent +practices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in the +reports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildew +and white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The expense +of the salary list, ship hire, provisions and merchandise was heavy and +continuous, while the returns were precarious to a degree. Not often did +such great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in +1726[16] and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734[17] to +glut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes. As a rule the company's +advantage of steady markets and friendly native relations appears to have +been more than offset by the freedom of the separate traders from fixed +charges and the necessity of dependence upon lazy and unfaithful employees. + +[Footnote 14: Moore, pp. 112, 164, 182.] + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., p. 82.] + +[Footnote 16: William Snelgrave, _A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and +the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. 8-32.] + +[Footnote 17: Moore, p. 157.] + +Instead of jogging along the coast, as many had been accustomed to do, and +casting anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by natives +who had slaves to sell,[18] the separate traders began before the close +of the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the +"castles," which were then a relic from the company regime. So advantageous +was this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared L500 +on her voyage, and next year the sloop _Adventure_, also of Newport, +Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade that after +losing by death one slave out of the ninety-five in her cargo she landed +the remainder in prime order at Barbados and sold them immediately in one +lot at L35 per head.[19] + +[Footnote 18: Snelgrave, introduction.] + +[Footnote 19: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, LXIX, 398, +429.] + +In Lower Guinea the Portuguese held an advantage, partly through the +influence of the Catholic priests. The Capuchin missionary Merolla, for +example, relates that while he was in service at the mouth of the Congo in +1685 word came that the college of cardinals had commanded the missionaries +in Africa to combat the slave trade. Promptly deciding this to be a +hopeless project, Merolla and his colleagues compromised with their +instructions by attempting to restrict the trade to ships of Catholic +nations and to the Dutch who were then supplying Spain under the asiento. +No sooner had the chiefs in the district agreed to this than a Dutch +trading captain set things awry by spreading Protestant doctrine among the +natives, declaring baptism to be the only sacrament required for salvation, +and confession to be superfluous. The priests then put all the Dutch under +the ban, but the natives raised a tumult saying that the Portuguese, the +only Catholic traders available, not only paid low prices in poor goods but +also aspired to a political domination. The crisis was relieved by a timely +plague of small-pox which the priests declared and the natives agreed was a +divinely sent punishment for their contumacy,--and for the time at least, +the exclusion of heretical traders was made effective.[20] The English +appear never to have excelled the Portuguese on the Congo and southward +except perhaps about the close of the eighteenth century. + +[Footnote 20: Jerom Merolla da Sorrente, _Voyage to Congo_ (translated from +the Italian), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 253-260.] + +The markets most frequented by the English and American separate traders +lay on the great middle stretches of the coast--Sierra Leone, the Grain +Coast (Liberia), the Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, the Oil Rivers as the +Niger Delta was then called, Cameroon, Gaboon and Loango. The swarm of +their ships was particularly great in the Gulf of Guinea upon whose shores +the vast fan-shaped hinterland poured its exiles along converging lines. + +The coffles came from distances ranging to a thousand miles or more, on +rivers and paths whose shore ends the European traders could see but +did not find inviting. These paths, always of single-file narrowness, +tortuously winding to avoid fallen trees and bad ground, never straightened +even when obstructions had rotted and gone, branching and crossing in +endless network, penetrating jungles and high-grass prairies, passing +villages that were and villages that had been, skirting the lairs of savage +beasts and the haunts of cannibal men, beset with drought and famine, storm +and flood, were threaded only by negroes, bearing arms or bearing burdens. +Many of the slaves fell exhausted on the paths and were cut out of the +coffles to die. The survivors were sorted by the purchasers on the coast +into the fit and the unfit, the latter to live in local slavery or to meet +either violent or lingering deaths, the former to be taken shackled on +board the strange vessels of the strange white men and carried to an +unknown fate. The only consolations were that the future could hardly be +worse than the recent past, that misery had plenty of company, and that +things were interesting by the way. The combination of resignation and +curiosity was most helpful. + +It was reassuring to these victims to see an occasional American negro +serving in the crew of a slaver and to know that a few specially favored +tribesmen had returned home with vivid stories from across the sea. On the +Gambia for example there was Job Ben Solomon who during a brief slavery +in Maryland attracted James Oglethorpe's attention by a letter written in +Arabic, was bought from his master, carried to England, presented at court, +loaded with gifts and sent home as a freeman in 1734 in a Royal African +ship with credentials requiring the governor and factors to show him every +respect. Thereafter, a celebrity on the river, he spread among his fellow +Foulahs and the neighboring Jolofs and Mandingoes his cordial praises of +the English nation.[21] And on the Gold Coast there was Amissa to testify +to British justice, for he had shipped as a hired sailor on a Liverpool +slaver in 1774, had been kidnapped by his employer and sold as a slave in +Jamaica, but had been redeemed by the king of Anamaboe and brought home +with an award by Lord Mansfield's court in London of L500 damages collected +from the slaving captain who had wronged him.[22] + +The bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 shifted the bulk of the +separate trading from London to the rival city of Bristol. But the removal +of the duties in 1730 brought the previously unimportant port of Liverpool +into the field with such vigor that ere long she had the larger half of +all the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessary +parsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions and +extra allowances they gave in their early years were nil.[23] By 1753 her +ships in the slave traffic numbered eighty-seven, totaling about eight +thousand tons burthen and rated to carry some twenty-five thousand slaves. +Eight of these vessels were trading on the Gambia, thirty-eight on the Gold +and Slave Coasts, five at Benin, three at New Calabar, twelve at Bonny, +eleven at Old Calabar, and ten in Angola.[24] For the year 1771 the number +of slavers bound from Liverpool was reported at one hundred and seven with +a capacity of 29,250 negroes, while fifty-eight went from London rated +to carry 8,136, twenty-five from Bristol to carry 8,810, and five from +Lancaster with room for 950. Of this total of 195 ships 43 traded in +Senegambia, 29 on the Gold Coast, 56 on the Slave Coast, 63 in the bights +of Benin and Biafra, and 4 in Angola. In addition there were sixty or +seventy slavers from North America and the West Indies, and these were +yearly increasing.[25] By 1801 the Liverpool ships had increased to 150, +with capacity for 52,557 slaves according to the reduced rating of five +slaves to three tons of burthen as required by the parliamentary act of +1788. About half of these traded in the Gulf of Guinea, and half in the +ports of Angola.[26] The trade in American vessels, particularly those of +New England, was also large. The career of the town of Newport in fact was +a small scale replied of Liverpool's. But acceptable statistics of the +American ships are lacking. + +[Footnote 21: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, pp. 69, 202-203.] + +[Footnote 22: Gomer Williams, _History of the Liverpool Privateers, with an +Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade_ (London, 1897), pp. 563, 564.] + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid_., p. 471, quoting _A General and Descriptive History +of Liverpool_ (1795).] + +[Footnote 24: _Ibid_., p. 472 and appendix 7.] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), p. 492 +note.] + +[Footnote 26: Corner Williams, Appendix 13.] + +The ship captains in addition to their salaries generally received +commissions of "4 in 104," on the gross sales, and also had the privilege +of buying, transporting and selling specified numbers of slaves on their +private account. When surgeons were carried they also were allowed +commissions and privileges at a smaller rate, and "privileges" were often +allowed the mates likewise. The captains generally carried more or less +definite instructions. Ambrose Lace, for example, master of the Liverpool +ship _Marquis of Granby_ bound in 1762 for Old Calabar, was ordered to +combine with any other ships on the river to keep down rates, to buy +550 young and healthy slaves and such ivory as his surplus cargo would +purchase, and to guard against fire, fever and attack. When laden he was +to carry the slaves to agents in the West Indies, and thence bring home +according to opportunity sugar, cotton, coffee, pimento, mahogany and rum, +and the balance of the slave cargo proceeds in bills of exchange.[27] +Simeon Potter, master of a Rhode Island slaver about the same time, was +instructed by his owners: "Make yr Cheaf Trade with The Blacks and little +or none with the white people if possible to be avoided. Worter yr Rum as +much as possible and sell as much by the short mesuer as you can." And +again: "Order them in the Bots to worter thear Rum, as the proof will Rise +by the Rum Standing in ye Son."[28] As to the care of the slave cargo a +Massachusetts captain was instructed in 1785 as follows: "No people require +more kind and tender treatment: to exhilarate their spirits than the +Africans; and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, remember +that on the other hand too much circumspection cannot be observed by +yourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatment +by insurrection, etc. When you consider that on the health of your slaves +almost your whole voyage depends--for all other risques but mortality, +seizures and bad debts the underwriters are accountable for--you will +therefore particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her with +vinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and to +cleanliness among your own people as well as among the slaves."[29] + +[Footnote 27: Ibid., pp. 486-489.] + +[Footnote 28: W.B. Weeden, _Economic and Social History of New England_ +(Boston [1890]), II, 465.] + +[Footnote 29: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 66, 67, citing J.O. Felt, _Annals of +Salem_, 2d ed., II, 289, 290.] + +Ships were frequently delayed for many months on the pestilent coast, for +after buying their licenses in one kingdom and finding trade slack there +they could ill afford to sail for another on the uncertain chance of a more +speedy supply. Sometimes when weary of higgling the market, they tried +persuasion by force of arms; but in some instances as at Bonny, in +1757,[30] this resulted in the victory of the natives and the destruction +of the ships. In general the captains and their owners appreciated the +necessity of patience, expensive and even deadly as that might prove to be. + +[Footnote 30: Gomer Williams, pp. 481, 482.] + +The chiefs were eager to foster trade and cultivate good will, for it +brought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy King +George" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lace +a mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in," a gold +mounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, +pewter plates, brass flagons, knives and forks, bullet and cannon-ball +molds, and sailcloth for his canoes, along with many other things for use +in trade.[31] + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 545-547.] + +The typical New England ship for the slave trade was a sloop, schooner or +barkentine of about fifty tons burthen, which when engaged in ordinary +freighting would have but a single deck. For a slaving voyage a second +flooring was laid some three feet below the regular deck, the space between +forming the slave quarters. Such a vessel was handled by a captain, two +mates, and from three to six men and boys. It is curious that a vessel of +this type, with capacity in the hold for from 100 to 120 hogsheads of rum +was reckoned by the Rhode Islanders to be "full bigg for dispatch,"[32] +while among the Liverpool slave traders such a ship when offered for +sale could not find a purchaser.[33] The reason seems to have been that +dry-goods and sundries required much more cargo space for the same value +than did rum. + +[Footnote 32: Massachusetts Historical Society, _Collections_, LXIX, 524.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., 500.] + +The English vessels were generally twice as great of burthen and with twice +the height in their 'tween decks. But this did not mean that the slaves +could stand erect in their quarters except along the center line; for when +full cargoes were expected platforms of six or eight feet in width were +laid on each side, halving the 'tween deck height and nearly doubling the +floor space on which the slaves were to be stowed. Whatever the size of the +ship, it loaded slaves if it could get them to the limit of its capacity. +Bosnian tersely said, "they lie as close together as it is possible to be +crowded."[34] The women's room was divided from the men's by a bulkhead, +and in time of need the captain's cabin might be converted into a hospital. + +[Footnote 34: Bosnian's _Guinea_, in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 490.] + +While the ship was taking on slaves and African provisions and water the +negroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sake +of fresh air. But on departure for the "middle passage," as the trip to +America was called by reason of its being the second leg of the ship's +triangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and in +foul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air and +exercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters and +swabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant. The negro men were +usually kept shackled for the first part of the passage until the chances +of mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain's fears gave place +to confidence. On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to be +repelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense of +the vessel.[35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargo +was perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport of +poverty-stricken white emigrants. Henry Laurens, after withdrawing from +African factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted by +some of the participants in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw an +instance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equal +to the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish.... Self interest prompted +the baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for a +market, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christians +from Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon the +cheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in what +condition they were landed."[36] + +[Footnote 35: _E. g_., Gomer Williams, pp. 560, 561.] + +[Footnote 36: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_ (New York, 1915), pp. +67, 68. For the tragic sufferings of an English convict shipment in 1768 +see _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 372-373] + +William Snelgrave, long a ship captain in the trade, relates that he was +accustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through his +interpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and not +to be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complain +to the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if they +struck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to be +severely punished. Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies +in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he +never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, +"I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death +itself." In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notified +by Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end of +an hour's time. "He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in him +to kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death I +should lose all the money I had paid for him.'" When the captain professed +himself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments assuring +his fellows that his life was safe.[37] + +[Footnote 37: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_ (London, 1734), pp. +162-185. Snelgrave's book also contains vivid accounts of tribal wars, +human sacrifices, traders' negotiations and pirate captures on the Grain +and Slave Coasts.] + +The discomfort in the densely packed quarters of the slave ships may be +imagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added it +was wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water or +food ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and in +epidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limit +of human experience. The average voyage however was rapid and smooth +by virtue of the steadily blowing trade winds, the food if coarse was +generally plenteous and wholesome, and the sanitation fairly adequate. In +a word, under stern and often brutal discipline, and with the poorest +accommodations, the slaves encountered the then customary dangers and +hardships of the sea.[38] + +[Footnote 38: Voluminous testimony in regard to conditions on the middle +passage was published by Parliament and the Privy Council in 1789-1791. +Summaries from it may be found in T.F. Buxton, _The African Slave Trade and +the Remedy_ (London, 1840), part I, chap. 2; and in W.O. Blake, _History of +Slavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10.] + +Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West India +Company's ship _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in April +and May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barely +enough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island of +Amebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile bad +food had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died, +and the slave cargo was daily diminishing. Five weeks of sailing then +carried the ship across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refill +her leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near her +destination at Curacao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finally +a sloop sent by the Curacao governor to remove the surviving slaves was +captured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprising +the cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and one +leaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 the +slave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as high +among the men as among the women.[39] About the same time, on the other +hand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher, +made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave.[40] The mortality on the +average ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight or +ten per cent. + +[Footnote 39: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and +Arms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N.Y., 1867), pp. 1-13.] + +[Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515.] + +Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the New +England branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for a +projected voyage.[41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at L300 sterling, was +to be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicines +and miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of L65, and provisioned for L50 more. +Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wages +of L10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eight +thousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. per gallon and with forty-five +barrels, tierces and hogsheads of bread, flour, beef, pork, tar, tobacco, +tallow and sugar--all at an estimated cost of L775--it was to sail for the +Gold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some +35 slave men were to be bought at 100 gallons per head, 15 women at 85 +gallons, and 15 boys and girls at 65 gallons; and the residue of the rum +and miscellaneous cargo was expected to bring some seventy ounces of gold +in exchange as well as to procure food supplies for the westward voyage. +Recrossing the Atlantic, with an estimated death loss of a man, a woman and +two children, the surviving slaves were to be sold in Jamaica at about L21, +L18, and L14 for the respective classes. Of these proceeds about one-third +was to be spent for a cargo of 105 hogsheads of molasses at 8_d_. per +gallon, and the rest of the money remitted to London, whither the gold dust +was also to be sent. The molasses upon reaching Newport was expected to +bring twice as much as it had cost in the tropics. After deducting factor's +commissions of from 2-1/2 to 5 per cent. on all sales and purchases, and of +"4 in 104" on the slave sales as the captain's allowance, after providing +for insurance at four per cent. on ship and cargo for each leg of the +voyage, and for leakage of ten per cent. of the rum and five per cent. of +the molasses, and after charging off the whole cost of the ship's outfit +and one-third of her original value, there remained the sum of L357, 8s. +2d. as the expected profits of the voyage. + +[Footnote 41: "An estimate of a voyage from Rhode Island to the Coast of +Guinea and from thence to Jamaica and so back to Rhode Island for a sloop +of 60 Tons." The authorities of Yale University, which possesses the +manuscript, have kindly permitted the publication of these data. The +estimates in Rhode Island and Jamaica currencies, which were then +depreciated, as stated in the document, to twelve for one and seven for +five sterling respectively, are here changed into their approximate +sterling equivalents.] + +As to the gross volume of the trade, there are few statistics. As early as +1734 one of the captains engaged in it estimated that a maximum of seventy +thousand slaves a year had already been attained.[42] For the next half +century and more each passing year probably saw between fifty thousand and +a hundred thousand shipped. The total transportation from first to last may +well have numbered more than five million souls. Prior to the nineteenth +century far more negro than white colonists crossed the seas, though less +than one tenth of all the blacks brought to the western world appear to +have been landed on the North American continent. Indeed, a statistician +has reckoned, though not convincingly, that in the whole period before 1810 +these did not exceed 385,500[43] + +[Footnote 42: Snelgrave, _Guinea and the Slave Trade_, p. 159.] + +[Footnote 43: H.C. Carey, _The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign_ +(Philadelphia, 1853), chap. 3.] + +In selling the slave cargoes in colonial ports the traders of course wanted +minimum delay and maximum prices. But as a rule quickness and high returns +were not mutually compatible. The Royal African Company tended to lay chief +stress upon promptness of sale. Thus at the end of 1672 it announced that +if persons would contract to receive whole cargoes upon their arrival and +to accept all slaves between twelve and forty years of age who were able to +go over the ship's side unaided they would be supplied at the rate of +L15 per head in Barbados, L16 in Nevis, L17 in Jamaica, and L18 in +Virginia.[44] The colonists were for a time disposed to accept this +arrangement where they could. For example Charles Calvert, governor of +Maryland, had already written Lord Baltimore in 1664: "I have endeavored to +see if I could find as many responsible men that would engage to take 100 +or 200 neigros every year from the Royall Company at that rate mentioned +in your lordship's letter; but I find that we are nott men of estates good +enough to undertake such a buisnesse, but could wish we were for we are +naturally inclined to love neigros if our purses could endure it."[45] But +soon complaints arose that the slaves delivered on contract were of the +poorest quality, while the better grades were withheld for other means of +sale at higher prices. Quarrels also developed between the company on the +one hand and the colonists and their legislatures on the other over the +rating of colonial moneys and the obstructions placed by law about the +collection of debts; and the colonists proceeded to give all possible +encouragement to the separate traders, legal or illegal as their traffic +might be.[46] + +[Footnote 44: E.D. Collins, "Studies in the Colonial Policy of England, +1672-1680," in the American Historical Association _Report_ for 1901, I, +158.] + +[Footnote 45: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_ no. 28, p. +249.] + +[Footnote 46: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_ (New York, 1912), part +I, vol. I, chap. 5.] + +Most of the sales, in the later period at least, were without previous +contract. A practice often followed in the British West Indian ports was to +advertise that the cargo of a vessel just arrived would be sold on board at +an hour scheduled and at a uniform price announced in the notice. At the +time set there would occur a great scramble of planters and dealers to grab +the choicest slaves. A variant from this method was reported in 1670 from +Guadeloupe, where a cargo brought in by the French African company was +first sorted into grades of prime men, (_pieces d'Inde_), prime women, boys +and girls rated at two-thirds of prime, and children rated at one-half. To +each slave was attached a ticket bearing a number, while a corresponding +ticket was deposited in one of four boxes according to the grade. At prices +then announced for the several grades, the planters bought the privilege of +drawing tickets from the appropriate boxes and acquiring thereby title to +the slaves to which the numbers they drew were attached.[47] + +[Footnote 47: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Francaises avant +1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122, 123.] + +In the chief ports of the British continental colonies the maritime +transporters usually engaged merchants on shore to sell the slaves as +occasion permitted, whether by private sale or at auction. At Charleston +these merchants charged a ten per cent commission on slave sales, though +their factorage rate was but five per cent. on other sorts of merchandise; +and they had credits of one and two years for the remittance of the +proceeds.[48] The following advertisement, published at Charleston in 1785 +jointly by Ball, Jennings and Company, and Smiths, DeSaussure and Darrell +is typical of the factors' announcements: "GOLD COAST NEGROES. On Thursday, +the 17th of March instant, will be exposed to public sale near the Exchange +(if not before disposed of by private contract) the remainder of the cargo +of negroes imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consisting +chiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having been +here through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to this +climate. The conditions of the sale will be credit to the first of January, +1786, on giving bond with approved security where required--the negroes not +to be delivered till the terms are complied with."[49] But in such colonies +as Virginia where there was no concentration of trade in ports, the ships +generally sailed from place to place peddling their slaves, with notice +published in advance when practicable. The diseased or otherwise unfit +negroes were sold for whatever price they would bring. In some of the ports +it appears that certain physicians made a practise of buying these to sell +the survivors at a profit upon their restoration to health.[50] + +[Footnote 48: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 75.] + +[Footnote 49: _The Gazette of the State of South Carolina_, Mch. 10, 1785.] + +[Footnote 50: C. C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 170.] + +That by no means all the negroes took their enslavement grievously is +suggested by a traveler's note at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1806: "We +met ... a number of new negroes, some of whom had been in the country long +enough to talk intelligibly. Their likely looks induced us to enter into +a talk with them. One of them, a very bright, handsome youth of about +sixteen, could talk well. He told us the circumstances of his being caught +and enslaved, with as much composure as he would any common occurrence, +not seeming to think of the injustice of the thing nor to speak of it with +indignation.... He spoke of his master and his work as though all were +right, and seemed not to know he had a right to be anything but a +slave."[51] + +[Footnote 51: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1906, p. 882.] + +In the principal importing colonies careful study was given to the +comparative qualities of the several African stocks. The consensus +of opinion in the premises may be gathered from several contemporary +publications, the chief ones of which were written in Jamaica.[52] The +Senegalese, who had a strong Arabic strain in their ancestry, were +considered the most intelligent of Africans and were especially esteemed +for domestic service, the handicrafts and responsible positions. "They are +good commanders over other negroes, having a high spirit and a tolerable +share of fidelity; but they are unfit for hard work; their bodies are not +robust nor their constitutions vigorous." The Mandingoes were reputed to be +especially gentle in demeanor but peculiarly prone to theft. They easily +sank under fatigue, but might be employed with advantage in the distillery +and the boiling house or as watchmen against fire and the depredations of +cattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts as +hardy and stalwart of mind and body. Long calls them haughty, ferocious and +stubborn; Edwards relates examples of their Spartan fortitude; and it +was generally agreed that they were frequently instigators of slave +conspiracies and insurrections. Yet their spirit of loyalty made them the +most highly prized of servants by those who could call it forth. Of them +Christopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward Islands, wrote in 1701 to +the English Board of Trade: "The Corramantes are not only the best and +most faithful of our slaves, but are really all born heroes. There is a +differance between them and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possible +for your Lordships to conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of that +nation. Intrepid to the last degree, not a man of them but will stand to +be cut to pieces without a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kind +master, but implacably revengeful when ill-treated. My father, who had +studied the genius and temper of all kinds of negroes forty-five years with +a very nice observation, would say, noe man deserved a Corramante that +would not treat him like a friend rather than a slave."[53] + +[Footnote 52: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, 403, +404; Bryan Edwards, _History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, +various editions, book IV, chap. 3; and "A Professional Planter," +_Practical Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves +in the Sugar Colonies_ (London, 1803), pp. 39-48. The pertinent portion of +this last is reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 127-133. For the +similar views of the French planters in the West Indies see Peytraud, +_L'Esclavage aux Antilles Francaises_, pp. 87-90.] + +[Footnote 53: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West +Indies_, 1701, pp. 720, 721.] + +The Whydahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the most +highly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful and +submissive. "That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel, +and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Pawpaws as the +chastisement of legal authority to which it is their duty to submit +patiently." As to the Eboes or Mocoes, described as having a sickly yellow +tinge in their complection, jaundiced eyes, and prognathous faces like +baboons, the women were said to be diligent but the men lazy, despondent +and prone to suicide. "They require therefore the gentlest and mildest +treatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence be +once obtained they manifest as great fidelity, affection and gratitude as +can reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery." + +The "kingdom of Gaboon," which straddled the equator, was the worst reputed +of all. "From thence a good negro was scarcely ever brought. They are +purchased so cheaply on the coast as to tempt many captains to freight with +them; but they generally die either on the passage or soon after +their arrival in the islands. The debility of their constitutions is +astonishing." From this it would appear that most of the so-called Gaboons +must have been in reality Pygmies caught in the inland equatorial forests, +for Bosman, who traded among the Gaboons, merely inveighed against their +garrulity, their indecision, their gullibility and their fondness for +strong drink, while as to their physique he observed: "they are mostly +large, robust well shaped men."[54] Of the Congoes and Angolas the Jamaican +writers had little to say except that in their glossy black they +were slender and sightly, mild in disposition, unusually honest, but +exceptionally stupid. + +[Footnote 54: Bosman in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 509, 510.] + +In the South Carolina market Gambia negroes, mainly Mandingoes, were the +favorites, and Angolas also found ready sale; but cargoes from Calabar, +which were doubtless comprised mostly of Eboes, were shunned because of +their suicidal proclivity. Henry Laurens, who was then a commission dealer +at Charleston, wrote in 1755 that the sale of a shipload from Calabar then +in port would be successful only if no other Guinea ships arrived before +its quarantine was ended, for the people would not buy negroes of that +stock if any others were to be had.[55] + +[Footnote 55: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 76, 77.] + +It would appear that the Congoes, Angolas and Eboes were especially prone +to run away, or perhaps particularly easy to capture when fugitive, for +among the 1046 native Africans advertised as runaways held in the Jamaica +workhouses in 1803 there were 284 Eboes and Mocoes, 185 Congoes and 259 +Angolas as compared with 101 Mandingoes, 60 Chambas (from Sierra Leone), 70 +Coromantees, 57 Nagoes and Pawpaws, and 30 scattering, along with a total +of 488 American-born negroes and mulattoes, and 187 unclassified.[56] + +[Footnote 56: These data were generously assembled for me by Professor +Chauncey S. Boucher of Washington University, St. Louis, from a file of the +_Royal Gazette_ of Kingston, Jamaica, for the year 1803, which is preserved +in the Charleston, S.C. Library.] + +This huge maritime slave traffic had great consequences for all the +countries concerned. In Liverpool it made millionaires,[57] and elsewhere +in England, Europe and New England it brought prosperity not only to ship +owners but to the distillers of rum and manufacturers of other trade goods. +In the American plantation districts it immensely stimulated the production +of the staple crops. On the other hand it kept the planters constantly +in debt for their dearly bought labor, and it left a permanent and +increasingly complex problem of racial adjustments. In Africa, it largely +transformed the primitive scheme of life, and for the worse. It created new +and often unwholesome wants; it destroyed old industries and it corrupted +tribal institutions. The rum, the guns, the utensils and the gewgaws were +irresistible temptations. Every chief and every tribesman acquired +a potential interest in slave getting and slave selling. Charges of +witchcraft, adultery, theft and other crimes were trumped up that the +number of convicts for sale might be swelled; debtors were pressed that +they might be adjudged insolvent and their persons delivered to the +creditors; the sufferings of famine were left unrelieved that parents might +be forced to sell their children or themselves; kidnapping increased until +no man or woman and especially no child was safe outside a village; and +wars and raids were multiplied until towns by hundreds were swept from the +earth and great zones lay void of their former teeming population.[58] + +[Footnote 57: Gomer Williams, chap. 6.] + +[Footnote 58: C.B. Wadstrom, _Observations on the Slave Trade_ (London, +1789); Lord Muncaster, _Historical Sketches of the Slave Trade and of its +Effects in Africa_ (London, 1792); Jerome Dowd, _The Negro Races_, vol. 3, +chap. 2 (MS).] + +The slave trade has well been called the systematic plunder of a continent. +But in the irony of fate those Africans who lent their hands to the looting +got nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine were +quite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captors +who remained in the African jungle. The only participants who got +unquestionable profit were the English, European and Yankee traders and +manufacturers. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE SUGAR ISLANDS + + +As regards negro slavery the history of the West Indies is inseparable from +that of North America. In them the plantation system originated and reached +its greatest scale, and from them the institution of slavery was extended +to the continent. The industrial system on the islands, and particularly +on those occupied by the British, is accordingly instructive as an +introduction and a parallel to the continental regime. + +The early career of the island of Barbados gives a striking instance of +a farming colony captured by the plantation system. Founded in 1624 by a +group of unprosperous English emigrants, it pursued an even and commonplace +tenor until the Civil War in England sent a crowd of royalist refugees +thither, together with some thousands of Scottish and Irish prisoners +converted into indentured servants. Negro slaves were also imported to work +alongside the redemptioners in the tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigo +crops, and soon proved their superiority in that climate, especially when +yellow fever, to which the Africans are largely immune, decimated the white +population. In 1643, as compared with some five thousand negroes of all +sorts, there were about eighteen thousand white men capable of bearing +arms; and in the little island's area of 166 square miles there were nearly +ten thousand separate landholdings. Then came the introduction of +sugar culture, which brought the beginning of the end of the island's +transformation. A fairly typical plantation in the transition period was +described by a contemporary. Of its five hundred acres about two hundred +were planted in sugar-cane, twenty in tobacco, five in cotton, five in +ginger and seventy in provision crops; several acres were devoted to +pineapples, bananas, oranges and the like; eighty acres were in pasturage, +and one hundred and twenty in woodland. There were a sugar mill, a boiling +house, a curing house, a distillery, the master's residence, laborers' +cabins, and barns and stables. The livestock numbered forty-five oxen, +eight cows, twelve horses and sixteen asses; and the labor force comprised +ninety-eight "Christians," ninety-six negroes and three Indian women +with their children. In general, this writer said, "The slaves and their +posterity, being subject to their masters forever, are kept and preserved +with greater care than the (Christian) servants, who are theirs for but +five years according to the laws of the island.[1] So that for the time +being the servants have the worser lives, for they are put to very hard +labor, ill lodging and their dyet very light." + +[Footnote 1: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] + +As early as 1645 George Downing, then a young Puritan preacher recently +graduated from Harvard College but later a distinguished English diplomat, +wrote to his cousin John Winthrop, Jr., after a voyage in the West Indies: +"If you go to Barbados, you shal see a flourishing Iland, many able men. I +beleive they have bought this year no lesse than a thousand Negroes, and +the more they buie the better they are able to buye, for in a yeare and +halfe they will earne (with God's blessing) as much as they cost."[2] +Ten years later, with bonanza prices prevailing in the sugar market, the +Barbadian planters declared their colony to be "the most envyed of the +world" and estimated the value of its annual crops at a million pounds +sterling.[3] But in the early sixties a severe fall in sugar prices put an +end to the boom period and brought the realization that while sugar was the +rich man's opportunity it was the poor man's ruin. By 1666 emigration to +other colonies had halved the white population; but the slave trade had +increased the negroes to forty thousand, most of whom were employed on the +eight hundred sugar estates.[4] For the rest of the century Barbados held +her place as the leading producer of British sugar and the most esteemed +of the British colonies; but as the decades passed the fertility of her +limited fields became depleted, and her importance gradually fell secondary +to that of the growing Jamaica. + +[Footnote 2: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, series 4, vol. +6, p. 536.] + +[Footnote 3: G.L. Beer, _Origins of the British Colonial System_ (New York, +1908), P. 413.] + +[Footnote 4: G.L. Beer, _The Old Colonial System_, part I, vol. 2, pp. 9, +10.] + +The Barbadian estates were generally much smaller than those of Jamaica +came to be. The planters nevertheless not only controlled their community +wholly in their interest but long maintained a unique "planters' committee" +at London to make representations to the English government on behalf of +their class. They pleaded for the colony's freedom of trade, for example, +with no more vigor than they insisted that England should not interfere +with the Barbadian law to prohibit Quakers from admitting negroes to their +meetings. An item significant of their attitude upon race relations is +the following from the journal of the Crown's committee of trade and +plantations, Oct. 8, 1680: "The gentlemen of Barbados attend, ... who +declare that the conversion of their slaves to Christianity would not only +destroy their property but endanger the island, inasmuch as converted +negroes grow more perverse and intractable than others, and hence of less +value for labour or sale. The disproportion of blacks to white being great, +the whites have no greater security than the diversity of the negroes' +languages, which would be destroyed by conversion in that it would be +necessary to teach them all English. The negroes are a sort of people so +averse to learning that they will rather hang themselves or run away than +submit to it." The Lords of Trade were enough impressed by this argument to +resolve that the question be left to the Barbadian government.[5] + +[Footnote 5: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West +Indies_, 1677-1680, p. 611.] + +As illustrating the plantation regime in the island in the period of its +full industrial development, elaborate instructions are extant which were +issued about 1690 to Richard Harwood, manager or overseer of the Drax Hall +and Hope plantations belonging to the Codrington family. These included +directions for planting, fertilizing and cultivating the cane, for the +operation of the wind-driven sugar mill, the boiling and curing houses and +the distillery, and for the care of the live stock; but the main concern +was with the slaves. The number in the gangs was not stated, but the +expectation was expressed that in ordinary years from ten to twenty new +negroes would have to be bought to keep the ranks full, and it was advised +that Coromantees be preferred, since they had been found best for the work +on these estates. Plenty was urged in provision crops with emphasis upon +plantains and cassava,--the latter because of the certainty of its +harvest, the former because of the abundance of their yield in years of no +hurricanes and because the negroes especially delighted in them and +found them particularly wholesome as a dysentery diet. The services of a +physician had been arranged for, but the manager was directed to take great +care of the negroes' health and pay special attention to the sick. The +clothing was not definitely stated as to periods. For food each was +to receive weekly a pound of fish and two quarts of molasses, tobacco +occasionally, salt as needed, palm oil once a year, and home-grown +provisions in abundance. Offenses committed by the slaves were to be +punished immediately, "many of them being of the houmer of avoiding +punishment when threatened: to hang themselves." For drunkenness the stocks +were recommended. As to theft, recognized as especially hard to repress, +the manager was directed to let hunger give no occasion for it.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Original MS. in the Bodleian Library, A. 248, 3. Copy used +through the courtesy of Dr. F.W. Pitman of Yale University.] + +Jamaica, which lies a thousand miles west of Barbados and has twenty-five +times her area, was captured by the English in 1655 when its few hundreds +of Spaniards had developed nothing but cacao and cattle raising. English +settlement began after the Restoration, with Roundhead exiles supplemented +by immigrants from the Lesser Antilles and by buccaneers turned farmers. +Lands were granted on a lavish scale on the south side of the island where +an abundance of savannahs facilitated tillage; but the development of +sugar culture proved slow by reason of the paucity of slaves and the +unfamiliarity of the settlers with the peculiarities of the soil and +climate. With the increase of prosperity, and by the aid of managers +brought from Barbados, sugar plantations gradually came to prevail +all round the coast and in favorable mountain valleys, while smaller +establishments here and there throve more moderately in the production of +cotton, pimento, ginger, provisions and live stock. For many years the +legislature, prodded by occasional slave revolts, tried to stimulate the +increase of whites by requiring the planters to keep a fixed proportion of +indentured servants; but in the early eighteenth century this policy proved +futile, and thereafter the whites numbered barely one-tenth as many as +the negroes. The slaves were reported at 86,546 in 1734; 112,428 in 1744; +166,914 in 1768; and 210,894 in 1787. In addition there were at the last +date some 10,000 negroes legally free, and 1400 maroons or escaped slaves +dwelling permanently in the mountain fastnesses. The number of sugar +plantations was 651 in 1768, and 767 in 1791; and they contained about +three-fifths of all the slaves on the island. Throughout this latter part +of the century the average holding on the sugar estates was about 180 +slaves of all ages.[7] + +[Footnote 7: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_, I, 494, Bryan Edwards, +_History of the British Colonies in the West Indies_, book II, appendix.] + +When the final enumeration of slaves in the British possessions was made +in the eighteen-thirties there were no single Jamaica holdings reported as +large as that of 1598 slaves held by James Blair in Guiana; but occasional +items were of a scale ranging from five to eight hundred each, and hundreds +numbered above one hundred each. In many of these instances the same +persons are listed as possessing several holdings, with Sir Edward Hyde +East particularly notable for the large number of his great squads. The +degree of absenteeism is indicated by the frequency of English nobles, +knights and gentlemen among the large proprietors. Thus the Earl of +Balcarres had 474 slaves; the Earl of Harwood 232; the Earl and Countess of +Airlie 59; Earl Talbot and Lord Shelborne jointly 79; Lord Seaford 70; Lord +Hatherton jointly with Francis Downing, John Benbow and the Right Reverend +H. Philpots, Lord Bishop of Exeter, two holdings of 304 and 236 slaves +each; and the three Gladstones, Thomas, William and Robert 468 slaves +jointly.[8] + +[Footnote 8: "Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims," in the British +official _Account: and Papers, 1837-1838_, vol. XLVIII.] + +Such an average scale and such a prevalence of absenteeism never prevailed +in any other Anglo-American plantation community, largely because none of +the other staples required so much manufacturing as sugar did in preparing +the crops for market. As Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793: "the business of +sugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages must +engage deeply.... It requires a capital of no less than thirty thousand +pounds sterling to embark in this employment with a fair prospect of +success." Such an investment, he particularized, would procure and +establish as a going concern a plantation of 300 acres in cane and 100 +acres each in provision crops, forage and woodland, together with the +appropriate buildings and apparatus, and a working force of 80 steers, 60 +mules and 250 slaves, at the current price for these last of L50 sterling +a head.[9] So distinctly were the plantations regarded as capitalistic +ventures that they came to be among the chief speculations of their time +for absentee investors. + +[Footnote 9: Bryan Edwards, _History of the West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] + +When Lord Chesterfield tried in 1767 to buy his son a seat in Parliament he +learned "that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for that +the rich East and West Indians had secured them all at the rate of three +thousand pounds at the least."[10] And an Englishman after traveling in the +French and British Antilles in 1825 wrote: "The French colonists, whether +Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast +no wistful looks toward France.... In our colonies it is quite different; +... every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging place where they +must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgages will let them live +elsewhere. They call England their home though many of them have never +been there.... The French colonist deliberately expatriates himself; the +Englishman never."[11] Absenteeism was throughout a serious detriment. Many +and perhaps most of the Jamaica proprietors were living luxuriously in +England instead of industriously on their estates. One of them, the +talented author "Monk" Lewis, when he visited his own plantation in +1815-1817, near the end of his life, found as much novelty in the doings of +his slaves as if he had been drawing his income from shares in the Banc of +England; but even he, while noting their clamorous good nature was chiefly +impressed by their indolence and perversity.[12] It was left for an invalid +traveling for his health to remark most vividly the human equation: "The +negroes cannot be silent; they talk in spite of themselves. Every passion +acts upon them with strange intensity, their anger is sudden and furious, +their mirth clamorous and excessive, their curiosity audacious, and their +love the sheer demand for gratification of an ardent animal desire. Yet +by their nature they are good-humored in the highest degree, and I know +nothing more delightful than to be met by a group of negro girls and to be +saluted with their kind 'How d'ye massa? how d'ye massa?'"[13] + +[Footnote 10: Lord Chesterfield, _Letters to his Son_ (London, 1774), II, +525.] + +[Footnote 11: H.N. Coleridge, _Six Months in the West Indies_, 4th ed. +(London, 1832), pp. 131, 132.] + +[Footnote 12: Matthew G. Lewis, _Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, kept +during a Residence in the Island of Jamaica_ (London, 1834).] + +[Footnote 13: H.N. Coleridge, p. 76.] + +On the generality of the plantations the tone of the management was too +much like that in most modern factories. The laborers were considered more +as work-units than as men, women and children. Kindliness and comfort, +cruelty and hardship, were rated at balance-sheet value; births and deaths +were reckoned in profit and loss, and the expense of rearing children was +balanced against the cost of new Africans. These things were true in some +degree in the North American slaveholding communities, but in the West +Indies they excelled. + +In buying new negroes a practical planter having a preference for those of +some particular tribal stock might make sure of getting them only by taking +with him to the slave ships or the "Guinea yards" in the island ports a +slave of the stock wanted and having him interrogate those for sale in +his native language to learn whether they were in fact what the dealers +declared them to be. Shrewdness was even more necessary to circumvent other +tricks of the trade, especially that of fattening up, shaving and oiling +the skins of adult slaves to pass them off as youthful. The ages most +desired in purchasing were between fifteen and twenty-five years. If these +were not to be had well grown children were preferable to the middle-aged, +since they were much less apt to die in the "seasoning," they would learn +English readily, and their service would increase instead of decreasing +after the lapse of the first few years. + +The conversion of new negroes into plantation laborers, a process called +"breaking in," required always a mingling of delicacy and firmness. Some +planters distributed their new purchases among the seasoned households, +thus delegating the task largely to the veteran slaves. Others housed and +tended them separately under the charge of a select staff of nurses and +guardians and with frequent inspection from headquarters. The mortality +rate was generally high under either plan, ranging usually from twenty to +thirty per cent, in the seasoning period of three or four years. The deaths +came from diseases brought from Africa, such as the yaws which was similar +to syphilis; from debilities and maladies acquired on the voyage; from the +change of climate and food; from exposure incurred in running away; from +morbid habits such as dirt-eating; and from accident, manslaughter and +suicide.[14] + +[Footnote 14: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 435; Edwards, _West Indies_, book +4, chap. 5; A Professional Planter, _Rules_, chap. 2; Thomas Roughley, +_Jamaica Planter's Guide_ (London, 1823), pp. 118-120.] + +The seasoned slaves were housed by families in separate huts grouped into +"quarters," and were generally assigned small tracts on the outskirts of +the plantation on which to raise their own provision crops. Allowances of +clothing, dried fish, molasses, rum, salt, etc., were issued them from the +commissary, together with any other provisions needed to supplement their +own produce. The field force of men and women, boys and girls was generally +divided according to strength into three gangs, with special details for +the mill, the coppers and the still when needed; and permanent corps were +assigned to the handicrafts, to domestic service and to various incidental +functions. The larger the plantation, of course, the greater the +opportunity of differentiating tasks and assigning individual slaves to +employments fitted to their special aptitudes. + +The planters put such emphasis upon the regularity and vigor of the routine +that they generally neglected other equally vital things. They ignored the +value of labor-saving devices, most of them even shunning so obviously +desirable an implement as the plough and using the hoe alone in breaking +the land and cultivating the crops. But still more serious was the passive +acquiescence in the depletion of their slaves by excess of deaths over +births. This decrease amounted to a veritable decimation, requiring the +frequent importation of recruits to keep the ranks full. Long estimated +this loss at about two per cent. annually, while Edwards reckoned that in +his day there were surviving in Jamaica little more than one-third as many +negroes as had been imported in the preceding career of the colony.[15] The +staggering mortality rate among the new negroes goes far toward accounting +for this; but even the seasoned groups generally failed to keep up their +numbers. The birth rate was notoriously small; but the chief secret of the +situation appears to have lain in the poor care of the newborn children. A +surgeon of long experience said that a third of the babies died in their +first month, and that few of the imported women bore children; and another +veteran resident said that commonly more than a quarter of the babies died +within the first nine days, of "jaw-fall," and nearly another fourth before +they passed their second year.[16] At least one public-spirited planter +advocated in 1801 the heroic measure of closing the slave trade in order +to raise the price of labor and coerce the planters into saving it both by +improving their apparatus and by diminishing the death rate.[17] But his +fellows would have none of his policy. + +[Footnote 15: Long, III, 432; Edwards, book 4, chap. 2.] + +[Footnote 16: _Abridgement of the evidence taken before a committee of the +whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), pp. 48, 80.] + +[Footnote 17: Clement Caines, _Letters on the Cultivation of the Otaheite +Cane_ (London, 1801), pp. 274-281.] + +While in the other plantation staples the crop was planted and reaped in +a single year, sugar cane had a cycle extending through several years. A +typical field in southside Jamaica would be "holed" or laid off in furrows +between March and June, planted in the height of the rainy season between +July and September, cultivated for fifteen months, and harvested in the +first half of the second year after its planting. Then when the rains +returned new shoots, "rattoons," would sprout from the old roots to yield +a second though diminished harvest in the following spring, and so on for +several years more until the rattoon or "stubble" yield became too small to +be worth while. The period of profitable rattooning ran in some specially +favorable districts as high as fourteen years, but in general a field was +replanted after the fourth crop. In such case the cycles of the several +fields were so arranged on any well managed estate that one-fifth of the +area in cane was replanted each year and four-fifths harvested. + +This cooerdination of cycles brought it about that oftentimes almost every +sort of work on the plantation was going on simultaneously. Thus on the +Lodge and Grange plantations which were apparently operated as a single +unit, the extant journal of work during the harvest month of May, 1801,[18] +shows a distribution of the total of 314 slaves as follows: ninety of the +"big gang" and fourteen of the "big gang feeble" together with fifty of +the "little gang" were stumping a new clearing, "holing" or laying off a +stubble field for replanting, weeding and filling the gaps in the field of +young first-year or "plant" cane, and heaping the manure in the ox-lot; +ten slaves were cutting, ten tying and ten more hauling the cane from +the fields in harvest; fifteen were in a "top heap" squad whose work was +conjecturally the saving of the green cane tops for forage and fertilizer; +nine were tending the cane mill, seven were in the boiling house, producing +a hogshead and a half of sugar daily, and two were at the two stills making +a puncheon of rum every four days; six watchmen and fence menders, twelve +artisans, eight stockminders, two hunters, four domestics, and two sick +nurses were at their appointed tasks; and eighteen invalids and pregnant +women, four disabled with sores, forty infants and one runaway were doing +no work. There were listed thirty horses, forty mules and a hundred oxen +and other cattle; but no item indicates that a single plow was in use. + +[Footnote 18: Printed by Clement Caines in a table facing p. 246 of his +_Letters_.] + +The cane-mill in the eighteenth century consisted merely of three +iron-sheathed cylinders, two of them set against the third, turned by +wind, water or cattle. The canes, tied into small bundles for greater +compression, were given a double squeezing while passing through the mill. +The juice expressed found its way through a trough into the boiling house +while the flattened stalks, called mill trash or megass in the British +colonies and bagasse in Louisiana, were carried to sheds and left to dry +for later use as fuel under the coppers and stills. + +In the boiling house the cane-juice flowed first into a large receptacle, +the clarifier, where by treatment with lime and moderate heat it was +separated from its grosser impurities. It then passed into the first +or great copper, where evaporation by boiling began and some further +impurities, rising in scum, were taken off. After further evaporation in +smaller coppers the thickened fluid was ladled into a final copper, the +teache, for a last boiling and concentration; and when the product of the +teache was ready for crystallization it was carried away for the curing. In +Louisiana the successive caldrons were called the grande, the propre, the +flambeau and the batterie, the last of these corresponding to the Jamaican +teache. + +The curing house was merely a timber framework with a roof above and a +great shallow sloping vat below. The sugary syrup from the teache was +generally potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, and +allowed to cool with occasional stirrings. Most of the sugar stayed in the +hogsheads, while some of it trickled with the mother liquor, molasses, +through perforations in the bottoms into the vat beneath. When the +hogsheads were full of the crudely cured, moist, and impure "muscovado" +sugar, they were headed up and sent to port. The molasses, the scum, and +the juice of the canes tainted by damage from rats and hurricanes were +carried to vats in the distillery where, with yeast and water added, the +mixture fermented and when distilled yielded rum. + +The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of a +certain degree of pageantry. Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaves +were freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopes +of Mont Pelee: "We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread of +cane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expanding +beyond an opening to the west.... Far down we can distinguish a line of +field-hands--the whole _atelier_, as it is called, of a plantation--slowly +descending a slope, hewing the canes as they go. There is a woman to every +two men, a binder (amarreuse): she gathers the canes as they are cut down, +binds them with their own tough long leaves into a sort of sheaf, +and carries them away on her head;--the men wield their cutlasses so +beautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy such +a spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system has +destroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the islands, +with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the march +of an army;--first advanced the cutlassers in line, naked to the waist; +then the amarreuses, the women who tied and carried; and behind these the +_ka_, the drum,--with a paid _crieur_ or _crieuse_ to lead the song;--and +lastly the black Commandeur, for general."[19] + +[Footnote 19: Lafcadio Hearn, _Two Years in the French West Indies_ (New +York, 1890), p. 275.] + +After this bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may be +abundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation, +elaborated expressly for posterity's information. This estate, lying in +St. John's parish on the southern slope of the Jamaica mountain chain, +comprised not only the plantation proper, which had some 560 acres in sugar +cane and smaller fields in food and forage crops, but also Spring Garden, a +nearby cattle ranch, and Mickleton which was presumably a relay station for +the teams hauling the sugar and rum to Port Henderson. The records, which +are available for the years from 1792 to 1796 inclusive, treat the three +properties as one establishment.[20] + +[Footnote 20: These records have been analyzed in U.B. Phillips, "A Jamaica +Slave Plantation," in the _American Historical Review_, XIX, 543-558.] + +The slaves of the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, apparently +all seasoned negroes, of whom 150 were in the main field gang. But this +force was inadequate for the full routine, and in that year "jobbing gangs" +from outside were employed at rates from _2s. 6d_. to _3s_. per head per +day and at a total cost of L1832, reckoned probably in Jamaican currency +which stood at thirty per cent, discount. In order to relieve the need of +this outside labor the management began that year to buy new Africans on a +scale considered reckless by all the island authorities. In March five men +and five women were bought; and in October 25 men, 27 women, 16 boys, 16 +girls and 6 children, all new Congoes; and in the next year 51 males and 30 +females, part Congoes and part Coromantees and nearly all of them eighteen +to twenty years old. Thirty new huts were built; special cooks and nurses +were detailed; and quantities of special foodstuffs were bought--yams, +plantains, flour, fresh and salt fish, and fresh beef heads, tongues, +hearts and bellies; but it is not surprising to find that the next outlay +for equipment was for a large new hospital in 1794, costing L341 for +building its brick walls alone. Yaws became serious, but that was a trifle +as compared with dysentery; and pleurisy, pneumonia, fever and dropsy had +also to be reckoned with. About fifty of the new negroes were quartered +for several years in a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the +routine even for the able-bodied was much lighter than on Worthy Park. + +One of the new negroes died in 1792, and another in the next year. Then in +the spring of 1794 the heavy mortality began. In that year at least 31 of +the newcomers died, nearly all of them from the "bloody flux" (dysentery) +except two who were thought to have committed suicide. By 1795, however, +the epidemic had passed. Of the five deaths of the new negroes that year, +two were attributed to dirt-eating,[21] one to yaws, and two to ulcers, +probably caused by yaws. The three years of the seasoning period were now +ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still alive. The +loss was perhaps less than usual where such large batches were bought; but +it demonstrates the strength of the shock involved in the transplantation +from Africa, even after the severities of the middle passage had been +survived and after the weaklings among the survivors had been culled out at +the ports. The outlay for jobbing gangs on Worthy Park rapidly diminished. + +[Footnote 21: The "fatal habit of eating dirt" is described by Thomas +Roughley in his _Planter's Guide_ (London. 1823) pp. 118-120.] + +The list of slaves at the beginning of 1794 is the only one giving full +data as to ages, colors and health as well as occupations. The ages were of +course in many cases mere approximations. The "great house negroes" head +the list, fourteen in number. They comprised four housekeepers, one of +whom however was but eight years old, three waiting boys, a cook, two +washerwomen, two gardeners and a grass carrier, and included nominally +Quadroon Lizette who after having been hired out for several years to Peter +Douglass, the owner of a jobbing gang, was this year manumitted. + +The overseer's house had its proportionate staff of nine domestics with two +seamstresses added, and it was also headquarters both for the nursing corps +and a group engaged in minor industrial pursuits. The former, with a "black +doctor" named Will Morris at its head, included a midwife, two nurses for +the hospital, four (one of them blind) for the new negroes, two for the +children in the day nursery, and one for the suckling babies of the women +in the gangs. The latter comprised three cooks to the gangs, one of whom +had lost a hand; a groom, three hog tenders, of whom one was ruptured, +another "distempered" and the third a ten-year-old boy, and ten aged idlers +including Quashy Prapra and Abba's Moll to mend pads, Yellow's Cuba and +Peg's Nancy to tend the poultry house, and the rest to gather grass and hog +feed. + +Next were listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, to guard against +depredations of men, cattle and rats and against conflagrations which might +sweep the ripening cane-fields and the buildings. All of these were black +but the mulatto foreman, and only six were described as able-bodied. The +disabilities noted were a bad sore leg, a broken back, lameness, partial +blindness, distemper, weakness, and cocobees which was a malady of the +blood. + +A considerable number of the slaves already mentioned were in such +condition that little work might be expected of them. Those completely laid +off were nine superannuated ranging from seventy to eighty-five years old, +three invalids, and three women relieved of work as by law required for +having reared six children each. + +Among the tradesmen, virtually all the blacks were stated to be fit for +field work, but the five mulattoes and the one quadroon, though mostly +youthful and healthy, were described as not fit for the field. There were +eleven carpenters, eight coopers, four sawyers, three masons and twelve +cattlemen, each squad with a foreman; and there were two ratcatchers whose +work was highly important, for the rats swarmed in incredible numbers and +spoiled the cane if left to work their will. A Jamaican author wrote, for +example, that in five or six months on one plantation "not less than nine +and thirty thousand were caught."[22] + +[Footnote 22: William Beckford, _A Discriptive Account of Jamaica_ (London, +1790), I. 55, 56.] + +In the "weeding gang," in which most of the children from five to eight +years old were kept as much for control as for achievement, there were +twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had +borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were +too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of +these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house, +were manumitted in 1795. + +Fifty-five, all new negroes except Darby the foreman, and including Blossom +the infant daughter of one of the women, comprised the Spring Garden squad. +Nearly all of these were twenty or twenty-one years old. The men included +Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume and +Sheridan; the women Spring, Summer, July, Bashfull, Virtue, Frolic, +Gamesome, Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle and Cowslip. Seventeen of this +distinguished company died within the year. + +The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 64 men from nineteen +to sixty years old and 73 women from nineteen to fifty years, though but +four of the women and nine of the men, including Quashy the "head driver" +or foreman, were past forty years. The gang included a "head home wainman," +a "head road wainman," who appears to have been also the sole slave plowman +on the place, a head muleman, three distillers, a boiler, two sugar +potters, and two "sugar guards" for the wagons carrying the crop to port. +All of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied and black. A +considerable number in it were new negroes, but only seven of the whole +died in this year of heaviest mortality. + +The "second gang," employed in a somewhat lighter routine under Sharper as +foreman, comprised 40 women and 27 men ranging from fifteen to sixty years, +all black. While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, four +were ulcerated, one was "inclined to be bloated," one was "very weak," and +Pheba was "healthy but worthless." + +Finally in the third or "small gang," for yet lighter work under Baddy as +driveress with Old Robin as assistant, there were 68 boys and girls, all +black, mostly between twelve and fifteen years old. The draught animals +comprised about 80 mules and 140 oxen. + +Among the 528 slaves all told--284 males and 244 females--74, equally +divided between the sexes, were fifty years old and upwards. If the new +negroes, virtually all of whom were doubtless in early life, be subtracted +from the gross, it appears that one-fifth of the seasoned stock had reached +the half century, and one-eighth were sixty years old and over. This is a +good showing of longevity. + +About eighty of the seasoned women were within the age limits of +childbearing. The births recorded were on an average of nine for each of +the five years covered, which was hardly half as many as might have been +expected under favorable conditions. Special entry was made in 1795 of the +number of children each woman had borne during her life, the number +of these living at the time this record was made, and the number of +miscarriages each woman had had. The total of births thus recorded was 345; +of children then living 159; of miscarriages 75. Old Quasheba and Betty +Madge had each borne fifteen children, and sixteen other women had borne +from six to eleven each. On the other hand, seventeen women of thirty years +and upwards had had no children and no miscarriages. The childbearing +records of the women past middle age ran higher than those of the younger +ones to a surprising degree. Perhaps conditions on Worthy Park had been +more favorable at an earlier period, when the owner and his family may +possibly have been resident there. The fact that more than half of the +children whom these women had borne were dead at the time of the record +comports with the reputation of the sugar colonies for heavy infant +mortality. With births so infrequent and infant deaths so many it may well +appear that the notorious failure of the island-bred stock to maintain its +numbers was not due to the working of the slaves to death. The poor care +of the young children may be attributed largely to the absence of a white +mistress, an absence characteristic of Jamaica plantations. There appears +to have been no white woman resident on Worthy Park during the time of this +record. In 1795 and perhaps in other years the plantation had a contract +for medical service at the rate of L140 a year. + +"Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great Britain Esquire" was the +absentee owner of Worthy Park. His kinsman Rose Price Esquire who was in +active charge was not salaried but may have received a manager's commission +of six per cent, on gross crop sales as contemplated in the laws of the +colony. In addition there were an overseer at L200, later L300, a year, +four bookkeepers at L50 to L60, a white carpenter at L120, and a white +plowman at L56. The overseer was changed three times during the five years +of the record, and the bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. The +bachelor staff was most probably responsible for the mulatto and quadroon +offspring and was doubtless responsible also for the occasional manumission +of a woman or child. + +Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the "drivers" or gang +foremen. Each of these had for example every year a "doubled milled cloth +colored great coat" costing 11$. 6_d_ and a "fine bound hat with girdle and +buckle" costing 10$. 6_d_.As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quart +of rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, four +boilers, two head cattlemen, two head mulemen, the "stoke-hole boatswain," +and the black doctor, and to the foremen respectively of the sawyers, +coopers, blacksmiths, watchmen, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the +head home wainman, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's field +nurse. These allowances totaled about three hundred gallons yearly. But +a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at +Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were recorded of +"rum used for the negroes on the estate." Upon the birth of each child the +mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver dollar. + +No record of whippings appears to have been kept, nor of any offenses +except absconding. Of the runaways, reports were made to the parish vestry +of those lying out at the end of each quarter. At the beginning of the +record there were no runaways and at the end there were only four; but +during 1794 and 1795 there were eight or nine listed in each report, most +of whom were out for but a few months each, but several for a year or two; +and several furthermore absconded a second or third time after returning. +The runaways were heterogeneous in age and occupation, with more old +negroes among them than might have been expected. Most of them were men; +but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, and +the old pad-mender Abba's Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter. A +few of those recovered were returned through the public agency of the +workhouse. Some of the rest may have come back of their own accord. + +In the summer of 1795, when absconding had for some time been too common, +the recaptured runaways and a few other offenders were put for disgrace and +better surveillance into a special "vagabond gang." This comprised Billy +Scott, who was usually a mason and sugar guard, Oxford who as head cooper +had enjoyed a weekly quart of rum, Cesar a sawyer, and Moll the old +pad-mender, along with three men and two women from the main gangs, and +three half-grown boys. The vagabond gang was so wretchedly assorted for +industrial purposes that it was probably soon disbanded and its members +distributed to their customary tasks. For use in marking slaves a branding +iron was inventoried, but in the way of arms there were merely two muskets, +a fowling piece and twenty-four old guns without locks. Evidently no +turbulence was anticipated. Worthy Park bought nearly all of its hardware, +dry goods, drugs and sundries in London, and its herrings for the negroes +and salt pork and beef for the white staff in Cork. Corn was cultivated +between the rows in some of the cane fields on the plantation, and some +guinea-corn was bought from neighbors. The negroes raised their own yams +and other vegetables, and doubtless pigs and poultry as well; and plantains +were likely to be plentiful. + +Every October cloth was issued at the rate of seven yards of osnaburgs, +three of checks, and three of baize for each adult and proportionately for +children. The first was to be made into coats, trousers and frocks, the +second into shirts and waists, the third into bedclothes. The cutting and +sewing were done in the cabins. A hat and a cap were also issued to each +negro old enough to go into the field, and a clasp-knife to each one above +the age of the third gang. From the large purchases of Scotch rugs recorded +it seems probable that these were issued on other occasions than those of +childbirth. As to shoes, however, the record is silent. + +The Irish provisions cost annually about L300, and the English supplies +about L1000, not including such extra outlays as that of L1355 in 1793 for +new stills, worms, and coppers. Local expenditures were probably reckoned +in currency. Converted into sterling, the salary list amounted to about +L500, and the local outlay for medical services, wharfage, and petty +supplies came to a like amount. Taxes, manager's commissions, and the +depreciation of apparatus must have amounted collectively to L800. The +net death-loss of slaves, not including that from the breaking-in of new +negroes, averaged about two and a quarter per cent.; that of the mules and +oxen ten per cent. When reckoned upon the numbers on hand in 1796 when the +plantation with 470 slaves was operating with very little outside help, +these losses, which must be replaced by new purchases if the scale of +output was to be maintained, amounted to about L900. Thus a total of L4000 +sterling is reached as the average current expense in years when no mishaps +occurred. + +The crops during the years of the record averaged 311 hogsheads of sugar, +sixteen hundredweight each, and 133 puncheons of rum, 110 gallons each. +This was about the common average on the island, of two-thirds as many +hogsheads as there were slaves of all ages on a plantation.[23] If the +prices had been those current in the middle of the eighteenth century these +crops would have yielded the proprietor great profits. But at L15 per +hogshead and L10 per puncheon, the prices generally current in the island +in the seventeen-nineties, the gross return was but about L6000 sterling, +and the net earnings of the establishment accordingly not above L2000. The +investment in slaves, mules and oxen was about L28,000, and that in land, +buildings and equipment according to the island authorities, would reach a +like sum.[24] The net earnings in good years were thus less than four per +cent. on the investment; but the liability to hurricanes, earthquakes, +fires, epidemics and mutinies would bring the safe expectations +considerably lower. A mere pestilence which carried off about sixty mules +and two hundred oxen on Worthy Park in 1793-1794 wiped out more than a +year's earnings. + +[Footnote 23: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 433, 439.] + +[Footnote 24: Edwards, _West Indies_, book 5, chap. 3.] + +In the twenty years prior to the beginning of the Worthy Park record more +than one-third of all the sugar plantations in Jamaica had gone through +bankruptcy. It was generally agreed that, within the limits of efficient +operation, the larger an estate was, the better its prospect for net +earnings. But though Worthy Park had more than twice the number of slaves +that the average plantation employed, it was barely paying its way. + +In the West Indies as a whole there was a remarkable repetition of +developments and experiences in island after island, similar to that +which occurred in the North American plantation regions, but even more +pronounced. The career of Barbados was followed rapidly by the other Lesser +Antilles under the English and French flags; these were all exceeded by the +greater scale of Jamaica; she in turn yielded the primacy in sugar to Hayti +only to have that French possession, when overwhelmed by its great negro +insurrection, give the paramount place to the Spanish Porto Rico and Cuba. +In each case the opening of a fresh area under imperial encouragement would +promote rapid immigration and vigorous industry on every scale; the land +would be taken up first in relatively small holdings; the prosperity of the +pioneers would prompt a more systematic husbandry and the consolidation of +estates, involving the replacement of the free small proprietors by slave +gangs; but diminishing fertility and intensifying competition would in the +course of years more than offset the improvement of system. Meanwhile more +pioneers, including perhaps some of those whom the planters had bought out +in the original colonies, would found new settlements; and as these in turn +developed, the older colonies would decline and decay in spite of desperate +efforts by their plantation proprietors to hold their own through the +increase of investments and the improvement of routine.[25] + +[Footnote 25: Herman Merivale, _Colonisation and Colonies_ (London, 1841), +PP. 92,93.] + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE TOBACCO COLONIES + + +The purposes of the Virginia Company of London and of the English public +which gave it sanction were profit for the investors and aggrandizement +for the nation, along with the reduction of pauperism at home and the +conversion of the heathen abroad. For income the original promoters looked +mainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, and +the production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they were +on the alert for unexpected opportunities to be exploited. The following of +the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco +culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At +the outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, +Virginia was launched with varied hopes and vague expectations. The project +was on the knees of the gods, which for a time proved a place of extreme +discomfort and peril. + +The first comers in the spring of 1607, numbering a bare hundred men and +no women, were moved by the spirit of adventure. With a cumbrous and +oppressive government over them, and with no private ownership of land nor +other encouragement for steadygoing thrift, the only chance for personal +gain was through a stroke of discovery. No wonder the loss of time and +strength in futile excursions. No wonder the disheartening reaction in the +malaria-stricken camp of Jamestown. + +A second hundred men arriving early in 1608 found but forty of the first +alive. The combined forces after lading the ships with "gilded dirt" and +cedar logs, were left facing the battle with Indians and disease. The dirt +when it reached London proved valueless, and the cedar, of course, worth +little. The company that summer sent further recruits including two women +and several Poles and Germans to make soap-ashes, glass and pitch--"skilled +workmen from foraine parts which may teach and set ours in the way where we +may set thousands a work in these such like services."[1] At the same time +it instructed the captain of the ship to explore and find either a lump of +gold, the South Sea passage, or some of Raleigh's lost colonists, and it +sent the officials at Jamestown peremptory notice that unless the L2000 +spent on the present supply be met by the proceeds of the ship's return +cargo, the settlers need expect no further aid. The shrewd and redoubtable +Captain John Smith, now president in the colony, opposed the vain +explorings, and sent the council in London a characteristic "rude letter." +The ship, said he, kept nearly all the victuals for its crew, while the +settlers, "the one halfe sicke, the other little better," had as their diet +"a little meale and water, and not sufficient of that." The foreign experts +had been set at their assigned labors; but "it were better to give five +hundred pound a tun for those grosse commodities in Denmarke than send for +them hither till more necessary things be provided. For in over-toyling our +weake and unskilfull bodies to satisfie this desire of present profit we +can scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another.... As yet you +must not looke for any profitable returnes."[2] + +[Footnote 1: Alexander Brown, _The First Republic in America_ (Boston, +1898), p. 68.] + +[Footnote 2: Capt. John Smith, _Works_, Arber ed. (Birmingham, 1884), pp. +442-445. Smith's book, it should be said, is the sole source for this +letter.] + +This unwelcome advice while daunting all mercenary promoters gave spur to +strong-hearted patriots. The prospect of profits was gone; the hope of +an overseas empire survived. The London Company, with a greatly improved +charter, appealed to the public through sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, +and personal canvassing, with such success that subscriptions to its stock +poured in from "lords, knights, gentlemen and others," including the trade +guilds and the town corporations. In lieu of cash dividends the company +promised that after a period of seven years, during which the settlers were +to work on the company's account and any surplus earnings were to be spent +on the colony or funded, a dividend in land would be issued. In this the +settlers were to be embraced as if instead of emigrating each of them had +invested L12 10s. in a share of stock. Several hundred recruits were sent +in 1609, and many more in the following years; but from the successive +governors at Jamestown came continued reports of disease, famine and +prostration, and pleas ever for more men and supplies. The company, bravely +keeping up its race with the death rate, met all demands as best it could. + +To establish a firmer control, Sir Thomas Dale was sent out in 1611 as high +marshal along with Sir Thomas Gates as governor. Both of these were men +of military training, and they carried with them a set of stringent +regulations quite in keeping with their personal proclivities. These rulers +properly regarded their functions as more industrial than political. They +for the first time distributed the colonists into a series of settlements +up and down the river for farming and live-stock tending; they spurred the +willing workers by assigning them three-acre private gardens; and they +mercilessly coerced the laggard. They transformed the colony from a +distraught camp into a group of severely disciplined farms, owned by the +London Company, administered by its officials, and operated partly by its +servants, partly by its tenants who paid rent in the form of labor. That is +to say, Virginia was put upon a schedule of plantation routine, producing +its own food supply and wanting for the beginning of prosperity only a +marketable crop. This was promptly supplied through John Rolfe's experiment +in 1612 in raising tobacco. The English people were then buying annually +some L200,000 worth of that commodity, mainly from the Spanish West Indies, +at prices which might be halved or quartered and yet pay the freight and +yield substantial earnings; and so rapid was the resort to the staple in +Virginia that soon the very market place in Jamestown was planted in it. +The government in fact had to safeguard the food supply by forbidding +anyone to plant tobacco until he had put two acres in grain. + +When the Gates-Dale administration ended, the seven year period from 1609 +was on the point of expiry; but the temptation of earnings from tobacco +persuaded the authorities to delay the land dividend. Samuel Argall, the +new governor, while continuing the stringent discipline, robbed the company +for his own profit; and the news of his misdeeds reaching London in 1618 +discredited the faction in the company which had supported his regime. The +capture of control by the liberal element among the stockholders, led +by Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton, was promptly signalized by +measures for converting Virginia into a commonwealth. A land distribution +was provided on a generous scale, and Sir George Yeardley was dispatched as +governor with instructions to call a representative assembly of the people +to share in the making of laws. The land warrants were issued at the rate +of a hundred acres on each share of stock and a similar amount to each +colonist of the time, to be followed in either case by the grant of a +second hundred acres upon proof that the first had been improved; and fifty +acres additional in reward for the future importation of every laborer. + +While the company continued as before to send colonists on its own account, +notably craftsmen, indigent London children, and young women to become +wives for the bachelor settlers, it now offered special stimulus to its +members to supplement its exertions. To this end it provided that groups +of its stockholders upon organizing themselves into sub-companies or +partnerships might consolidate their several grants into large units called +particular plantations; and it ordered that "such captaines or leaders of +perticulerr plantations that shall goe there to inhabite by vertue of their +graunts and plant themselves, their tenants and servants in Virginia, +shall have liberty till a forme of government be here settled for them, +associatinge unto them divers of the gravest and discreetes of their +companies, to make orders, ordinances and constitutions for the better +orderinge and dyrectinge of their servants and buisines, provided they be +not repugnant to the lawes of England."[3] + +[Footnote 3: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. +(Washington, 1906), I, 303.] + +To embrace this opportunity some fifty grants for particular plantations +were taken out during the remaining life of the London Company. Among them +were Southampton Hundred and Martin's Hundred, to each of which two or +three hundred settlers were sent prior to 1620,[4] and Berkeley Hundred +whose records alone are available. The grant for this last was issued +in February, 1619, to a missionary enthusiast, George Thorpe, and his +partners, whose collective holdings of London Company stock amounted to +thirty-five shares. To them was given and promised land in proportion to +stock and settlers, together with a bonus of 1500 acres in view of their +project for converting the Indians. Their agent in residence was as usual +vested with public authority over the dwellers on the domain, limited +only by the control of the Virginia government in military matters and in +judicial cases on appeal.[5] After delays from bad weather, the initial +expedition set sail in September comprising John Woodleaf as captain and +thirty-four other men of diverse trades bound to service for terms ranging +from three to eight years at varying rates of compensation. Several of +these were designated respectively as officers of the guard, keeper of the +stores, caretaker of arms and implements, usher of the hall, and clerk +of the kitchen. Supplies of provisions and equipment were carried, and +instructions in detail for the building of houses, the fencing of land, +the keeping of watch, and the observances of religion. Next spring the +settlement, which had been planted near the mouth of the Appomattox River, +was joined by Thorpe himself, and in the following autumn by William Tracy +who had entered the partnership and now carried his own family together +with a preacher and some forty servants. Among these were nine women and +the two children of a man who had gone over the year before. As giving +light upon indented servitude in the period it may be noted that many of +those sent to Berkeley Hundred were described as "gentlemen," and that five +of them within the first year besought their masters to send them each +two indented servants for their use and at their expense. Tracy's vessel +however was too small to carry all whom it was desired to send. It was in +fact so crowded with plantation supplies that Tracy wrote on the eve of +sailing: "I have throw out mani things of my own yet is ye midill and upper +extre[m]li pestered so that ouer men will not lie like men and ye mareners +hath not rome to stir God is abel in ye gretest weknes to helpe we will +trust to marsi for he must help be yond hope." Fair winds appear to have +carried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly took +charge of the plantation, displacing Woodleaf whose services had given +dissatisfaction. Beyond this point the records are extremely scant; but +it may be gathered that the plantation was wrecked and most of its +inhabitants, including Thorpe, slain in the great Indian massacre of 1622. +The restoration of the enterprise was contemplated in an after year, but +eventually the land was sold to other persons. + +[Footnote 4: _Records of the Virginia Company of London_, Kingsbury ed. +(Washington, 1906), I, 350.] + +[Footnote 5: The records of this enterprise (the Smyth of Nibley papers) +have been printed in the New York Public Library _Bulletin_, III, 160-171, +208-233, 248-258, 276-295.] + +The fate of Berkeley Hundred was at the same time the fate of most others +of the same sort; and the extinction of the London Company in 1624 ended +the granting of patents on that plan. The owners of the few surviving +particular plantations, furthermore, found before long that ownership by +groups of absentees was poorly suited to the needs of the case, and that +the exercise of public jurisdiction was of more trouble than it was worth. +The particular plantation system proved accordingly but an episode, yet it +furnished a transition, which otherwise might not readily have been found, +from Virginia the plantation of the London Company, to Virginia the colony +of private plantations and farms. When settlement expanded afresh after the +Indians were driven away many private estates gradually arose to follow the +industrial routine of those which had been called particular. + +The private plantations were hampered in their development by dearth of +capital and labor and by the extremely low prices of tobacco which began at +the end of the sixteen-twenties as a consequence of overproduction. But +by dint of good management and the diversification of their industry the +exceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried. +Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirty +years standing," whose establishment was at Blunt Point on the lower James, +it was written in 1648: "He hath a fine house and all things answerable to +it; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; he +keeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, hath +eight shoemakers employed in this trade, hath forty negroe servants, brings +them up to trades in his house: he yeerly sowes abundance of wheat, barley, +etc. The wheat he selleth at four shillings the bushell; kills store of +beeves, and sells them to victuall the ships when they come thither; hath +abundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poltery. He +married the daughter of Sir Tho. Hinton, and in a word, keeps a good +house, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia. He is worthy of much +honour."[6] Many other planters were thriving more modestly, most of them +giving nearly all their attention to the one crop. The tobacco output was +of course increasing prodigiously. The export from Virginia in 1619 had +amounted to twenty thousand pounds; that from Virginia and Maryland in 1664 +aggregated fifty thousand hogsheads of about five hundred pounds each.[7] + +[Footnote 6: _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649), reprinted +in Peter Force _Tracts_, vol. II.] + +[Footnote 7: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth +Century_ (New York, 1896), I, 391.] + +The labor problem was almost wholly that of getting and managing bondsmen. +Land in the colony was virtually to be had for the taking; and in general +no freemen arriving in the colony would engage for such wages as employers +could afford to pay. Workers must be imported. Many in England were willing +to come, and more could be persuaded or coerced, if their passage were paid +and employment assured. To this end indentured servitude had already been +inaugurated by the London Company as a modification of the long used system +of apprenticeship. And following that plan, ship captains brought hundreds, +then thousands of laborers a year and sold their indentures to the planters +either directly or through dealers in such merchandize. The courts took +the occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts to +deportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisoners +during the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose the +supply was further swelled by the agency of professional kidnappers. + +The bondage varied as to its terms, with two years apparently the minimum. +The compensation varied also from mere transportation and sustenance to a +payment in advance and a stipulation for outfit in clothing, foodstuffs +and diverse equipment at the end of service. The quality of redemptioners +varied from the very dregs of society to well-to-do apprentice planters; +but the general run was doubtless fairly representative of the English +working classes. Even the convicts under the terrible laws of that century +were far from all being depraved. This labor in all its grades, however, +had serious drawbacks. Its first cost was fairly heavy; it was liable to an +acclimating fever with a high death rate; its term generally expired not +long after its adjustment and training were completed; and no sooner was +its service over than it set up for itself, often in tobacco production, to +compete with its former employers and depress the price of produce. If the +plantation system were to be perpetuated an entirely different labor supply +must be had. + +"About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty +negars." Thus wrote John Rolfe in a report of happenings in 1619;[8] and +thus, after much antiquarian dispute, the matter seems to stand as to the +first bringing of negroes to Virginia. The man-of-war, or more accurately +the privateer, had taken them from a captured slaver, and it seems to have +sold them to the colonial government itself, which in turn sold them to +private settlers. At the beginning of 1625, when a census of the colony was +made,[9] the negroes, then increased to twenty-three in a total population +of 1232 of which about one-half were white servants, were distributed in +seven localities along the James River. In 1630 a second captured cargo was +sold in the colony, and from 1635 onward small lots were imported nearly +every year.[10] Part of these came from England, part from New Netherland +and most of the remainder doubtless from the West Indies. In 1649 Virginia +was reckoned to have some three hundred negroes mingled with its fifteen +thousand whites.[11] After two decades of a somewhat more rapid importation +Governor Berkeley estimated the gross population in 1671 at forty thousand, +including six thousand white servants and two thousand negro slaves.[12] +Ere this there was also a small number of free negroes. But not until +near the end of the century, when the English government had restricted +kidnapping, when the Virginia assembly had forbidden the bringing in of +convicts, and when the direct trade from Guinea had reached considerable +dimensions, did the negroes begin to form the bulk of the Virginia +plantation gangs. + +[Footnote 8: John Smith _Works_, Arber ed., p. 541.] + +[Footnote 9: Tabulated in the _Virginia Magazine_, VII, 364-367.] + +[Footnote 10: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 72-77.] + +[Footnote 11: _A New Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649).] + +[Footnote 12: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, II, 515.] + +Thus for two generations the negroes were few, they were employed alongside +the white servants, and in many cases were members of their masters' +households. They had by far the best opportunity which any of their race +had been given in America to learn the white men's ways and to adjust +the lines of their bondage into as pleasant places as might be. Their +importation was, for the time, on but an experimental scale, and even their +legal status was during the early decades indefinite. + +The first comers were slaves in the hands of their maritime sellers; but +they were not fully slaves in the hands of their Virginian buyers, for +there was neither law nor custom then establishing the institution of +slavery in the colony. The documents of the times point clearly to a vague +tenure. In the county court records prior to 1661 the negroes are called +negro servants or merely negroes--never, it appears, definitely slaves. A +few were expressly described as servants for terms of years, and others +were conceded property rights of a sort incompatible with the institution +of slavery as elaborated in later times. Some of the blacks were in fact +liberated by the courts as having served out the terms fixed either by +their indentures or by the custom of the country. By the middle of the +century several had become free landowners, and at least one of them owned +a negro servant who went to court for his freedom but was denied it because +he could not produce the indenture which he claimed to have possessed. +Nevertheless as early as the sixteen-forties the holders of negroes were +falling into the custom of considering them, and on occasion selling them +along with the issue of the females, as servants for life and perpetuity. +The fact that negroes not bound for a term were coming to be appraised as +high as L30, while the most valuable white redemptioners were worth not +above L15 shows also the tendency toward the crystallization of slavery +before any statutory enactments declared its existence.[13] + +[Footnote 13: The substance of this paragraph is drawn mainly from the +illuminating discussion of J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ +(Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XXXI, no. 3, Baltimore, 1913), pp. +24-35.] + +Until after the middle of the century the laws did not discriminate in any +way between the races. The tax laws were an index of the situation. The +act of 1649, for example, confined the poll tax to male inhabitants of all +sorts above sixteen years old. But the act of 1658 added imported female +negroes, along with Indian female servants; and this rating of negro +women as men for tax purposes was continued thenceforward as a permanent +practice. A special act of 1668, indeed, gave sharp assertion to the policy +of using taxation as a token of race distinction: "Whereas some doubts have +arisen whether negro women set free were still to be accompted tithable +according to a former act, it is declared by this grand assembly that +negro women, though permitted to enjoy their freedome yet ought not in all +respects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and impunities +of the English, and are still liable to the payment of taxes."[14] + +[Footnote 14: W.W. Hening, _Statutes at Large of Virginia_, I, 361, 454; +II, 267.] + +As to slavery itself, the earliest laws giving it mention did not establish +the institution but merely recognized it, first indirectly then directly, +as in existence by force of custom. The initial act of this series, passed +in 1656, promised the Indian tribes that when they sent hostages the +Virginians would not "use them as slaves."[15] The next, an act of +1660, removing impediments to trade by the Dutch and other foreigners, +contemplated specifically their bringing in of "negro slaves."[16] The +third, in the following year, enacted that if any white servants ran away +in company with "any negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction by +addition of time," the white fugitives must serve for the time of the +negroes' absence in addition to suffering the usual penalties on their own +score.[17] A negro whose time of service could not be extended must needs +have been a servant for life--in other words a slave. Then in 1662 it was +enacted that "whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by any +Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, ... all children born +in this colony shall be bond or free only according to the condition of the +mother."[18] Thus within six years from the first mention of slaves in the +Virginia laws, slavery was definitely recognized and established as the +hereditary legal status of such negroes and mulattoes as might be held +therein. Eighteen years more elapsed before a distinctive police law for +slaves was enacted; but from 1680 onward the laws for their control were as +definite and for the time being virtually as stringent as those which in +the same period were being enacted in Barbados and Jamaica. + +[Footnote 15: _Ibid_., I, 396.] + +[Footnote 16: _Ibid_., 540.] + +[Footnote 17: T Hening, II, 26.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., 170.] + +In the first decade or two after the London Company's end the plantation +and farm clearings broke the Virginian wilderness only in a narrow line on +either bank of the James River from its mouth to near the present site of +Richmond, and in a small district on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. +Virtually all the settlers were then raising tobacco, all dwelt at the +edge of navigable water, and all were neighbors to the Indians. As further +decades passed the similar shores of the parallel rivers to the northward, +the York, then the Rappahannock and the Potomac, were occupied in a similar +way, though with an increasing predominance of large landholdings. This +broadened the colony and gave it a shape conducive to more easy frontier +defence. It also led the way to an eventual segregation of industrial +pursuits, for the tidewater peninsulas were gradually occupied more or less +completely by the planters; while the farmers of less estate, weaned from +tobacco by its fall in price, tended to move west and south to new areas on +the mainland, where they dwelt in self-sufficing democratic neighborhoods, +and formed incidentally a buffer between the plantations on the seaboard +and the Indians round about. + +With the lapse of years the number of planters increased, partly through +the division of estates, partly through the immigration of propertied +Englishmen, and partly through the rise of exceptional yeomen to the +planting estate. The farmers increased with still greater speed; for the +planters in recruiting their gangs of indented laborers were serving +constantly as immigration agents and as constantly the redemptioners upon +completing their terms were becoming yeomen, marrying and multiplying. +Meanwhile the expansion of Maryland was extending an identical regime of +planters and farmers from the northern bank of the Potomac round the head +of the Chesapeake all the way to the eastern shore settlements of Virginia. + +In Maryland the personal proprietorship of Lord Baltimore and his desire to +found a Catholic haven had no lasting effect upon the industrial and social +development. The geographical conditions were so like those in Virginia and +the adoption of her system so obviously the road to success that no other +plans were long considered. Even the few variations attempted assimilated +themselves more or less promptly to the regime of the older colony. The +career of the manor system is typical. The introduction of that medieval +regime was authorized by the charter for Maryland and was provided for in +turn by the Lord Proprietor's instructions to the governor. Every grant of +one thousand, later two thousand acres, was to be made a manor, with its +appropriate court to settle differences between lord and tenant, to adjudge +civil cases between tenants where the issues involved did not exceed the +value of two pounds sterling, and to have cognizance of misdemeanors +committed on the manor. The fines and other profits were to go to the +manorial lord. + +Many of these grants were made, and in a few instances the manorial courts +duly held their sessions. For St. Clement's Manor, near the mouth of the +Potomac, for example, court records between 1659 and 1672 are extant. John +Ryves, steward of Thomas Gerard the proprietor, presided; Richard +Foster assisted as the elected bailiff; and the classified freeholders, +lease-holders, "essoines" and residents served as the "jury and homages." +Characteristic findings were "that Samuell Harris broke the peace with a +stick"; that John Mansell illegally entertained strangers; that land lines +"are at this present unperfect and very obscure"; that a Cheptico Indian +had stolen a shirt from Edward Turner's house, for which he is duly fined +"if he can be knowne"; "that the lord of the mannor hath not provided a +paire of stocks, pillory and ducking stoole--Ordered that these instruments +of justice be provided by the next court by a general contribution +throughout the manor"; that certain freeholders had failed to appear, "to +do their suit at the lord's court, wherefore they are amerced each man 50l. +of tobacco to the lord"; that Joshua Lee had injured "Jno. Hoskins his +hoggs by setting his doggs on them and tearing their eares and other hurts, +for which he is fined 100l. of tobacco and caske"; "that upon the death of +Mr. Robte Sly there is a reliefe due to the lord and that Mr. Gerard Sly is +his next heire, who hath sworne fealty accordingly,"[19] + +[Footnote 19: John Johnson, _Old Maryland Manors_ (Johns Hopkins University +_Studies_, I, no, 7, Baltimore, 1883), pp. 31-38.] + +St. Clement's was probably almost unique in its perseverance as a true +manor; and it probably discarded its medieval machinery not long after the +end of the existing record. In general, since public land was to be had +virtually free in reward for immigration whether in freedom or service, +most of the so-called manors doubtless procured neither leaseholders nor +essoines nor any other sort of tenants, and those of them which survived as +estates found their salvation in becoming private plantations with servant +and slave gangs tilling their tobacco fields. In short, the Maryland manors +began and ended much as the Virginia particular plantations had done before +them. Maryland on the whole assumed the features of her elder sister. Her +tobacco was of lower grade, partly because of her long delay in providing +public inspection; her people in consequence were generally less +prosperous, her plantations fewer in proportion to her farms, and her +labor supply more largely of convicts and other white servants and +correspondingly less of negroes. But aside from these variations in degree +the developments and tendencies in the one were virtually those of the +other. + +Before the end of the seventeenth century William Fitzhugh of Virginia +wrote that his plantations were being worked by "fine crews" of negroes, +the majority of whom were natives of the colony. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges +owned 108 slaves, John Carter 106, Ralph Wormeley 91, Robert Beverly 42, +Nathaniel Bacon, Sr., 40, and various other proprietors proportionate +numbers.[20] The conquest of the wilderness was wellnigh complete on +tidewater, and the plantation system had reached its full type for +the Chesapeake latitudes. Broad forest stretches divided most of the +plantations from one another and often separated the several fields on +the same estate; but the cause of this was not so much the paucity of +population as the character of the land and the prevalent industry. The +sandy expanses, and the occasional belts of clay likewise, had but a +surface fertility, and the cheapness of land prevented the conservation of +the soil. Hence the fields when rapidly exhausted by successive cropping in +tobacco were as a rule abandoned to broomsedge and scrub timber while new +and still newer grounds were cleared and cropped. Each estate therefore, if +its owner expected it to last a lifetime, must comprise an area in forestry +much larger than that at any one time in tillage. The great reaches of the +bay and the deep tidal rivers, furthermore, afforded such multitudinous +places of landing for ocean-going ships that all efforts to modify the +wholly rural condition of the tobacco colonies by concentrating settlement +were thwarted. It is true that Norfolk and Baltimore grew into consequence +during the eighteenth century; but the one throve mainly on the trade of +landlocked North Carolina, and the other on that of Pennsylvania. Not +until the plantation area had spread well into the piedmont hinterland did +Richmond and her sister towns near the falls on the rivers begin to focus +Virginia and Maryland trade; and even they had little influence upon life +on the tidewater peninsulas. + +[Footnote 20: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 88.] + +The third tobacco-producing colony, North Carolina, was the product of +secondary colonization. Virginia's expansion happened to send some of +her people across the boundary, where upon finding themselves under the +jurisdiction of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina they took pains to keep +that authority upon a strictly nominal basis. The first comers, about 1660, +and most of those who followed, were and continued to be small farmers; but +in the course of decades a considerable number of plantations arose in the +fertile districts about Albemarle Sound. Nearly everywhere in the lowlands, +however, the land was too barren for any distinct prosperity. The +settlements were quite isolated, the communications very poor, and the +social tone mostly that of the backwoods frontier. An Anglican missionary +when describing his own plight there in 1711 discussed the industrial +regime about him: "Men are generally of all trades and women the like +within their spheres, except some who are the posterity of old planters +and have great numbers of slaves who understand most handicraft. Men are +generally carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, coopers, butchers, tanners, +shoemakers, tallow-chandlers, watermen and what not; women, soap-makers, +starch-makers, dyers, etc. He or she that cannot do all these things, or +hath not slaves that can, over and above all the common occupations of both +sexes, will have but a bad time of it; for help is not to be had at any +rate, every one having business enough of his own. This makes tradesmen +turn planters, and these become tradesmen. No society one with another, but +all study to live by their own hands, of their own produce; and what they +can spare goes for foreign goods. Nay, many live on a slender diet to buy +rum, sugar and molasses, with other such like necessaries, which are sold +at such a rate that the planter here is but a slave to raise a provision +for other colonies, and dare not allow himself to partake of his own +creatures, except it be the corn of the country in hominy bread."[21] Some +of the farmers and probably all the planters raised tobacco according to +the methods prevalent in Virginia. Some also made tar for sale from the +abounding pine timber; but with most of the families intercourse with +markets must have been at an irreducible minimum. + +[Footnote 21: Letter of Rev. John Urmstone, July 7, 1711, to the secretary +of the Society for Propagating the Gospel, printed in F.L. Hawks, _History +of North Carolina_ (Fayetteville, N.C., 1857, 1858), II, 215, 216.] + +Tobacco culture, while requiring severe exertion only at a few crises, +involved a long painstaking routine because of the delicacy of the plant +and the difficulty of producing leaf of good quality, whether of the +original varieties, oronoko and sweet-scented, or of the many others later +developed. The seed must be sown in late winter or early spring in a +special bed of deep forest mold dressed with wood ashes; and the fields +must be broken and laid off by shallow furrows into hills three or four +feet apart by the time the seedlings were grown to a finger's length. Then +came the first crisis. During or just after an April, May or June rain the +young plants must be drawn carefully from their beds, distributed in the +fields, and each plant set in its hill. Able-bodied, expert hands could set +them at the rate of thousands a day; and every nerve must be strained for +the task's completion before the ground became dry enough to endanger the +seedlings' lives. Then began a steady repetition of hoeings and plowings, +broken by the rush after a rain to replant the hills whose first plants had +died or grown twisted. Then came also several operations of special tedium. +Each plant at the time of forming its flower bud must be topped at a height +to leave a specified number of leaves growing on the stalk, and each stalk +must have the suckers growing at the base of the leaf-stems pulled off; +and the under side of every leaf must be examined twice at least for the +destruction of the horn-worms. These came each year in two successive +armies or "gluts," the one when the plants were half grown, the other when +they were nearly ready for harvest. When the crop began to turn yellow the +stalks must be cut off close to the ground, and after wilting carried to +a well ventilated tobacco house and there hung speedily for curing. Each +stalk must hang at a proper distance from its neighbor, attached to laths +laid in tiers on the joists. There the crop must stay for some months, +with the windows open in dry weather and closed in wet. Finally came the +striking, sorting and prizing in weather moist enough to make the leaves +pliable. Part of the gang would lower the stalks to the floor, where the +rest working in trios would strip them, the first stripper taking the +culls, the second the bright leaves, the third the remaining ones of dull +color. Each would bind his takings into "hands" of about a quarter of a +pound each and throw them into assorted piles. In the packing or "prizing" +a barefoot man inside the hogshead would lay the bundles in courses, +tramping them cautiously but heavily. Then a second hogshead, without a +bottom, would be set atop the first and likewise filled, and then perhaps +a third, when the whole stack would be put under blocks and levers +compressing the contents into the one hogshead at the bottom, which when +headed up was ready for market. Oftentimes a crop was not cured enough for +prizing until the next crop had been planted. Meanwhile the spare time of +the gang was employed in clearing new fields, tending the subsidiary crops, +mending fences, and performing many other incidental tasks. With some +exaggeration an essayist wrote, "The whole circle of the year is one +scene of bustle and toil, in which tobacco claims a constant and chief +share."[22] + +[Footnote 22: C.W. Gooch, "Prize Essay on Agriculture in Virginia," in the +_Lynchburg Virginian_, July 14, 1833. More detailed is W.W. Bowie, "Prize +Essay on the Cultivation and Management of Tobacco," in the U.S. Patent +Office _Report_, 1849-1850, pp. 318-324. E.R. Billings, _Tobacco_ +(Hartford, 1875) is a good general treatise.] + +The general scale of slaveholdings in the tobacco districts cannot +be determined prior to the close of the American Revolution; but the +statistics then available may be taken as fairly representative for the +eighteenth century at large. A state census taken in certain Virginia +counties in 1782-1783[23] permits the following analysis for eight of them +selected for their large proportions of slaves. These counties, Amelia, +Hanover, Lancaster, Middlesex, New Kent, Richmond, Surry and Warwick, are +scattered through the Tidewater and the lower Piedmont. For each one of +their citizens, fifteen altogether, who held upwards of one hundred slaves, +there were approximately three who had from 50 to 99; seven with from 30 to +49; thirteen with from 20 to 29; forty with from 10 to 19; forty with from +5 to 9; seventy with from 1 to 4; and sixty who had none. In the three +chief plantation counties of Maryland, viz. Ann Arundel, Charles, and +Prince George, the ratios among the slaveholdings of the several scales, +according to the United States census of 1790, were almost identical +with those just noted in the selected Virginia counties, but the +non-slaveholders were nearly twice as numerous in proportion. In all these +Virginia and Maryland counties the average holding ranged between 8.5 +and 13 slaves. In the other districts in both commonwealths, where the +plantation system was not so dominant, the average slaveholding was +smaller, of course, and the non-slaveholders more abounding. + +[Footnote 23: Printed in lieu of the missing returns of the first U.S. +census, in _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States: +Virginia_ (Washington, 1908).] + +The largest slaveholding in Maryland returned in the census of 1790 was +that of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, comprising 316 slaves. Among the +largest reported in Virginia in 1782-1783 were those of John Tabb, Amelia +County, 257; William Allen, Sussex County, 241; George Chewning, 224, and +Thomas Nelson, 208, in Hanover County; Wilson N. Gary, Fluvanna County, +200; and George Washington, Fairfax County, 188. Since the great planters +occasionally owned several scattered plantations it may be that the +censuses reported some of the slaves under the names of the overseers +rather than under those of the owners; but that such instances were +probably few is indicated by the fact that the holdings of Chewning and +Nelson above noted were each listed by the census takers in several +parcels, with the names of owners and overseers both given. + +The great properties were usually divided, even where the lands lay in +single tracts, into several plantations for more convenient operation, each +under a separate overseer or in some cases under a slave foreman. If the +working squads of even the major proprietors were of but moderate scale, +those in the multitude of minor holdings were of course lesser still. On +the whole, indeed, slave industry was organized in smaller units by far +than most writers, whether of romance or history, would have us believe. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE RICE COAST + + +The impulse for the formal colonization of Carolina came from Barbados, +which by the time of the Restoration was both overcrowded and torn with +dissension. Sir John Colleton, one of the leading planters in that little +island, proposed to several of his powerful Cavalier friends in England +that they join him in applying for a proprietary charter to the vacant +region between Virginia and Florida, with a view of attracting Barbadians +and any others who might come. In 1663 accordingly the "Merry Monarch" +issued the desired charter to the eight applicants as Lords Proprietors. +They were the Duke of Albemarle, the Earl of Clarendon, Earl Craven, Lord +Ashley (afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury), Lord Berkeley, Sir George +Carteret, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir John Colleton. Most of these had no +acquaintance with America, and none of them had knowledge of Carolina or +purpose of going thither. They expected that the mere throwing open of the +region under their distinguished patronage would bring settlers in a rush; +and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offering +lands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popular +self-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlement +at the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedingly +barren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile in +the more southerly region nothing was done beyond exploring the shore. + +Finding their passive policy of no avail, the Lords Proprietors bestirred +themselves in 1669 to the extent of contributing several hundred pounds +each toward planting a colony on their southward coast. At the same time +they adopted the "fundamental constitutions" which John Locke had framed +for the province. These contemplated land grants in huge parcels to a +provincial nobility, and a cumbrous oligarchical government with a minimum +participation of popular representatives. The grandiloquent feudalism of +the scheme appealed so strongly to the aristocratic Lords Proprietors +that in spite of their usual acumen in politics they were blinded to its +conflicts with their charter and to its utter top-heaviness. They rewarded +Locke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with it +a grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to the +fundamental constitutions, notwithstanding repeated rejections of them by +the colonists. + +The fund of 1669 was used in planting what proved a permanent settlement of +English and Barbadians on the shores of Charleston Harbor. Thereafter the +Lords Proprietors relapsed into passiveness, commissioning a new governor +now and then and occasionally scolding the colonists for disobedience. The +progress of settlement was allowed to take what course it might. + +The fundamental constitutions recognized the institution of negro slavery, +and some of the first Barbadians may have carried slaves with them +to Carolina. But in the early decades Indian trading, lumbering and +miscellaneous farming were the only means of livelihood, none of which gave +distinct occasion for employing negroes. The inhabitants, furthermore, had +no surplus income with which to buy slaves. The recruits who continued to +come from the West Indies doubtless brought some blacks for their service; +but the Huguenot exiles from France, who comprised the chief other +streamlet of immigration, had no slaves and little money. Most of the +people were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows. The Huguenots +in particular, settling mainly in the interior on the Cooper and Santee +Rivers, labored with extraordinary diligence and overcame the severest +handicaps. That many of the settlers whether from France or the West Indies +were of talented and sturdy stock is witnessed by the mention of the family +names of Legare, Laurens, Marion and Ravenel among the Huguenots, Drayton, +Elliot, Gibbes and Middleton among the Barbadians, Lowndes and Rawlins +from St. Christopher's, and Pinckney from Jamaica. Some of the people were +sluggards, of course, but the rest, heterogeneous as they were, were living +and laboring as best they might, trying such new projects as they could, +building a free government in spite of the Lords Proprietors, and awaiting +the discovery of some staple resource from which prosperity might be won. + +Among the crops tried was rice, introduced from Madagascar by Landgrave +Thomas Smith about 1694, which after some preliminary failures proved so +great a success that from about the end of the seventeenth century its +production became the absorbing concern. Now slaves began to be imported +rapidly. An official account of the colony in 1708[1] reckoned the +population at about 3500 whites, of whom 120 were indentured servants, 4100 +negro slaves, and 1400 Indians captured in recent wars and held for the +time being in a sort of slavery. Within the preceding five years, while the +whites had been diminished by an epidemic, the negroes had increased by +about 1,100. The negroes were governed under laws modeled quite closely +upon the slave code of Barbados, with the striking exception that in this +period of danger from Spanish invasion most of the slave men were required +by law to be trained in the use of arms and listed as an auxiliary militia. + +[Footnote 1: Text printed in Edward McCrady, _South Carolina under the +Proprietary Government_ (New York, 1897). pp. 477-481.] + +During the rest of the colonial period the production of rice advanced at +an accelerating rate and the slave population increased in proportion, +while the whites multiplied somewhat more slowly. Thus in 1724 the whites +were estimated at 14,000, the slaves at 32,000, and the rice export was +about 4000 tons; in 1749 the whites were said to be nearly 25,000, the +slaves at least 39,000, and the rice export some 14,000 tons, valued at +nearly L100,000 sterling;[2] and in 1765 the whites were about 40,000, the +slaves about 90,000, and the rice export about 32,000 tons, worth some +L225,000.[3] Meanwhile the rule of the Lords Proprietors had been replaced +for the better by that of the crown, with South Carolina politically +separated from her northern sister; and indigo had been introduced as a +supplementary staple. The Charleston district was for several decades +perhaps the most prosperous area on the continent. + +[Footnote 2: Governor Glen, in B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of +South Carolina_ (New York, 1836), II, 218, 234, 266.] + +[Footnote 3: McCrady, _South Carolina under the Royal Government_ (New +York, 1899), pp. 389, 390, 807.] + +While rice culture did not positively require inundation, it was +facilitated by the periodical flooding of the fields, a practice which was +introduced into the colony about 1724. The best lands for this purpose were +level bottoms with a readily controllable water supply adjacent. During +most of the colonial period the main recourse was to the inland swamps, +which could be flooded only from reservoirs of impounded rain or brooks. +The frequent shortage of water in this regime made the flooding irregular +and necessitated many hoeings of the crop. Furthermore, the dearth of +watersheds within reach of the great cypress swamps on the river borders +hampered the use of these which were the most fertile lands in the colony. +Beginning about 1783 there was accordingly a general replacement of the +reservoir system by the new one of tide-flowing.[4] For this method tracts +were chosen on the flood-plains of streams whose water was fresh but whose +height was controlled by the tide. The land lying between the levels of +high and low tide was cleared, banked along the river front and on the +sides, elaborately ditched for drainage, and equipped with "trunks" or +sluices piercing the front embankment. On a frame above either end of each +trunk a door was hung on a horizontal pivot and provided with a ratchet. +When the outer door was raised above the mouth of the trunk and the inner +door was lowered, the water in the stream at high tide would sluice through +and flood the field, whereas at low tide the water pressure from the land +side would shut the door and keep the flood in. But when the elevation of +the doors was reversed the tide would be kept out and at low tide any water +collected in the ditches from rain or seepage was automatically drained +into the river. Occasional cross embankments divided the fields for greater +convenience of control. The tide-flow system had its own limitations and +handicaps. Many of the available tracts were so narrow that the cost of +embankment was very high in proportion to the area secured; and hurricanes +from oceanward sometimes raised the streams until they over-topped the +banks and broke them. If these invading waters were briny the standing crop +would be killed and the soil perhaps made useless for several years until +fresh water had leached out the salt. At many places, in fact, the water +for the routine flowing of the crop had to be inspected and the time +awaited when the stream was not brackish. + +[Footnote 4: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1809), +II, 201-206.] + +Economy of operation required cultivation in fairly large units. Governor +Glen wrote about 1760, "They reckon thirty slaves a proper number for a +rice plantation, and to be tended by one overseer."[5] Upon the resort to +tide-flowing the scale began to increase. For example, Sir James Wright, +governor of Georgia, had in 1771 eleven plantations on the Savannah, +Ogeechee and Canoochee Rivers, employing from 33 to 72 slaves each, +the great majority of whom were working hands.[6] At the middle of the +nineteenth century the single plantation of Governor Aiken on Jehossee +Island, South Carolina, of which more will be said in another chapter, had +some seven hundred slaves of all ages. + +[Footnote 5: Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, 202.] + +[Footnote 6: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, p. 445.] + +In spite of many variations in the details of cultivation, the tide-flow +system led to a fairly general standard of routine. After perhaps a +preliminary breaking of the soil in the preceding fall, operations began in +the early spring with smoothing the fields and trenching them with narrow +hoes into shallow drills about three inches wide at the bottom and twelve +or fourteen inches apart. In these between March and May the seed rice was +carefully strewn and the water at once let on for the "sprout flow." About +a week later the land was drained and kept so until the plants appeared +plentifully above ground. Then a week of "point flow" was followed by a +fortnight of dry culture in which the spaces between the rows were lightly +hoed and the weeds amidst the rice pulled up. Then came the "long flow" +for two or three weeks, followed by more vigorous hoeing, and finally +the "lay-by flow" extending for two or three months until the crop, then +standing shoulder high and thick with bending heads, was ready for harvest. +The flowings served a triple purpose in checking the weeds and grass, +stimulating the rice, and saving the delicate stalks from breakage and +matting by storms. + +A curious item in the routine just before the grain was ripe was the +guarding of the crop from destruction by rice birds. These bobolinks timed +their southward migration so as to descend upon the fields in myriads when +the grain was "in the milk." At that stage the birds, clinging to the +stalks, could squeeze the substance from within each husk by pressure of +the beak. Negroes armed with guns were stationed about the fields with +instructions to fire whenever a drove of the birds alighted nearby. This +fusillade checked but could not wholly prevent the bobolink ravages. To +keep the gunners from shattering the crop itself they were generally given +charges of powder only; but sufficient shot was issued to enable the guards +to kill enough birds for the daily consumption of the plantation. When +dressed and broiled they were such fat and toothsome morsels that in their +season other sorts of meat were little used. + +For the rice harvest, beginning early in September, as soon as a field was +drained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cutting +a swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high to +sustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day's +drying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a brief +curing. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followed +the tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. +In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail for +threshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off the +husk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "rice +flour" and broken grain, and barreled for market.[7] + +[Footnote 7: The best descriptions of the rice industry are Edmund Ruffin, +_Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ (Columbia, S.C. 1843); and R.F.W. +Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ (Charleston, 1854), which latter is +printed also in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615.] + +The ditches and pools in and about the fields of course bred swarms of +mosquitoes which carried malaria to all people subject. Most of the whites +were afflicted by that disease in the warmer half of the year, but the +Africans were generally immune. Negro labor was therefore at such a premium +that whites were virtually never employed on the plantations except as +overseers and occasionally as artisans. In colonial times the planters, +except the few quite wealthy ones who had town houses in Charleston, lived +on their places the year round; but at the close of the eighteenth century +they began to resort in summer to "pine land" villages within an hour or +two's riding distance from their plantations. In any case the intercourse +between the whites and blacks was notably less than in the tobacco region, +and the progress of the negroes in civilization correspondingly +slighter. The plantations were less of homesteads and more of business +establishments; the race relations, while often cordial, were seldom +intimate. + +The introduction of indigo culture was achieved by one of America's +greatest women, Eliza Lucas, afterward the wife of Charles Pinckney +(chief-justice of the province) and mother of the two patriot statesmen +Thomas and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Her father, the governor of the +British island of Antigua, had been prompted by his wife's ill health +to settle his family in South Carolina, where the three plantations he +acquired near Charleston were for several years under his daughter's +management. This girl while attending her father's business found time to +keep up her music and her social activities, to teach a class of young +negroes to read, and to carry on various undertakings in economic botany. +In 1741 her experiments with cotton, guinea-corn and ginger were defeated +by frost, and alfalfa proved unsuited to her soil; but in spite of two +preliminary failures that year she raised some indigo plants with success. +Next year her father sent a West Indian expert named Cromwell to manage her +indigo crop and prepare its commercial product. But Cromwell, in fear of +injuring the prosperity of his own community, purposely mishandled the +manufacturing. With the aid of a neighbor, nevertheless, Eliza not only +detected Cromwell's treachery but in the next year worked out the true +process. She and her father now distributed indigo seed to a number of +planters; and from 1744 the crop began to reach the rank of a staple.[8] +The arrival of Carolina indigo at London was welcomed so warmly that in +1748 Parliament established a bounty of sixpence a pound on indigo produced +in the British dominions. The Carolina output remained of mediocre quality +until in 1756 Moses Lindo, after a career in the indigo trade in London, +emigrated to Charleston and began to teach the planters to distinguish the +grades and manufacture the best.[9] At excellent prices, ranging generally +from four to six shillings a pound, the indigo crop during the rest of the +colonial period, reaching a maximum output of somewhat more than a million +pounds from some twenty thousand acres in the crop, yielded the community +about half as much gross income as did its rice. The net earnings of the +planters were increased in a still greater proportion than this, for the +work-seasons in the two crops could be so dovetailed that a single gang +might cultivate both staples. + +[Footnote 8: _Journal and Letters of Eliza Lucas_ (Wormesloe, Ga., 1850); +Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, _Eliza Pinckney_ (New York, 1896); _Plantation and +Frontier_, I, 265, 266.] + +[Footnote 9: B.A. Elzas, _The Jews of South Carolina_ (Philadelphia, 1905), +chap. 3.] + +Indigo grew best in the light, dry soil so common on the coastal plain. +From seed sown in the early spring the plant would reach its full growth, +from three to six feet high, and begin to bloom in June or early July. At +that stage the plants were cut off near the ground and laid under water in +a shallow vat for a fermentation which in the course of some twelve hours +took the dye-stuff out of the leaves. The solution then drawn into another +vat was vigorously beaten with paddles for several hours to renew and +complete the foaming fermentation. Samples were taken at frequent intervals +during the latter part of this process, and so soon as a blue tinge became +apparent lime water, in carefully determined proportions, was gently +stirred in to stop all further action and precipitate the "blueing." When +this had settled, the water was drawn off, the paste on the floor was +collected, drained in bags, kneaded, pressed, cut into cubes, dried in the +shade and packed for market.[10] A second crop usually sprang from the +roots of the first and was harvested in August or September. + +[Footnote 10: B.R. Carroll, _Historical Collections of South Carolina_, II, +532-535.] + +Indigo production was troublesome and uncertain of results. Not only did +the furrows have to be carefully weeded and the caterpillars kept off the +plants, but when the stalks were being cut and carried to the vats great +pains were necessary to keep the bluish bloom on the leaves from being +rubbed off and lost, and the fermentation required precise control for +the sake of quality in the product.[11] The production of the blue staple +virtually ended with the colonial period. The War of Independence not only +cut off the market for the time being but ended permanently, of course, the +receipt of the British bounty. When peace returned the culture was revived +in a struggling way; but its vexations and vicissitudes made it promptly +give place to sea-island cotton.[12] + +[Footnote 11: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, +1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), pp. 187-189.] + +[Footnote 12: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_, II, 212; D.D. +Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 132.] + +The plantation of the rice-coast type had clearly shown its tendency to +spread into all the suitable areas from Winyah Bay to St. John's River, +when its southward progress was halted for a time by the erection of +the peculiar province of Georgia. The launching of this colony was the +beginning of modern philanthropy. Upon procuring a charter in 1732 +constituting them trustees of Georgia, James Oglethorpe and his colleagues +began to raise funds from private donations and parliamentary grants for +use in colonizing English debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates. The +beneficiaries, chosen because of their indigence, were transported at the +expense of the trust and given fifty-acre homesteads with equipment and +supplies. Instruction in agriculture was provided for them at Savannah, and +various regulations were established for making them soberly industrious on +a small-farming basis. The land could not be alienated, and neither slaves +nor rum could be imported. Persons immigrating at their own expense might +procure larger land grants, but no one could own more than five hundred +acres; and all settlers must plant specified numbers of grape vines and +mulberry trees with a view to establishing wine and silk as the staples of +the colony. + +In the first few years, while Oglethorpe was in personal charge at Savannah +and supplies from England were abundant, there was an appearance of +success, which soon proved illusory. Not only were the conditions unfit +for silk and wine, but the fertile tracts were malarial and the healthy +districts barren, and every industry suited to the climate had to meet the +competition of the South Carolinians with their slave labor and plantation +system. The ne'er-do-weels from England proved ne'er-do-weels again. They +complained of the soil, the climate, and the paternalistic regulations +under which they lived. They protested against the requirements of silk and +wine culture; they begged for the removal of all peculiar restrictions and +for the institution of self-government They bombarded the trustees with +petitions saying "rum punch is very wholesome in this climate," asking +fee-simple title to their lands, and demanding most vigorously the right of +importing slaves. But the trustees were deaf to complaints. They maintained +that the one thing lacking for prosperity from silk and wine was +perseverance, that the restriction on land tenure was necessary on the one +hand to keep an arms-bearing population in the colony and on the other +hand to prevent the settlers from contracting debts by mortgage, that the +prohibitions of rum and slaves were essential safeguards of sobriety and +industry, and that discontent under the benevolent care of the trustees +evidenced a perversity on the part of the complainants which would +disqualify them for self-government. Affairs thus reached an impasse. +Contributions stopped; Parliament gave merely enough money for routine +expenses; the trustees lost their zeal but not their crotchets; the colony +went from bad to worse. Out of perhaps five thousand souls in Georgia about +1737 so many departed to South Carolina and other free settlements that in +1741 there were barely more than five hundred left. This extreme depression +at length forced even the staunchest of the trustees to relax. First the +exclusion of rum was repealed, then the introduction of slaves on lease +was winked at, then in 1749 and 1750 the overt importation of slaves was +authorized and all restrictions on land tenure were canceled. Finally the +stoppage of the parliamentary subvention in 1751 forced the trustees in the +following year to resign their charter. + +Slaveholders had already crossed the Savannah River in appreciable +numbers to erect plantations on favorable tracts. The lapse of a few +more transition years brought Georgia to the status on the one hand of a +self-governing royal province and on the other of a plantation community +prospering, modestly for the time being, in the production of rice and +indigo. Her peculiarities under the trustee regime were gone but not +forgotten. The rigidity of paternalism, well meant though it had been, was +a lesson against future submission to outward control in any form; and +their failure as a peasantry in competition with planters across the river +persuaded the Georgians and their neighbors that slave labor was essential +for prosperity. + +It is curious, by the way, that the tender-hearted, philanthropic +Oglethorpe at the very time of his founding Georgia was the manager of the +great slave-trading corporation, the Royal African Company. The conflict of +the two functions cannot be relieved except by one of the greatest of all +reconciling considerations, the spirit of the time. Whatever else the +radicals of that period might wish to reform or abolish, the slave trade +was held either as a matter of course or as a positive benefit to the +people who constituted its merchandise. + +The narrow limits of the rice and indigo regime in the two colonies +made the plantation system the more dominant in its own area. Detailed +statistics are lacking until the first federal census, when indigo was +rapidly giving place to sea-island cotton; but the requirements of the new +staple differed so little from those of the old that the plantations near +the end of the century were without doubt on much the same scale as before +the Revolution. In the four South Carolina parishes of St. Andrew's, St. +John's Colleton, St. Paul's and St. Stephen's the census-takers of 1790 +found 393 slaveholders with an average of 33.7 slaves each, as compared +with a total of 28 non-slaveholding families. In these and seven more +parishes, comprising together the rural portion of the area known +politically as the Charleston District, there were among the 1643 heads of +families 1318 slaveholders owning 42,949 slaves. William Blake had 695; +Ralph Izard had 594 distributed on eight plantations in three parishes, +and ten more at his Charleston house; Nathaniel Heyward had 420 on his +plantations and 13 in Charleston; William Washington had 380 in the country +and 13 in town; and three members of the Horry family had 340, 229 and 222 +respectively in a single neighborhood. Altogether there were 79 separate +parcels of a hundred slaves or more, 156 of between fifty and ninety-nine, +318 of between twenty and forty-nine, 251 of between ten and nineteen, 206 +of from five to nine, and 209 of from two to four, 96 of one slave each, +and 3 whose returns in the slave column are illegible.[13] The statistics +of the Georgetown and Beaufort districts, which comprised the rest of the +South Carolina coast, show a like analysis except for a somewhat larger +proportion of non-slaveholders and very small slaveholders, who were, +of course, located mostly in the towns and on the sandy stretches of +pine-barren. The detailed returns for Georgia in that census have been +lost. Were those for her coastal area available they would surely show a +similar tendency toward slaveholding concentration. + +[Footnote 13: _Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States, +1790: State of South Carolina_ (Washington, 1908); _A Century of Population +Growth_ (Washington, 1909), pp. 190, 191, 197, 198.] + +Avenues of transportation abundantly penetrated the whole district in the +form of rivers, inlets and meandering tidal creeks. Navigation on them was +so easy that watermen to the manner born could float rafts or barges for +scores of miles in any desired direction, without either sails or oars, by +catching the strong ebb and flow of the tides at the proper points. But +unlike the Chesapeake estuaries, the waterways of the rice coast were +generally too shallow for ocean-going vessels. This caused a notable +growth of seaports on the available harbors. Of those in South Carolina, +Charleston stood alone in the first rank, flanked by Georgetown and +Beaufort. In the lesser province of Georgia, Savannah found supplement in +Darien and Sunbury. The two leading ports were also the seats of government +in their respective colonies. Charleston was in fact so complete a focus +of commerce, politics and society that South Carolina was in a sense a +city-state. + +The towns were in sentiment and interest virtually a part of the plantation +community. The merchants were plantation factors; the lawyers and doctors +had country patrons; the wealthiest planters were town residents from time +to time; and many prospering townsmen looked toward plantation retirement, +carrying as it did in some degree the badge of gentility, as the crown of +their careers. Furthermore the urban negroes, more numerous proportionately +than anywhere else on the continent, kept the citizens as keenly alive +as the planters to the intricacies of racial adjustments. For example +Charleston, which in 1790 had 8089 whites, 7864 slaves and 586 free +negroes, felt as great anxiety as did the rural parishes at rumors of +slave conspiracies, and on the other hand she had a like interest in the +improvement of negro efficiency, morality and good will. + +The rice coast community was a small one. Even as measured in its number +of slaves it bulked only one-fourth as large, say in 1790, as the group of +tobacco commonwealths or the single sugar island of Jamaica. Nevertheless +it was a community to be reckoned with. Its people were awake to their +peculiar conditions and problems; it had plenty of talented citizens to +formulate policies; and it had excellent machinery for uniting public +opinion. In colonial times, plying its trade mainly with England and the +West Indies, it was in little touch with its continental neighbors, and it +developed a sense of separateness. As part of a loosely administered +empire its people were content in prosperity and self-government. But in a +consolidated nation of diverse and conflicting interests it would be likely +on occasion to assert its own will and resist unitedly anything savoring of +coercion. In a double sense it was of the _southern_ South. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE NORTHERN COLONIES + + +Had any American colony been kept wholly out of touch with both Indians +and negroes, the history of slavery therein would quite surely have been +a blank. But this was the case nowhere. A certain number of Indians were +enslaved in nearly every settlement as a means of disposing of captives +taken in war; and negro slaves were imported into every prosperous colony +as a mere incident of its prosperity. Among the Quakers the extent of +slaveholding was kept small partly, or perhaps mainly, by scruples of +conscience; in virtually all other cases the scale was determined by +industrial conditions. Here the plantation system flourished and slaves +were many; there the climate prevented profits from crude gang labor in +farming, and slaves were few. + +The nature and causes of the contrast will appear from comparing the +careers of two Puritan colonies launched at the same time but separated by +some thirty degrees of north latitude. The one was planted on the island +of Old Providence lying off the coast of Nicaragua, the other was on the +shores of Massachusetts bay. The founders of Old Providence were a score of +Puritan dignitaries, including the Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye and Sele, and +John Pym, incorporated into the Westminster Company in 1630 with a +combined purpose of erecting a Puritanic haven and gaining profits for +the investors. The soil of the island was known to be fertile, the nearby +Spanish Main would yield booty to privateers, and a Puritan government +would maintain orthodoxy. These enticements were laid before John Winthrop +and his companions; and when they proved steadfast in the choice of New +England, several hundred others of their general sort embraced the tropical +Providence alternative. Equipped as it was with all the apparatus of a "New +England Canaan," the founders anticipated a far greater career than seemed +likely of achievement in Massachusetts. Prosperity came at once in the form +of good crops and rich prizes taken at sea. Some of the latter contained +cargoes of negro slaves, as was of course expected, who were distributed +among the settlers to aid in raising tobacco; and when a certain Samuel +Rishworth undertook to spread ideas of liberty among them he was officially +admonished that religion had no concern with negro slavery and that +his indiscretions must stop. Slaves were imported so rapidly that the +outnumbered whites became apprehensive of rebellion. In the hope of +promoting the importation of white labor, so greatly preferable from the +public point of view, heavy impositions were laid upon the employment +of negroes, but with no avail. The apprehension of evils was promptly +justified. A number of the blacks escaped to the mountains where they dwelt +as maroons; and in 1638 a concerted uprising proved so formidable that the +suppression of it strained every resource of the government and the white +inhabitants. Three years afterward the weakened settlement was captured +by a Spanish fleet; and this was the end of the one Puritan colony in the +tropics.[1] + +[Footnote 1: A.P. Newton, _The Colonizing Activities of the English +Puritans_ (New Haven, 1914).] + +Massachusetts was likewise inaugurated by a corporation of Puritans, which +at the outset endorsed the institution of unfree labor, in a sense, by +sending over from England 180 indentured servants to labor on the company's +account. A food shortage soon made it clear that in the company's service +they could not earn their keep; and in 1630 the survivors of them were set +free.[2] Whether freedom brought them bread or whether they died of famine, +the records fail to tell. At any rate the loss of the investment in their +transportation, and the chagrin of the officials, materially hastened the +conversion of the colony from a company enterprise into an industrial +democracy. The use of unfree labor nevertheless continued on a private +basis and on a relatively small scale. Until 1642 the tide of Puritan +immigration continued, some of the newcomers of good estate bringing +servants in their train. The authorities not only countenanced this but +forbade the freeing of servants before the ends of their terms, and in at +least one instance the court fined a citizen for such a manumission.[3] +Meanwhile the war against the Pequots in 1637 yielded a number of +captives, whereupon the squaws and girls were distributed in the towns of +Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a parcel of the boys was shipped off +to the tropics in the Salem ship _Desire_. On its return voyage this +thoroughly Puritan vessel brought from Old Providence a cargo of tobacco, +cotton, and negroes.[4] About this time the courts began to take notice +of Indians as runaways; and in 1641 a "blackmore," Mincarry, procured the +inscription of his name upon the public records by drawing upon himself +an admonition from the magistrates.[5] This negro, it may safely be +conjectured, was not a freeman. That there were at least several other +blacks in the colony, one of whom proved unamenable to her master's +improper command, is told in the account of a contemporary traveler.[6] In +the same period, furthermore, the central court of the colony condemned +certain white criminals to become slaves to masters whom the court +appointed.[7] In the light of these things the pro-slavery inclination of +the much-disputed paragraph in the Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641, +admits of no doubt. The passage reads: "There shall never be any bond +slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull captives +taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or +are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages +which the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doeth +morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged +thereto by authoritie."[8] + +[Footnote 2: Thomas Dudley, _Letter_ to the Countess of Lincoln, in Alex. +Young, _Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts Boy_ (Boston, +1846), p. 312.] + +[Footnote 3: _Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of +Massachusetts Bay, 1630-1692_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 135, 136.] + +[Footnote 4: Letter of John Winthrop to William Bradford, Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXXIII, 360; Winthrop, _Journal_ +(Original Narratives edition, New York, 1908), I, 260.] + +[Footnote 5: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 6: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 231.] + +[Footnote 7: _Records of the Court of Assistants_, pp. 78, 79, 86.] + +[Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 231.] + +On the whole it seems that the views expressed a few years later by Emanuel +Downing in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop were not seriously +out of harmony with the prevailing sentiment. Downing was in hopes of a war +with the Narragansetts for two reasons, first to stop their "worship of the +devill," and "2lie, If upon a just warre the Lord should deliver them into +our hands, we might easily have men, women and children enough to exchange +for Moores,[9] which wil be more gaynful pilladge for us than wee conceive, +for I doe not see how wee can thrive untill wee get into a stock of slaves +sufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children's children will hardly +see this great continent filled with people, soe that our servants will +still desire freedome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for verie +great wages.[10] And I suppose you know verie well how we shall mayntayne +20 Moores cheaper than one Englishe servant." + +[Footnote 9: I. e. negroes.] + +[Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXXVI. 65.] + +When the four colonies, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, +created the New England Confederation in 1643 for joint and reciprocal +action in matters of common concern, they provided not only for the +intercolonial rendition of runaway servants, including slaves of course, +but also for the division of the spoils of Indian wars, "whether it be in +lands, goods or persons," among the participating colonies.[11] But perhaps +the most striking action taken by the Confederation in these regards was +a resolution adopted by its commissioners in 1646, in time of peace +and professedly in the interests of peace, authorizing reprisals for +depredations. This provided that if any citizen's property suffered injury +at the hands of an Indian, the offender's village or any other which +had harbored him might be raided and any inhabitants thereof seized in +satisfaction "either to serve or to be shipped out and exchanged for +negroes as the cause will justly beare."[12] Many of these captives were in +fact exported as merchandise, whether as private property or on the public +account of the several colonies.[13] The value of Indians for export was +greater than for local employment by reason of their facility in escaping +to their tribal kinsmen. Toward the end of the seventeenth century, +however, there was some importation of "Spanish Indians" as slaves.[14] + +[Footnote 11: _New Haven Colonial Records_, 1653-1665, pp. 562-566.] + +[Footnote 12: _Plymouth Records_, IX, 71.] + +[Footnote 13: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 30-48.] + +[Footnote 14: Cotton Mather, "Diary," in Massachusetts Historical Society +_Collections_, LXVII, 22, 203.] + +An early realization that the price of negroes also was greater than the +worth of their labor under ordinary circumstances in New England led the +Yankee participants in the African trade to market their slave cargoes in +the plantation colonies instead of bringing them home. Thus John Winthrop +entered in his journal in 1645: "One of our ships which went to the +Canaries with pipestaves in the beginning of November last returned now +and brought wine and sugar and salt, and some tobacco, which she had at +Barbadoes in exchange for Africoes which she carried from the Isle of +Maio."[15] In their domestic industry the Massachusetts people found +by experience that "many hands make light work, many hands make a full +fraught, but many mouths eat up all";[16] and they were shrewd enough to +apply the adage in keeping the scale of their industrial units within the +frugal requirements of their lives. + +[Footnote 15: Winthrop, _Journal_, II, 227.] + +[Footnote 16: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England," in Massachusetts +Historical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 332.] + +That the laws of Massachusetts were enforced with special severity against +the blacks is indicated by two cases before the central court in 1681, both +of them prosecutions for arson. Maria, a negress belonging to Joshua Lamb +of Roxbury, having confessed the burning of two dwellings, was sentenced by +the Governor "yt she should goe from the barr to the prison whence she +came and thence to the place of execution and there be burnt.--ye Lord be +mercifull to thy soule, sd ye Govr." The other was Jack, a negro belonging +to Samuel Wolcott of Weathersfield, who upon conviction of having set fire +to a residence by waving a fire brand about in search of victuals, was +condemned to be hanged until dead and then burned to ashes in the fire with +the negress Maria.[17] + +[Footnote 17: _Records of the Court of Assistants, 1630-1692_ (Boston, +1901), p. 198.] + +In this period it seems that Indian slaves had almost disappeared, and +the number of negroes was not great enough to call for special police +legislation. Governor Bradstreet, for example, estimated the "blacks or +slaves" in the colony in 1680 at "about one hundred or one hundred and +twenty."[18] But in 1708 Governor Dudley reckoned the number in Boston at +four hundred, one-half of whom he said had been born there, and those in +the rest of the colony at one hundred and fifty; and in the following +decades their number steadily mounted, as a concomitant of the colony's +increasing prosperity, until on the eve of the American Revolution they +were reckoned at well above five thousand. Although they never exceeded two +per cent. of the gross population, their presence prompted characteristic +legislation dating from about the beginning of the eighteenth century. +This on one hand taxed the importation of negros unless they were promptly +exported again on the other hand it forbade trading with slaves, restrained +manumission, established a curfew, provided for the whipping of any +negro or mulatto who should strike a "Christian," and prohibited the +intermarriage of the races. On the other hand it gave the slaves the +privilege of legal marriage with persons of their own race, though it did +not attempt to prevent the breaking up of such a union by the sale and +removal of the husband or wife.[19] Regarding the status of children there +was no law enacted, and custom ruled. The children born of Indian slave +mothers appear generally to have been liberated, for as willingly would a +man nurse a viper in his bosom as keep an aggrieved and able-bodied redskin +in his household. But as to negro children, although they were valued so +slightly that occasionally it is said they were given to any one who would +take them, there can be no reasonable doubt that by force of custom they +were the property of the owners of their mothers.[20] + +[Footnote 18: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XXVIII, 337.] + +[Footnote 19: Moore, _Slavery in Massachusetts_, pp. 52-55.] + +[Footnote 20: _Ibid_., pp. 20-27.] + +The New Englanders were "a plain people struggling for existence in a +poor wilderness.... Their lives were to the last degree matter of +fact, realistic, hard." [21] Shrewd in consequence of their poverty, +self-righteous in consequence of their religion, they took their +slave-trading and their slaveholding as part of their day's work and as +part of God's goodness to His elect. In practical effect the policy of +colonial Massachusetts toward the backward races merits neither praise nor +censure; it was merely commonplace. + +[Footnote 21: C.F. Adams, _Massachusetts, its Historians and its History_ +(Boston, 1893), p. 106.] + +What has been said in general of Massachusetts will apply with almost equal +fidelity to Connecticut.[22] The number of negroes in that colony was +hardly appreciable before 1720. In that year Governor Leete when replying +to queries from the English committee on trade and plantations took +occasion to emphasize the poverty of his people, and said as to bond labor: +"There are but fewe servants amongst us, and less slaves; not above 30, as +we judge, in the colony. For English, Scotts and Irish, there are so few +come in that we cannot give a certain acco[un]t. Some yeares come none; +sometimes a famaly or two in a year. And for Blacks, there comes sometimes +3 or 4 in a year from Barbadoes; and they are sold usually at the rate of +22l a piece, sometimes more and sometimes less, according as men can agree +with the master of vessels or merchants that bring them hither." Few +negroes had been born in the colony, "and but two blacks christened, as we +know of."[23] A decade later the development of a black code was begun by +an enactment declaring that any negro, mulatto, or Indian servant wandering +outside his proper town without a pass would be accounted a runaway and +might be seized by any person and carried before a magistrate for return to +his master. A free negro so apprehended without a pass must pay the court +costs. An act of 1702 discouraged manumission by ordering that if any +freed negroes should come to want, their former owners were to be held +responsible for their maintenance. Then came legislation forbidding the +sale of liquors to slaves without special orders from their masters, +prohibiting the purchase of goods from slaves without such orders, and +providing a penalty of not more than thirty lashes for any negro who should +offer to strike a white person; and finally a curfew law, in 1723, ordering +not above ten lashes for the negro, and a fine of ten shillings upon the +master, for every slave without a pass apprehended for being out of doors +after nine o'clock at night.[24] These acts, which remained in effect +throughout the colonial period, constituted a code of slave police which +differed only in degree and fullness from those enacted by the more +southerly colonies in the same generation. A somewhat unusual note, +however, was struck in an act of 1730 which while penalizing with stripes +the speaking by a slave of such words as would be actionable if uttered by +a free person provided that in his defence the slave might make the same +pleas and offer the same evidence as a freeman. The number of negroes in +the colony rose to some 6500 at the eve of the American Revolution. Most +of them were held in very small parcels, but at least one citizen, Captain +John Perkins of Norwich, listed fifteen slaves in his will. + +[Footnote 22: The scanty materials available are summarized in B.C. +Steiner, _History of Slavery in Connecticut_ (Johns Hopkins University +_Studies_, XI, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1893), pp. 9-23, 84. See also W.C. +Fowler, "The Historical Status of the Negro in Connecticut," in the +_Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries_, III, 12-18, 81-85, 148-153, +260-266.] + +[Footnote 23: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, III, 298.] + +[Footnote 24: _Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut_, IV, 40, 376; +V, 52, 53; VI, 390, 391.] + +Rhode Island was distinguished from her neighbors by her diversity and +liberalism in religion, by her great activity in the African slave trade, +and by the possession of a tract of unusually fertile soil. This last, +commonly known as the Narragansett district and comprised in the two +so-called towns of North and South Kingstown, lay on the western shore of +the bay, in the southern corner of the colony. Prosperity from tillage, +and especially from dairying and horse-breeding, caused the rise in that +neighborhood of landholdings and slaveholdings on a scale more commensurate +with those in Virginia than with those elsewhere in New England. The +Hazards, Champlins, Robinsons, and some others accumulated estates ranging +from five to ten thousand acres in extent, each with a corps of bondsmen +somewhat in proportion. In 1730, for example, South Kingstown had a +population of 965 whites, 333 negroes and 233 Indians; and for a number +of years afterward those who may safely be assumed to have been bondsmen, +white, red and black, continued to be from a third to a half as many as the +free inhabitants.[25] It may be noted that the prevalent husbandry was not +such as generally attracted unfree labor in other districts, and that the +climate was poorly suited to a negro population. The question then arises, +Why was there so large a recourse to negro slave labor? The answer probably +lies in the proximity of Newport, the main focus of African trading in +American ships. James Browne wrote in 1737 from Providence, which was also +busy in the trade, to his brother Obadiah who was then in Southern waters +with an African cargo and who had reported poor markets: "If you cannot +sell all your slaves to your mind, bring some of them home; I believe they +will sell well." [26] This bringing of remainders home doubtless enabled +the nearby townsmen and farmers to get slaves from time to time at bargain +prices. The whole colony indeed came to have a relatively large proportion +of blacks. In 1749 there were 33,773 whites and 3077 negroes; in 1756 there +were 35,939 and 4697 respectively; and in 1774, 59,707 and 3668. Of this +last number Newport contained 1246, South Kingstown 440, Providence 303, +Portsmouth 122, and Bristol 114.[27] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_ (Johns Hopkins +University _Studies_, IV, no. 3, Baltimore, 1886).] + +[Footnote 26: Gertrude S. Kimball, _Providence in Colonial Times_ (Boston, +1912), p. 247.] + +[Footnote 27: W.D. Johnston, "Slavery in Rhode Island, 1755-1776," in Rhode +Island Historical Society _Publications_, new series, II, 126, 127.] + +The earliest piece of legislation in Rhode Island concerning negroes was of +an anti-slavery character. This was an act adopted by the joint government +of Providence and Warwick in 1652, when for the time being those towns were +independent of the rest. It required, under a penalty of L40, that all +negroes be freed after having rendered ten years of service.[28] This +act may be attributed partly perhaps to the liberal influence of Roger +Williams, and partly to the virtual absence of negroes in the towns near +the head of the bay. It long stood unrepealed, but it was probably never +enforced, for no sooner did negroes become numerous than a conservative +reaction set in which deprived this peculiar law of any public sanction it +may have had at the time of enactment. When in the early eighteenth century +legislation was resumed in regard to negroes, it took the form of a slave +code much like that of Connecticut but with an added act, borrowed perhaps +from a Southern colony, providing that slaves charged with theft be tried +by impromptu courts consisting of two or more justices of the peace or town +officers, and that appeal might be taken to a court of regular session only +at the master's request and upon his giving bond for its prosecution. Some +of the towns, furthermore, added by-laws of their own for more thorough +police. South Kingstown for instance adopted an order that if any slave +were found in the house of a free negro, both guest and host were to be +whipped.[29] The Rhode Island Quakers in annual meeting began as early as +1717 to question the propriety of importing slaves, and other persons from +time to time echoed their sentiments; but it was not until just before the +American Revolution that legislation began to interfere with the trade or +the institution. + +[Footnote 28: _Rhode Island Colonial Records_, I, 243.] + +[Footnote 29: Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_, p. 11.] + +The colonies of Plymouth and New Haven in the period of their separate +existence, and the colonies of Maine and New Hampshire throughout their +careers, are negligible in a general account of negro slavery because +their climate and their industrial requirements, along with their poverty, +prevented them from importing any appreciable number of negroes. + +New Netherland had the distinction of being founded and governed by a great +slave-trading corporation--the Dutch West India Company--which endeavored +to extend the market for its human merchandise whithersoever its influence +reached. This pro-slavery policy was not wholly selfish, for the directors +appear to have believed that the surest way to promote a colony's welfare +was to make slaves easy to buy. In the infancy of New Netherland, when it +consisted merely of two trading posts, the company delivered its first +batch of negroes at New Amsterdam. But to its chagrin, the settlers would +buy very few; and even the company's grant of great patroonship estates +failed to promote a plantation regime. Devoting their energies more to the +Indian trade than to agriculture, the people had little use for farm hands, +while in domestic service, if the opinion of the Reverend Jonas Michaelius +be a true index, the negroes were found "thievish, lazy and useless trash." +It might perhaps be surmised that the Dutch were too easy-going for success +in slave management, were it not that those who settled in Guiana became +reputed the severest of all plantation masters. The bulk of the slaves in +New Netherland, left on the company's hands, were employed now in building +fortifications, now in tillage. But the company, having no adequate means +of supervising them in routine, changed the status of some of the older +ones in 1644 from slavery to tribute-paying. That is to say, it gave eleven +of them their freedom on condition that each pay the company every year +some twenty-two bushels of grain and a hog of a certain value. At the same +time it provided, curiously, that their children already born or yet to be +born were to be the company's slaves. It was proposed at one time by some +of the inhabitants, and again by Governor Stuyvesant, that negroes be armed +with tomahawks and sent in punitive expeditions against the Indians, but +nothing seems to have come of that. + +The Dutch settlers were few, and the Dutch farmers fewer. But as years went +on a slender stream of immigration entered the province from New England, +settling mainly on Long Island and in Westchester; and these came to be +among the company's best customers for slaves. The villagers of Gravesend, +indeed, petitioned in 1651 that the slave supply might be increased. Soon +afterward the company opened the trade to private ships, and then sent +additional supplies on its own account to be sold at auction. It developed +hopes, even, that New Amsterdam might be made a slave market for the +neighboring English colonies. A parcel sold at public outcry in 1661 +brought an average price of 440 florins,[30] which so encouraged the +authorities that larger shipments were ordered. Of a parcel arriving in +the spring of 1664 and described by Stuyvesant as on the average old and +inferior, six men were reserved for the company's use in cutting timber, +five women were set aside as unsalable, and the remaining twenty-nine, of +both sexes, were sold at auction at prices ranging from 255 to 615 florins. +But a great cargo of two or three hundred slaves which followed in the same +year reached port only in time for the vessel to be captured by the English +fleet which took possession of New Netherland and converted it into the +province of New York.[31] + +[Footnote 30: The florin has a value of forty cents.] + +[Footnote 31: This account is mainly drawn from A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in +New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 246-254, +and from E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of +Amsterdam, with additional papers illustrative of the slave trade under the +Dutch_ (Albany, 1867), pp. 99-213.] + +The change of the flag was very slow in bringing any pronounced change in +the colony's general regime. The Duke of York's government was autocratic +and pro-slavery and the inhabitants, though for some decades they bought +few slaves, were nothing averse to the institution. After the colony was +converted into a royal province by the accession of James II to the English +throne popular self-government was gradually introduced and a light import +duty was laid upon slaves. But increasing prosperity caused the rise of +slave importations to an average of about one hundred a year in the first +quarter of the eighteenth century;[32] and in spite of the rapid increase +of the whites during the rest of the colonial period the proportion of the +negroes was steadily maintained at about one-seventh of the whole. They +became fairly numerous in all districts except the extreme frontier, but in +the counties fronting New York Harbor their ratio was somewhat above the +average.[33] In 1755 a special census was taken of slaves older than +fourteen years, and a large part of its detailed returns has been +preserved. These reports from some two-score scattered localities enumerate +2456 slaves, about one-third of the total negro population of the +specified age; and they yield unusually definite data as to the scale of +slaveholdings. Lewis Morris of Morrisania had twenty-nine slaves above +fourteen years old; Peter DeLancy of Westchester Borough had twelve; and +the following had ten each: Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, Martinus +Hoffman of Dutchess County, David Jones of Oyster Bay, Rutgert Van Brunt of +New Utrecht, and Isaac Willett of Westchester Borough. Seventy-two others +had from five to nine each, and 1048 had still smaller holdings.[34] The +average quota was two slaves of working age, and presumably the same number +of slave children. That is to say, the typical slaveholding family had a +single small family of slaves in its service. From available data it may be +confidently surmised, furthermore, that at least one household in every ten +among the eighty-three thousand white inhabitants of the colony held one or +more slaves. These two features--the multiplicity of slaveholdings and the +virtually uniform pettiness of their scale--constituted a regime never +paralleled in equal volume elsewhere. The economic interest in slave +property, nowhere great, was widely diffused. The petty masters, however, +maintained so little system in the management of their slaves that the +public problem of social control was relatively intense. It was a state +of affairs conducing to severe legislation, and to hysterical action in +emergencies. + +[Footnote 32: _Documentary History of New York_ (Albany, 1850), I, 482.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., I, 467-474.] + +[Footnote 34: _Documentary History of New York_, III, 505-521.] + +The first important law, enacted in 1702, repeated an earlier prohibition +against trading with slaves; authorized masters to chastise their slaves at +discretion; forbade the meeting of more than three slaves at any time or +place unless in their masters' service or by their consent; penalized with +imprisonment and lashes the striking of a "Christian" by a slave; made the +seductor or harborer of a runaway slave liable for heavy damages to the +owner; and excluded slave testimony from the courts except as against other +slaves charged with conspiracy. In order, however, that undue loss to +masters might be averted, it provided that if by theft or other trespass a +slave injured any person to the extent of not more than five pounds, the +slave was not to be sentenced to death as in some cases a freeman might +have been under the laws of England then current, but his master was to be +liable for pecuniary satisfaction and the slave was merely to be whipped. +Three years afterward a special act to check the fleeing to Canada provided +a death penalty for any slave from the city and county of Albany found +traveling more than forty miles north of that city, the master to be +compensated from a special tax on slave property in the district. And in +1706 an act, passed mainly to quiet any fears as to the legal consequences +of Christianization, declared that baptism had no liberating effect, and +that every negro or mulatto child should inherit the status of its mother. + +The murder of a white family by a quartet of slaves in conspiracy not only +led to their execution, by burning in one case, but prompted an enactment +in 1708 that slaves charged with the murder of whites might be tried +summarily by three justices of the peace and be put to death in such manner +as the enormity of their crimes might be deemed to merit, and that slaves +executed under this act should be paid for by the public. Thus stood the +law when a negro uprising in the city of New York in 1712 and a reputed +conspiracy there in 1741 brought atrociously numerous and severe +punishments, as will be related in another chapter.[35] On the former of +these occasions the royally appointed governor intervened in several cases +to prevent judicial murder. The assembly on the other hand set to work +at once on a more elaborate negro law which restricted manumissions, +prohibited free negroes from holding real estate, and increased the rigor +of slave control. Though some of the more drastic provisions were afterward +relaxed in response to the more sober sense of the community, the negro +code continued for the rest of the colonial period to be substantially as +elaborated between 1702 and 1712.[36] The disturbance of 1741 prompted +little new legislation and left little permanent impress upon the +community. When the panic passed the petty masters resumed their customary +indolence of control and the police officers, justly incredulous of public +danger, let the rigors of the law relapse into desuetude. + +[Footnote 35: Below, pp. 470, 471.] + +[Footnote 36: The laws are summarized and quoted in A.J. Northrup "Slavery +in New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 254-272. +_See also_ E.V. Morgan, "Slavery in New York," in the American Historical +Association _Papers_ (New York, 1891), V, 335-350.] + +As to New Jersey, the eastern half, settled largely from New England, was +like in conditions and close in touch with New York, while the western +half, peopled considerably by Quakers, had a much smaller proportion of +negroes and was in sentiment akin to Pennsylvania. As was generally the +case in such contrast of circumstances, that portion of the province which +faced the greater problem of control determined the legislation for +the whole. New Jersey, indeed, borrowed the New York slave code in all +essentials. The administration of the law, furthermore, was about as it was +in New York, in the eastern counties at least. An alleged conspiracy near +Somerville in 1734 while it cost the reputed ringleader his life, cost his +supposed colleagues their ears only. On the other hand sentences to burning +at the stake were more frequent as punishment for ordinary crimes; and on +such occasions the citizens of the neighborhood turned honest shillings +by providing faggots for the fire. For the western counties the published +annals concerning slavery are brief wellnigh to blankness.[37] + +[Footnote 37: H.S. Cooley, _A Study of Slavery in New Jersey_ (Johns +Hopkins University _Studios_, XIV, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1896).] + +Pennsylvania's place in the colonial slaveholding sisterhood was a little +unusual in that negroes formed a smaller proportion of the population than +her location between New York and Maryland might well have warranted. +This was due not to her laws nor to the type of her industry but to the +disrelish of slaveholding felt by many of her Quaker and German inhabitants +and to the greater abundance of white immigrant labor whether wage-earning +or indentured. Negroes were present in the region before Penn's colony was +founded. The new government recognized slavery as already instituted. Penn +himself acquired a few slaves; and in the first quarter of the eighteenth +century the assembly legislated much as New York was doing, though somewhat +more mildly, for the fuller control of the negroes both slave and free. The +number of blacks and mulattoes reached at the middle of the century +about eleven thousand, the great majority of them slaves. They were most +numerous, of course, in the older counties which lay in the southeastern +corner of the province, and particularly in the city of Philadelphia. +Occasional owners had as many as twenty or thirty slaves, employed either +on country estates or in iron-works, but the typical holding was on a petty +scale. There were no slave insurrections in the colony, no plots of any +moment, and no panics of dread. The police was apparently a little more +thorough than in New York, partly because of legislation, which the white +mechanics procured, lessening negro competition by forbidding masters to +hire out their slaves. From travelers' accounts it would appear that the +relation of master and slave in Pennsylvania was in general more kindly +than anywhere else on the continent; but from the abundance of newspaper +advertisements for runaways it would seem to have been of about average +character. The truth probably lies as usual in the middle ground, that +Pennsylvania masters were somewhat unusually considerate. The assembly +attempted at various times to check slave importations by levying +prohibitive duties, which were invariably disallowed by the English crown. +On the other hand, in spite of the endeavors of Sandiford, Lay, Woolman +and Benezet, all of them Pennsylvanians, it took no steps toward relaxing +racial control until the end of the colonial period.[38] + +[Footnote 38: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911); +R.R. Wright, Jr., _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Philadelphia, 1912).] + +In the Northern colonies at large the slaves imported were more generally +drawn from the West Indies than directly from Africa. The reasons were +several. Small parcels, better suited to the retail demand, might be +brought more profitably from the sugar islands whither New England, New +York and Pennsylvania ships were frequently plying than from Guinea whence +special voyages must be made. Familiarity with the English language and +the rudiments of civilization at the outset were more essential to petty +masters than to the owners of plantation gangs who had means for breaking +in fresh Africans by deputy. But most important of all, a sojourn in the +West Indies would lessen the shock of acclimatization, severe enough under +the best of circumstances. The number of negroes who died from it was +probably not small, and of those who survived some were incapacitated and +bedridden with each recurrence of winter. + +Slavery did not, and perhaps could not, become an important industrial +institution in any Northern community; and the problem of racial +adjustments was never as acute as it was generally thought to be. In not +more than two or three counties do the negroes appear to have numbered more +than one fifth of the population; and by reason of being distributed +in detail they were more nearly assimilated to the civilization of the +dominant race than in southerly latitudes where they were held in gross. +They nevertheless continued to be regarded as strangers within the gates, +by some welcomed because they were slaves, by others not welcomed even +though they were in bondage. By many they were somewhat unreasonably +feared; by few were they even reasonably loved. The spirit not of love but +of justice and the public advantage was destined to bring the end of their +bondage. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +REVOLUTION AND REACTION + + +After the whole group of colonies had long been left in salutary neglect +by the British authorities, George III and his ministers undertook the +creation of an imperial control; and Parliament was too much at the king's +command for opposing statesmen to stop the project. The Americans wakened +resentfully to the new conditions. The revived navigation laws, the stamp +act, the tea duty, and the dispatch of redcoats to coerce Massachusetts +were a cumulation of grievances not to be borne by high-spirited people. +For some years the colonial spokesmen tried to persuade the British +government that it was violating historic and constitutional rights; but +these efforts had little success. To the argument that the empire was +composed of parts mutually independent in legislation, it was replied that +Parliament had legislated imperially ever since the empire's beginning, and +that the colonial assemblies possessed only such powers as Parliament might +allow. The plea of no taxation without representation was answered by the +doctrine that all elements in the empire were virtually represented in +Parliament. The stress laid by the colonials upon their rights as Britons +met the administration's emphasis upon the duty of all British subjects +to obey British laws. This countering of pleas of exemption with +pronouncements of authority drove the complainants at length from proposals +of reform to projects of revolution. For this the solidarity of the +continent was essential, and that was to be gained only by the most +vigorous agitation with the aid of the most effective campaign cries. The +claim of historic immunities was largely discarded in favor of the more +glittering doctrines current in the philosophy of the time. The demands for +local self-government or for national independence, one or both of which +were the genuine issues at stake, were subordinated to the claim of the +inherent and inalienable rights of man. Hence the culminating formulation +in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be +self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by +their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, +liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The cause of the community was to be +won under the guise of the cause of individuals. + +In Jefferson's original draft of the great declaration there was a +paragraph indicting the king for having kept open the African slave trade +against colonial efforts to close it, and for having violated thereby the +"most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who never +offended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to +incur miserable death in their transportation thither." This passage, +according to Jefferson's account, "was struck out in complaisance to South +Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation +of slaves and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northern +brethren also I believe," Jefferson continued, "felt a little tender under +these censures, for though their people have very few slaves themselves, +yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."[1] By +reason of the general stress upon the inherent liberty of all men, however, +the question of negro status, despite its omission from the Declaration, +was an inevitable corollary to that of American independence. + +[Footnote 1: Herbert Friedenwald, _The Declaration of Independence_ (New +York, 1904), pp. 130, 272.] + +Negroes had a barely appreciable share in precipitating the Revolution +and in waging the war. The "Boston Massacre" was occasioned in part by an +insult offered by a slave to a British soldier two days before; and in that +celebrated affray itself, Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was one of the +five inhabitants of Boston slain. During the course of the war free negro +and slave enlistments were encouraged by law in the states where racial +control was not reckoned vital, and they were informally permitted in the +rest. The British also utilized this resource in some degree. As early as +November 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the ousted royal governor of Virginia, +issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves "appertaining to +rebels" who would join him "for the more speedy reducing this colony to a +proper sense of their duty to his Majesty's crown and dignity."[2] In reply +the Virginia press warned the negroes against British perfidy; and the +revolutionary government, while announcing the penalties for servile +revolt, promised freedom to such as would promptly desert the British +standard. Some hundreds of negroes appear to have joined Dunmore, but they +did not save him from being driven away.[3] + +[Footnote 2: _American Archives_, Force ed., fourth series, III, 1385.] + +[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., III, 1387; IV, 84, 85; V, 160, 162.] + +When several years afterward military operations were transferred to the +extreme South, where the whites were few and the blacks many, the problem +of negro enlistments became at once more pressing and more delicate. Henry +Laurens of South Carolina proposed to General Washington in March, 1779, +the enrollment of three thousand blacks in the Southern department. +Hamilton warmly endorsed the project, and Washington and Madison more +guardedly. Congress recommended it to the states concerned, and pledged +itself to reimburse the masters and to set the slaves free with a payment +of fifty dollars to each of these at the end of the war. Eventually Colonel +John Laurens, the son of Henry, went South as an enthusiastic emissary of +the scheme, only to meet rebuff and failure.[4] Had the negroes in general +possessed any means of concerted action, they might conceivably have played +off the British and American belligerents to their own advantage. In +actuality, however, they were a passive element whose fate was affected +only so far as the master race determined. + +[Footnote 4: G.W. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_ (New +York [1882]), I, 353-362.] + +Some of the politicians who championed the doctrine of liberty inherent and +universal used it merely as a means to a specific and somewhat unrelated +end. Others endorsed it literally and with resolve to apply it wherever +consistency might require. How could they justly continue to hold men in +bondage when in vindication of their own cause they were asserting the +right of all men to be free? Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Edmund +Randolph and many less prominent slaveholders were disquieted by the +question. Instances of private manumission became frequent, and memorials +were fairly numerous advocating anti-slavery legislation. Indeed Samuel +Hopkins of Rhode Island in a pamphlet of 1776 declared that slavery in +Anglo-America was "without the express sanction of civil government," and +censured the colonial authorities and citizens for having connived in the +maintenance of the wrongful institution. + +As to public acts, the Vermont convention of 1777 when claiming statehood +for its community framed a constitution with a bill of rights asserting the +inherent freedom of all men and attaching to it an express prohibition of +slavery. The opposition of New York delayed Vermont's recognition until +1791 when she was admitted as a state with this provision unchanged. +Similar inherent-liberty clauses but without the expressed anti-slavery +application were incorporated into the bills of rights adopted severally by +Virginia in 1776, Massachusetts in 1780, and New Hampshire in 1784. In the +first of these the holding of slaves persisted undisturbed by this action; +and in New Hampshire the custom died from the dearth of slaves rather than +from the natural-rights clause. In Massachusetts likewise it is plain +from copious contemporary evidence that abolition was not intended by the +framers of the bill of rights nor thought by the people or the officials to +have been accomplished thereby.[5] One citizen, indeed, who wanted to keep +his woman slave but to be rid of her child soon to be born, advertised in +the _Independent Chronicle_ of Boston at the close of 1780: "A negro child, +soon expected, of a good breed, may be owned by any person inclining to +take it, and money with it."[6] The courts of the commonwealth, however, +soon began to reflect anti-slavery sentiment, as Lord Mansfield had done in +the preceding decade in England,[7] and to make use of the bill of rights +to destroy the masters' dominion. The decisive case was the prosecution of +Nathaniel Jennison of Worcester County for assault and imprisonment alleged +to have been committed upon his absconded slave Quork Walker in the process +of his recovery. On the trial in 1783 the jury responded to a strong +anti-slavery charge from Chief Justice Cushing by returning a verdict +against Jennison, and the court fined him L50 and costs. + +[Footnote 5: G.H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery in +Massachusetts_, pp. 181-209.] + +[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., p. 208. So far as the present writer's knowledge +extends, this item is without parallel at any other time or place.] + +[Footnote 7: The case of James Somerset on _habeas corpus_, in Howell's +_State Trials_, XX, Sec.548.] + +This action prompted the negroes generally to leave their masters, though +some were deterred "on account of their age and infirmities, or because +they did not know how to provide for themselves, or for some pecuniary +consideration."[8] The former slaveholders now felt a double grievance: +they were deprived of their able-bodied negroes but were not relieved of +the legal obligation to support such others as remained on their hands. +Petitions for their relief were considered by the legislature but never +acted upon. The legal situation continued vague, for although an act of +1788 forbade citizens to trade in slaves and another penalized the sojourn +for more than two months in Massachusetts of negroes from other states,[9] +no legislation defined the status of colored residents. In the federal +census of 1790, however, this was the only state in which no slaves were +listed. + +[Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 386.] + +[Footnote 9: Moore, pp. 227-229.] + +Racial antipathy and class antagonism among the whites appear to +have contributed to this result. John Adams wrote in 1795, with some +exaggeration and incoherence: "Argument might have [had] some weight in +the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the +multiplication of labouring white people, who would no longer suffer the +rich to employ these sable rivals so much to their injury ... If the +gentlemen had been permitted by law to hold slaves, the common white people +would have put the negroes to death, and their masters too, perhaps ... +The common white people, or rather the labouring people, were the cause of +rendering negroes unprofitable servants. Their scoffs and insults, their +continual insinuations, filled the negroes with discontent, made them lazy, +idle, proud, vicious, and at length wholly useless to their masters, +to such a degree that the abolition of slavery became a measure of +economy."[10] + +[Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 402.] + +Slavery in the rest of the Northern states was as a rule not abolished, but +rather put in process of gradual extinction by legislation of a peculiar +sort enacted in response to agitations characteristic of the times. +Pennsylvania set the pattern in an act of 1780 providing that all children +born thereafter of slave mothers in the state were to be the servants of +their mothers' owners until reaching twenty-eight years of age, and then to +become free. Connecticut followed in 1784 with an act of similar purport +but with a specification of twenty-five years, afterward reduced to +twenty-one, as the age for freedom; and in 1840 she abolished her remnant +of slavery outright. In Rhode Island an act of the same year, 1784, enacted +that the children thereafter born of slave mothers were to be free at the +ages of twenty-one for males and eighteen for females, and that these +children were meanwhile to be supported and instructed at public expense; +but an amendment of the following year transferred to the mothers' owners +the burden of supporting the children, and ignored the matter of their +education. New York lagged until 1799, and then provided freedom for the +after-born only at twenty-eight and twenty-five years for males and females +respectively; but a further act of 1817 set the Fourth of July in 1827 as a +time for the emancipation for all remaining slaves in the state. New +Jersey fell into line last of all by an act of 1804 giving freedom to the +after-born at the ages of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females; +and in 1846 she converted the surviving slaves nominally into apprentices +but without materially changing their condition. Supplementary legislation +here and there in these states bestowed freedom upon slaves in military +service, restrained the import and export of slaves, and forbade the +citizens to ply the slave trade by land or sea.[11] + +[Footnote 11: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 77-85; B.C. +Steiner, _Slavery in Connecticut_, pp. 30-32; _Rhode Island Colonial +Records_, X, 132, 133; A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in New York," in the New +York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 286-298; H.S. Cooley, "Slavery +in New Jersey" (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, XIV, nos. 9, 10), pp. +47-50; F.B. Lee, _New Jersey as a Colony and as a State_ (New York, 1912), +IV, 25-48.] + +Thus from Pennsylvania eastward the riddance of slavery was procured or put +in train, generally by the device of emancipating the _post nati_; and in +consequence the slave population in that quarter dwindled before the middle +of the nineteenth century to a negligible residue. To the southward the +tobacco states, whose industry had reached a somewhat stationary condition, +found it a simple matter to prohibit the further importation of slaves from +Africa. Delaware did this in 1776, Virginia in 1778, Maryland in 1783 and +North Carolina in 1794. But in these commonwealths as well as in their more +southerly neighbors, the contemplation of the great social and economic +problems involved in disestablishing slavery daunted the bulk of the +citizens and impelled their representatives to conservatism. The advocacy +of abolition, whether sudden or gradual, was little more than sporadic. +The people were not to be stampeded in the cause of inherent rights or +any other abstract philosophy. It was a condition and not a theory which +confronted them. + +In Delaware, however, the problem was hardly formidable, for at the time of +the first federal census there were hardly nine thousand slaves and a third +as many colored freemen in her gross population of some sixty thousand +souls. Nevertheless a bill for gradual abolition considered by the +legislature in 1786 appears not to have been brought to a vote,[12] and no +action in the premises was taken thereafter. The retention of slavery seems +to have been mainly due to mere public inertia and to the pressure of +political sympathy with the more distinctively Southern states. Because of +her border position and her dearth of plantation industry, the slaves in +Delaware steadily decreased to less than eighteen hundred in 1860, while +the free negroes grew to more than ten times as many. + +[Footnote 12: J.R. Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-1789," in J.F. +Jameson ed., _Essays in the Constitutional History of the United States, +1775-1789_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 300-302.] + +In Maryland various projects for abolition, presented by the Quakers +between 1785 and 1791 and supported by William Pinckney and Charles +Carroll, were successively defeated in the legislature; and efforts +to remove the legal restraints on private manumission were likewise +thwarted.[13] These restrictions, which applied merely to the freeing of +slaves above middle age, were in fact very slight. The manumissions indeed +were so frequent and the conditions of life in Maryland were so attractive +to free negroes, or at least so much less oppressive than in most other +states, that while the slave population decreased between 1790 and 1860 +from 103,036 to 87,189 souls the colored freemen multiplied from 8046 to +83,942, a number greater by twenty-five thousand than that in any other +commonwealth. + +[Footnote 13: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_ (Baltimore, 1899), pp. +52-64, 148-155.] + +Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1785 that anti-slavery men were as scarce to the +southward of Chesapeake Bay as they were common to the north of it, while +in Maryland, and still more in Virginia, the bulk of the people approved +the doctrine and a respectable minority were ready to adopt it in practice, +"a minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates against +the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of +a property which, however, keeps their conscience unquiet." Virginia, +he continued, "is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the +interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression, a +conflict in which the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx +into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the +principles of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to +them that I look with anxiety to turn the fate of the question."[14] +Jefferson had already tried to raise the issue by having a committee for +revising the Virginia laws, appointed in 1776 with himself a member, frame +a special amendment for disestablishing slavery. This contemplated a +gradual emancipation of the after-born children, their tutelage by the +state, their colonization at maturity, and their replacement in Virginia +by white immigrants.[15] But a knowledge that such a project would raise +a storm caused even its framers to lay it aside. The abolition of +primogeniture and the severance of church from state absorbed reformers' +energies at the expense of the slavery question. + +[Footnote 14: Jefferson, _Writings_, P.L. Ford ed., IV, 82-83.] + +[Footnote 15: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, various editions, query 14.] + +When writing his _Notes on Virginia_ in 1781 Jefferson denounced the +slaveholding system in phrases afterward classic among abolitionists: "With +what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one-half of +the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those +into despots and these into enemies ... And can the liberties of a nation +be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction +in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That +they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my +country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep +forever."[16] In the course of the same work, however, he deprecated +abolition unless it were to be accompanied with deportation: "Why not +retain and incorporate the blacks into the state...? Deep rooted prejudices +entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the +injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which +nature has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us into +parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the +extermination of the one or the other race ... This unfortunate difference +of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the +emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates while they wish to +vindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve its +dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question 'What +further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those +who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans, emancipation +required but one effort. The slave when made free might mix without +staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary +unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of +mixture."[17] + +[Footnote 16: Jefferson, _Notes on Virginia_, query 18.] + +[Footnote 17: _Ibid_., query 14.] + +George Washington wrote in 1786 that one of his chief wishes was that some +plan might be adopted "by which slavery may be abolished by slow, sure and +imperceptible degrees." But he noted in the same year that some abolition +petitions presented to the Virginia legislature had barely been given a +reading.[18] + +[Footnote 18: Washington, _Writings_, W.C. Ford ed., XI, 20, 62.] + +Seeking to revive the issue, Judge St. George Tucker, professor of law in +William and Mary College, inquired of leading citizens of Massachusetts in +1795 for data and advice, and undaunted by discouraging reports received in +reply or by the specific dissuasion of John Adams, he framed an intricate +plan for extremely gradual emancipation and for expelling the freedmen +without expense to the state by merely making their conditions of life +unbearable. This was presented to the legislature in a pamphlet of 1796 +at the height of the party strife between the Federalists and +Democratic-Republicans; and it was impatiently dismissed from +consideration.[19] Tucker, still nursing his project, reprinted his +"dissertation" as an appendix to his edition of Blackstone in 1803, where +the people and the politicians let it remain buried. In public opinion, the +problem as to the freedmen remained unsolved and insoluble. + +[Footnote 19: St. George Tucker, _A Dissertation on Slavery, with a +proposal for the gradual abolition of it in the State of Virginia_ +(Philadelphia, 1796, reprinted New York, 1860). Tucker's Massachusetts +correspondence is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society +_Collections_, XLIII (Belknap papers), 379-431.] + +Meanwhile the Virginia black code had been considerably moderated during +and after the Revolution; and in particular the previous almost iron-clad +prohibition of private manumission had been wholly removed in effect by an +act of 1782. In spite of restrictions afterward imposed upon manumission +and upon the residence of new freedmen in the state, the free negroes +increased on a scale comparable to that in Maryland. As compared with an +estimate of less than two thousand in 1782, there were 12,866 in 1790, +20,124 in 1800, and 30,570 in 1810. Thereafter the number advanced more +slowly until it reached 58,042, about one-eighth as many as the slaves +numbered, in 1860. + +In the more southerly states condemnation of slavery was rare. Among +the people of Georgia, the depressing experience of the colony under a +prohibition of it was too fresh in memory for them to contemplate with +favor a fresh deprivation. In South Carolina Christopher Gadsden had +written in 1766 likening slavery to a crime, and a decade afterward Henry +Laurens wrote: "You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery.... The day, I hope +is approaching when from principles of gratitude as well as justice every +man will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with the +golden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all my +negroes produce if sold at public auction tomorrow.... Nevertheless I am +devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail +of slavery. Great powers oppose me--the laws and customs of my country, +my own and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say if +I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not +insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest to +a better hand. I am not one of those ... who dare trust in Providence for +defence and security of their own liberty while they enslave and wish +to continue in slavery thousands who are as well entitled to freedom as +themselves. I perceive the work before me is great. I shall appear to many +as a promoter not only of strange but of dangerous doctrines; it will +therefore be necessary to proceed with caution."[20] Had either Gadsden +or Laurens entertained thoughts of launching an anti-slavery campaign, +however, the palpable hopelessness of such a project in their community +must have dissuaded them. The negroes of the rice coast were so +outnumbering and so crude that an agitation applying the doctrine of +inherent liberty and equality to them could only have had the effect of +discrediting the doctrine itself. Furthermore, the industrial prospect, +the swamps and forests calling for conversion into prosperous plantations, +suggested an increase rather than a diminution of the slave labor supply. +Georgia and South Carolina, in fact, were more inclined to keep open the +African slave trade than to relinquish control of the negro population. +Revolutionary liberalism had but the slightest of echoes there. + +[Footnote 20: Frank Moore ed., _Correspondence of Henry Laurens_ (New York, +1861), pp. 20, 21. The version of this letter given by Professor Wallace in +his _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 446, which varies from the present one, was +derived from a paraphrase by John Laurens to whom the original was written. +Cf. _South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine_, X. 49. For +related items in the Laurens correspondence _see_ D.D. Wallace, _Life of +Henry Laurens_, pp. 445, 447-455.] + +In North Carolina the prevailing lack of enterprise in public affairs had +no exception in regard to slavery. The Quakers alone condemned it. When in +1797 Nathaniel Macon, a pronounced individualist and the chief spokesman of +his state in Congress, discussed the general subject he said "there was not +a gentleman in North Carolina who did not wish there were no blacks in the +country. It was a misfortune--he considered it a curse; but there was no +way of getting rid of them." Macon put his emphasis upon the negro problem +rather than upon the question of slavery, and in so doing he doubtless +reflected the thought of his community.[21] The legislation of North +Carolina regarding racial control, like that of the period in South +Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, was more conservative than +liberal. + +[Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, VII, 661. American historians, through +preoccupation or inadvertence, have often confused anti-negro with +anti-slavery expressions. In reciting the speech of Macon here quoted +McMaster has replaced "blacks" with "slaves"; and incidentally he has made +the whole discussion apply to Georgia instead of North Carolina. Rhodes +in turn has implicitly followed McMaster in both errors. J.B. McMaster, +_History of the People of the United States_, II, 359; J.F. Rhodes, +_History of the United States_, I, 19.] + +The central government of the United States during the Revolution and the +Confederation was little concerned with slavery problems except in its +diplomatic affairs, where the question was merely the adjustment of +property in slaves, and except in regard to the western territories. +Proposals for the prohibition of slavery in these wilderness regions were +included in the first projects for establishing governments in them. +Timothy Pickering and certain military colleagues framed a plan in 1780 for +a state beyond the Ohio River with slavery excluded; but it was allowed +to drop out of consideration. In the next year an ordinance drafted by +Jefferson was introduced into Congress for erecting territorial governments +over the whole area ceded or to be ceded by the states, from the +Alleghanies to the Mississippi and from Canada to West Florida; and one of +its features was a prohibition of slavery after the year 1800 throughout +the region concerned. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congress +could enact legislation only by the affirmative votes of seven state +delegations. When the ballot was taken on the anti-slavery clause the six +states from Pennsylvania eastward voted aye: Maryland, Virginia and South +Carolina voted no; and the other states were absent. Jefferson was not +alone in feeling chagrin at the defeat and in resolving to persevere. +Pickering expressed his own views in a letter to Rufus King: "To suffer the +continuance of slaves till they can be gradually emancipated, in states +already overrun with them, may be pardonable because unavoidable without +hazarding greater evils; but to introduce them into countries where none +already exist ... can never be forgiven." King in his turn introduced a +resolution virtually restoring the stricken clause, but was unable to bring +it to a vote. After being variously amended, the ordinance without this +clause was adopted. It was, however, temporary in its provision and +ineffectual in character; and soon the drafting of one adequate for +permanent purposes was begun. The adoption of this was hastened in July, +1787, by the offer of a New England company to buy from Congress a huge +tract of Ohio land. When the bill was put to the final vote it was +supported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, +Abraham Yates. Delegations from all of the Southern states but Maryland +were present, and all of them voted aye. Its enactment gave to the country +a basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable to +the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. Applying +only to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided for +the erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed in +republican government, secured in the freedom of religion, jury trial and +all concomitant rights, endowed with public land for the support of schools +and universities, and while obligated to render fugitive slaves on claim +of their masters in the original states, shut out from the regime of +slaveholding itself.[22] "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary +servitude in the said territory," it prescribed, "otherwise than in +punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The +first Congress under the new constitution reenacted the ordinance, which +was the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government in +the period. + +[Footnote 22: A.C. McLaughlin, _The Confederation and the Constitution_ +(New York [1905]), chap. 7; B.A. Hinsdale, _The Old Northwest_ (New York, +1888), chap. 15.] + +By this time radicalism in general had spent much of its force. The +excessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty of +individuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp upon +the essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of many +sorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against their +opponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalist +property and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-class +interests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailing +jealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirking +of burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism and +particularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government now +enabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos and +get a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on the +principles of liberty had merely destroyed the old regime: matter-of-fact +reckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. The +plan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with the +popular will to procure a general ratification. + +Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent but +under local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, +its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over it +continued to lie in the several state governments. The great convention +at Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer of +authority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the one +hand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicate +one, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside all +problems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignorance +by even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs in +another was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and the +secrecy of the convention's proceedings exempted it from any pressure of +anti-slavery sentiment from outside. + +On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises was +discredited. Roger Sherman of Connecticut "observed that the abolition of +slavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good sense +of the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it." His +colleague Oliver Ellsworth said, "The morality or wisdom of slavery are +considerations belonging to the states themselves"; and again, "Let us not +intermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to +render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country." +And Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts "thought we had nothing to do with the +conduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give any +sanction to it." The agreement was general that the convention keep its +hands off so far as might be; but positive action was required upon +incidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for the +institution itself. These issues concerned the apportionment of +representation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition of +fugitives. This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of a +clause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changed +in its phrasing to read: "No person held to service or labour in one state +under the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of any +law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but +shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour +may be due." After some jockeying, the other two questions were settled by +compromise. Representation in the lower house of Congress was apportioned +among the states "according to their several members, which shall be +determined by adding to the whole number of free persons ... three fifths +of all other persons." As to the foreign slave trade, Congress was +forbidden to prohibit it prior to the year 1808, and was merely permitted +meanwhile to levy an import duty upon slaves at a rate of not more than ten +dollars each. [23] + +[Footnote 23: Max Farrand ed., _The Records of the Federal Convention_ (New +Haven, 1911), _passim_] + +In the state conventions to which the Constitution was referred for +ratification the debates bore out a remark of Madison's at Philadelphia +that the real difference of interests lay not between the large and small +states but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. The +opponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slavery +instrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on the +ground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carried +and that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect of +a federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South the +opposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of the +African trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate, +while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmost +practicable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved. +Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifying +conventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered, +strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and still +were so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending to +establish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful to +the cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promote +and establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation of +slaves of every description."[24] The proposal seems to have received no +further attention at the time. + +[Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H.V. Ames, "Proposed Amendment +to the Constitution of the United States," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 208] + +In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of the +few debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positive +action. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was never +enacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly by +Quakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the close +of the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a more +concrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf of +some negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard of +legal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committee +reported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizance +alone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed, +the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned at all with slavery was +the act of 1793 empowering the master of an interstate fugitive to seize +him wherever found, carry him before any federal or state magistrate in the +vicinage, and procure a certificate warranting his removal to the state +from which he had fled. Proposals to supplement this rendition act on the +one hand by safeguarding free negroes from being kidnapped under fraudulent +claims and on the other hand by requiring employers of strange negroes to +publish descriptions of them and thus facilitate the recovery of runaways, +were each defeated in the House. + +On the whole the glamor of revolutionary doctrines was passing, and self +interest was regaining its wonted supremacy. While the rising cotton +industry was giving the blacks in the South new value as slaves, Northern +spokesmen were frankly stating an antipathy of their people toward negroes +in any capacity whatever.[25] The succession of disasters in San Domingo, +meanwhile, gave warning against the upsetting of racial adjustments in the +black belts, and the Gabriel revolt of 1800 in Virginia drove the lesson +home. On slavery questions for a period of several decades the policy +of each of the two sections was merely to prevent itself from being +overreached. The conservative trend, however, could not wholly remove the +Revolution's impress of philosophical liberalism from the minds of men. +Slavery was always a thing of appreciable disrelish in many quarters; and +the slave trade especially, whether foreign or domestic, bore a permanent +stigma. + +[Footnote 25: _E. g., Annals of Congress_, 1799-1801, pp. 230-246.] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE CLOSING OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE + + +The many attempts of the several colonies to restrict or prohibit the +importation of slaves were uniformly thwarted, as we have seen, by the +British government. The desire for prohibition, however, had been far from +constant or universal.[1] The first Continental Congress when declaring the +Association, on October 18, 1774, resolved: "We will neither import, nor +purchase any slave imported, after the first day of December next; after +which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither +be concerned in it ourselves nor will we hire our vessels nor sell our +commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it."[2] But even +this was mainly a political stroke against the British government; and the +general effect of the restraint lasted not more than two or three years.[3] +The ensuing war, of course, hampered the trade, and the legislatures of +several Northern states, along with Delaware and Virginia, took occasion +to prohibit slave importations. The return of peace, although followed by +industrial depression, revived the demand for slave labor. Nevertheless, +Maryland prohibited the import by an act of 1783; North Carolina laid a +prohibitive duty in 1787; and South Carolina in the spring of that year +enacted the first of a series of temporary laws which maintained a +continuous prohibition for sixteen years. Thus at the time when the framers +of the Federal Constitution were stopping congressional action for twenty +years, the trade was legitimate only in a few of the Northern states, all +of which soon enacted prohibitions, and in Georgia alone at the South. +The San Domingan cataclysm prompted the Georgia legislature in an act +of December 19, 1793, to forbid the importation of slaves from the West +Indies, the Bahamas and Florida, as well as to require free negroes to +procure magisterial certificates of industriousness and probity.[4] The +African trade was left open by that state until 1798, when it was closed +both by legislative enactment and by constitutional provision. + +[Footnote 1: The slave trade enactments by the colonies, the states and +the federal government are listed and summarized in W.E.B. DuBois, _The +Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States, 1638-1870_ +(New York, 1904), appendices.] + +[Footnote 2: W.C. Ford, ed., _Journals of the Continental Congress_ +(Washington, 1904), I, 75, 77.] + +[Footnote 3: DuBois, pp. 44-48.] + +[Footnote 4: The text of the act, which appears never to have been printed, +is in the Georgia archives. For a transcript I am indebted to the Hon. +Philip Cook, Secretary of State of Georgia.] + +The scale of the importation in the period when Georgia alone permitted +them appears to have been small. For the year 1796, for example, the +imports at Savannah were officially reported at 2084, including some who +had been brought coastwise from the northward for sale.[5] A foreign +traveler who visited Savannah in the period noted that the demand was light +because of the dearth of money and credit, that the prices were about three +hundred dollars per head, that the carriers were mainly from New England, +and that one third of each year's imports were generally smuggled into +South Carolina.[6] + +[Footnote 5: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, pp. 459, +460.] + +[Footnote 6: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ +(London, 1799), p. 605.] + +In the impulse toward the prohibitory acts the humanitarian motive was +obvious but not isolated. At the North it was supplemented, often in +the same breasts, by the inhumane feeling of personal repugnance toward +negroes. The anti-slave-trade agitation in England also had a contributing +influence; and there were no economic interests opposing the exclusion. +At the South racial repugnance was fainter, and humanitarianism though of +positive weight was but one of several factors. The distinctively Southern +considerations against the trade were that its continuance would lower the +prices of slaves already on hand, or at least prevent those prices from +rising; that it would so increase the staple exports as to spoil the +world's market for them; that it would drain out money and keep the +community in debt; that it would retard the civilization of the negroes +already on hand; and that by raising the proportion of blacks in the +population it would intensify the danger of slave insurrections. The +several arguments had varying degrees of influence in the several areas. +In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-going +comfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer districts the +settlers were more confident in their own alertness. Again, where +prosperity was declining the planters were fairly sure to favor anything +calculated to raise the prices of slaves which they might wish in future to +sell, while on the other hand the people in districts of rising industry +were tempted by programmes tending to cheapen the labor they needed. + +The arguments used in South Carolina for and against exclusion may be +gathered from scattering reports in the newspapers. In September, 1785, the +lower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governor +on the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committee +of fifteen on the state of the republic. In this committee there was a +vigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibiting +slave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it. Since the +peace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven thousand slaves +had been imported, which at L50 each would be trifling as a cause of the +existing stringency; and the closing of the ports would therefore fail to +relieve the distress[7] Thomas Pinckney supported Rutledge with an argument +that the exclusion of the trade from Charleston would at once drive +commerce in general to the ports of Georgia and North Carolina, and that +the advantage of low prices, which he said had fallen from a level of L90 +in 1783, would be lost to the planters. Judge Pendleton, on the other hand, +stressed the need of retrenchment. Planters, he said, no longer enjoyed the +long loans which in colonial times had protected them from distress; and +the short credits now alone available put borrowers in peril of bankruptcy +from a single season of short crops and low prices.[8] The committee +reported Izard's bill; but it was defeated in the House by a vote of 47 to +51, and an act was passed instead for an emission of bills of credit by the +state. The advocacy of the trade by Thomas Pinckney indicates that at this +time there was no unanimity of conservatives against it. + +[Footnote 7: Charleston _Evening Gazette_, Sept. 26 and 28, 1785.] + +[Footnote 8: _Ibid_., Oct. 1, 1785.] + +When two years later the stringency persisted, the radicals in the +legislature demanded a law to stay the execution of debts, while the now +unified conservatives proposed again the stoppage of the slave trade. In +the course of the debate David Ramsay "made a jocose remark that every +man who went to church last Sunday and said his prayers was bound by a +spiritual obligation to refuse the importation of slaves. They had devoutly +prayed not to be led into temptation, and negroes were a temptation too +great to be resisted."[9] The issue was at length adjusted by combining +the two projects of a stay-law and a prohibition of slave importations for +three years in a single bill. This was approved on March 28, 1787; and a +further act of the same day added a penalty of fine to that of forfeiture +for the illegal introduction of slaves. The exclusion applied to slaves +from every source, except those whose masters should bring them when +entering the state as residents.[10] + +[Footnote 9: Charleston _Morning Post_, March 23, 1787.] + +[Footnote 10: _Ibid_., March 29, 1787; Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at +Large of South Carolina_, VII, 430.] + +Early in the next year an attempt was made to repeal the prohibition. Its +leading advocate was Alexander Gillon, a populistic Charleston merchant +who had been made a commodore by the State of South Carolina but had never +sailed a ship. The opposition was voiced so vigorously by Edward Rutledge, +Charles Pinckney, Chancellor Matthews, Dr. Ramsay, Mr. Lowndes, and others +that the project was crushed by 93 votes to 40. The strongest weapon in +the hands of its opponents appears to have been a threat of repealing the +stay-law in retaliation.[11] At the end of the year the prohibitory act +had its life prolonged until the beginning of 1793; and continuation acts +adopted every two or three years thereafter extended the regime until the +end of 1803. The constitutionality of the prohibition was tested before the +judiciary of the state in January, 1802, when the five assembled judges +unanimously pronounced it valid.[12] + +[Footnote 11: _Georgia State Gazette_ (Savannah), Feb. 17, 1788.] + +[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Jan. 30, 1802.] + +But at last the advocates of the open trade had their innings. The governor +in a message of November 24, 1803, recited that his best exertions to +enforce the law had been of no avail. Inhabitants of the coast and the +frontier, said he, were smuggling in slaves abundantly, while the people of +the central districts were suffering an unfair competition in having to +pay high prices for their labor. He mentioned a recently enacted law of +Congress reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only to +pronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction; and he +dismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of smuggled slaves +as "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction in servitude."[13] +Having thus described the problem as insoluble by prohibitions, he left the +solution to the legislature. + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 5, 1803.] + +In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward by a +statement of William Lowndes in Congress,[14] there is reason to believe +that violations of the law had not been committed on a great scale. Slave +prices could not have become nearly doubled, as they did during the period +of legal prohibition, if African imports had been at all freely made. The +governor may quite possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view to +bringing the system of exclusion to an end. + +[Footnote 14: _Annals of Congress_, 1803-1804, p. 992.] + +However this may have been, a bill was promptly introduced in the Senate +to repeal all acts against importations. Mr. Barnwell opposed this on +the ground that the immense influx of slaves which might be expected in +consequence would cut in half the value of slave property, and that the +increase in the cotton output would lower the already falling prices of +cotton to disastrous levels. The resumption of the great war in Europe, +said he, had already diminished the supply of manufactured goods and raised +their prices. "Was it under these circumstances that we ought to lay +out the savings of our industry, the funds accumulated in many years of +prosperity and peace, to increase that produce whose value had already +fallen so much? He thought not. The permission given by the bill would lead +to ruinous speculations. Everyone would purchase negroes. It was well known +that those who dealt in this property would sell it at a very long credit. +Our citizens would purchase at all hazards and trust to fortunate crops and +favorable markets for making their payments; and it would be found that +South Carolina would in a few years, if this trade continued open, be in +the same situation of debt, and subject to all misfortunes which that +situation had produced, as at the close of the Revolutionary war." The +newspaper closed its report of the speech by a concealment of its further +burden: "The Hon. member adduced in support of his opinion various other +arguments, still more cogent and impressive, which from reasons very +obvious we decline making public."[15] It may be surmised that the +suppressed remarks dealt with the danger of slave revolts. In the further +course of the debate, "Mr. Smith said he would agree to put a stop to the +importation of slaves, but he believed it impossible. For this reason he +would vote for the bill." The measure soon passed the Senate. + +[Footnote 15: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 26, 1803.] + +Meanwhile the lower house had resolved on December 8, in committee of the +whole, "that the laws prohibiting the importation of negroes and other +persons of colour in this state can be so amended as to prevent their +introduction amongst us," and had recommended that a select committee be +appointed to draft a bill accordingly.[16] Within the following week, +however, the sentiment of the House was swung to the policy of repeal, and +the Senate bill was passed. On the test vote the ayes were 55 and the +noes 46.[17] The act continued the exclusion of West Indian negroes, and +provided that slaves brought in from sister states of the Union must have +official certificates of good character; but as to the African trade it +removed all restrictions. In 1805 a bill to prohibit imports again was +introduced into the legislature, but after debate it was defeated.[18] + +[Footnote 16: _Ibid_., Dec. 20, 1803.] + +[Footnote 17: Charleston _City Gazette_, Dec. 22, 1803.] + +[Footnote 18: "Diary of Edward Hooker" in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] + +The local effect of the repeal is indicated in the experience of E.S. +Thomas, a Charleston bookseller of the time who in high prosperity had just +opened a new importation of fifty thousand volumes. As he wrote in after +years, the news that the legislature had reopened the slave trade "had not +been five hours in the city, before two large British Guineamen, that had +been lying on and off the port for several days expecting it, came up to +town; and from that day my business began to decline.... A great change at +once took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for the +coast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were bought +up with avidity, not only consuming the large funds that had been +accumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit +and mortgaging the slaves for payment.... For myself, I was upwards of five +years disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more than a half, in +all the principal towns from Augusta in Georgia to Boston."[19] + +[Footnote 19: E.S. Thomas, _Reminiscences_, II, 35, 36.] + +As reported at the end of the period, the importations amounted to 5386 +slaves in 1804; 6790 in 1805; 11,458 in 1806; and 15,676 in 1807.[20] +Senator William Smith of South Carolina upon examining the records at a +later time placed the total at 39,310, and analysed the statistics as +follows: slaves brought by British vessels, 19,449; by French vessels, +1078; by American vessels, operated mostly for the account of Rhode +Islanders and foreigners, 18,048.[21] If an influx no greater than this +could produce the effect which Thomas described, notwithstanding that many +of the slaves were immediately reshipped to New Orleans and many more +were almost as promptly sold into the distant interior, the scale of +the preceding illicit trade must have been far less than the official +statements and the apologies in Congress would indicate. + +[Footnote 20: _Virginia Argus_, Jan. 19, 1808.] + +[Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, 1821-1822, pp. 73-77.] + +South Carolina's opening of the trade promptly spread dismay in other +states. The North Carolina legislature, by a vote afterwards described as +virtually unanimous in both houses, adopted resolutions in December, 1804, +instructing the Senators from North Carolina and requesting her Congressmen +to use their utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procure +an amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at once to +prohibit the further importation of slaves and other persons of color +from Africa and the West Indies. Copies were ordered sent not only to the +state's delegation in Congress but to the governors of the other states for +transmission to the legislatures with a view to their concurrence.[22] In +the next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of New +Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of the +time when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of the +Constitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme of +amendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill for +the temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question of +African importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at the +beginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on the general +question three years afterward. + +[Footnote 22: Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter of +Governor James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, in +the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.] + +[Footnote 23: H.V. Ames, _Proposed Amendments to the Constitution_, in the +American Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 208, 209.] + +[Footnote 24: Printed from Senator Plumer's notes, in the _American +Historical Review_, XXII, 340-364.] + +In the winter of 1804-1805 bills were introduced in both Senate and House +to prohibit slave importations at large; but the one was postponed for a +year and the other was rejected,[25] doubtless because the time was not +near enough when they could take effect. At last the matter was formally +presented by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens," +he said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "on the approach of +the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to +withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation +in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued +on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the +reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to +proscribe. Although no law you can pass can take effect until the day of +the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening period +is not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot be +completed before that day."[26] Next day Senator Bradley of Vermont gave +notice of a bill which was shortly afterward introduced and which, after +an unreported discussion, was passed by the Senate on January 27. Its +conspicuous provisions were that after the close of the year 1807 the +importation of slaves was to be a felony punishable with death, and that +the interstate coasting trade in slaves should be illegal. + +[Footnote 25: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, p. +105.] + +The report of proceedings in the House was now full, now scant. The +paragraph of the President's message was referred on December 3 to a +committee of seven with Peter Early of Georgia as chairman and three other +Southerners in the membership. The committee's bill reported on December +15, proposed to prohibit slave importations, to penalize the fitting out of +vessels for the trade by fine and forfeiture, to lay fines and forfeitures +likewise upon the owners and masters found within the jurisdictional waters +of the United States with slaves from abroad on board, and empowered the +President to use armed vessels in enforcement. It further provided that if +slaves illegally introduced should be found within the United States they +should be forfeited, and any person wittingly concerned in buying or +selling them should be fined; it laid the burden of proof upon defendants +when charged on reasonable grounds of presumption with having violated the +act; and it prescribed that the slaves forfeited should, like other +goods in the same status, be sold at public outcry by the proper federal +functionaries.[27] + +[Footnote 26: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 14.] + +[Footnote 27 _Ibid_., pp. 167, 168.] + +Mr. Sloan of New Jersey instantly moved to amend by providing that the +forfeited slaves be entitled to freedom. Mr. Early replied that this would +rob the bill of all effect by depriving it of public sanction in the +districts whither slaves were likely to be brought. Those communities, he +said, would never tolerate the enforcement of a law which would set fresh +Africans at large in their midst. Mr. Smilie, voicing the sentiment and +indicating the dilemma of most of his fellow Pennsylvanians, declared +his unconquerable aversion to any measure which would make the federal +government a dealer in slaves, but confessed that he had no programme of +his own. Nathaniel Macon, the Speaker, saying that he thought the desire +to enact an effective law was universal, agreed with Early that Sloan's +amendment would defeat the purpose. Early himself waxed vehement, +prophesying the prompt extermination of any smuggled slaves emancipated in +the Southern states. The amendment was defeated by a heavy majority. + +Next day, however, Mr. Bidwell of Massachusetts renewed Sloan's attack by +moving to strike out the provision for the forfeiture of the slaves; but +his colleague Josiah Quincy, supported by the equally sagacious Timothy +Pitkin of Connecticut, insisted upon the necessity of forfeiture; and Early +contended that this was particularly essential to prevent the smuggling of +slaves across the Florida border where the ships which had brought them +would keep beyond the reach of congressional laws. The House finding itself +in an impasse referred the bill back to the same committee, which soon +reported it in a new form declaring the illegal importation of slaves +a felony punishable with death. Upon Early's motion this provision was +promptly stricken out in committee of the whole by a vote of 60 to 41; +whereupon Bidwell renewed his proposal to strike out the forfeiture of +slaves. He was numerously supported in speeches whose main burden was that +the United States government must not become the receiver of stolen goods. +The speeches in reply stressed afresh the pivotal quality of forfeiture in +an effective law; and Bidwell when pressed for an alternative plan could +only say that he might if necessary be willing to leave them to the +disposal of the several states, but was at any rate "opposed to disgracing +our statute book with a recognition of the principle of slavery." Quincy +replied that he wished Bidwell and his fellows "would descend from their +high abstract ground to the level of things in their own state--such +as have, do and will exist after your laws, and in spite of them." The +Southern members, said he, were anxious for nothing so much as a total +prohibition, and for that reason were insistent upon forfeiture. For the +sake of enforcing the law, and for the sake of controlling the future +condition of the smuggled slaves, forfeiture was imperative. Such a +provision would not necessarily admit that the importers had had a title +in the slaves before capture, but it and it alone would effectively divest +them of any color of title to which they might pretend. The amendment was +defeated by a vote of 36 to 63. + +When the bill with amendments was reported to the House by the committee of +the whole, on December 31, there was vigorous debate upon the question of +substituting imprisonment of from five to ten years in place of the death +penalty. Mr. Talmadge of Connecticut supported the provision of death with +a biblical citation; and Mr. Smilie said he considered it the very marrow +of the bill. Mr. Lloyd of Maryland thought the death penalty would be +out of proportion to the crime, and considered the extract from Exodus +inapplicable since few of the negroes imported had been stolen in Africa. +But Mr. Olin of Vermont announced that the man-stealing argument had +persuaded him in favor of the extreme penalty. Early now became furious, +and in his fury, frank. In a preceding speech he had pronounced slavery +"an evil regretted by every man in the country."[28] He now said: "A large +majority of the people in the Southern states do not ... believe it immoral +to hold human flesh in bondage. Many deprecate slavery as an evil; as a +political evil; but not as a crime. Reflecting men apprehend, at some +future day, evils, incalculable evils, from it; but it is a fact that +few, very few, consider it as a crime. It is best to be candid on this +subject.... I will tell the truth. A large majority of people in the +Southern states do not consider slavery as an evil. Let the gentleman go +and travel in that quarter of the Union; let him go from neighborhood to +neighborhood, and he will find that this is the fact. Some gentlemen appear +to legislate for the sake of appearances.... I should like to know what +honor you will derive from a law that will be broken every day of your +lives."[29] Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf of his +state of Rhode Island: "I wish the law made so strong as to prevent this +trade in future; but I cannot believe that a man ought to be hung for only +stealing a negro. Those who buy them are as bad as those who import them, +and deserve hanging quite as much." The yeas and nays recorded at the end +of the exhausting day showed 63 in favor and 53 against the substitution of +imprisonment. The North was divided, 29 to 37, with the nays coming mostly +from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut; the South, although South +Carolina as well as Kentucky was evenly divided, cast 34 yeas to 16 nays. +Virginia and Maryland, which might have been expected to be doubtful, +virtually settled the question by casting 17 yeas against 6 nays. + +[Footnote 28: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 174.] + +[Footnote 29: _Ibid_., pp. 238, 239.] + +When the consideration of the bill was resumed on January 7, Mr. Bidwell +renewed his original attack by moving to strike out the confiscation of +slaves; and when this was defeated by 39 to 77, he attempted to reach the +same end by a proviso "That no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue of +this act," This was defeated only by the casting vote of the Speaker. Those +voting aye were all from Northern states, except Archer of Maryland, Broom +of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky and Williams of North Carolina. The noes +were all from the South except one from New Hampshire, ten from New York, +and one from Pennsylvania. The outcome was evidently unsatisfactory to the +bulk of the members, for on the next day a motion to recommit the bill to +a new committee of seventeen prevailed by a vote of 76 to 46. Among the +members who shifted their position over night were six of the ten from New +York, four from Maryland, three from Virginia, and two from North Carolina. +In the new committee Bedinger of Kentucky, who was regularly on the +Northern side, was chairman, and Early was not included. + +This committee reported in February a bill providing, as a compromise, that +forfeited negroes should be carried to some place in the United States +where slavery was either not permitted or was in course of gradual +extinction, and there be indentured or otherwise employed as the President +might deem best for them and the country. Early moved that for this there +be substituted a provision that the slaves be delivered to the several +states in which the captures were made, to be disposed of at discretion; +and he said that the Southern people would resist the indenture provision +with their lives. This reckless assertion suggests that Early was either +set against the framing of an effective law, or that he spoke in mere blind +rage. + +Before further progress was made the House laid aside its bill in favor of +the one which the Senate had now passed. An amendment to this, striking out +the death penalty, was adopted on February 12 by a vote of 67 to 48. The +North gave 31 ayes and 36 noes, quite evenly distributed among the states. +The South cast 37 ayes to 11 noes, five of the latter coming from Virginia, +two from North Carolina, and one each from Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and +South Carolina. A considerable shifting of votes appeared since the ballot +on the same question six weeks before. Knight of Rhode Island, Sailly and +Williams of New York, Helms of New Jersey and Wynns of North Carolina +changed in favor of the extreme penalty; but they were more than offset by +the opposite change of Bidwell of Massachusetts, Van Cortlandt of New York, +Lambert of New Jersey, Clay and Gray of Virginia and McFarland of North +Carolina. Numerous members from all quarters who voted on one of these +roll-calls were silent at the other, and this variation also had a net +result against the infliction of death. The House then filled the blank +it had made in the bill by defining the offense as a high misdemeanor and +providing a penalty of imprisonment of not less than five nor more than +ten years. John Randolph opposed even this as excessive, but found himself +unsupported. The House then struck out the prohibition of the coasting +trade in slaves, and returned the bill as amended to the Senate. The latter +concurred in all the changes except that as to the coastwise trade, and +sent the bill back to the House. + +John Randolph now led in the insistence that the House stand firm. If the +bill should pass without the amendment, said he, the Southern people would +set the law at defiance, and he himself would begin the violation of so +unconstitutional an infringement of the rights of property. The House voted +to insist upon its amendment, and sent the bill to conference where in +compromise the prohibition as to the coastwise carriage of slaves for sale +was made to apply only to vessels of less than forty tons burthen. The +Senate agreed to this. In the House Mr. Early opposed it as improper in law +and so easy of evasion that it would be perfectly futile for the prevention +of smuggling from Florida. John Randolph said: "The provision of the bill +touched the right of private property. He feared lest at a future period it +might be made the pretext of universal emancipation. He had rather lose the +bill, he had rather lose all the bills of the session, he had rather lose +every bill passed since the establishment of the government, than agree +to the provision contained in this slave bill. It went to blow up the +Constitution in ruins."[30] Concurrence was carried, nevertheless, by a +vote of 63 to 49, in which the North cast 51 ayes to 12 noes, and the South +12 ayes to 37 noes. The Southern ayes were four from Maryland, four +from North Carolina, two from Tennessee, and one each from Virginia and +Kentucky. The Northern noes were five from New York, two each from New +Hampshire and Vermont, and one each from Massachusetts, Connecticut and +Pennsylvania. + +[Footnote 30: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 626.] + +The bill then passed the House. Its variance from the original House bill +was considerable, for it made the importation of slaves from abroad a high +misdemeanor punishable with imprisonment; it prohibited the coastwise trade +by sea in vessels of less than forty tons, and required the masters of +larger vessels transporting negroes coastwise to deliver to the port +officials classified manifests of the negroes and certificates that to the +best of their knowledge and belief the slaves had not been imported since +the beginning of 1808; and instead of forfeiture to the United States it +provided that all smuggled slaves seized under the act should be subject to +such disposal as the laws of the state or territory in which the seizure +might be made should prescribe.[31] Randolph, still unreconciled, offered +an explanatory act, February 27, that nothing in the preceding act should +be construed to affect in any manner the absolute property right of masters +in their slaves not imported contrary to the law, and that such masters +should not be liable to any penalty for the coastwise transportation of +slaves in vessels of less than forty tons. In attempting to force this +measure through, he said that if it did not pass the House at once he hoped +the Virginia delegation would wait on the President and remonstrate against +his approving the act which had passed.[32] By a vote of 60 to 49 this bill +was made the order for the next day; but its further consideration was +crowded out by the rush of business at the session's close. The President +signed the prohibitory bill on March 2, without having received the +threatened Virginia visitation. + +[Footnote 31: _Ibid_., pp. 1266-1270.] + +[Footnote 32: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 637.] + +Among the votes in the House on which the yeas and nays were recorded in +the course of these complex proceedings, six may be taken as tests. They +were on striking out the death penalty, December 31; on striking out the +forfeiture of slaves, January 7; on the proviso that no person should +be sold by virtue of the act, January 7; on referring the bill to a new +committee, January 8; on striking out the death penalty from the Senate +bill, February 12; and on the prohibition of the coasting trade in slaves +in vessels of under forty tons, February 26. In each case a majority of +the Northern members voted on one side of the question, and a yet larger +majority of Southerners voted on the other. Twenty-two members voted in +every case on the side which the North tended to adopt. These comprised +seven from Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, three from Connecticut, +and one or two from each of the other Northern states except Rhode Island +and Ohio. They comprised also Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky, and +Morrow of Virginia; while Williams of North Carolina was almost equally +constant in opposing the policies advocated by the bulk of his fellow +Southerners. On the other hand the regulars on the Southern side comprised +not only ten Virginians, all of the six South Carolinians, except three of +their number on the punishment questions, all of the four Georgians, three +North Carolinians, two Marylanders and one Kentuckian, but in addition +Tenney of New Hampshire, Schuneman, Van Rensselaer and Verplanck of New +York on all but the punishment questions. + +On the whole, sectional divergence was fairly pronounced, but only on +matters of detail. The expressions from all quarters of a common desire +to make the prohibition of importations effective were probably sincere +without material exception. As regards the Virginia group of states, their +economic interest in high prices for slaves vouches for the genuine purpose +of their representatives, while that of the Georgians and South Carolinians +may at the most be doubted and not disproved. The South in general +wished to prevent any action which might by implication stigmatize the +slaveholding regime, and was on guard also against precedents tending to +infringe state rights. The North, on the other hand, was largely divided +between a resolve to stop the sanction of slavery and a desire to enact +an effective law in the premises directly at issue. The outcome was a law +which might be evaded with relative ease wherever public sanction was weak, +but which nevertheless proved fairly effective in operation. + +When slave prices rose to high levels after the war of 1812 systematic +smuggling began to prevail from Amelia Island on the Florida border, and on +a smaller scale on the bayous of the Barataria district below New Orleans; +but these operations were checked upon the passage of a congressional act +in 1818 increasing the rewards to informers. Another act in the following +year directed the President to employ armed vessels for police in both +African and American waters, and incidentally made provisions contemplating +the return of captured slaves to Africa. Finally Congress by an act of 1820 +declared the maritime slave trade to be piracy.[33] Smuggling thereafter +diminished though it never completely ceased. + +[Footnote 33: DuBois, _Suppression of the Slave Trade_, pp. 118-123.] + +As to the dimensions of the illicit importations between 1808 and 1860, +conjectures have placed the gross as high as two hundred and seventy +thousand.[34] Most of the documents in the premises, however, bear palpable +marks of unreliability. It may suffice to say that these importations were +never great enough to affect the labor supply in appreciable degree. So far +as the general economic regime was concerned, the foreign slave trade was +effectually closed in 1808. + +[Footnote 34: W.H. Collins, _The Domestic Slave Trade of the Southern +States_ (New York [1904], pp. 12-20). _See also_ W.E.B. DuBois, +"Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1891, p. 173.] + +At that time, however, there were already in the United States about one +million slaves to serve as a stock from which other millions were to be +born to replenish the plantations in the east and to aid in the peopling of +the west. These were ample to maintain a chronic racial problem, and had no +man invented a cotton gin their natural increase might well have glutted +the market for plantation labor. Had the African source been kept freely +open, the bringing of great numbers to meet the demand in prosperous times +would quite possibly have so burdened the country with surplus slaves in +subsequent periods of severe depression that slave prices would have fallen +virtually to zero, and the slaveholding community would have been driven +to emancipate them wholesale as a means of relieving the masters from the +burden of the slaves' support. The foes of slavery had long reckoned that +the abolition of the foreign trade would be a fatal blow to slavery +itself. The event exposed their fallacy. Thomas Clarkson expressed the +disappointment of the English abolitionists in a letter of 1830: "We +certainly have been deceived in our first expectations relative to the +fruit of our exertions. We supposed that when by the abolition of the slave +trade the planters could get no more slaves, they would not only treat +better those whom they then had in their power, but that they would +gradually find it to their advantage to emancipate them. A part of our +expectations have been realized; ... but, alas! where the heart has been +desperately wicked, we have found no change. We did not sufficiently take +into account the effect of unlimited power on the human mind. No man likes +to part with power, and the more unbounded it is, the less he likes to +part with it. Neither did we sufficiently take into account the ignominy +attached to a black skin as the badge of slavery, and how difficult it +would be to make men look with a favourable eye upon what they had looked +[upon] formerly as a disgrace. Neither did we take sufficiently into +account the belief which every planter has, that such an unnatural state +as that of slavery can be kept up only by a system of rigour, and how +difficult therefore it would be to procure a relaxation from the ordinary +discipline of a slave estate."[35] + +[Footnote 35: MS. in private possession.] + +If such was the failure in the British West Indies, the change in +conditions in the United States was even greater; for the rise of the +cotton industry concurred with the prohibition of the African trade to +enhance immensely the preciousness of slaves and to increase in similar +degree the financial obstacle to a sweeping abolition. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE INTRODUCTION OF COTTON AND SUGAR + + +The decade following the peace of 1783 brought depression in all the +plantation districts. The tobacco industry, upon which half of the Southern +people depended in greater or less degree, was entering upon a half century +of such wellnigh constant low prices that the opening of each new tract for +its culture was offset by the abandonment of an old one, and the export +remained stationary at a little less than half a million hogsheads. Indigo +production was decadent; and rice culture was in painful transition to the +new tide-flow system. Slave prices everywhere, like those of most other +investments, were declining in so disquieting a manner that as late as the +end of 1794 George Washington advised a friend to convert his slaves into +other forms of property, and said on his own account: "Were it not that I +am principled against selling negroes, as you would cattle in a market, I +would not in twelve months hence be possessed of a single one as a slave. +I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a very troublesome +species of property ere many years have passed over our heads."[1] But at +that very time the addition of cotton and sugar to the American staples was +on the point of transforming the slaveholders' prospects. + +[Footnote 1: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, 1898, pp. 14, 15.] + +For centuries cotton had been among the world's materials for cloth, +though the dearth of supply kept it in smaller use than wool or flax. This +continued to be the case even when the original sources in the Orient were +considerably supplemented from the island of Bourbon and from the colonies +of Demarara, Berbice and Surinam which dotted the tropical South American +coast now known as Guiana. Then, in the latter half of the eighteenth +century, the great English inventions of spinning and Weaving machinery so +cheapened the manufacturing process that the world's demand for textiles +was immensely stimulated. Europe was eagerly inquiring for new fiber +supplies at the very time when the plantation states of America were under +the strongest pressure for a new source of income. + +The green-seed, short-staple variety of cotton had long been cultivated +for domestic use in the colonies from New Jersey to Georgia, but on such a +petty scale that spinners occasionally procured supplies from abroad. Thus +George Washington, who amid his many activities conducted a considerable +cloth-making establishment, wrote to his factor in 1773 that a bale of +cotton received from England had been damaged in transit.[2] The cutting +off of the foreign trade during the war for independence forced the +Americans to increase their cotton production to supply their necessities +for apparel. A little of it was even exported at the end of the war, eight +bags of which are said to have been seized by the customs officers at +Liverpool in 1784 on the ground that since America could not produce so +great a quantity the invoice must be fraudulent. But cotton was as yet kept +far from staple rank by one great obstacle, the lack of a gin. The fibers +of the only variety at hand clung to the seed as fast as the wool to the +sheep's back. It had to be cut or torn away; and because the seed-tufts +were so small, this operation when performed by hand was exceedingly slow +and correspondingly expensive. The preparation of a pound or two of lint a +day was all that a laborer could accomplish. + +[Footnote 2: MS. in the Library of Congress, Washington letter-books, XVII, +90.] + +The problem of the time had two possible solutions; the invention of a +machine for cleaning the lint from the seed of the sort already at hand, +or the introduction of some different variety whose lint was more lightly +attached. Both solutions were applied, and the latter first in point of +time though not in point of importance. + +About 1786 seed of several strains was imported from as many quarters +by planters on the Georgia-Carolina coast. Experiments with the Bourbon +variety, which yielded the finest lint then in the market, showed that +the growing season was too short for the ripening of its pods; but seed +procured from the Bahama Islands, of the sort which has ever since been +known as sea-island, not only made crops but yielded a finer fiber than +they had in their previous home. This introduction was accomplished by +the simultaneous experiments of several planters on the Georgia coast. Of +these, Thomas Spaulding and Alexander Bissett planted the seed in 1786 but +saw their plants fail to ripen any pods that year. But the ensuing winter +happened to be so mild that, although the cotton is not commonly a +perennial outside the tropics, new shoots grew from the old roots in the +following spring and yielded their crop in the fall.[3] Among those who +promptly adopted the staple was Richard Leake, who wrote from Savannah at +the end of 1788 to Tench Coxe: "I have been this year an adventurer, and +the first that has attempted on a large scale, in the article of cotton. +Several here as well as in Carolina have followed me and tried the +experiment. I shall raise about 5000 pounds in the seed from about eight +acres of land, and the next year I expect to plant from fifty to one +hundred acres."[4] + +[Footnote 3: Letter of Thomas Spaulding, Sapelo Island, Georgia, Jan. 20, +1844, to W.B. Scabrook, in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ +(New York, 1857), pp. 280-286.] + +[Footnote 4: E.J. Donnell, _Chronological and Statistical History of +Cotton_ (New York, 1872), p. 45.] + +The first success in South Carolina appears to have been attained by +William Elliott, on Hilton Head near Beaufort, in 1790. He bought five and +a half bushels of seed in Charleston at 14s per bushel, and sold his crop +at 10-1/2d per pound. In the next year John Screven of St. Luke's parish +planted thirty or forty acres, and sold his yield at from 1s. 2d. to 1s. +6d. sterling per pound. Many other planters on the islands and the adjacent +mainland now joined the movement. Some of them encountered failure, among +them General Moultrie of Revolutionary fame who planted one hundred and +fifty acres in St. John's Berkeley in 1793 and reaped virtually nothing.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, _Memoir on the Origin, Cultivation and +Uses of Cotton_ (Charleston, 1844), pp. 19, 20.] + +The English market came promptly to esteem the long, strong, silky +sea-island fiber as the finest of all cottons; and the prices at Liverpool +rose before the end of the century to as high as five shillings a pound. +This brought fortunes in South Carolina. Captain James Sinkler from a crop +of three hundred acres on his plantation, "Belvedere," in 1794 gathered +216 pounds to the acre, which at prices ranging from fifty to seventy-five +cents a pound brought him a gross return of $509 per laborer employed.[6] +Peter Gaillard of St. John's Berkeley received for his crop of the same +year an average of $340 per hand; and William Brisbane of St. Paul's earned +so much in the three years from 1796 to 1798 that he found himself rich +enough to retire from work and spend several years in travel at the North +and abroad. He sold his plantation to William Seabrook at a price which the +neighbors thought ruinously high, but Seabrook recouped the whole of it +from the proceeds of two years' crops.[7] + +[Footnote 6: Samuel DuBose, _Address delivered before the Black Oak +Agricultural Society, April 28, 1858_, in T.G. Thomas, _The Huguenots of +South Carolina_ (New York, 1887).] + +[Footnote 7: W.B. Seabrook, _Memoir on Cotton_, p. 20.] + +The methods of tillage were quickly systematized. Instead of being planted, +as at first, in separate holes, the seed came to be drilled and plants +grown at intervals of one or two feet on ridges five or six feet apart; +and the number of hoeings was increased. But the thinner fruiting of this +variety prevented the planters from attaining generally more than about +half the output per acre which their upland colleagues came to reap from +their crops of the shorter staple. A hundred and fifty pounds to the acre +and three or four acres to the hand was esteemed a reasonable crop on the +seaboard.[8] The exports of the sea-island staple rose by 1805 to nearly +nine million pounds, but no further expansion occurred until 1819 when an +increase carried the exports for a decade to about eleven million pounds a +year. In the course of the twenties Kinsey Burden and Hugh Wilson, both of +St. John's Colleton, began breeding superfine fiber through seed selection, +with such success that the latter sold two of his bales in 1828 at the +unequaled price of two dollars a pound. The practice of raising fancy +grades became fairly common after 1830, with the result, however, that for +the following decade the exports fell again to about eight million pounds a +year.[9] + +[Footnote 8: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. +132; J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 129, 131.] + +[Footnote 9: Seabrook, pp. 35-37, 53.] + +Sea-island cotton, with its fibers often measuring more than two inches in +length, had the advantages of easy detachment from its glossy black seed by +squeezing it between a pair of simple rollers, and of a price for even its +common grades ranging usually more than twice that of the upland staple. +The disadvantages were the slowness of the harvesting, caused by the +failure of the bolls to open wide; the smallness of the yield; and the +necessity of careful handling at all stages in preparing the lint for +market. Climatic requirements, furthermore, confined its culture within +a strip thirty or forty miles wide along the coast of South Carolina and +Georgia. In the first flush of the movement some of the rice fields were +converted to cotton;[10] but experience taught the community ere long that +the labor expense in the new industry absorbed too much of the gross return +for it to displace rice from its primacy in the district. + +[Footnote 10: F.A. Michaux, _Travels_, in R.G. Thwaites, ed., _Early +Western Travels_, III, 303.] + +In the Carolina-Georgia uplands the industrial and social developments +of the eighteenth century had been in marked contrast with those on the +seaboard. These uplands, locally known as the Piedmont, were separated from +the tide-water tract by a flat and sandy region, the "pine barrens," a +hundred miles or more in breadth, where the soil was generally too light +for prosperous agriculture before the time when commercial fertilizers came +into use. The Piedmont itself is a rolling country, extending without a +break from Virginia to Alabama and from the mountains of the Blue Ridge to +the line of the lowest falls on the rivers. The soil of mingled clay +and sand was originally covered with rich forest mold. The climate was +moderately suited to a great variety of crops; but nothing was found for +which it had a marked superiority until short-staple cotton was made +available. + +In the second half of the eighteenth century this region had come to +be occupied in scattered homesteads by migrants moving overland from +Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, extending their regime of frontier +farms until the stubborn Creek and Cherokee Indian tribes barred further +progress. Later comers from the same northeastward sources, some of them +bringing a few slaves, had gradually thickened the settlement without +changing materially its primitive system of life. Not many recruits had +entered from the rice coast in colonial times, for the regime there was not +such as to produce pioneers for the interior. The planters, unlike those of +Maryland and Virginia, had never imported appreciable numbers of indentured +servants to become in after years yeomen and fathers of yeomen; the slaves +begat slaves alone to continue at their masters' bidding; and the planters +themselves had for the time being little inducement to forsake the +lowlands. The coast and the Piedmont were unassociated except by a trickle +of trade by wagon and primitive river-boat across the barrens. The capture +of Savannah and Charleston by the British during the War for Independence, +however, doubtless caused a number of the nearby inhabitants to move into +the Piedmont as refugees, carrying their slaves with them. + +The commercial demands of the early settlers embraced hardly anything +beyond salt, ammunition and a little hardware. The forest and their +half-cleared fields furnished meat and bread; workers in the households +provided rude furniture and homespun; and luxuries, except home-made +liquors, were unknown. But the time soon came when zealous industry yielded +more grain and cattle than each family needed for its own supply. The +surplus required a market, which the seaboard was glad to furnish. The road +and river traffic increased, and the procurement of miscellaneous goods +from the ports removed the need of extreme diversity in each family's work. +This treeing of energy led in turn to a search for more profitable market +crops. Flax and hemp were tried, and tobacco with some success. Several new +villages were founded, indeed, on the upper courses of the rivers to serve +as stations for the inspection and shipment of tobacco; but their budding +hopes of prosperity from that staple were promptly blighted. The product +was of inferior grade, the price was low, and the cost of freightage high. +The export from Charleston rose from 2680 hogsheads in 1784 to 9646 in +1799, but rapidly declined thereafter. Tobacco, never more than a makeshift +staple, was gladly abandoned for cotton at the first opportunity.[11] + +[Footnote 11: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern +Cotton Belt to 1860_ (New York, 1908), pp. 46-55.] + +At the time of the federal census of 1790 there were in the main group of +upland counties of South Carolina, comprised then in the two "districts" of +Camden and Ninety-six, a total of 91,704 white inhabitants, divided into +15,652 families. Of these 3787 held slaves to the number of 19,934--an +average of 5-1/4 slaves in each holding. No more than five of these parcels +comprised as many as one hundred slaves each, and only 156 masters, about +four per cent, of the whole, had as many as twenty each. These larger +holdings, along with the 335 other parcels ranging from ten to nineteen +slaves each, were of course grouped mainly in the river counties in the +lower part of the Piedmont, while the smallest holdings were scattered far +and wide. That is to say, there was already discoverable a tendency toward +a plantation regime in the localities most accessible to market, while +among the farmers about one in four had one or more slaves to aid in the +family's work. The Georgia Piedmont, for which the returns of the early +censuses have been lost, probably had a somewhat smaller proportion of +slaves by reason of its closer proximity to the Indian frontier. + +A sprinkling of slaves was enough to whet the community's appetite for +opportunities to employ them with effect and to buy more slaves with the +proceeds. It is said that in 1792 some two or three million pounds +of short-staple cotton was gathered in the Piedmont,[12] perhaps in +anticipation of a practicable gin, and that the state of Georgia had +appointed a commission to promote the desired invention.[13] It is certain +that many of the citizens were discussing the problem when in the spring of +1793 young Eli Whitney, after graduating at Yale College, left his home in +Massachusetts intending to teach school in the South. While making a visit +at the home of General Greene's widow, near Savannah, he listened to a +conversation on the subject by visitors from upland Georgia, and he was +urged by Phineas Miller, the manager of the Greene estate, to apply his +Yankee ingenuity to the solution. When Miller offered to bear the expenses +of the project, Whitney set to work, and within ten days made a model which +met the essential requirements. This comprised a box with a slatted side +against which a wooden cylinder studded with wire points was made to play. +When seed cotton was fed into the box and the cylinder was revolved, the +sharp wires passing between the slats would engage the lint and pull it +through as they passed out in the further revolution of the cylinder. The +seed, which were too large to pass through the grating, would stay within +the hopper until virtually all the wool was torn off, whereupon they would +fall through a crevice on the further side. The minor problem which now +remained of freeing the cylinder's teeth from their congestion of lint +found a solution in Mrs. Greene's stroke with a hearth-broom. Whitney, +seizing the principle, equipped his machine with a second cylinder studded +with brushes, set parallel to the first but revolving in an opposite +direction and at a greater speed. This would sweep the teeth clean as fast +as they emerged lint-laden from the hopper. Thus was the famous cotton-gin +devised.[14] + +[Footnote 12: Letter of Phineas Miller to the Comptroller of South +Carolina, in the _American Historical Review_, III, 115.] + +[Footnote 13: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_ (New York, 1807), p. 23.] + +[Footnote 14: Denison Olmstead, _Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esq_. (New Haven, +1846), reprinted in J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. +297-320. M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, pp. 25, 26.] + +Miller, who now married Mrs. Greene, promptly entered into partnership with +Whitney not only to manufacture gins but also to monopolize the business +of operating them, charging one-third of the cotton as toll. They even +ventured into the buying and selling of the staple on a large scale. Miller +wrote Whitney in 1797, for example, that he was trying to raise money for +the purchase of thirty or forty thousand pounds of seed cotton at the +prevailing price of three cents, and was projecting a trade in the lint to +far-off Tennessee.[15] By this time the partners had as many as thirty gins +in operation at various points in Georgia; but misfortune had already begun +to pursue them. Their shop on the Greene plantation had been forced by a +mob even before their patent was procured in 1793, and Jesse Bull, Charles +M. Lin and Edward Lyons, collaborating near Wrightsboro, soon put forth an +improved gin in which saw-toothed iron discs replaced the wire points of +the Whitney model.[16] Whitney had now returned to New Haven to establish +a gin factory, and Miller wrote him in 1794 urging prompt shipments and +saying: "The people of the country are running mad for them, and much can +be said to justify their importunity. When the present crop is harvested +there will be a real property of at least fifty thousand dollars lying +useless unless we can enable the holders to bring it to market," But an +epidemic prostrated Whitney's workmen that year, and a fire destroyed his +factory in 1795. Meanwhile rival machines were appearing in the market, and +Whitney and Miller were beginning their long involvement in lawsuits. Their +overreaching policy of monopolizing the operation of their gins turned +public sentiment against them and inclined the juries, particularly in +Georgia, to decide in favor of their opponents. Not until 1807, when their +patent was on the point of expiring did they procure a vindication in the +Georgia courts. Meanwhile a grant of $50,000 from the legislature of South +Carolina to extinguish the patent right in that state, and smaller grants +from North Carolina and Tennessee did little more than counterbalance +expenses.[17] A petition which Whitney presented to Congress in 1812 for a +renewal of his expired patent was denied, and Whitney turned his talents to +the manufacture of muskets. + +[Footnote 15: _American Historical Review_. Ill, 104.] + +[Footnote 16: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 289, 290, +293-295.] + +[Footnote 17: M.B. Hammond, "Correspondence of Eli Whitney relating to the +Invention of the Cotton Gin," in the _American Historical Review_, III, +90-127.] + +In Georgia the contest of lawyers in the courts was paralleled by a battle +of advertisers in the newspapers. Thomas Spaulding offered to supply Joseph +Eve's gins from the Bahama Islands at fifty guineas each;[18] and Eve +himself shortly immigrated to Augusta to contend for his patent rights on +roller-gins, for some of his workmen had changed his model in such a way as +to increase the speed, and had put their rival gins upon the market.[19] +Among these may have been John Currie, who offered exclusive county rights +at $100 each for the making, using and vending of his type of gins,[20] +also William Longstreet of Augusta who offered to sell gins of his own +devising at $150 each,[21] and Robert Watkins of the short-lived town of +Petersburg, Georgia, who denounced Longstreet as an infringer of his patent +and advertised local non-exclusive rights for making and using his own +style of gins at the bargain rate of sixty dollars.[22] All of these were +described as roller gins; but all were warranted to gin upland as well as +sea-island cotton.[23] By the year 1800 Miller and Whitney had also +adopted the practice of selling licenses in Georgia, as is indicated by an +advertisement from their agent at Augusta. Meanwhile ginners were calling +for negro boys and girls ten or twelve years old on hire to help at the +machines;[24] and were offering to gin for a toll of one-fifth of the +cotton.[25] As years passed the rates were still further lowered. At +Augusta in 1809, for example, cotton was ginned and packed in square bales +of 350 pounds at a cost of $1.50 per hundredweight.[26] + +[Footnote 18: _Columbian Museum_ (Savannah, Ga.), April 26, 1796.] + +[Footnote 19: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 281.] + +[Footnote 20: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Dec. 10, 1796.] + +[Footnote 21: _Southern Sentinel_ (Augusta, Ga.), July 14, 1796.] + +[Footnote 22: _Ibid_., Feb. 7, 1797; Augusta _Chronicle_, June 10, 1797.] + +[Footnote 23: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 13, 1800.] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Sentinel_, April 23, 1795.] + +[Footnote 25: Augusta _Chronicle_, Jan. 16, 1796.] + +[Footnote 26: _Ibid_., Sept. 9, 1809.] + +The upland people of Georgia and the two Carolinas made prompt response to +the new opportunity. By 1800 even Tennessee had joined the movement, and +a gin of such excellence was erected near Nashville that the proprietors +exacted fees from visitors wishing to view it;[27] and by 1802 not only +were consignments being shipped to New Orleans for the European market, but +part of the crop was beginning to be peddled in wagons to Kentucky and in +pole-boats on the Ohio as far as Pittsburg, for the domestic making of +homespun.[28] In 1805 John Baird advertised at Nashville that, having +received a commission from correspondents at Baltimore, he was ready to +buy as much as one hundred thousand pounds of lint at fifteen cents a +pound.[29] In the settlements about Vicksburg in the Mississippi Territory, +cotton was not only the staple product by 1809, but was also for the time +being the medium of exchange, while in Arkansas the squatters were debarred +from the new venture only by the poverty which precluded them from getting +gins.[30] In Virginia also, in such of the southerly counties as had +summers long enough for the crop to ripen in moderate security, cotton +growing became popular. But for the time being these were merely an +out-lying fringe of cotton's principality. The great rush to cotton growing +prior to the war of 1812 occurred in the Carolina-Georgia Piedmont, with +its trend of intensity soon pointing south-westward. + +[Footnote 27: _Tennessee Gazette_ (Nashville, Tenn.), April 9, 1800.] + +[Footnote 28: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, +252.] + +[Footnote 29: _Tennessee Gazette_, March 27, 1805.] + +[Footnote 30: F. Cuming, _Tour to the Western Country_ (Pittsburg, 1810), +in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 272, 280, 298.] + +A shrewd contemporary observer found special reason to rejoice that the new +staple required no large capital and involved no exposure to disease. Rice +and indigo, said he, had offered the poorer whites, except the few employed +as overseers, no livelihood "without the degradation of working with +slaves"; but cotton, stimulating and elevating these people into the rank +of substantial farmers, tended "to fill the country with an independent +industrious yeomanry."[31] True as this was, it did not mean that producers +on a plantation scale were at a disadvantage. Settlers of every type, +in fact, adopted the crop as rapidly as they could get seed and ginning +facilities, and newcomers poured in apace to share the prosperity. + +[Footnote 31: David Ramsay, _History of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1808), +II, 448-9.] + +The exports mounted swiftly, but the world's market readily absorbed them +at rising prices until 1801 when the short-staple output was about forty +million pounds and the price at the ports about forty-four cents a pound. +A trade in slaves promptly arose to meet the eager demand for labor; and +migrants coming from the northward and the rice coast brought additional +slaves in their train. General Wade Hampton was the first conspicuous one +of these. With the masterful resolution which always characterized him, he +carried his great gang from the seaboard to the neighborhood of Columbia +and there in 1799 raised six hundred of the relatively light weight bales +of that day on as many acres.[32] His crop was reckoned to have a value of +some ninety thousand dollars.[33] + +[Footnote 32: Seabrook, pp. 16, 17.] + +[Footnote 33: Note made by L. C Draper from the Louisville, Ga., _Gazette_, +Draper MSS., series VV, vol. XVI, p. 84, Wisconsin Historical Society.] + +The general run of the upland cultivators, however, continued as always to +operate on a minor scale; and the high cost of transportation caused them +generally to continue producing miscellaneous goods to meet their domestic +needs. The diversified regime is pictured in Michaux's description of a +North Carolina plantation in 1802: "In eight hundred acres of which it is +composed, a hundred and fifty are cultivated in cotton, Indian corn, wheat +and oats, and dunged annually, which is a great degree of perfection in the +present state of agriculture in this part of the country. Independent of +this [the proprietor] has built in his yard several machines that the same +current of water puts in motion; they consist of a corn mill, a saw mill, +another to separate the cotton seeds, a tan-house, a tan-mill, a distillery +to make peach brandy, and a small forge where the inhabitants of the +country go to have their horses shod. Seven or eight negro slaves are +employed in the different departments, some of which are only occupied at +certain periods of the year. Their wives are employed under the direction +of the mistress in manufacturing cotton and linen for the use of the +family."[34] + +[Footnote 34: F.A. Michaux in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, III, +292.] + +The speed of the change to a general slaveholding regime in the uplands may +easily be exaggerated. In those counties of South Carolina which lay wholly +within the Piedmont the fifteen thousand slaves on hand in 1790 formed +slightly less than one-fifth of the gross population there. By 1800 +the number of slaves increased by seventy per cent., and formed nearly +one-fourth of the gross; in the following decade they increased by ninety +per cent., until they comprised one-third of the whole; from 1810 to 1820 +their number grew at the smaller rate of fifty per cent, and reached +two-fifths of the whole; and by 1830, with a further increase of forty per +cent., the number of slaves almost overtook that of the whites. The slaves +were then counted at 101,982, the whites at 115,318, and the free negroes +at 2,115. In Georgia the slave proportion grew more rapidly than this +because it was much smaller at the outset; in North Carolina, on the +other hand, the rise was less marked because cotton never throve there so +greatly. + +In its industrial requirements cotton was much closer to tobacco than to +rice or sugar. There was no vital need for large units of production. On +soils of the same quality the farmer with a single plow, if his family did +the hoeing and picking, was on a similar footing with the greatest planter +as to the output per hand, and in similar case as to cost of production per +bale. The scale of cotton-belt slaveholdings rose not because free labor +was unsuited to the industry but because slaveholders from the outside +moved in to share the opportunity and because every prospering +non-slaveholder and small slaveholder was eager to enlarge his personal +scale of operations. Those who could save generally bought slaves with +their savings; those who could not, generally continued to raise cotton +nevertheless. + +The gross cotton output, in which the upland crop greatly and increasingly +outweighed that of the sea-island staple, rapidly advanced from about +forty-eight million pounds in 1801 to about eighty million in 1806; then it +was kept stationary by the embargo and the war of 1812, until the return +of peace and open trade sent it up by leaps and bounds again. The price +dropped abruptly from an average of forty-four cents in the New York market +in 1801 to nineteen cents in 1802, but there was no further decline until +the beginning of the war with Great Britain.[35] + +[Footnote 35: M.B. Hammond, _The Cotton Industry_, table following p. 357.] + +Cotton's absorption of the people's energies already tended to become +excessive. In 1790 South Carolina had sent abroad a surplus of corn from +the back country measuring well over a hundred thousand bushels. But by +1804 corn brought in brigs was being advertised in Savannah to meet the +local deficit;[36] and in the spring of 1807 there seems to have been a +dearth of grain in the Piedmont itself. At that time an editorial in the +_Augusta Chronicle_ ran as follows: "A correspondent would recommend to the +planters of Georgia, now the season is opening, to raise more corn and less +cotton ... The dear bought experience of the present season should teach us +to be more provident for the future." [37] Under the conditions of the time +this excess at the expense of grain was likely to correct itself at once, +for men and their draught animals must eat to work, and in the prevailing +lack of transportation facilities food could not be brought from a +distance at a price within reach. The systematic basis of industry was the +production, whether by planters or farmers, of such food as was locally +needed and such supplies of cloth together with such other outfit as it was +economical to make at home, and the devotion of all further efforts to the +making of cotton. + +[Footnote 36: Savannah _Museum_, April n, 1804.] + +[Footnote 37: Reprinted in the _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), April 11, +1807.] + +Coincident with the rise of cotton culture in the Atlantic states was that +of sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana. In this triangular +district, whose apex is the junction of the Red and Mississippi rivers, the +country is even more amphibious than the rice coast. Everywhere in fact the +soil is too waterlogged for tillage except close along the Father of Waters +himself and his present or aforetime outlets. Settlement must, therefore, +take the form of strings of plantations and farms on these elevated +riparian strips, with the homesteads fronting the streams and the fields +stretching a few hundred or at most a few thousand yards to the rear; and +every new establishment required its own levee against the flood. So long +as there were great areas of unrestricted flood-plain above Vicksburg to +impound the freshets and lower their crests, the levees below required no +great height or strength; but the tasks of reclamation were at best arduous +enough to make rapid expansion depend upon the spur of great expectations. + +The original colony of the French, whose descendants called themselves +Creoles, was clustered about the town of New Orleans. A short distance up +stream the river banks in the parishes of St. Charles and St. John the +Baptist were settled at an early period by German immigrants; thence the +settlements were extended after the middle of the eighteenth century, first +by French exiles from Acadia, next by Creole planters, and finally by +Anglo-Americans who took their locations mostly above Baton Rouge. As to +the westerly bayous, the initial settlers were in general Acadian small +farmers. Negro slaves were gradually introduced into all these districts, +though the Creoles, who were the most vigorous of the Latin elements, were +the chief importers of them. Their numbers at the close of the colonial +period equalled those of the whites, and more than a tenth of them had been +emancipated. + +The people in the later eighteenth century were drawing their livelihoods +variously from hunting, fishing, cattle raising and Indian trading, from +the growing of grain and vegetables for sale to the boatmen and townsmen, +and from the production of indigo on a somewhat narrow margin of profit as +the principal export crop. Attempts at sugar production had been made in +1725 and again in 1762, but the occurrence of winter frosts before the cane +was fully ripe discouraged the enterprise; and in most years no more cane +was raised than would meet the local demand for sirup and rum. In the +closing decades of the century, however, worm pests devoured the indigo +leaves with such thoroughness as to make harvesting futile; and thereby the +planters were driven to seek an alternative staple. Projects of cotton were +baffled by the lack of a gin, and recourse was once more had to sugar. A +Spaniard named Solis had built a small mill below New Orleans in 1791 and +was making sugar with indifferent success when, in 1794-1795, Etienne de +Bore, a prominent Creole whose estate lay just above the town, bought a +supply of seed cane from Solis, planted a large field with it, engaged a +professional sugar maker, and installed grinding and boiling apparatus +against the time of harvest. The day set for the test brought a throng of +onlookers whose joy broke forth at the sight of crystals in the cooling +fluid--for the good fortune of Bore, who received some $12,000 for his crop +of 1796, was an earnest of general prosperity. + +Other men of enterprise followed the resort to sugar when opportunity +permitted them to get seed cane, mills and cauldrons. In spite of a dearth +of both capital and labor and in spite of wartime restrictions on maritime +commerce, the sugar estates within nine years reached the number of +eighty-one, a good many of which were doubtless the property of San +Domingan refugees who were now pouring into the province with whatever +slaves and other movables they had been able to snatch from the black +revolution. Some of these had fled first to Cuba and after a sojourn there, +during which they found the Spanish government oppressive, removed afresh +to Louisiana. As late as 1809 the year's immigration from the two islands +was reported by the mayor of New Orleans to the governor of Louisiana at +2,731 whites and 3,102 free persons of color, together with 3,226 slaves +warranted as the property of the free immigrants.[38] The volume of the +San Domingan influx from first to last was great enough to double the +French-speaking population. The newcomers settled mainly in the New Orleans +neighborhood, the whites among them promptly merging themselves with the +original Creole population. By reason of their previous familiarity with +sugar culture they gave additional stimulus to that industry. + +[Footnote 38: _Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Mch. +24, 1810.] + +Meanwhile the purchase of Louisiana by the United States in 1803 had +transformed the political destinies of the community and considerably +changed its economic prospects. After prohibiting in 1804 the importation +into the territory of any slaves who had been brought from Africa since +1798, Congress passed a new act in 1805 which, though probably intended to +continue the prohibition, was interpreted by the attorney-general to permit +the inhabitants to bring in any slaves whatever from any place within the +United States.[39] This news was published with delight by the New Orleans +newspapers at the end of February, 1806;[40] and from that time until the +end of the following year their columns bristled with advertisements of +slaves from African cargoes "just arrived from Charleston." Of these the +following, issued by the firm of Kenner and Henderson, June 24, 1806, is +an example: "The subscribers offer for sale 74 prime slaves of the Fantee +nation on board the schooner _Reliance_, I. Potter master, from Charleston, +now lying opposite this city. The sales will commence on the 25th. inst. +at 9 o'clock A.M., and will continue from day to day until the whole is +sold.[41] Good endorsed notes will be taken in payment, payable the 1st. +of January, 1807. Also [for sale] the above mentioned schooner _Reliance_, +burthen about 60 tons, completely fitted for an African voyage." + +[Footnote 39: W.E.B. DuBois, _Suppression of the African Slave Trade_, pp. +87-90. The acts of 1804 and 1805 are printed in B.P. Poore, _Charters and +Constitutions_ (Washington, 1877), I, 691-697.] + +[Footnote 40: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 28, 1806.] + +[Footnote 41: _Louisiana Gazette_, July 4, 1806.] + +Upon the prohibition of the African trade at large in 1808, the slave +demand of the sugar parishes was diverted to the Atlantic plantation states +where it served to advertise the Louisiana boom. Wade Hampton of South +Carolina responded in 1811 by carrying a large force of his slaves to +establish a sugar estate of his own at the head of Bayou Lafourche, and a +few others followed his example. The radical difference of the industrial +methods in sugar from those in the other staples, however, together with +the predominance of the French language, the Catholic religion and a +Creole social regime in the district most favorable for sugar, made +Anglo-Americans chary of the enterprise; and the revival of cotton prices +after 1815 strengthened the tendency of migrating planters to stay within +the cotton latitudes. Many of those who settled about Baton Rouge and on +the Red River with cotton as their initial concern shifted to sugar at the +end of the 'twenties, however, in response to the tariff of 1828 which +heightened sugar prices at a time when the cotton market was depressed. +This was in response, also, to the introduction of ribbon cane which +matured earlier than the previously used Malabar and Otaheite varieties and +could accordingly be grown in a somewhat higher latitude. + +The territorial spread was mainly responsible for the sudden advance of the +number of sugar estates from 308 operating in 1827, estimated as employing +21,000 able-bodied slaves and having a gross value of $34,000,000, to 691 +plantations in 1830,[42] with some 36,000 working slaves and a gross value +of $50,000,000. At this time the output was at the rate of about 75,000 +hogsheads containing 1,000 pounds of sugar each, together with some forty +or fifty gallons of molasses per hogshead as a by-product. Louisiana was at +this time supplying about half of the whole country's consumption of sugar +and bade fair to meet the whole demand ere long.[43] The reduction of +protective tariff rates, coming simultaneously with a rise of cotton +prices, then checked the spread of the sugar industry, and the substitution +of steam engines for horse power in grinding the cane caused some +consolidation of estates. In 1842 accordingly, when the slaves numbered +50,740 and the sugar crop filled 140,000 hogsheads, the plantations were +but 668.[44] The raising of the tariff anew in that year increased the +plantations to 762 in 1845 and they reached their maximum number of 1,536 +in 1849, when more than half of their mills were driven by steam[45] and +their slaves numbered probably somewhat more than a hundred thousand of +all ages.[46] Thereafter the recovery of the cotton market from the severe +depression of the early 'forties caused a strong advance in slave prices +which again checked the sugar spread, while the introduction of vacuum pans +and other improvements in apparatus[47] promoted further consolidations. +The number of estates accordingly diminished to 1,298 in 1859, on 987 of +which the mills were steam driven, and on 52 of which the extraction and +evaporation of the sugar was done by one sort or another of the newly +invented devices. The gross number of slaves in the sugar parishes was +nearly doubled between 1830 and 1850, but in the final ante-bellum decade +it advanced only at about the rate of natural increase.[48] The sugar +output advanced to 200,000 hogsheads in 1844 and to 450,000 in 1853. Bad +seasons then reduced it to 74,000 in 1856; and the previous maximum was not +equaled in the remaining ante-bellum years.[49] The liability of the +crop to damage from drought and early frost, and to destruction from the +outpouring of the Mississippi through crevasses in the levees, explains the +fluctuations in the yield. Outside of Louisiana the industry took no grip +except on the Brazos River in Texas, where in 1858 thirty-seven plantations +produced about six thousand hogsheads.[50] + +[Footnote 42: _DeBow's Review_, I, 55.] + +[Footnote 43: V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, 1851), +pp. 151 ff.] + +[Footnote 44: E.J. Forstall, _Agricultural Productions of Louisiana_ (New +Orleans, 1845).] + +[Footnote 45: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop Made in +Louisiana_ (New Orleans, annual, 1848-1859).] + +[Footnote 46: DeBow, in the _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 94, +estimated the sugar plantation slaves at 150,000; but this is clearly an +overestimate.] + +[Footnote 47: Some of these are described by Judah P. Benjamin in _DeBow's +Review_, II, 322-345.] + +[Footnote 48: _I. e_. from 150,000 to 180,000.] + +[Footnote 49: The crop of 1853, indeed, was not exceeded until near the +close of the nineteenth century.] + +[Footnote 50: P.A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop ... in +1858-1859_, p. 40.] + +In Louisiana in the banner year 1853, with perfect weather and no +crevasses, each of some 50,000 able-bodied field hands cultivated, besides +the incidental food crops, about five acres of cane on the average and +produced about nine hogsheads of sugar and three hundred gallons of +molasses per head. On certain specially favored estates, indeed, the +product reached as much as fifteen hogsheads per hand[51]. In the total of +1407 fully equipped plantations 103 made less than one hundred hogsheads +each, while forty produced a thousand hogsheads or more. That year's +output, however, was nearly twice the size of the average crop in the +period. A dozen or more proprietors owned two or more estates each, some of +which were on the largest scale, while at the other extreme several dozen +farmers who had no mills of their own sent cane from their few acres to be +worked up in the spare time of some obliging neighbor's mill. In general +the bulk of the crop was made on plantations with cane fields ranging from +rather more than a hundred to somewhat less than a thousand acres, and with +each acre producing in an ordinary year somewhat more than a hogshead of +sugar. + +[Footnote 51: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 199, 200.] + +Until about 1850 the sugar district as well as the cotton belt was calling +for labor from whatever source it might be had; but whereas the uplands had +work for people of both races and all conditions, the demand of the delta +lands, to which the sugar crop was confined, was almost wholly for negro +slaves. The only notable increase in the rural white population of the +district came through the fecundity of the small-farming Acadians who had +little to do with sugar culture. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT + + +The flow of population into the distant interior followed the lines of +least resistance and greatest opportunity. In the earlier decades these lay +chiefly in the Virginia latitudes. The Indians there were yielding, the +mountains afforded passes thither, and the climate permitted the familiar +tobacco industry. The Shenandoah Valley had been occupied mainly by +Scotch-Irish and German small farmers from Pennsylvania; but the glowing +reports, which the long hunters brought and the land speculators spread +from beyond the further mountains, made Virginians to the manner born +resolve to compete with the men of the backwoods for a share of the +Kentucky lands. During and after the war for independence they threaded +the gorges, some with slaves but most without. Here and there one found a +mountain glade so fertile that he made it his permanent home, while his +fellows pushed on to the greater promised land. Some of these emerging upon +a country of low and uniform hills, closely packed and rounded like the +backs of well-fed pigs crowding to the trough, staked out their claims, set +up their cabins, deadened their trees, and planted wheat. Others went on +to the gently rolling country about Lexington, let the luxuriant native +bluegrass wean them from thoughts of tobacco, and became breeders of horses +for evermore. A few, settling on the southerly edge of the bluegrass, +mainly in and about Garrard County, raised hemp on a plantation scale. The +rest, resisting all these allurements, pressed on still further to the +pennyroyal country where tobacco would have no rival. While thousands made +the whole journey overland, still more made use of the Ohio River for +the later stages. The adjutant at Fort Harmar counted in seven months of +1786-1787, 177 boats descending the Ohio, carrying 2,689 persons, 1,333 +horses, 766 cattle, 102 wagons and one phaeton, while still others passed +by night uncounted.[1] The family establishments in Kentucky were always +on a smaller scale, on an average, than those in Virginia. Yet the people +migrating to the more fertile districts tended to maintain and even to +heighten the spirit of gentility and the pride of type which they carried +as part of their heritage. The laws erected by the community were favorable +to the slaveholding regime; but after the first decades of the migration +period, the superior attractions of the more southerly latitudes for +plantation industry checked Kentucky's receipt of slaves. + +[Footnote 1: _Massachusetts Centinel_ (Boston), July 21, 1787.] + +The wilderness between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, meanwhile, was +attracting Virginia and Carolina emigrants as well as those from the +northerly states. The soil there was excellent, and some districts were +suited to tobacco culture. The Ordinance of 1787, however, though it was +not strictly enforced, made slaveholdings north of the Ohio negligible from +any but an antiquarian point of view. + +The settlement of Tennessee was parallel, though subsequent, to that of the +Shenandoah and Kentucky. The eastern intramontane valley, broad and fertile +but unsuited to the staple crops, gave homes to thousands of small farmers, +while the Nashville basin drew planters of both tobacco and cotton, and the +counties along the western and southern borders of the state made cotton +their one staple. The scale of slaveholdings in middle and western +Tennessee, while superior to that in Kentucky, was never so great as those +which prevailed in Virginia and the lower South. + +Missouri, whose adaptation to the southern staples was much poorer, came +to be colonized in due time partly by planters from Kentucky but mostly +by farmers from many quarters, including after the first decades a large +number of Germans, some of whom entered through the eastern ports and +others through New Orleans. + +This great central region as a whole acquired an agricultural regime +blending the features of the two national extremes. The staples were +prominent but never quite paramount. Corn and wheat, cattle and hogs were +produced regularly nearly everywhere, not on a mere home consumption basis, +but for sale in the cotton belt and abroad. This diversification caused +the region to wane in the esteem of the migrating planters as soon as the +Alabama-Mississippi country was opened for settlement. + +Preliminaries of the movement into the Gulf region had begun as early as +1768, when a resident of Pensacola noted that a group of Virginians had +been prospecting thereabouts with such favorable results that five of them +had applied for a large grant of lands, pledging themselves to bring in a +hundred slaves and a large number of cattle.[2] In 1777 William Bartram met +a group of migrants journeying from Georgia to settle on the lower course +of the Alabama River;[3] and in 1785 a citizen of Augusta wrote that "a +vast number" of the upland settlers were removing toward the Mississippi in +consequence of the relinquishment of Natchez by the Spaniards.[4] But these +were merely forerunners. Alabama in particular, which comprises for the +most part the basin draining into Mobile Bay, could have no safe market +for its produce until Spain was dispossessed of the outlet. The taking +of Mobile by the United States as an episode of the war of 1812, and the +simultaneous breaking of the Indian strength, removed the obstacles. The +influx then rose to immense proportions. The roads and rivers became +thronged, and the federal agents began to sell homesteads on a scale which +made the "land office business" proverbial.[5] + +[Footnote 2: Boston, Mass, _Chronicle_, Aug. 1-7, 1768.] + +[Footnote 3: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), p. 441.] + +[Footnote 4: _South Carolina Gazette_, May 26, 1785.] + +[Footnote 5: C.F. Emerick, "The Credit System and the Public Domain," +in the Vanderbilt University _Southern History Publications_, no. 3 +(Nashville, Tenn., 1899).] + +The Alabama-Mississippi population rose from 40,000 in round numbers in +1810 to 200,000 in 1820, 445,000 in 1830, 965,000 in 1840, 1,377,000 in +1850, and 1,660,000 in 1860, while the proportion of slaves advanced from +forty to forty-seven per cent. In the same period the tide flowed on into +the cotton lands of Arkansas and Louisiana and eventually into Texas. +Florida alone of the newer southern areas was left in relative neglect +by reason of the barrenness of her soil. The states and territories from +Alabama and Tennessee westward increased their proportion of the whole +country's cotton output from one-sixteenth in 1811 to one-third in 1820, +one-half before 1830, nearly two-thirds in 1840, and quite three-fourths in +1860; and all this was in spite of continued and substantial enlargements +of the eastern output. + +In the western cotton belt the lands most highly esteemed in the +ante-bellum period lay in two main areas, both of which had soils far more +fertile and lasting than any in the interior of the Atlantic states. One of +these formed a crescent across south-central Alabama, with its western horn +reaching up the Tombigbee River into northeastern Mississippi. Its soil of +loose black loam was partly forested, partly open, and densely matted with +grass and weeds except where limestone cropped out on the hill crests and +where prodigious cane brakes choked the valleys. The area was locally +known as the prairies or the black belt.[6] The process of opening it for +settlement was begun by Andrew Jackson's defeat of the Creeks in 1814 but +was not completed until some twenty years afterward. The other and greater +tract extended along both sides of the Mississippi River from northern +Tennessee and Arkansas to the mouth of the Red River. It comprised the +broad alluvial bottoms, together with occasional hill districts of rich +loam, especially notable among the latter of which were those lying about +Natchez and Vicksburg. The southern end of this area was made available +first, and the hills preceded the delta in popularity for cotton culture. +It was not until the middle thirties that the broadest expanse of the +bottoms, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, began to receive its great influx. +The rest of the western cotton belt had soils varying through much the same +range as those of Georgia and the Carolinas. Except in the bottoms, where +the planters themselves did most of the pioneering, the choicer lands of +the whole district were entered by a pellmell throng of great planters, +lesser planters and small farmers, with the farmers usually a little in +the lead and the planters ready to buy them out of specially rich lands. +Farmers refusing to sell might by their own thrift shortly rise into the +planter class; or if they sold their homesteads at high prices they might +buy slaves with the proceeds and remove to become planters in still newer +districts. + +[Footnote 6: This use of the term "black belt" is not to be confused with +the other and more general application of it to such areas in the South at +large as have a majority of negroes in their population.] + +The process was that which had already been exemplified abundantly in the +eastern cotton belt. A family arriving perhaps in the early spring with a +few implements and a small supply of food and seed, would build in a few +days a cabin of rough logs with an earthen floor and a roof of bark or of +riven clapboards. To clear a field they would girdle the larger trees and +clear away the underbrush. Corn planted in April would furnish roasting +ears in three months and ripe grain in six weeks more. Game was plenty; +lightwood was a substitute for candles; and housewifely skill furnished +homespun garments. Shelter, food and clothing and possibly a small cotton +crop or other surplus were thus had the first year. Some rested with this; +but the more thrifty would soon replace their cabins with hewn log or frame +houses, plant kitchen gardens and watermelon patches, set out orchards and +increase the cotton acreage. The further earnings of a year or two would +supply window glass, table ware, coffee, tea and sugar, a stock of poultry, +a few hogs and even perhaps a slave or two. The pioneer hardships decreased +and the homely comforts grew with every passing year of thrift. But the +orchard yield of stuff for the still, and the cotton field's furnishing +the wherewithal to buy more slaves, brought temptations. Distilleries and +slaves, a contemporary said, were blessings or curses according as they +were used or abused; for drunkenness and idleness were the gates of the +road to retrogression.[7] + +[Footnote 7: David Ramsay _History of South Carolina_, II, pp. 246 ff.] + +The pathetic hardships which some of the poorer migrants underwent in their +labors to reach the western opportunity are exemplified in a local item +from an Augusta newspaper in 1819: "Passed through this place from +Greenville District [South Carolina] bound for Chatahouchie, a man and his +wife, his son and his wife, with a cart but no horse. The man had a belt +over his shoulders and he drew in the shafts; the son worked by traces tied +to the end of the shafts and assisted his father to draw the cart; the +son's wife rode in the cart, and the old woman was walking, carrying +a rifle, and driving a cow."[8] This example, while extreme, was not +unique.[9] + +[Footnote 8: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 24, 1819, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 196.] + +[Footnote 9: _Niles' Register_, XX, 320.] + +The call of the west was carried in promoters' publications,[10] in +private letters, in newspaper reports, and by word of mouth. A typical +communication was sent home in 1817 by a Marylander who had moved to +Louisiana: "In your states a planter with ten negroes with difficulty +supports a family genteelly; here well managed they would be a fortune to +him. With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here the +crops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life never for a moment +causes the heart to ache--abundance spreads the table of the poor man, and +contentment smiles on every countenance."[11] Other accounts told glowingly +of quick fortunes made and to be made by getting lands cheaply in the early +stages of settlement and selling them at greatly enhanced prices when the +tide of migration arrived in force.[12] Such ebullient expressions were +taken at face value by thousands of the unwary; and other thousands of the +more cautious followed in the trek when personal inquiries had reinforced +the tug of the west. The larger planters generally removed only after +somewhat thorough investigation and after procuring more or less +acquiescence from their slaves; the smaller planters and farmers, with +lighter stake in their homes and better opportunity to sell them, with +lighter impedimenta for the journey, with less to lose by misadventure, +and with poorer facilities for inquiry, responded more readily to the +enticements. + +[Footnote 10: _E. g_., the Washington, Ky., _Mirror_, Sept. 30, 1797.] + +[Footnote 11: _Niles' Register_, XIII, 38.] + +[Footnote 12: _E. g., Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), March 11, 1836.] + +The fever of migration produced in some of the people an unconquerable +restlessness. An extraordinary illustration of this is given in the career +of Gideon Lincecum as written by himself. In 1802, when Gideon was ten +years old, his father, after farming successfully for some years in the +Georgia uplands was lured by letters from relatives in Tennessee to sell +out and remove thither. Taking the roundabout road through the Carolinas to +avoid the Cherokee country, he set forth with a wagon and four horses to +carry a bed, four chests, four white and four negro children, and his +mother who was eighty-eight years old. When but a few days on the road an +illness of the old woman caused a halt, whereupon Lincecum rented a nearby +farm and spent a year on a cotton crop. The journey was then resumed, but +barely had the Savannah River been crossed when another farm was rented and +another crop begun. Next year they returned to Georgia and worked a farm +near Athens. Then they set out again for Tennessee; but on the road in +South Carolina the wreck of the wagon and its ancient occupant gave +abundant excuse for the purchase of a farm there. After another crop, +successful as usual, the family moved back to Georgia and cropped still +another farm. Young Gideon now attended school until his father moved +again, this time southward, for a crop near Eatonton. Gideon then left his +father after a quarrel and spent several years as a clerk in stores here +and there, as a county tax collector and as a farmer, and began to read +medicine in odd moments. He now married, about the beginning of the year +1815, and rejoined his father who was about to cross the Indian country to +settle in Alabama. But they had barely begun this journey when the father, +while tipsy, bought a farm on the Georgia frontier, where the two families +settled and Gideon interspersed deer hunting with his medical reading. Next +spring the cavalcade crossed the five hundred miles of wilderness in six +weeks, and reached the log cabin village of Tuscaloosa, where Gideon built +a house. But provisions were excessively dear, and his hospitality to other +land seekers from Georgia soon consumed his savings. He began whipsawing +lumber, but after disablement from a gunpowder explosion he found lighter +employment in keeping a billiard room. He then set out westward again, +breaking a road for his wagon as he went. Upon reaching the Tombigbee River +he built a clapboard house in five days, cleared land from its canebrake, +planted corn with a sharpened stick, and in spite of ravages from bears and +raccoons gathered a hundred and fifty bushels from six acres. When the town +of Columbus, Mississippi, was founded nearby in 1819 he sawed boards to +build a house on speculation. From this he was diverted to the Indian +trade, bartering whiskey, cloth and miscellaneous goods for peltries. He +then became a justice of the peace and school commissioner at Columbus, +surveyed and sold town lots on public account, and built two school houses +with the proceeds. He then moved up the river to engage anew in the Indian +trade with a partner who soon proved a drunkard. He and his wife there +took a fever which after baffling the physicians was cured by his own +prescription. He then moved to Cotton Gin Port to take charge of a store, +but was invalided for three years by a sunstroke. Gradually recovering, +he lived in the woods on light diet until the thought occurred to him of +carrying a company of Choctaw ball players on a tour of the United States. +The tour was made, but the receipts barely covered expenses. Then in 1830, +Lincecum set himself up as a physician at Columbus. No sooner had he built +up a practice, however, than he became dissatisfied with allopathy and +went to study herb remedies among the Indians; and thereafter he practiced +botanic medicine. In 1834 he went as surgeon with an exploring party to +Texas and found that country so attractive that after some years further +at Columbus he spent the rest of his long life in Texas as a planter, +physician and student of natural history. He died there in 1873 at the age +of eighty years.[13] + +[Footnote 13: F.L. Riley, ed., "The Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum," in +the Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, VIII, 443-519.] + +The descriptions and advice which prospectors in the west sent home are +exemplified in a letter of F.X. Martin, written in New Orleans in 1911, +to a friend in eastern North Carolina. The lands, he said, were the most +remunerative in the whole country; a planter near Natchez was earning $270 +per hand each year. The Opelousas and Attakapas districts for sugar, +and the Red River bottoms for cotton, he thought, offered the best +opportunities because of the cheapness of their lands. As to the journey +from North Carolina, he advised that the start be made about the first of +September and the course be laid through Knoxville to Nashville. Traveling +thence through the Indian country, safety would be assured by a junction +with other migrants. Speed would be greater on horseback, but the route was +feasible for vehicles, and a traveler would find a tent and a keg of +water conducive to his comfort. The Indians, who were generally short of +provisions in spring and summer, would have supplies to spare in autumn; +and the prevailing dryness of that season would make the streams and swamps +in the path less formidable. An alternative route lay through Georgia; +but its saving of distance was offset by the greater expanse of Indian +territory to be crossed, the roughness of the road and the frequency of +rivers. The viewing of the delta country, he thought, would require three +or four months of inspection before a choice of location could safely be +made.[14] + +[Footnote 14: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 197-200.] + +The procedure of planters embarking upon long distance migration may be +gathered from the letters which General Leonard Covington of Calvert +County, Maryland, wrote to his brother and friends who had preceded him to +the Natchez district. In August, 1808, finding a prospect of selling +his Maryland lands, he formed a project of carrying his sixty slaves to +Mississippi and hiring out some of them there until a new plantation should +be ready for routine operation. He further contemplated taking with him ten +or fifteen families of non-slaveholding whites who were eager to migrate +under his guidance and wished employment by him for a season while they +cast about for farms of their own. Covington accordingly sent inquiries as +to the prevailing rates of hire and the customary feeding and treatment of +slaves. He asked whether they were commonly worked only from "sun to sun," +and explained his thought by saying, "It is possible that so much labor +may be required of hirelings and so little regard may be had for their +constitutions as to render them in a few years not only unprofitable but +expensive." He asked further whether the slaves there were contented, +whether they as universally took wives and husbands and as easily reared +children as in Maryland, whether cotton was of more certain yield and +sale than tobacco, what was the cost of clearing land and erecting rough +buildings, what the abundance and quality of fruit, and what the nature of +the climate. + +The replies he received were quite satisfactory, but a failure to sell part +of his Maryland lands caused him to leave twenty-six of his slaves in the +east. The rest he sent forward with a neighbor's gang. Three white men were +in charge, but one of the negroes escaped at Pittsburg and was apparently +not recaptured. Covington after detention by the delicacy of his wife's +health and by duties in the military service of the United States, set +out at the beginning of October, 1809, with his wife and five children, +a neighbor named Waters and his family, several other white persons, and +eleven slaves. He described his outfit as "the damnedest cavalcade that +ever man was burdened with; not less than seven horses compose my troop; +they convey a close carriage (Jersey stage), a gig and horse cart, so +that my family are transported with comfort and convenience, though at +considerable expense. All these odd matters and contrivances I design to +take with me to Mississippi if possible. Mr. Waters will also take down +his waggon and team." Upon learning that the Ohio was in low water he +contemplated journeying by land as far as Louisville; but he embarked at +Wheeling instead, and after tedious dragging "through shoals, sandbars and +ripples" he reached Cincinnati late in November. When the last letter on +the journey was written he was on the point of embarking afresh on a +boat so crowded, that in spite of his desire to carry a large stock of +provisions he could find room for but a few hundredweight of pork and a few +barrels of flour. He apparently reached his destination at the end of the +year and established a plantation with part of his negroes, leaving the +rest on hire. The approach of the war of 1812 brought distress; cotton was +low, bacon was high, and the sale of a slave or two was required in making +ends meet. Covington himself was now ordered by the Department of War to +take the field in command of dragoons, and in 1813 was killed in a battle +beyond the Canadian border. The fate of his family and plantation does not +appear in the records.[15] + +[Footnote 15: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 201-208.] + +A more successful migration was that of Col. Thomas S. Dabney in 1835. +After spending the years of his early manhood on his ancestral tide-water +estate, Elmington, in Gloucester County, Virginia, he was prompted to +remove by the prospective needs of his rapidly growing family. The justice +of his anticipations appears from the fact that his second wife bore him +eventually sixteen children, ten of whom survived her. After a land-looking +tour through Alabama and Louisiana, Dabney chose a tract in Hinds County, +Mississippi, some forty miles east of Vicksburg, where he bought the +property of several farmers as the beginning of a plantation which finally +engrossed some four thousand acres. Returning to Virginia, he was given a +great farewell dinner at Richmond, at which Governor Tyler presided and +many speakers congratulated Mississippi upon her gain of such a citizen +at Virginia's expense.[16] Several relatives and neighbors resolved to +accompany him in the migration. His brother-in-law, Charles Hill, took +charge of the carriages and the white families, while Dabney himself had +the care of the wagons and the many scores of negroes. The journey was +accomplished without mishap in two months of perfect autumn weather. Upon +arriving at the new location most of the log houses were found in ruins +from a recent hurricane; but new shelters were quickly provided, and in a +few months the great plantation, with its force of two hundred slaves, was +in routine operation. In the following years Dabney made it a practice to +clear about a hundred acres of new ground annually. The land, rich and +rolling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a general +failure of crops was never experienced--the bottoms would thrive in dry +seasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosper +them all. The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabney +at first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty of +his slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved while directing +their work, the beneficiary and his fellows were less grateful for the +service than offended at the undemocratic manner of its rendering. When +Dabney, furthermore, made no return calls for assistance, the restraint was +increased. The rich might patronize the poor in the stratified society +of old Virginia; in young Mississippi such patronage was an unpleasant +suggestion that stratification was beginning.[17] With the passage of years +and the continued influx of planters ready to buy their lands at good +prices, such fanners as did not thrive tended to vacate the richer soils. +The Natchez-Vicksburg district became largely consolidated into great +plantations,[18] and the tract extending thence to Tuscaloosa, as likewise +the district about Montgomery, Alabama, became occupied mostly by smaller +plantations on a scale of a dozen or two slaves each,[19] while the +non-slaveholders drifted to the southward pine-barrens or the western or +northwestern frontiers. + +[Footnote 16: _Richmond Enquirer_, Sept. 22, 1835, reprinted in Susan D. +Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (2d. ed., Baltimore, 1888), pp. +43-47.] + +[Footnote 17: Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 42-68.] + +[Footnote 18: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1860), pp. 20, 28] + +[Footnote 19: _Ibid_., pp. 160, 161; Robert Russell, _North America_ +(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 207.] + +The caravans of migrating planters were occasionally described by travelers +in the period. Basil Hall wrote of one which he overtook in South Carolina +in 1828: "It ... did not consist of above thirty persons in all, of whom +five-and-twenty at least were slaves. The women and children were stowed +away in wagons, moving slowly up a steep, sandy hill; but the curtains +being let down we could see nothing of them except an occasional glance of +an eye, or a row of teeth as white as snow. In the rear of all came a light +covered vehicle, with the master and mistress of the party. Along the +roadside, scattered at intervals, we observed the male slaves trudging in +front. At the top of all, against the sky line, two men walked together, +apparently hand in hand pacing along very sociably. There was something, +however, in their attitude, which seemed unusual and constrained. When +we came nearer, accordingly, we discovered that this couple were bolted +together by a short chain or bar riveted to broad iron clasps secured in +like manner round the wrists. 'What have you been doing, my boys,' said our +coachman in passing, 'to entitle you to these ruffles?' 'Oh, sir,' cried +one of them quite gaily, 'they are the best things in the world to travel +with.' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one of +the slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take the +matter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, it +appeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, not +to his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the female +not choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The +wretched husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man who +having no such tie to draw him back might be more safely trusted on the +journey."[20] + +[Footnote 20: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), +III, 128, 129. _See also_ for similar scenes, Adam Hodgson, _Letters from +North America_ (London, 1854), I, 113.] + +Timothy Flint wrote after observing many of these caravans: "The slaves +generally seem fond of their masters, and as much delighted and interested +in their migration as their masters. It is to me a very pleasing and +patriarchal sight."[21] But Edwin L. Godkin, who in his transit of a +Mississippi swamp in 1856 saw a company in distress, used the episode as a +peg on which to hang an anti-slavery sentiment: "I fell in with an emigrant +party on their way to Texas. Their mules had sunk in the mud, ... the +wagons were already embedded as far as the axles. The women of the party, +lightly clad in cotton, had walked for miles, knee-deep in water, through +the brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were now +crouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree.... The men +were making feeble attempts to light a fire.... 'Colonel,' said one of them +as I rode past, 'this is the gate of hell, ain't it?' ... The hardships the +negroes go through who are attached to one of these emigrant parties baffle +description.... They trudge on foot all day through mud and thicket without +rest or respite.... Thousands of miles are traversed by these weary +wayfarers without their knowing or caring why, urged on by the whip and in +the full assurance that no change of place can bring any change to them.... +Hard work, coarse food, merciless floggings, are all that await them, and +all that they can look to. I have never passed them, staggering along in +the rear of the wagons at the close of a long day's march, the weakest +furthest in the rear, the strongest already utterly spent, without +wondering how Christendom, which eight centuries ago rose in arms for a +sentiment, can look so calmly on at so foul and monstrous a wrong as this +American slavery."[22] If instead of crossing the Mississippi bottoms and +ascribing to slavery the hardships he observed, Godkin had been crossing +the Nevada desert that year and had come upon, as many others did, a train +of emigrants with its oxen dead, its women and children perishing +of thirst, and its men with despairing eyes turned still toward the +gold-fields of California, would he have inveighed against freedom as the +cause? Between Flint's impression of pleasure and Godkin's of gloom no +choice need be made, for either description was often exemplified. In +general the slaves took the fatigues and the diversions of the route merely +as the day's work and the day's play. + +[Footnote 21: Timothy Flint, _History and Geography of the Western States_ +(Cincinnati, 1828), p. 11.] + +[Footnote 22: Letter of E.L. Godkin to the _London News_, reprinted in the +_North American Review_, CLXXXV (1907), 46, 47.] + +Many planters whose points of departure and of destination were accessible +to deep water made their transit by sea. Thus on the brig _Calypso_ sailing +from Norfolk to New Orleans in April, 1819, Benjamin Ballard and Samuel T. +Barnes, both of Halifax County, North Carolina, carrying 30 and 196 slaves +respectively, wrote on the margins of their manifests, the one "The owner +of these slaves is moving to the parish of St. Landry near Opelousas where +he has purchased land and intends settling, and is not a dealer in human +flesh," the other, "The owner of these slaves is moving to Louisiana to +settle, and is not a dealer in human flesh." On the same voyage Augustin +Pugh of the adjoining Bertie County carried seventy slaves whose manifest, +though it bears no such asseveration, gives evidence that they likewise +were not a trader's lot; for some of the negroes were sixty years old, and +there were as many children as adults in the parcel. Lots of such sizes +as these were of course exceptional. In the packages of manifests now +preserved in the Library of Congress the lists of from one to a dozen +slaves outnumbered those of fifty or more by perhaps a hundred fold. + +The western cotton belt not only had a greater expanse and richer lands +than the eastern, but its cotton tended to have a longer fiber, ranging, +particularly in the district of the "bends" of the Mississippi north of +Vicksburg, as much as an inch and a quarter in length and commanding a +premium in the market. Its far reaching waterways, furthermore, made +freighting easy and permitted the planters to devote themselves the more +fully to their staple. The people in the main made their own food supplies; +yet the market demand of the western cotton belt and the sugar bowl for +grain and meat contributed much toward the calling of the northwestern +settlements into prosperous existence.[23] + +[Footnote 23: G.S. Callender in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, XVII, +111-162.] + +This thriving of the West, however, was largely at the expense of the older +plantation states.[24] In 1813 John Randolph wrote: "The whole country +watered by the rivers which fall into the Chesapeake is in a state of +paralysis...The distress is general and heavy, and I do not see how the +people can pay their taxes." And again: "In a few years more, those of us +who are alive will move off to Kaintuck or the Massissippi, where corn can +be had for sixpence a bushel and pork for a penny a pound. I do not wonder +at the rage for emigration. What do the bulk of the people get here that +they cannot have there for one fifth the labor in the western country?" +Next year, after a visit to his birthplace, he exclaimed: "What a spectacle +does our lower country present! Deserted and dismantled country-houses once +the seats of cheerfulness and plenty, and the temples of the Most High +ruinous and desolate, 'frowning in portentous silence upon the land,'" And +in 1819 he wrote from Richmond: "You have no conception of the gloom and +distress that pervade this place. There has been nothing like it since 1785 +when from the same causes (paper money and a general peace) there was a +general depression of everything."[25] + +[Footnote 24: Edmund Quincy, _Life of Josiah Quincy_ (Boston, 1869), p. +336.] + +[Footnote 25: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (Philadelphia, 1851), +II, 15; I, 2; II, 105.] + +The extreme depression passed, but the conditions prompting emigration were +persistent and widespread. News items from here and there continued for +decades to tell of movement in large volume from Tide-water and Piedmont, +from the tobacco states and the eastern cotton-belt, and even from Alabama +in its turn, for destinations as distant and divergent as Michigan, +Missouri and Texas. The communities which suffered cast about for both +solace and remedy. An editor in the South Carolina uplands remarked at the +beginning of 1833 that if emigration should continue at the rate of the +past year the state would become a wilderness; but he noted with grim +satisfaction that it was chiefly the "fire-eaters" that were moving +out.[26] In 1836 another South Carolinian wrote: "The spirit of emigration +is still rife in our community. From this cause we have lost many, and we +are destined, we fear, to lose more, of our worthiest citizens." Though +efforts to check it were commonly thought futile, he addressed himself to +suasion. The movement, said he, is a mistaken one; South Carolina planters +should let well enough alone. The West is without doubt the place for +wealth, but prosperity is a trial to character. In the West money is +everything. Its pursuit, accompanied as it is by baneful speculation, +lawlessness, gambling, sabbath-breaking, brawls and violence, prevents +moral attainment and mental cultivation. Substantial people should stay in +South Carolina to preserve their pristine purity, hospitality, freedom of +thought, fearlessness and nobility.[27] + +[Footnote 26: Sumterville, S.C., _Whig_, Jan. 5, 1833.] + +[Footnote 27: "The Spirit of Emigration," signed "A South Carolinian," in +the _Southern Literary Journal_, II, 259-262 (June, 1836).] + +An Alabama spokesman rejoiced in the manual industry of the white people in +his state, and said if the negroes were only thinned off it would become a +great and prosperous commonwealth.[28] But another Alabamian, A.B. Meek, +found reason to eulogize both emigration and slavery. He said the +roughness of manners prevalent in the haphazard western aggregation of +New Englanders, Virginians, Carolinians and Georgians would prove but +a temporary phase. Slavery would be of benefit through its tendency to +stratify society, ennoble the upper classes, and give even the poorer +whites a stimulating pride of race. "In a few years," said he, "owing to +the operation of this institution upon our unparalleled natural advantages, +we shall be the richest people beneath the bend of the rainbow; and then +the arts and the sciences, which always follow in the train of wealth, will +flourish to an extent hitherto unknown on this side of the Atlantic." [29] + +[Footnote 28: Portland, Ala., _Evening Advertiser_, April 12, 1833.] + +[Footnote 29: _Southern Ladies' Book_ (Macon, Ga.), April, 1840.] + +As a practical measure to relieve the stress of the older districts a +beginning was made in seed selection, manuring and crop rotation to +enhance the harvests; horses were largely replaced by mules, whose earlier +maturity, greater hardihood and longer lives made their use more economical +for plow and wagon work;[30] the straight furrows of earlier times gave +place in the Piedmont to curving ones which followed the hill contours +and when supplemented with occasional grass balks and ditches checked the +scouring of the rains and conserved in some degree the thin soils of the +region; a few textile factories were built to better the local market for +cotton and lower the cost of cloth as well as to yield profits to their +proprietors; the home production of grain and meat supplies was in some +measure increased; and river and highway improvements and railroad +construction were undertaken to lessen the expenses of distant +marketing.[31] Some of these recourses were promptly adopted in the newer +settlements also; and others proved of little avail for the time being. The +net effect of the betterments, however, was an appreciable offsetting +of the western advantage; and this, when added to the love of home, the +disrelish of primitive travel and pioneer life, and the dread of the costs +and risks involved in removal, dissuaded multitudes from the project of +migration. The actual depopulation of the Atlantic states was less than the +plaints of the time would suggest. The volume of emigration was undoubtedly +great, and few newcomers came in to fill the gaps. But the birth rate alone +in those generations of ample families more than replaced the losses year +by year in most localities. The sense of loss was in general the product +not of actual depletion but of disappointment in the expectation of +increase. + +[Footnote 30: H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New +York, 1916), pp. 166-168.] + +[Footnote 31: U.B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the Eastern +Cotton Belt to 1860_.] + +The non-slaveholding backwoodsmen formed the vanguard of settlement on +each frontier in turn; the small slaveholders followed on their heels and +crowded each fertile district until the men who lived by hunting as well as +by farming had to push further westward; finally the larger planters with +their crowded carriages, their lumbering wagons and their trudging slaves +arrived to consolidate the fields of such earlier settlers as would sell. +It often seemed to the wayfarer that all the world was on the move. But in +the districts of durable soil thousands of men, clinging to their homes, +repelled every attack of the western fever. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE DOMESTIC SLAVE TRADE + + +In the New England town of Plymouth in November, 1729, a certain Thompson +Phillips who was about to sail for Jamaica exchanged a half interest in his +one-legged negro man for a similar share in Isaac Lathrop's negro boy who +was to sail with Phillips and be sold on the voyage. Lathrop was meanwhile +to teach the man the trade of cordwaining, and was to resell his share +to Phillips at the end of a year at a price of L40 sterling.[1] This +transaction, which was duly concluded in the following year, suggests the +existence of a trade in slaves on a small scale from north to south in +colonial times. Another item in the same connection is an advertisement in +the _Boston Gazette_ of August 17, 1761, offering for sale young slaves +just from Africa and proposing to take in exchange "any negro men, strong +and hearty though not of the best moral character, which are proper +subjects of transportation";[2] and a third instance appears in a letter of +James Habersham of Georgia in 1764 telling of his purchase of a parcel +of negroes at New York for work on his rice plantation.[3] That the +disestablishment of slavery in the North during and after the American +Revolution enhanced the exportation of negroes was recited in a Vermont +statute of 1787,[4] and is shown by occasional items in Southern archives. +One of these is the registry at Savannah of a bill of sale made at New +London in 1787 for a mulatto boy "as a servant for the term of ten years +only, at the expiration of which time he is to be free."[5] Another is a +report from an official at Norfolk to the Governor of Virginia, in 1795, +relating that the captain of a sloop from Boston with three negroes on +board pleaded ignorance of the Virginia law against the bringing in of +slaves.[6] + +[Footnote 1: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XXIV, 335, +336.] + +[Footnote 2: Reprinted in Joshua Coffin, _An Account of Some of the +Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860), p. 15.] + +[Footnote 3: "The Letters of James Habersham," in the Georgia Historical +Society _Collections_, VI, 22, 23.] + +[Footnote 4: _New England Register_, XXIX, 248, citing Vermont _Statutes_, +1787, p. 105.] + +[Footnote 5: U.B. Phillips, "Racial Problems, Adjustments and Disturbances +in the Ante-bellum South," in _The South in the Building of the Nation_, +IV, 218.] + +[Footnote 6: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, VIII, 255.] + +The federal census returns show that from 1790 onward the decline in the +number of slaves in the Northern states was more than counterbalanced by +the increase of their free negroes. This means either that the selling of +slaves to the southward was very slight, or that the statistical effect +of it was canceled by the northward flight of fugitive slaves and the +migration of negroes legally free. There seems to be no evidence that the +traffic across Mason and Dixon's line was ever of large dimensions, the +following curious item from a New Orleans newspaper in 1818 to the contrary +notwithstanding: "Jersey negroes appear to be peculiarly adapted to this +market--especially those that bear the mark of Judge Van Winkle, as it is +understood that they offer the best opportunity for speculation. We have +the right to calculate on large importations in future, from the success +which hitherto attended the sale."[7] + +[Footnote 7: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 22, 1818, quoting the New +Orleans _Chronicle_, July 14, 1818.] + +The internal trade at the South began to be noticeable about the end of the +eighteenth century. A man at Knoxville, Tennessee, in December, 1795, sent +notice to a correspondent in Kentucky that he was about to set out with +slaves for delivery as agreed upon, and would carry additional ones on +speculation; and he concluded by saying "I intend carrying on the business +extensively."[8] In 1797 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt met a "drove of +negroes" about one hundred in number,[9] whose owner had abandoned the +planting business in the South Carolina uplands and was apparently carrying +them to Charleston for sale. In 1799 there was discovered in the Georgia +treasury a shortage of some ten thousand dollars which a contemporary news +item explained as follows: Mr. Sims, a member of the legislature, having +borrowed the money from the treasurer, entrusted it to a certain Speers for +the purchase of slaves in Virginia. "Speers accordingly went and purchased +a considerable number of negroes; and on his way returning to this state +the negroes rose and cut the throats of Speers and another man who +accompanied him. The slaves fled, and about ten of them, I think, were +killed. In consequence of this misfortune Mr. Sims was rendered unable to +raise the money at the time the legislature met."[10] Another transaction +achieved record because of a literary effusion which it prompted. Charles +Mott Lide of South Carolina, having inherited a fortune, went to Virginia +early in 1802 to buy slaves, and began to establish a sea-island cotton +plantation in Georgia. But misfortune in other investments forced him next +year to sell his land, slaves and crops to two immigrants from the Bahama +Islands. Thereupon, wrote he, "I composed the following valedictory, which +breathes something of the tenderness of Ossian."[11] Callous history is not +concerned in the farewell to his "sweet asylum," but only in the fact that +he bought slaves in Virginia and carried them to Georgia. A grand jury +at Alexandria presented as a grievance in 1802, "the practice of persons +coming from distant parts of the United States into this district for the +purpose of purchasing slaves."[12] Such fugitive items as these make up the +whole record of the trade in its early years, and indeed constitute the +main body of data upon its career from first to last. + +[Footnote 8: Unsigned MS. draft in the Wisconsin Historical Society, Draper +collection, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 55, 56.] + +[Footnote 9: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_, p. +592.] + +[Footnote 10: Charleston, S.C., _City Gazette_, Dec. 21, 1799.] + +[Footnote 11: Alexander Gregg, _History of the Old Cheraws_ (New York, +1877), pp. 480-482.] + +[Footnote 12: Quoted in a speech in Congress in 1829, _Register of +Debates_, V, 177.] + +As soon as the African trade was closed, the interstate traffic began to +assume the aspect of a regular business though for some years it not only +continued to be of small scale but was oftentimes merely incidental in +character. That is to say, migrating planters and farmers would in some +cases carry extra slaves bought with a view to reselling them at western +prices and applying the proceeds toward the expense of their new +homesteads. The following advertisement by William Rochel at Natchez in +1810 gives an example of this: "I have upwards of twenty likely Virginia +born slaves now in a flat bottomed boat lying in the river at Natchez, for +sale cheaper than has been sold here in years.[13] Part of said negroes +I wish to barter for a small farm. My boat may be known by a large cane +standing on deck." + +[Footnote 13: Natchez, Miss., _Weekly Chronicle_, April 2, 1810.] + +The heyday of the trade fell in the piping times of peace and migration +from 1815 to 1860. Its greatest activity was just prior to the panic of +1837, for thereafter the flow was held somewhat in check, first by the +hard times in the cotton belt and then by an agricultural renaissance in +Virginia. A Richmond newspaper reported in the fall of 1836 that estimates +by intelligent men placed Virginia's export in the preceding year at +120,000 slaves, of whom at least two thirds had been carried by emigrating +owners, and the rest by dealers.[14] This was probably an exaggeration +for even the greatest year of the exodus. What the common volume of the +commercial transport was can hardly be ascertained from the available data. + +[Footnote 14: _Niles' Register_, LI, 83 (Oct. 8, 1836), quoting the +_Virginia Times_.] + +The slave trade was partly systematic, partly casual. For local sales every +public auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in each +city there were brokers buying them to sell again or handling them on +commission. One of these at New Orleans in 1854 was Thomas Foster who +advertised that he would pay the highest prices for sound negroes as +well as sell those whom merchants or private citizens might consign him. +Expecting to receive negroes throughout the season, he said, he would have +a constant stock of mechanics, domestics and field hands; and in addition +he would house as many as three hundred slaves at a time, for such as +were importing them from other states.[16] Similarly Clark and Grubb, of +Whitehall Street in Atlanta, when advertising their business as wholesale +grocers, commission merchants and negro brokers, announced that they kept +slaves of all classes constantly on hand and were paying the highest market +prices for all that might be offered.[16] At Nashville, William L. Boyd, +Jr., and R.W. Porter advertised as rival slave dealers in 1854;[17] and in +the directory of that city for 1860 E.S. Hawkins, G.H. Hitchings, and Webb, +Merrill and Company were also listed in this traffic. At St. Louis in 1859 +Corbin Thompson and Bernard M. Lynch were the principal slave dealers. The +rates of the latter, according to his placard, were 37-1/2 cents per day +for board and 2-1/2 per cent, commission on sales; and all slaves entrusted +to his care were to be held at their owners' risk.[18] + +[Footnote 15: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 163.] + +[Footnote 16: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Mch. 7, 1860.] + +[Footnote 17: _Southern Business Directory_, II, 131.] + +[Footnote 18: H.A. Trexler, _Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865_ (Baltimore, +1914), p. 49.] + +On the other hand a rural owner disposed to sell a slave locally would +commonly pass the word round among his neighbors or publish a notice in the +county newspaper. To this would sometimes be appended a statement that the +slave was not to be sent out of the state, or that no dealers need apply. +The following is one of many such Maryland items: "Will be sold for cash or +good paper, a negro woman, 22 years old, and her two female children. She +is sold for want of employment, and will not be sent out of the state. +Apply to the editor."[19] In some cases, whether rural or urban, the slave +was sent about to find his or her purchaser. In the city of Washington +in 1854, for example, a woman, whose husband had been sold South, was +furnished with the following document: "The bearer, Mary Jane, and her two +daughters, are for sale. They are sold for no earthly fault whatever. She +is one of the most ladylike and trustworthy servants I ever knew. She is +a first rate parlour servant; can arrange and set out a dinner or party +supper with as much taste as the most of white ladies. She is a pretty good +mantua maker; can cut out and make vests and pantaloons and roundabouts +and joseys for little boys in a first rate manner. Her daughters' ages are +eleven and thirteen years, brought up exclusively as house servants. The +eldest can sew neatly, both can knit stockings; and all are accustomed to +all kinds of house work. They would not be sold to speculators or traders +for any price whatever." The price for the three was fixed at $1800, but a +memorandum stated that a purchaser taking the daughters at $1000 might have +the mother on a month's trial. The girls were duly bought by Dr. Edward +Maynard, who we may hope took the mother also at the end of the stipulated +month.[20] In the cities a few slaves were sold by lottery. One Boulmay, +for example, advertised at New Orleans in 1819 that he would sell fifty +tickets at twenty dollars each, the lucky drawer to receive his girl +Amelia, thirteen years old.[21] + +[Footnote 19: Charleston, Md., _Telegraph_, Nov. 7, 1828.] + +[Footnote 20: MSS. in the New York Public Library, MSS. division, filed +under "slavery."] + +[Footnote 21: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Aug. 17, 1819.] + +The long distance trade, though open to any who would engage in it, appears +to have been conducted mainly by firms plying it steadily. Each of these +would have an assembling headquarters with field agents collecting slaves +for it, one or more vessels perhaps for the coastwise traffic, and a +selling agency at one of the centers of slave demand. The methods followed +by some of the purchasing agents, and the local esteem in which they were +held, may be gathered by an item written in 1818 at Winchester in the +Shenandoah Valley: "Several wretches, whose hearts must be as black as the +skins of the unfortunate beings who constitute their inhuman traffic, have +for several days been impudently prowling about the streets of this place +with labels on their hats exhibiting in conspicuous characters the words +'Cash for negroes,'"[22] That this repugnance was genuine enough to cause +local sellers to make large concessions in price in order to keep faithful +servants out of the hands of the long-distance traders is evidenced by +the following report in 1824 from Hillsborough on the eastern shore of +Maryland: "Slaves in this county, and I believe generally on this shore, +have always had two prices, viz. a neighbourhood or domestic and a foreign +or Southern price. The domestic price has generally been about a third less +than the foreign, and sometimes the difference amounts to one half."[23] + +[Footnote 22: _Virginia Northwestern Gazette_, Aug. 15, 1818.] + +[Footnote 23: _American Historical Review_, XIX, 818.] + +The slaves of whom their masters were most eager to be rid were the +indolent, the unruly, and those under suspicion. A Creole settler at Mobile +wrote in 1748, for example, to a friend living on the Mississippi: "I am +sending you l'Eveille and his wife, whom I beg you to sell for me at the +best price to be had. If however they will not bring 1,500 francs each, +please keep them on your land and make them work. What makes me sell them +is that l'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of some thirty +Mobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this; but since there is +rarely smoke without fire I think it well to take the precaution."[24] The +converse of this is a laconic advertisement at Charleston in 1800: +"Wanted to purchase one or two negro men whose characters will not be +required."[25] It is probable that offers were not lacking in response. + +[Footnote 24: MS. in private possession, here translated from the French.] + +[Footnote 25: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 8, 1800.] + +Some of the slaves dealt in were actually convicted felons sold by the +states in which their crimes had been committed. The purchasers of these +were generally required to give bond to transport them beyond the limits +of the United States; but some of the traders broke their pledges on the +chance that their breaches would not be discovered. One of these, a certain +W.H. Williams, when found offering his outlawed merchandize of twenty-four +convict slaves at New Orleans in 1841, was prosecuted and convicted. His +penalty included the forfeiture of the twenty-four slaves, a fine of $500 +to the state of Louisiana for each of the felons introduced, and the +forfeiture to the state of Virginia of his bond in the amount of $1,000 per +slave. The total was reckoned at $48,000.[26] + +[Footnote 26: _Niles' Register_, LX, 189, quoting the New Orleans +_Picayune_, May 2, 1841.] + +The slaves whom the dealers preferred to buy for distant sale were "likely +negroes from ten to thirty years old."[27] Faithfulness and skill in +husbandry were of minor importance, for the trader could give little proof +of them to his patrons. Demonstrable talents in artisanry would of course +enhance a man's value; and unusual good looks on the part of a young woman +might stimulate the bidding of men interested in concubinage. Episodes of +the latter sort were occasionally reported; but in at least one instance +inquiry on the spot showed that sex was not involved. This was the case of +the girl Sarah, who was sold to the highest bidder on the auction block in +the rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel at New Orleans in 1841 at a price of +eight thousand dollars. The onlookers were set agog, but a newspaper man +promptly found that the sale had been made as a mere form in the course of +litigation and that the bidding bore no relation to the money which was to +change hands.[28] Among the thousands of bills of sale which the present +writer has scanned, in every quarter of the South, many have borne record +of exceptional prices for men, mostly artisans and "drivers"; but the few +women who brought unusually high prices were described in virtually every +case as fine seamstresses, parlor maids, laundresses, hotel cooks, and +the like. Another indication against the multiplicity of purchases for +concubinage is that the great majority of the women listed in these records +were bought in family groups. Concubinage itself was fairly frequent, +particularly in southern Louisiana; but no frequency of purchases for it as +a predominant purpose can be demonstrated from authentic records. + +[Footnote 27: Advertisement in the _Western Carolinian_ (Salisbury, N. C), +July 12, 1834.] + +[Footnote 28: New Orleans _Bee_, Oct. 16, 1841.] + +Some of the dealers used public jails, taverns and warehouses for the +assembling of their slaves, while others had stockades of their own. That +of Franklin and Armfield at Alexandria, managed by the junior member of +the firm, was described by a visitor in July, 1835. In addition to a brick +residence and office, it comprised two courts, for the men and women +respectively, each with whitewashed walls, padlocked gates, cleanly +barracks and eating sheds, and a hospital which at this time had no +occupants. In the men's yards "the slaves, fifty or sixty in number, were +standing or moving about in groups, some amusing themselves with rude +sports, and others engaged in conversation which was often interrupted +by loud laughter in all the varied tones peculiar to negroes." They were +mostly young men, but comprised a few boys of from ten to fifteen years +old. In the women's yard the ages ranged similarly, and but one woman had a +young child. The slaves were neatly dressed in clothes from a tailor shop +within the walls, and additional clothing was already stored ready to be +sent with the coffle and issued to its members at the end of the southward +journey. In a yard behind the stockade there were wagons and tents made +ready for the departure. Shipments were commonly made by the firm once +every two months in a vessel for New Orleans, but the present lot was to +march overland. Whether by land or sea, the destination was Natchez, where +the senior partner managed the selling end of the business. Armfield +himself was "a man of fine personal appearance, and of engaging and +graceful manners"; and his firm was said to have gained the confidence of +all the countryside by its honorable dealings and by its resolute efforts +to discourage kidnapping. It was said to be highly esteemed even among the +negroes.[29] + +[Footnote 29: E.A. Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the +United States_ (Boston, 1836), pp. 135, 143, 150.] + +Soon afterward this traveler made a short voyage on the Potomac with a +trader of a much more vulgar type who was carrying about fifty slaves, +mostly women with their children, to Fredericksburg and thence across the +Carolinas. Overland, the trader said, he was accustomed to cover some +twenty-five miles a day, with the able-bodied slaves on foot and the +children in wagons. The former he had found could cover these marches, +after the first few days, without much fatigue. His firm, he continued, had +formerly sent most of its slaves by sea, but one of the vessels carrying +them had been driven to Bermuda, where all the negroes had escaped to land +and obtained their freedom under the British flag.[30] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid_., pp. 145-149.] + +The scale of the coasting transit of slaves may be ascertained from the +ship manifests made under the requirements of the congressional act of +1808 and now preserved in large numbers in the manuscripts division of the +Library of Congress. Its volume appears to have ranged commonly, between +1815 and 1860, at from two to five thousand slaves a year. Several score of +these, or perhaps a few hundred, annually were carried as body servants by +their owners when making visits whether to southern cities or to New York +or Philadelphia. Of the rest about half were sent or carried without intent +of sale. Thus in 1831 James L. Pettigru and Langdon Cheves sent from +Charleston to Savannah 85 and 64 slaves respectively of ages ranging from +ninety and seventy years to infancy, with obvious purpose to develop newly +acquired plantations in Georgia. Most of the non-commercial shipments, +however, were in lots of from one to a dozen slaves each. The traders' +lots, on the other hand, which were commonly of considerable dimensions, +may be somewhat safely distinguished by the range of the negroes' ages, +with heavy preponderance of those between ten and thirty years, and by the +recurrence of shippers' and consignees' names. The Chesapeake ports were +the chief points of departure, and New Orleans the great port of entry. +Thus in 1819 Abner Robinson at Baltimore shipped a cargo of 99 slaves to +William Kenner and Co. at New Orleans, whereas by 1832 Robinson had himself +removed to the latter place and was receiving shipments from Henry King +at Norfolk. In the latter year Franklin and Armfield sent from Alexandria +_via_ New Orleans to Isaac Franklin at Natchez three cargoes of 109, 117 +and 134 slaves, mainly of course within the traders' ages; R.C. Ballard and +Co. sent batches from Norfolk to Franklin at Natchez and to John Hogan and +Co. at New Orleans; and William T. Foster, associated with William Rollins +who was master of the brig _Ajax_, consigned numerous parcels to various +New Orleans correspondents. About 1850 the chief shippers were Joseph +Donovan of Baltimore, B.M. and M.L. Campbell of the same place, David +Currie of Richmond and G.W. Apperson of Norfolk, each of whom sent each +year several shipments of several score slaves to New Orleans. The +principal recipients there were Thomas Boudar, John Hogan, W.F. Talbott, +Buchanan, Carroll and Co., Masi and Bourk, and Sherman Johnson. The outward +manifests from New Orleans show in turn a large maritime distribution from +that port, mainly to Galveston and Matagorda Bay. The chief bulk of this +was obviously migrant, not commercial; but a considerable dependence of all +the smaller Gulf ports and even of Montgomery upon the New Orleans labor +market is indicated by occasional manifests bulking heavily in the traders' +ages. In 1850 and thereabouts, it is curious to note, there were manifests +for perhaps a hundred slaves a year bound for Chagres _en route_ for San +Francisco. They were for the most part young men carried singly, and were +obviously intended to share their masters' adventures in the California +gold fields. + +Many slaves carried by sea were covered by marine insurance. Among a number +of policies issued by the Louisiana Insurance Company to William Kenner and +Company was one dated February 18, 1822, on slaves in transit in the brig +_Fame_. It was made out on a printed form of the standard type for the +marine insurance of goods, with the words "on goods" stricken out and "on +slaves" inserted. The risks, specified as assumed in the printed form were +those "of the sea, men of war, fire, enemies, pirates, rovers, thieves, +jettison, letters of mart and counter-mart, surprisals, taking at sea, +arrests, restraints and detainments of all kings, princes or people of what +nation, condition or quality soever, barratry of the master and mariners, +and all other perils, losses and misfortunes that have or shall come to the +hurt, detriment or damage of the said goods or merchandize, or any part +thereof." In manuscript was added: "This insurance is declared to be made +on one hundred slaves, valued at $40,000 and warranted by the insured to be +free from insurrection, elopement, suicide and natural death." The premium +was one and a quarter per cent, of the forty thousand dollars.[31] That +the insurers were not always free from serious risk is indicated by a New +Orleans news item in 1818 relating that two local insurance companies +had recently lost more than forty thousand dollars in consequence of the +robbery of seventy-two slaves out of a vessel from the Chesapeake by a +piratical boat off the Berry Islands.[32] + +[Footnote 31: Original in private possession.] + +[Footnote 32: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Sept. 23, 1818, quoting the +_Orleans Gazette_.] + +Overland coffles were occasionally encountered and described by travelers. +Featherstonhaugh overtook one at daybreak one morning in southwestern +Virginia bound through the Tennessee Valley and wrote of it as follows: "It +was a camp of negro slave drivers, just packing up to start. They had about +three hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding night +in chains in the woods. These they were conducting to Natchez on the +Mississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana. It +resembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they had +a caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages for the purpose of +conducting the white people and any of the blacks that should fall lame.... +The female slaves, some of them sitting on logs of wood, while others were +standing, and a great many little black children, were warming themselves +at the fire of the bivouac. In front of them all, and prepared for the +march, stood in double files about two hundred men slaves, manacled and +chained to each other." The writer went on to ejaculate upon the horror of +"white men with liberty and equality in their mouths," driving black men +"to perish in the sugar mills of Louisiana, where the duration of life for +a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven years."[33] Sir Charles Lyell, +who was less disposed to moralize or to repeat slanders of the Louisiana +regime, wrote upon reaching the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, in January, +1846: "The first sight we saw there was a long line of negroes, men, women +and boys, well dressed and very merry, talking and laughing, who stopped to +look at our coach. On inquiry we were told that it was a gang of slaves, +probably from Virginia, going to the market to be sold."[34] Whether this +laughing company wore shackles the writer failed to say. + +[Footnote 33: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion through the Slave States_ +(London, 1844), I, 120.] + +[Footnote 34: Sir Charles Lyell, _A Second Visit to the United States_ (New +York, 1849), II, 35.] + +Some of the slaves in the coffles were peddled to planters and townsmen +along the route; the rest were carried to the main distributing centers and +there either kept in stock for sale at fixed prices to such customers as +might apply, or sold at auction. Oftentimes a family group divided for sale +was reunited by purchase. Johann Schoepf observed a prompt consummation of +the sort when a cooper being auctioned continually called to the bidders +that whoever should buy him must buy his son also, an injunction to which +his purchaser duly conformed.[35] Both hardness of heart and shortness +of sight would have been involved in the neglect of so ready a means of +promoting the workman's equanimity; and the good nature of the competing +bidders doubtless made the second purchase easy. More commonly the sellers +offered the slaves in family groups outright. By whatever method the sales +were made, the slaves of both sexes were subjected to such examination of +teeth and limbs as might be desired.[36] Those on the block oftentimes +praised their own strength and talents, for it was a matter of pride to +fetch high prices. On the other hand if a slave should bear a grudge +against his seller, or should hope to be bought only by someone who would +expect but light service, he might pretend a disability though he had it +not. The purchasers were commonly too shrewd to be deceived in either way; +yet they necessarily took risks in every purchase they made. If horse +trading is notoriously fertile in deception, slave trading gave opportunity +for it in as much greater degree as human nature is more complex and +uncertain than equine and harder to fathom from surface indications. + +[Footnote 35: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation, +1783-1784_, A.J. Morrison tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), I, 148.] + +[Footnote 36: The proceedings at typical slave auctions are narrated by +Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 143-145; and +by William Chambers, _Things as they are in America_ (2d edition, London, +1857), pp. 273-284.] + +There was also some risk of loss from defects of title. The negroes offered +might prove to be kidnapped freemen, or stolen slaves, or to have been +illegally sold by their former owners in defraud of mortgagees. The last +of these considerations was particularly disquieting in times of financial +stress, for suspicion of wholesale frauds then became rife. At the +beginning of 1840, for example, the offerings of slaves from Mississippi in +large numbers and at bargain prices in the New Orleans market prompted a +local editor to warn the citizens against buying cheap slaves who might +shortly be seized by the federal marshal at the suit of citizens in other +states. A few days afterward the same journal printed in its local news the +following: "Many slaves were put up this day at the St. Louis exchange. Few +if any were sold. It is very difficult now to find persons willing to buy +slaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears entertained that +such property may be already mortgaged to the banks of the above named +states. Our moneyed men and speculators are now wide awake. It will take a +pretty cunning child to cheat them."[37] + +[Footnote 37: _Louisiana Courier_, Feb. 12 and 15, 1840.] + +The disesteem in which the slavetraders were held was so great and general +in the Southern community as to produce a social ostracism. The prevailing +sentiment was expressed, with perhaps a little exaggeration, by D.R. +Hundley of Alabama in his analysis of Southern social types: "Preeminent in +villainy and a greedy love of filthy lucre stands the hard-hearted negro +trader.... Some of them, we do not doubt, are conscientious men, but the +number is few. Although honest and honorable when they first go into the +business, the natural result of their calling seems to corrupt them; for +they usually have to deal with the most refractory and brutal of the slave +population, since good and honest slaves are rarely permitted to fall into +the unscrupulous clutches of the speculator.... [He] is outwardly a coarse, +ill-bred person, provincial in speech and manners, with a cross-looking +phiz, a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking eyes, a dirty +tobacco-stained mouth, and shabby dress.... He is not troubled evidently +with a conscience, for although he habitually separates parent from child, +brother from sister, and husband from wife, he is yet one of the jolliest +dogs alive, and never evinces the least sign of remorse.... Almost every +sentence he utters is accompanied by an oath.... Nearly nine tenths of the +slaves he buys and sells are vicious ones sold for crimes and misdemeanors, +or otherwise diseased ones sold because of their worthlessness as property. +These he purchases for about one half what healthy and honest slaves would +cost him; but he sells them as both honest and healthy, mark you! So soon +as he has completed his 'gang' he dresses them up in good clothes, makes +them comb their kinky heads into some appearance of neatness, rubs oil on +their dusky faces to give them a sleek healthy color, gives them a dram +occasionally to make them sprightly, and teaches each one the part he or +she has to play; and then he sets out for the extreme South.... At every +village of importance he sojourns for a day or two, each day ranging his +'gang' in a line on the most busy street, and whenever a customer makes his +appearance the oily speculator button-holes him immediately and begins to +descant in the most highfalutin fashion upon the virtuous lot of darkeys he +has for sale. Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom was not a circumstance to any one of +the dozens he points out. So honest! so truthful! so dear to the hearts +of their former masters and mistresses! Ah! Messrs. stock-brokers of Wall +Street--you who are wont to cry up your rotten railroad, mining, steamboat +and other worthless stocks[38]--for ingenious lying you should take lessons +from the Southern negro trader!" Some of the itinerant traders were said, +however, and probably with truth, to have had silent partners among the +most substantial capitalists in the Southern cities.[39] + +[Footnote 38: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 139-142.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid_., p.145.] + +The social stigma upon slave dealing doubtless enhanced the profits of the +traders by diminishing the competition. The difference in the scales of +prices prevailing at any time in the cheapest and the dearest local markets +was hardly ever less than thirty per cent. From such a margin, however, +there had to be deducted not only the cost of feeding, clothing, +sheltering, guarding and transporting the slaves for the several months +commonly elapsing between purchase and sale in the trade, but also +allowances for such loss as might occur in transit by death, illness, +accident or escape. At some periods, furthermore, slave prices fell so +rapidly that the prospect of profit for the speculator vanished. At +Columbus, Georgia, in December, 1844, for example, it was reported that a +coffle from North Carolina had been marched back for want of buyers.[40] +But losses of this sort were more than offset in the long run by the upward +trend of prices which was in effect throughout the most of the ante-bellum +period. The Southern planters sometimes cut into the business of the +traders by going to the border states to buy and bring home in person the +slaves they needed.[41] The building of railways speeded the journeys and +correspondingly reduced the costs. The Central of Georgia Railroad +improved its service in 1858 by instituting a negro sleeping car [42]--an +accommodation which apparently no railroad has furnished in the post-bellum +decades. + +[Footnote 40: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 31, 1844.] + +[Footnote 41: Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade_, p.171.] + +While the traders were held in common contempt, the incidents and effects +of their traffic were viewed with mixed emotions. Its employment of +shackles was excused only on the ground of necessary precaution. Its +breaking up of families was generally deplored, although it was apologized +for by thick-and-thin champions of everything Southern with arguments that +negro domestic ties were weak at best and that the separations were no more +frequent than those suffered by free laborers at the North under the stress +of economic necessity. Its drain of money from the districts importing the +slaves was regretted as a financial disadvantage. On the other hand, the +citizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at being +saved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and at +seeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but even +these considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, +by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessen +materially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime young +workmen and women rather than culls who were being sold South, that white +immigration was not filling their gaps, and that accordingly land prices +were falling as slave prices rose.[45] + +[Footnote 42: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1859.] + +[Footnote 43: _National Intelligencer_ (Washington, D.C.), Jan. 19, 1833.] + +[Footnote 44: R.R. Howison, _History of Virginia_ (Richmond, Va., +1846-1848), II. 519, 520.] + +[Footnote 45: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in +_DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] + +Delaware alone among the states below Mason and Dixon's line appears to +have made serious effort to restrict the outgoing trade in slaves; but all +the states from Maryland and Kentucky to Louisiana legislated from time to +time for the prohibition of the inward trade.[46] The enforcement of these +laws was called for by citizen after citizen in the public press, as +demanded by "every principle of justice, humanity, policy and interest," +and particularly on the ground that if the border states were drained of +slaves they would be transferred from the pro-slavery to the anti-slavery +group in politics.[47] The state laws could not constitutionally debar +traders from the right of transit, and as a rule they did not prohibit +citizens from bringing in slaves for their own use. These two apertures, +together with the passiveness of the public, made the legislative obstacles +of no effect whatever. As to the neighborhood trade within each community, +no prohibition was attempted anywhere in the South. + +[Footnote 46: These acts are summarized in W.H. Collins, _Domestic Slave +Trade_, chap. 7.] + +[Footnote 47: _Louisiana Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1818 and Jan. 29, 1823; +_Louisiana Courier_, Jan. 13, 1831; _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), +Dec. 4, 1821, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 67-70; _Federal +Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Feb. 6, 1847.] + +On the whole, instead of hampering migration, as serfdom would have done, +the institution of slavery made the negro population much more responsive +to new industrial opportunity than if it had been free. The long distance +slave trade found its principal function in augmenting the westward +movement. No persuasion of the ignorant and inert was required; the fiat of +one master set them on the road, and the fiat of another set them to new +tasks. The local branch of the trade had its main use in transferring labor +from impoverished employers to those with better means, from passive owners +to active, and from persons with whom relations might be strained to +others whom the negroes might find more congenial. That this last was not +negligible is suggested by a series of letters in 1860 from William Capers, +overseer on a Savannah River rice plantation, to Charles Manigault his +employer, concerning a slave foreman or "driver" named John. In the first +of these letters, August 5, Capers expressed pleasure at learning that +John, who had in previous years been his lieutenant on another estate, was +for sale. He wrote: "Buy him by all means. There is but few negroes +more competent than he is, and he was not a drunkard when under my +management.... In speaking with John he does not answer like a smart negro, +but he is quite so. You had better say to him who is to manage him on +Savannah." A week later Capers wrote: "John arrived safe and handed me +yours of the 9th inst. I congratulate you on the purchase of said negro. +He says he is quite satisfied to be here and will do as he has always done +'during the time I have managed him.' No drink will be offered him. All +on my part will be done to bring John all right." Finally, on October 15, +Capers reported: "I have found John as good a driver as when I left him on +Santee. Bad management was the cause of his being sold, and [I] am glad you +have been the fortunate man to get him."[48] + +[Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 337, 338.] + +Leaving aside for the present, as topics falling more fitly under the +economics of slavery, the questions of the market breeding of slaves in the +border states and the working of them to death in the lower South, as well +as the subject of inflations and depressions in slave prices, it remains +to mention the chief defect of the slave trade as an agency for the +distribution of labor. This lay in the fact that it dealt only in lifetime +service. Employers, it is true, might buy slaves for temporary employment +and sell them when the need for their labor was ended; but the fluctuations +of slave prices and of the local opportunity to sell those on hand would +involve such persons in slave trading risks on a scale eclipsing that of +their industrial earnings. The fact that slave hiring prevailed extensively +in all the Southern towns demonstrates the eagerness of short term +employers to avoid the toils of speculation. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE COTTON REGIME + + +It would be hard to overestimate the predominance of the special crops in +the industry and interest of the Southern community. For good or ill they +have shaped its development from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. +Each characteristic area had its own staple, and those districts which had +none were scorned by all typical Southern men. The several areas expanded +and contracted in response to fluctuations in the relative prices of their +products. Thus when cotton was exceptionally high in the early 'twenties +many Virginians discarded tobacco in its favor for a few years,[1] and on +the Louisiana lands from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, the planters from time +to time changed from sugar to cotton and back again.[2] There were local +variations also in scale and intensity; but in general the system in each +area tended to be steady and fairly uniform. The methods in the several +staples, furthermore, while necessarily differing in their details, were so +similar in their emphasis upon routine that each reinforced the influence +of the others in shaping the industrial organization of the South as a +whole. + +[Footnote 1: _Richmond Compiler_, Nov. 25, 1825, and _Alexandria Gazette_, +Feb. 11, 1826, quoted in the _Charleston City Gazette_, Dec. 1, 1825 and +Feb. 20, 1826; _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore, Dec. 29, 1825), VII, 299.] + +[Footnote 2: _Hunt's Merchant's Magazine_, IX, 149.] + +At the height of the plantation system's career, from 1815 to 1860, indigo +production was a thing of the past; hemp was of negligible importance; +tobacco was losing in the east what it gained in the west; rice and +sea-island cotton were stationary; but sugar was growing in local +intensity, and upland cotton was "king" of a rapidly expanding realm. +The culture of sugar, tobacco and rice has been described in preceding +chapters; that of the fleecy staple requires our present attention. + +The outstanding features of the landscape on a short-staple cotton +plantation were the gin house and its attendant baling press. The former +was commonly a weatherboarded structure some forty feet square, raised +about eight feet from the ground by wooden pillars. In the middle of the +space on the ground level, a great upright hub bore an iron-cogged pinion +and was pierced by a long horizontal beam some three feet from the ground. +Draught animals hitched to the ends of this and driven in a circular path +would revolve the hub and furnish power for transmission by cogs and belts +to the gin on the floor above. At the front of the house were a stair and a +platform for unloading seed cotton from the wagons; inside there were bins +for storage, as well as a space for operating the gin; and in the rear a +lean-to room extending to the ground level received the flying lint and let +it settle on the floor. The press, a skeleton structure nearby, had in the +center a stout wooden box whose interior length and width determined the +height and thickness of the bales but whose depth was more than twice as +great as the intended bale's width. The floor, the ends and the upper +halves of the sides of the box were built rigidly, but the lower sides were +hinged at the bottom, and the lid was a block sliding up and down according +as a great screw from above was turned to left or right. The screw, +sometimes of cast iron but preferably of wood as being less liable to break +under strain without warning, worked through a block mortised into a timber +frame above the box, and at its upper end it supported two gaunt beams +which sloped downward and outward to a horse path encircling the whole. +A cupola roof was generally built on the revolving apex to give a slight +shelter to the apparatus; and in some cases a second roof, with the screw +penetrating its peak, was built near enough the ground to escape the whirl +of the arms. When the contents of the lint room were sufficient for a bale, +a strip of bagging was laid upon the floor of the press and another was +attached to the face of the raised lid; the sides of the press were then +made fast, and the box was filled with cotton. The draught animals at the +beam ends were then driven round the path until the descent of the lid +packed the lint firmly; whereupon the sides were lowered, the edges of the +bagging drawn into place, ropes were passed through transverse slots in +the lid and floor and tied round the bale in its bagging, the pressure +was released, and the bale was ready for market. Between 1820 and 1860 +improvements in the apparatus promoted an increase in the average weight +of the bales from 250 to 400 pounds; while in still more recent times the +replacement of horse power by steam and the substitution of iron ties for +rope have caused the average bale to be yet another hundredweight heavier. +The only other distinctive equipment for cotton harvesting comprised cloth +bags with shoulder straps, and baskets of three or four bushels capacity +woven of white-oak splits to contain the contents of the pickers' bags +until carried to the gin house to be weighed at the day's end. + +Whether on a one-horse farm or a hundred-hand plantation, the essentials in +cotton growing were the same. In an average year a given force of laborers +could plant and cultivate about twice as much cotton as it could pick. The +acreage to be seeded in the staple was accordingly fixed by a calculation +of the harvesting capacity, and enough more land was put into other crops +to fill out the spare time of the hands in spring and summer. To this +effect it was customary to plant in corn, which required less than half as +much work, an acreage at least equal to that in cotton, and to devote the +remaining energy to sweet potatoes, peanuts, cow peas and small grain. In +1820 the usual crop in middle Georgia for each full hand was reported at +six acres of cotton and eight of corn;[3] but in the following decades +during which mules were advantageously substituted for horses and oxen, +and the implements of tillage were improved and the harvesters grew more +expert, the annual stint was increased to ten acres in cotton and ten in +corn. + +[Footnote 3: _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore), II, 359.] + +At the Christmas holiday when the old year's harvest was nearly or quite +completed, well managed plantations had their preliminaries for the new +crop already in progress. The winter months were devoted to burning +canebrakes, clearing underbrush and rolling logs in the new grounds, +splitting rails and mending fences, cleaning ditches, spreading manure, +knocking down the old cotton and corn stalks, and breaking the soil of the +fields to be planted. Some planters broke the fields completely each year +and then laid off new rows. Others merely "listed" the fields by first +running a furrow with a shovel plow where each cotton or corn row was to be +and filling it with a single furrow of a turn plow from either side; then +when planting time approached they would break out the remaining balks with +plows, turning the soil to the lists and broadening them into rounded plant +beds. This latter plan was advocated as giving a firm seed bed while making +the field clean of all grass at the planting. The spacing of the cotton +rows varied from three to five feet according to the richness of the soil. +The policy was to put them at such distance that the plants when full grown +would lightly interlace their branches across the middles. + +In March the corn fields were commonly planted, not so much because this +forehandedness was better for the crop as for the sake of freeing the +choicer month of April for the more important planting of cotton. In this +operation a narrow plow lightly opened the crests of the beds; cotton seed +were drilled somewhat thickly therein; and a shallow covering of earth was +given by means of a concave board on a plow stock, or by a harrow, a roller +or a small shallow plow. + +Within two or three weeks, as soon as the young plants had put forth three +or four leaves, thinning and cultivation was begun. Hoe hands, under +orders to chop carefully, stirred the crust along the rows and reduced the +seedlings to a "double stand," leaving only two plants to grow at each +interval of twelve or eighteen inches. The plows then followed, stirring +the soil somewhat deeply near the rows. In another fortnight the hoes gave +another chopping, cutting down the weaker of each pair of plants, thus +reducing the crop to a "single stand"; and where plants were missing they +planted fresh seed to fill the gaps. The plows followed again, with broad +wings to their shares, to break the crust and kill the grass throughout the +middles. Similar alternations of chipping and plowing then ensued until +near the end of July, each cultivation shallower than the last in order +that the roots of the cotton should not be cut.[4] + +[Footnote 4: Cotton Culture is described by M.W. Philips in the _American +Agriculturist_, II (New York, 1843), 51, 81, 117, 149; by various writers +in J.A. Turner, ed., _The Cotton Planter's Manual_ (New York, 1856), chap. +I; Harry Hammond, _The Cotton Plant_ (U.S. Department of Agriculture, +Experiment Station, _Bulletin_ 33, 1896); and in the U.S. Census, 1880, +vols. V and VI.] + +When the blossoms were giving place to bolls in midsummer, "lay-by time" +was at hand. Cultivation was ended, and the labor was diverted to other +tasks until in late August or early September the harvest began. The +corn, which had been worked at spare times previously, now had its blades +stripped and bundled for fodder; the roads were mended, the gin house and +press put in order, the premises in general cleaned up, and perhaps a few +spare days given to recreation. + +The cotton bolls ripened and opened in series, those near the center of the +plant first, then the outer ones on the lower branches, and finally the +top crop. If subjected unduly to wind and rain the cotton, drooping in the +bolls, would be blown to the ground or tangled with dead leaves or stained +with mildew. It was expedient accordingly to send the pickers through the +fields as early and as often as there was crop enough open to reward the +labor. + +Four or five compartments held the contents of each boll; from sixty to +eighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed; and three or four +pounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of lint. When a boll was wide +open a deft picker could empty all of its compartments by one snatch of +the fingers; and a specially skilled one could keep both hands flying +independently, and still exercise the small degree of care necessary to +keep the lint fairly free from the trash of the brittle dead calyxes. As +to the day's work, a Georgia planter wrote in 1830: "A hand will pick or +gather sixty to a hundred pounds of cotton in the seed, with ease, per day. +I have heard of some hands gathering a hundred and twenty pounds in a day. +The hands on a plantation ought to average sixty-five pounds," [5] But +actual records in the following decades made these early pickers appear +very inept. On Levin Covington's plantation near Natchez in 1844, in a +typical week of October, Bill averaged 220 pounds a day, Dred 205 pounds, +Aggy 215, and Delia 185; and on Saturday of that week all the twenty-eight +men and boys together picked an average of 160 pounds, and all the eighteen +women and girls an average of 125.[6] But these were dwarfed in turn by the +pickings on J.W. Fowler's Prairie plantation, Coahoma County, Mississippi, +at the close of the ante-bellum period. In the week of September 12 to 17, +1859, Sandy, Carver and Gilmore each averaged about three hundred pounds a +day, and twelve other men and five women ranged above two hundred, while +the whole gang of fifty-one men and women, boys and girls average 157 +pounds each.[7] + +[Footnote 5: _American Farmer_, II, 359.] + +[Footnote 6: MS. in the Mississippi Department of History and Archives, +Jackson, Miss.] + +[Footnote 7: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] + +The picking required more perseverance than strength. Dexterity was at a +premium, but the labors of the slow, the youthful and the aged were all +called into requisition. When the fields were white with their fleece and +each day might bring a storm to stop the harvesting, every boll picked +might well be a boll saved from destruction. Even the blacksmith was called +from his forge and the farmer's children from school to bend their backs in +the cotton rows. The women and children picked steadily unless rains drove +them in; the men picked as constantly except when the crop was fairly under +control and some other task, such as breaking in the corn, called the whole +gang for a day to another field or when the gin house crew had to clear the +bins by working up their contents to make room for more seed cotton. + +In the Piedmont where the yield was lighter the harvest was generally ended +by December; but in the western belt, particularly when rains interrupted +the work, it often extended far into the new year. Lucien Minor, for +example, wrote when traveling through the plantations of northern Alabama, +near Huntsville, in December, 1823: "These fields are still white with +cotton, which frequently remains unpicked until March or April, when the +ground is wanted to plant the next crop."[8] Planters occasionally noted in +their journals that for want of pickers the top crop was lost. + +[Footnote 8: _Atlantic Monthly_, XXVI, 175.] + +As to the yield, an adage was current, that cotton would promise more and +do less and promise less and do more than any other green thing that grew. +The plants in the earlier stages were very delicate. Rough stirring of the +clods would kill them; excess of rain or drought would be likewise fatal; +and a choking growth of grass would altogether devastate the field. +Improvement of conditions would bring quick recuperation to the surviving +stalks, which upon attaining their full growth became quite hardy; but +undue moisture would then cause a shedding of the bolls, and the first +frost of autumn would stop the further fruiting. The plants, furthermore, +were liable to many diseases and insect ravages. In infancy cut-worms might +sever the stalks at the base, and lice might sap the vitality; in the full +flush of blooming luxuriance, wilt and rust, the latter particularly on +older lands, might blight the leaves, or caterpillars in huge armies reduce +them to skeletons and blast the prospect; and even when the fruit was +formed, boll-worms might consume the substance within, or dry-rot prevent +the top crop from ripening. The ante-bellum planters, however, were exempt +from the Mexican boll-weevil, the great pest of the cotton belt in the +twentieth century. + +While every planter had his fat years and lean, and the yield of the belt +as a whole alternated between bumper crops and short ones, the industry was +in general of such profit as to maintain a continued expansion of its area +and a never ending though sometimes hesitating increase of its product. The +crop rose from eighty-five million pounds in 1810 to twice as much in 1820; +it doubled again by 1830 and more than doubled once more by 1840. Extremely +low prices for the staple in the early 'forties and again in 1849 prompted +a campaign for crop reduction; and in that decade the increase was only +from 830,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 pounds. But the return of good prices in +the 'fifties caused a fresh and huge enlargement to 2,300,000,000 pounds in +the final census year of the ante-bellum period. While this was little more +than one fourth as great as the crops of sixteen million bales in 1912 and +1915, it was justly reckoned in its time, at home and abroad, a prodigious +output. All the rest of the world then produced barely one third as much. +The cotton sent abroad made up nearly two thirds of the value of the gross +export trade of the United States, while the tobacco export had hardly a +tenth of the cotton's worth. In competition with all the other staples, +cotton engaged the services of some three fourths of all the country's +plantation labor, in addition to the labor of many thousands of white +farmers and their families. + +The production and sale of the staple engrossed no less of the people's +thought than of their work. A traveler who made a zig-zag journey from +Charleston to St. Louis in the early months of 1827, found cotton "a +plague." At Charleston, said he, the wharves were stacked and the stores +and ships packed with the bales, and the four daily papers and all +the patrons of the hotel were "teeming with cotton." At Augusta the +thoroughfares were thronged with groaning wagons, the warehouses were +glutted, the open places were stacked, and the steamboats and barges hidden +by their loads. On the road beyond, migrating planters and slaves bound +for the west, "'where the cotton land is not worn out,'" met cotton-laden +wagons townward bound, whereupon the price of the staple was the chief +theme of roadside conversation. Occasionally a wag would have his jest. The +traveler reported a tilt between two wagoners: "'What's cotton in Augusta?' +says the one with a load.... 'It's cotton,' says the other. 'I know that,' +says the first, 'but what is it?' 'Why,' says the other, 'I tell you it's +cotton. Cotton is cotton in Augusta and everywhere else that I ever heard +of,' 'I know that as well as you,' says the first, 'but what does cotton +bring in Augusta?' 'Why, it brings nothing there, but everybody brings +cotton,'" Whereupon the baffled inquirer appropriately relieved his +feelings and drove on. At his crossing of the Oconee River the traveler saw +pole-boats laden with bales twelve tiers high; at Milledgeville and Macon +cotton was the absorbing theme; in the newly opened lands beyond he "found +cotton land speculators thicker than locusts in Egypt"; in the neighborhood +of Montgomery cotton fields adjoined one another in a solid stretch for +fourteen miles along the road; Montgomery was congested beyond the capacity +of the boats; and journeying thence to Mobile he "met and overtook nearly +one hundred cotton waggons travelling over a road so bad that a state +prisoner could hardly walk through it to make his escape." As to Mobile, it +was "a receptacle monstrous for the article. Look which way you will you +see it, and see it moving; keel boats, steamboats, ships, brigs, schooners, +wharves, stores, and press-houses, all appeared to be full; and I believe +that in the three days I was there, boarding with about one hundred cotton +factors, cotton merchants and cotton planters, I must have heard the word +cotton pronounced more than three thousand times." New Orleans had a +similar glut. + +On the journey up the Mississippi the plaint heard by this traveler from +fellow passengers who lived at Natchitoches, was that they could not get +enough boats to bring the cotton down the Red. The descending steamers and +barges on the great river itself were half of them heavy laden with cotton +and at the head of navigation on the Tennessee, in northwestern Alabama, +bales enough were waiting to fill a dozen boats. "The Tennesseeans," said +he, "think that no state is of any account but their own; Kentucky, they +say, would be if it could grow cotton, but as it is, it is good for +nothing. They count on forty or fifty thousand bales going from Nashville +this season; that is, if they can get boats to carry it all." The fleet +on the Cumberland River was doing its utmost, to the discomfort of the +passengers; and it was not until the traveler boarded a steamer for +St. Louis at the middle of March, that he escaped the plague which had +surrounded him for seventy days and seventy nights. This boat, at last, +"had not a bale of cotton on board, nor did I hear it named more than twice +in thirty-six hours...I had a pretty tolerable night's sleep, though I +dreamed of cotton."[9] + +[Footnote 9: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Oct. 11, 1827, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, I, 283-289.] + +This obsession was not without its undertone of disquiet. Foresighted men +were apprehensive lest the one-crop system bring distress to the cotton +belt as it had to Virginia. As early as 1818 a few newspaper editors[10] +began to decry the regime; and one of them in 1821 rejoiced in a widespread +prevalence of rot in the crop of the preceding year as a blessing, in that +it staved off the rapidly nearing time when the staple's price would fall +below the cost of production.[11] A marked rise of the price to above +twenty cents a pound at the middle of the decade, however, silenced these +prophets until a severe decline in the later twenties prompted the sons of +Jeremiah to raise their voices again, and the political crisis procured +them a partial hearing. Politicians were advocating the home production +of cloth and foodstuffs as a demonstration against the protective tariff, +while the economists pleaded for diversification for the sake of permanent +prosperity, regardless of tariff rates. One of them wrote in 1827: "That we +have cultivated cotton, cotton, cotton and bought everything else, has long +been our opprobrium. It is time that we should be aroused by some means or +other to see that such a course of conduct will inevitably terminate in +our ultimate poverty and ruin. Let us manufacture, because it is our best +policy. Let us go more on provision crops and less on cotton, because we +have had everything about us poor and impoverished long enough.... We have +good land, unlimited water powers, capital in plenty, and a patriotism +which is running over in some places. If the tariff drives us to this, +we say, let the name be sacred in all future generations."[12] Next year +William Ellison of the South Carolina uplands welcomed even the low price +of cotton as a lever[13] which might pry the planters out of the cotton rut +and shift them into industries less exhausting to the soil. + +[Footnote 10: Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. 23, 1818.] + +[Footnote 11: _Georgia Journal_ (Milledgeville), June 5, 1821.] + +[Footnote 12: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), June 21, 1827.] + +[Footnote 13: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 13.] + +But in the breast of the lowlander, William Elliott, the depression of the +cotton market produced merely a querulous complaint that the Virginians, by +rushing into the industry several years before when the prices were high, +had spoiled the market. Each region, said he, ought to devote itself to +the staples best suited to its climate and soil; this was the basis of +profitable commerce. The proper policy for Virginia and most of North +Carolina was to give all their labor spared from tobacco to the growing of +corn which South Carolina would gladly buy of them if undisturbed in her +peaceful concentration upon cotton.[14] The advance of cotton prices +throughout most of the thirties suspended the discussion, and the regime +went on virtually unchanged. As an evidence of the specialization of the +Piedmont in cotton, it was reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbia +alone the purchases of bacon during the preceding year had amounted to +three and a half million pounds.[15] + +[Footnote 14: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 61.] + +[Footnote 15: _Niles' Register_, LI, 46.] + +The world-wide panic of 1837 began to send prices down, and the specially +intense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so thoroughly that for five +years afterward the producers had to take from five to seven cents a pound +for their crops. Planters by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously in +the inflated southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves afresh +to study the means of salvation. Edmund Ruffin, the Virginian enthusiast +for fertilizers, was employed by the authority of the South Carolina +legislature to make an agricultural survey of that state with a view to +recommending improvements. Private citizens made experiments on their +estates; and the newspapers and the multiplying agricultural journals +published their reports and advice. Most prominent among the cotton belt +planters who labored in the cause of reform were ex-Governor James H. +Hammond of South Carolina, Jethro V. Jones of Georgia, Dr. N.B. Cloud of +Alabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of Mississippi. Of these, Hammond was +chiefly concerned in swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase, +and livestock improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improved +strains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing; and Philips was +an all-round experimenter and propagandist. Hammond and Philips, who were +both spurred to experiments by financial stress, have left voluminous +records in print and manuscript. Their careers illustrate the handicaps +under which innovators labored. + +Hammond's estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, some +sixteen miles below Augusta. Impressed by the depletion of his upland +soils, he made a journey in 1838 through southwestern Georgia and the +adjacent portion of Florida in search of a new location; but finding land +prices inflated, he returned without making a purchase,[17] and for the +time being sought relief at home through the improvement of his methods. He +wrote in 1841: "I have tried almost all systems, and unlike most planters +do not like what is old. I hardly know anything old in corn or cotton +planting but what is wrong." His particular enthusiasm now was for plow +cultivation as against the hoe. The best planter within his acquaintance, +he said, was Major Twiggs, on the opposite bank of the Savannah, who ran +thirty-four plows with but fourteen hoes. Hammond's own plowmen were now +nearly as numerous as his full hoe hands, and his crops were on a scale of +twenty acres of cotton, ten of corn and two of oats to the plow. He was +fertilizing each year a third of his corn acreage with cotton seed, and a +twentieth of his cotton with barnyard manure; and he was making a surplus +of thirty or forty bushels of corn per hand for sale.[18] This would +perhaps have contented him in normal times, but the severe depression of +cotton prices drove him to new prognostications and plans. His confidence +in the staple was destroyed, he said, and he expected the next crop +to break the market forever and force virtually everyone east of the +Chattahoochee to abandon the culture. "Here and there," he continued, "a +plantation may be found; but to plant an acre that will not yield three +hundred pounds net will be folly. I cannot make more than sixty dollars +clear to the hand on my whole plantation at seven cents...The western +plantations have got fairly under way; Texas is coming in, and the game is +up with us." He intended to change his own activities in the main to the +raising of cattle and hogs; and he thought also of sending part of his +slaves to Louisiana or Texas, with a view to removing thither himself after +a few years if the project should prove successful.[19] In an address of +the same year before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, he +advised those to emigrate who intended to continue producing cotton, +and recommended for those who would stay in the Piedmont a diversified +husbandry including tobacco but with main emphasis upon cereals and +livestock.[20] Again at the end of 1849, he voiced similar views at the +first annual fair of the South Carolina Institute. The first phase of the +cotton industry, said he, had now passed; and the price henceforward would +be fixed by the cost of production, and would yield no great profits even +in the most fertile areas. The rich expanses of the Southwest, he thought, +could meet the whole world's demand at a cost of less than five cents a +pound, for the planters there could produce two thousand pounds of lint +per hand while those in the Piedmont could not exceed an average of twelve +hundred pounds. This margin of difference would deprive the slaves of their +value in South Carolina and cause their owners to send them West, unless +the local system of industry should be successfully revolutionized. +The remedies he proposed were the fertilization of the soil, the +diversification of crops, the promotion of commerce, and the large +development of cotton manufacturing.[21] + +[Footnote 16: Described in 1846 in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, 113, +114.] + +[Footnote 17: MS. diary, April 13 to May 14, 1838, in Hammond papers, +Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 18: Letters of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 27 and Mch. +9, 1841. Hammond's MS. drafts are in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 19: Letter to Isaac W. Hayne, Jan. 21, 1841.] + +[Footnote 20: MS. oration in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 21: James H. Hammond, _An Address delivered before the South +Carolina Institute, at the first annual Fair, on the 20th November, 1849_ +(Charleston. 1849).] + +Hammond found that not only the public but his own sons also, with the +exception of Harry, were cool toward his advice and example; and he himself +yielded to the temptation of the higher cotton prices in the 'fifties, and +while not losing interest in cattle and small grain made cotton and corn +his chief reliance. He appears to have salved his conscience in this +relapse by devoting part of his income to the reclamation of a great marsh +on his estate. He operated two plantations, the one at his home, "Silver +Bluff," the other, "Cathwood," near by. The field force on the former +comprised in 1850 sixteen plow hands, thirty-four full hoe hands, six +three-quarter hands, two half hands and a water boy, the whole rated at +fifty-five full hands. At Cathwood the force, similarly grouped, was rated +at seventy-one hands; but at either place the force was commonly subject to +a deduction of some ten per cent, of its rated strength, on the score of +the loss of time by the "breeders and suckers" among the women. In addition +to their field strength and the children, of whom no reckoning was made in +the schedule of employments, the two plantations together had five stable +men, two carpenters, a miller and job worker, a keeper of the boat landing, +three nurses and two overseers' cooks; and also thirty-five ditchers in the +reclamation work. + +At Silver Bluff, the 385 acres in cotton were expected to yield 330 bales +of 400 pounds each; the 400 acres in corn had an expectation of 9850 +bushels; and 10 acres of rice, 200 bushels. At Cathwood the plantings and +expectations were 370 acres in cotton to yield 280 bales, 280 in corn to +yield 5000 bushels, 15 in wheat to yield 100 bushels, 11 in rye to yield +50, and 2 in rice to yield 50. In financial results, after earning in 1848 +only $4334.91, which met barely half of his plantation and family expenses +for the year, his crop sales from 1849 to 1853 ranged from seven to twenty +thousand dollars annually in cotton and from one and a half to two and +a half thousand dollars in corn. His gross earnings in these five years +averaged $16,217.76, while his plantation expenses averaged $5393.87, and +his family outlay $6392.67, leaving an average "clear gain per annum," as +he called it, of $4431.10. The accounting, however, included no reckoning +of interest on the investment or of anything else but money income and +outgo. In 1859 Hammond put upon the market his 5500 acres of uplands with +their buildings, livestock, implements and feed supplies, together with 140 +slaves including 70 full hands. His purpose, it may be surmised, was to +confine his further operations to his river bottoms.[22] + +[Footnote 22: Hammond MSS., Library of Congress.] + +Philips, whom a dearth of patients drove early from the practice of +medicine, established in the 'thirties a plantation which he named Log +Hall, in Hinds County, Mississippi. After narrowly escaping the loss of his +lands and slaves in 1840 through his endorsement of other men's notes, +he launched into experimental farming and agricultural publication. He +procured various fancy breeds of cattle and hogs, only to have most of +them die on his hands. He introduced new sorts of grasses and unfamiliar +vegetables and field crops, rarely with success. Meanwhile, however, he +gained wide reputation through his many writings in the periodicals, and in +the 'fifties he turned this to some advantage in raising fancy strains +of cotton and selling their seed. His frequent attendance at fairs and +conventions and his devotion to his experiments and to his pen caused +him to rely too heavily upon overseers in the routine conduct of his +plantation. In consequence one or more slaves occasionally took to the +woods; the whole force was frequently in bad health; and his women, though +remarkably fecund, lost most of their children in infancy. In some degree +Philips justified the prevalent scorn of planters for "book farming."[23] + +[Footnote 23: M.W. Phillips, "Diary," F.L. Riley, ed., in the Mississippi +Historical Society _Publications_, X, 305-481; letters of Philips in the +_American Agriculturist, DeBow's Review_, etc., and in J.A. Turner, ed., +_The Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 98-123.] + +The newspapers and farm journals everywhere printed arguments in the +'forties in behalf of crop diversification, and _DeBow's Review_, founded +in 1846, joined in the campaign; but the force of habit, the dearth of +marketable substitutes and the charms of speculation conspired to make all +efforts of but temporary avail. The belt was as much absorbed in cotton in +the 'fifties as it had ever been before. + +Meanwhile considerable improvement had been achieved in cotton methods. +Mules, mainly bred in Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, largely replaced +the less effective horses and oxen; the introduction of horizontal plowing +with occasional balks and hillside ditches, checked the washing of the +Piedmont soils; the use of fertilizers became fairly common; and cotton +seed was better selected. These last items of manures and seed were the +subject of special campaigns. The former was begun as early as 1808 by the +Virginian John Taylor of Caroline in his "Arator" essays, and was furthered +by the publications of Edmund Ruffin and many others. But an adequate +available source of fertilizers long remained a problem without solution. +Taylor stressed the virtues of dung and rotation; but the dearth of forage +hampered the keeping of large stocks of cattle, and soiling crops were +thought commonly to yield too little benefit for the expense in labor. +Ruffin had great enthusiasm for the marl or phosphate rock of the Carolina +coast; but until the introduction in much later decades of a treatment by +sulphuric acid this was too little soluble to be really worth while as a +plant food. Lime was also praised; but there were no local sources of it in +the districts where it was most needed. + +Cotton seed, in fact, proved to be the only new fertilizer generally +available in moderate abundance prior to the building of the railroads. In +early years the seed lay about the gins as refuse until it became a public +nuisance. To abate it the village authorities of Sparta, Georgia, for +example, adopted in 1807 an ordinance "that the owner of each and every +cotton machine within the limits of said town shall remove before the first +day of May in each year all seed and damaged cotton that may be about such +machines, or dispose of such seed or cotton so as to prevent its unhealthy +putrefaction."[24] Soon after this a planter in St. Stephen's Parish, +South Carolina, wrote: "We find from experience our cotton seed one of the +strongest manures we make use of for our Indian corn; a pint of fresh seed +put around or in the corn hole makes the corn produce wonderfully",[25] +but it was not until the lapse of another decade or two that such practice +became widespread. In the thirties Harriet Martineau and J.S. Buckingham +noted that in Alabama the seed was being strewn as manure on a large +scale.[26] As an improvement of method the seed was now being given in many +cases a preliminary rotting in compost heaps, with a consequent speeding of +its availability as plant food;[27] and cotton seed rose to such esteem as +a fertilizer for general purposes that many planters rated it to be worth +from sixteen to twenty-five cents a bushel of twenty-five pounds.[28] As +early as 1830, furthermore a beginning was made in extracting cottonseed +oil for use both in painting and illumination, and also in utilizing the +by-product of cottonseed meal as a cattle feed.[29] By the 'fifties the oil +was coming to be an unheralded substitute for olive oil in table use; but +the improvements which later decades were to introduce in its extraction +and refining were necessary for the raising of the manufacture to the scale +of a substantial industry. + +[Footnote 24: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Jan. 31, 1807.] + +[Footnote 25: Letter of John Palmer. Dec. 3, 1808, to David Ramsay. MS. in +the Charleston Library.] + +[Footnote 26: Harriet Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_, (London, +1838), I, 218; I.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, +1842), I, 257.] + +[Footnote 27: D.R. Williams of South Carolina described his own practice to +this effect in an essay of 1825 contributed to the _American Farmer_ and +reprinted in H.T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (New +York, 1916), pp. 226, 227.] + +[Footnote 28: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 99; Robert +Russell, _North America_, p. 269.] + +[Footnote 29: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 563; _American Farmer_, II, 98; +H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_, pp. 197-209.] + +The importation of fertilizers began with guano. This material, the dried +droppings of countless birds, was discovered in the early 'forties on +islands off the coast of Peru;[30] and it promptly rose to such high esteem +in England that, according to an American news item, Lloyd's listed for +1845 not less than a thousand British vessels as having sailed in search of +guano cargoes. The use of it in the United States began about that year; +and nowhere was its reception more eager than in the upland cotton belt. +Its price was about fifty dollars a ton in the seaports. To stimulate the +use of fertilizers, the Central of Georgia Railroad Company announced +in 1858 that it would carry all manures for any distance on its line in +carload lots at a flat rate of two dollars per ton; and the connecting +roads concurred in this policy. In consequence the Central of Georgia +carried nearly two thousand tons of guano in 1859, and more than nine +thousand tons in 1860, besides lesser quantities of lime, salt and bone +dust. The superintendent reported that while the rate failed to cover the +cost of transportation, the effect in increasing the amount of cotton to be +freighted, and in checking emigration, fully compensated the road.[31] A +contributor to the _North American Review_ in January, 1861, wrote: "The +use of guano is increasing. The average return for each pound used in the +cotton field is estimated to be a pound and a half of cotton; and the +planter who could raise but three bales to the hand on twelve acres of +exhausted soil has in some instances by this appliance realized ten bales +from the same force and area. In North Carolina guano is reported to +accelerate the growth of the plant, and this encourages the culture on +the northern border of the cotton-field, where early frosts have proved +injurious." + +[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, III, 283.] + +[Footnote 31: Central of Georgia Railroad Company _Reports_, 1858-1860.] + +Widespread interest in agricultural improvement was reported by _DeBow's +Review_ in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local and general +fairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of Alabama, for example, +announced success in devising a cotton picking machine; but as in many +subsequent cases in the same premises, the proclamation was premature. + +As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to have begun +about 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results from seed newly +procured from Mexico. These were in a few years widely distributed under +the name of Petit Gulf cotton. Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began to +breed strains from selected seed; and others here and there followed his +example, most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The more dignified +of the planters who prided themselves on selling nothing but cotton, would +distribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fine +plants they might encounter in their fields, and make little ado about +it. Men of a more flamboyant sort, such as M.W. Philips, contemning such +"ruffle-shirt cant," would christen their strains with attractive names, +publish their virtues as best they might, and offer their fancy seed for +sale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was in +vogue, selling at many places for five dollars a quart. In 1839 this was +eclipsed by the Alvarado strain, which its sponsors computed from an +instance of one heavily fruited stalk nine feet high and others not so +prodigious, might yield three thousand pounds per acre.[32] Single Alvarado +seeds were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160. In +the succeeding years Vick's Hundred Seed, Brown's, Pitt's, Prolific, Sugar +Loaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan's, Banana, Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, +Mammoth, Mastodon and many others competed for attention and sale. Some +proved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing larger +bolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionate +weight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test of +planting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth the +cost of carriage. Extreme prices for seed of any strain were of course +obtainable only for the first year or two; and the temptation to make +fraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not always +resisted. Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but the +succession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a certain Miller +of Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered by +chance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cotton +per acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly named +it Accidental Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad town +Atlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton," he wrote in a +public letter, "would run a three million bale crop up to more than four +millions; and this would reduce the price probably to four or five cents. +Don't you see, Mr. Miller, that we had better let you keep and plant your +seed? You say that you had rather plant your crop with them than take a +dollar a pint.... Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well--we might +do worse."[33] + +[Footnote 32: _Southern Banner_( Athens, Ga.), Sept. 20, 1839.] + +[Footnote 33: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 98-128.] + +In the sea-island branch of the cotton industry the methods differed +considerably from those in producing the shorter staple. Seed selection was +much more commonly practiced, and extraordinary care was taken in ginning +and packing the harvest. The earliest and favorite lands for this crop +were those of exceedingly light soil on the islands fringing the coast of +Georgia and South Carolina. At first the tangle of live-oak and palmetto +roots discouraged the use of the plow; and afterward the need of heavy +fertilization with swamp mud and seaweed kept the acreage so small in +proportion to the laborers that hoes continued to be the prevalent means of +tillage. Operations were commonly on the basis of six or seven acres to the +hand, half in cotton and the rest in corn and sweet potatoes. In the swamps +on the mainland into which this crop was afterwards extended, the use of +the plow permitted the doubling of the area per hand; but the product of +the swamp lands was apparently never of the first grade. + +The fields were furrowed at five-foot intervals during the winter, bedded +in early spring, planted in late April or early May, cultivated until the +end of July, and harvested from September to December. The bolls opened but +narrowly and the fields had to be reaped frequently to save the precious +lint from damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to have +averaged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The preparation for market +required the greatest painstaking of all. First the seed cotton was dried +on a scaffold; next it was whipped for the removal of trash and sand; then +it was carefully sorted into grades by color and fineness; then it went to +the roller gins, whence the lint was spread upon tables where women picked +out every stained or matted bit of the fiber; and finally when gently +packed into sewn bags it was ready for market. A few gin houses were +equipped in the later decades with steam power; but most planters retained +the system of a treadle for each pair of rollers as the surest safeguard +of the delicate filaments. A plantation gin house was accordingly a simple +barn with perhaps a dozen or two foot-power gins, a separate room for the +whipping, a number of tables for the sorting and moting, and a round hole +in the floor to hold open the mouth of the long bag suspended for the +packing.[34] In preparing a standard bale of three hundred pounds, it was +reckoned that the work required of the laborers at the gin house was as +follows: the dryer, one day; the whipper, two days; the sorters, at fifty +pounds of seed cotton per day for each, thirty days; the ginners, each +taking 125 pounds in the seed per day and delivering therefrom 25 pounds of +lint, twelve days; the moters, at 43 pounds, seven days; the inspector and +packer, two days; total fifty-four days. + +[Footnote 34: The culture and apparatus are described by W.B. Seabrook, +_Memoir on Cotton_, pp. 23-25; Thomas Spaulding in the _American +Agriculturist_, III, 244-246; R.F.W. Allston, _Essay on Sea Coast Crops_ +(Charleston, 1854), reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615; J.A. +Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 131-136. The routine of +operations is illustrated in the diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, of Woodboo +plantation, 1847-1850, printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 195-208.] + +The roller gin was described in a most untechnical manner by Basil Hall: +"It consists of two little wooden rollers, each about as thick as a man's +thumb, placed horizontally and touching each other. On these being put into +rapid motion, handfulls of the cotton are cast upon them, which of course +are immediately sucked in.... A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth ... is +made to wag up and down with considerable velocity in front of the rollers. +This rugged comb, which is equal in length to the rollers, lies parallel to +them, with the sharp ends of its teeth almost in contact with them. By +the quick wagging motion given to this comb by the machinery, the buds of +cotton cast upon the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to be +sucked in. The seeds, now released ... fly off like sparks to the right and +left, while the cotton itself passes between the rollers."[35] + +[Footnote 35: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), +III, 221, 222.] + +As to yields and proceeds, a planter on the Georgia seaboard analyzed his +experience from 1830 to 1847 as follows: the harvest average per acre +ranged from 68 pounds of lint in 1846 to 223 pounds in 1842, with a general +average for the whole period of 137 pounds; the crop's average price per +pound ranged from 14 cents in 1847 to 41 cents in 1838, with a general +average of 23 1/2 cents; and the net proceeds per hand were highest at +$137 in 1835, lowest at $41 in 1836, and averaged $83 for the eighteen +years.[36] + +[Footnote 36: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, pp. 128, 129.] + +In the cotton belt as a whole the census takers of 1850 enumerated 74,031 +farms and plantations each producing five bales or more,[37] and they +reckoned the crop at 2,445,793 bales of four hundred pounds each. Assuming +that five bales were commonly the product of one full hand, and leaving +aside a tenth of the gross output as grown perhaps on farms where the +cotton was not the main product, it appears that the cotton farms and +plantations averaged some thirty bales each, and employed on the average +about six full hands. That is to say, there were very many more small +farms than large plantations devoted to cotton; and among the plantations, +furthermore, it appears that very few were upon a scale entitling them +to be called great, for the nature of the industry did not encourage the +engrossment of more than sixty laborers under a single manager.[38] It is +true that some proprietors operated on a much larger scale than this. It +was reported in 1859, for example, that Joseph Bond of Georgia had marketed +2199 bales of his produce, that numerous Louisiana planters, particularly +about Concordia Parish, commonly exceeded that output; that Dr. Duncan of +Mississippi had a crop of 3000 bales; and that L.R. Marshall, who lived at +Natchez and had plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, was +accustomed to make more than four thousand bales.[39] The explanation lies +of course in the possession by such men of several more or less independent +plantations of manageable size. Bond's estate, for example, comprised not +less than six plantations in and about Lee County in southwestern Georgia, +while his home was in the town of Macon. The areas of these, whether +cleared or in forest, ranged from 1305 to 4756 acres.[40] But however large +may have been the outputs of exceptionally great planters, the fact remains +on the other hand that virtually half of the total cotton crop each year +was made by farmers whose slaves were on the average hardly more numerous +than the white members of their own families. The plantation system +nevertheless dominated the regime. + +[Footnote 37: _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 178] + +[Footnote 38: _DeBow's Review_, VIII, 16.] + +[Footnote 39: _Ibid_., XXVI, 581.] + +[Footnote 40: Advertisement of Bond's executors offering the plantations +for sale in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Nov. 8, 1859.] + +The British and French spinners, solicitous for their supply of material, +attempted at various times and places during the ante-bellum period to +enlarge the production of cotton where it was already established and to +introduce it into new regions. The result was a complete failure to lessen +the predominance of the United States as a source. India, Egypt and Brazil +might enlarge their outputs considerably if the rates in the market were +raised to twice or thrice their wonted levels; but so long as the price +held a moderate range the leadership of the American cotton belt could not +be impaired, for its facilities were unequaled. Its long growing season, +hot in summer by day and night, was perfectly congenial to the plant, its +dry autumns permitted the reaping of full harvests, and its frosty winters +decimated the insect pests. Its soil was abundant, its skilled managers +were in full supply, its culture was well systematized, and its labor +adequate for the demand. To these facilities there was added in the +Southern thought of the time, as no less essential for the permanence of +the cotton belt's primacy, the plantation system and the institution of +slavery. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS + + +The tone and method of a plantation were determined partly by the crop and +the lie of the land, partly by the characters of the master and his men, +partly by the local tradition. Some communities operated on the basis of +time-work, or the gang system; others on piece-work or the task system. The +former was earlier begun and far more widely spread, for Sir Thomas Dale +used it in drilling the Jamestown settlers at their work, it was adopted +in turn on the "particular" and private plantations thereabout, and it was +spread by the migration of the sons and grandsons of Virginia throughout +the middle and western South as far as Missouri and Texas. The task system, +on the other hand, was almost wholly confined to the rice coast. The gang +method was adaptable to operations on any scale. If a proprietor were of +the great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and his +sons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step for +step at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe. If there were a dozen +or two working hands, the master, and perhaps the son, instead of laboring +manually would superintend the work of the plow and hoe gangs. If the +slaves numbered several score the master and his family might live in +leisure comparative or complete, while delegating the field supervision to +an overseer, aided perhaps by one or more slave foremen. When an estate +was inherited by minor children or scattered heirs, or where a single +proprietor had several plantations, an overseer would be put into full +charge of an establishment so far as the routine work was concerned; and +when the plantations in one ownership were quite numerous or of a great +scale a steward might be employed to supervise the several overseers. Thus +in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall +on the Potomac had a steward to assist in the administration of his many +scattered properties, and Washington after dividing the Mount Vernon lands +into several units had an overseer upon each and a steward for the whole +during his own absence in the public service. The neighboring estate of +Gunston Hall, belonging to George Mason, was likewise divided into several +units for the sake of more detailed supervision. Even the 103 slaves of +James Mercer, another neighbor, were distributed on four plantations under +the management in 1771 of Thomas Oliver. Of these there were 54 slaves on +Marlborough, 19 on Acquia, 12 on Belviderra and 9 on Accokeek, besides 9 +hired for work elsewhere. Of the 94 not hired out, 64 were field workers. +Nearly all the rest, comprising the house servants, the young children, the +invalids and the superannuated, were lodged on Marlborough, which was of +course the owner's "home place." Each of the four units had its implements +of husbandry, and three of them had tobacco houses; but the barn and +stables were concentrated on Marlborough. This indicates that the four +plantations were parts of a single tract so poor in soil that only pockets +here and there would repay cultivation.[1] This presumption is reinforced +by an advertisement which Mercer published in 1767: "Wanted soon, ... a +farmer who will undertake the management of about 80 slaves, all settled +within six miles of each other, to be employed in making of grain."[2] In +such a case the superintendent would combine the functions of a regular +overseer on the home place with those of a "riding boss" inspecting the +work of the three small outlying squads from time to time. Grain crops +would facilitate this by giving more frequent intermissions than tobacco in +the routine. The Mercer estate might indeed be more correctly described +as a plantation and three subsidiary farms than as a group of four +plantations. The occurrence of tobacco houses in the inventory and of grain +crops alone in the advertisement shows a recent abandonment of the tobacco +staple; and the fact of Mercer's financial embarrassment[3] suggests, what +was common knowledge, that the plantation system was ill suited to grain +production as a central industry. + +[Footnote 1: Robert Carter's plantation affairs are noted in Philip V. +Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, N.J., 1900); the Gunston Hall +estate is described in Kate M. Rowland, _Life of George Mason_ (New York, +1892), I, 98-102; many documents concerning Mt. Vernon are among the George +Washington MSS. in the Library of Congress, and Washington's letters, +1793-179, to his steward are printed in the Long Island Historical Society +_Memoirs_ v. 4; of James Mercer's establishments an inventory taken in 1771 +is reproduced in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 249.] + +[Footnote 2: _Virginia Gazette_ (Williamsburg, Va.), Oct. 22, 1767, +reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 133.] + +[Footnote 3: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 286.] + +The organization and routine of the large plantations on the James River in +the period of an agricultural renaissance are illustrated in the inventory +and work journal of Belmead, in Powhatan County, owned by Philip St. George +Cocke and superintended by S.P. Collier.[4] At the beginning of 1854 the +125 slaves were scheduled as follows: the domestic staff comprised a +butler, two waiters, four housemaids, a nurse, a laundress, a seamstress, a +dairy maid and a gardener; the field corps had eight plowmen, ten male and +twelve female hoe hands, two wagoners and four ox drivers, with two cooks +attached to its service; the stable and pasture staff embraced a carriage +driver, a hostler, a stable boy, a shepherd, a cowherd and a hog herd; in +outdoor crafts there were two carpenters and five stone masons; in indoor +industries a miller, two blacksmiths, two shoemakers, five women spinners +and a woman weaver; and in addition there were forty-five children, one +invalid, a nurse for the sick, and an old man and two old women hired off +the place, and finally Nancy for whom no age, value or classification is +given. The classified workers comprised none younger than sixteen years +except the stable boy of eleven, a waiter of twelve, and perhaps some of +the housemaids and spinners whose ages are not recorded. At the other +extreme there were apparently no slaves on the plantation above sixty years +old except Randal, a stone mason, who in spite of his sixty-six years was +valued at $300, and the following who had no appraisable value: Old Jim the +shepherd, Old Maria the dairy maid, and perhaps two of the spinners. The +highest appraisal, $800, was given to Payton, an ox driver, twenty-eight +years old. The $700 class comprised six plowmen, five field hands, the +three remaining ox drivers, both wagoners, both blacksmiths, the carriage +driver, four stone masons, a carpenter, and Ned the twenty-eight year old +invalid whose illness cannot have been chronic. The other working men +ranged between $250 and $500 except the two shoemakers whose rating was +only $200 each. None of the women were appraised above $400, which was the +rating also of the twelve and thirteen year old boys. The youngest children +were valued at $100 each. These ratings were all quite conservative for +that period. The fact that an ox driver overtopped all others in appraisal +suggests that the artisans were of little skill. The masons, the carpenters +and various other specialists were doubtless impressed as field hands on +occasion. + +[Footnote 4: These records are in the possession of Wm. Bridges of +Richmond, Va. For copies of them, as well as for many other valuable items, +I am indebted to Alfred H. Stone of Dunleith, Miss.] + +The livestock comprised twelve mules, nine work horses, a stallion, a brood +mare, four colts, six pleasure horses and "William's team" of five head; +sixteen work oxen, a beef ox, two bulls, twenty-three cows, and twenty-six +calves; 150 sheep and 115 swine. The implements included two reaping +machines, three horse rakes, two wheat drills, two straw cutters, three +wheat fans, and a corn sheller; one two-horse and four four-horse wagons, +two horse carts and four ox carts; nine one-horse and twelve two-horse +plows, six colters, six cultivators, eight harrows, two earth scoops, and +many scythes, cradles, hoes, pole-axes and miscellaneous farm implements as +well as a loom and six spinning wheels. + +The bottom lands of Belmead appear to have been cultivated in a rotation +of tobacco and corn the first year, wheat the second and clover the third, +while the uplands had longer rotations with more frequent crops of clover +and occasional interspersions of oats. The work journal of 1854 shows +how the gang dovetailed the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of the +several crops and the general upkeep of the plantation. + +On specially moist days from January to the middle of April all hands were +called to the tobacco houses to strip and prize the cured crop; when the +ground was frozen they split and hauled firewood and rails, built fences, +hauled stone to line the ditches or build walls and culverts, hauled +wheat to the mill, tobacco and flour to the boat landing, and guano, land +plaster, barnyard manure and straw to the fields intended for the coming +tobacco crop; and in milder dry weather they spread and plowed in these +fertilizers, prepared the tobacco seed bed by heaping and burning brush +thereon and spading it mellow, and also sowed clover and oats in their +appointed fields. In April also the potato patch and the corn fields were +prepared, and the corn planted; and the tobacco bed was seeded at the +middle of the month. In early May the corn began to be plowed, and the soil +of the tobacco fields drawn by hoes into hills with additional manure in +their centers. From the end of May until as late as need be in July the +occurrence of every rain sent all hands to setting the tobacco seedlings in +their hills at top speed as long as the ground stayed wet enough to give +prospect of success in the process. In the interims the corn cultivation +was continued, hay was harvested in the clover fields and the meadows, and +the tobacco fields first planted began to be scraped with hoe and plow. The +latter half of June was devoted mainly to the harvesting of small grain +with the two reaping machines and the twelve cradles; and for the following +two months the main labor force was divided between threshing the wheat and +plowing, hoeing, worming and suckering the tobacco, while the expert Daniel +was day after day steadily topping the plants. In late August the plows +began breaking the fallow fields for wheat. Early in September the cutting +and housing of tobacco began, and continued at intervals in good weather +until the middle of October. Then the corn was harvested and the sowing of +wheat was the chief concern until the end of November when winter plowing +was begun for the next year's tobacco. Two days in December were devoted to +the housing of ice; and Christmas week, as well as Easter Monday and a +day or two in summer and fall, brought leisure. Throughout the year the +overseer inspected the negroes' houses and yards every Sunday morning and +regularly reported them in good order. + +The greatest of the tobacco planters in this period was Samuel Hairston, +whose many plantations lying in the upper Piedmont on both sides of the +Virginia-North Carolina boundary were reported in 1854 to have slave +populations aggregating some 1600 souls, and whose gardens at his homestead +in Henry County, Virginia, were likened to paradise. Of his methods +of management nothing more is known than that his overseers were +systematically superintended and that his negroes were commonly both fed +and clothed with the products of the plantations themselves.[5] + +[Footnote 5: William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ (London, +1857), pp. 194, 195, quoting a Richmond newspaper of 1854.] + +In the eastern cotton belt a notable establishment of earlier decades was +that of Governor David R. Williams, who began operations with about a +hundred slaves in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, near the beginning +of the nineteenth century and increased their number fivefold before his +death in 1830. While each of his four plantations gave adequate yields of +the staple as well as furnishing their own full supplies of corn and pork, +the central feature and the chief source of prosperity was a great bottom +tract safeguarded from the floods of the Pee Dee by a levee along the river +front. The building of this embankment was but one of many enterprises +which Williams undertook in the time spared from his varied political and +military services. Others were the improvement of manuring methods, the +breeding of mules, the building of public bridges, the erection and +management of a textile factory, the launching of a cottonseed oil mill, of +which his talents might have made a success even in that early time had not +his untimely death intervened. The prosperity of Williams' main business in +the face of his multifarious diversions proves that his plantation +affairs were administered in thorough fashion. His capable wife must have +supplemented the husband and his overseers constantly and powerfully in the +conduct of the routine. The neighboring plantation of a kinsman, Benjamin +F. Williams, was likewise notable in after years for its highly improved +upland fields as well as for the excellent specialized work of its slave +craftsmen.[6] + +[Footnote 6: Harvey T. Cooke, _The Life and Legacy of David Rogerson +Williams_ (New York, 1916), chaps. XIV, XVI, XIX, XX, XXV. This book, +though bearing a New York imprint, is actually published, as I have been at +pains to learn, by Mr. J.W. Norwood of Greenville, South Carolina.] + +In the fertile bottoms on the Congaree River not far above Columbia, lay +the well famed estate of Colonel Wade Hampton, which in 1846 had some +sixteen hundred acres of cotton and half as much of corn. The traveler, +when reaching it after long faring past the slackly kept fields and +premises common in the region, felt equal enthusiasm for the drainage and +the fencing, the avenues, the mansion and the mill, the stud of blooded +horses, the herd of Durham cattle, the flock of long-wooled sheep, and the +pens of Berkshire pigs.[7] Senator McDuffie's plantation in the further +uplands of the Abbeville district was likewise prosperous though on a +somewhat smaller scale. Accretions had enlarged it from three hundred acres +in 1821 to five thousand in 1847, when it had 147 slaves of all ages. Many +of these were devoted to indoor employments, and seventy were field workers +using twenty-four mules. The 750 acres in cotton commonly yielded crops of +a thousand pounds in the seed; the 325 acres in corn gave twenty-five or +thirty bushels; the 300 in oats, fifteen bushels; and ten acres in peas, +potatoes and squashes yielded their proportionate contribution.[8] + +[Footnote 7: Described by R.L. Allen in the _American Agriculturist_, VI, +20, 21.] + +[Footnote 8: _DeBow's Review_, VI, 149.] + +The conduct and earnings of a cotton plantation fairly typical among those +of large scale, may be gathered from the overseer's letters and factor's +accounts relating to Retreat, which lay in Jefferson County, Georgia. This +was one of several establishments founded by Alexander Telfair of Savannah +and inherited by his two daughters, one of whom became the wife of W.B. +Hodgson. For many years Elisha Cain was its overseer. The first glimpse +which the correspondence affords is in the fall of 1829, some years after +Cain had taken charge. He then wrote to Telfair that many of the negroes +young and old had recently been ill with fever, but most of them had +recovered without a physician's aid. He reported further that a slave named +John had run away "for no other cause than that he did not feel disposed to +be governed by the same rules and regulations that the other negroes on +the land are governed by." Shortly afterward John returned and showed +willingness to do his duty. But now Cain encountered a new sort of trouble. +He wrote Telfair in January, 1830: "Your negroes have a disease now among +them that I am fully at a loss to know what I had best to do. Two of them +are down with the venereal disease, Die and Sary. Doctor Jenkins has been +attending Die four weeks, and very little alteration as I can learn. It is +very hard to get the truth; but from what I can learn, Sary got it from +Friday." A note appended to this letter, presumably by Telfair, reads: +"Friday is the house servant sent to Retreat every summer. I have all the +servants examined before they leave Savannah." + +In a letter of February, 1831, Cain described his winter work and his +summer plans. The teams had hauled away nearly all the cotton crop of 205 +bales; the hog killing had yielded thirteen thousand pounds of pork, from +which some of the bacon and lard was to be sent to Telfair's town house; +the cotton seed were abundant and easily handled, but they were thought +good for fertilizing corn only; the stable and cowpen manure was +embarrassingly plentiful in view of the pressure of work for the mules and +oxen; and the encumbrance of logs and brush on the fields intended for +cotton was straining all the labor available to clear them. The sheep, he +continued, had not had many lambs; and many of the pigs had died in spite +of care and feeding; but "the negroes have been healthy, only colds, and +they have for some time now done their work in as much peace and have been +as obedient as I could wish." + +One of the women, however, Darkey by name, shortly became a pestilent +source of trouble. Cain wrote in 1833 that her termagant outbreaks among +her fellows had led him to apply a "moderate correction," whereupon she had +further terrorized her housemates by threats of poison. Cain could then +only unbosom himself to Telfair: "I will give you a full history of my +belief of Darkey, to wit: I believe her disposition as to temper is as bad +as any in the whole world. I believe she is as unfaithful as any I have +ever been acquainted with. In every respect I believe she has been more +injury to you in the place where she is than two such negroes would sell +for.... I have tryed and done all I could to get on with her, hopeing that +she would mend; but I have been disappointed in every instant. I can not +hope for the better any longer." + +The factor's record becomes available from 1834, with the death of Telfair. +The seventy-six pair of shoes entered that year tells roughly the number +of working hands, and the ninety-six pair in 1842 suggests the rate of +increase. Meanwhile the cotton output rose from 166 bales of about three +hundred pounds in 1834 to 407 bales of four hundred pounds in the fine +weather of 1841. In 1836 an autumn report from Cain is available, dated +November 20. Sickness among the negroes for six weeks past had kept +eight or ten of them in their beds; the resort to Petit Gulf seed had +substantially increased the cotton yield; and the fields were now white +with a crop in danger of ruin from storms. "My hands," he said, "have +picked well when they were able, and some of them appear to have a kind +of pride in making a good crop." A gin of sixty saws newly installed had +proved too heavy for the old driving apparatus, but it was now in operation +with shifts of four mules instead of two as formerly. This pressure, in +addition to the hauling of cotton to market had postponed the gathering of +the corn crop. The corn would prove adequate for the plantation's need, and +the fodder was plentiful, but the oats had been ruined by the blast. The +winter cloth supply had been spun and woven, as usual, on the place; but +Cain now advised that the cotton warp for the jeans in future be bought. +"The spinning business on this plantation," said he, "is very ungaining. In +the present arrangement there is eight hands regular imployed in spinning +and weaving, four of which spin warpe, and it could be bought at the +factory at 120 dollars annually. Besides, it takes 400 pounds of cotton +each year, leaveing 60 dollars only to the four hands who spin warp.... +These hands are not old negroes, not all of them. Two of Nanny's daughters, +or three I may say, are all able hands ... and these make neither corn nor +meat. Take out $20 to pay their borde, and it leaves them in debt. I give +them their task to spin, and they say they cannot do more. That is, they +have what is jenerly given as a task." + +In 1840 Cain raised one of the slaves to the rank of driver, whereupon +several of the men ran away in protest, and Cain was impelled to defend his +policy in a letter to Mary Telfair, explaining that the new functionary had +not been appointed "to lay off tasks and use the whip." The increase of the +laborers and the spread of the fields, he said, often required the working +of three squads, the plowmen, the grown hoe hands, and the younger hoe +hands. "These separate classes are frequently separate a considerable +distance from each other, and so soon as I am absent from either they are +subject to quarrel and fight, or to idle time, or beat and abuse the mules; +and when called to account each negro present when the misconduct took +place will deny all about the same. I therefore thought, and yet believe, +that for the good order of the plantation and faithful performance of their +duty, it was proper to have some faithful and trusty hand whose duty it +should be to report to me those in fault, and that is the only dread they +have of John, for they know he is not authorized to beat them. You mention +in your letter that you do not wish your negroes treated with severity. +I have ever thought my fault on the side of lenity; if they were treated +severe as many are, I should not be their overseer on any consideration." +In the same letter Cain mentioned that the pork made on the place the +preceding year had yielded eleven monthly allowances to the negroes at the +rate of 1050 pounds per month, and that the deficit for the twelfth month +had been filled as usual by a shipment from Savannah. + +From 407 bales in 1841 the cotton output fell rapidly, perhaps because of +restriction prompted by the low prices, to 198 bales in 1844. Then it rose +to the maximum of 438 bales in 1848. Soon afterwards Cain's long service +ended, and after two years during which I. Livingston was in charge, I.N. +Bethea was engaged and retained for the rest of the ante-bellum period. The +cotton crops in the 'fifties did not commonly exceed three hundred bales +of a weight increasing to 450 pounds, but they were supplemented to some +extent by the production of wheat and rye for market. The overseer's wages +were sometimes as low as $600, but were generally $1000 a year. In the +expense accounts the annual charges for shoes, blankets and oznaburgs were +no more regular than the items of "cotton money for the people." These +sums, averaging about a hundred dollars a year, were distributed among +the slaves in payment for the little crops of nankeen cotton which they +cultivated in spare time on plots assigned to the several families. Other +expense items mentioned salt, sugar, bacon, molasses, tobacco, wool and +cotton cards, loom sleighs, mules and machinery. Still others dealt with +drugs and doctor's bills. In 1837, for example, Dr. Jenkins was paid $90 +for attendance on Priscilla. In some years the physician's payment was a +round hundred dollars, indicating services on contract. In May, 1851, there +are debits of $16.16 for a constable's reward, a jail fee and a railroad +fare, and of $1.30 for the purchase of a pair of handcuffs, two padlocks +and a trace chain. These constitute the financial record of a runaway's +recapture. + +From 1834 to 1841 the gross earnings on Retreat ranged between eight and +fifteen thousand dollars, of which from seven to twelve thousand each year +was available for division between the owners. The gross then fell rapidly +to $4000 in 1844, of which more than half was consumed in expenses. It then +rose as rapidly to its maximum of $21,300 in 1847, when more than half of +it again was devoted to current expenses and betterments. Thereafter the +range of the gross was between $8000 and $17,000 except for a single +year of crop failure, 1856, when the 109 bales brought $5750. During the +'fifties the current expenses ranged usually between six and ten thousand +dollars, as compared with about one third as much in the 'thirties. This is +explained partly by the resolution of the owners to improve the fields, +now grown old, and to increase the equipment. For the crop of 1856, for +example, purchases were made of forty tons of Peruvian guano at $56 per +ton, and nineteen tons of Mexican guano at $25 a ton. In the following +years lime, salt and dried blood were included in the fertilizer purchases. +At length Hodgson himself gave over his travels and his ethnological +studies to take personal charge on Retreat. He wrote in June, 1859, to his +friend Senator Hammond, of whom we have seen something in the preceding +chapter, that he had seriously engaged in "high farming," and was spreading +huge quantities of fertilizers. He continued: "My portable steam engine +is the _delicia domini_ and of overseer too. It follows the reapers +beautifully in a field of wheat, 130 acres, and then in the rye fields. In +August it will be backed up to the gin house and emancipate from slavery +eighteen mules and four little nigger drivers."[9] + +[Footnote 9: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +The factor's books for this plantation continue their records into the war +time. From the crop of 1861 nothing appears to have been sold but a single +bale of cotton, and the year's deficit was $6,721. The proceeds from the +harvests of 1862 were $500 from nineteen bales of cotton, and some $10,000 +from fodder, hay, peanuts and corn. The still more diversified market +produce of 1863 comprised also wheat, which was impressed by the +Confederate government, syrup, cowpeas, lard, hams and vinegar. The +proceeds were $17,000 and the expenses about $9000, including the +overseer's wages at $1300 and the purchase of 350 bushels of peanuts from +the slaves at $1.50 per bushel. The reckonings in the war period were made +of course in the rapidly depreciating Confederate currency. The stoppage of +the record in 1864 was doubtless a consequence of Sherman's march through +Georgia.[10] + +[Footnote 10: The Retreat records are in the possession of the Georgia +Historical Society, trustee for the Telfair Academy of Art, Savannah, Ga. +The overseer's letters here used are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, +I, 314, 330-336, II, 39, 85.] + +In the western cotton belt the plantations were much like those of the +eastern, except that the more uniform fertility often permitted the fields +to lie in solid expanses instead of being sprawled and broken by waste +lands as in the Piedmont. The scale of operations tended accordingly to be +larger. One of the greatest proprietors in that region, unless his display +were far out of proportion to his wealth, was Joseph A.S. Acklen whose +group of plantations was clustered near the junction of the Red and +Mississippi Rivers. In 1859 he began to build a country house on the style +of a Gothic castle, with a great central hall and fifty rooms exclusive of +baths and closets.[11] The building was expected to cost $150,000, and +the furnishings $125,000 more. Acklen's rules for the conduct of his +plantations will be discussed in another connection;[12] but no description +of his estate or his actual operations is available. + +[Footnote 11: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 2, 1859.] + +[Footnote 12: Below, pp. 262 ff.] + +Olmsted described in detail a plantation in the neighborhood of Natchez. +Its thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of cotton, corn and incidental +crops were tilled by a plow gang of thirty and a hoe gang of thirty-seven, +furnished by a total of 135 slaves on the place. A driver cracked a whip +among the hoe hands, occasionally playing it lightly upon the shoulders +of one or another whom he thought would be stimulated by the suggestion. +"There was a nursery for sucklings at the quarters, and twenty women at +this time left their work four times a day, for half an hour, to nurse the +young ones, and whom the overseer counted as half hands--that is, expected +to do half an ordinary day's work." At half past nine every night the hoe +and plow foremen, serving alternately, sounded curfew on a horn, and half +an hour afterward visited each cabin to see that the households were at +rest and the fires safely banked. The food allowance was a peck of corn and +four pounds of pork weekly. Each family, furthermore, had its garden, fowl +house and pigsty; every Christmas the master distributed among them coffee, +molasses, tobacco, calico and "Sunday tricks" to the value of from a +thousand to fifteen hundred dollars; and every man might rive boards in the +swamp on Sundays to buy more supplies, or hunt and fish in leisure times to +vary his family's fare. Saturday afternoon was also free from the routine. +Occasionally a slave would run away, but he was retaken sooner or later, +sometimes by the aid of dogs. A persistent runaway was disposed of by +sale.[13] + +[Footnote 13: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1860), pp. 46-54.] + +Another estate in the same district, which Olmsted observed more cursorily, +comprised four adjoining plantations, each with its own stables and +quarter, each employing more than a hundred slaves under a separate +overseer, and all directed by a steward whom the traveler described as +cultured, poetic and delightful. An observation that women were at some +of the plows prompted Olmsted to remark that throughout the Southwest the +slaves were worked harder as a rule than in the easterly and northerly +slaveholding states. On the other hand he noted: "In the main the negroes +appeared to be well cared for 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 large loft. The remainder +lived in log huts, small and mean in appearance;[14] but those of their +overseers were little better, and preparations were being made to replace +all of these by neat boarded cottages." + +[Footnote 14: Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp. 72-92.] + +In the sugar district Estwick Evans when on his "pedestrious tour" in 1817 +found the shores of the Mississippi from a hundred miles above New Orleans +to twenty miles below the city in a high state of cultivation. +"The plantations within these limits," he said, "are superb beyond +description.... The dwelling houses of the planters are not inferior to any +in the United States, either with respect to size, architecture, or the +manner in which they are furnished. The gardens and yards contiguous to +them are formed and decorated with much taste. The cotton, sugar and ware +houses are very large, and the buildings for the slaves are well finished. +The latter buildings are in some cases forty or fifty in number, and each +of them will accommodate ten or twelve persons.... The planters here derive +immense profits from the cultivation of their estates.[15] The yearly +income from them is from twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars." + +[Footnote 15: Estwick Evans, _A Pedestrious Tour ... through the Western +States and Territories_ (Concord, N.H., 1817), p. 219, reprinted in R.G. +Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, VIII, 325, 326.] + +Gross proceeds running into the tens of thousands of dollars were indeed +fairly common then and afterward among Louisiana sugar planters, for the +conditions of their industry conduced strongly to a largeness of plantation +scale. Had railroad facilities been abundant a multitude of small +cultivators might have shipped their cane to central mills for manufacture, +but as things were the weight and the perishableness of the cane made +milling within the reach of easy cartage imperative. It was inexpedient +even for two or more adjacent estates to establish a joint mill, for the +imminence of frost in the harvest season would make wrangles over the +questions of precedence in the grinding almost inevitable. As a rule, +therefore, every unit in cane culture was also a unit in sugar manufacture. +Exceptions were confined to the scattering instances where some small farm +lay alongside a plantation which had a mill of excess capacity available +for custom grinding on slack days. + +The type of plantation organization in the sugar bowl was much like that +which has been previously described for Jamaica. Mules were used as draught +animals instead of oxen, however, on account of their greater strength +and speed, and all the seeding and most of the cultivation was done with +deep-running plows. Steam was used increasingly as years passed for driving +the mills, railways were laid on some of the greater estates for hauling +the cane, more suitable varieties of cane were introduced, guano was +imported soon after its discovery to make the rich fields yet more fertile, +and each new invention of improved mill apparatus was readily adopted for +the sake of reducing expenses. In consequence the acreage cultivated per +hand came to be several times greater than that which had prevailed in +Jamaica's heyday. But the brevity of the growing season kept the saccharine +content of the canes below that in the tropics, and together with the +mounting price of labor made prosperity depend in some degree upon +protective tariffs. The dearth of land available kept the sugar output +well below the domestic demand, though the molasses market was sometimes +glutted. + +A typical prosperous estate of which a description and a diary are +extant[16] was that owned by Valcour Aime, lying on the right bank of the +Mississippi about sixty miles above New Orleans. Of the 15,000 acres which +it comprised in 1852, 800 were in cane, 300 in corn, 150 in crops belonging +to the slaves, and most of the rest in swampy forest from which two or +three thousand cords of wood were cut each year as fuel for the sugar mill +and the boiling house. The slaves that year numbered 215 of all ages, half +of them field hands,[17] and the mules 64. The negroes were well housed, +clothed and fed; the hospital and the nursery were capacious, and the +stables likewise. The mill was driven by an eighty-horse-power steam +engine, and the vacuum pans and the centrifugals were of the latest types. +The fields were elaborately ditched, well manured, and excellently tended. +The land was valued at $360,000, the buildings at $100,000, the machinery +at $60,000, the slaves at $170,000, and the livestock at $11,000; +total, $701,000. The crop of 1852, comprising 1,300,000 pounds of white +centrifugal sugar at 6 cents and 60,000 gallons of syrup at 36 cents, +yielded a gross return of almost $100,000. The expenses included 4,629 +barrels of coal from up the river, in addition to the outlay for wages and +miscellaneous supplies. + +[Footnote 16: _Harper's Magasine_, VII, 758, 759 (November, 1853); +Valcour Aime, _Plantation Diary_ (New Orleans, 1878), partly reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, I, 214, 230.] + +[Footnote 17: According to the MS. returns of the U.S. census of 1850 +Aime's slaves at that time numbered 231, of whom 58 were below fifteen +years old, 164 were between 15 and 65, and 9 (one of them blind, another +insane) were from 66 to 80 years old. Evidently there was a considerable +number of slaves of working age not classed by him as field hands.] + +In the routine of work, each January was devoted mainly to planting fresh +canes in the fields from which the stubble canes or second rattoons had +recently been harvested. February and March gave an interval for cutting +cordwood, cleaning ditches, and such other incidentals as the building and +repair of the plantation's railroad. Warm weather then brought the corn +planting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of the +crops gave time for incidentals again. Corn and hay were now harvested, the +roads and premises put in order, the cordwood hauled from the swamp, the +coal unladen from the barges, and all things made ready for the rush of +the grinding season which began in late October. In the first phase of +harvesting the main gang cut and stripped the canes, the carters and the +railroad crew hauled them to the mill, and double shifts there kept up the +grinding and boiling by day and by night. As long as the weather continued +temperate the mill set the pace for the cutters. But when frost grew +imminent every hand who could wield a knife was sent to the fields to cut +the still standing stalks and secure them against freezing. For the first +few days of this phase, the stalks as fast as cut were laid, in their +leaves, in great mats with the tops turned south to prevent the entrance +of north winds, with the leaves of each layer covering the butts of that +below, and with a blanket of earth over the last butts in the mat. Here +these canes usually stayed until January when they were stripped and strewn +in the furrows of the newly plowed "stubble" field as the seed of a new +crop. After enough seed cane were "mat-layed," the rest of the cut was +merely laid lengthwise in the adjacent furrows to await cartage to the +mill.[18] In the last phase of the harvest, which followed this work of the +greatest emergency, these "windrowed" canes were stripped and hauled, with +the mill setting the pace again, until the grinding was ended, generally in +December. + +[Footnote 18: These processes of matlaying and windrowing are described in +L. Bouchereau, _Statement of the Sugar and Rice Crops made in Louisiana in +1870-71_ (New Orleans, 1871), p. xii.] + +Another typical sugar estate was that of Dr. John P.R. Stone, comprising +the two neighboring though not adjacent plantations called Evergreen and +Residence, on the right bank of the Mississippi in Iberville Parish. The +proprietor's diary is much like Aime's as regards the major crop routine +but is fuller in its mention of minor operations. These included the +mending and heightening of the levee in spring, the cutting of staves, +the shaving of hoops and the making of hogsheads in summer, and, in their +fitting interims, the making of bricks, the sawing of lumber, enlarging +old buildings, erecting new ones, whitewashing, ditching, pulling fodder, +cutting hay, and planting and harvesting corn, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, +peas and turnips. There is occasional remark upon the health of the slaves, +usually in the way of rejoicing at its excellence. Apparently no outside +help was employed except for an Irish carpenter during the construction of +a sugar house on Evergreen in 1850.[19] The slaves on Evergreen in 1850 +numbered 44 between the ages of 15 and 60 years and 26 children; on +Residence, 25 between 15 and 65 years and 6 children.[20] The joint crop +in 1850, ground in the Residence mill, amounted to 312 hogsheads of brown +sugar and sold for 4-3/4 to 5 cents a pound; that of the phenomenal year +1853, when the Evergreen mill was also in commission, reached 520 hogsheads +on that plantation and 179 on Residence, but brought only 3 cents a pound. +These prices were much lower than those of white sugar at the time; but as +Valcour Aime found occasion to remark, the refining reduced the weight of +the product nearly as much as it heightened the price, so that the chief +advantage of the centrifugals lay in the speed of their process. + +[Footnote 19: Diary of Dr. J.P.R. Stone. MS. in the possession of Mr. John +Stone Ware, White Castle, La. For the privilege of using the diary I +am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody of the University of Michigan, now +Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] + +[Footnote 20: MS. returns in the U.S. Census Bureau, data procured through +the courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Mr.(now +Lieutenant) V. Alton Moody.] + +All of the characteristic work in the sugar plantation routine called +mainly for able-bodied laborers. Children were less used than in tobacco +and cotton production, and the men and women, like the mules, tended to be +of sturdier physique. This was the result partly of selection, partly of +the vigorous exertion required. + +Among the fourteen hundred and odd sugar plantations of this period, the +average one had almost a hundred slaves of all ages, and produced average +crops of nearly three hundred hogsheads or a hundred and fifty tons. Most +of the Anglo-Americans among the planters lived about Baton Rouge and on +the Red River, where they or their fathers had settled with an initial +purpose of growing cotton. Their fellows who acquired estates in the Creole +parishes were perhaps as often as otherwise men who had been merchants and +not planters in earlier life. One of these had removed from New York in the +eighteenth century and had thriven in miscellaneous trade at Pensacola and +on the Mississippi. In 1821 he bought for $140,000 a plantation and its +complement of slaves on Bayou Lafourche, and he afterward acquired a second +one in Plaquemines Parish. In the conduct of his plantation business he +shrewdly bought blankets by the bale in Philadelphia, and he enlarged his +gang by commissioning agents to buy negroes in Virginia and Maryland. The +nature of the instructions he gave may be gathered from the results, for +there duly arrived in several parcels between 1828 and 1832, fully covered +by marine insurance for the coastwise voyage, fifty slaves, male and +female, virtually all of whom ranged between the ages of ten and +twenty-five years.[21] This planter prospered, and his children after him; +and while he may have had a rugged nature, his descendants to-day are among +the gentlest of Louisianians. Another was Duncan F. Kenner, who was long a +slave trader with headquarters at New Orleans before he became a planter in +Ascension Parish on a rapidly increasing scale. His crop advanced from 580 +hogsheads in 1849 to 1,370 hogsheads in 1853 and 2,002 hogsheads in 1858 +when he was operating two mills, one equipped with vacuum pans and the +other with Rillieux apparatus.[22] A third example was John Burnside, who +emigrated from the North of Ireland in his youth rose rapidly from grocery +clerk in upland Virginia to millionaire merchant in New Orleans, and then +in the fifties turned his talents to sugar growing. He bought the three +contiguous plantations of Col. J.S. Preston lying opposite Donaldsonville, +and soon added a fourth one to the group. In 1858 his aggregate crop was +3,701 hogsheads; and in 1861 his fields were described by William H. +Russell as exhibiting six thousand acres of cane in an unbroken tract. By +employing squads of immigrant Irishmen for ditching and other severe +work he kept his literally precious negroes, well housed and fed, in +fit condition for effective routine under his well selected staff of +overseers.[23] Even after the war Burnside kept on acquiring plantations, +and with free negro labor kept on making large sugar crops. At the end of +his long life, spent frugally as a bachelor and somewhat of a recluse, +he was doubtless by far the richest man in all the South. The number of +planters who had been merchants and the frequency of partnerships and +corporations operating sugar estates, as well as the magnitude of scale +characteristic of the industry, suggest that methods of a strictly business +kind were more common in sugar production than in that of cotton or +tobacco. Domesticity and paternalism were nevertheless by no means alien to +the sugar regime. + +[Footnote 21: MSS. in private possession, data from which were made +available through the kindness of Mr. V.A. Moody.] + +[Footnote 22: The yearly product of each sugar plantation in Louisiana +between 1849 and 1858 is reported in P.A. Champonier's _Annual Statement_ +of the crop. (New Orleans, 1850-1859).] + +[Footnote 23: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, +1863), pp. 268-279] + +Virtually all of the tobacco, short staple cotton and sugar plantations +were conducted on the gang system. The task system, on the other hand, was +instituted on the rice coast, where the drainage ditches checkering +the fields into half or quarter acre plots offered convenient units of +performance in the successive processes. The chief advantage of the task +system lay in the ease with which it permitted a planter or an overseer +to delegate much of his routine function to a driver. This official each +morning would assign to each field hand his or her individual plot, and +spend the rest of the day in seeing to the performance of the work. At +evening or next day the master could inspect the results and thereby keep +a check upon both the driver and the squad. Each slave when his day's task +was completed had at his own disposal such time as might remain. The driver +commonly gave every full hand an equal area to be worked in the same way, +and discriminated among them only in so far as varying conditions from plot +to plot would permit the assignment of the stronger and swifter workmen to +tracts where the work required was greater, and the others to plots where +the labor was less. Fractional hands were given fractional tasks, or were +combined into full hands for full tasks. Thus a woman rated at three +quarters might be helped by her own one quarter child, or two half-hand +youths might work a full plot jointly. The system gave some stimulus to +speed of work, at least from time to time, by its promise of afternoon +leisure in reward. But for this prospect to be effective the tasks had to +be so limited that every laborer might have the hope of an hour or two's +release as the fruit of diligence. The performance of every hand tended +accordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of the +weakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, was +almost equally strong in the gang system also. + +The task acre was commonly not a square of 210 feet, but a rectangle 300 +feet long and 150 feet broad, divided into square halves and rectangular +quarters, and further divisible into "compasses" five feet wide and 150 +feet long, making one sixtieth of an acre. The standard tasks for full +hands in rice culture were scheduled in 1843 as follows: plowing with two +oxen, with the animals changed at noon, one acre; breaking stiff land with +the hoe and turning the stubble under, ten compasses; breaking such land +with the stubble burnt off, or breaking lighter land, a quarter acre or +slightly more; mashing the clods to level the field, from a quarter to half +an acre; trenching the drills, if on well prepared land, three quarters of +an acre; sowing rice, from three to four half-acres; covering the drills, +three quarters; the first hoeing, half an acre, or slightly less if the +ground were lumpy and the drills hard to clear; second hoeing, half an +acre, or slightly less or more according to the density of the grass; third +hoeing with hand picking of the grass from the drills, twenty compasses; +fourth hoeing, half an acre; reaping with the sickle, three quarters, +or much less if the ground were new and cumbered or if the stalks were +tangled; and threshing with the flail, six hundred sheaves for the men, +five hundred for the women.[24] Much of the incidental work was also done +by tasks, such as ditching, cutting cordwood, squaring timber, splitting +rails, drawing staves and hoop poles, and making barrels. The scale of the +crop was commonly five acres of rice to each full hand, together with about +half as much in provision crops for home consumption. + +[Footnote 24: Edmund Ruffin, _Agricultural Survey of South Carolina_ +(Columbia, 1843), p. 118.] + +Under the task system, Olmsted wrote: "most of the slaves work rapidly and +well...Custom has settled the extent of the task, and it is difficult to +increase it. The driver who marks it out has to remain on the ground until +it is finished, and has no interest in over-measuring it; and if it should +be systematically increased very much there is the danger of a general +stampede to the 'swamp'--a danger a slave can always hold before his +master's cupidity...It is the driver's duty to make the tasked hands do +their work well.[25] If in their haste to finish it they neglect to do it +properly he 'sets them back,' so that carelessness will hinder more than +it hastens the completion of their tasks." But Olmsted's view was for once +rose colored. A planter who lived in the regime wrote: "The whole task +system ... is one that I most unreservedly disapprove of, because it +promotes idleness, and that is the parent of mischief."[26] Again the truth +lies in the middle ground. The virtue or vice of the system, as with the +gang alternative, depended upon its use by a diligent master or its abuse +by an excessive delegation of responsibility. + +[Footnote 25: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 435, 436.] + +[Footnote 26: J.A. Turner, ed., _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 34.] + +That the tide when taken at the flood on the rice coast as elsewhere +would lead to fortune is shown by the career of the greatest of all rice +planters, Nathaniel Heyward. At the time of his birth, in 1766, his father +was a planter on an inland swamp near Port Royal. Nathaniel himself after +establishing a small plantation in his early manhood married Harriett +Manigault, an heiress with some fifty thousand dollars. With this, when +both lands and slaves were cheap, Heyward bought a tide-land tract and +erected four plantations thereon, and soon had enough accrued earnings to +buy the several inland plantations of the Gibbes brothers, who had fallen +into debt from luxurious living. With the proceeds of his large crops at +high prices during the great wars in Europe, he bought more slaves year +after year, preferably fresh Africans as long as that cheap supply remained +available, and he bought more land when occasion offered. Joseph Manigault +wrote of him in 1806: "Mr. Heyward has lately made another purchase of +land, consisting of 300 acres of tide swamp, joining one of his Combahee +plantations and belonging to the estate of Mrs. Bell. I believe he has made +a good bargain. It is uncleared and will cost him not quite L20 per acre. +I have very little doubt that he will be in a few years, if he lives, the +richest, as he is the best planter in the state. The Cooper River lands +give him many a long ride." Heyward was venturesome in large things, +conservative in small. He long continued to have his crops threshed by +hand, saying that if it were done by machines his darkies would have no +winter work; but when eventually he instituted mechanical threshers, no +one could discern an increase of leisure. In the matter of pounding +mills likewise, he clung for many years to those driven by the tides and +operating slowly and crudely; but at length he built two new ones driven by +steam and so novel and complete in their apparatus as to be the marvels of +the countryside. He necessarily depended much upon overseers; but his own +frequent visits of inspection and the assistance rendered by his sons kept +the scattered establishments in an efficient routine. The natural increase +of his slaves was reckoned by him to have ranged generally between one and +five per cent. annually, though in one year it rose to seven per cent. At +his death in 1851 he owned fourteen rice plantations with fields ranging +from seventy to six hundred acres in each, and comprising in all 4,390 +acres in cultivation. He had also a cotton plantation, much pine land and a +sawmill, nine residences in Charleston, appraised with their furniture at +$180,000; securities and cash to the amount of $200,000; $20,000 worth of +horses, mules and cattle; $15,000 worth of plate; and $3000 worth of old +wine. His slaves, numbering 2,087 and appraised at an average of $550, made +up the greater part of his two million dollar estate. His heirs continued +his policy. In 1855, for example, they bought a Savannah River plantation +called Fife, containing 500 acres of prime rice land at $150 per +acre, together with its equipment and 120 slaves, at a gross price of +$135,600.[27] + +[Footnote 27: MSS. in the possession of Mrs. Hawkins K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, +S.C., including a "Memoir of Nathaniel Heyward," written in 1895 by Gabriel +E. Manigault.] + +The history of the estate of James Heyward, Nathaniel's brother, was in +striking contrast with this. When on a tour in Ireland he met and married +an actress, who at his death in 1796 inherited his plantation and 214 +slaves. Two suitors for the widow's hand promptly appeared in Alexander +Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and Charles Baring, his cousin. Mrs. +Heyward married the latter, who increased the estate to seven or eight +hundred acres in rice, yielding crops worth from twelve to thirty thousand +dollars. But instead of superintending its work in person Baring bought +a large tract in the North Carolina mountains, built a house there, and +carried thither some fifty slaves for his service. After squandering the +income for nearly fifty years, he sold off part of the slaves and mortgaged +the land; and when the plantation was finally surrendered in settlement of +Baring's debts, it fell into Nathaniel Heyward's possession.[28] + +[Footnote 28: Notes by Louis Manigault of a conversation with Nathaniel +Heyward in 1846. M.S. in the collection above mentioned.] + +Another case of absentee neglect, made notorious through Fanny Kemble's +_Journal_, was the group of rice and sea-island cotton plantations founded +by Senator Pierce Butler on and about Butler's Island near the mouth of the +Altamaha River. When his two grandsons inherited the estate, they used it +as a source of revenue but not as a home. One of these was Pierce Butler +the younger, who lived in Philadelphia. When Fanny Kemble, with fame +preceding her, came to America in 1832, he became infatuated, followed +her troupe from city to city, and married her in 1834. The marriage was +a mistake. The slaveholder's wife left the stage for the time being, but +retained a militant English abolitionism. When in December, 1838, she and +her husband were about to go South for a winter on the plantations, she +registered her horror of slavery in advance, and resolved to keep a journal +of her experiences and observations. The resulting record is gloomy enough. +The swarms of negroes were stupid and slovenly, the cabins and hospitals +filthy, the women overdriven, the overseer callous, the master indifferent, +and the new mistress herself, repudiating the title, was more irritable and +meddlesome than helpful.[29] The short sojourn was long enough. A few years +afterward the ill-mated pair were divorced and Fanny Kemble resumed her +own name and career. Butler did not mend his ways. In 1859 his half of the +slaves, 429 in number, were sold at auction in Savannah to pay his debts. + +[Footnote 29: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal of a Residence on a Georgia +Plantation in 1838-1839_(London, 1863).] + +A pleasanter picture is afforded by the largest single unit in rice culture +of which an account is available. This was the plantation of William Aiken, +at one time governor of South Carolina, occupying Jehossee Island near the +mouth of the Edisto River. It was described in 1850 by Solon Robinson, an +Iowa farmer then on tour as correspondent for the _American Agriculturist_. +The two or three hundred acres of firm land above tide comprised the +homestead, the negro quarter, the stables, the stock yard, the threshing +mill and part of the provision fields. Of the land which could be flooded +with the tide, about fifteen hundred acres were diked and drained. About +two-thirds of this appears to have been cropped in rice each year, and the +rest in corn, oats and sweet potatoes. The steam-driven threshing apparatus +was described as highly efficient. The sheaves were brought on the heads of +the negroes from the great smooth stack yard, and opened in a shed where +the scattered grain might be saved. A mechanical carrier led thence to the +threshing machines on the second floor, whence the grain descended through +a winnowing fan. The pounding mill, driven by the tide, was a half mile +distant at the wharf, whence a schooner belonging to the plantation carried +the hulled and polished rice in thirty-ton cargoes to Charleston. The +average product per acre was about forty-five bushels in the husk, each +bushel yielding some thirty pounds of cleaned rice, worth about three cents +a pound. The provision fields commonly fed the force of slaves and mules; +and the slave families had their own gardens and poultry to supplement +their fare. The rice crops generally yielded some twenty-five +thousand dollars in gross proceeds, while the expenses, including the +two-thousand-dollar salary of the overseer, commonly amounted to some ten +thousand dollars. During the summer absence of the master, the overseer +was the only white man on the place. The engineers, smiths, carpenters +and sailors were all black. "The number of negroes upon the place," wrote +Robinson, "is just about 700, occupying 84 double frame houses, each +containing two tenements of three rooms to a family besides the +cockloft.... There are two common hospitals and a 'lying-in hospital,' and +a very neat, commodious church, which is well filled every Sabbath.... Now +the owner of all this property lives in a very humble cottage, embowered in +dense shrubbery and making no show.... He and his family are as plain and +unostentatious in their manners as the house they live in.... Nearly all +the land has been reclaimed and the buildings, except the house, erected +new within the twenty years that Governor Aiken has owned the island. I +fully believe that he is more concerned to make his people comfortable +and happy than he is to make money."[30] When the present writer visited +Jehossee in the harvest season sixty years after Robinson, the fields were +dotted with reapers, wage earners now instead of slaves, but still using +sickles on half-acre tasks; and the stack yard was aswarm with sable men +and women carrying sheaves on their heads and chattering as of old in a +dialect which a stranger can hardly understand. The ante-bellum hospital +and many of the cabins in their far-thrown quadruple row were still +standing. The site of the residence, however, was marked only by desolate +chimneys, a live-oak grove and a detached billiard room, once elegant but +now ruinous, the one indulgence which this planter permitted himself. + +[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 187, 188, reprinted in _DeBow's +Review_, IX, 201-203.] + +The ubiquitous Olmsted chose for description two rice plantations operated +as one, which he inspected in company with the owner, whom he calls "Mr. +X." Frame cabins at intervals of three hundred feet constituted the +quarters; the exteriors were whitewashed, the interiors lathed and +plastered, and each family had three rooms and a loft, as well as a chicken +yard and pigsty not far away. "Inside, the cabins appeared dirty and +disordered, which was rather a pleasant indication that their home life +was not much interfered with, though I found certain police regulations +enforced." Olmsted was in a mellow mood that day. At the nursery "a number +of girls eight or ten years old were occupied in holding and tending the +youngest infants. Those a little older--the crawlers--were in the pen, and +those big enough to toddle were playing on the steps or before the house. +Some of these, with two or three bigger ones, were singing and dancing +about a fire they had made on the ground.... The nurse was a kind-looking +old negro woman.... I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not a +baby of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three other +plantation nurseries which I have visited." The chief slave functionary was +a "gentlemanly-mannered mulatto who ... carried by a strap at his waist a +very large bunch of keys and had charge of all the stores of provisions, +tools and materials on the plantations, as well as of their produce before +it was shipped to market. He weighed and measured out all the rations of +the slaves and the cattle.... In all these departments his authority was +superior to that of the overseer; ... and Mr. X. said he would trust him +with much more than he would any overseer he had ever known." The master +explained that this man and the butler, his brother, having been reared +with the white children, had received special training to promote their +sense of dignity and responsibility. The brothers, Olmsted further +observed, rode their own horses the following Sunday to attend the same +church as their master, and one of them slipped a coin into the hand of the +boy who had been holding his mount. The field hands worked by tasks under +their drivers. "I saw one or two leaving the field soon after one o'clock, +several about two; and between three and four I met a dozen men and women +coming home to their cabins, having finished their day's work." As to +punishment, Olmsted asked how often it was necessary. The master replied: +"'Sometimes perhaps not once for two or three weeks; then it will seem as +if the devil had gotten into them all and there is a good deal of it.'" As +to matings: "While watching the negroes in the field, Mr. X. addressed a +girl who was vigorously plying a hoe near us: 'Is that Lucy?--Ah, Lucy, +what's this I hear about you?' The girl simpered, but did not answer or +discontinue her work. 'What is this I hear about you and Sam, eh?' The girl +grinned and still hoeing away with all her might whispered 'Yes, sir.' 'Sam +came to see me this morning,' 'If master pleases.' 'Very well; you may come +up to the house Saturday night, and your mistress will have something for +you.'"[31] We may hope that the pair whose prospective marriage was thus +endorsed with the promise of a bridal gift lived happily ever after. + +[Footnote 31: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_,418-448.] + +The most detailed record of rice operations available is that made by +Charles Manigault from the time of his purchase in 1833 of "Gowrie," on the +Savannah River, twelve miles above the city of Savannah.[32] The plantation +then had 220 acres in rice fields, 80 acres unreclaimed, a good pounding +mill, and 50 slaves. The price of $40,000 was analyzed by Manigault as +comprising $7500 for the mill, $70 per acre for the cleared, and $37 for +the uncleared, and an average of $300 for the slaves. His maintenance +expense per hand he itemized at a weekly peck of corn, $13 a year; summer +and winter clothes, $7; shoes, $1; meat at times, salt, molasses and +medical attention, not estimated. In reward for good service, however, +Manigault usually issued broken rice worth $2.50 per bushel, instead of +corn worth $1. Including the overseer's wages the current expense for the +plantation for the first six years averaged about $2000 annually. Meanwhile +the output increased from 200 barrels of rice in 1833 to 578 in 1838. The +crop in the latter year was particularly notable, both in its yield of +three barrels per acre, or 161-1/2 barrels per working hand, and its price +of four cents per pound or $24 per barrel. The net proceeds of the one crop +covered the purchase in 1839 of two families of slaves, comprising sixteen +persons, mostly in or approaching their prime, at a price of $640 each. + +[Footnote 32: The Manigault MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. H.K. +Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation +and Frontier_, I, 134-139 _et passim_.] + +Manigault and his family were generally absent every summer and sometimes +in winter, at Charleston or in Europe, and once as far away as China. His +methods of administration may be gathered from his letters, contracts and +memoranda. In January, 1848, he wrote from Naples to I.F. Cooper whom his +factor had employed at $250 a year as a new overseer on Gowrie: "My negroes +have the reputation of being orderly and well disposed; but like all +negroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to. I expect +the kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been a +principal thing with me. I never suffer them to work off the place, or +exchange work with any plantation....It has always been my plan to give out +allowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, because +this has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if they +received allowance on Saturday for instance some of them would be off with +it that same evening to the shops to trade, and perhaps would not get back +until Monday morning. I allow no strange negro to take a wife on my place, +and none of mine to keep a boat."[33] + +[Footnote 33: MS. copy in Manigault letter book.] + +A few years after this, Manigault bought an adjoining plantation, "East +Hermitage," and consolidated it with Gowrie, thereby increasing his rice +fields to 500 acres and his slaves to about 90 of all ages. His draught +animals appear to have comprised merely five or six mules. A new overseer, +employed in 1853 at wages of $500 together with corn and rice for his table +and the services of a cook and a waiting boy, was bound by a contract +stipulating the duties described in the letter to Cooper above quoted, +along with a few additional items. He was, for example, to procure a book +of medical instructions and a supply of the few requisite "plantation +medicines" to be issued to the nurses with directions as needed. In case of +serious injury to a slave, however, the sufferer was to be laid upon a door +and sent by the plantation boat to Dr. Bullock's hospital in Savannah. +Except when the work was very pressing the slaves were to be sent home for +the rest of the day upon the occurrence of heavy rains in the afternoon, +for Manigault had found by experience "that always after a complete +wetting, particularly in cold rainy weather in winter or spring, one +or more of them are made sick and lie up, and at times serious illness +ensues."[34] + +[Footnote 34: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 122-126.] + +In 1852 and again in 1854 storms and freshets heavily injured Manigault's +crops, and cholera decimated his slaves. In 1855 the fields were in +bad condition because of volunteer rice, and the overseer was dying of +consumption. The slaves, however, were in excellent health, and the crop, +while small, brought high prices because of the Crimean war. In 1856 a new +overseer named Venters handled the flooding inexpertly and made but half +a crop, yielding $12,660 in gross proceeds. For the next year Venters was +retained, on the maxim "never change an overseer if you can help it," +and nineteen slaves were bought for $11,850 to fill the gaps made by the +cholera. Furthermore a tract of pine forest was bought to afford summer +quarters for the negro children, who did not thrive on the malarial +plantation, and to provide a place of isolation for cholera cases. In 1857 +Venters made a somewhat better crop, but as Manigault learned and wrote at +the end of the year, "elated by a strong and very false religious feeling, +he began to injure the plantation a vast deal, placing himself on a par +with the negroes by even joining in with them at their prayer meetings, +breaking down long established discipline which in every case is so +difficult to preserve, favoring and siding in any difficulty with the +people against the drivers, besides causing numerous grievances." The +successor of the eccentric Venters in his turn proved grossly neglectful; +and it was not until the spring of 1859 that a reliable overseer was found +in William Capers, at a salary of $1000. Even then the year's experience +was such that at its end Manigault recorded the sage conclusion: "The truth +is, on a plantation, to attend to things properly it requires both master +and overseer." + +The affairs of another estate in the Savannah neighborhood, "Sabine +Fields," belonging to the Alexander Telfair estate, may be gleaned from +its income and expense accounts. The purchases of shoes indicate a +working force of about thirty hands. The purchases of woolen clothing and +waterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather; +but the scale of the doctor's bills suggest either epidemics or serious +occasional illnesses. The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeen +and eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the record +they included both rice and sea-island cotton. The gross receipts were +highest at $1,695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied from +a surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2,035 in the two years 1853 and +1854 for which the accounting was consolidated. Under E.S. Mell, who was +overseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until +1849, losses thereafter. The following items of expense in this latter +period, along with high doctor's bills, may explain the reverse: for taking +a negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of a +boy prosecuted for larceny, $9.26; jail fees of Cesar, $2.69; for the +apprehension of a runaway, $5; paid Jones for trying to capture a negro, +$5. In February, 1854, Mell was paid off, and a voucher made record of a +newspaper advertisement for another overseer. What happened to the new +incumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855: "Paid ... amount +Jones' bill for capturing negroes, $25. Expenses of Overseer Page's burial +as follows, Ferguson's bill, $25; Coroner's, $14; Dr. Kollock's, $5; total +$69." A further item in 1856 of twenty-five dollars paid for the arrest of +Bing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing of +the overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean that +disorders continued under Page's successor.[35] + +[Footnote 35: Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the Telfair +MSS. in the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.] + +Other lowland plantations on a scale similar to that of Sabine Fields +showed much better earnings. One of these, in Liberty County, Georgia, +belonged to the heirs of Dr. Adam Alexander of Savannah. It was devoted to +sea-island cotton in the 'thirties, but rice was added in the next decade. +While the output fluctuated, of course, the earnings always exceeded the +expenses and sometimes yielded as much as a hundred dollars per hand for +distribution among the owners.[36] + +[Footnote 36: The accounts for selected years are printed in _Plantation +and Frontier_, I, 150-165.] + +The system of rice production was such that plantations with less than +a hundred acres available for the staple could hardly survive in the +competition. If one of these adjoined another estate it was likely to be +merged therewith; but if it lay in isolation the course of years would +probably bring its abandonment. The absence of the proprietors every summer +in avoidance of malaria, and the consequent expense of overseer's wages, +hampered operations on a small scale, as did also the maintenance of +special functionaries among the slaves, such as drivers, boatswains, trunk +minders, bird minders, millers and coopers. In 1860 Louis Manigault listed +the forty-one rice plantations on the Savannah River and scheduled their +acreage in the crop. Only one of them had as little as one hundred acres +in rice, and it seems to have been an appendage of a larger one across the +river. On the other hand, two of them had crops of eleven hundred, and two +more of twelve hundred acres each. The average was about 425 acres per +plantation, expected to yield about 1200 pounds of rice per acre each +year.[37] A census tabulation in 1850, ignoring any smaller units, numbered +the plantations which produced annually upwards of 20,000 pounds of rice at +446 in South Carolina, 80 in Georgia, and 25 in North Carolina.[38] + +[Footnote 37: MS. in the possession of Mrs. H.K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C.] + +[Footnote 38: _Compendium of the Seventh U.S. Census_, p. 178.] + +Indigo and sea-island cotton fields had no ditches dividing them +permanently into task units; but the fact that each of these in its day was +often combined with rice on the same plantations, and that the separate +estates devoted to them respectively lay in the region dominated by the +rice regime, led to the prevalence of the task system in their culture +also. The soils used for these crops were so sandy and light, however, that +the tasks, staked off each day by the drivers, ranged larger than those in +rice. In the cotton fields they were about half an acre per hand, whether +for listing, bedding or cultivation. In the collecting and spreading of +swamp mud and other manures for the cotton the work was probably done +mostly by gangs rather than by task, since the units were hard to measure. +In cotton picking, likewise, the conditions of the crop were so variable +and the need of haste so great that time work, perhaps with special rewards +for unusually heavy pickings, was the common resort. Thus the lowland +cotton regime alternated the task and gang systems according to the work +at hand; and even the rice planters of course abandoned all thoughts of +stinted performance when emergency pressed, as in the mending of breaks in +the dikes, or when joint exertion was required, as in log rolling, or when +threshing and pounding with machinery to set the pace. + +That the task system was extended sporadically into the South Carolina +Piedmont, is indicated by a letter of a certain Thomas Parker of the +Abbeville district, in 1831,[39] which not only described his methods but +embodied an essential plantation precept. He customarily tasked his hoe +hands, he said, at rates determined by careful observation as just both to +himself and the workers. These varied according to conditions, but ranged +usually about three quarters of an acre. He continued: "I plant six acres +of cotton to the hand, which is about the usual quantity planted in my +neighborhood. I do not make as large crops as some of my neighbors. I am +content with three to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with my +provisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of my +neighbors made five bales to the hand. In such cases I have vanity enough, +however, to attribute this to better lands. I have no overseer, nor indeed +is there one in the neighborhood. We personally attend to our planting, +believing that as good a manure as any, if not the best we can apply to our +fields, is the print of the master's footstep." + +[Footnote 39: _Southern Agriculturist_, March. 1831, reprinted in the +_American Farmer_, XIII, 105, 106.] + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +PLANTATION MANAGEMENT + + +Typical planters though facile in conversation seldom resorted to their +pens. Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form of +instructions to their stewards and overseers. These counsels of perfection, +drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much in +detail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions. Their initial topic +was usually the care of the slaves. Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in +1759 for the guidance of his steward: "The care of negroes is the first +thing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wants +that they may be provided with all necessarys. The breeding wenches more +particularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to, +and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that will +be injurious to them, ... and the children to be well looked after, ... and +that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care." +P.C. Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856: "The proprietor, in the first +place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first +object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the +negroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may +proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty, +severity or want of care towards the negroes. For the well being, however, +of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and +discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed, +and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the +one hand or harshness on the other." Charles Manigault likewise required of +his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindness +and consideration in sickness and health." On J.W. Fowler's plantation in +the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter +such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed +in 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline and +obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency +of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being +indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable +dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about +the Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby +establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my +Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all +overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1] + +[Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are +printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 109-129.] + +Joseph A.S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of +applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2] +His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the +most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read in +part: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the +maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its +time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for +everything and everything done according to rule. In this way labor becomes +easy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he +himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage +negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of +his temper." + +[Footnote 2: They were also printed in _DeBow's Review_, XXII, 617-620, +XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).] + +[Footnote 3: _See above_, p. 239.] + +James H. Hammond's "plantation manual" which is the fullest of such +documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to +subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good crop +means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land, +mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which +must be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not be +merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but +as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value +of the rest of the property.... There should be an increase in number and +improvement in condition of negroes."[4] + +[Footnote 4: MS. bound volume, "Plantation Manual," among the Hammond +papers in the Library of Congress.] + +For the care of the sick, of course, all these planters were solicitous. +Acklen, Manigault and Weston provided that mild cases be prescribed for by +the overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness a +doctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwife +and general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks and +whites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey is +the doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, when +she thinks she can do no more for the sick, you will employ a physician." +Hammond, however, was such a devotee of homeopathy that in the lack of an +available physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote in +his manual: "No negro will be allowed to remain at his own house when sick, +but must be confined to the hospital. Every reasonable complaint must be +promptly attended to; and with any marked or general symptom of sickness, +however trivial, a negro may lie up a day or so at least.... Each case +has to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain the +disease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination; +... the directions for treatment, diet, etc., most implicitly followed; the +effects and changes cautiously observed.... In cases where there is the +slightest uncertainty, the books must be taken to the bedside and a careful +and thorough examination of the case and comparison of remedies made before +administering them. The overseer must record in the prescription book +every dose of medicine administered." Weston said he would never grudge a +doctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness under +pretence of illness. "Nothing," said he, "is so subversive of discipline, +or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposed +to do the work of the lazy." + +Pregnancy, childbirth and the care of children were matters of special +concern. Weston wrote: "The pregnant women are always to do some work up +to the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field and +staying there. If they are sick, they are to go to the hospital and stay +there until it is pretty certain their time is near." "Lying-in women are +to be attended by the midwife as long as is necessary, and by a woman put +to nurse them for a fortnight. They will remain at the negro houses for +four weeks, and then will work two weeks on the highland. In some cases, +however, it is necessary to allow them to lie up longer. The health of many +women has been ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond's rules +were as follows: "Sucklers are not required to leave their homes until +sunrise, when they leave their children at the children's house before +going to field. The period of suckling is twelve months. Their work lies +always within half a mile of the quarter. They are required to be cool +before commencing to suckle--to wait fifteen minutes at least in summer, +after reaching the children's house before nursing. It is the duty of the +nurse to see that none are heated when nursing, as well as of the overseer +and his wife occasionally to do so. They are allowed forty-five minutes at +each nursing to be with their children. They return three times a day until +their children are eight months old--in the middle of the forenoon, at +noon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twice +a day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only...The amount +of work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a full +hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months +are put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required of +them. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances as +full-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in +confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during +delivery. The confined woman lies up one month, and the midwife remains in +constant attendance for seven days. Each woman on confinement has a bundle +given her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of cloth +and rag, and some nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice and flour for the +mother." + +The instructions with one accord required that the rations issued to the +negroes be never skimped. Corbin wrote, "They ought to have their belly +full, but care must be taken with this plenty that no waste is committed." +Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, ordered his overseer to "see that +their necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing be good and +sufficient, their houses comfortable; and be kind and attentive to them in +sickness and old age." And further: "There will be stated hours for the +negroes to breakfast and dine [in the field], and those hours must be +regularly observed. The manager will frequently inspect the meals as they +are brought by the cook--see that they have been properly prepared, and +that vegetables be at all times served with the meat and bread." At the +same time he forbade his slaves to use ardent spirits or to have such about +their houses. Weston wrote: "Great care should be taken that the negroes +should never have less than their regular allowance. In all cases of doubt, +it should be given in favor of the largest quantity. The measure should +not be struck, but rather heaped up over. None but provisions of the best +quality should be used." Telfair specified as follows: "The allowance for +every grown negro, however old and good for nothing, and every young one +that works in the field, is a peck of corn each week and a pint of salt, +and a piece of meat, not exceeding fourteen pounds, per month...The +suckling children, and all other small ones who do not work in the field, +draw a half allowance of corn and salt....Feed everything plentifully, but +waste nothing." He added that beeves were to be killed for the negroes in +July, August and September. Hammond's allowance to each working hand was a +heaping peck of meal and three pounds of bacon or pickled pork every week. +In the winter, sweet potatoes were issued when preferred, at the rate of a +bushel of them in lieu of the peck of meal; and fresh beef, mutton or pork, +at increased weights, were to be substituted for the salt pork from time to +time. The ditchers and drivers were to have extra allowances in meat and +molasses. Furthermore, "Each ditcher receives every night, when ditching, a +dram (jigger) consisting of two-thirds whiskey and one-third water, with as +much asafoetida as it will absorb, and several strings of red peppers added +in the barrel. The dram is a large wine-glass full. In cotton picking time +when sickness begins to be prevalent, every field hand gets a dram in the +morning before leaving for the field. After a soaking rain all exposed to +it get a dram before changing their clothes; also those exposed to the +dust from the shelter and fan in corn shelling, on reaching the quarter at +night; or anyone at any time required to keep watch in the night. Drams are +not given as rewards, but only as medicinal. From the second hoeing, or +early in May, every work hand who uses it gets an occasional allowance of +tobacco, about one sixth of a pound, usually after some general operation, +as a hoeing, plowing, etc. This is continued until their crops are +gathered, when they can provide for themselves." The families, furthermore, +shared in the distribution of the plantation's peanut crop every fall. Each +child was allowed one third as much meal and meat as was given to each +field hand, and an abundance of vegetables to be cooked with their meat. +The cooking and feeding was to be done at the day nursery. For breakfast +they were to have hominy and milk and cold corn bread; for dinner, +vegetable soup and dumplings or bread; and cold bread or potatoes were to +be kept on hand for demands between meals. They were also to have molasses +once or twice a week. Each child was provided with a pan and spoon in +charge of the nurse. + +Hammond's clothing allowance was for each man in the fall two cotton +shirts, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket, and in the spring two +cotton shirts and two pairs of cotton pants, with privilege of substitution +when desired; for each woman six yards of woolen cloth and six yards of +cotton cloth in the fall, six yards of light and six of heavy cotton cloth +in the spring, with needles, thread and buttons on each occasion. Each +worker was to have a pair of stout shoes in the fall, and a heavy blanket +every third year. Children's cloth allowances were proportionate and their +mothers were required to dress them in clean clothes twice a week. + +In the matter of sanitation, Acklen directed the overseer to see that the +negroes kept clean in person, to inspect their houses at least once a week +and especially during the summer, to examine their bedding and see to its +being well aired, to require that their clothes be mended, "and everything +attended to which conduces to their comfort and happiness." In these +regards, as in various others, Fowler incorporated Acklen's rules in his +own, almost verbatim. Hammond scheduled an elaborate cleaning of the houses +every spring and fall. The houses were to be completely emptied and their +contents sunned, the walls and floors were to be scrubbed, the mattresses +to be emptied and stuffed with fresh hay or shucks, the yards swept and the +ground under the houses sprinkled with lime. Furthermore, every house was +to be whitewashed inside and out once a year; and the negroes must appear +once a week in clean clothes, "and every negro habitually uncleanly in +person must be washed and scrubbed by order of the overseer--the driver and +two other negroes officiating." + +As to schedules of work, the Carolina and Georgia lowlanders dealt in +tasks; all the rest in hours. Telfair wrote briefly: "The negroes to be +tasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work, well +done--the task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strength +of the negro." Weston wrote with more elaboration: "A task is as much work +as the meanest full hand can do in nine hours, working industriously.... +This task is never to be increased, and no work is to be done over task +except under the most urgent necessity; which over-work is to be reported +to the proprietor, who will pay for it. No negro is to be put into a task +which [he] cannot finish with tolerable ease. It is a bad plan to punish +for not finishing tasks; it is subversive of discipline to leave tasks +unfinished, and contrary to justice to punish for what cannot be done. In +nothing does a good manager so much excel a bad as in being able to discern +what a hand is capable of doing, and in never attempting to make him do +more." In Hammond's schedule the first horn was blown an hour before +daylight as a summons for work-hands to rise and do their cooking and other +preparations for the day. Then at the summons of the plow driver, at first +break of day, the plowmen went to the stables whose doors the overseer +opened. At the second horn, "just at good daylight," the hoe gang set out +for the field. At half past eleven the plowmen carried their mules to a +shelter house in the fields, and at noon the hoe hands laid off for dinner, +to resume work at one o'clock, except that in hot weather the intermission +was extended to a maximum of three and a half hours. The plowmen led the +way home by a quarter of an hour in the evening, and the hoe hands followed +at sunset. "No work," said Hammond, "must ever be required after dark." +Acklen contented himself with specifying that "the negroes must all rise at +the ringing of the first bell in the morning, and retire when the last +bell rings at night, and not leave their houses after that hour unless on +business or called." Fowler's rule was of the same tenor: "All hands should +be required to retire to rest and sleep at a suitable hour and permitted to +remain there until such time as it will be necessary to get out in time to +reach their work by the time they can see well how to work." + +Telfair, Fowler and Hammond authorized the assignment of gardens and +patches to such slaves as wanted to cultivate them at leisure times. To +prevent these from becoming a cloak for thefts from the planter's crops, +Telfair and Fowler forbade the growing of cotton in the slaves' private +patches, and Hammond forbade both cotton and corn. Fowler specifically +gave his negroes the privilege of marketing their produce and poultry "at +suitable leisure times." Hammond had a rule permitting each work hand to go +to Augusta on some Sunday after harvest; but for some reason he noted in +pencil below it: "This is objectionable and must be altered." Telfair +and Weston directed that their slaves be given passes on application, +authorizing them to go at proper times to places in the neighborhood. The +negroes, however, were to be at home by the time of the curfew horn about +nine o'clock each night. Mating with slaves on other plantations was +discouraged as giving occasion for too much journeying. + +"Marriage is to be encouraged," wrote Hammond, "as it adds to the comfort, +happiness and health of those who enter upon it, besides insuring a greater +increase. Permission must always be obtained from the master before +marriage, but no marriage will be allowed with negroes not belonging to the +master. When sufficient cause can be shewn on either side, a marriage may +be annulled; but the offending party must be severely punished. Where both +are in wrong, both must be punished, and if they insist on separating must +have a hundred lashes apiece. After such a separation, neither can marry +again for three years. For first marriage a bounty of $5.00, to be invested +in household articles, or an equivalent of articles, shall be given. If +either has been married before, the bounty shall be $2.50. A third marriage +shall be not allowed but in extreme cases, and in such cases, or where both +have been married before, no bounty will be given." + +"Christianity, humanity and order elevate all, injure none," wrote Fowler, +"whilst infidelity, selfishness and disorder curse some, delude others and +degrade all. I therefore want all of my people encouraged to cultivate +religious feeling and morality, and punished for inhumanity to their +children or stock, for profanity, lying and stealing." And again: "I would +that every human being have the gospel preached to them in its original +purity and simplicity. It therefore devolves upon me to have these +dependants properly instructed in all that pertains to the salvation of +their souls. To this end whenever the services of a suitable person can be +secured, have them instructed in these things. In view of the fanaticism +of the age, it behooves the master or overseer to be present on all +such occasions. They should be instructed on Sundays in the day time if +practicable; if not, then on Sunday night." Acklen wrote in his usual +peremptory tone: "No negro preachers but my own will be permitted to preach +or remain on any of my places. The regularly appointed minister for my +places must preach on Sundays during daylight, or quit. The negroes must +not be suffered to continue their night meetings beyond ten o'clock." +Telfair in his rules merely permitted religious meetings on Saturday nights +and Sunday mornings. Hammond encouraged his negroes to go to church on +Sundays, but permitted no exercises on the plantation beyond singing and +praying. He, and many others, encouraged his negroes to bring him their +complaints against drivers and overseers, and even against their own +ecclesiastical authorities in the matter of interference with recreations. + +Fighting among the negroes was a common bane of planters. Telfair +prescribed: "If there is any fighting on the plantation, whip all engaged +in it, for no matter what the cause may have been, all are in the wrong." +Weston wrote: "Fighting, particularly amongst women, and obscene or abusive +language, is to be always rigorously punished." + +"Punishment must never be cruel or abusive," wrote Acklen, closely followed +by Fowler, "for it is absolutely mean and unmanly to whip a negro from mere +passion and malice, and any man who can do so is utterly unfit to have +control of negroes; and if ever any of my negroes are cruelly or inhumanly +treated, bruised, maimed or otherwise injured, the overseer will be +promptly discharged and his salary withheld." Weston recommended the lapse +of a day between the discovery of an offense and the punishment, and he +restricted the overseer's power in general to fifteen lashes. He continued: +"Confinement (not in the stocks) is to be preferred to whipping; but the +stoppage of Saturday's allowance, and doing whole task on Saturday, will +suffice to prevent ordinary offenses. Special care must be taken to prevent +any indecency in punishing women. No driver or other negro is to be allowed +to punish any person in any way except by order of the overseer and in his +presence." And again: "Every person should be made perfectly to understand +what they are punished for, and should be made to perceive that they are +not punished in anger or through caprice. All abusive language or violence +of demeanor should be avoided; they reduce the man who uses them to a level +with the negro, and are hardly ever forgotten by those to whom they are +addressed." Hammond directed that the overseer "must never threaten a +negro, but punish offences immediately on knowing them; otherwise he will +soon have runaways." As a schedule he wrote: "The following is the order +in which offences must be estimated and punished: 1st, running away; 2d, +getting drunk or having spirits; 3d, stealing hogs; 4th, stealing; 5th, +leaving plantation without permission; 6th, absence from house after +horn-blow at night; 7th, unclean house or person; 8th, neglect of tools; +9th, neglect of work. The highest punishment must not exceed a hundred +lashes in one day, and to that extent only in extreme cases. The whip lash +must be one inch in width, or a strap of one thickness of leather 1-1/2 +inches in width, and never severely administered. In general fifteen to +twenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging. The hands in every case must +be secured by a cord. Punishment must always be given calmly, and never +when angry or excited." Telfair was as usual terse: "No negro to have +more than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime." +Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sent +special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You had +best think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the important +old plantation maxim, viz: 'never to threaten a negro,' or he will do as +you and I would when at school--he will run. But with such a one, ... if +you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and +give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for +three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again.... Mind then and tell +him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels +with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on +himself, for he now sees how easy it is to fix 'a bad disposed nigger.' +Then give my compliments to him and tell him that you wrote me of his +conduct, and say if he don't change for the better I'll sell him to a slave +trader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent several +of the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause." In one +case Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver brought +him up for punishment but allowed him to run before it was administered.[5] + +[Footnote 5: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 32, 94.] + +As to rewards, Hammond was the only one of these writers to prescribe them +definitely. His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driver +three dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each every +Christmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for every +actual increase of two on the place. Further, "for every infant thirteen +months old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, the +mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock." + +"The head driver," Hammond wrote, "is the most important negro on the +plantation, and is not required to work like other hands. He is to +be treated with more respect than any other negro by both master and +overseer....He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all +times; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to +punish it with discretion on the spot....He is a confidential servant, and +may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer." Weston, +forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer's +order and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance of +quiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slaves +to the fields each morning, the assignment and supervision of tasks, +and the inspection of "such things as the overseer only generally +superintends." Telfair informed his overseer: "I have no driver. You are to +task the negroes yourself, and each negro is responsible to you for his own +work, and nobody's else." + +Of the master's own functions Hammond wrote in another place: "A planter +should have all his work laid out, days, weeks, months, seasons and years +ahead, according to the nature of it. He must go from job to job without +losing a moment in turning round, and he must have all the parts of his +work so arranged that due proportion of attention may be bestowed upon each +at the proper time. More is lost by doing work out of season, and doing it +better or worse than is requisite, than can readily be supposed. Negroes +are harassed by it, too, instead of being indulged; so are mules, and +everything else. A halting, vacillating, undecided course, now idle, now +overstrained, is more fatal on a plantation than in any other kind of +business--ruinous as it is in any."[6] + +[Footnote 6: Letter of Hammond to William Gilmore Simms, Jan. 21, 1841, +from Hammond's MS. copy in the Library of Congress.] + +In the overseer all the virtues of a master were desired, with a deputy's +obedience added. Corbin enjoined upon his staff that they "attend their +business with diligence, keep the negroes in good order, and enforce +obedience by the example of their own industry, which is a more effectual +method in every respect than hurry and severity. The ways of industry," he +continued, "are constant and regular, not to be in a hurry at one time and +do nothing at another, but to be always usefully and steadily employed. +A man who carries on business in this manner will be prepared for every +incident that happens. He will see what work may be proper at the distance +of some time and be gradually and leisurely preparing for it. By this +foresight he will never be in confusion himself, and his business, instead +of a labor, will be a pleasure to him." Weston wrote: "The proprietor +wishes particularly to impress upon the overseer the criterions by which +he will judge of his usefullness and capacity. First, by the general +well-being of all the negroes; their cleanly appearance, respectful +manners, active and vigorous obedience; their completion of their tasks +well and early; the small amount of punishment; the excess of births over +deaths; the small number of persons in hospital; and the health of the +children. Secondly, the condition and fatness of the cattle and mules; the +good repair of all the fences and buildings, harness, boats, flats and +ploughs; more particularly the good order of the banks and trunks, and the +freedom of the fields from grass and volunteer [rice]. Thirdly, the amount +and quality of the rice and provision crops.... The overseer is expressly +forbidden from three things, viz.: bleeding, giving spirits to any negro +without a doctor's order, and letting any negro on the place have or keep +any gun, powder or shot." One of Acklen's prohibitions upon his overseers +was: "Having connection with any of my female servants will most certainly +be visited with a dismissal from my employment, and no excuse can or will +be taken." + +Hammond described the functions as follows: "The overseer will never be +expected to work in the field, but he must always be with the hands when +not otherwise engaged in the employer's business.... The overseer must +never be absent a single night, nor an entire day, without permission +previously obtained. Whenever absent at church or elsewhere he must be on +the plantation by sundown without fail. He must attend every night and +morning at the stables and see that the mules are watered, cleaned and fed, +and the doors locked. He must keep the stable keys at night, and all the +keys, in a safe place, and never allow anyone to unlock a barn, smoke-house +or other depository of plantation stores but himself. He must endeavor, +also, to be with the plough hands always at noon." He must also see that +the negroes are out promptly in the morning, and in their houses after +curfew, and must show no favoritism among the negroes. He must carry on all +experiments as directed by the employer, and use all new implements and +methods which the employer may determine upon; and he must keep a full +plantation diary and make monthly inventories. Finally, "The negroes must +be made to obey and to work, which may be done, by an overseer who attends +regularly to his business, with very little whipping. Much whipping +indicates a bad tempered or inattentive manager, and will not be allowed." +His overseer might quit employment on a month's notice, and might be +discharged without notice. Acklen's dicta were to the same general effect. + +As to the relative importance of the several functions of an overseer, all +these planters were in substantial agreement. As Fowler put it: "After +taking proper care of the negroes, stock, etc., the next most important +duty of the overseer is to make, if practicable, a sufficient quantity of +corn, hay, fodder, meat, potatoes and other vegetables for the consumption +of the plantation, and then as much cotton as can be made by requiring good +and reasonable labor of operatives and teams." Likewise Henry Laurens, +himself a prosperous planter of the earlier time as well as a statesman, +wrote to an overseer of whose heavy tasking he had learned: "Submit to +make less rice and keep my negroes at home in some degree of happiness in +preference to large crops acquired by rigour and barbarity to those poor +creatures." And to a new incumbent: "I have now to recommend to you the +care of my negroes in general, but particularly the sick ones. Desire Mrs. +White not to be sparing of red wine for those who have the flux or bad +loosenesses; let them be well attended night and day, and if one wench is +not sufficient add another to nurse them. With the well ones use gentle +means mixed with easy authority first--if that does not succeed, make +choice of the most stubborn one or two and chastise them severely but +properly and with mercy, that they may be convinced that the end of +correction is to be amendment," Again, alluding to one of his slaves +who had been gathering the pennies of his fellows: "Amos has a great +inclination to turn rum merchant. If his confederate comes to that +plantation, I charge you to discipline him with thirty-nine sound lashes +and turn him out of the gate and see that he goes quite off."[7] + +[Footnote 7: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 133, 192.] + +The published advice of planters to their fellows was quite in keeping with +these instructions to overseers. About 1809, for example, John Taylor, of +Caroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day, +wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows: "The addition of +comfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for the +advantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by a +ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniary +point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections +throughout life, which will cost him nothing." He recommended fireproof +brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plenty +in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for +pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for +upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole +force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the +thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure +to inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations. "A daily +allowance of cyder," Taylor continued, "will extend the success of this +system for the management of slaves, and particularly its effect of +diminishing corporal punishments. But the reader is warned that a stern +authority, strict discipline and complete subordination must be combined +with it to gain any success at all."[8] + +[Footnote 8: John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, _Arator, Being +a Series of Agricultural Essays_ (2d ed., Georgetown, D. C, 1814), pp. +122-125.] + +Another Virginian's essay, of 1834, ran as follows: Virginia negroes are +generally better tempered than any other people; they are kindly, grateful, +attached to persons and places, enduring and patient in fatigue and +hardship, contented and cheerful. Their control should be uniform and +consistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity. Punishment for real +faults should be invariable but moderate. "The best evidence of the good +management of slaves is the keeping up of good discipline with little or +no punishment." The treatment should be impartial except for good conduct +which should bring rewards. Praise is often a better cure for laziness than +stripes. The manager should know the temper of each slave. The proud and +high spirited are easily handled: "Your slow and sulky negro, although he +may have an even temper, is the devil to manage. The negro women are all +harder to manage than the men. The only way to get along with them is by +kind words and flattery. If you want to cure a sloven, give her something +nice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she has +on anything tolerably decent." Eschew suspicion, for it breeds dishonesty. +Promote harmony and sound methods among your neighbors. "A good +disciplinarian in the midst of bad managers of slaves cannot do much; and +without discipline there cannot be profit to the master or comfort to the +slaves." Feed and clothe your slaves well. The best preventive of theft is +plenty of pork. Let them have poultry and gardens and fruit trees to attach +them to their houses and promote amenability. "The greatest bar to good +discipline in Virginia is the number of grog shops in every farmer's +neighborhood." There is no severity in the state, and there will be no +occasion for it again if the fanatics will only let us alone.[9] + +[Footnote 9: "On the Management of Negroes. Addressed to the Farmers and +Overseers of Virginia," signed "H. C," in the _Farmer's Register_, I, 564, +565 (February, 1834).] + +An essay written after long experience by Robert Collins, of Macon, +Georgia, which was widely circulated in the 'fifties, was in the same tone: +"The best interests of all parties are promoted by a kind and liberal +treatment on the part of the owner, and the requirement of proper +discipline and strict obedience on the part of the slave ... Every attempt +to force the slave beyond the limits of reasonable service by cruelty or +hard treatment, so far from extorting more work, only tends to make him +unprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation and a curse." The quarters should +be well shaded, the houses free of the ground, well ventilated, and large +enough for comfort; the bedding and blankets fully adequate. "In former +years the writer tried many ways and expedients to economize in the +provision of slaves by using more of the vegetable and cheap articles of +diet, and less of the costly and substantial. But time and experience have +fully proven the error of a stinted policy ... The allowance now given per +week to each hand ... is five pounds of good clean bacon and one quart of +molasses, with as much good bread as they require; and in the fall, or +sickly season of the year, or on sickly places, the addition of one pint of +strong coffee, sweetened with sugar, every morning before going to work." +The slaves may well have gardens, but the assignment of patches for market +produce too greatly "encourages a traffic on their own account, and +presents a temptation and opportunity, during the process of gathering, for +an unscrupulous fellow to mix a little of his master's produce with his +own. It is much better to give each hand whose conduct has been such as to +merit it an equivalent in money at the end of the year; it is much less +trouble, and more advantageous to both parties." Collins further advocated +plenty of clothing, moderate hours, work by tasks in cotton picking and +elsewhere when feasible, and firm though kindly discipline. "Slaves," he +said, "have no respect or affection for a master who indulges them over +much.... Negroes are by nature tyrannical in their dispositions, and if +allowed, the stronger will abuse the weaker, husbands will often abuse +their wives and mothers their children, so that it becomes a prominent duty +of owners and overseers to keep peace and prevent quarrelling and disputes +among them; and summary punishment should follow any violation of this +rule. Slaves are also a people that enjoy religious privileges. Many +of them place much value upon it; and to every reasonable extent that +advantage should be allowed them. They are never injured by preaching, but +thousands become wiser and better people and more trustworthy servants +by their attendance at church. Religious services should be provided and +encouraged on every plantation. A zealous and vehement style, both in +doctrine and manner, is best adapted to their temperament. They are good +believers in mysteries and miracles, ready converts, and adhere with much +pertinacity to their opinions when formed."[10] It is clear that Collins +had observed plantation negroes long and well. + +[Footnote 10: Robert Collins, "Essay on the Management of Slaves," +reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 421-426, and partly reprinted in F.L. +Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 692-697.] + +Advice very similar to the foregoing examples was also printed in the +form of manuals at the front of blank books for the keeping of plantation +records;[11] and various planters described their own methods in operation +as based on the same principles. One of these living at Chunnennuggee, +Alabama, signing himself "N.B.P.," wrote in 1852 an account of the problems +he had met and the solutions he had applied. Owning some 150 slaves, he had +lived away from his plantation until about a decade prior to this writing; +but in spite of careful selection he could never get an overseer combining +the qualities necessary in a good manager. "They were generally on +extremes; those celebrated for making large crops were often too severe, +and did everything by coercion. Hence turmoil and strife ensued. The +negroes were ill treated and ran away. On the other hand, when he employed +a good-natured man there was a want of proper discipline; the negroes +became unmanageable and, as a natural result, the farm was brought into +debt," The owner then entered residence himself and applied methods which +resulted in contentment, health and prolific increase among the slaves, and +in consistently good crops. The men were supplied with wives at home so far +as was practicable; each family had a dry and airy house to itself, with a +poultry house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly were +three and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, together +with a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nursery +were fed from the master's kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables and +bread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women were +given time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all hands +had to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; and +a clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday. The chief +distinction of this plantation, however, lay in its device for profit +sharing. To each slave was assigned a half-acre plot with the promise that +if he worked with diligence in the master's crop the whole gang would in +turn be set to work his crop. This was useful in preventing night and +Sunday work by the negroes. The proceeds of their crops, ranging from ten +to fifty dollars, were expended by the master at their direction for Sunday +clothing and other supplies.[12] On a sugar plantation visited by Olmsted +a sum of as many dollars as there were hogsheads in the year's crop was +distributed among the slaves every Christmas.[13] + +[Footnote 11: Pleasant Suit, _Farmer's Accountant and Instructions for +Overseers_ (Richmond, Va., 1828); _Affleck's Cotton Plantation Record and +Account Book_, reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVIII, 339-345, and in Thomas +W. Knox, _Campfire and Cotton Field_ (New York, 1865), pp. 358-364. _See +also_ for varied and interesting data as to rules, experience and advice; +Thomas S. Clay (of Bryan County, Georgia), _Detail of a Plan for the Moral +Improvement of Negroes on Plantations_ (1833); and _DeBow's Review_, XII, +291, 292; XIX, 358-363; XXI, 147-149, 277-279; XXIV, 321-326; XXV, 463; +XXVI, 579, 580; XXIX, 112-115, 357-368.] + +[Footnote 12: _Southern Quarterly Review_, XXI, 215, 216.] + +[Footnote 13: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 660.] + +Of overseers in general, the great variety in their functions, their +scales of operation and their personal qualities make sweeping assertions +hazardous. Some were at just one remove from the authority of a great +planter, as is suggested by the following advertisement: "Wanted, a manager +to superintend several rice plantations on the Santee River. As the +business is extensive, a proportionate salary will be made, and one or two +young men of his own selection employed under him.[14] A healthful summer +residence on the seashore is provided for himself and family." Others +were hardly more removed from the status of common field hands. Lawrence +Tompkins, for example, signed with his mark in 1779 a contract to oversee +the four slaves of William Allason, near Alexandria, and to work steadily +with them. He was to receive three barrels of corn and three hundred pounds +of pork as his food allowance, and a fifth share of the tobacco, hemp and +flax crops and a sixth of the corn; but if he neglected his work he might +be dismissed without pay of any sort.[15] Some overseers were former +planters who had lost their property, some were planters' sons working for +a start in life, some were English and German farmers who had brought their +talents to what they hoped might prove the world's best market, but most of +them were of the native yeomanry which abounded in virtually all parts +of the South. Some owned a few slaves whom they put on hire into their +employers' gangs, thereby hastening their own attainment of the means to +become planters on their own score.[16] + +[Footnote 14: _Southern Patriot_ (Charleston, S. C), Jan. 9, 1821.] + +[Footnote 15: MS. Letter book, 1770-1787, among the Allason papers in the +New York Public Library.] + +[Footnote 16: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, pp. 21, 135.] + +If the master lived on the plantation, as was most commonly the case, the +overseer's responsibilities were usually confined to the daily execution of +orders in supervising the slaves in the fields and the quarters. But when +the master was an absentee the opportunity for abuses and misunderstandings +increased. Jurisdiction over slaves and the manner of its exercise were the +grounds of most frequent complaint. On the score of authority, for example, +a Virginia overseer in the employ of Robert Carter wrote him in 1787 in +despair at the conduct of a woman named Suckey: "I sent for hir to Come in +the morning to help Secoure the foder, but She Sent me word that She would +not come to worke that Day, and that you had ordered her to wash hir +Cloaiths and goo to Any meeting She pleased any time in the weke without my +leafe, and on monday when I Come to Reken with hir about it She Said it was +your orders and She would do it in Defiance of me.... I hope if Suckey is +aloud that privilige more than the Rest, that she will bee moved to some +other place, and one Come in her Room."[17] On the score of abuses, Stancil +Barwick, an overseer in southwestern Georgia, wrote in 1855 to John B. +Lamar: "I received your letter on yesterday ev'ng. Was vary sorry to hear +that you had heard that I was treating your negroes so cruely. Now, sir, I +do say to you in truth that the report is false. Thear is no truth in it. +No man nor set of men has ever seen me mistreat one of the negroes on the +place." After declaring that miscarriages by two of the women had been due +to no requirement of work, he continued: "The reports that have been sent +must have been carried from this place by negroes. The fact is I have made +the negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, an +is the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found among +the negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, but +not cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on the +place. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed by +no man on earth,"[18] + +[Footnote 17: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 325.] + +[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., I, 312, 313.] + +To diminish the inducement for overdriving, the method of paying the +overseers by crop shares, which commonly prevailed in the colonial period, +was generally replaced in the nineteenth century by that of fixed salaries. +As a surer preventive of embezzlement, a trusty slave was in some cases +given the store-house keys in preference to the overseer; and sometimes +even when the master was an absentee an overseer was wholly dispensed with +and a slave foreman was given full charge. This practice would have been +still more common had not the laws discouraged it.[19] Some planters +refused to leave their slaves in the full charge of deputies of any kind, +even for short periods. For example, Francis Corbin in 1819 explained +to James Madison that he must postpone an intended visit because of the +absence of his son. "Until he arrives," Corbin wrote, "I dare not, in +common prudence, leave my affairs to the sole management of overseers, who +in these days are little respected by our intelligent negroes, many of whom +are far superior in mind, morals and manners to those who are placed in +authority over them."[20] + +[Footnote 19: Olmsted, _Seaboard States_, p. 206.] + +[Footnote 20: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 261.] + +Various phases of the problem of management are illustrated in a letter of +A.H. Pemberton of the South Carolina midlands to James H. Hammond at the +end of 1846. The writer described himself as unwilling to sacrifice his +agricultural reading in order to superintend his slaves in person, but as +having too small a force to afford the employment of an overseer pure and +simple. For the preceding year he had had one charged with the double +function of working in person and supervising the slaves' work also; but +this man's excess of manual zeal had impaired his managerial usefulness. +What he himself did was well done, said Pemberton, "and he would do _all_ +and leave the negroes to do virtually nothing; and as they would of course +take advantage of this, what he did was more than counterbalanced by what +they did not." Furthermore, this employee, "who worked harder than any man +I ever saw," used little judgment or foresight. "Withal, he has always been +accustomed to the careless Southern practice generally of doing things +temporarily and in a hurry, just to last for the present, and allowing the +negroes to leave plows and tools of all kinds just where they use them, +no matter where, so that they have to be hunted all over the place when +wanted. And as to stock, he had no idea of any more attention to them than +is common in the ordinarily cruel and neglectful habits of the South." +Pemberton then turned to lamentation at having let slip a recent +opportunity to buy at auction "a remarkably fine looking negro as to size +and strength, very black, about thirty-five or forty, and so intelligent +and trustworthy that he had charge of a separate plantation and eight or +ten hands some ten or twelve miles from home." The procuring of such a +foreman would precisely have solved Pemberton's problem; the failure to +do so left him in his far from hopeful search for a paragon manager and +workman combined.[21] + +[Footnote 21: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +On the whole, the planters were disposed to berate the overseers as a class +for dishonesty, inattention and self indulgence. The demand for new +and better ones was constant. For example, the editor of the _American +Agriculturist_, whose office was at New York, announced in 1846: "We are +almost daily beset with applications for properly educated managers +for farms and plantations--we mean for such persons as are up to the +improvements of the age, and have the capacity to carry them into +effect."[22] Youths occasionally offered themselves as apprentices. One of +them, in Louisiana, published the following notice in 1822: "A young man +wishing to acquire knowledge of cotton planting would engage for twelve +months as overseer and keep the accounts of a plantation.... Unquestionable +reference as to character will be given."[23] And a South Carolinian in +1829 proposed that the practice be systematized by the appointment of local +committees to bring intelligent lads into touch with planters willing to +take them as indentured apprentices.[24] The lack of system persisted, +however, both in agricultural education and in the procuring of managers. +In the opinion of Basil Hall and various others the overseers were commonly +better than the reputation of their class,[25] but this is not to say that +they were conspicuous either for expertness or assiduity. On the whole +they had about as much human nature, with its merits and failings, as the +planters or the slaves or anybody else. + +[Footnote 22: _American Agriculturist_, V, 24.] + +[Footnote 23: _Louisiana Herald_ (Alexandria, La.), Jan. 12, 1822, +advertisement.] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Agriculturist_, II, 271.] + +[Footnote 25: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_, III, 193.] + +It is notable that George Washington was one of the least tolerant +employers and masters who put themselves upon record.[26] This was +doubtless due to his own punctiliousness and thorough devotion to system as +well as to his often baffled wish to diversify his crops and upbuild his +fields. When in 1793 he engaged William Pearce as a new steward for the +group of plantations comprising the Mount Vernon estate, he enjoined strict +supervision of his overseers "to keep them from running about and to oblige +them to remain constantly with their people, and moreover to see at what +time they turn out in the morning--for," said he, "I have strong suspicions +that this with some of them is at a late hour, the consequences of which +to the negroes is not difficult to foretell." "To treat them civilly," +Washington continued, "is no more than what all men are entitled to; but my +advice to you is, keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow upon +familiarity in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not. Pass +by no faults or neglects, particularly at first, for overlooking one only +serves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some of +them, one in particular, will try at first what lengths he may go." +Particularizing as to the members of his staff, Washington described their +several characteristics: Stuart was intelligent and apparently honest and +attentive, but vain and talkative, and usually backward in his schedule; +Crow would be efficient if kept strictly at his duty, but seemed prone to +visiting and receiving visits. "This of course leaves his people too much +to themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side and +flogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfaction +which it creates, has in one or two instances been productive of serious +consequences." McKay was a "sickly, slothful and stupid sort of fellow," +too much disposed to brutality in the treatment of the slaves in his +charge; Butler seemed to have "no more authority over the negroes ... than +an old woman would have"; and Green, the overseer of the carpenters, was +too much on a level with the slaves for the exertion of control. Davy, the +negro foreman at Muddy Hole, was rated in his master's esteem higher than +some of his white colleagues, though Washington had suspicions concerning +the fate of certain lambs which had vanished while in his care. Indeed the +overseers all and several were suspected from time to time of drunkenness, +waste, theft and miscellaneous rascality. In the last of these categories +Washington seems to have included their efforts to secure higher wages. + +[Footnote 26: Voluminous plantation data are preserved in the Washington +MSS. in the Library of Congress. Those here used are drawn from the letters +of Washington published in the Long Island Historical Society _Memoirs_, +vol. IV; entitled _George Washington and Mount Vernon_. A map of the Mount +Vernon estate is printed in Washington's _Writings_ (W.C. Ford ed.), XII, +358.] + +The slaves in their turn were suspected of ruining horses by riding them at +night, and of embezzling grain issued for planting, as well as of lying and +malingering in general. The carpenters, Washington said, were notorious +piddlers; and not a slave about the mansion house was worthy of trust. +Pretences of illness as excuses for idleness were especially annoying. +"Is there anything particular in the cases of Ruth, Hannah and Pegg," +he enquired, "that they have been returned as sick for several weeks +together?... If they are not made to do what their age and strength will +enable them, it will be a very bad example to others, none of whom would +work if by pretexts they can avoid it." And again: "By the reports I +perceive that for every day Betty Davis works she is laid up two. If she +is indulged in this idleness she will grow worse and worse, for she has a +disposition to be one of the most idle creatures on earth, and is besides +one of the most deceitful." Pearce seems to have replied that he was at a +loss to tell the false from the true. Washington rejoined: "I never found +so much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in distinguishing between real +and feigned sickness, or when a person is much afflicted with pain. Nobody +can be very sick without having a fever, or any other disorder continue +long upon anyone without reducing them.... But my people, many of them, +will lay up a month, at the end of which no visible change in their +countenance nor the loss of an ounce of flesh is discoverable; and their +allowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them." Runaways were +occasional. Of one of them Washington directed: "Let Abram get his deserts +when taken, by way of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, for +I have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment in +all his corrections." Of another, whom he had previously described as an +idler beyond hope of correction: "Nor is it worth while, except for the +sake of example, ... to be at much trouble, or any expence over a trifle, +to hunt him up." Of a third, who was thought to have escaped in company +with a neighbor's slave: "If Mr. Dulany is disposed to pursue any measure +for the purpose of recovering his man, I will join him in the expence so +far as it may respect Paul; but I would not have my name appear in any +advertisement, or other measure, leading to it." Again, when asking that a +woman of his who had fled to New Hampshire be seized and sent back if it +could be done without exciting a mob: "However well disposed I might be to +gradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description of +people (if the latter was in itself practicable), at this moment it would +neither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a premature +preference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellow +serv'ts who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving than +herself of favor."[27] Finally: "The running off of my cook has been a most +inconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeable +is that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by +purchase. But this resolution I fear I must break. I have endeavored to +hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied." As to provisions, the +slaves were given fish from Washington's Potomac fishery while the supply +lasted, "meat, fat and other things ... now and then," and of meal "as +much as they can eat without waste, and no more." The housing and clothing +appear to have been adequate. The "father of his country" displayed little +tenderness for his slaves. He was doubtless just, so far as a business-like +absentee master could be; but his only generosity to them seems to have +been the provision in his will for their manumission after the death of his +wife. + +[Footnote 27: Marion G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_( Boston, 1891), p. +36.] + +Lesser men felt the same stresses in plantation management. An owner of +ninety-six slaves told Olmsted that such was the trouble and annoyance +his negroes caused him, in spite of his having an overseer, and such the +loneliness of his isolated life, that he was torn between a desire to sell +out at once and a temptation to hold on for a while in the expectation of +higher prices. At the home of another Virginian, Olmsted wrote: "During +three hours or more in which I was in company with the proprietor I do +not think there were ten consecutive minutes uninterrupted by some of the +slaves requiring his personal direction or assistance. He was even obliged +three times to leave the dinner table. 'You see,' said he smiling, as he +came in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure,'" A +third Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter's +cares and troubles were endless; the slaves, men, women and children, +infirm and aged, had wants innumerable; some were indolent, some obstinate, +some fractious, and each class required different treatment. With the daily +wants of food, clothing and the like, "the poor man's time and thoughts, +indeed every faculty of mind, must be exercised on behalf of those who have +no minds of their own."[28] + +[Footnote 28: F.L. Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 44, 58, 718.] + +Harriet Martineau wrote on her tour of the South: "Nothing struck me +more than the patience of slave-owners ... with their slaves ... When I +considered how they love to be called 'fiery Southerners,' I could not but +marvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to which +they are liable in their homes. Persons from New England, France or +England, becoming slaveholders, are found to be the most severe masters +and mistresses, however good their tempers may always have appeared +previously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half an +hour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible +manner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, +their infants slighted,--themselves deluded by artifices--they cannot, like +the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled."[29] It is clear from +every sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negro +slaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnigh +necessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness and +patience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financial +ruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; the +possession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern not +vital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns were +turned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineau +and most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, wrote after a journey to +Charleston in 1855: "The change to a Northerner in coming South is always +a great one when he steps over the boundary of the free states; and the +farther you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness and +careless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution and +skilful management.... The outside first aspect of slavery has nothing +horrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about looking +unhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips and +chains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in the +free as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone ten +times as far, I dare say, without seeing the first sign of negro misery +or white tyranny."[30] If, indeed, the neatness of aspect be the test of +success, most plantations were failures; if the test of failure be the lack +of harmony and good will, it appears from the available evidence that most +plantations were successful. + +[Footnote 29: Harriet Martineau, _Society in America_ (London, 1837), II +315, 316.] + +[Footnote 30: Charles Eliot Norton, _Letters_ (Boston, 1913), I, 121.] + +The concerns and the character of a high-grade planter may be gathered from +the correspondence of John B. Lamar, who with headquarters in the town of +Macon administered half a dozen plantations belonging to himself and his +kinsmen scattered through central and southwestern Georgia and northern +Florida.[31] The scale of his operations at the middle of the nineteenth +century may be seen from one of his orders for summer cloth, presumably +at the rate of about five yards per slave. This was to be shipped from +Savannah to the several plantations as follows: to Hurricane, the property +of Howell Cobb, Lamar's brother-in-law, 760 yards; to Letohatchee, a trust +estate in Florida belonging to the Lamar family, 500 yards; and to Lamar's +own plantations the following: Swift Creek, 486; Harris Place, 360; Domine, +340; and Spring Branch, 229. Of his course of life Lamar wrote: "I am one +half the year rattling over rough roads with Dr. Physic and Henry, stopping +at farm houses in the country, scolding overseers in half a dozen counties +and two states, Florida and Georgia, and the other half in the largest +cities of the Union, or those of Europe, living on dainties and riding on +rail-cars and steamboats. When I first emerge from Swift Creek into the +hotels and shops on Broadway of a summer, I am the most economical body +that you can imagine. The fine clothes and expensive habits of the people +strike me forcibly.... In a week I become used to everything, and in a +month I forget my humble concern on Swift Creek and feel as much a nabob as +any of them.... At home where everything is plain and comfortable we look +on anything beyond that point as extravagant. When abroad where things are +on a greater scale, our ideas keep pace with them. I always find such to be +my case; and if I live to a hundred I reckon it will always be so." + +[Footnote 31: Lamar's MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, +Athens, Ga. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, +I, 167-183, 309-312, II, 38, 41.] + +Lamar could command strong words, as when a physician demanded five hundred +dollars for services at Hurricane in 1844, or when overseers were detected +in drunkenness or cruelty; but his most characteristic complaints were of +his own short-comings as a manager and of the crotchets of his relatives. +His letters were always cheery, and his repeated disappointments in +overseers never damped his optimism concerning each new incumbent. His +old lands contented him until he found new and more fertile ones to buy, +whereupon his jubilation was great. When cotton was low he called himself a +toad under the harrow; but rising markets would set him to counting bales +before the seed had more than sprouted and to building new plantations in +the air. In actual practice his log-cabin slave quarters gave place to +frame houses; his mules were kept in full force; his production of corn and +bacon was nearly always ample for the needs of each place; his slaves were +permitted to raise nankeen cotton on their private accounts; and his own +frequent journeys of inspection and stimulus, as he said, kept up an +_esprit du corps_. When an overseer reported that his slaves were down with +fever by the dozen and his cotton wasting in the fields, Lamar would hasten +thither with a physician and a squad of slaves impressed from another +plantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. He +redistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a better +balancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy as +far as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate the +families. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among his +slaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized them +to find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and good +nature made "Mas John" a favorite recourse. + +As to crops and management, Lamar indicated his methods in criticizing +those of a relative: "Uncle Jesse still builds air castles and blinds +himself to his affairs. Last year he tinkered away on tobacco and sugar +cane, things he knew nothing about.... He interferes with the arrangements +of his overseers, and has no judgment of his own.... If he would employ a +competent overseer and move off the plantation with his family he could +make good crops, as he has a good force of hands and good lands.... I have +found that it is unprofitable to undertake anything on a plantation out of +the regular routine. If I had a little place off to itself, and my business +would admit of it, I should delight in agricultural experiments." In his +reliance upon staple routine, as in every other characteristic, Lamar rings +true to the planter type. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +PLANTATION LABOR + + +WHILE produced only in America, the plantation slave was a product of +old-world forces. His nature was an African's profoundly modified but +hardly transformed by the requirements of European civilization. The wrench +from Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting his +ancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperament +than upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee, Ebo or Angola, +he became instead the American negro. The Caucasian was also changed by the +contact in a far from negligible degree; but the negro's conversion +was much the more thorough, partly because the process in his case was +coercive, partly because his genius was imitative. + +The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit reservation +as to limits, that a negro was what a white man made him. The molding, +however, was accomplished more by groups than by individuals. The purposes +and policies of the masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence the +negroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into the +predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagerness +for society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person, +dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness +toward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to +superstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for +praise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, a +healthy human repugnance toward overwork. "It don't do no good to hurry," +was a negro saying, "'caze you're liable to run by mo'n you overtake." +Likewise painstaking was reckoned painful; and tomorrow was always waiting +for today's work, while today was ready for tomorrow's share of play. On +the other hand it was a satisfaction to work sturdily for a hard boss, and +so be able to say in an interchange of amenities: "Go long, half-priced +nigger! You wouldn't fotch fifty dollars, an' I'm wuth a thousand!"[1] + +[Footnote 1: _Daily Tropic_ (New Orleans), May 18, 1846.] + +Contrasts were abundant. John B. Lamar, on the one hand, wrote: "My man Ned +the carpenter is idle or nearly so at the plantation. He is fixing gates +and, like the idle groom in Pickwick, trying to fool himself into the +belief that he is doing something.... He is an eye servant. If I was with +him I could have the work done soon and cheap; but I am afraid to trust him +off where there is no one he fears."[2] On the other hand, M.W. Philips +inscribed a page of his plantation diary as follows:[3] + +[Footnote 2: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 38.] + +[Footnote 3: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 444.] + + Sunday + July 10, 1853 + Peyton is no more + Aged 42 + Though he was a bad man in many respects + yet he was a most excellent field + hand, always at his + post. + On this place for 21 years. + Except the measles and its sequence, the + injury rec'd by the mule last Nov'r and its sequence, + he has not lost 15 days' work, I verily believe, in the + remaining 19 years. I wish we could hope for his + eternal state. + +Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the old-fashioned prime +negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch the +roustabouts at work--those chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging, +lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of New +Orleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made.[4] Ready +at every touching of the shore day and night, resting and sleeping only +between landings, they carry their loads almost at running speed, and when +returning for fresh burdens they "coonjine" by flinging their feet in +semi-circles at every step, or cutting other capers in rhythm to show their +fellows and the gallery that the strain of the cotton bales, the grain +sacks, the oil barrels and the timbers merely loosen their muscles and +lighten their spirits. + +[Footnote 4: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of +Economics, New Orleans, April 11th, 1911, on River Transportation and Its +Relation to New Orleans, Past, Present and Future_. [New Orleans, 1911.]] + +Such an exhibit would have been the despair of the average ante-bellum +planter, for instead of choosing among hundreds of applicants and rejecting +or discharging those who fell short of a high standard, he had to make +shift with such laborers as the slave traders chanced to bring or as his +women chanced to rear. His common problem was to get such income and +comfort as he might from a parcel of the general run; and the creation +of roustabout energy among them would require such vigor and such iron +resolution on his own part as was forthcoming in extremely few cases. + +Theoretically the master might be expected perhaps to expend the minimum +possible to keep his slaves in strength, to discard the weaklings and the +aged, to drive his gang early and late, to scourge the laggards hourly, to +secure the whole with fetters by day and with bolts by night, and to keep +them in perpetual terror of his wrath. But Olmsted, who seems to have gone +South with the thought of finding some such theory in application, wrote: +"I saw much more of what I had not anticipated and less of what I had in +the slave states than, with a somewhat extended travelling experience, in +any other country I ever visited";[5] and Nehemiah Adams, who went from +Boston to Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himself +laughing with the laughing ones instead.[6] + +[Footnote 5: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 179.] + +[Footnote 6: Nehemiah Adams. _A Southside View of Slavery, or Three Months +in the South in 1854_ (Boston, 1854), chap. 2.] + +The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was as strange to +the bulk of the planters as the doctrine and practice of moderation was to +those who viewed the regime from afar and with the mind's eye. A planter +in explaining his mildness might well have said it was due to his being +neither a knave nor a fool He refrained from the use of fetters not so much +because they would have hampered the slaves in their work as because the +general use of them never crossed his mind. And since chains and bolts were +out of the question, the whole system of control must be moderate; slaves +must be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might be by +loyalty, pride and the prospect of reward. + +Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional degree. A +certain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked success even when his whole +force was of fresh Africans. In a pamphlet of the late eighteen-twenties +he told of his method as follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settled +a plantation on St. John's River in Florida with about fifty new negroes, +many of whom I brought from the Coast myself. They were mostly fine young +men and women, and nearly in equal numbers. I never interfered in their +connubial concerns nor domestic affairs, but let them regulate these after +their own manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and what I +thought would add to their physical and moral happiness. I encouraged as +much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon +and night and Sunday morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] was +usually employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for the +week. Both men and women were very industrious. Many of them made twenty +bushels of corn to sell, and they vied with each other in dress and +dancing.... They were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared perfectly +happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had +to apply other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, the +punishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing their work +well. My object was to excite their ambition and attachment by kindness, +not to depress their spirits by fear and punishment.... Perfect confidence, +friendship and good understanding reigned between us." During the War of +1812 most of these negroes were killed or carried off in a Seminole raid. +When peace returned and Kingsley attempted to restore his Eden with a +mixture of African and American negroes, a serpent entered in the guise of +a negro preacher who taught the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sunday +and eating the catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves +"became poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was only to +do justice--to take what belonged to them, because I kept them in unjust +bondage." They came to believe "that all pastime or pleasure in this +iniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of sorrow and +repentance, and the sooner they were out of it the better; that they would +then go to a good country where they would experience no want of anything, +and have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful and would +pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and ask +forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to the +church, etc.... Finally myself and the overseer became completely divested +of all authority over the negroes.... Severity had no effect; it only made +it worse."[7] + +[Footnote 7: [Z. Kingsley] _A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society +as It exists ... under the Name of Slavery_. By an inhabitant of Florida. +Fourth edition (1834), pp. 21, 22. (Copy in the Library of Congress.)] + +This experience left Kingsley undaunted in his belief that liberalism +and profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the plantation regime. +To support this contention further he cited an experiment by a South +Carolinian who established four or five plantations in a group on Broad +River, with a slave foreman on each and a single overseer with very limited +functions over the whole. The cotton crop was the master's, while the hogs, +corn and other produce belonged to the slaves for their sustenance and the +sale of any surplus. The output proved large, "and the owner had no further +trouble nor expense than furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying the +overseer's wages, so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that he +could realize his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without paying +the customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on the operation +of his slaves." In Kingsley's opinion the system "answered extremely well, +and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivating +utility, local attachment and moral improvement among the slaves."[8] + +[Footnote 8: [Z. Kingsley] _Treatise_, p. 22.] + +The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government by slaves +is probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on their +plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi. There +the slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in every +way they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts +composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to be +inflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with his +power of pardon. The regime was maintained for a number of years in full +effect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9] + +[Footnote 9: W.L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro +Problem," in the _Sewanee Review_ (October, 1908).] + +These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend to +counterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme. +In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, the +relation of planter and slave was largely shaped by a sense of propriety, +proportion and cooperation. + +As to food, clothing and shelter, a few concrete items will reinforce the +indications in the preceding chapters that crude comfort was the rule. +Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776 that a Georgia slaveholder with +whom he stopped sold no dairy products from his forty cows in milk. The +proprietor explained this by saying: "I have a considerable family of black +people who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for Those I have +were either chosen for their good qualities or born in the family; and I +find from long experience and observation that the better they are fed, +clothed and treated, the more service and profit we may expect to derive +from their labour. In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or any +article of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best advantage +amongst my family and slaves." At another place Bartram noted the arrival +at a plantation of horse loads of wild pigeons taken by torchlight from +their roosts in a neighboring swamp.[10] + +[Footnote 10: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), pp. 307-310, 467, +468.] + +On Charles Cotesworth Pinckney's two plantations on the South Carolina +coast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a detail of four slaves was +shifted from the field work each week for a useful holiday in angling +for the huge drumfish which abounded in those waters; and their catches +augmented the fare of the white and black families alike.[11] Game and +fish, however, were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combined +the virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness. On +Fowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands numbered a little less +than half a hundred, the pork harvest throughout the eighteen-fifties, +except for a single year of hog cholera, yielded from eleven to +twenty-three hundred pounds; and when the yield was less than the normal, +northwestern bacon or barreled pork made up the deficit.[12] + +In the matter of clothing, James Habersham sent an order to London in 1764 +on behalf of himself and two neighbors for 120 men's jackets and breeches +and 80 women's gowns to be made in assorted sizes from strong and heavy +cloth. The purpose was to clothe their slaves "a little better than common" +and to save the trouble of making the garments at home.[13] In January, +1835, the overseer of one of the Telfair plantations reported that the +woolen weaving had nearly supplied the full needs of the place at the rate +of six or six and a half yards for each adult and proportionately for the +children.[14] In 1847, in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrote +from Paris to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroes +and see how many jackets and trousers you want for the men at Gowrie, ... +and then write to Messrs. Matthiessen and Co. of Charleston to send them to +you, together with the same quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and a +large woolen Scotch cap for each man and youth on the place.... Send back +anything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs. Habersham and +Son the twilled wool and cotton, called by some 'Hazzard's cloth,' for all +the women and children, and get two or three dozen handkerchiefs so as to +give each woman and girl one.... The shoes you will procure as usual from +Mr. Habersham by sending down the measures in time."[15] Finally, the +register of A.L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont contains +record of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a steady schedule. Every +spring each man drew two cotton shirts and two pair of homespun woolen +trousers, each woman a frock and chemises, and each child clothing or cloth +in proportion; and every fall the men drew shirts, trousers and coats, the +women shifts, petticoats, frocks and sacks, the children again on a similar +scale, and the several families blankets as needed.[16] + +[Footnote 11: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 203-208.] + +[Footnote 12: MS. records in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, +Miss.] + +[Footnote 13: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 293, 294.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., 192, 193.] + +[Footnote 15: MS. copy in Manigault's letter book.] + +[Footnote 16: MS. in the possession of Mrs. J.F. Minis, Savannah, Ga.] + +As for housing, the vestiges of the old slave quarters, some of which +have stood abandoned for half a century, denote in many cases a sounder +construction and greater comfort than most of the negroes in freedom have +since been able to command. + +With physical comforts provided, the birth-rate would take care of itself. +The pickaninnies were winsome, and their parents, free of expense and +anxiety for their sustenance, could hardly have more of them than they +wanted. A Virginian told Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fast +as they did on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and in +Georgia, Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits."[18] In Mississippi +M.W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when at the age of +thirty she was married by her master to a new husband, and had eight more +thereafter, including a set of triplets.[19] But the culminating instance +is the following as reported by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERY +REMARKABLE. There is now living in the vicinity of Campbell a negro +woman belonging to a gentleman by the name of Todd; this woman is in her +forty-second year and has had forty-one children and at this time is +pregnant with her forty-second child, and possibly with her forty-third, as +she has frequently had doublets."[20] Had childbearing been regulated +in the interest of the masters, Todd's woman would have had less than +forty-one and Amy less than her nineteen, for such excesses impaired the +vitality of the children. Most of Amy's, for example, died a few hours or +days after birth. + +[Footnote 17: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 57.] + +[Footnote 18: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 179.] + +[Footnote 19: Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, X, 439, 443, +447, 480.] + +[Footnote 20: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 11, 1822, quoting the +Lynchburg _Press_.] + +A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie." Virtually +all of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and wives except Caroline +who in twenty years bore ten children. Her husband was presumably the slave +of some other master. Tom and Milly had nine children in eighteen years; +Harry and Jainy had seven in twenty-two years; Fanny had five in seventeen +years with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa likewise had +five in nineteen years with Bob as the father of all but the first; and +Hector and Mary had five in seven years. On the other hand, two old couples +and one in their thirties had had no children, while eight young pairs had +from one to four each.[21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisiana +plantation called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole. The +slaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards comprised +thirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre des naissances" +showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859 distributed among +twenty-three women, two of whom were still in their teens when the record +ended. Rhode bore six children between her seventeenth and thirty-fourth +years; Henriette bore six between twenty-one and forty; Esther six between +twenty-one and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two; +Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore from one +to three children each, including Celestine who had her first baby when +fifteen and her second two years after. None of the matings or paternities +appear in the record, though the christenings and the slave godparents are +registered.[22] + +[Footnote 21: MS. in the possession of W.H. Stovall, Stovall, Miss.] + +[Footnote 22: MS. in the Howard Memorial Library, New Orleans.] + +The death rate was a subject of more active solicitude. This may be +illustrated from the journal for 1859-1860 of the Magnolia plantation, +forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its record of rations to 138 +hands, and of the occasional births, deaths, runaways and recaptures, and +of the purchase of a man slave for $2300, it contains the following summary +under date of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen months +over 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping cough, and then +the diphtheria, all of which we have gone through with but little loss save +in the whooping cough when we lost some twelve children." This entry was in +the spirit of rejoicing at escape from disasters. But on December 18 there +were two items of another tone. One of these was entered by an overseer +named Kellett: "[I] shot the negro boy Frank for attempting to cut at me +and three boys with his cane knife with intent to kill." The other, in a +different handwriting, recorded tersely: "J.A. Randall commenst buisnass +this mornung. J. Kellett discharged this morning." The owner could not +afford to keep an overseer who killed negroes even though it might be in +self defence.[23] + +[Footnote 23: MS. preserved on the plantation, owned by ex-Governor H.C. +War-moth.] + +Of epidemics, yellow fever was of minor concern as regards the slaves, for +negroes were largely immune to it; but cholera sometimes threatened to +exterminate the slaves and bankrupt their masters. After a visitation of +this in and about New Orleans in 1832, John McDonogh wrote to a friend: +"All that you have seen of yellow fever was nothing in comparison. It is +supposed that five or six thousand souls, black and white, were carried off +in fourteen days."[24] The pecuniary loss in Louisiana from slave deaths +in that epidemic was estimated at four million dollars.[25] Two years +afterward it raged in the Savannah neighborhood. On Mr. Wightman's +plantation, ten miles above the city, there were in the first week of +September fifty-three cases and eighteen deaths. The overseer then checked +the spread by isolating the afflicted ones in the church, the barn and the +mill. The neighboring planters awaited only the first appearance of the +disease on their places to abandon their crops and hurry their slaves to +lodges in the wilderness.[26] Plagues of smallpox were sometimes of similar +dimensions. + +[Footnote 24: William Allen, _Life of John McDonogh_ (Baltimore, 1886), p. +54.] + +[Footnote 25: _Niles' Register_, XLV, 84] + +[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Sept. 14 and 17 and +Oct. 22, 1834.] + +Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin. A series +of them drove M.W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation journal: "Oh! my +losses almost make me crazy. God alone can help." In short, planters must +guard their slaves' health and life as among the most vital of their own +interests; for while crops were merely income, slaves were capital. The +tendency appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrant +labor when available for such work as would involve strain and exposure. +The documents bearing on this theme are scattering but convincing. Thus +E.J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields, +said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantation +ditches;[27] T.B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippi +in 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planter +when describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were +hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usual +routine.[29] Olmsted noted on the Virginia seaboard that "Mr. W.... had an +Irish gang draining for him by contract." Olmsted asked, "why he should +employ Irishmen in preference to doing the work with his own hands. 'It's +dangerous work,' the planter replied, 'and a negro's life is too valuable +to be risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss you +know,'"[30] On a Louisiana plantation W.H. Russell wrote in 1860: "The +labor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands and hewing down the +forests is generally done by Irish laborers who travel about the country +under contractors or are engaged by resident gangsmen for the task. Mr. +Seal lamented the high prices of this work; but then, as he said, 'It was +much better to have Irish do it, who cost nothing to the planter if they +died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment,'" Russell +added on his own score: "There is a wonderful mine of truth in this +observation. Heaven knows how many poor Hibernians have been consumed and +buried in these Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshop +keeper and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the planter." +On another plantation the same traveller was shown the debris left by the +last Irish gang and was regaled by an account of the methods by which their +contractor made them work.[31] Robert Russell made a similar observation on +a plantation near New Orleans, and was told that even at high wages Irish +laborers were advisable for the work because they would do twice as +much ditching as would an equal number of negroes in the same time.[32] +Furthermore, A. de Puy Van Buren, noted as a common sight in the Yazoo +district, "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,' +straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chief +element among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.[33] +Likewise Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his boat with +cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work at +the top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture the +wildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this division +of labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise +confirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggers +are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, +or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chance +observations it may be added that many newspaper items and canal and +railroad company reports from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that the +construction gangs were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attracted +those whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor was +their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the lives +of their slaves. + +[Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, _The Agricultural Productions of +Louisiana_ (New Orleans, 1845).] + +[Footnote 28: _Harper's Magazine_, VII, 755.] + +[Footnote 29: _DeBoufs Review_, XI, 401.] + +[Footnote 30: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 90, 91.] + +[Footnote 31: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp +272, 273, 278.] + +[Footnote 32: Robert Russell, _North America, Its Agriculture and Chwate_ +(Edinburgh, 1857), p. 272.] + +[Footnote 33: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the +South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 84, 318.] + +[Footnote 34: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 550, 551.] + +Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease, disability +and death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better than +a slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on the +plantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely +took vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened +punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape from +bondage altogether. + +Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a protest against +severities. An episode of this sort was recounted in a letter of a Georgia +overseer to his absent employer: "Sir: I write you a few lines in order to +let you know that six of your hands has left the plantation--every man but +Jack. They displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a few +lashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were missing. I think +they are lying out until they can see you or your uncle Jack, as he is +expected daily. They may be gone off, or they may be lying round in this +neighbourhood, but I don't know. I blame Tom for the whole. I don't think +the rest would of left the plantation if Tom had not of persuaded them of +for some design. I give Tom but a few licks, but if I ever get him in my +power I will have satisfaction. There was a part of them had no cause for +leaving, only they thought if they would all go it would injure me moore. +They are as independent a set for running of as I have ever seen, and I +think the cause is they have been treated too well. They want more whipping +and no protecter; but if our country is so that negroes can quit their +homes and run of when they please without being taken they will have the +advantage of us. If they should come in I will write to you immediately and +let you know." [35] + +[Footnote 35: Letter of I.E.H. Harvey, Jefferson County, Georgia, April 16, +1837, to H.C. Flournoy, Athens, Ga. MS. in private possession. Punctuation +and capitals, which are conspicuously absent in the original, have here +been supplied for the sake of clarity.] + +Such a case is analogous to that of wage-earning laborers on strike for +better conditions of work. The slaves could not negotiate directly at such +a time, but while they lay in the woods they might make overtures to the +overseer through slaves on a neighboring plantation as to terms upon which +they would return to work, or they might await their master's posthaste +arrival and appeal to him for a redress of grievances. Humble as their +demeanor might be, their power of renewing the pressure by repeating their +flight could not be ignored. A happy ending for all concerned might be +reached by mutual concessions and pledges. That the conclusion might be +tragic is illustrated in a Louisiana instance where the plantation was in +charge of a negro foreman. Eight slaves after lying out for some weeks +because of his cruelty and finding their hardships in the swamp intolerable +returned home together and proposed to go to work again if granted amnesty. +When the foreman promised a multitude of lashes instead, they killed him +with their clubs. The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia, +told what they had done, and surrendered themselves. The coroner went to +the plantation and found the foreman dead according to specifications.[36] +The further history of the eight is unknown. + +[Footnote 36: _Daily Delta_ (New Orleans), April 17, 1849.] + +Most of the runaways went singly, but some of them went often. Such chronic +offenders were likely to be given exemplary punishment when recaptured. In +the earlier decades branding and shackling were fairly frequent. Some of +the punishments were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflicted +upon talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quite +as fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period the more common +resorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale. The menace of this last +was shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell +on earth of any district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise. +"They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave +refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the +slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for they +recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turn +blackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiable +purpose of keeping their own slaves content. + +Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered more +or less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper advertisements for +fugitives reinforces the impression that the need of deterrence was vital. +Whippings, instead of proving a cure, might bring revenge in the form of +sabotage, arson or murder. Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter might +prove of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical. The +preventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and festivities to +create lightness of heart; overtime and overtask payments to promote zeal +and satisfaction; kindliness and care to call forth loyalty in return; +and the special device of crop patches to give every hand a stake in the +plantation. This last raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaves +were allowed to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might be +stimulated more than industry and punishments become more necessary +than before. In the cotton belt a solution was found at last in nankeen +cotton.[37] This variety had been widely grown for domestic use as early as +the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was left largely in neglect +until when in the thirties it was hit upon for negro crops. While the +prices it brought were about the same as those of the standard upland +staple, its distinctive brown color prevented the admixture of the +planter's own white variety without certain detection when it reached +the gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations is +indicated by the proceeds of $1,969.65 in 1859 from the nankeen of the +negroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in Taylor County, Georgia.[38] Such +returns might be distributed in cash; but planters generally preferred for +the sake of sobriety that money should not be freely handled by the slaves. +Earnings as well as gifts were therefore likely to be issued in the form of +tickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed the following +to the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg in the Christmas season of +1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let the bearer George have ten dollars value in +anything he chooses"; and the merchants entered a memorandum that George +chose two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a pair +of hose, and six shillings in cash.[39] + +[Footnote 37: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p. +128.] + +[Footnote 38: Macon, Ga., _Telegraph_, Feb. 3, 1859, quoted in _DeBow's +Review_, XXIX, 362, note.] + +[Footnote 39: MS. among the Allen and Ellis papers in the Library of +Congress.] + +In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to avoid the +occasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too heavy, the simplest +recourse was to reduce the schedule. If jobs were slackly done, +acquiescence was easier than correction. The easy-going and plausible +disposition of the blacks conspired with the heat of the climate to soften +the resolution of the whites and make them patient. Severe and unyielding +requirements would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied with +geniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization would make +plantation life not only tolerable but charming. + +In the actual regime severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness the +rule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote in 1820: "After travelling +through three slave states I am obliged to go back to theory to raise any +abhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an instance of +cruel treatment nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in +'the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and appear at +least as independent as their masters; in animal spirits they have greatly +the advantage."[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828: "I have no wish, God knows! +to defend slavery in the abstract; ... but ... nothing during my recent +journey gave me more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I was +gradually brought that the planters of the Southern states of America, +generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage their estates with +the least possible severity. I do not say that undue severity is nowhere +exercised; but the discipline, taken upon the average, as far as I could +learn, is not more strict than is necessary for the maintenance of a proper +degree of authority, without which the whole framework of society in that +quarter would be blown to atoms."[41] And Olmsted wrote: "The only whipping +of slaves that I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazy +children as they are being broke in to work."[42] + +[Footnote 40: Adlard Welby, _Visit to North America_ (London, 1821 ) +reprinted in Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, XII, 289] + +[Footnote 41: Basil Hall, _Travels in the United States_, III, 227, 228.] + +[Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 146.] + +As to the rate and character of the work, Hall said that in contrast with +the hustle prevailing on the Northern farms, "in Carolina all mankind +appeared comparatively idle."[43] Olmsted, when citing a Virginian's remark +that his negroes never worked enough to tire themselves, said on his own +account: "This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at +work--they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength +into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, +perhaps."[44] And Solon Robinson reported tersely from a rice plantation +that the negroes plied their hoes "at so slow a rate, the motion would have +given a quick-working Yankee convulsions."[45] + +[Footnote 43: Basil Hall, III, 117.] + +[Footnote 44: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 91.] + +[Footnote 45: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 93.] + +There was clearly no general prevalence of severity and strain in the +regime. There was, furthermore, little of that curse of impersonality +and indifference which too commonly prevails in the factories of the +present-day world where power-driven machinery sets the pace, where the +employers have no relations with the employed outside of work hours, where +the proprietors indeed are scattered to the four winds, where the directors +confine their attention to finance, and where the one duty of the +superintendent is to procure a maximum output at a minimum cost. No, the +planters were commonly in residence, their slaves were their chief property +to be conserved, and the slaves themselves would not permit indifference +even if the masters were so disposed. The generality of the negroes +insisted upon possessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectful +intimacy. While by no means every plantation was an Arcadia there were many +on which the industrial and racial relations deserved almost as glowing +accounts as that which the Englishman William Faux wrote in 1819 of the +"goodly plantation" of the venerable Mr. Mickle in the uplands of South +Carolina.[46] "This gentleman," said he, "appears to me to be a rare +example of pure and undefiled religion, kind and gentle in manners.... +Seeing a swarm, or rather herd, of young negroes creeping and dancing +about the door and yard of his mansion, all appearing healthy, happy and +frolicsome and withal fat and decently clothed, both young and old, I felt +induced to praise the economy under which they lived. 'Aye,' said he, 'I +have many black people, but I have never bought nor sold any in my life. +All that you see came to me with my estate by virtue of my father's will. +They are all, old and young, true and faithful to my interests. They need +no taskmaster, no overseer. They will do all and more than I expect them +to do, and I can trust them with untold gold. All the adults are well +instructed, and all are members of Christian churches in the neighbourhood; +and their conduct is becoming their professions. I respect them as my +children, and they look on me as their friend and father. Were they to be +taken from me it would be the most unhappy event of their lives,' This +conversation induced me to view more attentively the faces of the adult +slaves; and I was astonished at the free, easy, sober, intelligent and +thoughtful impression which such an economy as Mr. Mickle's had indelibly +made on their countenances." + +[Footnote 46: William Faux, _Memorable Days in America_ (London, 1823), p. +68, reprinted in Thwaites, ed., _Early Western Travels_, XI, 87.] + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +PLANTATION LIFE + + +When Hakluyt wrote in 1584 his _Discourse of Western Planting_, his theme +was the project of American colonization; and when a settlement was planted +at Jamestown, at Boston or at Providence as the case might be, it was +called, regardless of the type, a plantation. This usage of the word in the +sense of a colony ended only upon the rise of a new institution to which +the original name was applied. The colonies at large came then to be known +as provinces or dominions, while the sub-colonies, the privately +owned village estates which prevailed in the South, were alone called +plantations. In the Creole colonies, however, these were known as +_habitations_--dwelling places. This etymology of the name suggests the +nature of the thing--an isolated place where people in somewhat peculiar +groups settled and worked and had their being. The standard community +comprised a white household in the midst of several or many negro families. +The one was master, the many were slaves; the one was head, the many were +members; the one was teacher, the many were pupils. + +The scheme of the buildings reflected the character of the group. The "big +house," as the darkies loved to call it, might be of any type from a double +log cabin to a colonnaded mansion of many handsome rooms, and its setting +might range from a bit of primeval forest to an elaborate formal garden. +Most commonly the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretense +to distinction without nor to luxury within. The two fairly constant +features were the hall running the full depth of the house, and the +verandah spanning the front. The former by day and the latter at evening +served in all temperate seasons as the receiving place for guests and the +gathering place for the household at all its leisure times. The house was +likely to have a quiet dignity of its own; but most of such beauty as the +homestead possessed was contributed by the canopy of live-oaks if on the +rice or sugar coasts, or of oaks, hickories or cedars, if in the uplands. +Flanking the main house in many cases were an office and a lodge, +containing between them the administrative headquarters, the schoolroom, +and the apartments for any bachelor overflow whether tutor, sons or +guests. Behind the house and at a distance of a rod or two for the sake of +isolating its noise and odors, was the kitchen. Near this, unless a spring +were available, stood the well with its two buckets dangling from the +pulley; and near this in turn the dairy and the group of pots and tubs +which constituted the open air laundry. Bounding the back yard there were +the smoke-house where bacon and hams were cured, the sweet potato pit, the +ice pit except in the southernmost latitudes where no ice of local origin +was to be had, the carriage house, the poultry house, the pigeon cote, and +the lodgings of the domestic servants. On plantations of small or medium +scale the cabins of the field hands generally stood at the border of the +master's own premises; but on great estates, particularly in the lowlands, +they were likely to be somewhat removed, with the overseer's house, the +smithy, and the stables, corn cribs and wagon sheds nearby. At other +convenient spots were the buildings for working up the crops--the tobacco +house, the threshing and pounding mills, the gin and press, or the sugar +house as the respective staples required. The climate conduced so strongly +to out of door life that as a rule each roof covered but a single unit of +residence, industry or storage. + +The fields as well as the buildings commonly radiated from the planter's +house. Close at hand were the garden, the orchards and the horse lot; and +behind them the sweet potato field, the watermelon patch and the forage +plots of millet, sorghum and the like. Thence there stretched the fields +of the main crops in a more or less solid expanse according to the local +conditions. Where ditches or embankments were necessary, as for sugar and +rice fields, the high cost of reclamation promoted compactness; elsewhere +the prevailing cheapness of land promoted dispersion. Throughout the +uplands, accordingly, the area in crops was likely to be broken by wood +lots and long-term fallows. The scale of tillage might range from a few +score acres to a thousand or two; the expanse of unused land need have no +limit but those of the proprietor's purse and his speculative proclivity. + +The scale of the orchards was in some degree a measure of the domesticity +prevailing. On the rice coast the unfavorable character of the soil and the +absenteeism of the planter's families in summer conspired to keep the fruit +trees few. In the sugar district oranges and figs were fairly plentiful. +But as to both quantity and variety in fruits the Piedmont was unequaled. +Figs, plums, apples, pears and quinces were abundant, but the peaches +excelled all the rest. The many varieties of these were in two main groups, +those of clear stones and soft, luscious flesh for eating raw, and those +of clinging stones and firm flesh for drying, preserving, and making pies. +From June to September every creature, hogs included, commonly had as many +peaches as he cared to eat; and in addition great quantities might be +carried to the stills. The abandoned fields, furthermore, contributed +dewberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild plums in summer, and +persimmons in autumn, when the forest also yielded its muscadines, fox +grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts and chinquapins, and along the +Gulf coast pecans. + +The resources for edible game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, +opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, +doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and snipe in the swamps and +marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and +rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin +and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In +most localities it required little time for a household, slave or free, to +lay forest, field or stream under tribute. + +The planter's own dietary, while mostly home grown, was elaborate. Beef and +mutton were infrequent because the pastures were poor; Irish potatoes were +used only when new, for they did not keep well in the Southern climate; +and wheaten loaves were seldom seen because hot breads were universally +preferred. The standard meats were chicken in its many guises, ham and +bacon. Wheat flour furnished relays of biscuit and waffles, while corn +yielded lye hominy, grits, muffins, batter cakes, spoon bread, hoe cake +and pone. The gardens provided in season lettuce, cucumbers, radishes and +beets, mustard greens and turnip greens, string beans, snap beans and +butter beans, asparagus and artichokes, Irish potatoes, squashes, onions, +carrots, turnips, okra, cabbages and collards. The fields added green corn +for boiling, roasting, stewing and frying, cowpeas and black-eyed peas, +pumpkins and sweet potatoes, which last were roasted, fried or candied +for variation. The people of the rice coast, furthermore, had a special +fondness for their own pearly staple; and in the sugar district _strop de +batterie_ was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves and jellies were +in variety and quantity limited only by the almost boundless resources and +industry of the housewife and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breads +and relishes would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpected +guests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal than would +be taken away at the end, never to return. If ever tables had a habit of +groaning it was those of the planters. Frugality, indeed, was reckoned a +vice to be shunned, and somewhat justly so since the vegetables and eggs +were perishable, the bread and meat of little cost, and the surplus from +the table found sure disposal in the kitchen or the quarters. Lucky was the +man whose wife was the "big house" cook, for the cook carried a basket, and +the basket was full when she was homeward bound. + +The fare of the field hands was, of course, far more simple. Hoecake and +bacon were its basis and often its whole content. But in summer fruit +and vegetables were frequent; there was occasional game and fish at all +seasons; and the first heavy frost of winter brought the festival of +hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all +other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare +ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings +greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of +corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, +carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by brought +recreation, but the hog-killing brought fat satisfaction.[1] + +[Footnote 1: This account of plantation homesteads and dietary is drawn +mainly from the writer's own observations in post-bellum times in which, +despite the shifting of industrial arrangements and the decrease of wealth, +these phases have remained apparent. Confirmation may be had in Philip +Fithian _Journal_ (Princeton, 1900); A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a +Year's Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859); Susan D. Smedes, +_Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (Baltimore, 1887); Mary B. Chestnutt, _A +Diary from Dixie_ (New York, 1905); and many other memoirs and traveller's +accounts.] + +The warmth of the climate produced some distinctive customs. One was the +high seasoning of food to stimulate the appetite; another was the afternoon +siesta of summer; a third the wellnigh constant leaving of doors ajar even +in winter when the roaring logs in the chimney merely took the chill from +the draughts. Indeed a door was not often closed on the plantation except +those of the negro cabins, whose inmates were hostile to night air, and +those of the storerooms. As a rule, it was only in the locks of the latter +that keys were ever turned by day or night. + +The lives of the whites and the blacks were partly segregate, partly +intertwined. If any special link were needed, the children supplied it. +The whites ones, hardly knowing their mothers from their mammies or their +uncles by blood from their "uncles" by courtesy, had the freedom of the +kitchen and the cabins, and the black ones were their playmates in the +shaded sandy yard the livelong day. Together they were regaled with +folklore in the quarters, with Bible and fairy stories in the "big house," +with pastry in the kitchen, with grapes at the scuppernong arbor, with +melons at the spring house and with peaches in the orchard. The half-grown +boys were likewise almost as undiscriminating among themselves as the dogs +with which they chased rabbits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, when +the fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something +to envy in the freedom of their fellows' feet from the cramping weight of +shoes and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With +the approach of maturity came routine and responsibility for the whites, +routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each +race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, some +of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of +both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a somewhat +distinctive plantation type. + +In amusements and in religion the activities of the whites and blacks were +both mingled and separate. Fox hunts when occurring by day were as a rule +diversions only for the planters and their sons and guests, but when they +occurred by moonlight the chase was joined by the negroes on foot with +halloos which rivalled the music of the hounds. By night also the blacks, +with the whites occasionally joining in, sought the canny 'possum and the +embattled 'coon; in spare times by day they hied their curs after the +fleeing Brer Rabbit, or built and baited seductive traps for turkeys and +quail; and fishing was available both by day and by night. At the horse +races of the whites the jockeys and many of the spectators were negroes; +while from the cock fights and even the "crap" games of the blacks, white +men and boys were not always absent. + +Festivities were somewhat more separate than sports, though by no means +wholly so. In the gayeties of Christmas the members of each race were +spectators of the dances and diversions of the other. Likewise marriage +merriment in the great house would have its echo in the quarters; and +sometimes marriages among the slaves were grouped so as to give occasion +for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general +invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding +among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the +fiddle, the banjo and the bones were not seldom in requisition. + +[Footnote 2: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), April 20, 1858.] + +It was a matter of discomfort that in the evangelical churches dancing +and religion were held to be incompatible. At one time on Thomas Dabney's +plantation in Mississippi, for instance, the whole negro force fell captive +in a Baptist "revival" and forswore the double shuffle. "I done buss' my +fiddle an' my banjo, and done fling 'em away," the most music-loving +fellow on the place said to the preacher when asked for his religious +experiences.[3] Such a condition might be tolerable so long as it was +voluntary; but the planters were likely to take precautions against its +becoming coercive. James H. Hammond, for instance, penciled a memorandum +in his plantation manual: "Church members are privileged to dance on all +holyday occasions; and the class-leader or deacon who may report them shall +be reprimanded or punished at the discretion of the master."[4] The logic +with which sin and sanctity were often reconciled is illustrated in Irwin +Russell's remarkably faithful "Christmas in the Quarters." "Brudder Brown" +has advanced upon the crowded floor to "beg a blessin' on dis dance:" + +[Footnote 3: S.D. Smedes. _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 161, 162.] + +[Footnote 4: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + + O Mashr! let dis gath'rin' fin' a blessin' in yo' sight! + Don't jedge us hard fur what we does--you knows it's Chrismus night; + An' all de balunce ob de yeah we does as right's we kin. + Ef dancin's wrong, O Mashr! let de time excuse de sin! + + We labors in de vineya'd, wukin' hard and wukin' true; + Now, shorely you won't notus, ef we eats a grape or two, + An' takes a leetle holiday,--a leetle restin' spell,-- + Bekase, nex' week we'll start in fresh, an' labor twicet as well. + + Remember, Mashr,--min' dis, now,--de sinfulness ob sin + Is 'pendin' 'pon de sperrit what we goes an' does it in; + An' in a righchis frame ob min' we's gwine to dance an' sing, + A-feelin' like King David, when he cut de pigeon-wing. + + It seems to me--indeed it do--I mebbe mout be wrong-- + That people raly _ought_ to dance, when Chrismus comes along; + Des dance bekase dey's happy--like de birds hops in de trees, + De pine-top fiddle soundin' to de blowin' ob de breeze. + + We has no ark to dance afore, like Isrul's prophet king; + We has no harp to soun' de chords, to holp us out to sing; + But 'cordin' to de gif's we has we does de bes' we knows, + An' folks don't 'spise de vi'let-flower bekase it ain't de rose. + + You bless us, please, sah, eben ef we's doin' wrong tonight: + Kase den we'll need de blessin' more'n ef we's doin' right; + An' let de blessin' stay wid us, untel we comes to die, + An' goes to keep our Chrismus wid dem sheriffs in de sky! + + Yes, tell dem preshis anjuls we's a-gwine to jine 'em soon: + Our voices we's a-trainin' fur to sing de glory tune; + We's ready when you wants us, an' it ain't no matter when-- + O Mashr! call yo' chillen soon, an' take 'em home! Amen.[5] + +[Footnote 5: Irwin Russell, _Poems_ (New York [1888]), pp. 5-7.] + +The churches which had the greatest influence upon the negroes were those +which relied least upon ritual and most upon exhilaration. The Baptist and +Methodist were foremost, and the latter had the special advantage of the +chain of camp meetings which extended throughout the inland regions. At +each chosen spot the planters and farmers of the countryside would jointly +erect a great shed or "stand" in the midst of a grove, and would severally +build wooden shelters or "tents" in a great square surrounding it. When the +crops were laid by in August, the households would remove thither, their +wagons piled high with bedding, chairs and utensils to keep "open house" +with heavy-laden tables for all who might come to the meeting. With less +elaborate equipment the negroes also would camp in the neighborhood and +attend the same service as the whites, sitting generally in a section of +the stand set apart for them. The camp meeting, in short, was the chief +social and religious event of the year for all the Methodist whites and +blacks within reach of the ground and for such non-Methodists as cared +to attend. For some of the whites this occasion was highly festive, for +others, intensely religious; but for any negro it might easily be both at +once. Preachers in relays delivered sermons at brief intervals from +sunrise until after nightfall; and most of the sermons were followed by +exhortations for sinners to advance to the mourners' benches to receive +the more intimate and individual suasion of the clergy and their corps of +assisting brethren and sisters. The condition was highly hypnotic, and the +professions of conversion were often quite as ecstatic as the most fervid +ministrant could wish. The negroes were particularly welcome to the +preachers, for they were likely to give the promptest response to the +pulpit's challenge and set the frenzy going. A Georgia preacher, for +instance, in reporting from one of these camps in 1807, wrote: "The first +day of the meeting, we had a gentle and comfortable moving of the spirit of +the Lord among us; and at night it was much more powerful than before, and +the meeting was kept up all night without intermission. However, before +day the white people retired, and the meeting was continued by the black +people." It is easy to see who led the way to the mourners' bench. "Next +day," the preacher continued, "at ten o'clock the meeting was remarkably +lively, and many souls were deeply wrought upon; and at the close of the +sermon there was a general cry for mercy, and before night there were a +good many persons who professed to get converted. That night the meeting +continued all night, both by the white and black people, and many souls +were converted before day." The next day the stir was still more general. +Finally, "Friday was the greatest day of all. We had the Lord's Supper at +night, ... and such a solemn time I have seldom seen on the like occasion. +Three of the preachers fell helpless within the altar, and one lay a +considerable time before he came to himself. From that the work of +convictions and conversions spread, and a large number were converted +during the night, and there was no intermission until the break of day. At +that time many stout hearted sinners were conquered. On Saturday we had +preaching at the rising of the sun; and then with many tears we took leave +of each other."[6] + +[Footnote 6: _Farmer's Gazette_ (Sparta, Ga.), Aug. 8, 1807, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 285, 286.] + +The tone of the Baptist "protracted meetings" was much like that of the +Methodist camps. In either case the rampant emotionalism, effective enough +among the whites, was with the negroes a perfect contagion. With some of +these the conversion brought lasting change; with others it provided a +garment of piety to be donned with "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes" and +doffed as irksome on week days. With yet more it merely added to the joys +of life. The thrill of exaltation would be followed by pleasurable "sin," +to give place to fresh conversion when the furor season recurred. The +rivalry of the Baptist and Methodist churches, each striving by similar +methods to excel the other, tempted many to become oscillating proselytes, +yielding to the allurements first of the one and then of the other, and on +each occasion holding the center of the stage as a brand snatched from the +burning, a lost sheep restored to the fold, a cause and participant of +rapture. + +In these manifestations the negroes merely followed and enlarged upon the +example of some of the whites. The similarity of practices, however, +did not promote a permanent mingling of the two races in the same +congregations, for either would feel some restraint upon its rhapsody +imposed by the presence of the other. To relieve this there developed in +greater or less degree a separation of the races for purposes of worship, +white ministers preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantation +missions, and home talent among the negroes filling the intervals. While +some of the black exhorters were viewed with suspicion by the whites, +others were highly esteemed and unusually privileged. One of these at +Lexington, Kentucky, for example, was given the following pass duly signed +by his master: "Tom is my slave, and has permission to go to Louisville for +two or three weeks and return here after he has made his visit. Tom is a +preacher of the reformed Baptist church, and has always been a faithful +servant."[7] As a rule the greater the proportion of negroes in a district +or a church connection, the greater the segregation in worship. If the +whites were many and the negroes few, the latter would be given the gallery +or some other group of pews; but if the whites were few and the negroes +many, the two elements would probably worship in separate buildings. Even +in such case, however, it was very common for a parcel of black domestics +to flock with their masters rather than with their fellows. + +[Footnote 7: Dated Aug. 6, 1856, and signed E. McCallister. MS. in the New +York Public Library.] + +The general regime in the fairly typical state of South Carolina was +described in 1845 in a set of reports procured preliminary to a convention +on the state of religion among the negroes and the means of its betterment. +Some of these accounts were from the clergy of several denominations, +others from the laity; some treated of general conditions in the several +districts, others in detail of systems on the writers' own plantations. In +the latter group, N.W. Middleton, an Episcopalian of St. Andrew's parish, +wrote that he and his wife and sons were the only religious teachers of his +slaves, aside from the rector of the parish. He read the service and taught +the catechism to all every Sunday afternoon, and taught such as came +voluntarily to be instructed after family prayers on Wednesday nights. His +wife and sons taught the children "constantly during the week," chiefly in +the catechism. On the other hand R.F.W. Allston, a fellow Episcopalian of +Prince George, Winyaw, had on his plantation a place of worship open to all +denominations. A Methodist missionary preached there on alternate Sundays, +and the Baptists were less regularly cared for. Both of these sects, +furthermore, had prayer meetings, according to the rules of the plantation, +on two nights of each week. Thus while Middleton endeavored to school his +slaves in his own faith, Allston encouraged them to seek salvation by such +creed as they might choose. + +An Episcopal clergyman in the same parish with Allston wrote that he held +fortnightly services among the negroes on ten plantations, and enlisted +some of the literate slaves as lay readers. His restriction of these to the +text of the prayer book, however, seems to have shorn them of power. The +bulk of the slaves flocked to the more spontaneous exercises elsewhere; +and the clergyman could find ground for satisfaction only in saying that +frequently as many as two hundred slaves attended services at one of the +parish churches in the district. + +The Episcopal failure was the "evangelical" opportunity. Of the thirteen +thousand slaves in Allston's parish some 3200 were Methodists and 1500 +Baptists, as compared with 300 Episcopalians. In St. Peter's parish a +Methodist reported that in a total of 6600 slaves, 1335 adhered to his +faith, about half of whom were in mixed congregations of whites and blacks +under the care of two circuit-riders, and the rest were in charge of two +missionaries who ministered to negroes alone. Every large plantation, +furthermore, had one or more "so-called negro preachers, but more properly +exhorters." In St. Helena parish the Baptists led with 2132 communicants; +the Methodists followed with 314 to whom a missionary holding services on +twenty plantations devoted the whole of his time; and the Episcopalians as +usual brought up the rear with fifty-two negro members of the church at +Beaufort and a solitary additional one in the chapel on St. Helena island. + +Of the progress and effects of religion in the lowlands Allston and +Middleton thought well. The latter said, "In every respect I feel +encouraged to go on." The former wrote: "Of my own negroes and those in my +immediate neighborhood I may speak with confidence. They are attentive to +religious instruction and greatly improved in intelligence and morals, in +domestic relations, etc. Those who have grown up under religious training +are more intelligent and generally, though not always, more improved than +those who have received religious instruction as adults. Indeed the degree +of intelligence which as a class they are acquiring is worthy of deep +consideration." Thomas Fuller, the reporter from the Beaufort neighborhood, +however, was as much apprehensive as hopeful. While the negroes had greatly +improved in manners and appearance as a result of coming to worship in town +every Sunday, said he, the freedom which they were allowed for the purpose +was often misused in ways which led to demoralization. He strongly advised +the planters to keep the slaves at home and provide instruction there. + +From the upland cotton belt a Presbyterian minister in the Chester district +wrote: "You are all aware, gentlemen, that the relation and intercourse +between the whites and the blacks in the up-country are very different from +what they are in the low-country. With us they are neither so numerous nor +kept so entirely separate, but constitute a part of our households, and are +daily either with their masters or some member of the white family. From +this circumstance they feel themselves more identified with their owners +than they can with you. I minister steadily to two different congregations. +More than one hundred blacks attend.... The gallery, or a quarter of the +house, is appropriated to them in all our churches, and they enjoy the +preached gospel in common with the whites." Finally, from the Greenville +district, on the upper edge of the Piedmont, where the Methodists and +Baptists were completely dominant among whites and blacks alike, it was +reported: "About one fourth of the members in the churches are negroes. +In the years 1832, '3 and '4 great numbers of negroes joined the churches +during a period of revival. Many, I am sorry to say, have since been +excommunicated. As the general zeal in religion declined, they backslid." +There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer continued, who were +thought to do some good; but the general improvement in negro character, he +thought, was mainly due to the religious and moral training given by their +masters, and still more largely by their mistresses. From all quarters the +expression was common that the promotion of religion among the slaves was +not only the duty of masters but was to their interest as well in that it +elevated the morals of the workmen and improved the quality of the service +they rendered.[8] + +[Footnote 8: _Proceedings of the Meeting in Charleston, S.C., May 13-15, +1845, on the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, together with the Report +of the Committee and the Address to the Public_ (Charleston, 1845). The +reports of the Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes in +Liberty County, Georgia, printed annually for a dozen years or more in the +'thirties and 'forties, relate the career of a particularly interesting +missionary work in that county on the rice coast, under the charge of the +Reverend C.C. Jones. The tenth report in the series (1845) summarizes the +work of the first decade, and the twelfth (1847) surveys the conditions +then prevalent. In C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ +(Nashville, [1857]) the ninth chapter is made up of reports on the mission +activities of that church among the negroes in various quarters of the +South.] + +In general, the less the cleavage of creed between master and man, the +better for both, since every factor conducing to solidarity of sentiment +was of advantage in promoting harmony and progress. When the planter went +to sit under his rector while the slave stayed at home to hear an exhorter, +just so much was lost in the sense of fellowship. It was particularly +unfortunate that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had no +co-religionists except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they had +more conflict than community of economic and sentimental interest. On +the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsible +religious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroes +everywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired by +consistent self-control in the performance of duty rather man by the +alternation of spasmodic reforms and relapses. + +Occasionally some hard-headed negro would resist the hypnotic suggestion +of his preacher, and even repudiate glorification on his death-bed. A +Louisiana physician recounts the final episode in the career of "Old Uncle +Caleb," who had long been a-dying. "Before his departure, Jeff, the negro +preacher of the place, gathered his sable flock of saints and sinners +around the bed. He read a chapter and prayed, after which they sang a +hymn.... Uncle Caleb lay motionless with closed eyes, and gave no sign. +Jeff approached and took his hand. 'Uncle Caleb,' said he earnestly, 'de +doctor says you are dying; and all de bredderin has come in for to see you +de last time. And now, Uncle Caleb, dey wants to hear from your own mouf de +precious words, dat you feels prepared to meet your God, and is ready and +willin' to go,' Old Caleb opened his eyes suddenly, and in a very peevish, +irritable tone, rebuffed the pious functionary in the following unexpected +manner: 'Jeff, don't talk your nonsense to me! You jest knows dat I an't +ready to go, nor willin' neder; and dat I an't prepared to meet nobody,' +Jeff expatiated largely not only on the mercy of God, but on the glories of +the heavenly kingdom, as a land flowing with milk and honey, etc. 'Dis ole +cabin suits me mon'sus well!' was the only reply he could elicit from the +old reprobate. And so he died."[9] + +[Footnote 9: William H. Holcombe, "Sketches of Plantation Life," in the +_Knickerbocker Magazine_, LVII, 631 (June, 1861).] + +The slaves not only had their own functionaries in mystic matters, +including a remnant of witchcraft, but in various temporal concerns also. +Foremen, chosen by masters with the necessary sanction of the slaves, had +industrial and police authority; nurses were minor despots in sick rooms +and plantation hospitals; many an Uncle Remus was an oracle in folklore; +and many an Aunt Dinah was arbitress of style in turbans and of elegancies +in general. Even in the practice of medicine a negro here and there gained +a sage's reputation. The governor of Virginia reported in 1729 that he had +"met with a negro, a very old man, who has performed many wonderful cures +of diseases. For the sake of his freedom he has revealed the medicine, a +concoction of roots and barks.... There is no room to doubt of its being +a certain remedy here, and of singular use among the negroes--it is well +worth the price (L60) of the negro's freedom, since it is now known how to +cure slaves without mercury."[10] And in colonial South Carolina a slave +named Caesar was particularly famed for his cure for poison, which was a +decoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rum +and lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in +case of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription +published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal which +printed it found its copies exhausted by the demand.[11] An example of more +common episodes appears in a letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, +to Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall, asking that "Brother Tom," Carter's +coachman, be sent to see a sick child in his quarter. Dawson continued: +"The black people at this place hath more faith in him as a doctor than any +white doctor; and as I wrote you in a former letter I cannot expect you to +lose your man's time, etc., for nothing, but am quite willing to pay for +same."[12] + +[Footnote 10: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913), +p. 53, note.] + +[Footnote 11: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 25, 1751.] + +[Footnote 12: MS. in the Carter papers, Virginia Historical Society.] + +Each plantation had a double head in the master and the mistress. The +latter, mother of a romping brood of her own and over-mother of the +pickaninny throng, was the chatelaine of the whole establishment. Working +with a never flagging constancy, she carried the indoor keys, directed the +household routine and the various domestic industries, served as head nurse +for the sick, and taught morals and religion by precept and example. +Her hours were long, her diversions few, her voice quiet, her influence +firm.[13] Her presence made the plantation a home; her absence would have +made it a factory. The master's concern was mainly with the able-bodied in +the routine of the crops. He laid the plans, guessed the weather, ordered +the work, and saw to its performance. He was out early and in late, +directing, teaching, encouraging, and on occasion punishing. Yet he found +time for going to town and for visits here and there, time for politics, +and time for sports. If his duty as he saw it was sometimes grim, and +his disappointments keen, hearty diversions were at hand to restore his +equanimity. His horn hung near and his hounds made quick response on +Reynard's trail, and his neighbors were ready to accept his invitations and +give theirs lavishly in return, whether to their houses or to their fields. +When their absences from home were long, as they might well be in the +public service, they were not unlikely upon return to meet such a reception +as Henry Laurens described: "I found nobody there but three of our old +domestics--Stepney, Exeter and big Hagar. These drew tears from me by their +humble and affectionate salutes. My knees were clasped, my hands kissed, +my very feet embraced, and nothing less than a very--I can't say fair, but +full--buss of my lips would satisfy the old man weeping and sobbing in my +face.... They ... held my hands, hung upon me; I could scarce get from +them. 'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never thought to see you again; now I am +happy; Ah, I never thought to see you again.'"[14] + +[Footnote 13: Emily J. Putnam, _The Lady_ (New York, 1910), pp. 282-323.] + +[Footnote 14: D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 436.] + +Among the clearest views of plantation life extant are those of two +Northern tutors who wrote of their Southern sojourns. One was Philip +Fithian who went from Princeton in 1773 to teach the children of Colonel +Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall in the "Northern Neck" of Virginia, probably +the most aristocratic community of the whole South: the other was A. de Puy +Van Buren who left Battle Creek in the eighteen-fifties to seek health and +employment in Mississippi and found them both, and happiness too, amid the +freshly settled folk on the banks of the Yazoo River. Each of these made +jottings now and then of the work and play of the negroes, but both of them +were mainly impressed by the social regime in which they found themselves +among the whites. Fithian marveled at the evidences of wealth and the +stratification of society, but he reckoned that a well recommended +Princeton graduate, with no questions asked as to his family, fortune or +business, would be rated socially as on an equal footing with the owner +of a L10,000 estate, though this might be discounted one-half if he were +unfashionably ignorant of dancing, boxing, fencing, fiddling and cards.[15] +He was attracted by the buoyancy, the good breeding and the cordiality of +those whom he met, and particularly by the sound qualities of Colonel and +Mrs. Carter with whom he dwelt; but as a budding Presbyterian preacher he +was a little shocked at first by the easy-going conduct of the Episcopalian +planters on Sundays. The time at church, he wrote, falls into three +divisions: first, that before service, which is filled by the giving and +receiving of business letters, the reading of advertisements and the +discussion of crop prices and the lineage and qualities of favorite horses; +second, "in the church at service, prayrs read over in haste, a sermon +seldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound +morality or deep, studied metaphysicks;"[16] third, "after service is over, +three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the church among the +crowd, in which time you will be invited by several different gentlemen +home with them to dinner." + +[Footnote 15: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), +p. 287.] + +[Footnote 16: Fithian _Journal and Letters_, p. 296.] + +Van Buren found the towns in the Yazoo Valley so small as barely to be +entitled to places on the map; he found the planters' houses to be commonly +mere log structures, as the farmers' houses about his own home in Michigan +had been twenty years before; and he found the roads so bad that the mule +teams could hardly draw their wagons nor the spans of horses their chariots +except in dry weather. But when on his horseback errands in search of a +position he learned to halloo from the roadway and was regularly met at +each gate with an extended hand and a friendly "How do you do, sir? Won't +you alight, come in, take a seat and sit awhile?"; when he was invariably +made a member of any circle gathered on the porch and refreshed with cool +water from the cocoanut dipper or with any other beverages in circulation; +when he was asked as a matter of course to share any meal in prospect and +to spend the night or day, he discovered charms even in the crudities of +the pegs for hanging saddles on the porch and the crevices between the logs +of the wall for the keeping of pipes and tobacco, books and newspapers. +Finally, when the planter whose house he had made headquarters for two +months declined to accept a penny in payment, Van Buren's heart overflowed. +The boys whom he then began to teach he found particularly apt in +historical studies, and their parents with whom he dwelt were thorough +gentlefolk. + +Toward the end of his narrative, Van Buren expressed the thought that +Mississippi, the newly settled home of people from all the older Southern +states, exemplified the manners of all. He was therefore prompted to +generalize and interpret: "A Southern gentleman is composed of the same +material that a Northern gentleman is, only it is tempered by a Southern +clime and mode of life. And if in this temperament there is a little more +urbanity and chivalry, a little more politeness and devotion to the ladies, +a little more _suaviter in modo_, why it is theirs--be fair and acknowledge +it, and let them have it. He is from the mode of life he lives, especially +at home, more or less a cavalier; he invariably goes a-horseback. His boot +is always spurred, and his hand ensigned with the riding-whip. Aside from +this he is known by his bearing--his frankness and firmness." Furthermore +he is a man of eminent leisureliness, which Van Buren accounts for as +follows: "Nature is unloosed of her stays there; she is not crowded for +time; the word haste is not in her vocabulary. In none of the seasons is +she stinted to so short a space to perform her work as at the North. She +has leisure enough to bud and blossom--to produce and mature fruit, and do +all her work. While on the other hand in the North right the reverse is +true. Portions are taken off the fall and spring to lengthen out the +winter, making his reign nearly half the year. This crowds the work of +the whole year, you might say, into about half of it. This ... makes the +essential difference between a Northerner and a Southerner. They are +children of their respective climes; and this is why Southrons are so +indifferent about time; they have three months more of it in a year than we +have." [17] + +[Footnote 17: A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the +South_, pp. 232-236.] + +A key to Van Buren's enthusiasm is given by a passage in the diary of +the great English reporter, William H. Russell: "The more one sees of a +planter's life the greater is the conviction that its charms come from a +particular turn of mind, which is separated by a wide interval from modern +ideas in Europe. The planter is a denomadized Arab;--he has fixed himself +with horses and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women with +Oriental care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tender +and hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming, +because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments of +womanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudeness +about it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents are +visible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, in +its decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery."[18] The Southerners +themselves took its incongruities much as a matter of course. The regime +was to their minds so clearly the best attainable under the circumstances +that its roughnesses chafed little. The plantations were homes to which, +as they were fond of singing, their hearts turned ever; and the negroes, +exasperating as they often were to visiting strangers, were an element +in the home itself. The problem of accommodation, which was the central +problem of the life, was on the whole happily solved. + +[Footnote 18: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, +1863), p. 285.] + +The separate integration of the slaves was no more than rudimentary. They +were always within the social mind and conscience of the whites, as the +whites in turn were within the mind and conscience of the blacks. The +adjustments and readjustments were mutually made, for although the masters +had by far the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by no +means devoid of influence. A sagacious employer has well said, after long +experience, "a negro understands a white man better than the white man +understands the negro."[19] This knowledge gave a power all its own. The +general regime was in fact shaped by mutual requirements, concessions +and understandings, producing reciprocal codes of conventional morality. +Masters of the standard type promoted Christianity and the customs of +marriage and parental care, and they instructed as much by example as +by precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences, and +permitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought the slaves could be +trusted not to abuse; they refrained from selling slaves except under +the stress of circumstances; they avoided cruel, vindictive and captious +punishments, and endeavored to inspire effort through affection rather +than through fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderate +industrial results. In short their despotism, so far as it might properly +be so called was benevolent in intent and on the whole beneficial in +effect. + +[Footnote 19: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of +Economics_ [New Orleans, 1911], p. 8.] + +Some planters there were who inflicted severe punishments for disobedience +and particularly for the offense of running away; and the community +condoned and even sanctioned a certain degree of this. Otherwise no planter +would have printed such descriptions of scars and brands as were fairly +common in the newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the recapture +of absconders.[20] When severity went to an excess that was reckoned as +positive cruelty, however, the law might be invoked if white witnesses +could be had; or the white neighbors or the slaves themselves might apply +extra-legal retribution. The former were fain to be content with inflicting +social ostracism or with expelling the offender from the district;[21] the +latter sometimes went so far as to set fire to the oppressor's house or to +accomplish his death by poison, cudgel, knife or bullet.[22] + +[Footnote 20: Examples are reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, +79-91.] + +[Footnote 21: An instance is given in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the +Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., [1914]), p. 75.] + +[Footnote 22: For instances _see Plantation and Frontier_, II, 117-121.] + +In the typical group there was occasion for terrorism on neither side. The +master was ruled by a sense of dignity, duty and moderation, and the +slaves by a moral code of their own. This embraced a somewhat obsequious +obedience, the avoidance of open indolence and vice, the attainment of +moderate skill in industry, and the cultivation of the master's good +will and affection. It winked at petty theft, loitering and other little +laxities, while it stressed good manners and a fine faithfulness in major +concerns. While the majority were notoriously easy-going, very many made +their master's interests thoroughly their own; and many of the masters had +perfect confidence in the loyalty of the bulk of their servitors. When on +the eve of secession Edmund Ruffin foretold[23] the fidelity which the +slaves actually showed when the war ensued, he merely voiced the faith of +the planter class. + +[Footnote 23: _Debowfs Review_, XXX, 118-120 (January, 1861).] + +In general the relations on both sides were felt to be based on pleasurable +responsibility. The masters occasionally expressed this in their letters. +William Allason, for example, who after a long career as a merchant at +Falmouth, Virginia, had retired to plantation life, declined his niece's +proposal in 1787 that he return to Scotland to spend his declining years. +In enumerating his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing which +in your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithful +slaves, which perhaps we have raised from their earliest breath. Even this, +however, some can do, as with horses, etc., but I must own that it is not +in my disposition."[24] + +[Footnote 24: Letter dated Jan. 22, 1787, in the Allason MS. mercantile +books, Virginia State Library.] + +Others were yet more expressive when they came to write their wills. +Thus[25] Howell Cobb of Houston County, Georgia, when framing his testament +in 1817 which made his body-servant "to be what he is really deserving, a +free man," and gave an annuity along with virtual freedom to another slave, +of an advanced age, said that the liberation of the rest of his slaves was +prevented by a belief that the care of generous and humane masters would +be much better for them than a state of freedom. Accordingly he bequeathed +these to his wife who he knew from her goodness of temper would treat them +with unflagging kindness. But should the widow remarry, thereby putting her +property under the control of a stranger, the slaves and the plantation +were at once to revert to the testator's brother who was recommended to +bequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he were deemed worthy of the +trust. "It is my most ardent desire that in whatsoever hands fortune +may place said negroes," the will enjoined, "that all the justice and +indulgence may be shown them that is consistent with a state of slavery. I +flatter myself with the hope that none of my relations or connections will +be so ungrateful to my memory as to treat or use them otherwise." Surely +upon the death of such a master the slaves might, with even more than usual +unction, raise their melodious refrain: + +[Footnote 25: MS. copy in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, +Ga. The nephew mentioned in the will was Howell Cobb of Confederate +prominence.] + + Down in de cawn fiel' + Hear dat mo'nful soun'; + All de darkies am aweepin', + Massa's in de col', col' ground. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +PLANTATION TENDENCIES + + +Every typical settlement in English America was in its first phase a bit +of the frontier. Commerce was rudimentary, capital scant, and industry +primitive. Each family had to suffice itself in the main with its own +direct produce. No one could afford to specialize his calling, for the +versatility of the individual was wellnigh a necessity of life. This phase +lasted only until some staple of export was found which permitted the rise +of external trade. Then the fruit of such energy as could be spared from +the works of bodily sustenance was exchanged for the goods of the outer +world; and finally in districts of special favor for staples, the bulk of +the community became absorbed in the special industry and procured most of +its consumption goods from without. + +In the hidden coves of the Southern Alleghanies the primitive regime has +proved permanent. In New England where it was but gradually replaced +through the influence first of the fisheries and then of manufacturing, it +survived long enough to leave an enduring spirit of versatile enterprise, +evidenced in the plenitude of "Yankee notions." In the Southern lowlands +and Piedmont, however, the pristine advantages of self-sufficing industry +were so soon eclipsed by the profits to be had from tobacco, rice, indigo, +sugar or cotton, that in large degree the whole community adopted a +stereotyped economy with staple production as its cardinal feature. +The earnings obtained by the more efficient producers brought an early +accumulation of capital, and at the same time the peculiar adaptability of +all the Southern staples to production on a large scale by unfree labor +prompted the devotion of most of the capital to the purchase of servants +and slaves. Thus in every district suited to any of these staples, the +growth of an industrial and social system like that of Europe and the +Northern States was cut short and the distinctive Southern scheme of things +developed instead. + +This regime was conditioned by its habitat, its products and the racial +quality of its labor supply, as well as by the institution of slavery and +the traditional predilections of the masters. The climate of the South was +generally favorable to one or another of the staples except in the elevated +tracts in and about the mountain ranges. The soil also was favorable except +in the pine barrens which skirted the seaboard. Everywhere but in the +alluvial districts, however, the land had only a surface fertility, and all +the staples, as well as their great auxiliary Indian corn, required the +fields to be kept clean and exposed to the weather; and the heavy rainfall +of the region was prone to wash off the soil from the hillsides and to +leach the fertile ingredients through the sands of the plains. But so +spacious was the Southern area that the people never lacked fresh fields +when their old ones were outworn. Hence, while public economy for the long +run might well have suggested a conservation of soil at the expense of +immediate crops, private economy for the time being dictated the opposite +policy; and its dictation prevailed, as it has done in virtually all +countries and all ages. Slaves working in squads might spread manure and +sow soiling crops if so directed, as well as freemen working individually; +and their failure to do so was fully paralleled by similar neglect at the +North in the same period. New England, indeed, was only less noted than the +South for exhausted fields and abandoned farms. The newness of the country, +the sparseness of population and the cheapness of land conspired with +crops, climate and geological conditions to promote exploitive methods. +The planters were by no means alone in shaping their program to fit these +circumstances.[1] The heightened speed of the consequences was in a sense +merely an unwelcome proof of their system's efficiency. Their laborers, by +reason of being slaves, must at word of command set forth on a trek of +a hundred or a thousand miles. No racial inertia could hinder nor local +attachments hold them. In the knowledge of this the masters were even more +alert than other men of the time for advantageous new locations; and they +were accordingly fain to be content with rude houses and flimsy fences in +any place of sojourn, and to let their hills remain studded with stumps as +well as to take the exhaustion of the soil as a matter of course.[2] + +[Footnote 1 Edmund Ruffin, _Address on the opposite results of exhausting +and fertilizing systems of agriculture. Read before the South Carolina +Institute, November 18, 1852_ (Charleston, 1853), pp. 12, 13.] + +[Footnote 2 W.L. Trenholm, "The Southern States, their social and +industrial history, conditions and needs," in the _Journal of Social +Science_, no. IX (January, 1878).] + +Migration produced a more or less thorough segregation of types, for +planters and farmers respectively tended to enter and remain in the +districts most favorable to them.[3] The monopolization of the rice and +sugar industries by the planters, has been described in previous chapters. +At the other extreme the farming regime was without a rival throughout the +mountain regions, in the Shenandoah and East Tennessee Valleys and in +large parts of Kentucky and Missouri where the Southern staples would not +flourish, and in great tracts of the pine barrens where the quality of +the soil repelled all but the unambitious. The tobacco and cotton belts +remained as the debatable ground in which the two systems might compete on +more nearly even terms, though in some cotton districts the planters had +always an overwhelming advantage. In the Mississippi bottoms, for example, +the solid spread of the fields facilitated the supervision of large gangs +at work, and the requirement of building and maintaining great levees on +the river front virtually debarred operations by small proprietors. The +extreme effects of this are illustrated in Issa-quena County, Mississippi, +and Concordia Parish, Louisiana, where in 1860 the slaveholdings averaged +thirty and fifty slaves each, and where except for plantation overseers +and their families there were virtually no non-slaveholders present. The +Alabama prairies, furthermore, showed a plantation predominance almost as +complete. In the six counties of Dallas, Greene, Lowndes, Macon, Perry, +Sumter and Wilcox, for example, the average slaveholdings ranged from +seventeen to twenty-one each, and the slaveholding families were from twice +to six times as numerous as the non-slaveholding ones. Even in the more +rugged parts of the cotton belt and in the tobacco zone as well, the same +tendency toward the engrossment of estates prevailed, though in milder +degree and with lesser effects. + +[Footnote 3 F.V. Emerson, "Geographical Influences in American Slavery," in +the American Geographical Society _Bulletin_, XLIII (1911), 13-26, 106-118, +170-181.] + +This widespread phenomenon did not escape the notice of contemporaries. Two +members of the South Carolina legislature described it as early as 1805 in +substance as follows: "As one man grows wealthy and thereby increases his +stock of negroes, he wants more land to employ them on; and being fully +able, he bids a large price for his less opulent neighbor's plantation, who +by selling advantageously here can raise money enough to go into the back +country, where he can be more on a level with the most forehanded, can get +lands cheaper, and speculate or grow rich by industry as he pleases."[4] +Some three decades afterward another South Carolinian spoke sadly "on the +incompatibleness of large plantations with neighboring farms, and their +uniform tendency to destroy the yeoman."[5] Similarly Dr. Basil Manly,[6] +president of the University of Alabama, spoke in 1841 of the inveterate +habit of Southern farmers to buy more land and slaves and plod on captive +to the customs of their ancestors; and C.C. Clay, Senator from Alabama, +said in 1855 of his native county of Madison, which lay on the Tennessee +border: "I can show you ... the sad memorials of the artless and exhausting +culture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking the cream off their +lands, unable to restore them by rest, manures or otherwise, are going +further west and south in search of other virgin lands which they may and +will despoil and impoverish in like manner. Our wealthier planters, with +greater means and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, +extending their plantations and adding to their slave force. The wealthy +few, who are able to live on smaller profits and to give their blasted +fields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merely +independent.... In traversing that county one will discover numerous farm +houses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupied +by slaves, or tenantless, deserted and dilapidated; he will observe +fields, once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those evil +harbingers fox-tail and broomsedge; he will see the moss growing on the +mouldering walls of once thrifty villages; and will find 'one only master +grasps the whole domain' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen white +families. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty years ago scarce +a forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is already +exhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia and +the Carolinas; the freshness of its agricultural glory is gone, the vigor +of its youth is extinct, and the spirit of desolation seems brooding over +it."[7] + +[Footnote 4: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, p. 878.] + +[Footnote 5: Quoted in Francis Lieber, _Slavery, Plantations and the +Yeomanry_ (Loyal Publication Society, no. 29, New York, 1863), p. 5.] + +[Footnote 6: _Tuscaloosa Monitor_, April 13, 1842.] + +[Footnote 7: _DeBow's Review_, XIX, 727.] + +The census returns for Madison County show that in 1830 when the gross +population was at its maximum the whites and slaves were equally numerous, +and that by 1860 while the whites had diminished by a fourth the slaves had +increased only by a twentieth. This suggests that the farmers were drawn, +not driven, away. + +The same trend may be better studied in the uplands of eastern Georgia +where earlier settlements gave a longer experience and where fuller +statistics permit a more adequate analysis. In the county of Oglethorpe, +typical of that area, the whites in the year 1800 were more than twice as +many as the slaves, the non-slaveholding families were to the slaveholders +in the ratio of 8 to 5, and slaveholders on the average had but 5 +slaves each. In 1820 the county attained its maximum population for the +ante-bellum period, and competition between the industrial types was +already exerting its full effect. The whites were of the same number as +twenty years before, but the slaves now exceeded them; the slaveholding +families also slightly exceeded those who had none, and the scale of the +average slaveholding had risen to 8.5. Then in the following forty years +while the whites diminished and the number of slaves remained virtually +constant, the scale of the average slaveholding rose to 12.2; the number of +slaveholders shrank by a third and the non-slaveholders by two thirds.[8] +The smaller slaveholders, those we will say with less than ten slaves each, +ought of course to be classed among the farmers. When this is done the +farmers of Oglethorpe appear to have been twice as many as the planters +even in 1860. But this is properly offset by rating the average plantation +there at four or five times the industrial scale of the average farm, which +makes it clear that the plantation regime had grown dominant. + +[Footnote 8: U.B. Phillips, "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black +Belts," in the _American Historical Review_, XI, 810-813 (July, 1906).] + +In such a district virtually everyone was growing cotton to the top of his +ability. When the price of the staple was high, both planters and farmers +prospered in proportion to their scales. Those whose earnings were greatest +would be eager to enlarge their fields, and would make offers for adjoining +lands too tempting for some farmers to withstand. These would sell out and +move west to resume cotton culture to better advantage than before. When +cotton prices were low, however, the farmers, feeling the stress most +keenly, would be inclined to forsake staple production. But in such case +there was no occasion for them to continue cultivating lands best fit for +cotton. The obvious policy would be to sell their homesteads to neighboring +planters and move to cheaper fields beyond the range of planters' +competition. Thus the farmers were constantly pioneering in districts of +all sorts, while the plantation regime, whether by the prosperity and +enlargement of the farms or by the immigration of planters, or both, was +constantly replacing the farming scale in most of the staple areas. + +In the oldest districts of all, however, the lowlands about the Chesapeake, +the process went on to a final stage in which the bulk of the planters, +after exhausting the soil for staple purposes, departed westward and were +succeeded in their turn by farmers, partly native whites and free negroes +and partly Northerners trickling in, who raised melons, peanuts, potatoes, +and garden truck for the Northern city markets. + +Throughout the Southern staple areas the plantations waxed and waned in a +territorial progression. The regime was a broad billow moving irresistibly +westward and leaving a trough behind. At the middle of the nineteenth +century it was entering Texas, its last available province, whose cotton +area it would have duly filled had its career escaped its catastrophic +interruption. What would have occurred after that completion, without the +war, it is interesting to surmise. Probably the crest of the billow would +have subsided through the effect of an undertow setting eastward again. +Belated immigrants, finding the good lands all engrossed, would have +returned to their earlier homes, to hold their partially exhausted soils +in higher esteem than before and to remedy the depletion by reformed +cultivation. That the billow did not earlier give place to a level flood +was partly due to the shortage of slaves; for the African trade was closed +too soon for the stock to fill the country in these decades. To the same +shortage was owing such opportunity as the white yeomanry had in staple +production. The world offered a market, though not at high prices, for a +greater volume of the crops than the plantation slaves could furnish; the +farmers supplied the deficit. + +Free workingmen in general, whether farmers, artisans or unskilled wage +earners, merely filled the interstices in and about the slave plantations. +One year in the eighteen-forties a planter near New Orleans, attempting to +dispense with slave labor, assembled a force of about a hundred Irish and +German immigrants for his crop routine. Things went smoothly until the +midst of the grinding season, when with one accord the gang struck for +double pay. Rejecting the demand the planter was unable to proceed with +his harvest and lost some ten thousand dollars worth of his crop.[9] The +generality of the planters realized, without such a demonstration, that +each year must bring its crop crisis during which an overindulgence by the +laborers in the privileges of liberty might bring ruin to the employers. +To secure immunity from this they were the more fully reconciled to the +limitations of their peculiar labor supply. Freemen white or black might +be convenient as auxiliaries, and were indeed employed in many instances +whether on annual contract as blacksmiths and the like or temporarily +as emergency helpers in the fields; but negro slaves were the standard +composition of the gangs. This brought it about that whithersoever the +planters went they carried with them crowds of negro slaves and all the +problems and influences to which the presence of negroes and the prevalence +of slavery gave rise. + +[Footnote 9: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_, +(London, 1850), II, 162, 163.] + +One of the consequences was to keep foreign immigration small. In the +colonial period the trade in indentured servants recruited the white +population, and most of those who came in that status remained as permanent +citizens of the South; but such Europeans as came during the nineteenth +century were free to follow their own reactions without submitting to a +compulsory adjustment. Many of them found the wage-earning opportunity +scant, for the slaves were given preference by their masters when steady +occupations were to be filled, and odd jobs were often the only recourse +for outsiders. This was an effect of the slavery system. Still more +important, however, was the repugnance which the newcomers felt at working +and living alongside the blacks; and this was a consequence not of the +negroes being slaves so much as of the slaves being negroes. It was +a racial antipathy which when added to the experience of industrial +disadvantage pressed the bulk of the newcomers northwestward beyond the +confines of the Southern staple belts, and pressed even many of the native +whites in the same direction. + +This intrenched the slave plantations yet more strongly in their local +domination, and by that very fact it hampered industrial development. Great +landed proprietors, it is true, have oftentimes been essential for making +beneficial innovations. Thus the remodeling of English agriculture which +Jethro Tull and Lord Townsend instituted in the eighteenth century could +not have been set in progress by any who did not possess their combination +of talent and capital.[10] In the ante-bellum South, likewise, it was the +planters, and necessarily so, who introduced the new staples of sea-island +cotton and sugar, the new devices of horizontal plowing and hillside +terracing, the new practice of seed selection, and the new resource of +commercial fertilizers. Yet their constant bondage to the staples debarred +the whole community in large degree from agricultural diversification, and +their dependence upon gangs of negro slaves kept the average of skill and +assiduity at a low level. + +[Footnote 10: R.E. Prothero, _English Farming, past and present_, (London, +1912), chap. 7.] + +The negroes furnished inertly obeying minds and muscles; slavery provided a +police; and the plantation system contributed the machinery of direction. +The assignment of special functions to slaves of special aptitudes would +enhance the general efficiency; the cooerdination of tasks would prevent +waste of effort; and the conduct of a steady routine would lessen the +mischiefs of irresponsibility. But in the work of a plantation squad no +delicate implements could be employed, for they would be broken; and no +discriminating care in the handling of crops could be had except at a cost +of supervision which was generally prohibitive. The whole establishment +would work with success only when the management fully recognized and +allowed for the crudity of the labor. + +The planters faced this fact with mingled resolution and resignation. The +sluggishness of the bulk of their slaves they took as a racial trait to +be conquered by discipline, even though their ineptitude was not to +be eradicated; the talents and vigor of their exceptional negroes and +mulattoes, on the other hand, they sought to foster by special training and +rewards. But the prevalence of slavery which aided them in the one policy +hampered them in the other, for it made the rewards arbitrary instead of +automatic and it restricted the scope of the laborers' employments and of +their ambitions as well. The device of hiring slaves to themselves, which +had an invigorating effect here and there in the towns, could find little +application in the country; and the paternalism of the planters could +provide no fully effective substitute. Hence the achievements of the +exceptional workmen were limited by the status of slavery as surely as +the progress of the generality was restricted by the fact of their being +negroes. + +A further influence of the plantation system was to hamper the growth of +towns. This worked in several ways. As for manufactures, the chronic demand +of the planters for means with which to enlarge their scales of operations +absorbed most of the capital which might otherwise have been available for +factory promotion. A few cotton mills were built in the Piedmont where +water power was abundant, and a few small ironworks and other industries; +but the supremacy of agriculture was nowhere challenged. As for commerce, +the planters plied the bulk of their trade with distant wholesale dealers, +patronizing the local shopkeepers only for petty articles or in emergencies +when transport could not be awaited; and the slaves for their part, while +willing enough to buy of any merchant within reach, rarely had either money +or credit. + +Towns grew, of course, at points on the seaboard where harbors were good, +and where rivers or railways brought commerce from the interior. Others +rose where the fall line marked the heads of river navigation, and on the +occasional bluffs of the Mississippi, and finally a few more at railroad +junctions. All of these together numbered barely three score, some of which +counted their population by hundreds rather than by thousands; and in the +wide intervals between there was nothing but farms, plantations and thinly +scattered villages. In the Piedmont, country towns of fairly respectable +dimensions rose here and there, though many a Southern county-seat could +boast little more than a court house and a hitching rack. Even as regards +the seaports, the currents of trade were too thin and divergent to permit +of large urban concentration, for the Appalachian water-shed shut off +the Atlantic ports from the commerce of the central basin; and even the +ambitious construction of railroads to the northwest, fostered by the +seaboard cities, merely enabled the Piedmont planters to get their +provisions overland, and barely affected the volume of the seaboard trade. +New Orleans alone had a location promising commercial greatness; but her +prospects were heavily diminished by the building of the far away Erie +Canal and the Northern trunk line railroads which diverted the bulk of +Northwestern trade from the Gulf outlet. + +As conditions were, the slaveholding South could have realized a +metropolitan life only through absentee proprietorships. In the Roman +_latifundia_, which overspread central and southern Italy after the +Hannibalic war, absenteeism was a chronic feature and a curse. The +overseers there were commonly not helpers in the proprietors' daily +routine, but sole managers charged with a paramount duty of procuring +the greatest possible revenues and transmitting them to meet the urban +expenditures of their patrician employers. The owners, having no more +personal touch with their great gangs of slaves than modern stockholders +have with the operatives in their mills, exploited them accordingly. Where +humanity and profits were incompatible, business considerations were likely +to prevail. Illustrations of the policy may be drawn from Cato the Elder's +treatise on agriculture. Heavy work by day, he reasoned, would not only +increase the crops but would cause deep slumber by night, valuable as a +safeguard against conspiracy; discord was to be sown instead of harmony +among the slaves, for the same purpose of hindering plots; capital +sentences when imposed by law were to be administered in the presence of +the whole corps for the sake of their terrorizing effect; while rations for +the able-bodied were not to exceed a fixed rate, those for the sick were to +be still more frugally stinted; and the old and sick slaves were to be +sold along with other superfluities.[11] Now, Cato was a moralist of wide +repute, a stoic it is true, but even so a man who had a strong sense of +duty. If such were his maxims, the oppressions inflicted by his fellow +proprietors and their slave drivers must have been stringent indeed. + +[Footnote 11: A.H.J. Greenidge, _History of Rome during the later Republic +and the early Principate_ (New York, 1905), I, 64-85; M. Porcius Cato, _De +Agri Cultura_, Keil ed. (Leipsig, 1882).] + +The heartlessness of the Roman _latifundiarii_ was the product partly of +their absenteeism, partly of the cheapness of their slaves which were +poured into the markets by conquests and raids in all quarters of the +Mediterranean world, and partly of the lack of difference between masters +and slaves in racial traits. In the ante-bellum South all these conditions +were reversed: the planters were commonly resident; the slaves were costly; +and the slaves were negroes, who for the most part were by racial quality +submissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiable +and ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invited +paternalism rather than repression. Many a city slave in Rome was the boon +companion of his master, sharing his intellectual pleasures and his revels, +while most of those on the _latifundia_ were driven cattle. It was hard to +maintain a middle adjustment for them. In the South, on the other hand, the +medium course was the obvious thing. The bulk of the slaves, because they +were negroes, because they were costly, and because they were in personal +touch, were pupils and working wards, while the planters were teachers and +guardians as well as masters and owners. There was plenty of coercion in +the South; but in comparison with the harshness of the Roman system the +American regime was essentially mild. + +Every plantation of the standard Southern type was, in fact, a school +constantly training and controlling pupils who were in a backward state of +civilization. Slave youths of special promise, or when special purposes +were in view, might be bound as apprentices to craftsmen at a distance. +Thus James H. Hammond in 1859 apprenticed a fourteen-year-old mulatto boy, +named Henderson, for four years to Charles Axt, of Crawfordville, Georgia, +that he might be taught vine culture. Axt agreed in the indenture to feed +and clothe the boy, pay for any necessary medical attention, teach him his +trade, and treat him with proper kindness. Before six months were ended +Alexander H. Stephens, who was a neighbor of Axt and a friend of Hammond, +wrote the latter that Henderson had run away and that Axt was unfit to have +the care of slaves, especially when on hire, and advised Hammond to take +the boy home. Soon afterward Stephens reported that Henderson had returned +and had been whipped, though not cruelly, by Axt.[12] The further history +of this episode is not ascertainable. Enough of it is on record, however, +to suggest reasons why for the generality of slaves home training was +thought best. + +[Footnote 12: MSS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +This, rudimentary as it necessarily was, was in fact just what the bulk of +the negroes most needed. They were in an alien land, in an essentially +slow process of transition from barbarism to civilization. New industrial +methods of a simple sort they might learn from precepts and occasional +demonstrations; the habits and standards of civilized life they could only +acquire in the main through examples reinforced with discipline. These the +plantation regime supplied. Each white family served very much the function +of a modern social settlement, setting patterns of orderly, well bred +conduct which the negroes were encouraged to emulate; and the planters +furthermore were vested with a coercive power, salutary in the premises, of +which settlement workers are deprived. The very aristocratic nature of the +system permitted a vigor of discipline which democracy cannot possess. On +the whole the plantations were the best schools yet invented for the mass +training of that sort of inert and backward people which the bulk of the +American negroes represented. The lack of any regular provision for the +discharge of pupils upon the completion of their training was, of course, a +cardinal shortcoming which the laws of slavery imposed; but even in view +of this, the slave plantation regime, after having wrought the initial and +irreparable misfortune of causing the negroes to be imported, did at +least as much as any system possible in the period could have done toward +adapting the bulk of them to life in a civilized community. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE + + +In barbaric society slavery is a normal means of conquering the isolation +of workers and assembling them in more productive cooerdination. Where +population is scant and money little used it is almost a necessity in the +conduct of large undertakings, and therefore more or less essential for +the advancement of civilization. It is a means of domesticating savage or +barbarous men, analogous in kind and in consequence to the domestication of +the beasts of the field.[1] It was even of advantage to some of the people +enslaved, in that it saved them from extermination when defeated in war, +and in that it gave them touch with more advanced communities than their +own. But this was counterbalanced by the stimulus which the profits of +slave catching gave to wars and raids with all their attendant injuries. +Any benefit to the slave, indeed, was purely incidental. The reason for the +institution's existence was the advantage which accrued to the masters. +So positive and pronounced was this reckoned to be, that such highly +enlightened people as the Greeks and Romans maintained it in the palmiest +days of their supremacies. + +[Footnote 1: This thought was expressed, perhaps for the first time, in +T.R. Dew's essay on slavery (1832); it is elaborated in Gabriel Tarde, _The +Laws of Imitation_ (Parsons tr., New York, 1903), pp. 278, 279.] + +Western Europe in primitive times was no exception. Slavery in a more or +less fully typical form was widespread. When the migrations ended in the +middle ages, however, the rise of feudalism gave the people a thorough +territorial regimentation. The dearth of commerce whether in goods or in +men led gradually to the conversion of the unfree laborers from slaves +into serfs or villeins attached for generations to the lands on which they +wrought. Finally, the people multiplied so greatly and the landless were +so pressed for livelihood that at the beginning of modern times European +society found the removal of bonds conducive to the common advantage. Serfs +freed from their inherited obligations could now seek employment wherever +they would, and landowners, now no longer lords, might employ whom they +pleased. Bondmen gave place to hirelings and peasant proprietors, +status gave place to contract, industrial society was enabled to make +redistributions and readjustments at will, as it had never been before. In +view of the prevailing traits and the density of the population a general +return whether to slavery or serfdom was economically unthinkable. An +intelligent Scotch philanthropist, Fletcher of Saltoun, it is true, +proposed at the end of the seventeenth century that the indigent and their +children be bound as slaves to selected masters as a means of relieving +the terrible distresses of unemployment in his times;[2] but his project +appears to have received no public sanction whatever. The fact that he +published such a plan is more a curious antiquarian item than one of +significance in the history of slavery. Not even the thin edge of a wedge +could possibly be inserted which might open a way to restore what everyone +was on virtually all counts glad to be free of. + +[Footnote 2: W.E.H. Lecky, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ +(New York, 1879), II, 43,44.] + +When the American mining and plantation colonies were established, however, +some phases of the most ancient labor problems recurred. Natural resources +invited industry in large units, but wage labor was not to be had. The +Spaniards found a temporary solution in impressing the tropical American +aborigines, and the English in a recourse to indented white immigrants. But +both soon resorted predominantly for plantation purposes to the importation +of Africans, for whom the ancient institution of slavery was revived. Thus +from purely economic considerations the sophisticated European colonists +of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved themselves and their +descendants, with the connivance of their home governments, in the toils of +a system which on the one hand had served their remote forbears with good +effect, but which on the other hand civilized peoples had long and almost +universally discarded as an incubus. In these colonial beginnings the +negroes were to be had so cheaply and slavery seemed such a simple and +advantageous device when applied to them, that no qualms as to the future +were felt. At least no expressions of them appear in the records of thought +extant for the first century and more of English colonial experience. +And when apprehensions did arise they were concerned with the dangers of +servile revolt, not with any deleterious effects to arise from the economic +nature of slavery in time of peace. + +Now, slavery and indented servitude are analogous to serfdom in that they +may yield to the employers all the proceeds of industry beyond what is +required for the sustenance of the laborers; but they have this difference, +immense for American purposes, that they permit labor to be territorially +shifted, while serfdom keeps it locally fixed. By choosing these +facilitating forms of bondage instead of the one which would have attached +the laborers to the soil, the founders of the colonial regime in industry +doubtless thought they had avoided all economic handicaps in the premises. +Their device, however, was calculated to meet the needs of a situation +where the choice was between bond labor and no labor. As generations passed +and workingmen multiplied in America, the system of indentures for white +immigrants was automatically dissolved; but slavery for the bulk of the +negroes persisted as an integral feature of economic life. Whether this +was conducive or injurious to the prosperity of employers and to the +community's welfare became at length a question to which students far and +wide applied their faculties. Some of the participants in the discussion +considered the problem as one in pure theory; others examined not only the +abstract ratio of slave and free labor efficiency but included in their +view the factor of negro racial traits and the prospects and probable +consequences of abolition under existing circumstances. On the one point +that an average slave might be expected to accomplish less in an hour's +work than an average free laborer, agreement was unanimous; on virtually +every other point the views published were so divergent as to leave the +public more or less distracted. Adam Smith, whose work largely shaped the +course of economic thought for a century following its publication in 1776, +said of slave labor merely that its cost was excessive by reason of its +lack of zest, frugality and inventiveness. The tropical climate of the +sugar colonies, he conceded, might require the labor of negro slaves, +but even there its productiveness would be enhanced by liberal policies +promoting intelligence among the slaves and assimilating their condition to +that of freemen.[3] To some of these points J.B. Say, the next economist to +consider the matter, took exception. Common sense must tell us, said he, +that a slave's maintenance must be less than that of a free workman, since +the master will impose a more drastic frugality than a freeman will adopt +unless a dearth of earnings requires it. The slave's work, furthermore, +is more constant, for the master will not permit so much leisure and +relaxation as the freeman customarily enjoys. Say agreed, however, that +slavery, causing violence and brutality to usurp the place of intelligence, +both hampered the progress of invention and enervated such free laborers as +were in touch with the regime.[4] + +[Footnote 3: Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_, various editions, book I, +chap. 8; book III, chap. 2; book IV, chaps. 7 and 9.] + +[Footnote 4: J.B. Say, _Traite d'Economie Politique_ (Paris, 1803), book I, +chap. 28; in various later editions, book I, chap. 19.] + +The translation of Say's book into English evoked a reply to his views on +slavery by Adam Hodgson, an Englishman with anti-slavery bent who had made +an American tour; but his essay, though fortified with long quotations, +was too rambling and ill digested to influence those who were not already +desirous of being convinced.[5] More substantial was an essay of 1827 by +a Marylander, James Raymond, who cited the experiences of his own +commonwealth to support his contentions that slavery hampered economy by +preventing seasonal shiftings of labor, by requiring employers to support +their operatives in lean years as well as fat, and by hindering the +accumulation of wealth by the laborers. The system, said he, could yield +profits to the masters only in specially fertile districts; and even there +it kept down the growth of population and of land values.[6] + +[Footnote 5: Adam Hodgson, _A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, on the +comparative expense of free and slave labour_ (Liverpool, 1823; New York, +1823).] + +[Footnote 6: James Raymond, _Prize Essay on the Comparative Economy of Free +and Slave Labor in Agriculture_ (Frederick [Md.], 1827), reprinted in the +_African Repository_, III, 97-110 (June, 1827).] + +About the same time Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, +wrote: "Slave labour is undoubtedly the dearest kind of labour; it is all +forced, and forced too from a class of human beings who have the least +propensity to voluntary labour even when it is to benefit themselves +alone." The cost of rearing a slave to the age of self support, he +reckoned, including insurance, at forty dollars a year for fifteen years. +The usual work of a slave field hand, he thought, was barely two-thirds of +what a white laborer at usual wages would perform, and from his earnings +about forty dollars a year must be deducted for his maintenance. When +interest on the investment and a proportion of an overseer's wages were +deducted in addition, he thought the prevalent rate, six to eight dollars +a month and board valued at forty or fifty dollars a year, for free white +farm hands in the Northern states gave a decisive advantage to those who +hired laborers over those who owned them. "Nothing will justify slave +labour in point of economy," he concluded, "but the nature of the soil and +climate which incapacitates a white man from labouring in the summer time, +as on the rich lands in Carolina and Georgia extending one hundred miles +from the seaboard."[7] + +[Footnote 7: Thomas Cooper, _Lectures on the Elements of Political +Economy_, (Columbia [S.C.], 1826), pp. 94, 95.] + +The economic vices of slavery as exemplified in Virginia were elaborated in +an essay printed in 1832 attributed to Jesse Burton Harrison of that state. +Slavery, said this essay, drives away free workmen by stigmatizing labor, +for "nothing but the most abject necessity would lead a white man to hire +himself to work in the fields under the overseer"; it causes exhaustion of +the soil by reason of the negligence it promotes in the workmen and +the stress which overseers are fain to put upon immediate returns; it +discourages all forms of industry but plantation tillage, furthermore, for +although it has not and perhaps cannot be proved that slaves may not be +successfully employed in manufactures, the community has gone and tends +still to go, on that assumption; it discourages mechanic skill, for the +slaves never acquire more than the rudiments of artisanry, and the planters +discourage white craftsmen by giving preference uniformly to their +own laborers. Slave labor is dearer than free, because of its lack of +incentive; the regime costs the community the services of the immigrants +who would otherwise enter; and finally it promotes waste instead of +frugality on the part of both masters and slaves. The only means by which +Virginia could procure profit from slaves, it concluded, was that of +raising them for sale to the lower South; but such profit could only be +gained systematically at a complete sacrifice of honor.[8] + +[Footnote 8: [Jesse Burton Harrison], _Review of the Slave Question, +extracted from the American Quarterly Review, Dec. 1832_. By a Virginian +(Richmond, 1833).] + +Daniel R. Goodloe of North Carolina wrote in 1846 in a similar tone but +with original arguments. Beginning with an exposition of the South's +comparative backwardness in economic development, he showed a twofold +working of the institution of slavery as the cause. For one thing it +lessened the vigor of industry by degrading labor in the estimation of the +poor and engendering pride in the rich; but far more important, it required +employers to sink large amounts of capital in the purchase of laborers +instead of permitting them to pay for work, as the wage system does, out +of current proceeds. It thereby particularly hampered the growth of +manufactures, for in such lines, as well as in commerce, "the fact that +slavery absorbs the bulk of Southern capital must always present an +obstacle to extensive operations." The holding of laborers as property, he +continued, can contribute nothing to production, for the destruction of the +property by the liberation of the slaves would not impair their laboring +efficiency. Hence all the individual wealth which has assumed that shape +has added nothing to the resources of the community. "Slavery merely serves +to appropriate the wages of labor--it distributes wealth, but cannot create +it." It involves expenditure in acquiring early population, then operates +to prevent land improvements and the diversification of industry, +restricting, indeed, even the range of agriculture. The monopoly which the +South has enjoyed in the production of the staples has palliated the evils +of slavery, but at the same time has expanded the system to the point of +great injury to the public. Goodloe accordingly advocated the riddance of +the institution, contending that both landowners and laborers would thereby +benefit. The continued maintenance of the institution, on the other hand, +would bring severe loss to the slaveholders, for within the coming decade +the demand of the Southwest for slaves would be sated, he thought, and +nothing but a great advancement of cotton prices and an unlimited supply of +fertile land for its production could sustain slave prices. "It is +evident that the Southern country approaches a period of great and sudden +depreciation in the value of slave property."[9] + +[Footnote 9: [D.R. Goodloe], _Inquiry into the Causes which have retarded +the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the +Southern States, in which the question of slavery is considered in a +politico-economic point of view. By a Carolinian_. (Washington, 1846.) +_See also_ a similar essay by the same author in the U.S. Commissioner of +Agriculture's _Report_ for 1865, pp. 102-135.] + +The statistical theme of the South's backwardness was used by many other +essayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding regime. With most +of these, however, exemplified saliently by H.R. Helper, logic was to such +extent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from the +proper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy. + +On the other hand, Thomas R. Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turn +of the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery, +attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of the +United States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency. +His central theme was the imperative necessity of maintaining the +enslavement of the negroes on hand until a sound plan was devised and made +applicable for their peaceful and prosperous disposal elsewhere. Among +Dew's disciples, William Harper of South Carolina admitted that slave labor +was dear and unskillful, though he thought it essential for productive +industry in the tropics and sub-tropics, and he considered coercion +necessary for the negroes elsewhere in civilized society. James H. Hammond, +likewise, agreed that "as a general rule ... free labor is cheaper than +slave labor," but in addition to the factor of race he stressed the +sparsity of population in the South as a contributing element in +economically necessitating the maintenance of slavery.[10] + +[Footnote 10: "Essay" (1832), Harper's "Memoir" (1838), and Hammond's +"Letters to Clarkson" (1845) are collected in the _Pro-Slavery Argument_ +(Philadelphia, 1852).] + +Most of the foregoing Southern writers were men of substantial position and +systematic reasoning. N.A. Ware, on the other hand who in 1844 issued in +the capacity of a Southern planter a slender volume of _Notes on Political +Economy_ was both obscure and irresponsible. Contending as his main theme +that protective tariffs were of no injury to the plantation interests, he +asserted that slave labor was incomparably cheaper than free, and attempted +to prove it by ignoring the cost of capital and by reckoning the price +of bacon at four cents a pound and corn at fifteen cents a bushel. Then, +curiously, he delivered himself of the following: "When slavery shall have +run itself out or yielded to the changes and ameliorations of the times, +the owners and all dependent upon it will stand appalled and prostrate, +as the sot whose liquor has been withheld, and nothing but the bad and +worthless habit left to remind the country of its ruinous effects. The +political economist, as well as all wise statesmen in this country, cannot +think of any measure going to discharge slavery that would not be a worse +state than its existence." His own remedy for the depression prevailing at +the time when he wrote, was to divert a large proportion of the slaves from +the glutted business of staple agriculture into manufacturing, for which he +thought them well qualified.[11] Equally fantastic were the ideas of H.C. +Carey of Pennsylvania who dealt here and there with slavery in the course +of his three stout volumes on political economy. His lucubrations are +negligible for the present survey. + +[Footnote 11: [N.A. Ware] _Notes on Political Economy as applicable to the +United States_. By a Southern Planter (New York, 1844), pp. 200-204.] + +All these American writers except Goodloe accomplished little of +substantial quality in the field of economic thought beyond adding details +to the doctrines of Adam Smith and Say. John Stuart Mill in turn did little +more than combine the philosophies of his predecessors. "It is a truism +to assert," said he, "that labour extorted by fear of punishment is +insufficient and unproductive"; yet some people can be driven by the +lash to accomplish what no feasible payment would have induced them to +undertake. In sparsely settled regions, furthermore, slavery may afford +the otherwise unobtainable advantages of labour combination, and it has +undoubtedly hastened industrial development in some American areas. Yet, +since all processes carried on by slave labour are conducted in the rudest +manner, virtually any employer may pay a considerably greater value in +wages to free labour than the maintenance of his slaves has cost him and be +a gainer by the change.[12] + +[Footnote 12: John Stuart Mill, _Principles of Political Economy_ (London, +1848, and later editions), book II, chap. 5.] + +Partly concurring and partly at variance with Mill's views were those which +Edmund Ruffin of Virginia published in a well reasoned essay of 1857, _The +Political Economy of Slavery_. "Slave labor in each individual case and for +each small measure of time," he said, "is more slow and inefficient than +the labor of a free man." On the other hand it is more continuous, for +hirelings are disposed to work fewer hours per day and fewer days per year, +except when wages are so low as to require constant exertion in the +gaining of a bare livelihood. Furthermore, the consolidation of domestic +establishments, which slavery promotes, permits not only an economy in the +purchase of supplies but also a great saving by the specialization of labor +in cooking, washing, nursing, and the care of children, thereby releasing +a large proportion of the women from household routine and rendering them +available for work in the field. An increasing density of population, +however, would depress the returns of industry to the point where slaves +would merely earn their keep, and free laborers would of necessity lengthen +their hours. Finally a still greater glut of labor might come, and indeed +had occurred in various countries of Europe, carrying wages so low that +only the sturdiest free laborers could support themselves and all the +weaker ones must enter a partial pauperism. At such a stage the employment +of slaves could only be continued at a steady deficit, to relieve +themselves from which the masters must resort to a general emancipation. In +the South, however, there were special public reasons, lying in the racial +traits of the slave population, which would make that recourse particularly +deplorable; for the industrial collapse ensuing upon emancipation in the +British West Indies on the one hand, and on the other the pillage and +massacre which occurred in San Domingo and the disorder still prevailing +there, were alternative examples of what might be apprehended from orderly +or revolutionary abolition as the case might be. The Southern people, in +short, might well congratulate themselves that no ending of their existing +regime was within visible prospect.[13] + +[Footnote 13: Edmund Ruffin, _The Political Economy of Slavery_ ([Richmond, +1857]).] + +About the same time a writer in _DeBow's Review_ elaborated the theme that +the comparative advantages of slavery and freedom depended wholly upon the +attainments of the laboring population concerned. "Both are necessarily +recurring types of social organization, and each suited to its peculiar +phase of society." "When a nation or society is in a condition unfit for +self-government, ... often the circumstance of contact with or subjection +by more enlightened nations has been the means of transition to a higher +development." "All that is now needed for the defence of United States +negro slavery and its entire exoneration from reproach is a thorough +investigation of fact; ... and political economy ... must ... pronounce our +system ... no disease, but the normal and healthy condition of a society +formed of such mixed material as ours." "The strong race and the weak, the +civilized and the savage," the one by nature master, the other slave, "are +here not only cast together, but have been born together, grown together, +lived together, worked together, each in his separate sphere striving for +the good of each.... These two races of men are mutually assistant to each +other and are contributing in the largest possible degree consistent with +their mutual powers to the good of each other and mankind." A general +emancipation therefore could bring nothing but a detriment.[14] + +[Footnote 14: _DeBow's Review_, XXI, 331-349, 443-467 (October and +November, 1856).] + +What proved to be the last work in the premises before the overthrow of +slavery in the United States was _The Slave Power, its Character, Career +and Probable Designs_, by J.E. Cairnes, professor of political economy in +the University of Dublin and in Queen's College, Galway. It was published +in 1862 and reissued with appendices in the following year. Cairnes at the +outset scouted the factors of climate and negro racial traits. The sole +economic advantage of slavery, said he, consists in its facilitation +of control in large units; its defects lay in its causing reluctance, +unskilfulness and lack of versatility. The reason for its prevalence in the +South he found in the high fertility and the immense abundance of soil on +the one hand, and on the other the intensiveness of staple cultivation. A +single operative, said he, citing as authority Robert Russell's erroneous +assertion, "might cultivate twenty acres in wheat or Indian corn, but could +not manage more than two in tobacco or three in cotton; therefore the +supervision of a considerable squad is economically feasible in these +though it would not be so in the cereals." These conditions might once have +made slave labor profitable, he conceded; but such possibility was now +doubtless a thing of the distant past. The persistence of the system did +not argue to the contrary, for it would by force of inertia persist as long +as it continued to be self-supporting. + +Turning to a different theme, Cairnes announced that slave labor, since it +had never been and never could be employed with success in manufacturing or +commercial pursuits, must find its whole use in agriculture; and even there +it required large capital, at the same time that the unthrifty habits +inculcated in the masters kept them from accumulating funds. The +consequence was that slaveholding society must necessarily be and remain +heavily in debt. The imperative confinement of slave labor to the most +fertile soils, furthermore, prevented the community from utilizing any +areas of inferior quality; for slaveholding society is so exclusive that it +either expels free labor from its vicinity or deprives it of all industrial +vigor. It is true that some five millions of whites in the South have no +slaves; but these "are now said to exist in this manner in a condition +little removed from savage life, eking out a wretched subsistence by +hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves for occasional jobs, by plunder." +These "mean whites ... are the natural growth of the slave system; ... +regular industry is only known to them as the vocation of slaves, and it is +the one fate which above all others they desire to avoid."[15] + +[Footnote 15: First American edition (New York, 1862), pp. 54, 78, 79.] + +"The constitution of a slave society," he says again, "resolves itself into +three classes, broadly distinguished from each other and connected by no +common interest--the slaves on whom devolves all the regular industry, the +slaveholders who reap all its fruits, and an idle and lawless rabble who +live dispensed over vast plains in a condition little removed from absolute +barbarism."[16] Nowhere can any factors be found which will promote any +progress of civilization so long as slavery persists. The non-slaveholders +will continue in "a life alternating between listless vagrancy and the +excitement of marauding expeditions." "If civilization is to spring up +among the negro race, it will scarcely be contended that this will happen +while they are still slaves; and if the present ruling class are ever to +rise above the existing type, it must be in some other capacity than +as slaveholders."[17] Even as a "probationary discipline" to prepare a +backward people for a higher form of civilized existence, slavery as it +exists in America cannot be justified; for that effect is vitiated by +reason of the domestic slave trade. "Considerations of economy, ... which +under a natural system afford some security for humane treatment by +identifying the master's interest with the slave's preservation, when once +trading in slaves is practised become reasons for racking to the utmost the +toil of the slave; for when his place can at once be supplied from foreign +preserves the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment than +its productiveness while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slave +management in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is +that which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the +utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth."[18] + +[Footnote 16: Ibid., p. 60.] + +[Footnote 17: Ibid., p. 83.] + +[Footnote 18: First American edition (New York, 1862), p. 73.] + +The force of circumstances gave this book a prodigious and lasting vogue. +Its confident and cogent style made skepticism difficult; the dearth of +contrary data prevented impeachment on the one side of the Atlantic, and +on the other side the whole Northern people would hardly criticise such a +vindication of their cause in war by a writer from whose remoteness might +be presumed fairness, and whose professional position might be taken as +giving a stamp of thoroughness and accuracy. Yet the very conditions and +method of the writer made his interpretations hazardous. An economist, +using great caution, might possibly have drawn the whole bulk of his data +from travelers' accounts, as Cairnes did, and still have reached fairly +sound conclusions; but Cairnes gave preference not to the concrete +observations of the travelers but to their generalizations, often biased +or amateurish, and on them erected his own. Furthermore, he ignored such +material as would conflict with his preconceptions. His conclusions, +accordingly, are now true, now false, and while always vivid are seldom +substantially illuminating. His picture of the Southern non-slaveholders, +which, be it observed, he applied in his first edition to five millions +or ten-elevenths of that whole white population, and which he restricted, +under stress of contemporary criticism, only to four million souls in the +second edition,[19] is merely the most extreme of his grotesqueries. The +book was, in short, less an exposition than an exposure. + +[Footnote 19: Ibid., second edition (London, 1863), appendix D.] + +These criticisms of Cairnes will apply in varying lesser degrees to all of +his predecessors in the field. Those who sought the truth merely were in +general short of data; those who could get the facts in any fullness were +too filled with partisan purpose. What was begun as a study was continued +as a dispute, necessarily endless so long as the political issue remained +active. Many data which would have been illuminating, such as plantation +records and slave price quotations, were never systematically assembled; +and the experience resulting from negro emancipation was then too slight +for use in substantial generalizations. The economist M'Culloch, for +example, concluded from the experience of San Domingo and Jamaica that +cane sugar production could not be sustained without slavery;[20] but the +industrial careers of Cuba, Porto Rico and Louisiana since his time have +refuted him. He, like virtually all his contemporaries in economic thought, +confused the several factors of slavery, race traits and the plantation +system; the consequent liability to error was inevitable. + +[Footnote 20: J.R. M'Culloch, _Principles of Political Economy_ (fourth +edition, Edinburgh, 1849), p. 439.] + +Economists of later times have nearly all been too much absorbed in current +problems to give attention to a discarded institution. Most of them have +ignored the subject of slavery altogether, and the concern of the rest with +it has been merely incidental. Nicholson, for example, alludes to it as[21] +"one of the earliest and one of the most enduring forms of poverty," and +again as "the original and universal form of bankruptcy." Smart deals with +it only as concerns the care of workingmen's children: "The one good thing +in slavery was the interest of the master in the future of his workers. +The children of the slaves were the master's property. They were always at +least a valuable asset.... But there is no such continuity in the +relation between the employer [of free labor] and his human cattle. The +best-intentioned employer cannot be expected to be much concerned about the +efficient upkeep of the workman's child when the child is free to go where +he likes.... The child's future is bound up with the father's wage. The +wage may be enough, even when low, to support the father's efficiency, but +it is not necessarily enough to keep up the efficiency of the young laborer +on which the future depends."[22] Loria deals more extensively with +slavery as affected by the valuation of labor,[23] and Gibson[24] examines +elaborately the nature of hypothetically absolute slavery in analyzing the +earnings of labor. The contributions of both Loria and Gibson will be used +below. The economic bearings of the institution in history still await +satisfactory analysis. + +[Footnote 21: J.S. Nicholson, _Principles of Political Economy_ (New York, +1898), I, 221, 391.] + +[Footnote 22: William Smart, _The Distribution of Income_ (London, 1899), +pp. 296, 297.] + +[Footnote 23: Achille Loria, _La Costitutione Economica Odierna_ (Turin, +1899), chap. 6, part 2.] + +[Footnote 24: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909).] + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +BUS + + +An expert accountant has well defined the property of a master in his slave +as an annuity extending throughout the slave's working life and amounting +to the annual surplus which the labor of the slave produced over and above +the cost of his maintenance.[1] Before any profit accrued to the master +in any year, however, various deductions had to be subtracted from this +surplus. These included interest on the slave's cost, regardless of +whether he had been reared by his owner or had been bought for a price; +amortization of the capital investment; insurance against the slave's +premature death or disability and against his escape from service; +insurance also for his support when incapacitated whether by illness, +accident or old age; taxes; and wages of superintendence. None of these +charges would any sound method of accounting permit the master to escape. + +[Footnote 1: Arthur H. Gibson, _Human Economics_ (London, 1909), p. 202. +The substance of the present paragraph and the three following ones is +mostly in close accord with Gibson's analysis.] + +The maintenance of the slave at the full rate required for the preservation +of lusty physique was essential. The master could not reduce it below that +standard without impairing his property as well as lessening its immediate +return; and as a rule he could shift none of the charge to other shoulders, +for the public would grant his workmen no dole from its charity funds. On +the other hand, he was often induced to raise the scale above the minimum +standard in order to increase the zeal and efficiency of his corps. In any +case, medical attendance and the like was necessarily included in the cost +of maintenance. + +The capital investment in a slave reared by his master would include +charges for the insurance of the child's mother at the time of his birth +and for her deficit of routine work before and afterward; the food, +clothing, nurse's care and incidentals furnished in childhood; the surplus +of supplies over earnings in the period of youth while the slave was not +fully earning his own keep and his overhead charges; compound interest on +all of these until the slave reached adolescence or early manhood; and a +proportion of similar charges on behalf of other children in his original +group who had died in youth. In his teens the slave's earnings would +gradually increase until they covered all his current charges, including +the cost of supervision; and shortly before the age of twenty he would +perhaps begin to yield a net return to the owner. + +A slave's highest rate of earning would be reached of course when his +physical maturity and his training became complete, and would normally +continue until his bodily powers began to flag. This period would extend +in the case of male field hands from perhaps twenty-five to possibly fifty +years of age, and in the case of artizans from say thirty to fifty-five +years. The maximum valuation of the slave as property, however, would come +earlier, at the point when the investment in his production was first +complete and when his maximum earnings were about to begin; and his value +would thereafter decline, first slowly and then more swiftly with every +passing year, in anticipation of the decline and final cessation of his +earning power. Thus the ratio between the capital value of a slave and his +annual net earnings, far from remaining constant, would steadily recede +from the beginning to the end of his working life. At the age of twenty +it might well be as ten to one; at the age of fifty it would probably not +exceed four to one; at sixty-five it might be less than a parity. + +In the buying and selling of nearly all non-human commodities the cost of +production, or of reproduction, bears a definite relation to the market +price, in that it fixes a limit below which owners will not continue to +produce and sell. In the case of slaves, however, the cost of rearing had +no practical bearing upon the market price, for the reason that the owners +could not, or at least did not, increase or diminish the production at +will.[2] It has been said by various anti-slavery spokesmen that many +slaveowners systematically bred slaves for the market. They have adduced no +shred of supporting evidence however; and although the present writer has +long been alert for such data he has found but a single concrete item in +the premises. This one came, curiously enough, from colonial Massachusetts, +where John Josslyn recorded in 1636: "Mr. Maverick's negro woman came to my +chamber window and in her own country language and tune sang very loud and +shril. Going out to her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and +willingly would have expressed her grief in English. But I apprehended it +by her countenance and deportment, whereupon I repaired to my host to learn +of him the cause, for that I understood before that she had been a queen in +her own countrey, and observed a very humble and dutiful garb used towards +her by another negro who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a +breed of negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield to perswasions +to company with a negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, +will'd she nill'd she to go to bed to her--which was no sooner done than +she kickt him out again. This she took in high disdain beyond her slavery, +and this was the cause of her grief."[3] + +[Footnote 2: This is at variance with Gibson's thesis which, professedly +dealing always in pure hypothesis, assumes a state of "perfect" slavery in +which breeding is controlled on precisely the same basis as in the case of +cattle.] + +[Footnote 3: John Josslyn, "Account of two Voyages to New England," in the +Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections, XXIII_, 231.] + +As for the ante-bellum South, the available plantation instructions, +journals and correspondence contain no hint of such a practice. Jesse +Burton Harrison, a Virginian in touch with planters' conversation and +himself hostile to slavery,[4] went so far as to write, "It may be that +there is a small section of Virginia (perhaps we could indicate it) where +the theory of population is studied with reference to the yearly income +from the sale of slaves," but he went no further; and this, be it noted, is +not clearly to hint anything further than that the owners of multiplying +slaves reckoned their own gains from the unstimulated increase. If pressure +were commonly applied James H. Hammond would not merely have inserted the +characteristic provision in his schedule of rewards: "For every infant +thirteen months old and in sound health that has been properly attended to, +the mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock."[5] A planter here and +there may have exerted a control of matings in the interest of industrial +and commercial eugenics, but it is extremely doubtful that any appreciable +number of masters attempted any direct hastening of slave increase. The +whole tone of the community was hostile to such a practice. Masters were +in fact glad enough to leave the slaves to their own inclinations in all +regards so long as the day's work was not obstructed and good order was +undisturbed. They had of course everywhere and at all times an interest +in the multiplication of their slaves as well as the increase of their +industrial aptitudes. Thus William Lee wrote in 1778 concerning his +plantation in Virginia: "I wish particular attention may be paid to rearing +young negroes, and taking care of those grown up, that the number may be +increased as much as possible; also putting several of the most promising +and ingenious lads apprentices to different trades, such as carpenters, +coopers, wheelwrights, sawyers, shipwrights, bricklayers, plasterers, +shoemakers and blacksmiths; some women should also be taught to weave."[6] + +[Footnote 4: _Review of the Slave Question_ (Richmond, 1833), p. 17.] + +[Footnote 5: See above, p. 272.] + +[Footnote 6: W.C. Ford, ed., _Letters of William Lee_ (Brooklyn, 1891), II, +363, 364.] + +But even if masters had stimulated breeding on occasion, that would have +created but a partial and one-sided relationship between cost of production +and market price. To make the connection complete it would have been +requisite for them to check slave breeding when prices were low; and even +the abolitionists, it seems, made no assertion to that effect. No, the +market might decline indefinitely without putting an appreciable check upon +the birth rate; and the master had virtually no choice but to rear every +child in his possession. The cost of production, therefore, could not serve +as a nether limit for slave prices at any time. + +An upper limit to the price range was normally fixed by the reckoning of a +slave's prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance. The slave +may here be likened to a mine operated by a corporation leasing the +property. The slave's claim to his maintenance represents the prior claim +of the land-owner to his rent; the master's claim to the annual surplus +represents the equity of the stockholders in the corporation. But the ore +will some day be exhausted and the dividends cease. Purchasers of the stock +should accordingly consider amortization and pay only such price as will +be covered by the discounted value of the prospective dividends during the +life of the mine. The price of the output fluctuates, however, and the +rate of any year's earnings can only be conjectured. Precise reckoning is +therefore impracticable, and the stock will rise and fall in the market in +response to the play of conjectures as to the present value of the total +future earnings applicable to dividends. So also a planter entering the +slave market might have reckoned in advance the prospect of working life +which a slave of given age would have, and the average earnings above +maintenance which might be expected from his labor. By discounting each of +those annual returns at the prevailing rate of interest to determine their +present values, and adding up the resulting sums, he would ascertain the +price which his business prospects would justify him in paying. Having +bought a slave at such a price, an equally thoroughgoing caution would have +led him to take out a life, health and accident insurance policy on the +slave; but even then he must personally have borne the risk of the slave's +running away. In practice the lives of a few slaves engaged in steamboat +operation and other hazardous pursuits were insured,[7] but the total +number of policies taken on their lives, except as regards marine insurance +in the coasting slave trade, was very small. The planters as a rule carried +their own risks, and they generally dispensed with actuarial reckonings in +determining their bids for slaves. About 1850 a rule of thumb was current +that a prime hand was worth a hundred dollars for every cent in the current +price of a pound of cotton. In general, however, the prospective purchaser +merely "reckoned" in the Southern sense of conjecturing, at what price +he could employ an added slave with probable advantage, and made his bid +accordingly. + +[Footnote 7: J.C. Nott, in J.B.D. DeBow, ed., _Industrial Resources of the +Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 299; F.L. Hoffman, in +_The South in the Building of the Nation_ (Richmond, Va. [1909]), 638-655. +_DeBow's Review_, X, 241, contains an advertisement of a company offering +life and accident insurance on slaves. + +A typical policy is preserved in the MSS. division of the Library of +Congress. It was issued Dec. 31, 1851, by the Louisville agent of the +Mutual Benefit Fire and Life Insurance Company of Louisiana, to T.P. +Linthicum of Bairdstown, Ky., insuring for $650 each the lives of Jack, 26 +years old and Alexander, 31 years old, for one year, at the rates of 2 and +2-1/2 per cent, respectively, plus one per cent, for permission to employ +the slaves on steamboats during the first half of the period. They were +employed as waiters. Jack died Nov. 20, and the insurance was duly paid.] + +A slave's market price was affected by sex, age, physique, mental quality, +industrial training, temper, defects and vices, so far as each of these +could be ascertained. The laws of most of the states presumed a seller's +warrant of health at the time of sale, unless expressly withheld, and in +Louisiana this warrant extended to mental and moral soundness. The period +in which the buyer might apply for redress, however, was limited to a few +months, and the verdicts of juries were uncertain. On the whole, therefore, +if the buyer were unacquainted with the slave's previous career and with +his attitude toward the transfer of possession, he necessarily incurred +considerable risk in making each purchase. But in general the taking of +reasonable precautions would cause the loss through unsuspected vices in +one case to be offset by gains through unexpected virtues in another. + +The scale and the trend of slave prices are essential features of the +regime which most economists have ignored and for which the rest have had +too little data. For colonial times the quotations are scant. An historian +of the French West Indies, however, has ascertained from the archives +that whereas the prices ranged perhaps as low as 200 francs for imported +Africans there at the middle of the seventeenth century, they rose to +450 francs by the year 1700 and continued in a strong and steady advance +thereafter, except in war times, until the very eve of the French +Revolution. Typical prices for prime field hands in San Domingo were 650 +francs in 1716, 800 in 1728, 1,160 in 1750, 1,400 in 1755, 1,180 in 1764, +1,600 in 1769, 1,860 in 1772, 1,740 in 1777, and 2,200 francs in 1785.[8] + +[Footnote 8: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Francaises avant +1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122-127.] + +In the British West Indies it is apparent from occasional documents that +the trend was similar. A memorial from Barbados in 1689, for example, +recited that in earlier years the planters had been supplied with Africans +at L7 sterling per head, of which forty shillings covered the Guinea cost +and L5 paid the freightage; but now since the establishment of the Royal +African company, "we buy negroes at the price of an engrossed commodity, +the common rate of a good negro on shipboard being twenty pound. And we are +forced to scramble for them in so shameful a manner that one of the great +burdens of our lives is the going to buy negroes. But we must have them; we +cannot be without them."[9] The overthrow of the monopoly, however, brought +no relief. In 1766 the price of new negroes in the West Indies ranged at +about L26;[10] and in 1788-1790 from L41 to L49. At this time the value +of a prime field hand, reared in the islands, was reported to be twice as +great as that of an imported African.[11] + +[Footnote 9: _Groans of the Plantations_ (1679), p. 5, quoted in W. +Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_ (Cambridge, 1892), +II, 278, note.] + +[Footnote 10: _Abridgement of the Evidence taken before a Committee of the +whole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), p. 37.] + +[Footnote 11: "An Old Member of Parliament," _Doubts on the Abolition of +the Slave Trade_ (London, 1790), p. 72, quoting Dr. Adair's evidence in the +_Privy Council Report_, part 3, Antigua appendix no. II]. + +In Virginia the rise was proportionate. In 1671 a planter wrote of his +purchase of a negro for L26. 10_s_ and said he supposed the price was the +highest ever paid in those parts; but a few years afterward a lot of four +men brought L30 a head, two women the same rate, and two more women L25 +apiece; and before the end of the seventeenth century men were being +appraised at L40.[12] An official report from the colony in 1708 noted a +great increase of the slave supply in recent years, but observed that the +prices had nevertheless risen.[13] In 1754 George Washington paid L52 for a +man and nearly as much for a woman; in 1764 he bought a lot at L57 a head; +in 1768 he bought two mulattoes at L50 and L61.15_s_ respectively, a negro +for L66.10_s_, another at public vendue for L72, and a girl for L49.10_s_. +Finally in 1772 he bought five males, one of whom cost L50, another L65, a +third L75, and the remaining two L90 each;[14] and in the same year he was +offered L80 for a slave named Will Shagg whom his overseer described as an +incorrigible runaway.[15] + +[Footnote 12: P.A. Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth +Century_, II, 88-92.] + +[Footnote 13: _North Carolina Colonial Records_, I, 693.] + +[Footnote 14: W.C. Ford, _George Washington_ (Paris and New York, 1900), +I, 125-127; _Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor_ (Brooklyn, +1889).] + +[Footnote 15: S.M. Hamilton, ed., _Letters to Washington_. IV, 127.] + +Scattered items which might be cited from still other colonies make the +evidence conclusive that there was a general and substantially continuous +rise throughout colonial times. The advances which occurred in the +principal British West India islands and in Virginia, indeed, were a +consequence of advances elsewhere, for by the middle of the eighteenth +century all of these colonies were already passing the zenith of their +prosperity, whereas South Carolina, Georgia, San Domingo and Brazil, as +well as minor new British tropical settlements, were in course of rapid +plantation expansion. Prices in the several communities tended of course to +be equalized partly by a slender intercolonial slave trade but mainly by +the Guineamen's practice of carrying their wares to the highest of the many +competing markets. + +The war for American independence, bringing hard times, depressed all +property values, those of slaves included. But the return of peace brought +prompt inflation in response to exaggerated anticipations of prosperity to +follow. Wade Hampton, for example, wrote to his brother from Jacksonborough +in the South Carolina lowlands, January 30, 1782: "All attempts to purchase +negroes have been fruitless, owing to the flattering state of our affairs +in this quarter."[16] The sequel was sharply disappointing. The indigo +industry was virtually dead, and rice prices, like those of tobacco, did +not maintain their expected levels. The financial experience was described +in 1786 by Henry Pendleton, a judge on the South Carolina bench, in words +which doubtless would have been similarly justified in various other +states: "No sooner had we recovered and restored the country to peace and +order than a rage for running into debt became epidemical.... A happy +speculation was almost every man's object and pursuit.... What a load +of debt was in a short time contracted in the purchase of British +superfluities, and of lands and slaves for which no price was too high if +credit for the purchase was to be obtained!... How small a pittance of the +produce of the years 1783, '4, '5, altho' amounting to upwards of 400,000 +sterling a year on an average, hath been applied toward lessening old +burdens!... What then was the consequence? The merchants were driven to the +exportation of gold and silver, which so rapidly followed; ... a diminution +of the value of the capital as well as the annual produce of estates in +consequence of the fallen price; ... the recovery of new debts as well +as old in effect suspended, while the numerous bankruptcies which have +happened in Europe amongst the merchants trading to America, the reproach +of which is cast upon us, have proclaimed to all the trading nations +to guard against our laws and policy, and even against our moral +principles."[17] + +[Footnote 16: MS. among the Gibbes papers In the capitol at Columbia, S.C.] + +[Footnote 17: _Charleston Morning Post_, Dec. 13, 1786 quoted in the +_American Historical Review_, XIV, 537, 538] + +The depression continued with increasing severity into the following +decade, when it appears that many of the planters in the Charleston +district were saved from ruin only by the wages happily drawn from the +Santee Canal Company in payment for the work of their slaves in the canal +construction gangs.[18] The conditions and prospects in Virginia at the +same time are suggested by a remark of George Washington in 1794 on slave +investments: "I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be a +very troublesome species of property ere many years have passed over our +heads."[19] + +[Footnote 18: Samuel DuBose, "Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish," in +T.G. Thomas, ed., _History of the Huguenots in South Carolina_ (New York, +1887), pp. 66-68.] + +[Footnote 19: New York Public Library _Bulletin_, II, 15. This letter has +been quoted at greater length at the beginning of chapter VIII above.] + +Prices in this period were so commonly stated in currency of uncertain +depreciation that a definite schedule by years may not safely be made. It +is clear, however, that the range in 1783 was little lower than it had been +on the eve of the war, while in 1795 it was hardly more than half as high. +For the first time in American history, in a period of peace, there was +a heavy and disquieting fall in slave prices. This was an earnest of +conditions in the nineteenth century when advances and declines alternated. +From about 1795 onward the stability of the currency and the increasing +abundance of authentic data permit the fluctuations of prices to be +measured and their causes and effects to be studied with some assurance. + +The materials extant comprise occasional travellers' notes, fairly numerous +newspaper items, and quite voluminous manuscript collections of appraisals +and bills of sale, all of which require cautious discrimination in their +analysis.[20] The appraisals fall mainly into two groups: the valuation of +estates in probate, and those for the purpose of public compensation to +the owners of slaves legally condemned for capital crimes. The former were +oftentimes purely perfunctory, and they are generally serviceable only as +aids in ascertaining the ratios of value between slaves of the diverse ages +and sexes. The appraisals of criminals, however, since they prescribed +actual payments on the basis of the market value each slave would have had +if his crime had not been committed, may be assumed under such laws as +Virginia maintained in the premises to be fairly accurate. A file of more +than a thousand such appraisals, with vouchers of payment attached, which +is preserved among the Virginia archives in the State Library at Richmond, +is particularly copious in regard to prices as well as in regard to crimes +and punishments. + +[Footnote 20: The difficulties to be encountered in ascertaining the values +at any time and place are exemplified in the documents pertaining to slave +prices in the various states in the year 1815, printed in the _American +Historical Review_, XIX, 813-838. In the gleaning of slave prices I have +been actively assisted by Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of +Georgia and Miss Lillie Richardson of New Orleans.] + +The bills of sale recording actual market transactions remain as the chief +and central source of information upon prices. Some thousands of these, +originating in the city of Charleston, are preserved in a single file among +the state archives of South Carolina at Columbia; other thousands are +scattered through the myriad miscellaneous notarial records in the court +house at New Orleans; many smaller accumulations are to be found in +county court houses far and wide, particularly in the cotton belt; and +considerable numbers are in private possession, along with plantation +journals and letters which sometimes contain similar data. + +Now these documents more often than otherwise record the sale of slaves +in groups. One of the considerations involved was that a gang already +organized would save its purchaser time and trouble in establishing a new +plantation as a going concern, and therefore would probably bring a higher +gross price than if its members were sold singly. Another motive was that +of keeping slave families together, which served doubly in comporting with +scruples of conscience and inducing to the greater contentment of slaves +in their new employ. The documents of the time demonstrate repeatedly the +appreciation of equanimity as affecting value. But group sales give slight +information upon individual prices; and even the bills of individual +sale yield much less than a statistician could wish. The sex is always +presumable from the slave's name, the color is usually stated or implied, +and occasionally deleterious proclivities are specified, as of a confirmed +drunkard or a persistent runaway; but specifications of age, strength and +talents are very often, one and all, omitted. The problem is how may these +bare quotations of price be utilized. To strike an average of all prices +in any year at any place would be fruitless, since an even distribution of +slave grades cannot be assumed when quotations are not in great volume: the +prices of young children are rarely ascertainable from the bills, since +they were hardly ever sold separately; the prices of women likewise are too +seldom segregated from those of their children to permit anything to be +established beyond a ratio to some ascertained standard; and the prices of +artizans varied too greatly with their skill to permit definite schedules +of them. The only market grade, in fact, for which basic price tabulations +can be made with any confidence is that of young male prime field hands, +for these alone may usually be discriminated even when ages and qualities +are not specified. The method here is to select in the group of bills for +any time and place such maximum quotations for males as occur with any +notable degree of frequency. Artizans, foremen and the like are thereby +generally excluded by the infrequency of their sales, while the +middle-aged, the old and the defective are eliminated by leaving aside the +quotations of lower range. The more scattering bills in which ages +and crafts are given will then serve, when supplemented from probate +appraisals, to establish valuation ratios between these able-bodied +unskilled young men and the several other classes of slaves. Thus, artizans +often brought twice as much as field hands of similar ages, prime women +generally brought three-fourths or four-fifths as much as prime men; boys +and girls entering their teens, and men and women entering their fifties, +brought about half of prime prices for their sexes; and infants were +generally appraised at about a tenth or an eighth of prime. The average +price for slaves of all ages and both sexes, furthermore, was generally +about one-half of the price for male prime field hands. The fluctuation +of prime prices, therefore, measures the rise and fall of slave values in +general. + +The accompanying chart will show the fluctuations of the average prices +of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in +middle Georgia, and at New Orleans, aL well as the contemporary range of +average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, +that of New York. The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from +about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in +1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence of the initial +impulse of cotton and sugar production and of the contemporary prohibition +of the African slave trade by the several states. At those levels prices +remained virtually fixed, in most markets, for nearly a decade as an effect +of South Carolina's reopening of her ports and of the hampering of export +commerce by the Napoleonic war. The latter factor prevented even the +congressional stoppage of the foreign slave trade in 1808 from exerting +any strong effect upon slave prices for the time being except in the sugar +district. The next general movement was in fact a downward one of about +$100 a head caused by the War of 1812. At the return of peace the prices +leaped with parallel perpendicularity in all the markets from $400-$500 in +1814 to twice that range in 1818, only to be upset by the world-wide panic +of the following year and to descend to levels of $400 to $600 in 1823. +Then came a new rise in the cotton and sugar districts responding to a +heightened price of their staples, but for once not evoking a sympathetic +movement in the other markets. A small decline then ensuing gave place to +a soaring movement at New Orleans, in response to the great stimulus which +the protective tariff of 1828 gave to sugar production. The other markets +began in the early thirties to make up for the tardiness of their rise; and +as a feature of the general inflation of property values then prevalent +everywhere, slave prices rose to an apex in 1837 of $1,300 in the +purchasing markets and $1,100 in Virginia. The general panic of 1837 +began promptly to send them down; and though they advanced in 1839 as a +consequence of a speculative bolstering of the cotton market that year, +they fell all the faster upon the collapse of that project, finding new +levels of rest only at a range of $500-$700. A final advance then set in +at the middle of the forties which continued until the highest levels on +record were attained on the eve of secession and war. [Illustration: PRICES +OF SLAVES AND OF COTTON.] + +There are thus in the slave price diagram for the nineteenth century a +plateau, with a local peak rising from its level in the sugar district, and +three solid peaks--all of them separated by intervening valleys, and all +corresponding more or less to the elevations and depressions in the cotton +range. The plateau, 1803-1812, was prevented from producing a peak in the +eastern markets by the South Carolina repeal of the slave trade prohibition +and by the European imbroglio. The first common peak, 1818, and its ensuing +trough came promptly upon the establishment of the characteristic regime of +the ante-bellum period, in which the African reservoir could no longer +be drawn upon to mitigate labor shortages and restrain the speculative +enhancement of slave prices. The trough of the 'twenties was deeper and +broader in the upper and eastern South than elsewhere partly because the +panic of 1819 had brought a specially severe financial collapse there from +the wrecking of mushroom canal projects and the like.[21] It is remarkable +that so wide a spread of rates in the several districts prevailed for so +long a period as here appears. The statistics may of course be somewhat at +fault, but there is reason for confidence that their margin of error is not +great enough to vitiate them. + +[Footnote 21: _E. g., The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey_ (North Carolina +Historical Commission _Publications_, Raleigh, 1914), I, 93ff] + +The next peak, 1837-1839, was in most respects like the preceding one, and +the drop was quite as sudden and even more severe. The distresses of the +time in the district where they were the most intense were described in a +diary of 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in the +hope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrin +was promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster. "Speculation," +said he, "has been making poor men rich and rich men princes." But now "a +revulsion has taken place. Mississippi is ruined. Her rich men are poor, +and her poor men beggars.... We have seen hard times in North Carolina, +hard times in the east, hard times everywhere; but Mississippi exceeds them +all.... Lands ... that once commanded from thirty to fifty dollars per acre +may now be bought for three or five dollars, and that with considerable +improvements, while many have been sold at sheriff's sales at fifty cents +that were considered worth ten to twenty dollars. The people, too, are +running their negroes to Texas and to Alabama, and leaving their real +estate and perishable property to be sold, or rather sacrificed.... So +great is the panic and so dreadful the distress that there are a great many +farms prepared to receive crops, and some of them actually planted, and yet +deserted, not a human being to be found upon them. I had prepared myself to +see hard times here, but unlike most cases, the actual condition of affairs +is much worse than the report."[22] + +[Footnote 22: W.H. Wills, "Diary," in the Southern History Association +_Publications_, VIII (Washington, 1904), 35.] + +The fall of Mississippi slaves continued, accompanying that of cotton and +even anticipating it in the later phase of the movement, until extreme +depths were reached in the middle forties, though at New Orleans and in the +Georgia uplands the decline was arrested in 1842 at a level of about $700. +The sugar planters began prospering from the better prices established for +their staple by the tariff of that year, and were able to pay more than +panic prices for slaves; but as has been noted in an earlier chapter, +suspicion of fraud in the cases of slaves offered from Mississippi +militated against their purchase. A sugar planter would be willing to pay +considerably more for a neighbor's negro than for one who had come down the +river and who might shortly be seized on a creditor's attachment. + +At the middle of the forties, with a rising cotton market, there began +a strong and sustained advance, persisting throughout the fifties and +carrying slave prices to unexampled heights. By 1856 the phenomenon was +receiving comment in the newspapers far and wide. In the early months of +that year the _Republican_ of St. Louis reported field hand sales in +Pike County, Missouri, at from $1,215 to $1,642; the _Herald_ of Lake +Providence, Louisiana, recorded the auction of General L.C. Folk's slaves +at which "negro men ranged from $1,500 to $1,635, women and girls from +$1,250 to $1,550, children in proportion--all cash" and concluded: "Such a +sale, we venture to say, has never been equaled in the state of Louisiana." +In Virginia, likewise, the Richmond _Despatch_ in January told of the sale +of an estate in Halifax County at which "among other enormous prices, one +man brought $1,410 and another $1,425, and both were sold again privately +the same day at advances of $50. They were ordinary field hands, not +considered no. I. in any respect." In April the Lynchburg _Virginian_ +reported the sale of men in the auction of a large estate at from $1,120 to +$2,110, with most of the prices ranging midway between; and in August the +Richmond _Despatch_ noted that instead of the customary summer dullness in +the demand for slaves, it was unprecedentedly vigorous, with men's prices +ranging from $1,200 to $1,500.[23] + +The _Southern Banner_ of Athens, Georgia, said as early as January, 1855: +"Everybody except the owners of slaves must feel and know that the price +of slave labor and slave property at the South is at present too high when +compared with the prices of everything else. There must ere long be a +change; and ... we advise parties interested to 'stand from under!'"[24] +But the market belied the apprehensions. A neighboring journal noted at the +beginning of 1858, that in the face of the current panic, slave prices +as indicated in newspapers from all quarters of the South held up +astonishingly. "This argues a confidence on the part of the planters that +there is a good time coming. Well," the editor concluded with a hint of +his own persistent doubts, "we trust they may not be deceived in their +calculations."[25] + +The market continued deaf to the Cassandra school. When in March, 1859, +Pierce Butler's half of the slaves from the plantations which his quondam +wife made notorious were auctioned to defray his debts, bidders who +gathered from near and far offered prices which yielded an average rate +of $708 per head for the 429 slaves of all ages.[26] And in January and +February the still greater auction at Albany, Georgia, of the estate of +Joseph Bond, lately deceased, yielded $2,850 for one of the men, about +$1,900 as an average for such prime field hands as were sold separately, +and a price of $958.64 as a general average for the 497 slaves of all ages +and conditions.[27] Sales at similar prices were at about the same time +reported from various other quarters.[28] + +[Footnote 23: These items were reprinted in George M. Weston, _Who are and +who may be Slaves in the U.S._ [1856].] + +[Footnote 24: _Southern Banner_, Jan. 11, 1855, endorsing an editorial of +similar tone in the New York _Express_.] + +[Footnote 25: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 21, 1858.] + +[Footnote 26: _What Became of the Slaves on a Georgia Plantation Auction +Sale of Slaves at Savannah, March 2d and 3d, 1859. A Sequel to Mrs. +Kemble's Journal_ [1863]. This appears to have been a reprint of an +article in the New York _Tribune_. The slaves were sold in family parcels +comprising from two to seven persons each.] + +[Footnote 27: MS. record in the Ordinary's office at Macon, Ga. Probate +Returns, vol. 9, pp. 2-7.] + +[Footnote 28: Edward Ingle, _Southern Sidelights_ (New York [1896]), p. +294. note.] + +Editorial warnings were now more vociferous than before. The _Federal +Union_ of Milledgeville said for example: "There is a perfect fever raging +in Georgia now on the subject of buying negroes.... Men are borrowing money +at exorbitant rates of interest to buy negroes at exorbitant prices. The +speculation will not sustain the speculators, and in a short time we shall +see many negroes and much land offered under the sheriff's hammer, with few +buyers for cash; and then this kind of property will descend to its real +value. The old rule of pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the +pound--that is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents a negro man is +worth $1,200.00, if at fifteen cents then $1,500.00--does not seem to be +regarded. Negroes are 25 per cent. higher now with cotton at ten and one +half cents than they were two or three years ago when it was worth fifteen +and sixteen cents. Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surely +come."[29] + +[Footnote 29: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Jan. 17, 1860, +reprinted with endorsement in the _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), Jan. 26, +1860, and reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 73, 74.] + +The fever was likewise raging in the western South,[30] and it persisted +until the end of 1860. Indeed the peak of this price movement was evidently +cut off by the intervention of war. How great an altitude it might have +reached, and what shape its downward slope would have taken had peace +continued, it is idle to conjecture. But that a crash must have come is +beyond a reasonable doubt. + +[Footnote 30: Prices at Lebanon, Tenn., and Franklin, Ky., are given in +_Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XI, 774 (Dec., 1859).] + +The Charleston _Mercury_[31] attributed the advance of slave prices in the +fifties mainly to the demand of the railroads for labor. This was borne +out in some degree by the transactions of the railroad companies whose +headquarters were in that city. The president of the Charleston and +Savannah Railroad Company, endorsing the arguments which had been advanced +by a writer in _DeBows Review_,[32] recommended in his first annual report, +1855, an extensive purchase of slaves for the company's construction gangs, +reckoning that at the price of $1,000, with interest at 7 per cent. and +life insurance at 2-1/2 per cent. the annual charge would be little more +than half the current cost in wages at $180. The yearly cost of maintenance +and superintendence, reckoned at $20 for clothing, $15 for corn, molasses +and tobacco, $1 for physician's fees, $10 for overseer's wages and $15 for +tools and repairs, he said, would be the same whether the slaves were hired +or bought.[33] How largely the company adopted its president's plan is not +known. For the older and stronger South Carolina Railroad Company, however, +whose lines extended from Charleston to Augusta, Columbia and Camden, +detailed records in the premises are available. This company was created +in 1843 by the merging of two earlier corporations, one of which already +possessed eleven slaves. In February, 1845, the new company bought three +more slaves, two of which cost $400 apiece and the third $686. At the end +of the next year the superintendent reported: "After hands for many years +in the company's service have acquired the knowledge and skill necessary to +make them valuable, the company are either compelled to submit to higher +rates of wages imposed or to pass others at a lower rate of compensation +through the same apprenticeship, with all the hazard of a strike, in their +turn, by the owners."[34] The directors, after studying the problem thus +presented, launched upon a somewhat extensive slave-purchasing programme, +buying one in 1848 and seven in 1849 at uniform prices of $900; one in +1851 at $800 thirty-seven in 1852, all but two of which were procured in a +single purchase from J.C. Sproull and Company, at prices from $512.50 to +$1,004.50, but mostly ranging near $900; and twenty-eight more at various +times between 1853 and 1859, at prices rising to $1,500. Finally, when two +or three years of war had put all property, of however precarious a nature, +at a premium over Confederate currency, the company bought another slave +in August, 1863, for $2,050, and thirty-two more in 1864 at prices ranging +from $2,450 to $6,005.[35] All of these slaves were males. No ages or +trades are specified in the available records, and no statement of the +advantages actually experienced in owning rather than hiring slaves. + +[Footnote 31: Reprinted in William Chambers, _American Slavery and Colour_ +(London, 1857), P. 207.] + +[Footnote 32: _DeBow's Review_, XVII, 76-82.] + +[Footnote 33: _Ibid_., XVIII, 404-406.] + +[Footnote 34: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_ +(New York, 1908), p. 205.] + +[Footnote 35: South Carolina Railroad Company _Reports_ for 1860 and 1865.] + +The Brandon Bank, at Brandon, Mississippi, which was virtually identical +with the Mississippi and Alabama Railroad Company, bought prior to 1839, +$159,000 worth of slaves for railroad employment, but it presumably lost +them shortly after that year when the bank and the railroad together went +bankrupt.[36] The state of Georgia had bought about 190 slaves in and +before 1830 for employment in river and road improvements, but it sold them +in 1834,[37] and when in the late 'forties and the 'fifties it built and +operated the Western and Atlantic Railroad it made no repetition of the +earlier experiment. In the 'fifties, indeed, the South Carolina Railroad +Company was almost unique in its policy of buying slaves for railroad +purposes. + +[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, LVI, 130 (April 27, 1839).] + +[Footnote 37: U.B. Phillips, _Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt_, +pp. 114, 115; W.C. Dawson, _Compilation of Georgia Laws_, p. 399; O.H. +Prince, _Digest of the Laws of Georgia_, p. 742.] + +The most cogent reason against such a policy was not that the owned slaves +increased the current charges, but that their purchase involved the +diversion of capital in a way which none but abnormal circumstances could +justify. In the year 1846 when the superintendent of the South Carolina +company made his recommendation, slave prices were abnormally low and +cotton prices were leaping in such wise as to make probable a strong +advance in the labor market. By 1855, however, the price of slaves had +nearly doubled, and by 1860 it was clearly inordinate. The special occasion +for a company to divert its funds or increase its capital obligations had +accordingly vanished, and sound policy would have suggested the sale of +slaves on hand rather than the purchase of more. The state of Louisiana, +indeed, sold in 1860[38] the force of nearly a hundred slave men which it +had used on river improvements long enough for many of its members to have +grown old in the service.[39] + +[Footnote 38: Board of Public Works _Report_ for 1860 (Baton Rouge, 1861), +p. 7.] + +[Footnote 39: State Engineer's _Report_ for 1856 (New Orleans, 1857), p. +7.] + +Manufacturing companies here and there bought slaves to man their works, +but in so doing added seriously to the risks of their business. A news item +of 1849 reported that an outbreak of cholera at the Hillman Iron Works near +Clarksville, Tenn., had brought the death of four or five slaves and the +removal of the remainder from the vicinity until the epidemic should have +passed.[40] A more normal episode of mere financial failure was that which +wrecked the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company whose plant was located on Broad +River in South Carolina. To complete its works and begin operations this +company procured a loan of some $92,000 in 1837 from the Bank of the State +of South Carolina on the security of the land and buildings and a hundred +slaves owned by the company. After several years of operation during which +the purchase of additional slaves raised the number to 194, twenty-seven of +whom were mechanics, the company admitted its insolvency. When the mortgage +was foreclosed in 1845 the bank bought in virtually the whole property to +save its investment, and operated the works for several years until a new +company, with a manager imported from Sweden, was floated to take the +concern off its hands.[41] + +[Footnote 40: New Orleans _Delta_, Mch. 10, 1849.] + +[Footnote 41: _Report of the Special Joint Committee appointed to examine +the Bank of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1849); _Report of +the President and Directors of the Bank of the State of South Carolina, +November, 1850_ (Columbia, 1850).] + +Most of the cotton mills depended wholly upon white labor, though a few +made experiments with slave staffs. One of these was in operation in Maury +County, Tennessee, in 1827,[42] and another near Pensacola, Florida, twenty +years afterward. Except for their foremen, each of these was run by slave +operatives exclusively; and in the latter case, at least, all the slaves +were owned by the company. These comprised in 1847 some forty boys and +girls, who were all fed, and apparently well fed, at the company's +table.[43] The career of these enterprises is not ascertainable. A better +known case is that of the Saluda Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina. +When J. Graves came from New England in 1848 to assume the management of +this mill he found several negroes among the operatives, all of whom were +on hire. His first impulse was to replace all the negroes with whites; but +before this was accomplished the newcomer was quite converted by their +"activity and promptness," and he recommended that the number of black +operatives be increased instead of diminished. "They are easily trained +to habits of industry and patient endurance," he said, "and by the +concentration of all their faculties ... their imitative faculties become +cultivated to a very high degree, their muscles become trained and obedient +to the will, so that whatever they see done they are quick in learning to +do."[44] The company was impelled by Graves' enthusiasm to resort to slave +labor exclusively, partly on hire from their owners and partly by purchase. +At the height of this regime, in 1851, the slave operatives numbered +158.[45] But whether from the incapacity of the negroes as mill hands or +from the accumulation of debt through the purchase of slaves, the company +was forced into liquidation at the close of the following year.[46] + +[Footnote 42: _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta, Ga.), Apr. 24, 1828, reprinted in +_Plantation and Frontier_, II, 258.] + +[Footnote 43: _DeBow's Review_, IV, 256.] + +[Footnote 44: Letter of J. Graves, May 15, 1849, in the Augusta, Ga., +_Chronicle_, June 1, 1849. Cf. also J.B. D Debow, _Industrial Resources of +the Southern and Western States_ (New Orleans, 1852), II, 339.] + +[Footnote 45: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 319, 320.] + +[Footnote 46: _Augusta Chronicle_, Jan. 5, 1853.] + +Corporations had reason at all times, in fact, to prefer free laborers over +slaves even on hire, for in so doing they escaped liabilities for injuries +by fellow servants. When a firm of contractors, for example, advertised +in 1833 for five hundred laborers at $15 per month to work on the Muscle +Shoals canal in northern Alabama, it deemed it necessary to say that in +cases of accidents to slaves it would assume financial responsibility "for +any injury or damage that may hereafter happen in the process of blasting +rock or of the caving of banks."[47] Free laborers, on the other hand, +carried their own risks. Except when some planter would take a contract for +grading in his locality, to be done under his own supervision in the spare +time of his gang, slaves were generally called for in canal and railroad +work only when the supply of free labor was inadequate. + +[Footnote 47: Reprinted in E.S. Abdy, _Journal of a Residence in the United +States_ (London, 1835), II, 109.] + +Slaveowners, on the other hand, were equally reluctant to hire their slaves +to such corporations or contractors except in times of special depression, +for construction camps from their lack of sanitation, discipline, +domesticity and stability were at the opposite pole from plantations as +places of slave residence. High wages were no adequate compensation for +the liability to contagious and other diseases, demoralization, and the +checking of the birth rate by the separation of husbands and wives. The +higher the valuation of slave property, the greater would be the strength +of these considerations. + +Slaves were a somewhat precarious property under all circumstances. Losses +were incurred not only through disease[48] and flight but also through +sudden death in manifold ways, and through theft. A few items will furnish +illustration. An early Charleston newspaper printed the following: "On the +ninth instant Mr. Edward North at Pon Pon sent a sensible negro fellow to +Moon's Ferry for a jug of rum, which is about two miles from his house; +and he drank to that excess in the path that he died within six or seven +hours."[49] From the Eutaws in the same state a correspondent wrote in 1798 +of a gin-house disaster: "I yesterday went over to Mr. Henry Middleton's +plantation to view the dreadful effects of a flash of lightning which the +day before fell on his machine house in which were about twenty negro men, +fourteen of which were killed immediately."[50] In 1828 the following +appeared in a newspaper at New Orleans: "Yesterday towards one o'clock +P.M., as one of the ferry boats was crossing the river with sixteen slaves +on board belonging to General Wade Hampton, with their baggage, a few rods +distant from the shore these negroes, being frightened by the motion of the +boat, all threw themselves on the same side, which caused the boat to fill; +and notwithstanding the prompt assistance afforded, four or five of these +unfortunates perished."[51] In 1839 William Lowndes Yancey, who was then a +planter in South Carolina, lost his whole gang through the poisoning of a +spring on his place, and was thereby bankrupted.[52] About 1858 certain +bandits in western Louisiana abducted two slaves from the home of the Widow +Bernard on Bayou Vermilion. After the lapse of several months they were +discovered in the possession of one Apcher, who was tried for the theft +but acquitted. The slaves when restored to their mistress were put in the +kitchen, bound together by their hands. But while the family was at dinner +the two ran from the house and drowned themselves in the bayou. The +narrator of the episode attributed the impulse for suicide to the taste for +vagabondage and the hatred for work which the negroes had acquired from the +bandit.[53] + +[Footnote 48: For the effect of epidemics _see_ above, pp. 300, 301.] + +[Footnote 49: _South Carolina Gazette_, Feb. 12 to 19, 1741.] + +[Footnote 50: _Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Feb. 4, 1798, supplement.] + +[Footnote 51: _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 3, 1828.] + +[Footnote 52: J.W. DuBose, _Life of W.L. Yancey_ (Birmingham, Ala., 1892), +p. 39.] + +[Footnote 53: Alexandra Barbe, _Histoire des Comites de Vigilance aux +Attakapas_] (Louisiana, 1861), pp. 182-185. + +The governor of South Carolina reported the convictions of five white +men for the crime of slave stealing in the one year;[54] and in the +penitentiary lists of the several states the designation of slave stealers +was fairly frequent, in spite of the fact that the death penalty was +generally prescribed for the crime. One method of their operation was +described in a Georgia newspaper item of 1828 which related that two +wagoners upon meeting a slave upon the road persuaded him to lend a hand in +shifting their load. When the negro entered the wagon they overpowered him +and drove on. When they camped for the night they bound him to the wheel; +but while they slept he cut his thongs and returned to his master.[55] The +greatest activities in this line, however, were doubtless those of the +Murrell gang of desperadoes operating throughout the southwest in the early +thirties with a shrewd scheme for victimizing both whites and blacks. They +would conspire with a slave, promising him his freedom or some other reward +if he would run off with them and suffer himself to be sold to some unwary +purchaser and then escape to join them again.[56] Sometimes they repeated +this process over and over again with the same slave until a threat of +exposure from him led to his being silenced by murder. In the same period a +smaller gang with John Washburn as its leading spirit and with Natchez as +informal headquarters, was busy at burglary, highway and flatboat robbery, +pocket picking and slave stealing.[57] In 1846 a prisoner under arrest at +Cheraw, South Carolina, professed to reveal a new conspiracy for slave +stealing with ramifications from Virginia to Texas; but the details appear +not to have been published.[58] + +[Footnote 54: H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of the Slave in South +Carolina_ [1914], pp. 110-112.] + +[Footnote 55: _The Athenian_ (Athens, Ga.), Aug. 19, 1828.] + +[Footnote 56: H.R. Howard, compiler, _The History of Virgil A. Stewart and +his Adventure in capturing and exposing the great "Western Land Pirate" and +his Gang_ (New York, 1836), pp. 63-68, 104, _et passim_. The truth of these +accounts of slave stealings is vouched for in a letter to the editor of the +New Orleans _Bulletin_, reprinted in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, +Ga.), Nov. 5, 1835.] + +[Footnote 57: The manifold felonies of the gang were described by Washburn +in a dying confession after his conviction for a murder at Cincinnati. +Natchez _Courier_, reprinted in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Feb. +28, 1837. Other reports of the theft of slaves appear in the Charleston +_Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Nov. 2, 1786; _Southern Banner_ +(Athens, Ga.), July 19, 1834, advertisement; _Federal Union_ +(Milledgeville, Ga.), July 18, 1835; and the following New Orleans +journals: _Louisiana Gazette_, Apr. 1 and Sept. 10, 1819; _Mercantile +Advertiser_, Sept 29, 1831; _Bee_, Dec. 14, 1841; Mch. 10, 1845, and Aug. +1 and Nov. 11, 1848; _Louisiana Courier_, Mch. 29 and Sept. 18, 1840; +_Picayune_, Aug. 21, 1845.] + +[Footnote 58: New Orleans _Commercial Times_, Aug. 26, 1846.] + +Certain hostile critics of slavery asserted that in one district or another +masters made reckonings favorable to such driving of slaves at their work +as would bring premature death. Thus Fanny Kemble wrote in 1838, when on +the Georgia coast: "In Louisiana ... the humane calculation was not only +made but openly and unhesitatingly avowed that the planters found it upon +the whole their most profitable plan to work off (kill with labour) their +whole number of slaves about once in seven years, and renew the whole +stock."[59] The English traveler Featherstonhaugh likewise wrote of +Louisiana in 1844, when he had come as close to it as East Tennessee, +that "the duration of life for a sugar mill hand does not exceed seven +years."[60] William Goodell supported a similar assertion of his own in +1853 by a series of citations. The first of these was to Theodore Weld as +authority, that "Professor Wright" had been told at New York by Dr. Deming +of Ashland, Ohio, a story that Mr. Dickinson of Pittsburg had been told by +Southern planters and slave dealers on an Ohio River steamboat. The tale +thus vouched for contained the assertion that sugar planters found that by +the excessive driving of slaves day and night in the grinding season they +could so increase their output that "they could afford to sacrifice one set +of hands in seven years," and "that this horrible system was now practised +to a considerable extent." The second citation was likewise to Weld for a +statement by Mr. Samuel Blackwell of Jersey City, whose testimonial lay in +the fact of his membership in the Presbyterian church, that while on a tour +in Louisiana "the planters generally declared to him that they were obliged +so to overwork their slaves during the sugar-making season (from eight to +ten weeks) as to use them up in seven or eight years." The third was to the +Rev. Mr. Reed of London who after a tour in Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky +in 1834 published the following: "I was told, confidentially, from +excellent authority, that recently at a meeting of planters in South +Carolina the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more +profitable to the owner if well fed, well clothed and worked lightly, or if +made the most of at once and exhausted in some eight years. The decision +was in favor of the last alternative"[61] An anonymous writer in 1857 +repeated this last item without indication of its date or authority but +with a shortening of the period of exhaustion to "some four or five +years."[62] + +[Footnote 59: Frances A. Kemble, _Journal_ (New York, 1863), p. 28.] + +[Footnote 60: G.W. Featherstonhaugh, _Excursion Through the Slave States_ +(London, 1844), I, 120. Though Featherstonhaugh afterward visited New +Orleans his book does not recur to this topic.] + +[Footnote 61: William Goodell, _The American Slave Code in Theory and +Practise_ (New York, 1853), pp. 79-81, citing Theodore Weld, _Slavery as it +is_, p 39, and Mattheson, _Visit to the American Churches_, II, 173.] + +[Footnote 62: _The Suppressed Book about Slavery! Prepared for publication +in 1857, never published until the present time_ (New York, 1864), p. 211.] + +These assertions, which have been accepted by some historians as valid, +prompt a series of reflections. In the first place, anyone who has had +experience with negro labor may reasonably be skeptical when told that +healthy, well fed negroes, whether slave or free, can by any routine +insistence of the employer be driven beyond the point at which fatigue +begins to be injurious. In the second place, plantation work as a rule had +the limitation of daylight hours; in plowing, mules which could not +be hurried set the pace; in hoeing, haste would imperil the plants by +enhancing the proportion of misdirected strokes; and in the harvest of +tobacco, rice and cotton much perseverance but little strain was involved. +The sugar harvest alone called for heavy exertion and for night work in the +mill. But common report in that regard emphasized the sturdy sleekness as +well as the joviality of the negroes in the grinding season;[63] and even +if exhaustion had been characteristic instead, the brevity of the period +would have prevented any serious debilitating effect before the coming of +the more leisurely schedule after harvest. In fact many neighboring Creole +and Acadian farmers, fishermen and the like were customarily enlisted +on wages as plantation recruits in the months of stress.[64] The sugar +district furthermore was the one plantation area within easy reach of a +considerable city whence a seasonal supply of extra hands might be had to +save the regular forces from injury. The fact that a planter, as reported +by Sir Charles Lyell, failed to get a hundred recruits one year in the +midst of the grinding season[65] does not weaken this consideration. It may +well have been that his neighbors had forestalled him in the wage-labor +market, or that the remaining Germans and Irish in the city refused to take +the places of their fellows who were on strike. It is well established that +sugar planters had systematic recourse to immigrant labor for ditching and +other severe work.[66] It is incredible that they ignored the same recourse +if at any time the requirements of their crop threatened injury to their +property in slaves. The recommendation of the old Roman, Varro, that +freemen be employed in harvesting to save the slaves[67] would apply with +no more effect, in case of need, to the pressing of oil and wine than to +the grinding of sugar-cane. Two months' wages to a Creole, a "'Cajun" or +an Irishman would be cheap as the price of a slave's continued vigor, +even when slave prices were low. On the whole, however, the stress of the +grinding was not usually as great as has been fancied. Some of the regular +hands in fact were occasionally spared from the harvest at its height and +set to plow and plant for the next year's crop.[68] + +[Footnote 63: E. g., Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 668.] + +[Footnote 64: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 606.] + +[Footnote 65: _See_ above, p. 337.] + +[Footnote 66: See above, pp. 301, 302.] + +[Footnote 67: Varro, _De Re Rustica_, I, XVII, 2.] + +[Footnote 68: _E. g_., items for November, 1849, in the plantation diary of +Dr. John P.R. Stone, of Iberville Parish, Louisiana. For the use of this +document, the MS. of which is in the possession of Mr. John Stone Ware, +White-Castle, La., I am indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody, of the University +of Michigan, now Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France.] + +The further question arises: how could a master who set himself to work a +slave to death in seven years make sure on the one hand that the demise +would not be precipitated within a few months instead, and on the other +that the consequence would not be merely the slave's incapacitation instead +of his death? In the one case a serious loss would be incurred at once; in +the other the stoppage of the slave's maintenance, which would be the only +conceivable source of gain in the premises, would not have been effected, +but the planter would merely have an invalid on his hands instead of a +worker. Still further, the slaves had recourses of their own, even aside +from appeals for legal redress. They might shoot or stab the oppressor, +burn his house, or run away, or resort to any of a dozen other forms of +sabotage. These possibilities the masters knew as well as the slaves. Mere +passive resistance, however, in cases where even that was needed, would +generally prove effective enough. + +Finally, if all the foregoing arguments be dismissed as fallacious, there +still remains the factor of slave prices as a deterrent in certain periods. +If when slaves were cheap and their produce dear it might be feasible and +profitable to exhaust the one to increase the other, the opportunity would +surely vanish when the price relations were reversed. The trend of the +markets was very strong in that direction. Thus at the beginning of the +nineteenth century a prime field hand in the upland cotton belt had the +value of about 1,500 pounds of middling cotton; by 1810 this value had +risen to 4,500 pounds; by 1820 to 5,500; by 1830 to 6,000; by 1840 to +8,300; from 1843 to 1853 it was currently about 10,000; and in 1860 it +reached about 16,000 pounds. Comparison of slave values as measured in the +several other staples would show quite similar trends, though these great +appreciations were accompanied by no remotely proportionate increase of +the slaves' industrial capacities. The figures tell their own tale of +the mounting preposterousness of any calculated exhaustion of the human +chattels. + +The tradition in anti-slavery circles was however too strong to die. +Various travelers touring the South, keen for corroborative evidence but +finding none, still nursed the belief that a further search would bring +reward. It was like the rainbow's end, always beyond the horizon. Thus the +two Englishmen, Marshall Hall and William H. Russell, after scrutinizing +many Southern localities and finding no slave exhaustion, asserted that it +prevailed either in a district or in a type of establishment which they had +not examined. Hall, who traveled far in the Southern states and then merely +touched at Havana on his way home, wrote: "In the United States the life of +the slave has been cherished and his offspring promoted. In Cuba the lives +of the slaves have been 'used up' by excessive labour, and increase in +number disregarded. It is said, indeed, that the slave-life did not extend +beyond eight or ten years."[69] Russell recorded his surprise at finding +that the Louisiana planters made no reckoning whatever of the cost of their +slaves' labor, that Irish gangs nevertheless did the ditching, and that the +slave children of from nine to eleven years were at play, "exempted from +that cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and +manufacturing districts of England"; and then upon glimpsing the homesteads +of some Creole small proprietors, he wrote: "It is among these men that, at +times, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that slaves are exposed to +the severest labor."[70] Johann Schoepf on the other hand while travelling +many years before on the Atlantic seaboard had written: "They who have the +largest droves [of slaves] keep them the worst, let them run naked mostly +or in rags, and accustom them as much as possible to hunger, but exact of +them steady work."[71] That no concrete observations were adduced in any +of these premises is evidence enough, under the circumstances, that the +charges were empty. + +[Footnote 69: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ +(London, 1854), p. 154.] + +[Footnote 70: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), pp. +274, 278.] + +[Footnote 71: Johann David Schoepf, _Travels in the Confederation_, A.J. +Morrisson, tr. (Philadelphia, 1911), II, 147. But _see ibid_., pp. 94, 116, +for observations of a general air of indolence among whites and blacks +alike.] + +The capital value of the slaves was an increasingly powerful insurance of +their lives and their health. In four days of June, 1836, Thomas Glover of +Lowndes County, Alabama, incurred a debt of $35 which he duly paid, for +three visits with mileage and prescriptions by Dr. Salley to his "wench +Rina";[72] and in the winter of 1858 Nathan Truitt of Troup County, +Georgia, had medical attendance rendered to a slave child of his to the +amount of $130.50.[73] These are mere chance items in the multitude which +constantly recur in probate records. Business prudence required expenditure +with almost a lavish hand when endangered property was to be saved. The +same consideration applied when famines occurred, as in Alabama in 1828[74] +and 1855.[75] Poverty-stricken freemen might perish, but slaveowners could +use the slaves themselves as security for credits to buy food at famine +prices to feed them.[76] As Olmsted said, comparing famine effects in the +South and in Ireland, "the slaves suffered no physical want--the peasant +starved."[77] The higher the price of slaves, the more stringent the +pressure upon the masters to safeguard them from disease, injury and risk +of every sort. + +[Footnote 72: MS. receipt in private possession.] + +[Footnote 73: MS. probate records at LaGrange, Ga.] + +[Footnote 74: Charleston, _City Gazette_, May 28, 1828.] + +[Footnote 75: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 707, 708, quoting +contemporary newspapers.] + +[Footnote 76: Cf. D.D. Wallace, _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 429.] + +[Footnote 77: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 244.] + +Although this phase of the advancing valuation gave no occasion for regret, +other phases brought a spread of dismay and apprehension. In an essay of +1859 Edmund Ruffin analyzed the effects in Virginia. In the last fifteen +years, he said, the value of slaves had been doubled, solely because of +the demand from the lower South. The Virginians affected fell into three +classes. The first were those who had slaves to be sold, whether through +pressure of debt or in the legal division of estates or in the rare event +of liquidating a surplus of labor. These would receive advantage from high +prices. The second were those who wishing neither to buy nor sell slaves +desired merely to keep their estates intact. These were, of course, +unaffected by the fluctuations. The third were the great number of +enterprising planters and farmers who desired to increase the scale of +their industrial operations and who would buy slaves if conditions were +propitious but were debarred therefrom by the immoderate prices. When these +men stood aside in the bidding the manual force and the earning power of +the commonwealth were depleted. The smaller volume of labor then remaining +must be more thinly applied; land values must needs decline; and the +shrewdest employers must join the southward movement. The draining of +the slaves, he continued, would bring compensation in an inflow of white +settlers only when the removal of slave labor had become virtually complete +and had brought in consequence the most extreme prostration of land +prices and of the incomes of the still remaining remnant of the original +population. The exporting of labor, at whatever price it might be sold, he +likened to a farmer's conversion of his plow teams into cash instead of +using them in his work. According to these views, he concluded, "the +highest prices yet obtained from the foreign purchasers of our slaves have +never left a profit to the state or produced pecuniary benefit to general +interests. And even if prices should continue to increase, as there is good +reason to expect and to dread, until they reach $2000 or more for the best +laborers, or $1200 for the general average of ages and sexes, these prices, +though necessarily operating to remove every slave from Virginia, will +still cause loss to agricultural and general interests in every particular +sale, and finally render the state a desert and a ruin."[78] + +[Footnote 78: Edmund Ruffin, "The Effects of High Prices of Slaves," in +_DeBow's Review_, XXVI, 647-657 (June, 1859).] + +At Charleston a similar plaint was voiced by L.W. Spratt. In early years +when the African trade was open and slaves were cheap, said he, in the +Carolina lowlands "enterprise found a profitable field, and necessarily +therefore the fortunes of the country bloomed and brightened. But when +the fertilizing stream of labor was cut off, when the opening West had +no further supply to meet its requisitions, it made demands upon the +accumulations of the seaboard. The limited amount became a prize to be +contended for. Land in the interior offered itself at less than one dollar +an acre. Land on the seaboard had been raised to fifty dollars per acre, +and labor, forced to elect between them, took the cheaper. The heirs who +came to an estate, or the men of capital who retired from business, sought +a location in the West. Lands on the seaboard were forced to seek for +purchasers; purchasers came to the seaboard to seek for slaves. Their +prices were elevated to their value not upon the seaboard where lands were +capital but in the interior where the interest upon the cost of labor was +the only charge upon production. Labor therefore ceased to be profitable +in the one place as it became profitable in the other. Estates which were +wealth to their original proprietors became a charge to the descendants +who endeavored to maintain them. Neglect soon came to the relief of +unprofitable care; decay followed neglect. Mansions became tenantless and +roofless. Trees spring in their deserted halls and wave their branches +through dismantled windows. Drains filled up; the swamps returned. Parish +churches in imposing styles of architecture and once attended by a goodly +company in costly equipages, are now abandoned. Lands which had ready sale +at fifty dollars per acre now sell for less than five dollars; and over +all these structures of wealth, with their offices of art, and over +these scenes of festivity and devotion, there now hangs the pall of an +unalterable gloom."[79] In a later essay the same writer dealt with +developments in the 'fifties in more sober phrases which are corroborated +by the census returns. Within the decade, he said, as many as ten thousand +slaves had been drawn from Charleston by the attractive prices of the west, +and the towns of the interior had suffered losses in the same way. The +slaves had been taken in large numbers from all manufacturing employments, +and were now being sold by thousands each year from the rice fields. "They +are as yet retained by cotton and the culture incident to cotton; but as +almost every negro offered in our markets is bid for by the West, the drain +is likely to continue." In the towns alone was the loss offset in any +degree by an inflow of immigration.[80] + +[Footnote 79: L.W. Spratt, _The Foreign Slave Trade, the source of +political power, of material progress, of social integrity and of social +emancipation to the South_ (Charleston, 1858), pp. 7, 8.] + +[Footnote 80: L.W. Spratt, "Letter to John Perkins of Louisiana," in the +Charleston _Mercury_, Feb. 13, 1861.] + +A similar trend as to slaves but with a sharply contrasting effect upon +prosperity was described by Gratz Brown as prevailing in Missouri. The +slave population, said he, is in process of rapid decline except in a dozen +central counties along the Missouri River. "Hemp is the only staple here +left that will pay for investment in negroes," and that can hardly hold +them against the call of the cotton belt. Already the planters of the +upland counties are beginning to send their slaves to southerly markets +in response to the prices there offered. In most parts of Missouri, he +continued, slavery could not be said to exist as a system. It accordingly +served, not as an appreciable industrial agency, but only as a deterrent +hampering the progress of immigration. Brown therefore advocated the +complete extirpation of the institution as a means of giving great impetus +to the state's prosperity.[81] + +[Footnote 81: B. Gratz Brown, _Speech in the Missouri Legislature, February +12, 1857 on gradual emancipation in Missouri_ (St. Louis, 1857).] + +These accounts are colored by the pro-slavery views of Ruffin and Spratt +and the opposite predilections of Brown. It is clear nevertheless that the +net industrial effects of the exportation of slaves were strikingly +diverse in the several regions. In Missouri, and in Delaware also, where +plantations had never been dominant and where negroes were few, the loss +of slaves was more than counterbalanced by the gain of freemen; in some +portions of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky the replacement of the one by +the other was at so evenly compensating a rate that the volume of industry +was not affected; but in other parts of those states and in the rural +districts of the rice coast the depletion of slaves was not in any +appreciable measure offset by immigration. This applies also to the older +portions of the eastern cotton belt. + +Throughout the northern and eastern South doubts had often been expressed +that slave labor was worth its price. Thus Philip Fithian recorded in his +Virginia diary in 1774 a conversation with Mrs. Robert Carter in which she +expressed an opinion, endorsed by Fithian, "that if in Mr. Carter's or in +any gentleman's estate all the negroes should be sold and the money put to +interest in safe hands, and let the land which the negroes now work lie +wholly uncultivated, the bare interest of the price of the negroes would be +a much greater yearly income than what is now received from their working +the lands, making no allowance at all for the trouble and risk of the +masters as to crops and negroes."[82] In 1824 John Randolph said: "It is +notorious that the profits of slave labor have been for a long time on the +decrease, and that on a fair average it scarcely reimburses the expense of +the slave," and concluded by prophesying that a continuance of the tendency +would bring it about "in case the slave shall not elope from his master, +that his master will run away from him."[83] In 1818 William Elliott +of Beaufort, South Carolina, had written that in the sea-island cotton +industry for a decade past the high valuations of lands and slaves had been +wholly unjustified. On the one hand, said he, the return on investments +was extremely small; on the other, it was almost impossible to relieve an +embarrassed estate by the sale of a part, for the reduction of the scale of +operations would cause a more than proportionate reduction of income.[84] + +[Footnote 82: Philip V. Fithian, _Journal and Letters_ (Princeton, 1900), +p. 145.] + +[Footnote 83: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_ (New York 1851), II, +215.] + +[Footnote 84: _Southern Agriculturist_, I, 151-163.] + +The remorseless advance of slave prices as measured in their produce tended +to spread the adverse conditions noted by Elliott into all parts of the +South; and by the close of the 'fifties it is fairly certain that no +slaveholders but those few whose plantations lay in the most advantageous +parts of the cotton and sugar districts and whose managerial ability was +exceptionally great were earning anything beyond what would cover their +maintenance and carrying charges. + +Achille Loria has repeatedly expressed the generalization that slaves have +been systematically overvalued wherever the institution has prevailed, and +he has attempted to explain the phenomenon by reference to an economic law +of his own formulation that capitalists always and everywhere exploit labor +by devices peculiarly adapted to each regime in turn. His latest argument +in the premises is as follows: Man, who is by nature dispersively +individualistic, is brought into industrial coordination only by coercion. +Isolated labor if on exceptionally fertile soil or if equipped with +specially efficient apparatus or if supernormal in energy may produce a +surplus income, but ordinarily it can earn no more than a bare subsistence. +Associative labor yields so much greater returns that masters of one sort +or another emerge in every progressive society to replace dispersion with +concentration and to engross most of the accruing enhancement of produce +to themselves as captains of industry. This "persistent and continuous +coercion, compelling them to labour in conformity to a unitary plan or in +accordance with a concentrating design" is commonly in its earlier form +slavery, and slaveholders are thus the first possessors of capital. As +capitalists they become perpetually concerned with excluding the laborers +from the proprietorship of land and the other means of production. So long +as land is relatively abundant this can be accomplished only by keeping +labor enslaved, and enslavement cannot be maintained unless the slaves are +prevented from buying their freedom. This prevention is procured by the +heightening of slave prices at such a rate as to keep the cost of freedom +always greater than the generality of the slaves can pay with their own +accumulated savings or _peculia_. Slave prices in fact, whether in ancient +Rome or in modern America, advanced disproportionately to the advantage +which the owners could derive from the ownership. "This shows that an +element of speculation enters into the valuation of the slave, or that +there is a hypervaluation of the slave. _This is the central phenomenon of_ +_slavery_; and it is to this far more than to the indolence of slave labour +that is due the low productivity of slave states, the permanently unstable +equilibrium of the slaveholding enterprise, and its inevitable ruin." The +decline of earnings and of slave prices promotes a more drastic oppression, +as in Roman Sicily, to reduce the slave's _peculium_ and continue the +prevention of his self-purchase. When this device is about to fail of its +purpose the masters may foil the intention of the slaves by changing them +into serfs, attaching the lands to the laborers as an additional thing to +be purchased as a condition of freedom. The value of the man may now +be permitted to fall to its natural level. Finally, when the growth of +population has made land so dear that common laborers in freedom cannot +save enough to buy farms, the occasion for slavery and serfdom lapses. +Laborers may now be freed to become a wage-earning proletariat, to take +their own risks. An automatic coercion replaces the systematic; the labor +stimulus is intensified, but the stress of the employer is diminished. The +laborer does not escape from coercion, but merely exchanges one of its +forms for another.[85] + +[Footnote 85: Achille Loria, _The Economic Synthesis_, M. Eden Paul tr. +(London, 1914), PP. 23-26, 91-99.] + +Now Loria falls into various fallacies in other parts of his book, as when +he says that southern lands are generally more fertile than northern +and holds that alone, to the exclusion of climate and racial qualities, +responsible for the greater prevalence of slavery ancient and modern in +southerly latitudes; or when he follows Cairnes in asserting that upon the +American slave plantations "the only form of culture practised was spade +culture, merely agglomerating upon a single area of land a number of +isolated laborers"; or when he contends that either slavery or serfdom +since based on force and fraud "destroys the possibility of fiduciary +credit by cancelling the conditions [of trust and confidence] which alone +can foster it." [86] Such errors disturb one's faith. In the presentation +of his main argument, furthermore, he not only exaggerates the cleavage +between capitalists and laborers, the class consciousness of the two groups +and the rationality of capitalistic purpose, but he falls into calamitous +ambiguity and confusion. The central phenomenon of slavery, says he, is +speculation or the overvaluation of the slave. He thereupon assumes that +speculation always means overvaluation, ignoring its downward possibility, +and he accounts for the asserted universal and continuously increasing +overvaluation by reference to the desire of masters to prevent slaves from +buying their freedom. Here he ignores essential historic facts. In American +law a slave's _peculium_ had no recognition; and the proportion of slaves, +furthermore, who showed any firm disposition to accumulate savings for the +purpose of buying their freedom was very small. Where such efforts were +made, however, they were likely to be aided by the masters through +facilities for cash earnings, price concessions and honest accounting +of instalments, notwithstanding the lack of legal requirements in the +premises. Loria's explanation of the "central phenomenon" is therefore +hardly tenable. + +[Footnote 86: _Ibid_., pp. 26, 190, 260.] + +A far sounder basic doctrine is that of the accountant Gibson, recited +at the beginning of this chapter, that the valuation of a slave is +theoretically determined by the reckoning of his prospective earnings above +the cost of his maintenance. In the actual Southern regime, however, this +was interfered with by several influences. For one thing, the successful +proprietors of small plantations could afford to buy additional slaves at +somewhat more than the price reckoned on _per capita_ earnings, because the +advance of their establishments towards the scale of maximum efficiency +would reduce the proportionate cost of administration. Again, the scale of +slaveholdings was in some degree a measure of social rank, and men were +accordingly tempted by uneconomic motives to increase their trains of +retainers. Both of these considerations stimulated the bidding. On the +other hand conventional morality deterred many proprietors from selling +slaves except under special stress, and thereby diminished the offers in +the market. If the combination of these factors is not adequate as an +explanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a new +country and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly +sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome +business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The +variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them +to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated +prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On the +other hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available as a +rule more tempting than slaves as investments. Corporation securities were +few and unseasoned; lands were liable to wear out and were painfully slow +in liquidation; but slaves were a self-perpetuating stock whose ownership +was a badge of dignity, whose management was generally esteemed a +pleasurable responsibility, whose labor would yield an income, and whose +value could be realized in cash with fair promptitude in time of need. No +calculated overvaluation by proprietors for the sake of keeping the slaves +enslaved need be invented. Loria's thesis is a work of supererogation. + +But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices did +rise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that in +virtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area had +been accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog upon +material progress. The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its making +labor mobile, regular and secure. These qualities accorded remarkably, so +far as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the one +hand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other. Its vices +were more numerous, and in part more subtle. + +The North was annually acquiring thousands of immigrants who came at their +own expense, who worked zealously for wages payable from current earnings, +and who possessed all the inventive and progressive potentialities of +European peoples. But aspiring captains of industry at the South could as +a rule procure labor only by remitting round sums in money or credit which +depleted their working capital and for which were obtained slaves fit only +for plantation routine, negroes of whom little initiative could be expected +and little contribution to the community's welfare beyond their mere +muscular exertions. The negroes were procured in the first instance mainly +because white laborers were not to be had; afterward when whites might +otherwise have been available the established conditions repelled them. The +continued avoidance of the South by the great mass of incoming Europeans in +post-bellum decades has now made it clear that it was the negro character +of the slaves rather than the slave status of the negroes which was chiefly +responsible. The racial antipathy felt by the alien whites, along with +their cultural repugnance and economic apprehensions, intrenched the +negroes permanently in the situation. The most fertile Southern areas when +once converted into black belts tended, and still tend as strongly as ever, +to be tilled only by inert negroes, the majority of whom are as yet perhaps +less efficient in freedom than their forbears were as slaves. + +The drain of funds involved in the purchase of slaves was impressive to +contemporaries. Thus Governor Spotswood wrote from Virginia to the British +authorities in 1711 explaining his assent to a L5 tax upon the importation +of slaves. The members of the legislature, said he, "urged what is really +true, that the country is already ruined by the great number of negros +imported of late years, that it will be impossible for them in many years +to discharge the debts already contracted for the purchase of those negroes +if fresh supplys be still poured upon them while their tobacco continues so +little valuable, but that the people will run more and more in debt."[87] +And in 1769 a Charleston correspondent wrote to a Boston journal: "A +calculation having been made of the amount of purchase money of slaves +effected here the present year, it is computed at L270,000 sterling, which +sum will by that means be drained off from this province."[88] + +[Footnote 87: Virginia Historical Society _Collections_, I, 52.] + +[Footnote 88: Boston _Chronicle_, Mch. 27, 1769.] + +An unfortunate fixation of capital was likewise remarked. Thus Sir Charles +Lyell noted at Columbus, Georgia, in 1846 that Northern settlers were +"struck with the difficulty experienced in raising money here by small +shares for the building of mills. 'Why,' say they, 'should all our cotton +make so long a journey to the North, to be manufactured there, and come +back to us at so high a price? It is because all spare cash is sunk here in +purchasing negroes.'" And again at another stage of his tour: "That slave +labour is more expensive than free is an opinion which is certainly gaining +ground in the higher parts of Alabama, and is now professed openly by some +Northerners who have settled there. One of them said to me, 'Half the +population of the South is employed in seeing that the other half do their +work, and they who do work accomplish half what they might do under a +better system.' 'We cannot,' said another,[89] 'raise capital enough for +new cotton factories because all our savings go to buy negroes, or as has +lately happened, to feed them when the crop is deficient." + +[Footnote 89: Sir Charles Lyell, _Second Visit to the United States_ +(London, 1850), II, 35, 84, 85.] + +The planters, who were the principal Southern capitalists, trod in a +vicious circle. They bought lands and slaves wherewith to grow cotton, +and with the proceeds ever bought more slaves to make more cotton; and +oftentimes they borrowed heavily on their lands and slaves as collateral in +order to enlarge their scale of production the more speedily. When slave +prices rose the possessors of those in the cotton belt seldom took profit +from the advance, for it was a rare planter who would voluntarily sell his +operating force. When crops failed or prices fell, however, the loans might +be called, the mortgages foreclosed, and the property sold out at panic +levels. Thus while the slaves had a guarantee of their sustenance, their +proprietors, themselves the guarantors, had a guarantee of nothing. By +virtue, or more properly by vice, of the heavy capitalization of the +control of labor which was a cardinal feature of the ante-bellum regime, +they were involved in excessive financial risks. + +The slavery system has often been said to have put so great a stigma on +manual labor as to have paralyzed the physical energies of the Southern +white population. This is a great exaggeration; and yet it is true that the +system militated in quite positive degree against the productivity of the +several white classes. Among the well-to-do it promoted leisure by giving +rise to an abnormally large number of men and women who whether actually +or nominally performing managerial functions, did little to bring sweat +to their brows. The proportion of white collars to overalls and of muslin +frocks to kitchen aprons was greater than in any other Anglo-Saxon +community of equal income. The contrast so often drawn between Southern +gentility and Northern thrift had a concrete basis in fact. At the other +extreme the enervation of the poor whites, while mainly due to malaria +and hookworm, had as a contributing cause the limitation upon their +wage-earning opportunity which the slavery system imposed. Upon the middle +class and the yeomanry, which were far more numerous and substantial[90] +than has been commonly realized, the slavery system exerted an economic +influence by limiting the availability of capital and by offering the +temptation of an unsound application of earnings. When a prospering farmer, +for example, wanted help for himself in his fields or for his wife indoors, +the habit of the community prompted him to buy or hire slaves at a greater +cost than free labor would normally have required.[91] The high price of +slaves, furthermore, prevented many a capable manager from exercising his +talents by debarring him from the acquisition of labor and the other means +of large-scale production. + +[Footnote 90: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 91-100, 193-303; John M. Aughey, _The Iron Furnace, or +Slavery and Secession_ (Philadelphia, 1863), p. 231.] + +[Footnote 91: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, p. 513.] + +Finally, the force of custom, together with the routine efficiency of slave +labor itself, caused the South to spoil the market for its distinctive +crops by producing greater quantities than the world would buy at +remunerative prices. To this the solicitude of the masters for the health +of their slaves contributed. The harvesting of wheat, for example, as a +Virginian planter observed in a letter to his neighbor James Madison, in +the days when harvesting machinery was unknown, required exertion much more +severe than the tobacco routine, and was accordingly, as he put it, "by +no means so conducive to the health of our negroes, upon whose increase +(_miserabile dictu_!) our principal profit depends."[92] The same +letter also said: "Where there is negro slavery there will be laziness, +carelessness and wastefulness. Nor is it possible to prevent them. Severity +increases the evil, and humanity does not lessen it." + +[Footnote 92: Francis Corbin to James Madison, Oct. 10, 1819, in the +Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 263.] + +On the whole, the question whether negro labor in slavery was more or less +productive than free negro labor would have been is not the crux of the +matter. The influence of the slaveholding regime upon the whites themselves +made it inevitable that the South should accumulate real wealth more slowly +than the contemporary North. The planters and their neighbors were in the +grip of circumstance. The higher the price of slaves the greater was the +absorption of capital in their purchase, the blacker grew the black belts, +the more intense was the concentration of wealth and talent in plantation +industry, the more complete was the crystallization of industrial society. +Were there any remedies available? Certain politicians masquerading as +economists advocated the territorial expansion of the regime as a means +of relief. Their argument, however, would not stand analysis. On one hand +virtually all the territory on the continent climatically available for the +staples was by the middle of the nineteenth century already incorporated +into slaveholding states; on the other hand, had new areas been available +the chief effects of their exploitation would have been to heighten the +prices of slaves and lower the prices of crops. Actual expansion had in +fact been too rapid for the best interests of society, for it had kept the +population too sparse to permit a proper development of schools and the +agencies of communications. + +With a view to increase the power of the South to expand, and for other +purposes mainly political, a group of agitators in the 'fifties raised a +vehement contention in favor of reopening the African slave trade in full +volume. This, if accomplished, would have lowered the cost of labor, but +its increase of the crops would have depressed staple prices in still +greater degree; its unsettling of the slave market would have hurt vested +interests; and its infusion of a horde of savage Africans would have +set back the progress of the negroes already on hand and have magnified +permanently the problems of racial adjustment. + +The prohibition of the interstate slave trade was another project for +modifying the situation. It was mooted in the main by politicians alien to +the regime. If accomplished it would have wrought a sharp differentiation +in the conditions within the several groups of Southern states. An analogy +may be seen in the British possessions in tropical America, where, +following the stoppage of the intercolonial slave trade in 1807, a royal +commission found that the average slave prices as gathered from sale +records between 1822 and 1830 varied from a range in the old and stagnant +colonies of L27 4_s_. 11-3/4_d_. in Bermuda, L29 18_s_. 9-3/4_d_. in the +Bahamas, L47 1_s_. in Barbados and L44 15_s_. 2-1/4_d_. in Jamaica, to L105 +4_s_., L114 11_s_. and L120 4_s_. 7-1/2_d_ respectively in the new and +buoyant settlements of Trinidad, Guiana and British Honduras.[93] If the +interstate transfer had been stopped, the Virginia, Maryland and Carolina +slave markets would have been glutted while the markets of every +southwestern state were swept bare. Slave prices in the former would have +fallen to such levels that masters would have eventually resorted to +manumission in self-defence, while in the latter all existing checks to the +inflation of prices would have been removed and all the evils consequent +upon the capitalization of labor intensified. + +[Footnote 93: _Accounts and Papers_ [of the British Government], 1837-1838, +vol. 48, [p. 329].] + +Another conceivable plan would have been to replace slavery at large by +serfdom. This would have attached the negroes to whatever lands they +chanced to occupy at the time of the legislation. By force of necessity it +would have checked the depletion of soils; but by preventing territorial +transfer it would have robbed the negroes and their masters of all +advantages afforded by the virginity of unoccupied lands. Serfdom could +hardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparsely +settled country such as the South then was. + +Finally the conversion of slaves into freemen by a sweeping emancipation +was a project which met little endorsement except among those who ignored +the racial and cultural complications. Financially it would work drastic +change in private fortunes, though the transfer of ownership from the +masters to the laborers themselves need not necessarily have great effect +for the time being upon the actual wealth of the community as a whole. +Emancipation would most probably, however, break down the plantation system +by making the labor supply unstable, and fill the country partly with +peasant farmers and partly with an unattached and floating negro +population. Exceptional negroes and mulattoes would be sure to thrive upon +their new opportunities, but the generality of the blacks could be counted +upon to relax into a greater slackness than they had previously been +permitted to indulge in. The apprehension of industrial paralysis, however, +appears to have been a smaller factor than the fear of social chaos as a +deterrent in the minds of the Southern whites from thoughts of abolition. + +The slaveholding regime kept money scarce, population sparse and land +values accordingly low; it restricted the opportunities of many men of both +races, and it kept many of the natural resources of the Southern country +neglected. But it kept the main body of labor controlled, provisioned and +mobile. Above all it maintained order and a notable degree of harmony in a +community where confusion worse confounded would not have been far to +seek. Plantation slavery had in strictly business aspects at least as many +drawbacks as it had attractions. But in the large it was less a business +than a life; it made fewer fortunes than it made men. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +TOWN SLAVES + + +Southern households in town as well as in country were commonly large, and +the dwellings and grounds of the well-to-do were spacious. The dearth of +gas and plumbing and the lack of electric light and central heating made +for heavy chores in the drawing of water, the replenishment of fuel and the +care of lamps. The gathering of vegetables from the kitchen garden, the +dressing of poultry and the baking of relays' of hot breads at meal times +likewise amplified the culinary routine. Maids of all work were therefore +seldom employed. Comfortable circumstances required at least a cook and +a housemaid, to which might be added as means permitted a laundress, a +children's nurse, a seamstress, a milkmaid, a butler, a gardener and a +coachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none but +the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the gross +population was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menial +employment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection of +householders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate services +and gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census of +Charleston in 1848,[94] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics as +compared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. The slaves were more +numerous than the free also in the semi-domestic employments of coachmen +and porters, and among the dray-men and the coopers and the unskilled +laborers in addition. + +[Footnote 94: J.L. Dawson and H.W. DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for +1848_ (Charleston, 1849), pp. 31-36. The city's population then comprised +some 20,000 whites, a like number of slaves, and about 3,500 free persons +of color. The statistics of occupations are summarized in the accompanying +table.] + +MANUAL OCCUPATIONS IN CHARLESTON, 1848 + + Slaves | Free Negroes| Whites + Men | Women Men |Women Men |Women +Domestic servants 1,888 | 3,384 9 | 28 13 | 100 +Cooks and +confectioners 7 | 12 18 | 18 ... | 5 +Nurses and midwives ...| 2 ... | 10 ... | 5 +Laundresses ...| 33 ... | 45 ... | ... +Seamstresses and +mantua makers ... | 24 ... | 196 ... | 125 +Milliners ... | ... ... | 7 ... | 44 +Fruiterers, hucksters +and pedlers ... | 18 6 | 5 46 | 18 +Gardeners 3 | ... ...| ... 5 | 1 +Coachmen 15 | ... 4 | ... 2 | ... +Draymen 67 | ... 11 | ... 13 | ... +Porters 35 | ... 5 | ... 8 | ... +Wharfingers and +stevedores 2 | ... 1 | ... 21 | ... +Pilots and sailors 50 | ... 1 | ... 176 | ... +Fishermen 11 | ... 14 | ... 10 | ... +Carpenters 120 | ... 27 | ... 119 | ... +Masons and +bricklayers 68 | ... 10 | ... 60 | ... +Painters and +plasterers 16 | ... 4 | ... 18 | ... +Tinners 3 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Ship carpenters +and joiners 51 | ... 6 | ... 52 | ... +Coopers 61 | ... 2 | ... 20 | ... +Coach makers and +wheelwrights 3 | ... 1 | ... 26 | ... +Cabinet makers 8 | ... ... | ... 26 | ... +Upholsterers 1 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Gun, copper and +locksmiths 2 | ... 1 | ... 16 | ... +Blacksmiths and +horseshoers 40 | ... 4 | ... 51 | ... +Millwrights ... | ... 5 | ... 4 | ... +Boot and shoemakers 6 | ... 17 | ... 30 | ... +Saddle and harness +makers 2 | ... 1 | ... 29 | ... +Tailors and cap makers 36 | ... 42 | 6 68 | 6 +Butchers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Millers ... | ... 1 | ... 14 | ... +Bakers 39 | ... 1 | ... 35 | 1 +Barbers and hairdressers 4 | ... 14 | ... ... | 6 +Cigarmakers 5 | ... 1 | ... 10 | ... +Bookbinders 3 | ... ... | ... 10 | ... +Printers 5 | ... ... | ... 65 | ... +Other mechanics [A] 45 | ... 2 | ... 182 | ... +Apprentices 43 | 8 14 | 7 55 | 5 +Unclassified, unskilled +laborers 838 | 378 19 | 2 192 | ... +Superannuated 38 | 54 1 | 5 ... | ... + +[Footnote A: The slaves and free negroes in this group were designated +merely as mechanics. The whites were classified as follows: 3 joiners, +1 plumber, 8 gas fitters, 7 bell hangers, 1 paper hanger, 6 carvers and +gilders, 9 sail makers, 5 riggers, 1 bottler, 8 sugar makers, 43 engineers, +10 machinists, 6 boilermakers, 7 stone cutters, 4 piano and organ builders, +23 silversmiths, 15 watchmakers, 3 hair braiders, 1 engraver, 1 cutler, 3 +molders, 3 pump and block makers, 2 turners, 2 wigmakers, 1 basketmaker, 1 +bleacher, 4 dyers, and 4 journeymen. + +In addition there were enumerated of whites in non-mechanical employments +in which the negroes did not participate, 7 omnibus drivers and 16 +barkeepers.] + +On the other hand, although Charleston excelled every other city in the +proportion of slaves in its population, free laborers predominated in all +the other industrial groups, though but slightly in the cases of the masons +and carpenters. The whites, furthermore, heavily outnumbered the free +negroes in virtually all the trades but that of barbering which they +shunned. Among women workers the free colored ranked first as seamstresses, +washerwomen, nurses and cooks, with white women competing strongly in the +sewing trades alone. A census of Savannah in the same year shows a similar +predominance of whites in all the male trades but that of the barbers, in +which there were counted five free negroes, one slave and no whites.[2] +From such statistics two conclusions are clear: first, that the repulsion +of the whites was not against manual work but against menial service; +second, that the presence of the slaves in the town trades was mainly due +to the presence of their fellows as domestics. + +[Footnote 2: Joseph Bancroft, _Census of the City of Savannah_ (Savannah, +1848).] + +Most of the slave mechanics and out-of-door laborers were the husbands and +sons of the cooks and chambermaids, dwelling with them on their masters' +premises, where the back yard with its crooning women and romping +vari-colored children was as characteristic a feature as on the +plantations. Town slavery, indeed, had a strong tone of domesticity, and +the masters were often paternalistically inclined. It was a townsman, for +example, who wrote the following to a neighbor: "As my boy Reuben has +formed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her for a wife, this +is to let you know that I am perfectly willing that he should, with your +consent, marry her. His character is good; he is honest, faithful and +industrious." The patriarchal relations of the country, however, which +depended much upon the isolation of the groups, could hardly prevail in +similar degree where the slaves of many masters intermingled. Even for +the care of the sick there was doubtless fairly frequent recourse to such +establishments as the "Surgical Infirmary for Negroes" at Augusta which +advertised its facilities in 1854,[3] though the more common practice, of +course, was for slave patients in town as well as country to be nursed +at home. A characteristic note in this connection was written by a young +Georgia townswoman: "No one is going to church today but myself, as we have +a little negro very sick and Mama deems it necessary to remain at home to +attend to him."[4] + +[Footnote 3: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 289, +advertisement. The building was described as having accommodations for +fifty or sixty patients. The charge for board, lodging and nursing was $10 +per month, and for surgical operations and medical attendance "the usual +rates of city practice."] + +[Footnote 4: Mary E. Harden to Mrs. Howell Cobb, Athens, Ga., Nov. 13, +1853. MS. in possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +The town regime was not so conducive to lifelong adjustments of masters +and slaves except as regards domestic service; for whereas a planter could +always expand his operations in response to an increase of his field hands +and could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he might +produce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire +out or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic +establishment. On the other hand a building contractor with an expanding +business could not await the raising of children but must buy or hire +masons and carpenters where he could find them. + +Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs. Thus William Elfe, a +Charleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial period, had title to +four sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and he managed to keep some of +their wives and children in his possession also by having a farm on the +further side of the harbor for their residence and employment.[5] William +Rouse, a Charleston leather worker who closed his business in 1825 when +the supply of tan bark ran short, had for sale four tanners, a currier and +seven shoemakers, with, however, no women or children;[6] and the seven +slaves of William Brockelbank, a plastering contractor of the same city, +sold after his death in 1850, comprised but one woman and no children.[7] +Likewise when the rope walk of Smith, Dorsey and Co. at New Orleans was +offered for sale in 1820, fourteen slave operatives were included without +mention of their families.[8] + +[Footnote 5: MS. account book of William Elfe, in the Charleston Library.] + +[Footnote 6: Charleston _City Gazette_, Jan. 5, 1826, advertisement.] + +[Footnote 7: Charleston _Mercury_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, Dec. +5, 1850. This news item owed its publication to the "handsome prices" +realized. A plasterer 28 years old brought $2,135; another, 30, $1,805; a +third, 24, $1775; a fourth, 24, $1,100; and a fifth, 20, $730.] + +[Footnote 8: _Louisiana Advertiser_ (New Orleans), May 13, 1820, +advertisement.] + +Far more frequently such laborers were taken on hire. The following are +typical of a multitude of newspaper advertisements: Michael Grantland at +Richmond offered "good wages" for the year 1799 by piece or month for six +or eight negro coopers.[9] At the same time Edward Rumsey was calling for +strong negro men of good character at $100 per year at his iron works in +Botetourt County, Virginia, and inviting free laboring men also to take +employment with him.[10] In 1808 Daniel Weisinger and Company wanted three +or four negro men to work in their factory at Frankfort, Kentucky, saying +"they will be taught weaving, and liberal wages will be paid for their +services."[11] George W. Evans at Augusta in 1818 "Wanted to hire, eight or +ten white or black men for the purpose of cutting wood."[12] A citizen of +Charleston in 1821 called for eight good black carpenters on weekly or +monthly wages, and in 1825 a blacksmith and wheel-wright of the same city +offered to take black apprentices.[13] In many cases whites and blacks +worked together in the same employ, as in a boat-building yard on the Flint +River in 1836,[14] and in a cotton mill at Athens, Georgia, in 1839.[15] + +[Footnote 9: _Virginia Gazette_ (Richmond), Nov. 20, 1798.] + +[Footnote 10: Winchester, Va., _Gazette_, Jan. 30, 1799.] + +[Footnote 11: The _Palladium_ (Frankfort, Ky.), Dec. 1, 1808.] + +[Footnote 12: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, Aug. 1, 1818.] + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 22, 1825.] + +[Footnote 14: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 18, 1836, +reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 356.] + +[Footnote 15: J.S. Buckingham, _The Slave States of America_ (London, +[1842]), II, 112.] + +In some cases the lessor of slaves procured an obligation of complete +insurance from the lessee. An instance of this was a contract between +James Murray of Wilmington in 1743, when he was departing for a sojourn in +Scotland, and his neighbor James Hazel. The latter was to take the three +negroes Glasgow, Kelso and Berwick for three years at an annual hire of L21 +sterling for the lot. If death or flight among them should prevent Hazel +from returning any of the slaves at the end of the term he was to reimburse +Murray at full value scheduled in the lease, receiving in turn a bill of +sale for any runaway. Furthermore if any of the slaves were permanently +injured by willful abuse at the hands of Hazel's overseer, Murray was to be +paid for the damage.[16] Leases of this type, however, were exceptional. +As a rule the owners appear to have carried all risks except in regard to +willful injury, and the courts generally so adjudged it where the contracts +of hire had no stipulations in the premises.[17] When the Georgia supreme +court awarded the owner a full year's hire of a slave who had died in the +midst of his term the decision was complained of as an innovation "signally +oppressive to the poorer classes of our citizens--the large majority--who +are compelled to hire servants."[18] + +[Footnote 16: Nina M. Tiffany ed., _Letters of James Murray, Loyalist_ +(Boston, 1901), pp. 67-69.] + +[Footnote 17: J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_ (New York, 1837), pp. +152-155.] + +[Footnote 18: Editorial in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. +12, 1854.] + +The main supply of slaves for hire was probably comprised of the husbands +and sons, and sometimes the daughters, of the cooks and housemaids of the +merchants, lawyers and the like whose need of servants was limited but who +in many cases made a point of owning their slaves in families. On the other +hand, many townsmen whose capital was scant or whose need was temporary +used hired slaves even for their kitchen work; and sometimes the filling of +the demand involved the transfer of a slave from one town to another. Thus +an innkeeper of Clarkesville, a summer resort in the Georgia mountains, +published in the distant newspapers of Athens and Augusta in 1838 his +offer of liberal wages for a first rate cook.[19] This hiring of domestics +brought periodic embarrassments to those who depended upon them. A Virginia +clergyman who found his wife and himself doing their own chores "in the +interval between the hegira of the old hirelings and the coming of the +new"[20] was not alone in his plight. At the same season, a Richmond editor +wrote: "The negro hiring days have come, the most woeful of the year! So +housekeepers think who do not own their own servants; and even this class +is but a little better off than the rest, for all darkeydom must have +holiday this week, and while their masters and mistresses are making fires +and cooking victuals or attending to other menial duties the negroes are +promenading the streets decked in their finest clothes."[21] Even the +tobacco factories, which were constantly among the largest employers of +hired slaves, were closed for lack of laborers from Christmas day until +well into January.[22] + +[Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1838, advertisement +ordering its own republication in the Augusta _Constitutionalist_.] + +[Footnote 20: T.C. Johnson, _Life of Robert L. Dabney_ (Richmond, 1905), p. +120.] + +[Footnote 21: Richmond _Whig_, quoted in the _Atlanta Intelligencer_, Jan. +5, 1859.] + +[Footnote 22: Robert Russell, _North America_ (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 151.] + +That the bargain of hire sometimes involved the consent of more than two +parties is suggested by a New Year's colloquy overheard by Robert Russell +on a Richmond street: "I was rather amused at the efforts of a market +gardener to hire a young woman as a domestic servant. The price her owner +put upon her services was not objected to by him, but they could not agree +about other terms. The grand obstacle was that she would not consent to +work in the garden, even when she had nothing else to do. After taking an +hour's walk in another part of town I again met the two at the old bargain. +Stepping towards them, I now learned that she was pleading for other +privileges--her friends and favourites must be allowed to visit her.[23] +At length she agreed to go and visit her proposed home and see how things +looked." That the scruples of proprietors occasionally prevented the +placing of slaves is indicated by a letter of a Georgia woman anent her +girl Betty and a free negro woman, Matilda: "I cannot agree for Betty to +be hired to Matilda--her character is too bad. I know her of old; she is a +drunkard, and is said to be bad in every respect. I would object her being +hired to any colored person no matter what their character was; and if she +cannot get into a respectable family I had rather she came home, and if she +can't work out put her to spinning and weaving. Her relations here beg she +may not be permitted to go to Matilda. She would not be worth a cent at the +end of the year."[24] + +The cooerdination of demand and supply was facilitated in some towns by +brokers. Thus J. de Bellievre of Baton Rouge maintained throughout 1826 a +notice in the local _Weekly Messenger_ of "Servants to hire by the day or +month," including both artizans and domestics; and in the Nashville city +directory of 1860 Van B. Holman advertised his business as an agent for the +hiring of negroes as well as for the sale and rental of real estate. + +[Footnote 23: _Ibid_.] + +[Footnote 24: Letter of Mrs. S.R. Cobb, Cowpens, Ga., Jan. 9 1843, to +her daughter-in-law at Athens. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, +Athens, Ga.] + +Slave wages, generally quoted for the year and most frequently for +unskilled able-bodied hands, ranged materially higher, of course, in the +cotton belt than in the upper South. Women usually brought about half +the wages of men, though they were sometimes let merely for the keep of +themselves and their children. In middle Georgia the wages of prime men +ranged about $100 in the first decade of the nineteenth century, dropped to +$60 or $75 during the war of 1812, and then rose to near $150 by 1818. The +panic of the next year sent them down again; and in the 'twenties they +commonly ranged between $100 and $125. Flush times then raised them in +such wise that the contractors digging a canal on the Georgia coast found +themselves obliged in 1838 to offer $18 per month together with the +customary weekly rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quarts +of corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitute +for life and health insurance.[25] The beginning of the distressful +'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville could get its +street gang on a scale of $125;[26] at the middle of the decade slaveowners +were willing to take almost any wages offered; and in its final year the +Georgia Railroad paid only $70 to $75 for section hands. In 1850, however, +this rate leaped to $100 and $110, and caused a partial substitution of +white laborers for the hired slaves;[27] but the brevity of any relief +procured by this recourse is suggested by a news item from Chattanooga in +1852 reporting that the commonest labor commanded a dollar a day, that +mechanics were all engaged far in advance, that much building was perforce +being postponed, and that all persons who might be seeking employment were +urged to answer the city's call.[28] By 1854 the continuing advance began +to discommode rural employers likewise. A Norfolk newspaper of the time +reported that the current wages of $150 for ordinary hands and $225 for +the best laborers, together with life insurance for the full value of +the slaves, were so high that prudent farmers were curtailing their +operations.[29] At the beginning of 1856 the wages in the Virginia tobacco +factories advanced some fifteen per cent. over the rates of the preceding +year;[30] and shortly afterward several of these establishments took refuge +in the employment of white women for their lighter processes.[31] In 1860 +there was a culmination of this rise of slave wages throughout the South, +contemporaneous with that of their purchase prices. First-rate hands +were engaged by the Petersburg tobacco factories at $225;[32] and in +northwestern Louisiana the prime field hands in a parcel of slaves hired +for the year brought from $300 to $360 each, and a blacksmith $430.[33] The +general average then prevalent for prime unskilled slaves, however, was +probably not much above two hundred dollars. While the purchase price of +slaves was wellnigh quadrupled in the three score years of the nineteenth +century, slave wages were little more than doubled, for these were of +course controlled not by the fluctuating hopes and fears of what the +distant future might bring but by the sober prospect of the work at hand. + +[Footnote 25: Advertisement in the Savannah newspapers, reprinted in J.S. +Buckingham, _Slave States_ (London, 1842), I, 137.] + +[Footnote 26: MS. minutes of the board of aldermen, in the town hall at +Milledgeville, Ga. Item dated Feb. 23, 1841.] + +[Footnote 27: Georgia Railroad Company _Report_ for 1850, p. 13.] + +[Footnote 28: Chattanooga _Advertiser_, quoted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +June 6, 1852.] + +[Footnote 29: Norfolk _Argus_, quoted in _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), +Jan. 12, 1854.] + +[Footnote 30: Richmond _Dispatch_, Jan., 1856, quoted in G.M. Weston, _Who +are and who may be Slaves in the U.S._ (caption).] + +[Footnote 31: _Hunt's Merchants' Magazine_, XL, 522.] + +[Footnote 32: Petersburg _Democrat_, quoted by the Atlanta _Intelligencer_, +Jan., 1860.] + +[Footnote 33: _DeBow's Review_, XXIX, 374.] + +The proprietors of slaves for hire appear to have been generally as much +concerned with questions of their moral and physical welfare as with the +wages to be received, for no wage would compensate for the debilitation of +the slave or his conversion into an inveterate runaway. The hirers in their +turn had the problem, growing more intense with the advance of costs, of +procuring full work without resorting to such rigor of discipline as +would disquiet the owners of their employees. The tobacco factories found +solution in piece work with bonus for excess over the required stint. At +Richmond in the middle 'fifties this was commonly yielding the slaves from +two to five dollars a month for their own uses; and these establishments, +along with all other slave employers, suspended work for more than a week +at the Christmas season.[34] + +[Footnote 34: Robert Russell, _North America_, p. 152.] + +The hiring of slaves from one citizen to another did not meet all the needs +of the town industry, for there were many occupations in which the regular +supervision of labor was impracticable. Hucksters must trudge the streets +alone; and market women sit solitary in their stalls. If slaves were to +follow such callings at all, and if other slaves were to utilize their +talents in keeping cobbler and blacksmith shops and the like for public +patronage,[35] they must be vested with fairly full control of their own +activities. To enable them to compete with whites and free negroes in the +trades requiring isolated and occasional work their masters early and +increasingly fell into the habit of hiring many slaves to the slaves +themselves, granting to each a large degree of industrial freedom in return +for a stipulated weekly wage. The rates of hire varied, of course, with the +slave's capabilities and the conditions of business in their trades. The +practice brought friction sometimes between slaves and owners when wages +were in default. An instance of this was published in a Charleston +advertisement of 1800 announcing the auction of a young carpenter and +saying as the reason of the sale that he had absconded because of a deficit +in his wages.[36] Whether the sale was merely by way of punishment or +was because the proprietor could not give personal supervision to the +carpenter's work the record fails to say. The practice also injured the +interests of white competitors in the same trades, who sometimes bitterly +complained;[37] it occasionally put pressure upon the slaves to fill +out their wages by theft; and it gave rise in some degree to a public +apprehension that the liberty of movement might be perverted to purposes of +conspiracy. The law came to frown upon it everywhere; but the device was +too great a public and private convenience to be suppressed. + +[Footnote 35: _E. g_., "For sale: a strong, healthy Mulatto Man, about +24 years of age, by trade a blacksmith, and has had the management of a +blacksmith shop for upwards of two years" Advertisement in the Alexandria, +Va., _Times and Advertiser_, Sept. 26, 1797.] + +[Footnote 36: Charleston _City Gazette_, May 12, 1800.] + +[Footnote 37: _E. g., Plantation and Frontier_, II, 367.] + +To procure the enforcement of such laws a vigilance committee was proposed +at Natchez in 1824;[38] but if it was created it had no lasting effect. +With the same purpose newspaper campaigns were waged from time to time. +Thus in the spring of 1859 the _Bulletin_ of Columbia, South Carolina, said +editorially: "Despite the laws of the land forbidding under penalty the +hiring of their time by slaves, it is much to be regretted that the +pernicious practice still exists," and it censured the citizens who were +consciously and constantly violating a law enacted in the public interest. +The nearby Darlington _Flag_ endorsed this and proposed in remedy that +the town police and the rural patrols consider void all tickets issued by +masters authorizing their slaves to pass and repass at large, that all +slaves found hiring their time be arrested and punished, and that their +owners be indicted as by law provided. The editor then ranged further. +"There is another evil of no less magnitude," said he, "and perhaps the +foundation of the one complained of. It is that of transferring slave labor +from its legitimate field, the cultivation of the soil, into that of the +mechanic arts.... Negro mechanics are an ebony aristocracy into which +slaves seek to enter by teasing their masters for permission to learn a +trade. Masters are too often seduced by the prospect of gain to yield their +assent, and when their slaves have acquired a trade are forced to the +violation of the law to realize their promised gain. We should therefore +have a law to prevent slave mechanics going off their masters' premises to +work. Let such a law be passed, and ... there will no longer be need of a +law to prohibit slaves hiring their own time," The _Southern Watchman_ of +Athens, Georgia, reprinted all of this in turn, along with a subscriber's +communication entitled "free slaves." There were more negroes enjoying +virtual freedom in the town of Athens, this writer said, than there were +_bona fide_ free negroes in any ten counties of the district. "Everyone who +is at all acquainted with the character of the slave race knows that they +have great ideas of liberty, and in order to get the enjoyment of it they +make large offers for their time. And everyone who knows anything of the +negro knows that he won't work unless he is obliged to.... The negro thus +set free, in nine cases out of ten, idles away half of his time or gambles +away what he does make, and then relies on his ingenuity in stealing to +meet the demands pay day inevitably brings forth; and this is the way our +towns are converted into dens of rogues and thieves."[39] + +[Footnote 38: Natchez _Mississippian_, quoted in _Le Courrier de la +Louisiane_ (New Orleans), Aug. 25, 1854.] + +[Footnote 39: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Apr. 20, 1859.] + +These arguments had been answered long before by a citizen of Charleston. +The clamor, said he, was intended not so much to guard the community +against theft and insurrection as to diminish the competition of slaves +with white mechanics. The strict enforcement of the law would almost +wholly deprive the public of the services of jobbing slaves, which were +indispensable under existing circumstances. Let the statute therefore be +left in the obscurity of the lawyers' bookshelves, he concluded, to be +brought forth only in case of an emergency.[40] And so such laws were left +to sleep, despite the plaints of self-styled reformers. + +[Footnote 40: Letter to the editor in the Charleston _City Gazette_, Nov. +1, 1825. To similar effect was an editorial in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +Oct. 16, 1851.] + +That self-hire may often have led to self-purchase is suggested by an +illuminating letter of Billy Procter, a slave at Americus, Georgia, in 1854 +to Colonel John B. Lamar of whom something has been seen in a foregoing +chapter. The letter, presumably in the slave's own hand, runs as follows: +"As my owner, Mr. Chapman, has determined to dispose of all his Painters, I +would prefer to have you buy me to any other man. And I am anxious to get +you to do so if you will. You know me very well yourself, but as I wish +you to be fully satisfied I beg to refer you to Mr. Nathan C. Monroe, Dr. +Strohecker and Mr. Bogg. I am in distress at this time, and will be until I +hear from you what you will do. I can be bought for $1000--and I think that +you might get me for 50 Dolls less if you try, though that is Mr. Chapman's +price. Now Mas John, I want to be plain and honest with you. If you will +buy me I will pay you $600 per year untill this money is paid, or at any +rate will pay for myself in two years.... I am fearfull that if you do not +buy me, there is no telling where I may have to go, and Mr. C. wants me to +go where I would be satisfied,--I promise to serve you faithfully, and I +know that I am as sound and healthy as anyone you could find. You will +confer a great favour, sir, by Granting my request, and I would be +very glad to hear from you in regard to the matter at your earliest +convenience."[41] + +[Footnote 41: MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., +printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 41. The writer must have been +well advanced in years or else highly optimistic. Otherwise he could not +have expected to earn his purchase price within two years.] + +The hiring of slaves by one citizen to another prevailed to some extent +in country as well as town, and the hiring of them to themselves was +particularly notable in the forest labors of gathering turpentine and +splitting shingles[42]; but slave hire in both its forms was predominantly +an urban resort. On the whole, whereas the plantation system cherished +slavery as a wellnigh fundamental condition, town industry could tolerate +it only by modifying its features to make labor more flexibly responsive to +the sharply distinctive urban needs. + +[Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 153-155.] + +As to routine control, urban proprietors were less complete masters even +of slaves in their own employ than were those in the country. For example, +Morgan Brown of Clarksville, Tennessee, had occasion to publish the +following notice: "Whereas my negroes have been much in the habit of +working at night for such persons as will employ them, to the great injury +of their health and morals, I therefore forbid all persons employing them +without my special permission in writing. I also forbid trading with them, +buying from or selling to them, without my written permit stating the +article they may buy or sell. The law will be strictly enforced against +transgressors, without respect to persons[43]." + +[Footnote 43: _Town Gazette and Farmers' Register_ (Clarksville, Tenn.), +Aug. 9, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 45, 46.] + +When broils occurred in which slaves were involved, the masters were likely +to find themselves champions rather than judges. This may be illustrated by +two cases tried before the town commissioners of Milledgeville, Georgia, +in 1831. In the first of these Edward Gary was ordered to bring before the +board his slave Nathan to answer a charge of assault upon Richard Mayhorn, +a member of the town patrol, and show why punishment should not be +inflicted. On the day set Cary appeared without the negro and made a +counter charge supported by testimony that Mayhorn had exceeded his +authority under the patrol ordinance. The prosecution of the slave was +thereupon dropped, and the patrolman was dismissed from the town's employ. +The second case was upon a patrol charge against a negro named Hubbard, +whose master or whose master's attorney was one Wiggins, reciting an +assault upon Billy Woodliff, a slave apparently of Seaborn Jones. Billy +being sworn related that Hubbard had come to the door of his blacksmith +shop and "abused and bruised him with a rock." Other evidence revealed that +Hubbard's grievance lay in Billy's having taken his wife from him. "The +testimony having been concluded, Mr. Wiggins addressed the board in a +speech containing some lengthy, strengthy and depthy argument: whereupon +the board ordered that the negro man Hubbard receive from the marshall ten +lashes, moderately laid on, and be discharged."[44] Even in the maintenance +of household discipline masters were fain to apply chastisement vicariously +by having the town marshal whip their offending servants for a small fee. + +[Footnote 44: MS. archives in the town hall at Milledgeville, Ga., selected +items from which are printed in the American Historical Association +_Report_ for 1903, I, 468, 469.] + +The variety in complexion, status and attainment among town slaves led to a +somewhat elaborate gradation of colored society. One stratum comprised the +fairly numerous quadroons and mulattoes along with certain exceptional +blacks. The men among these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, +painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the +cast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread, +and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This element +was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or less +irked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could not +cross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes on the +other hand, with an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, the +women frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors, carrying +their burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying as great store in +their kerchief turbans as their paler cousins did in their beflowered +bonnets. The men of this class wore their shreds and patches with an +easy swing, doffed their wool hats to white men as they passed, called +themselves niggers or darkies as a matter of course, took the joys and +sorrows of the day as they came, improvised words to the music of their +work, and customarily murdered the Queen's English, all with a true if +humble nonchalance and a freedom from carking care. + +The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more than +rudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work days assumed +a grandiloquence of manner when they donned their holiday clothes. The +gayeties of the colored population were most impressive to visitors from +afar. Thus Adam Hodgson wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "I +was pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day in +their best attire, and was amused with their manners towards each other. +They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, and make the +most formal and particular inquiries after each other's families."[45] J.S. +Buckingham wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays, when the +slaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they move about in +every thoroughfare, and are generally more gaily dressed than the whites. +The females wear white muslin and light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets, +ribbons and feathers; some carry reticules on the arm and many are seen +with parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchief +before them in the most fashionable style. The young men among the +slaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed hats, and carry +walking-sticks; and from the bowings, curtseying and greetings in the +highway one might almost imagine one's self to be at Hayti and think that +the coloured people had got possession of the town and held sway, while the +whites were living among them by sufferance."[46] Olmsted in his turn found +the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the whites,[47] +and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia. The town ordinances, +while commonly strict in regard to the police of slaves for the rest of the +year, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festive +assemblies at Christmas tide. + +[Footnote 45: Adam Hodgson, _Letters from North America_, I, 97.] + +[Footnote 46: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States_, II, 427.] + +[Footnote 47: _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 101, 103. Cf. also _DeBow's +Review_, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199.] + +Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasional +complaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, among +matters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grog +shops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night, +in spite of the prohibitions of the law.[48] A citizen of Charleston +protested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form of +dissipation. "There are," said he, "sometimes every evening in the week, +funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes ... who +disturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of burying grounds in Pitt +street near Boundary street. It appears to be a jubilee for every slave in +the city. They are seen eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters, +and such is frequently the crowd and noise made by them that carriages +cannot safely be driven that way."[49] + +[Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 153.] + +[Footnote 49: Letter of a citizen in the _Southern Patriot_, quoted in H.M. +Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., 1914), +p. 144.] + +The operations of urban constables and police courts are exemplified in +some official statistics of Charleston. In the year ending September 1, +1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all, were followed in 138 cases +by prompt magisterial discharge, by fines in 309 cases, and by punishment +in the workhouse or by remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264 +of the remainder. The mayor said in summary: "Of the 573 slaves fined or +committed to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for being out at +night without tickets or being found in the dram shops or other unlawful +places. The fines imposed did not in general exceed $1, and where corporal +punishment was inflicted it was always moderate. It is worthy to remark +that of the 460 cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 were +prosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303 cases, and in +118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by a previous examination +421 suits." Arrests of colored freemen in the same period numbered 78, of +which 27 were followed by discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentence +to the workhouse, and 10 by remandment. + +In the second year following, the slave and free negro arrests for being +"out after the beating of the tattoo without tickets, fighting and rioting +in the streets, following military companies, walking on the battery +contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or other +violation of the city and state laws" advanced for some unexplained reason +to an aggregate of 1424. Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged +after examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted +or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines were +paid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners or guardians, 115 +were runaways who were duly returned to their masters or otherwise disposed +of according to law, and the remaining 252 were delivered on their owners' +orders.[50] + +[Footnote 50: Official reports quoted in H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of +Slaves in South Carolina_, pp. 49, 50.] + +At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the public whipping +of negro offenders at prominent points on the city streets, but +complaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[51] had brought its +discontinuance. For the punishment of misdemeanants under sentences to hard +labor a treadmill was instituted in the workhouse;[52] and the ensuing +substitution of labor for the lash met warm official commendation.[53] + +[Footnote 51: _Columbian Herald_ (Charleston), June 26, 1788.] + +[Footnote 52: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 2, 1826.] + +[Footnote 53: Grand jury presentments, _ibid_., May 15, 1826.] + +In church affairs the two races adhered to the same faiths, but their +worship tended slowly to segregate. A few negroes habitually participated +with the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal rituals, or listened to the +long and logical sermons of the Presbyterians. Larger numbers occupied the +pews appointed for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptist +whites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with their own +tastes. But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint. The +white preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing of +the negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptu +eloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when +dignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their own +manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemly +conduct.[54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding of separate +congregations to which the white ministers occasionally preached and in +which white laymen often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonly +filled by blacks alone. There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiar +talent for "'rousements" and the prayer leader might beseech the Almighty +in tones to reach His ears though afar off. There the sisters might sway +and croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur the +spokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. There +not only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead of +the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermon +would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm. + +[Footnote 54: A Methodist preacher wrote of an episode at Wilmington: "On +one occasion I took a summary process with a certain black woman who in +their love-feast, with many extravagant gestures, cried out that she was +'young King Jesus,' I bade her take her seat, and then publicly read her +out of membership, stating that we would not have such wild fanatics +among us, meantime letting them all know that such expressions were even +blasphemous. Poor Aunt Katy felt it deeply, repented, and in a month I took +her back again. The effect was beneficial, and she became a rational +and consistent member of the church." Joseph Travis, _Autobiography_ +(Nashville, 1855), pp. 71, 72.] + +In some cases the withdrawal of the blacks had the full character of +secession. An example in this line had been set in Philadelphia when +some of the negroes who had been attending white churches of various +denominations were prompted by the antipathy of the whites and by the +ambition of the colored leaders to found, in 1791, an African church with +a negro minister. In the course of a few years this was divided into +congregations of the several sects. Among these the Methodists prospered +to such degree that in 1816 they launched the African Methodist Episcopal +Church, with congregations in Baltimore and other neighboring cities +included within its jurisdiction.[55] Richard Allen as its first bishop +soon entered into communication with Morris Brown and other colored +Methodists of Charleston who were aggrieved at this time by the loss of +their autonomy. In former years the several thousand colored Methodists, +who outnumbered by tenfold the whites in the congregations there, had +enjoyed a quarterly conference of their own, with the custody of their +collections and with control over the church trials of colored members; but +on the ground of abuses these privileges were cancelled in 1815. A secret +agitation then ensued which led on the one hand to the increase of the +negro Methodists by some two thousand souls, and on the other to the visit +of two of their leaders to Philadelphia where they were formally ordained +for Charleston pastorates. When affairs were thus ripened, a dispute as +to the custody of one of their burial grounds precipitated their intended +stroke in 1818. Nearly all the colored class leaders gave up their papers +simultaneously, and more than three-quarters of their six thousand +fellows withdrew their membership from the white Methodist churches. "The +galleries, hitherto crowded, were almost completely deserted," wrote a +contemporary, "and it was a vacancy that could be _felt_. The absence of +their responses and hearty songs were really felt to be a loss to those so +long accustomed to hear them.... The schismatics combined, and after +great exertion succeeded in erecting a neat church building.... Their +organization was called the African Church," and one of its ministers was +constituted bishop. Its career, however, was to be short lived, for the +city authorities promptly proceeded against them, first by arresting a +number of participants at one of their meetings but dismissing them with a +warning that their conduct was violative of a statute of 1800 prohibiting +the assemblage of slaves and free negroes for mental instruction without +the presence of white persons; next by refusing, on the grounds that both +power and willingness were lacking, a plea by the colored preachers for a +special dispensation; and finally by the seizure of all the attendants at +another of their meetings and the sentencing of the bishop and a dozen +exhorters, some to a month's imprisonment or departure from the state, +others to ten lashes or ten dollars' fine. The church nevertheless +continued in existence until 1822 when in consequence of the discovery of a +plot for insurrection among the Charleston negroes the city government had +the church building demolished. Morris Brown moved to Philadelphia, where +he afterward became bishop of the African Church, and the whole Charleston +project was ended.[56] The bulk of the blacks returned to the white +congregations, where they soon overflowed the galleries and even the +"boxes" which were assigned them at the rear on the main floors. Some of +the older negroes by special privilege then took seats forward in the main +body of the churches, and others not so esteemed followed their example in +such numbers that the whites were cramped for room. After complaints on +this score had failed for several years to bring remedy, a crisis came +in Bethel Church on a Sunday in 1833 when Dr. Capers was to preach. More +whites came than could be seated the forward-sitting negroes refused +to vacate their seats for them; and a committee of young white members +forcibly ejected these blacks At a "love-feast" shortly afterward one of +the preachers criticized the action of the committee thereby giving the +younger element of the whites great umbrage. Efforts at reconciliation +failing, nine of the young men were expelled from membership, whereupon +a hundred and fifty others followed them into a new organization which +entered affiliation with the schismatic Methodist Protestant Church.[57] +Race relations in the orthodox congregations were doubtless thereafter more +placid. + +[Footnote 55: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911), +pp. 134-136.] + +[Footnote 56: Charleston _Courier_, June 9, 1818; Charleston _City +Gazette_, quoted in the _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), July 10, 1818; +J.L.E.W. Shecut, _Medical and Philosophical Essays_ (Charleston, 1819), +p. 34; C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ (Nashville +[1857]), pp. 212-214, 232; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, p. 142.] + +[Footnote 57: C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_, pp. +215-217.] + +In most of the permanent segregations the colored preachers were ordained +and their congregations instituted under the patronage of the whites. +At Savannah as early as 1802 the freedom of the slave Henry Francis was +purchased by subscription, and he was ordained by white ministers at the +African Baptist Church. After a sermon by the Reverend Jesse Peter of +Augusta, the candidate "underwent a public examination respecting his faith +in the leading doctrines of Christianity, his call to the sacred ministry +and his ideas of church government. Giving entire satisfaction on these +important points, he kneeled down, when the ordination prayer with +imposition of hands was made by Andrew Bryant The ordained ministers +present then gave the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Francis, who was +forthwith presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by Mr. +Holcombe."[58] The Methodists were probably not far behind the Baptists in +this policy. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with much smaller numbers +of negro co-religionists to care for, followed the same trend in later +decades. Thus the presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of +$7,700, a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregation +to be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian Church of the +city. The building had a T shape, the transepts appropriated to the use of +white persons. The Sunday school of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirty +white men and women as its teaching staff.[59] + +[Footnote 58: Henry Holcombe ed., _The Georgia Analytical Repository_ (a +Baptist magazine of Savannah, 1802), I, 20, 21. For further data concerning +Francis and other colored Baptists of his time see the _Journal of Negro +History_, I, 60-92.] + +[Footnote 59: J.H. Thornwell, D.D., _The Rights and Duties of Masters: a +sermon preached at the dedication of a church erected at Charleston, S.C. +for the benefit and instruction of the colored population_ (Charleston, +1850).] + +Such arrangements were not free from objection, however, as the +Episcopalians of Charleston learned about this time. To relieve the +congestion of the negro pews in St. Michael's and St. Philip's, a separate +congregation was organized with a few whites included in its membership. +While it was yet occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mob +demolished Calvary Church which was being built for its accommodation. When +the proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further use of his premises +the congregation dispersed. The mob's action was said to be in protest +against the doings of the "bands" or burial societies among the Calvary +negroes.[60] + +[Footnote 60: _Public Proceedings relating to Calvary Church and the +Religious Instruction of Slaves_ (Charleston, 1850).] + +The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave and free was +obstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that it might be perverted +to insurrectionary purposes. Thus when at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two free +negroes petitioned the Virginia legislature on behalf of themselves and +several hundred slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by the +whites had not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanction +for the creation of a "Baptist African Church," the legislature withheld +its permission. In 1841, however, this purpose was in effect accomplished +when it was found that a negro church would not be in violation of the law +provided it had a white pastor. At that time the First Baptist Church +of Richmond, having outgrown its quarters, erected a new building to +accommodate its white members and left its old one to the negroes. The +latter were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white minister +and with the choice of its deacons vested in a white committee. In 1855, +when this congregation had grown to three thousand members, the +Ebenezer church was established as an offshoot, with a similar plan of +government.[61] + +[Footnote 61: J.B. Earnest, _The Religious Development of the Negro in +Virginia_ (Charlottesville, 1914), pp. 72-83. For the similar trend of +church segregation in the Northern cities see J.W. Cromwell, _The Negro in +American History_ (Washington, 1914). pp. 61-70.] + +At Baltimore there were in 1835 ten colored congregations, with slave and +free membership intermingled, several of which had colored ministers;[62] +and by 1847 the number of churches had increased to thirteen or more, +ten of which were Methodist.[63] In 1860 there were two or more colored +congregations at Norfolk; at Savannah three colored churches were paying +salaries of $800 to $1000 to their colored ministers,[64] and in Atlanta +a subscription was in progress for the enlargement of the negro church +building to relieve its congestion.[65] By this time a visitor in virtually +any Southern city might have witnessed such a scene as William H. Russell +described at Montgomery:[66] "As I was walking ... I perceived a crowd +of very well-dressed negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brick +building which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into which +white people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, or +persons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated much +comfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all were slaves. One of my +companions went up to a woman in a straw hat, with bright red and green +ribbon trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and +a rainbow-like gown blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious +crinoline, and asked her 'Whom do you belong to?' She replied, 'I b'long to +Massa Smith, sar.'" + +[Footnote 62: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] + +[Footnote 63: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 206.] + +[Footnote 64: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New +York, 1860), pp. 350, 351.] + +[Footnote 65: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, July 13, 1859, editorial commending +the purpose.] + +[Footnote 66: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), p. +167.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +FREE NEGROES + + +In the colonial period slaves were freed as a rule only when generous +masters rated them individually deserving of liberty or when the negroes +bought themselves. Typical of the time were the will of Thomas Stanford of +New Jersey in 1722 directing that upon the death of the testator's wife +his negro man should have his freedom if in the opinion of three neighbors +named he had behaved well,[1] and a deed signed by Robert Daniell of +South Carolina in 1759 granting freedom to his slave David Wilson in +consideration of his faithful service and of L600 currency in hand paid.[2] +So long as this condition prevailed, in which the ethics of slaveholding +were little questioned, the freed element remained extremely small. + +[Footnote 1: _New Jersey Archives_, XXIII, 438.] + +[Footnote 2: MS. among the probate records at Charleston.] + +The liberal philosophy of the Revolution, persisting thereafter in spite of +reaction, not only wrought the legal disestablishment of slavery throughout +the North, but prompted private manumissions far and wide.[3] Thus Philip +Graham of Maryland made a deed in 1787 reciting his realization that the +holding of his "fellow men in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the +golden law of God and the unalienable right of mankind as well as to +every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place in +America," and converting his slaves into servants for terms, the adults +to become free at the close of that year and the children as they reached +maturity.[4] In the same period, upon his coming of age, Richard Randolph, +brother of the famous John, wrote to his guardian: "With regard to the +division of the estate, I have only to say that I want not a single negro +for any other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every +individual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say +nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant an +animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."[5] +The Randolph estate, however, was so cumbered with debts that the desired +manumissions could not then be made. At Richard's death in 1796 he left a +will of the expected tenor, providing for a wholesale freeing as promptly +as it could legally be accomplished by the clearance of the mortgage.[6] In +1795 John Stratton of Norfolk, asserting his "full persuassion that freedom +is the natural right of all men," set free his able-bodied slave, Peter +Wakefield.[7] Robert K. Moore of Louisville mingled thrift with liberalism +by setting free in 1802 two pairs of married slaves because of his +conviction that involuntary servitude was wrong, and at the same time +binding them by indenture to serve him for some fourteen years longer in +consideration of certain small payments in advance and larger ones at the +ends of their terms.[8] + +[Footnote 3: These were restricted for a time in North Carolina, however, +by an act of 1777 which recited the critical and alarming state of public +affairs as its occasion.] + +[Footnote 4: MS. transcript in the file of powers of attorney, I, 243, +among the county records at Louisville, Ky.] + +[Footnote 5: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph of Roanoke_ (New York, +1851), I, 63.] + +[Footnote 6: _DeBow's Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] + +[Footnote 7: MS. along with many similar documents among the deed files at +Norfolk, Va.] + +[Footnote 8: MSS. in the powers of attorney files, II, 118, 122, 127, at +Louisville, Ky.] + +Manumissions were in fact so common in the deeds and wills of the men of +'76 that the number of colored freemen in the South exceeded thirty-five +thousand in 1790 and was nearly doubled in each of the next two decades. +The greater caution of their successors, reinforced by the rise of slave +prices, then slackened the rate of increase to twenty-five and finally to +ten per cent. per decade. Documents in this later period, reverting to the +colonial basis, commonly recited faithful service or self purchase rather +than inherent rights as the grounds for manumission. Liberations on a large +scale, nevertheless, were not wholly discontinued. John Randolph's will set +free nearly four hundred in 1833;[9] Monroe Edwards of Louisiana manumitted +160 by deed in 1840;[10] and George W.P. Custis of Virginia liberated his +two or three hundred at his death in 1857.[11] + +[Footnote 9: Garland, _Life of Randolph_, II, 150, 151.] + +[Footnote 10: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 245.] + +Still other large proprietors while not bestowing immediate liberty made +provisions to bring it after the lapse of years. Prominent among these were +three Louisianians. Julien Poydras, who died in 1824, ordered his executors +to sell his six plantations with their respective staffs under contracts to +secure the manumission of each slave after twenty-five years of service +to the purchaser, together with an annual pension of $25 to each of those +above sixty years of age; and years afterward a nephew of the testator +procured an injunction from the supreme court of the state estopping the +sale of some of the slaves by one of their purchasers in such way as would +hazard the fulfilment of the purpose.[12] Stephen Henderson, a Scotch +immigrant who had acquired several sugar plantations, provided as follows, +by will made in 1837 and upheld by the courts: ten and twenty slaves +respectively were to be chosen by lot at periods five and ten years after +his death to be freed and sent to Liberia, and at the end of twenty-five +years the rest were to fare likewise, but any who refused to be deported +were to be kept as apprentices on the plantations.[13] John McDonogh, the +most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, made a unique bargain with +his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively to +earn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by the overtime work of +Saturday afternoons. This labor was to be done in McDonogh's own service, +and he was to keep account of their earnings. They were entitled to draw +upon this fund upon approved occasions; but since the contract was with the +whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash the others must +draw theirs _pro rata_, thereby postponing the common day of liberation. +Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the +master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of the +rest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule, and after some delay +in embarkation they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, with +their late master's benediction. In concluding his public narration in the +premises McDonogh wrote: "They have now sailed for Liberia, the land of +their fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more +virtuous people does not exist in any country."[14] + +[Footnote 11: _Daily True Delta_ (New Orleans), Dec. 19, 1857.] + +[Footnote 12: Poydras _vs_. Mourrain, in _Louisiana Reports_, IX, 492. The +will is quoted in the decision.] + +[Footnote 13: _Niles' Register_, LXVIII, 361. The original MS. is filed in +will book no. 6 in the New Orleans court house.] + +[Footnote 14: J.T. Edwards ed., _Some Interesting Papers of John McDonogh_ +(McDonoghville, Md., 1898), pp. 49-58.] + +Among more romantic liberations was that of Pierre Chastang of Mobile who, +in recognition of public services in the war of 1812 and the yellow fever +epidemic of 1819 was bought and freed by popular subscription;[15] that of +Sam which was provided by a special act of the Georgia legislature in 1834 +at a cost of $1,800 in reward for his having saved the state capitol from +destruction by fire;[16] and that of Prince which was attained through the +good offices of the United States government. Prince, after many years as +a Mississippi slave, wrote a letter in Arabic to the American consul at +Tangier in which he recounted his early life as a man of rank among the +Timboo people and his capture in battle and sale overseas. This led Henry +Clay on behalf of the Adams administration to inquire at what cost he +might be bought for liberation and return. His master thereupon freed him +gratuitously, and the citizens of Natchez raised a fund for the purchase of +his wife, with a surplus for a flowing Moorish costume in which Prince +was promptly arrayed. The pair then departed, in 1828, for Washington _en +route_ for Morocco, Prince avowing that he would soon send back money for +the liberation of their nine children.[17] + +[Footnote 15: D.W. Mitchell, _Ten Years in the United States_ (London, +1862), p. 235.] + +[Footnote 16: Georgia Senate _Journal_ for 1834, p. 25. At a later period +the Georgia legislature had occasion to reward another slave, Ransom by +name, who while hired from his master by the state had heroically saved +the Western and Atlantic Railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee River +from destruction by fire. Since official sentiment was now hostile to +manumission, it was resolved in 1849 that he be bought by the state and +ensured a permanent home; and in 1853 a further resolution directed the +chief engineer of the state-owned railroad to pay him just wages during +good behavior. Georgia _Acts, 1849-1850_, pp. 416, 417; _1853-1854_, pp. +538, 539. Old citizens relate that a house was built for Ransom on the +Western and Atlantic right of way in Atlanta which he continued to occupy +until his death many years after the Civil War. For these data I am +indebted to Mr. J. Groves Cohen, Secretary of the Western and Atlantic +Railroad Commission, Atlanta, Ga.] + +[Footnote 17: "Letter from a Gentleman of Natchez to a Lady of Cincinnati," +in the _Georgia Courier_ (Augusta), May 22, 1828. For a similar instance in +colonial Maryland see the present work, p. 31.] + +Most of the negroes who procured freedom remained in the United States, +though all of those who gained it by flight and many of those manumitted +had to shift their location at the time of changing their status. At least +one of the fugitives, however, made known his preference for his native +district in a manner which cost him his liberty. After two years in Ohio +and Canada he returned to the old plantation in Georgia, where he was +welcomed with a command to take up the hoe. Rejecting this implement, he +proposed to buy himself if a thousand dollars would suffice. When his +master, declining to negotiate, ordered him into custody he stabbed one of +the negroes who seized him. At the end of the episode the returned wanderer +lay in jail; but where his money was, or whether in truth he had any, is +not recorded.[18] Among some of those manumitted and sent out of their +original states as by law required, disappointment and homesickness were +distressingly keen. A group of them who had been carried to New York in +1852 under the will of a Mr. Cresswell of Louisiana, found themselves in +such misery there that they begged the executor to carry them back, saying +he might keep them as slaves or sell them--that they had been happy before +but were wretched now.[19] + +[Footnote 18: Cassville, Ga., _Standard_, May 31, 1858, reprinted in the +_Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), June 8, 1858.] + +[Footnote 19: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 90.] + +The slaves manumitted for meritorious service and those who bought +themselves formed together an element of substantial worth in the Southern +free colored population. Testamentary endorsement like that which Abel +P. Upshur gave on freeing his man David Rich--"I recommend him in the +strongest manner to the respect, esteem and confidence of any community in +which he may live"[20]--are sufficiently eloquent in the premises. Those +who bought themselves were similarly endorsed in many instances, and the +very fact of their self purchase was usually a voucher of thrift and +sobriety. Many of those freed on either of these grounds were of mixed +blood; and to them were added the mulatto and quadroon children set free by +their white fathers, with particular frequency in Louisiana, who by virtue +oftentimes of gifts in lands, goods and moneys were in the propertied class +from the time of their manumission. The recruits joining the free colored +population through all of these channels tended, together with their +descendants, to be industrious, well-mannered and respected members of +society. + +[Footnote 20: William C. Nell, _The Colored Patriots of the American +Revolution_ (Boston, 1855), pp. 215, 216. For a similar item see Garland's +_Randolph_, p. 151.] + +Each locality was likely to have some outstanding figure among these. In +Georgia the most notable was Austin Dabney, who as a mulatto youth served +in the Revolutionary army and attached himself ever afterward to the white +family who saved his life when he had been wounded in battle. The Georgia +legislature by special act gave him a farm; he was welcomed in the tavern +circle of chatting lawyers whenever his favorite Judge Dooly held court +at his home village; and once when the formality of drawing his pension +carried him to Savannah the governor of the state, seeing him pass, dragged +him from his horse and quartered him as a guest in his house.[21] John +Eady of the South Carolina lowlands by a like service in the War for +Independence earned a somewhat similar recognition which he retained +throughout a very long life.[22] + +[Footnote 21: George R. Giltner, _Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of +Upper Georgia_ (New York, 1855), pp. 212-215.] + +[Footnote 22: Diary of Thomas P. Porcher. MS. in private possession.] + +Others were esteemed rather for piety and benevolence than for heroic +services. "Such," wrote Bishop Capers of the Southern Methodist Church, +"were my old friends Castile Selby and John Bouquet of Charleston, Will +Campbell and Harry Myrick of Wilmington, York Cohen of Savannah, and others +I might name. These I might call remarkable for their goodness. But I use +the word in a broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the father +of the Methodist church, white and black, in Fayetteville, and the best +preacher of his time in that quarter." Evans, a free-born full-blooded +black, as Capers went on to relate, had been a shoemaker and licensed +preacher in Virginia, but while journeying toward Charleston in search +of better employment he had been so struck by the lack of religion and +morality among the negroes in Fayetteville that he determined upon their +conversion as his true mission in life. When the town authorities dispersed +his meetings he shifted his rude pulpit into the woods outside their +jurisdiction and invited surveillance by the whites to prove his lack +of offence. The palpable improvement in the morals of his followers led +erelong to his being invited to preach within the town again, where the +white people began to be numerous among his hearers. A regular congregation +comprising members of both races was organized and a church building +erected. But the white attendance grew so large as to threaten the crowding +out of the blacks. To provide room for these the side walls of the +church were torn off and sheds built on either flank; and these were the +conditions when Capers himself succeeded the aged negro in its pulpit in +1810 and found him on his own score an inspiration. Toward the ruling race, +Capers records, Evans was unfailingly deferential, "never speaking to a +white but with his hat under his arm; never allowing himself to be seated +in their houses.... 'The whites are kind to me and come to hear me preach,' +he would say, 'but I belong to my own sort and must not spoil them.' And +yet Henry Evans was a Boanerges; and in his duty feared not the face of +man." [23] + +[Footnote 23: W.W. Wightman, _Life of William Capers_ (Nashville, 1858), +pp. 124-129.] + +In the line of intellectual attainment and the like the principal +figures lived in the eighteenth century. One of them was described in a +contemporary news item which suggests that some journalists then were akin +to their successors of more modern times. "There is a Mr. St. George, +a Creole, son to the French governor of St. Domingo, now at Paris, who +realizes all the accomplishments attributed by Boyle and others to the +Admirable Creighton of the Scotch. He is so superior at the sword that +there is an edict of the Parliament of Paris to make his engagement in any +duel actual death. He is the first dancer (even before the Irish Singsby) +in the world. He plays upon seven instruments of music, beyond any other +individual. He speaks twenty-six languages, and maintains public thesises +in each. He walks round the various circles of science like the master of +each; and strange to be mentioned to white men, this Mr. St. George is a +mulatto, the son of an African mother."[24] Less happy was the career of +Francis Williams of Jamaica, a plaything of the human gods. Born of negro +parents who had earned special privilege in the island, he was used by the +Duke of Montague in a test of negro mental capacity and given an education +in an English grammar school and at Cambridge University. Upon his return +to Jamaica his patron sought his appointment as a member of the governor's +council but without success; and he then became a schoolmaster and a poet +on occasion in the island capital. Williams described himself with some +pertinence as "a white man acting under a black skin." His contempt for +his fellow negroes and particularly for the mulattoes made him lonely, +eccentric, haughty and morose. A Latin panegyric which is alone available +among his writings is rather a language exercise than a poem.[25] On +the continent Benjamin Banneker was an almanac maker and somewhat of an +astronomer, and Phyllis Wheatley of Boston a writer of verses. Both +were doubtless more noted for their sable color than for their positive +qualities. The wonder of them lay in their ambition and enterprise, not in +their eminence among scientific and literary craftsmen at large.[26] Such +careers as these had no equivalent in the nineteenth century until its +closing decades when Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar and W.E.B. +DuBois set new paces in their several courses of endeavor. + +[Footnote 24: News item dated Philadelphia, Mch. 28, in the _Georgia State +Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), May 19, 1787.] + +[Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), II, +447-485; T.H. MacDermott, "Francis Williams," in the _Journal of Negro +History_, II, 147-159. The Latin poem is printed in both of these +accounts.] + +[Footnote 26: John W. Cromwell, _The Negro in American History_ +(Washington, 1914), pp. 77-97.] + +Of a more normal but less conspicuous type was Jehu Jones, the colored +proprietor of one of Charleston's most popular hotels who lived in the same +manner as his white patrons, accumulated property to the value of some +forty thousand dollars, and maintained a reputation for high business +talent and integrity.[27] At New Orleans men of such a sort were quite +numerous. Prominent among them by reason of his wealth and philanthropy was +Thomy Lafon, a merchant and money lender who systematically accumulated +houses and lots during a lifetime extending both before and after the +Civil War and whose possessions when he died at the age of eighty-two were +appraised at nearly half a million dollars.[28] Prosperity and good repute, +however, did not always go hand in hand. The keeper of the one good tavern +in the Louisiana village of Bayou Sara in 1831 was a colored woman of whom +Anne Royall wrote: "This _nigger_ or mulatto was rich, owned the tavern and +several slaves, to whom she was a great tyrant. She owned other valuable +property and a great deal of money, as report said; and doubtless it is +true. She was very insolent, and, I think, drank. It seems one Tague [an +Irishman], smitten with her charms and her property, made love to her +and it was returned, and they live together as man and wife. She was the +ugliest wench I ever saw, and, if possible, he was uglier, so they were +well matched."[29] One might ascribe the tone of this description to the +tartness of Mrs. Royall's pen were it not that she recorded just afterward +that a body-servant of General Ripley who was placed at her command in St. +Francisville was "certainly the most accomplished servant I ever saw."[30] + +[Footnote 27: W.C. Nell, _Colored Patriots_, pp. 244, 245.] + +[Footnote 28: New Orleans _Picayune_, Dec. 23, 1893. His many charitable +bequests are scheduled in the _Picayune_ of a week later.] + +[Footnote 29: Anne Royall, _Southern Tour_ (Washington, 1831), pp. 87-89.] + +[Footnote 30: _Ibid_., p. 91.] + +The property of colored freemen oftentimes included slaves. Such instances +were quite numerous in pre-revolutionary San Domingo; and some in +the British West Indies achieved notoriety through the exposure of +cruelties.[31] On the continent a negro planter in St. Paul's Parish, South +Carolina, was reported before the close of the eighteenth century to have +two hundred slaves as well as a white wife and son-in-law, and the returns +of the first federal census appear to corroborate it.[32] In Louisiana +colored planters on a considerable scale became fairly numerous. Among them +were Cyprien Ricard who bought at a sheriff's sale in 1851 an estate in +Iberville Parish along with its ninety-one slaves for nearly a quarter of +a million dollars; Marie Metoyer of Natchitoches Parish had fifty-eight +slaves and more than two thousand acres of land when she died in 1840; +Charles Roques of the same parish died in 1854 leaving forty-seven slaves +and a thousand acres; and Martin Donato of St. Landry dying in 1848 +bequeathed liberty to his slave wife and her seven children and left them +eighty-nine slaves and 4,500 arpents of land as well as notes and mortgages +to a value of $46,000.[33] In rural Virginia and Maryland also there were +free colored slaveholders in considerable numbers.[34] + +[Footnote 31: Reverend Charles Peters, _Two Sermons Preached at Dominica, +with an appendix containing minutes of evidence of three trials_ (London, +1802), pp. 36-49.] + +[Footnote 32: LaRochefoucauld-Liancourt, _Travels in the United States_ +(London, 1799), p. 602, giving the negro's name as Pindaim. The census +returns of 1790 give no such name, but they list James Pendarvis in a group +comprising a white man, a free colored person and 123 slaves, and also a +Mrs. Persons, free colored, with 136 slaves. She may have been Pindaim's +(or Pendarvis') mulatto daughter, while the white man listed in the +Pendarvis item was perhaps her husband or an overseer. _Heads of Families +at the First Census of the United States: South Carolina_ (Washington, +1908), pp. 35, 37.] + +[Footnote 33: For these and other data I am indebted to Professor E.P. +Puckett of Central College, Fayette, Mo., who has permitted me to use his +monograph, "_Free Negroes in Louisiana_," in manuscript. The arpent was the +standard unit of area in the Creole parishes of Louisiana, the acre in the +parishes of Anglo-American settlement.] + +[Footnote 34: Calvin D. Wilson, "Black Masters," in the _North American +Review_, CLXXXI, 685-698, and "Negroes who owned Slaves," in the _Popular +Science Monthly_, LXXXI, 483-494; John H. Russell, "Colored Freemen as +Slave Owners in Virginia," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 233-242.] + +Slaveholdings by colored townsmen were likewise fairly frequent. Among the +360 colored taxpayers in Charleston in 1860, for example, 130, including +nine persons described as of Indian descent, were listed as possessing 390 +slaves.[35] The abundance of such holdings at New Orleans is evidenced by +the multiplicity of applications from colored proprietors for authority +to manumit slaves, with exemption from the legal requirement that the new +freedmen must leave the state.[36] A striking example of such petitions was +that presented in 1832 by Marie Louise Bitaud, free woman of color, +which recited that in the preceding year she had bought her daughter and +grandchild at a cost of $700; that a lawyer had now told her that in view +of her lack of free relatives to inherit her property, in case of death +intestate her slaves would revert to the state; that she had become alarmed +at this prospect; and she accordingly begged permission to manumit them +without their having to leave Louisiana. The magistrates gave their consent +on condition that the petitioner furnish a bond of $500 to insure the +support and education of the grandson until his coming of age. This was +duly done and the formalities completed.[37] + +[Footnote 35: _List of the Taxpayers of Charleston for 1860_(Charleston, +1861), part 2.] + +[Footnote 36: Many of these are filed in the record books of manumissions +in the archive rooms of the New Orleans city hall. Some were denied on the +ground that proof was lacking that the slaves concerned were natives of +the state or that they would be self-supporting in freedom; others were +granted.] + +[Footnote 37: For the use of this MS. petition with its accompanying +certificates I am indebted to Mr. J.F. Schindler of New York.] + +Evidence of slaveholdings by colored freemen occurs also in the bills of +sale filed in various public archives. One of these records that a citizen +of Charleston sold in 1828 a man slave to the latter's free colored sister +at a price of one dollar, "provided he is kindly treated and is never sold, +he being an unfortunate individual and requiring much attention." In the +same city a free colored man bought a slave sailmaker for $200.[38] At +Savannah in 1818 Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800 +to Alex Hunter, guardian of the colored freeman Louis Mirault, in trust for +him; and in 1833 Anthony Ordingsell, free colored, having obtained through +his guardian an order of court, sold a slave woman to the highest bidder +for $385.[39] + +[Footnote 38: MSS. in the files of slave sales in the South Carolina +archives at Columbia.] + +[Footnote 39: MSS. among the county archives at Savannah, Ga.] + +It is clear that aside from the practice of holding slave relatives as a +means of giving them virtual freedom, an appreciable number of colored +proprietors owned slaves purely as a productive investment. It was +doubtless a group of these who sent a joint communication to a New Orleans +newspaper when secession and war were impending: "The free colored +population (native) of Louisiana ... own slaves, and they are dearly +attached to their native land, ... and they are ready to shed their blood +for her defence. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the +North, but they have plenty for Louisiana.... They will fight for her in +1861 as they fought in 1814-'15.... If they have made no demonstration it +is because they have no right to meddle with politics, but not because they +are not well disposed. All they ask is to have a chance, and they will +be worthy sons of Louisiana."[40] Oral testimony gathered by the present +writer from old residents in various quarters of the South supports the +suggestion of this letter that many of the well-to-do colored freemen +tended to prize their distinctive position so strongly as to deplore any +prospect of a general emancipation for fear it would submerge them in the +great black mass. + +[Footnote 40: Letter to the editor, signed "A large number of them," in the +New Orleans _Daily Delta_, Dec. 28, 1860. Men of this element had indeed +rendered service under Jackson in the defence of the city against Pakenham, +as Louisianians well knew.] + +The types discussed thus far were exceptional. The main body of the free +negroes were those who whether in person or through their mothers had been +liberated purely from sentiment and possessed no particular qualifications +for self-directed careers. The former slaves of Richard Randolph who were +colonized in accordance with his will as petty landed proprietors near +Farmville, Virginia, proved commonly thriftless for half a century +afterward;[41] and Olmsted observed of the Virginia free negroes in general +that their poverty was not due to the lack of industrial opportunity.[42] +Many of those in the country were tenants. George Washington found one of +them unprofitable as such;[43] and Robert Carter in 1792 rented farms to +several in spite of his overseer's remonstrance that they had no adequate +outfit of tools and teams, and against his neighbors' protests.[44] Not a +few indeed were mere squatters on waste lands. A Georgia overseer reported +in 1840 that several such families had made clearings in the woods of +the plantation under his charge, and proposed that rent be required of +them;[45] and travellers occasionally came upon negro cabins in fields +which had been abandoned by their proprietors.[46] The typical rural family +appears to have tilled a few acres on its own account, and to have been +willing to lend a hand to the whites for wages when they needed service. +It was this readiness which made their presence in many cases welcome in a +neighborhood. A memorial signed by thirty-eight citizens of Essex County, +Virginia, in 1842 in behalf of a freedman might be paralleled from the +records of many another community: "We would be glad if he could be +permitted to remain with us and have his freedom, as he is a well disposed +person and a very useful man in many respects. He is a good carpenter, a +good cooper, a coarse shoemaker, a good hand at almost everything that is +useful to us farmers."[47] Among the free negroes on the seaboard there was +a special proclivity toward the water pursuits of boating, oystering and +the like.[48] In general they found a niche in industrial society much on +a level with the slaves but as free as might be from the pressure of +systematic competition. + +[Footnote 41: F.N. Watkins, "The Randolph Emancipated Slaves," in _DeBow's +Review_, XXIV, 285-290.] + +[Footnote 42: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 126.] + +[Footnote 43: S.M. Hamilton ed., _Letters to Washington_, IV, 239.] + +[Footnote 44: Carter MSS. in the Virginia Historical Society.] + +[Footnote 45: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 155.] + +[Footnote 46: _E. g_., F. Cumming, _Tour to the West_, reprinted in +Thwaites ed., _Early Western Travels_, IV, 336.] + +[Footnote 47: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 153.] + +[Footnote 48: _Ibid_., p. 150.] + +Urban freemen had on the average a somewhat higher level of attainment than +their rural fellows, for among them was commonly a larger proportion of +mulattoes and quadroons and of those who had demonstrated their capacity +for self direction by having bought their own freedom. Recruits of some +skill in the crafts, furthermore, came in from the country, because of +the advantages which town industry, in sharp contrast with that of the +plantations, gave to free labor. A characteristic state of affairs is shown +by the official register of free persons of color in Richmond County, +Georgia, wherein lay the city of Augusta, for the year 1819[49]. Of the +fifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, only +seven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specific +trades or employments. The prosperity of the group must have been but +moderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workers +at washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; and +although an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its minister +must have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for no +designation of a preacher appears in the list. At Charleston, likewise, +according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a total +of 239 listed in manual occupations were unclassified laborers, while the +great majority were engaged in the shop and building trades. The women +again were very numerous in sewing and washing employments, and an +appreciable number of them were domestic servants outright.[50] + +[Footnote 49: _Augusta Chronicle_, Mch. 13, 1819, reprinted in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 143-147.] + +[Footnote 50: Dawson and DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for 1848_, +summarized in the table given on p. 403 of the present work.] + +In the compendium of the United States census of 1850 there are printed in +parallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored males +above fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans. In +the Northern metropolis there were 3337 enumerated, and in the Southern +1792. The former had 4 colored lawyers and 3 colored druggists while the +latter had none of either; and the colored preachers and doctors were 21 +to 1 and 9 to 4 in New York's favor. But New Orleans had 4 colored +capitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 brokers and 2 collectors, with +none of any of these at New York; and 64 merchants, 5 jewelers and 61 +clerks to New York's 3, 3 and 7 respectively, and 12 colored teachers to 8. +New York had thrice New Orleans' number of colored barbers, and twice as +many butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrasted +with 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers, +tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not in +much better proportion. One-third of all New York's colored men, indeed, +were unskilled laborers and another quarter were domestic servants, not to +mention the many cooks, coachmen and other semi-domestic employees, whereas +at New Orleans the unskilled were but a tenth part of the whole and no male +domestics were listed. This showing, which on the whole is highly favorable +to New Orleans, is partly attributable to the more than fourfold excess +of mulattoes over the blacks in its free population, in contrast with a +reversed proportion at New York; for the men of mixed blood filled all the +places above the rank of artisan at New Orleans, and heavily preponderated +in virtually all the classes but that of unskilled laborers. New York's +poor showing as regards colored craftsmen, however, was mainly due to the +greater discrimination which its white people applied against all who had a +strain of negro blood. + +This antipathy and its consequent industrial repression was palpably more +severe at the North in general than in the South. De Tocqueville remarked +that "the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in +proportion as they are emancipated." Fanny Kemble, in her more vehement +style, wrote of the negroes in the North: "They are not slaves indeed, +but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own +despised race, scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not +tolerated even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free +certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the +offscouring of the very dregs of your society.... All hands are extended to +thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, the +most vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turn +the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach."[51] Marshall +Hall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of that +prejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, a +prejudice unknown in the South, where the domestic relations between the +African and the European are so much more intimate."[52] Olmsted recorded +a conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red River +steamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "He +said that colored people could associate with whites much more easily +and comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason he +preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from +white people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North than +in Louisiana."[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who after +buying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but had +promptly returned. When questioned by his former owner this man said: "Oh, +I don't like dat Philadelphy, massa; an't no chance for colored folks dere. +Spec' if I'd been a runaway de wite folks dere take care o' me; but I +couldn't git anythin' to do, so I jis borrow ten dollar of my broder an' +cum back to old Virginny."[54] In Ohio, John Randolph's freedmen were +prevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors had +bought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in the +state;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a public +meeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place would +not be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke up +the school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for colored +girls. The legislatures of various Northern states, furthermore, excluded +free immigrants as well as discriminating sharply against those who were +already inhabitants. Wherever the negroes clustered numerously, from Boston +to Philadelphia and Cincinnati, they were not only brow-beaten and excluded +from the trades but were occasionally the victims of brutal outrage whether +from mobs or individual persecutors.[56] + +[Footnote 51: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal_ (London, 1863), p. 7.] + +[Footnote 52: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_ +(London, 1854), p. 17.] + +[Footnote 53: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 636.] + +[Footnote 54: _Ibid_., p. 104.] + +[Footnote 55: F.U. Quillin, _The Color Line in Ohio_ (Ann Arbor, Mich.), p. +20; _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 143.] + +[Footnote 56: J.P. Gordy, _Political History of the United States_ (New +York, 1902), II, 404, 405; John Daniels, _In Freedom's Birthplace_ (Boston, +1914), pp. 25-29; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, +1911), pp. 143-168, 195-204, containing many details; F.U. Quillin, _The +Color Line in Ohio_, pp. 11-87; C.G. Woodson, "The Negroes of Cincinnati +Prior to the Civil War," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 1-22; N.D. +Harris, _Negro Slavery in Illinois_ (Chicago, 1906), pp. 226-240.] + +In the South, on the other hand, the laws were still more severe but the +practice of the white people was much more kindly. Racial antipathy was +there mitigated by the sympathetic tie of slavery which promoted an +attitude of amiable patronage even toward the freedmen and their +descendants.[57] The tone of the memorials in which many Southern townsmen +petitioned for legal exemptions to permit specified free negroes to remain +in their communities[58] found no echo from the corresponding type of +commonplace unromantic citizens of the North. A few Southern petitions were +of a contrasting tenor, it is true, one for example presented to the city +council of Atlanta in 1859: "We feel aggrieved as Southern citizens that +your honorable body tolerates a negro dentist (Roderick Badger) in our +midst; and in justice to ourselves and the community it ought to be abated. +We, the residents of Atlanta, appeal to you for justice."[59] But it may +readily be guessed that these petitioners were more moved by the interest +of rival dentists than by their concern as Southern citizens. Southern +protests of another class, to be discussed below, against the toleration +of colored freedmen in general, were prompted by considerations of public +security, not by personal dislike. + +[Footnote 57: Cf. N.S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 166, +186-191.] + +[Footnote 58: _E. g_., J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. +152-155.] + +[Footnote 59: J.H. Martin, _Atlanta and its Builders_ ([Atlanta,] 1902), I, +145.] + +Although the free colored numbers varied greatly from state to state, +their distribution on the two sides of Mason and Dixon's line maintained +a remarkable equality throughout the antebellum period. The chief +concentration was in the border states of either section. At the one +extreme they were kept few by the chill of the climate; at the other +by stringency of the law and by the high prices of slave labor which +restrained the practice of manumission. Wherever they dwelt, they lived +somewhat precariously upon the sufferance of the whites, and in a more or +less palpable danger of losing their liberty. + +Not only were escaped slaves liable to recapture anywhere within the United +States, but those who were legally free might be seized on fraudulent +claims and enslaved in circumvention of the law, or they might be kidnapped +outright. One of those taken by fraud described his experience and +predicament as follows in a letter from "Boonvill Missouria" to the +governor of Georgia: "Mr. Coob Dear Sir I have Embrast this oppertuniny of +Riting a few Lines to you to inform you that I am sold as a Slave for 14 +hundard dolars By the man that came to you Last may and told you a Pack +of lies to get you to Sine the warrant that he Brought that warrant was a +forged as I have heard them say when I was Coming on to this Countrey and +Sir I thought that I would write and see if I could get you to do any thing +for me in the way of Getting me my freedom Back a Gain if I had some Papers +from the Clarkes office in the City of Milledgeville and a little Good +addvice in a Letter from you or any kind friend that I could get my freedom +a Gain and my name can Be found on the Books of the Clarkes office Mr Bozal +Stulers was Clarke when I was thear last and Sir a most any man can City +that I Charles Covey is lawfuley a free man ... But at the same time I do +not want you to say any thing about this to any one that may acquaint my +Preseant mastear of these things as he would quickly sell me and there +fore I do not want this known and the men that came after me Carried me to +Mempears tenessee and after whiping me untill my Back was Raw from my rump +to the Back of my neck sent me to this Place and sold me Pleas to ancer +this as soon as you Can and Sir as soon as I can Get my time Back I will +pay you all charges if you will Except of it yours in beast Charles Covey +Borned and Raized in the City of Milledgeville and a Blacksmith by trade +and James Rethearfurd in the City of Macon is my Laller [lawyer?] and can +tell you all about these things."[60] + +[Footnote 60: Letter of Charles Covey to Howell Cobb, Nov. 30, 1853. MS. in +the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., for the use of which I am +indebted to Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia. For +another instance in which Cobb's aid was asked see the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1911, II, 331-334.] + +In a few cases claims of ownership were resurrected after a long lapse. +That of Alexander Pierre, a New Orleans negro who had always passed as +free-born, was the consequence of an affray in which he had worsted another +black. In revenge the defeated combatant made the fact known that Pierre +was the son of a blind girl who because of her lack of market value had +been left by her master many years before to shift for herself when he had +sold his other slaves and gone to France. Thereupon George Heno, the heir +of the departed and now deceased proprietor, laid claim to the whole Pierre +group, comprising the blind mother, Alexander himself, his sister, and +that sister's two children. Whether Heno's proceedings at law to procure +possession succeeded or failed is not told in the available record.[61] In +a kindred case not long afterward, however, the cause of liberty triumphed. +About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupee Parish had permitted his slave +Eulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; and +thereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtual +freedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to get +official sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring and +desiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominal +sale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this man +proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and +the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for +freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state +supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in +strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall +suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in +this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of +action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be +a runaway or fugitive."[62] + +[Footnote 61: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, May 25, 1849.] + +[Footnote 62: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the +New Orleans _True Delta_, Dec. 16, 1854.] + +Kidnappings without pretense of legal claim were done so furtively that +they seldom attained record unless the victims had recourse to the courts; +and this was made rare by the helplessness of childhood in some cases and +in others by the fear of lashes. Indeed when complexion gave presumption of +slave status, as it did, and custody gave color of ownership, the prospect +of redress through the law was faint unless the services of some white +friend could be enlisted. Two cases made conspicuous by the publication of +elaborate narratives were those of Peter Still and Solomon Northrup. The +former, kidnapped in childhood near Philadelphia, served as a slave some +forty years in Kentucky and northern Alabama, until with his own savings he +bought his freedom and returned to his boyhood home. The problem which he +then faced of liberating his wife and three children was taken off his +hands for a time by Seth Concklin, a freelance white abolitionist who +volunteered to abduct them. This daring emancipator duly went to Alabama +in 1851, embarked the four negroes on a skiff and carried them down the +Tennessee and up the Ohio and the Wabash until weariness at the oars drove +the company to take the road for further travel. They were now captured +and the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; but +Concklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohio +by the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procured +endorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of New +York and New England by which he raised funds enough to buy his family's +freedom. At the conclusion of the narrative of their lives Peter and his +wife were domestics in a New Jersey boardinghouse, one of their two +sons was a blacksmith's apprentice in a neighboring town, the other had +employment in a Pennsylvania village, and the daughter was at school in +Philadelphia.[63] + +[Footnote 63: Kate E.R. Pickard, _The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, being the +personal recollections of Peter Still and his wife Vina after forty years +of slavery_ (Syracuse, 1856). The dialogue in which the book abounds is, +of course, fictitious, but the outlines of the narrative and the documents +quoted are presumably authentic.] + +Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until +in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers +offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington. +Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free +papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans. +Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, +lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter +had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's +commission from the governor of New York. With the assistance of the local +authorities Northrup's identity was promptly established, his liberty +procured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to his +wife and children at Saratoga.[64] + +[Footnote 64: [David Wilson ed.], _Narrative of Solomon Northrup_ (New +York, 1853). Though the books of this class are generally of dubious value +this one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantation +life and labor are of particular interest.] + +A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William +Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had +come from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had +been offered passage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de +Blanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had +ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his +papers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston was +sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring +merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houston +accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold +to one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of title, refused +payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F. +Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the +British consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed +his whole narrative that it might "assist the plaintiff to prove his +freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave."[65] + +[Footnote 65: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, June 1, 1850.] + +Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping +and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among +which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66] +Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally; +but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential +value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many +thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 there +were 83,942 of this class in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North +Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large. + +[Footnote 66: Alexandria, Va., _Advertiser_, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of the +society's quarterly meeting; J.D. Paxton, _Letters on Slavery_ (Lexington, +Ky., 1833), p. 30, note.] + +A few free negroes were reduced by public authority to private servitude, +whether for terms or for life, in punishment for crime. In Maryland under +an act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following two +years, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictions +ranging from arson to petty larceny.[67] Some others were sold in various +states under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even to +default of jail fees during imprisonment as fugitive suspects. + +[Footnote 67: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, pp. 231, 232.] + +A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who +had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state +petitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was +doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband +"from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering +as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds +William Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859, +reciting "That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom +he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied +man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, +committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives +a thousand times harder and in more destitution than the slaves of many +planters in this district." He accordingly asked permission by special act +to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive +him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such +occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted +laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at +their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to +enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia +law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any +creditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during which +protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master +to pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginia +archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely +scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from +$300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations +of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years +old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature. +An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July, +1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five +hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free +wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer +escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears +to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio +than among the whites. + +[Footnote 68: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 161, 162.] + +[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., II, 163, 164.] + +[Footnote 70: In the absence of permissive laws the self-enslavement of +negroes was invalid. Texas Supreme Court _Reports_, XXIV, 560. And a negro +who had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retain +his free status, though the contract between him and his employer was not +thereby voided. North Carolina Supreme Court _Reports_, LX, 434.] + +[Footnote 71: MSS. in the Virginia State Library.] + +[Footnote 72: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, p. 577.] + +[Footnote 73: An instance is given in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New +Orleans), Aug. 26, 1830, and another in the New Orleans _Commercial +Advertiser_, Oct. 25, 1831. The motives are not stated.] + +Invitations to American free negroes to try their fortunes in other lands +were not lacking. Facilities for emigration to Liberia were steadily +maintained by the Colonization Society from 1819 onward;[74] the Haytian +government under President Boyer offered special inducements from that +republic in 1824;[75] in 1840 an immigration society in British Guiana +proffered free transportation for such as would remove thither;[76] and in +1859 Hayti once more sent overtures, particularly to the French-speaking +colored people of Louisiana, promising free lands to all who would come as +well as free transportation to such as could not pay their passage.[77] But +these opportunities were seldom embraced. With the great bulk of those to +whom they were addressed the dread of an undiscovered country from whose +bourne few travellers had returned puzzled their wills, as it had done +Hamlet's, and made them rather bear those ills they had than to fly to +others that they knew not of. + +[Footnote 74: J.H.T. McPherson, _History of Liberia_ (Johns Hopkins +University _Studies_, IX, no. 10).] + +[Footnote 75: _Correspondence relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the +Free People of Colour in the United States, together with the instructions +to the agent sent out by President Boyer_ (New York, 1824); _Plantation and +Frontier_, II, 155-157.] + +[Footnote 76: _Inducements to the Colored People of the United States +to Emigrate to British Guiana, compiled from statements and documents +furnished by Mr. Edward Carberry, agent of the immigration society of +British Guiana and a proprietor in that colony_. By "A friend to the +Colored People" (Boston, 1840); The _Liberator_ (Boston), Feb. 28, 1840, +advertisement.] + +[Footnote 77: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the +New Orleans _Picayune_, July 16, 1859, and Oct. 21 and 23, 1860.] + +Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generally +at the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from the +white schools and poorly provided with schools of their own.[78] Exclusion +of the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close of +the war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was made +complete by the action of the constitutional convention of North Carolina +in 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807 +and 1838,[79] was a more palpable grievance against which a convention +of colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested.[80] +Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites was +likewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in the +North as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required license +and registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions upon +movement, education and occupations; and several of them required the +procurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for good +behavior. + +[Footnote 78: The schooling facilities are elaborately and excellently +described and discussed in C.G. Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior +to 1861_ (New York, 1915).] + +[Footnote 79: Emil Olbrich, _The Development of Sentiment for Negro +Suffrage to 1860_ (University of Wisconsin _Bulletin_, Historical Series, +III, no, I).] + +[Footnote 80: _Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of +the People of Colour, held in Philadelphia from the sixth to the eleventh +of June_, 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831).] + +These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressions +which they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment which +colored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that some +of them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularly +when white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent. +Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excess +among the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the colored +inmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratio +to the free colored population but half as high as did the corresponding +prisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios were +about six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northern +whites respectively.[81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess of +actual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for the +discriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables, +magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negro +was doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth under +circumstances in which white men went free. The more severe industrial +discrimination at the North, which drove large numbers to an alternative of +destitution or crime, was furthermore contributive to the special excess of +negro criminality there. + +[Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10,000 of the respective +populations was about 2.2 for the whites and 13.0 for the free colored +(with slave convicts included) at the South, and 2.5 for the whites and +28.7 for the free colored at the North. _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, +p. 166. See also _Southern Literary Messenger_, IX, 340-352; _DeBow's +Review_, XIV, 593-595; David Christy, _Cotton Is King_ (Cincinnati, 1855), +p. 153; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 155-158.] + +In some instances the violence of mobs was added to the might of the law. +Such was the case at Washington in 1835 when following on the heels of a +man's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and his +trial within the jail as a precaution to keep him from the mob's clutches, +a new report was spread that Beverly Snow, the free mulatto proprietor of +a saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken in +slurring terms of the wives and daughters of white mechanics as a class. +"In a very short time he had more customers than both Brown and Gadsby--but +the landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made all +through the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increased +number of guests, but Snow was still absent." The mob then began to search +the houses of his associates for him. In that of James Hutton, another free +mulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to a +magistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held an +organized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee was +appointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council held +session, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out. +Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negro +hut and breaking the windows of a negro church.[82] Such outrages appear to +have been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racial +subordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter. + +[Footnote 82: Washington _Globe_, about August 14, reprinted in the _North +Carolina Standard_, Aug. 27, 1835.] + +Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatly +refrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freeman +was one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. They +submitted to the regime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course, +because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because there +were solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes had +reason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carry +themselves with a quiet conservative dignity. The less prosperous blacks, +together with such of their mulatto confreres as were similarly inert, +had the satisfaction at least of not being slaves; and those in the South +commonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic of +both African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends among +the whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay in +fairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarly +their own. + +The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stress +upon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they were +doubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among the +whites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of these +institutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers. +There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless +slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the +colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and +conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual +aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of +them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership +confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free +blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings +of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent +cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits +of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a +free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were +thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from +thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85] + +[Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, +1909), p. 6.] + +[Footnote 84: _Ibid_., pp. 68, 69.] + +[Footnote 85: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.] + +The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the +constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New +Orleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officers +were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and +six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month. +Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to +its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow +members, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love," and to +wear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrears +of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a +subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was the +duty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of the +official mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was to +see to the washing of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work from +the lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to have +charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members +as might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extent +of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule. +Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of +a member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpse +and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge +was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, +hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all +told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify +that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as +sociable as an Irish wake. + +[Footnote 86: _The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society of +Orleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace_ (Caption).] + +Doubtless to some extent in their lodges, and certainly to a great degree +in their daily affairs, the lives of the free colored and the slaves +intermingled. Colored freemen, except in the highest of their social +strata, took free or slave wives almost indifferently. Some indeed appear +to have preferred the unfree, either because in such case the husband would +not be responsible for the support of the family or because he might engage +the protection of his wife's master in time of need.[87] On the other hand +the free colored women were somewhat numerously the prostitutes, or in more +favored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereabouts +particularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon balls," was +a systematized practice.[88] When this had persisted for enough generations +to produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtless +cut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful though +clandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions of +some of those who to this day take the seats assigned to colored passengers +in the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossing +the line" has not in all such breasts been a mastering ambition. + +[Footnote 87: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 130-133.] + +[Footnote 88: Albert Phelps, _Louisiana_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 212, 213.] + +The Southern whites were of several minds regarding the free colored +element in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealously +disposed on the ground of their competition, the interest and inclination +of citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon those +whose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, these +men shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, the +freedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services were +enlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. One +of the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoes +and the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousness +of the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety and +contending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove allies +of the whites.[89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. The +general discussion at the South in the premises did not concern the +virtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as the +influence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connection +that the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the ground +of their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was more +than matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. A +citizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91] +"It is a melancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities of +Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equality +with the whites, ... they are chiefly noted for their aversion to labor +and proneness to villainy. Men of this class are peculiarly dangerous in +a community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness of +their manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wicked +and deep laid plots." + +[Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated +against the Southern and Western States respecting the institution and +existence of Slavery among them_. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1822), +pp. 84, 85.] + +[Footnote 90: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 158.] + +[Footnote 91: Letter to the editor in the _Louisiana Gazette_, Aug. 12, +1819.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +SLAVE CRIME + + +The negroes were in a strange land, coercively subjected to laws and +customs far different from those of their ancestral country; and by being +enslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprived +of that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope of +individual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected that +their conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whites +who were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks, +however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and the +reckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole well +founded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave no +special concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt. + +Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they were +commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and +often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences +of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the +penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of serious +infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict +slave regime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for +investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in the +premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials +of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812 +Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 Fannie +Micklejohn, charged with the murder of an infant was acquitted; and Tom, +convicted of murdering a fellow slave was sentenced to branding on each +cheek with the letter M and to thirty-nine lashes on his bare back on each +of three successive days, after which he was to be discharged. In 1816 +John, a slave of William McGeehee, convicted of the theft of a $100 bill +was sentenced to whipping in similar fashion. In 1818 Aleck was found +guilty of an assault with intent to murder, and received sentence of fifty +lashes on three days in succession. In 1819 Rodney was capitally sentenced +for arson. In 1821 Peter, charged with murdering a slave, was convicted of +manslaughter and ordered to be branded with M on the right cheek and to be +given the customary three times thirty-nine lashes; and Edmund, charged +with involuntary manslaughter, was dismissed on the ground that the court +had no cognizance of such offense. In 1822 Davis was convicted of assault +upon a white person with intent to kill, but his sentence is not recorded. +In or about the same year John, a slave of William Robertson, convicted of +burglary but recommended to mercy, was sentenced to be branded with T on +the right cheek and to receive three times thirty-nine lashes; and on the +same day the same slave was sentenced to death for assault upon a white +man with intent to kill. In 1825 John Ponder's George when convicted of +burglary was recommended by the jury to the mercy of the court but received +sentence of death nevertheless; and Stephen was sentenced likewise for +murderous assault upon a white man. In 1826 Elleck, charged with assault +with intent of murder and rape, was convicted on the first part of the +charge only, but received sentence of death. In 1828 Elizabeth Smith's +George was acquitted of larceny from the house; and next year Caroline was +likewise acquitted on a charge of maiming a white person. Finally, in 1832 +Martin, upon pleading guilty to a charge of murderous assault, was given a +whipping sentence of the customary thirty-nine lashes on three successive +days.[2] + +[Footnote 1: W.E.B. DuBois, in the _Annals of the Academy of Political and +Social Science_, XVIII, 132.] + +[Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of Baldwin +County on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences." MS. in the +court house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac American +Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 123-125.] + +A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave +circumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as +the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy +as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became +skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the +whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro +midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time +a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was +missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its +two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky, +charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to +receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of +four days.[3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because the +law declared them to be such when committed by persons of that class. The +striking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them are +examples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were of +sorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of the +perpetrators. + +[Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 1, 1864.] + +In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume of +criminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact that +in the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slave +convicts at a cost of L15,538 for the compensation of their masters,[4] and +that in 1816 some forty such were deported from New York to New Orleans, +much to the disquiet of the Louisiana authorities.[5] As for the South, +state-wide statistical views with any approach to adequacy are available +for two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that the +laws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerable +impartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In its +penitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmates +comprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All the +slaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving life +terms.[6] Classed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3 +for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 for +poisoning, 5 for attempts to poison, 7 for assault with intent to kill, 2 +for stabbing, 3 for shooting, 20 for striking or wounding a white person, +1 for wounding a child, 4 for attempts to rape, and 3 for insurrection.[7] +This catalogue is notable for its omissions as well as for its content. +While there were four white inmates of the prison who stood convicted of +rape, there were no negroes who had accomplished that crime. Likewise as +compared with 52 whites and 4 free negroes serving terms for larceny, there +were no slave prisoners in that category. Doubtless on the one hand the +negro rapists had been promptly put to death, and on the other hand the +slaves committing mere theft had been let off with whippings. Furthermore +there were no slaves committed for counterfeiting or forgery, horse +stealing, slave stealing or aiding slaves to escape. + +[Footnote 4: _Royal Gazette_ (Kingston, Jamaica), Jan. 29, 1803.] + +[Footnote 5: Message of Governor Claiborne in the _Journal_ of the +Louisiana House of Representatives, 3d legislature, 1st session, p, 22. For +this note I am indebted to Mr. V.A. Moody.] + +[Footnote 6: Under an act of 1854, effective at this time, the owner of any +slave executed or imprisoned was to receive indemnity from the state to the +extent of two-thirds of the slave's appraised value.] + +[Footnote 7: _Report of the Board of Control of the Louisiana Penitentiary, +January, 1861_ (Baton Rouge, 1861). Among the 22 pardoned in 1860 were 2 +slaves who had been sentenced for murder, 2 for arson, and 1 for assault +with intent to kill.] + +The uniquely full view which may be had of the trend of serious crimes +among the Virginia slaves is due to the preservation of vouchers filed in +pursuance of a law of that state which for many decades required appraisal +and payment by the public for all slaves capitally convicted and sentenced +to death or deportation. The file extends virtually from 1780 to 1864, +except for a gap of three years in the late 1850's.[8] The volume of crime +rose gradually decade by decade to a maximum of 242 in the 1820's, and +tended to decline slowly thereafter. The gross number of convictions was +1,418, all but 91 of which were of males. For arson there were 90 slaves +convicted, including 29 women. For burglary there were 257, with but one +woman among them. The highway robbers numbered 15, the horse thieves 20, +and the thieves of other sorts falling within the purview of the vouchers +24, with no women in these categories. It would be interesting to know how +the slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but this +the vouchers fail to tell. + +[Footnote 8: The MS. vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia State +Library. They have been statistically analyzed by the present writer, +substantially as here follows, in the _American Historical Review_, XX, +336-340.] + +For murder there were 346, discriminated as having been committed upon the +master 56, the mistress 11, the overseer 11; upon other white persons 120; +upon free negroes 7; upon slaves 85, including 12 children all of whom were +killed by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of the +murderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison, +including the administering of ground glass, 40 men and 16 women were +convicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman for +administering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous assault there +were 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon male +offenders and only two of which were described as having been directed +against colored victims. + +For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This total +of 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but the +territorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewater +district than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slave +crime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; and +its notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to the +contemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroes +among them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at least +two cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, if +one be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicion +of rape," they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentioned +among the victims is of course far from proving that these were never +violated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the private +cognizance of the masters.[9] A Delaware instance of the sort attained +record through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had run +away after being punished. + +[Footnote 9: Elkton (Md.) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertisement, reprinted +in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122.] + +For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them in +Henrico County in 1800 for participation in Gabriel's revolt, 17 in 1831, +mainly in Southampton County as followers of Nat Turner, and the rest +mostly scattering. Among miscellaneous and unclassified cases there was one +slave convicted of forgery, another of causing the printing of anti-slavery +writings, and 301 sentenced without definite specification of their crimes. +Among the vouchers furthermore are incidental records of the killing of a +slave in 1788 who had been proclaimed an outlaw, and of the purchase and +manumission by the commonwealth of Tom and Pharaoh in 1801 for services +connected with the suppression of Gabriel's revolt. + +As to punishments, the vouchers of the eighteenth century are largely +silent, though one of them contains the only unusual sentence to be found +in the whole file. This directed that the head of a slave who had murdered +a fellow slave be cut off and stuck on a pole at the forks of the road. +In the nineteenth century only about one-third of the vouchers record +execution. The rest give record of transportation whether under the +original sentences or upon commutation by the governor, except for the +cases which from 1859 to 1863 were more numerous than any others where the +commutations were to labor on the public works. + +The statistics of rape in Virginia, and the Georgia cases already given, +refute the oft-asserted Southern tradition that negroes never violated +white women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may be +drawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester, +Massachusetts in 1768.[10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned to +death, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt at +rape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governor +issued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, a +slave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in +1844 a jury in Habersham County, after testimony by the victim and others, +found a slave named Dave guilty of rape upon Hester An Dobbs, "a free white +female in the peace of God and state of Georgia," and the criminal was duly +hanged by the sheriff.[12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rape +at Tuscaloosa,[13] and another in Washington County confessed after capture +that while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from her +horse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circumstances +too horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben was +sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.[15] In +Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into the +woods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. The +criminal had been caught when the report went to press.[16] + +[Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by a +contemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Man +who was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed on +the body of one Deborah Metcalfe_" (Boston, 1768).] + +[Footnote 11: Augusta _Chronicle_, Mch. 29, 1811.] + +[Footnote 12: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 579, +580.] + +[Footnote 13: Charleston _Observer_, Nov. 24, 1827.] + +[Footnote 14: _Ibid_., Nov. 10, 1827.] + +[Footnote 15: New Orleans _Delta_, June 23, 1849.] + +[Footnote 16: New Orleans _Bee_, Sept. 27, 1842, reprinted in _Plantation +and Frontier_, II, 121, 122.] + +Other examples will show that lynchings were not altogether lacking +in those days in sequel to such crimes. Near the village of Gallatin, +Mississippi, in 1843, two slave men entered a farmer's house in his absence +and after having gotten liquor from his wife by threats, "they forcibly +took from her arms the infant babe and rudely throwing it upon the floor, +they threw her down, and while one of them accomplished the fiendish design +of a ravisher the other, pointing the muzzle of a loaded gun at her head, +said he would blow out her brains if she resisted or made any noise." The +miscreants then loaded a horse with plunder from the house and made off, +but they were shortly caught by pursuing citizens and hanged. The local +editor said on his own score when recounting the episode: "We have ever +been and now are opposed to any kind of punishment being administered +under the statutes of Judge Lynch; but ... a due regard for candor and the +preservation of all that is held most sacred and all that is most dear to +man in the domestic circles of life impels us to acknowledge the fact that +if the perpetrators of this excessively revolting crime had been burned +alive, as was at first decreed, their fate would have been too good for +such diabolical and inhuman wretches."[17] + +[Footnote 17: Gallatin, Miss., _Signal_, Feb. 27, 1843, reprinted in the +_Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Mch. 1, 1843.] + +An editorial in the _Sentinel_ of Columbus, Georgia, described and +discussed a local occurrence of August 12, 1851,[18] in a different tone: + +[Footnote 18: Columbus _Sentinel_, reprinted in the Augusta _Chronicle_, +Aug. 17, 1851. This item, which is notable in more than one regard, was +kindly furnished by Prof. R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia.] + +"Our community has just been made to witness the most high-handed and +humiliating act of violence that it has ever been our duty to chronicle.... +At the May term of the Superior Court a negro man was tried and condemned +on the charge of having attempted to commit rape upon a little white girl +in this county. His trial was a fair one, his counsel was the best our +bar afforded, his jury was one of the most intelligent that sat upon the +criminal side of our court, and on patient and honest hearing he was found +guilty and sentenced to be hung on Tuesday, the 12th inst. This, by the +way, was the second conviction. The negro had been tried and convicted +before, but his counsel had moved and obtained a new trial, which we have +seen resulted like the first in a conviction. + +"Notwithstanding his conviction, it was believed by some that the negro was +innocent. Those who believed him innocent, in a spirit of mercy, undertook +a short time since to procure his pardon; and a petition to that effect was +circulated among our citizens and, we believe, very numerously signed. This +we think was a great error.... It is dangerous for the people to undertake +to meddle with the majesty of the jury trial; and strange as it may sound +to some people, we regard the unfortunate denouement of this case as but +the extreme exemplification of the very principle which actuated those who +originated this petition. Each proceeded from a spirit of discontent with +the decisions of the authorized tribunals; the difference being that in the +one case peaceful means were used for the accomplishment of mistaken mercy, +and in the other violence was resorted to for the attainment of mistaken +justice. + +"The petition was sent to Governor Towns, and on Monday evening last the +messenger returned with a full and free pardon to the criminal. In the +meantime the people had begun to flock in from the country to witness the +execution; and when it was announced that a pardon had been received, the +excitement which immediately pervaded the streets was indescribable. Monday +night passed without any important demonstration. Tuesday morning the crowd +in the streets increased, and the excitement with it. A large and excited +multitude gathered early in the morning at the market house, and after +numerous violent harangues a leader was chosen, and resolutions passed to +the effect that the mob should demand the prisoner at four o'clock in the +afternoon, and if he should not be given up he was to be taken by force +and executed. After this decision the mob dispersed, and early in the +afternoon, upon the ringing of the market bell, it reassembled and +proceeded to the jail. The sheriff of the county of course refused to +surrender the negro, when he was overpowered, the prison doors broken open, +and the unfortunate culprit dragged forth and hung. + +"These are the facts, briefly and we believe accurately, stated. We do +not feel now inclined to comment upon them. We leave them to the public, +praying in behalf of our injured community all the charity which can be +extended to an act so outraging, so unpardonable." + +A similar occurrence in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1855 was reported with +no expression of regret. A negro who had raped and murdered a young girl +there was brought before the superior court in regular session. "When the +case was called for trial a motion for change of venue to the county of +Greene was granted. This so exasperated the citizens of Sumter (many of +whom were in favor of summary punishment in the outset) that a large number +of them collected on the 23d. ult., took him out of prison, chained him +to a stake on the very spot where the murder was committed, and in the +presence of two or three thousand negroes and a large number of white +people,[19] burned him alive." This mention of negroes in attendance is in +sharp contrast with their palpable absence on similar occasions in later +decades. They were present, of course, as at legal executions, by the +command of their masters to receive a lesson of deterrence. The wisdom of +this policy, however, had already been gravely questioned. A Louisiana +editor, for example, had written in comment upon a local hanging: "The +practice of sending slaves to witness the execution of their fellows as +a terror to them has many advocates, but we are inclined to doubt its +efficacy. We took particular pains to notice on this occasion the effects +which this horrid spectacle would produce on their minds, and our +observation taught us that while a very few turned with loathing from the +scene, a large majority manifested that levity and curiosity superinduced +by witnessing a monkey show."[20] + +[Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 21, 1855.] + +[Footnote 20: _Caddo Gazette_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, April 5, +1845.] + +For another case of lynching, which occurred in White County, Tennessee, in +1858, there is available merely the court record of a suit brought by the +owners of the slave to recover pecuniary damages from those who had lynched +him. It is incidentally recited, with strong reprehension by the court, +that the negro was in legal custody under a charge of rape and murder when +certain citizens, part of whom had signed a written agreement to "stand by +each other," broke into the jail and hanged the prisoner.[21] + +[Footnote 21: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 336. For lynchings prompted by +other crimes than rape see below, p. 474, footnote 60.] + +In general the slaveholding South learned of crimes by individual negroes +with considerable equanimity. It was the news or suspicion of concerted +action by them which alone caused widespread alarm and uneasiness. That +actual deeds of rebellion by small groups were fairly common is suggested +by the numerous slaves convicted of murdering their masters and overseers +in Virginia, as well as by chance items from other quarters. Thus in 1797 +a planter in Screven County, Georgia, who had recently bought a batch of +newly imported Africans was set upon and killed by them, and his wife's +escape was made possible only by the loyalty of two other slaves.[22] +Likewise in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1844, when a Mr. Stewart +threatened one of his slaves, that one and two others turned upon him and +beat him to death;[23] and in Arkansas in 1845 an overseer who was attacked +under similar circumstances saved his life only with the aid of several +neighbors and through the use of powder and ball.[24] Such episodes were +likely to grow as the reports of them flew over the countryside. For +instance in 1856 when an unruly slave on a plantation shortly below New +Orleans upon being threatened with punishment seized an axe and was +thereupon shot by his overseer, the rumor of an insurrection quickly ran to +and through the city.[25] + +[Footnote 22: _Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser_ (Savannah, Ga.), +Feb. 24, 1797.] + +[Footnote 23: Paducah _Kentuckian_, quoted in the New Orleans _Bee_, Apr. +3, 1844.] + +[Footnote 24: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 1, 1845, citing the Arkansas +_Southern Shield_.] + +[Footnote 25: New Orleans _Daily Tropic_, Feb. 16, 1846.] + +If all such rumors as this, many of which had equally slight basis, were +assembled, the catalogue would reach formidable dimensions. A large number +doubtless escaped record, for the newspapers esteemed them "a delicate +subject to touch";[26] and many of those which were recorded, we may be +sure, have not come to the investigator's notice. A survey of the revolts +and conspiracies and the rumors of such must nevertheless be attempted; for +their influence upon public thought and policy, at least from time to time, +was powerful. + +[Footnote 26: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 23, 1856, +editorial.] + +Early revolts were of course mainly in the West Indies, for these were long +the chief plantation colonies. No more than twenty years after the first +blacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on the +plantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like number +from other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until they +were all cut down or captured.[27] In the English islands precedents of +conspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous. A plot +among the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed and +the ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had a +similar end.[29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar course +until 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number. The +governor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporary +wrote,[30] "for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, and +abundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest kept +in a more stricter manner." This quietude continued only until 1692 when +three negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy. One of these, on promise +of pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own participation +therein. The two others were condemned "to be hung in chains on a gibbet +till they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned." These +endured the torture "for four days without making any confession, but then +gave in and promised to confess on promise of life. One was accordingly +taken down on the day following. The other did not survive." The tale as +then gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form six +regiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the forts +and arsenal through bribery among their custodians. The governor when +reporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishment +of the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward to +future informers, would make the colony secure.[31] There seems to have +been no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 when +the blacks rose in great mass and burned more than sixty plantations, as +well as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived from +neighboring islands and suppressed them.[32] + +[Footnote 27: J.A. Saco, _Esclavitud en el Nuevo Mondo_ (Barcelona, 1879), +pp. 131-133.] + +[Footnote 28: Maryland Historical Society _Fund Publications_, XXXV.] + +[Footnote 29: Richard Ligon, _History of Barbados_ (London, 1657).] + +[Footnote 30: Charles Lincoln ed., _Narratives of the Indian Wars, +1675-1699_ (New York, 1913), pp. 71, 72.] + +[Footnote 31: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, +1689-1692_, pp. 732-734.] + +[Footnote 32: _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), June 17, 1816.] + +In Jamaica a small outbreak in 1677[33] was followed by another, in +Clarendon Parish, in 1690. When these latter insurgents were routed by the +whites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearby +mountain fastnesses where, under the chieftainship of Cudjoe, they became +securely established as a community of marooned freemen. Welcoming runaway +slaves and living partly from depredations, they made themselves so +troublesome to the countryside that in 1733 the colonial government built +forts at the mouths of the Clarendon defiles and sent expeditions against +the Maroon villages. Cudjoe thereupon shifted his tribe to a new and better +buttressed vale in Trelawney Parish, whither after five years more spent in +forays and reprisals the Jamaican authorities sent overtures for peace. The +resulting treaty, signed in 1738, gave recognition to the Maroons, assigned +them lands and rights of hunting, travel and trade, pledged them to render +up runaway slaves and criminals in future, and provided for the residence +of an agent of the island government among the Maroons as their +superintendent. Under these terms peace prevailed for more than half a +century, while the Maroon population increased from 600 to 1400 souls. At +length Major James, to whom these blacks were warmly attached, was replaced +as superintendent by Captain Craskell whom they disliked and shortly +expelled. Tumults and forays now ensued, in 1795, the effect of which upon +the sentiment of the whites was made stronger by the calamitous occurrences +in San Domingo. Negotiations for a fresh accommodation fell through, +whereupon a conquest was undertaken by a joint force of British troops, +Jamaican militia and free colored auxiliaries. The prowess of the Maroons +and the ruggedness of their district held all these at bay, however, until +a body of Spanish hunters with trained dogs was brought in from Cuba. The +Maroons, conquered more by fright than by force, now surrendered, whereupon +they were transported first to Nova Scotia and thence at the end of the +century to the British protectorate in Sierra Leone.[34] Other Jamaican +troubles of some note were a revolt in St. Mary's Parish in 1765,[35] and +a more general one in 1832 in which property of an estimated value of +$1,800,000 was destroyed before the rebellion was put down at a cost of +some $700,000 more.[36] There were troubles likewise in various other +colonies, as with insurgents in Antigua in 1701[37] and[38] 1736 and +Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1752;[39] with maroons in Grenada in 1765,[40] +Dominica in 1785[41] and Demarara in[42] 1794; and with conspirators in +Cuba in 1825[43] and St. Croix[44] and Porto Rico in 1848.[45] + +[Footnote 33: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, +1689-1692_, p. 101.] + +[Footnote 34: R.C. Dallas, _History of the Maroons_ (London, 1803).] + +[Footnote 35: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXXVI, 135.] + +[Footnote 36: _Niles' Register_, XLIV, 124.] + +[Footnote 37: _Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies_, 1701, +pp. 721, 722.] + +[Footnote 38: _South Carolina Gazette_ (Charleston), Jan. 29, 1837.] + +[Footnote 39: _Gentleman's Magazine_, XXII, 477.] + +[Footnote 40: _Ibid_., XXXV, 533.] + +[Footnote 41: Charleston, S.C., _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_, Jan. +26, 1786.] + +[Footnote 42: Henry Bolinbroke, _Voyage to the Demerary_ (Philadelphia, +1813), pp. 200-203.] + +[Footnote 43: _Louisiana Gazette_, Oct. 12, 1825.] + +[Footnote 44: New Orleans _Bee_, Aug. 7, 1848.] + +[Footnote 45: _Ibid_., Aug. 16 and Dec. 15, 1848.] + +Everything else of such nature, however, was eclipsed by the prodigious +upheaval in San Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution. Under the +flag of France the western end of that island had been converted in the +course of the eighteenth century from a nest of buccaneers into the most +thriving of plantation colonies. By 1788 it contained some 28,000 white +settlers, 22,000 free negroes and mulattoes, and 405,000 slaves. It had +nearly eight hundred sugar estates, many of them on a huge scale. The +soil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that on many fields the +sugar-cane would grow perennially from the same roots almost without end. +Exports of coffee and cotton were considerable, of sugar and molasses +enormous; and the volume was still rapidly swelling by reason of the great +annual importations of African slaves. The colony was by far the most +valued of the French overseas possessions. + +Some of the whites were descendants of the original freebooters, and +retained the temperament of their forbears; others were immigrant fortune +seekers. The white women were less than half as numerous as the men, and +black or yellow concubines were common substitutes for wives. The colony +was the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and more +self-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outside +control, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that the +colored freemen be kept passive. + +A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under the +old regime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projects +in France and to demand representation in the coming States General. But +the rapid progress of radical republicanism in that assembly threw most of +these into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still to +endorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_ +at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand the +National Assembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man," together with its +decrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to free +persons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in the +northern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south. +When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative Assembly revoked +the former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring all +control over negro status to the colonial assemblies. Upon receiving news +of this the mulattoes and blacks, with the courage of despair, spread ruin +in every district. The whites, driven into the few fortified places, begged +succor from France; but the Jacobins, who were now in control at Paris, had +a programme of their own. By a decree of April 4, 1792, the Legislative +Assembly granted full political equality to colored freemen and provided +for the dispatch of Republican commissioners to establish the new regime. +The administration of the colony by these functionaries was a travesty. +Most of the surviving whites emigrated to Cuba and the American continent, +carrying such of their slaves as they could command. The free colored +people, who at first welcomed the commissioners, unexpectedly turned +against them because of a decree of August 29, 1793, abolishing slavery. + +At this juncture Great Britain, then at war with the French Republic, +intervened by sending an army to capture the colony. Most of the colored +freemen and the remaining whites rallied to the flag of these invaders; but +the slaves, now commanded by the famous Toussaint L'Ouverture, resisted +them effectually, while yellow fever decimated their ranks and paralyzed +their energies. By 1795 the two colored elements, the mulattoes who had +improvised a government on a slaveholding basis in the south, and the +negroes who dominated the north, each had the other alone as an active +enemy; and by the close of the century the mulattoes were either destroyed +or driven into exile; and Toussaint, while still acknowledging a nominal +allegiance to France, was virtual monarch of San Domingo. The peace of +Amiens at length permitted Bonaparte to send an army against the "Black +Napoleon." Toussaint soon capitulated, and in violation of the amnesty +granted him was sent to his death in a French dungeon. But pestilence again +aided the blacks, and the war was still raging when the breach of the peace +in Europe brought a British squadron to blockade and capture the remnant +of the French army. The new black leader, Dessalines, now proclaimed the +colony's independence, renaming it Hayti, and in 1804 he crowned himself +emperor. In the following year any further conflict with the local whites +was obviated by the systematic massacre of their small residue. In the +other French islands the developments, while on a much smaller scale, were +analogous.[46] + +[Footnote 46: T. Lothrop Stoddard, _The French Revolution in San Domingo_ +(Boston, 1914).] + +In the Northern colonies the only signal disturbances were those of 1712 +and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy of +the public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had been +recurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a mission +school by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagation +of the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroes +who had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable; +and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indians +or mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as they +contended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-three +provided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose the +dark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afire +and slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfire +caused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speed +that only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when the +plotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape capture; but +when the woods were beaten and the town searched next day and an emergency +court sat upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than the +whole conspiracy had comprised. The prosecuting officer, indeed, hounded +one of the prisoners through three trials, to win a final conviction after +two acquittals. The maxim that no one may twice be put in jeopardy for the +same offense evidently did not apply to slaves in that colony. Of those +convicted one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in chains; +nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake, one of these +being sentenced "to be burned with a slow fire, that he may continue in +torment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in said fire until he +be dead and consumed to ashes"; and several others were saved only by the +royal governor's reprieve and the queen's eventual pardon. Such animosity +was exhibited by the citizens toward the "catechetical school" that for +some time its teacher hardly dared show himself on the streets. The furor +gradually subsided, however, and Mr. Neau continued his work for a dozen +years longer, and others carried it on after his death.[47] + +[Footnote 47: E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Documents Relative to the Colonial +History of New York_, V, 341, 342, 346, 356, 357, 371; _New York +Genealogical and Biographical Record_, XXI, 162, 163; New Orleans _Daily +Delta_, April 1, 1849; J.A. Doyle, _English Colonies in America_ (New York, +1907), V, pp. 258, 259.] + +The commotion of 1741 was a panic among the whites of high and low degree, +prompted in sequel to a robbery and a series of fires by the disclosures of +Mary Burton, a young white servant concerning her master John Hughson, and +the confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of many aliases but +most commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputable +house and a prostitute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duress +that Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from the +negroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had already +effected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, the +supreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration in +bringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters.[48] +Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, and +likewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as a +conspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either to +the gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of the +slaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives; +and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations of +detail which the increasingly fluent testimony of Mary Burton received. +Some of the confessions, however, were of no avail to those who made them. +Quack and Cuffee, for example, terror-stricken at the stake, made somewhat +stereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay the +execution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear of +tumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number of +sentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herself +by her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turn +out there was no guessing where or when there would be an end of +impeachments."[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot several +persons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religious +principles superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestable +practices; at which the judges were very much astonished."[50] This +farcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stop +the tragic proceedings. + +[Footnote 48: Daniel Horsmanden, one of the magistrates who sat in these +trials, published in 1744 the _Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection +of the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro and +other slaves for burning the city of New York in America, and murdering +the Inhabitants_; and this, reprinted under the title, _The New York +Conspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot_ (New York, 1810), is the chief +source of knowledge in the premises. See also the contemporary letters of +Lieutenant-Governor Clarke in E.B. O'Callaghan, ed., _Documents Relative to +the Colonial History of New York_, VI, 186, 197, 198, 201-203.] + +[Footnote 49: _Ibid_., pp. 96-100.] + +[Footnote 50: _Ibid_., pp. 370-372.] + +In New Jersey in 1734 a slave at Raritan when jailed for drunkenness and +insolence professed to reveal a plot for insurrection, whereupon he and +a fellow slave were capitally convicted. One of them escaped before +execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a +negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt +and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration. +Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release +them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the +restoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were punished for arson.[52] + +[Footnote 51: MS. transcript in the New York Public Library from the New +York _Gazette_, Mch. 18, 1734.] + +[Footnote 52: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 152, 153.] + +In the Southern colonies there were no outbreaks in the seventeenth century +and but two discoveries of plots, it seems, both in Virginia. The first +of these, 1663, in which indented white servants and negro slaves in +Gloucester County were said to be jointly involved, was betrayed by one of +the servants. The colonial assembly showed its gratification not only by +freeing the informer and giving him five thousand pounds of tobacco but by +resolving in commemoration of "so transcendant a favour as the preserving +all we have from so utter ruin," "that the 13th. of September be annually +kept holy, being the day those villains intended to put the plot in +execution."[53] The other plot, of slaves alone, in the "Northern Neck" of +the colony in 1687, appears to have been of no more than local concern.[54] +The punishments meted out on either occasion are unknown. + +[Footnote 53: Hening, _Virginia Statutes at Large_, II, 204.] + +[Footnote 54: J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, +1902), p. 79.] + +The eighteenth century, with its multiplication of slaves, saw somewhat +more frequent plots in its early decades. The discovery of one in Isle of +Wight County, Virginia, in 1709 brought thirty-nine lashes to each of +three slaves and fifty lashes to a free negro found to be cognizant, and +presumably more drastic punishments to two other slaves who were held as +ringleaders to await the governor's order. Still another slave who at +least for the time being escaped the clutches of the law was proclaimed +an outlaw.[55] The discovery of another plot in Gloucester and Middlesex +Counties of the same colony in 1723 prompted the assembly to provide for +the deportation to the West Indies of seven slave participants.[56] + +[Footnote 55: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, I, 129, 130.] + +[Footnote 56: _Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1712-1726_, +p. 36.] + +In South Carolina, although depredations by runaways gave acute uneasiness +in 1711 and thereabouts, no conspiracy was discovered until 1720 when some +of the participants were burnt, some hanged and some banished.[57] Matters +were then quiet again until 1739 when on a September Sunday a score of +Angola blacks with one Jonny as their leader broke open a store, supplied +themselves with arms, and laid their course at once for Florida where they +had been told by Spanish emissaries welcome and liberty awaited them. +Marching to the beat of drums, slaughtering with ease the whites they came +upon, and drawing black recruits to several times their initial number, on +the Pon Pon road that day the rebels covered ten prosperous miles. But +when at evening they halted to celebrate their exploits with dancing and +plundered rum they were set upon by the whites whom couriers had collected. +Several were killed in the onslaught, and a few more were captured on the +spot. Most of the rest fled back to their cabins, but a squad of ten made +their way thirty miles farther on the route to Florida and sold their +lives in battle when overtaken. Of those captured on the field or in their +quarters some were shot but none were tortured. The toll of lives lost +numbered twenty-one whites and forty-four[58] blacks. + +[Footnote 57: Letter of June 24, 1720, among the MS. transcripts in the +state capitol at Columbia of documents in the British Public Record +Office.] + +[Footnote 58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, X, 127; South Carolina Historical +Society _Collections_, II, 270; Alexander Hewatt, _Historical Account of +South Carolina and Georgia_ (London, 1779), II, 72, 73. Joshua Coffin in +his _Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860) +listed a revolt at Savannah, Ga., in 1728. But Savannah was not founded +until 1733, and it contained virtually no negroes prior to 1750.] + +Following this and the New York panic of two years later, there was +remarkable quiet in race relations in general for a full half century. It +was not indeed until the spread of the amazing news from San Domingo and +the influx thence of white refugees and their slaves that a new series of +disturbances began on the continent. At Norfolk in 1792 some negroes were +arrested on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly discharged for lack +of evidence;[59] and close by at Portsmouth in the next year there were +such savage clashes between the newly come French blacks and those of the +Virginia stock that citizens were alarmed for their own safety.[60] In +Louisiana an uprising on the plantation of Julien Poydras in Pointe +Coupee Parish in 1796 brought the execution of a dozen or two negroes and +sentences to prison of several whites convicted as their accomplices;[61] +and as late as 1811 an outbreak in St. Charles and St. James Parishes was +traced in part to San Domingo slaves.[62] + +[Footnote 59: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 540, 541, 546.] + +[Footnote 60: _Ibid_., VI, 490, letter of a citizen who had just found four +strange negroes hanging from the branches of a tree near his door.] + +[Footnote 61: C.C. Robin, _Voyages_ (Paris, 1806), II, 244 ff.; E.P. +Puckett, "Free Negroes in Louisiana" (MS.).] + +[Footnote 62: M Puckett, _op. cit. Le Moniteur de la Louisiane_ (New +Orleans), Feb. 11, 1811, has mention of the manumission of a mulatto slave +at this time on the ground of his recent valiant defence of his master's +house against attacking insurgents.] + +Gabriel's rising in the vicinity of Richmond, however, eclipsed all other +such events on the continent in this period. Although this affair was +of prodigious current interest its details were largely obscured by the +secrecy maintained by the court and the legislature in their dealings with +it. Reports in the newspapers of the time were copious enough but were +vague except as to the capture of the leading participants; and the +reminiscent journalism of after years was romantic to the point of +absurdity. It is fairly clear, however, that Gabriel and other slaves +on Thomas H. Prosser's plantation, which lay several miles distant from +Richmond, began to brew the conspiracy as early as June, 1800, and enlisted +some hundreds of confederates, perhaps more than a thousand, before +September 1, the date fixed for its maturity. Many of these were doubtless +residents of Richmond, and some it was said lived as far away as Norfolk. +The few muskets procured were supplemented by cutlasses made from scythe +blades and by plantation implements of other sorts; but the plan of +onslaught contemplated a speedy increase of this armament. From a +rendezvous six miles from Richmond eleven hundred men in three columns +under designated officers were to march upon the city simultaneously, one +to seize the penitentiary which then served also as the state arsenal, +another to take the powder magazine in another quarter of the town, and the +third to begin a general slaughter with such weapons as were already at +hand. + +Things progressed with very little hitch until the very eve of the day +set. But then two things occurred, either of which happening alone would +probably have foiled the project. On the one hand a slave on Moseley +Sheppard's plantation informed his master of the plot; on the other hand +there fell such a deluge of rain that the swelling of the streams kept most +of the conspirators from reaching the rendezvous. Meanwhile couriers had +roused the city, and the rebels assembled could only disperse. Scores of +them were taken, including eventually Gabriel himself who eluded pursuit +for several weeks and sailed to Norfolk as a stowaway. The magistrates, of +course, had busy sessions, but the number of death sentences was less than +might have been expected. Those executed comprised Gabriel and five other +Prosser slaves along with nineteen more belonging to other masters; and +ten others, in scattered ownership, were deported. To provide for a more +general riddance of suspected negroes the legislature made secret overtures +to the federal government looking to the creation of a territorial +reservation to receive such colonists; but for the time being this came +to naught. The legislature furthermore created a permanent guard for the +capitol, and it liberated at the state's expense Tom and Pharaoh, slaves of +the Sheppard family, as reward for their services in helping to foil the +plot.[63] + +[Footnote 63: T.W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat," in the _Atlantic +Monthly_, X, 337-345, reprinted in the same author's _Travellers and +Outlaws_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 185-214; J.C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery in +Virginia_, p. 92; J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 65; MS. +vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments for +convicted slaves.] + +Set on edge by Gabriel's exploit, citizens far and wide were abnormally +alert for some time thereafter; and perhaps the slaves here and there were +unusually restive. Whether the one or the other of these conditions +was most responsible, revelations and rumors were for several years +conspicuously numerous. In 1802 there were capital convictions of fourteen +insurgent or conspiring slaves in six scattered counties of Virginia;[64] +and panicky reports of uprisings were sent out from Hartford and Bertie +Counties, North Carolina.[65] In July, 1804, the mayor of Savannah received +from Augusta "information highly important to the safety, peace and +security" of his town, and issued appropriate orders to the local +militia.[66] Among rumors flying about South Carolina in this period, one +on a December day in 1805 telling of risings above and below Columbia +led to the planting of cannon before the state house there and to the +instruction of the night patrols to seize every negro found at large. An +over-zealous patrolman thereupon shot a slave who was peacefully following +his own master, and was indicted next day for murder. The peaceful passing +of the night brought a subsidence of the panic with the coming of day.[67] + +[Footnote 64: Vouchers as above.] + +[Footnote 65: Augusta, Ga., _Chronicle_, June 26, 1802.] + +[Footnote 66: Thomas Gamble, Jr., _History of the City Government of +Savannah_ [Savannah, 1900], p. 68.] + +[Footnote 67: "Diary of Edward Hooker," in the American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 881, 882.] + +In Virginia, again, there were disturbing rumors at one place or another +every year or two from 1809 to 1814,[68] but no occurrence of tangible +character until the Boxley plot of 1816 in Spottsylvania and Louisa +Counties. George Boxley, the white proprietor of a country store, was a +visionary somewhat of John Brown's type. Participating in the religious +gatherings of the negroes and telling them that a little white bird had +brought him a holy message to deliver his fellowmen from bondage, he +enlisted many blacks in his project for insurrection. But before the +plot was ripe it was betrayed by a slave woman, and several negroes were +arrested. Boxley thereupon marched with a dozen followers on a Quixotic +errand of release, but on the road the blacks fell away, and he, after some +time in hiding, surrendered himself. Six of the negroes after conviction +were hanged and a like number transported; but Boxley himself broke jail +and escaped.[69] + +[Footnote 68: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, X, 62, 63, 97, 368.] + +[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., X, 433-436; _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), Apr. +18 and 24 (Reprinting a report from the _Virginia Herald_ of Mch. 9), and +July 12, 1816; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public +payments for convicted slaves.] + +In the lower South a plot at Camden, South Carolina, in 1816[70] and +another at Augusta, Georgia,[71] three years afterward had like plans of +setting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of the +respective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Both +plots were betrayed, and several participants in each were executed. +These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot at +Charleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types involved, the +methods of persuasion used by the leading spirits and the sobriety of the +whites on the occasion is one of the most notable of such episodes on +record. + +[Footnote 70: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated +against the Southern and Western States, with historical notes of +insurrections_ (Charleston, 1822), pp. 75-77; H.T. Cook, _Life and Legacy +of David R. Williams_, p. 131; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, pp. 151, 152.] + +[Footnote 71: News item from Augusta in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New +Orleans), June 15, 1819.] + +Denmark Vesey, brought from Africa in his youth, had bought his freedom +with part of a $1500 prize drawn by him in a lottery, and was in this +period an independent artisan. Harboring a deep resentment against the +whites, however, he began to plan his plot some four years before its +maturity. He familiarized himself with the Bible account of the deliverance +of the children of Israel, and collected pamphlet and newspaper material on +anti-slavery sentiment in England and the North and on occurrences in San +Domingo, with all of which on fit occasions he regaled the blacks with whom +he came into touch. Arguments based on such data brought concurrence of +negroes of the more intelligent sort, prominent among whom were certain +functionaries of the African Church who were already nursing grievances +on the score of the suppression of their ecclesiastical project by the +Charleston authorities.[72] The chief minister of that church, Morris +Brown, however, was carefully left out of the conspiracy. In appealing +to the more ignorant and superstitious element, on the other hand, the +services of Gullah Jack, so called because of his Angola origin, were +enlisted, for as a recognized conjuror he could bewitch the recalcitrant +and bestow charmed crabs' claws upon those joining the plot to make them +invulnerable. In the spring of 1822 things were put in train for the +outbreak. The Angolas, the Eboes and the Carolina-born were separately +organized under appropriate commanders; arrangements were made looking to +the support of the plantation slaves within marching distance of the city; +and letters were even sent by the negro cook on a vessel bound for San +Domingo with view apparently both to getting assistance from that island +and to securing a haven there in case the revolt should prove only +successful enough to permit the seizure of the ships in Charleston harbor. +Meanwhile the coachmen and draymen in the plot were told off to mobilize +the horses in their charge, pikes were manufactured, the hardware stores +and other shops containing arms were listed for special attention, and +plans were laid for the capture of the city's two arsenals as the first +stroke in the revolt. This was scheduled for midnight on Sunday, June 16. + +[Footnote 72: See above, p. 421.] + +On May 30 George, the body-servant of Mr. Wilson, told his master that Mr. +Paul's William had invited him to join a society which was to make a stroke +for freedom. William upon being seized and questioned by the city council +made something of a confession incriminating two other slaves, Mingo Harth +and Peter Poyas; but these were so staunch in their denials that they were +discharged, with confidential slaves appointed to watch them. William was +held for a week of solitary confinement, at the end of which he revealed +the extensive character of the plot and the date set for its maturity. The +city guard was thereupon strengthened; but the lapse of several days in +quiet was about to make the authorities incredulous, when another citizen +brought them word from another slave of information precisely like that +which had first set them on the _qui vive_. This caused the local militia +to be called out to stiffen the patrol. Then as soon as the appointed +Sunday night had passed, which brought no outbreak, the city council +created a special court as by law provided, comprising two magistrates +together with five citizens carefully selected for their substantial +character and distinguished position. These were William Drayton, Nathaniel +Heyward, James R. Pringle, James Legare and Robert J. Turnbull. More +sagacious and responsible men could certainly not have been found. A +committee of vigilance was also appointed to assist the court. + +This court having first made its own rules that no negro was to be tried +except in the presence of his master or attorney, that everyone on trial +should be heard in his own defense, and that no one should be capitally +sentenced on the bare testimony of a single witness, proceeded to the trial +of Peter Poyas, Denmark Vesey and others against whom charges had then been +lodged. By eavesdropping those who were now convicted and confronting them +with their own words, confessions were procured implicating many others who +in turn were put on trial, including Gullah Jack whose necromancy could not +save him. In all 130 negroes were arrested, including nine colored freemen. +Of the whole number, twenty-five were discharged by the committee of +vigilance and 27 others by the court. Nine more were acquitted with +recommendations with which their masters readily complied, that they be +transported. Of those convicted, 34 were deported by public authority +and 35 were hanged. In addition four white men indicted for +complicity, comprising a German peddler, a Scotchman, a Spaniard and a +Charlestonian,[73] were tried by a regular court having jurisdiction over +whites and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to twelve months. + +[Footnote 73: _An Account of the late intended Insurrection among a portion +of the Blacks of this City. Published by the Authority of the Corporation +of Charleston_ (Charleston, 1822); Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker (the +presiding magistrates of the special court), _An Official Report of the +Trials of sundry Negroes charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection, +with a report of the trials of four white persons on indictments for +attempting to excite the slaves to insurrection_ (Charleston, 1822); T.D. +Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, 1909), pp. 130-136.] + +A number of Charleston citizens promptly memorialized the state assembly +recommending that all free negroes be expelled, that the penalties +applicable to whites conspiring with negroes be made more severe, and that +the control over the blacks be generally stiffened.[74] The legislature +complied except as to the proposal for expulsion. Charlestonians also +organized an association for the prevention of negro disturbances; but by +1825 the public seems to have begun to lose its ardor in the premises.[75] + +[Footnote 74: _Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and +House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, +1822), reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 103-116.] + +[Footnote 75: Address of the association, in the Charleston _City Gazette_, +Aug. 5, 1825.] + +The next salient occurrence in the series was the outbreak which brought +fame to Nat Turner and the devoted Virginia county of Southampton. Nat, +a slave who by the custom of the country had acquired the surname of his +first master, was the foreman of a small plantation, a Baptist exhorter +capable of reading the Bible, and a pronounced mystic. For some years, as +he told afterward when in custody, he had heard voices from the heavens +commanding him to carry on the work of Christ to make the last to be first +and the first last; and he took the sun's eclipse in February, 1831, as a +sign that the time was come. He then enlisted a few of his fellows in his +project, but proceeded to spend his leisure for several months in prayer +and brooding instead of in mundane preparation. When at length on Sunday +night, August 21, he began his revolt he had but a petty squad of +companions, with merely a hatchet and a broad-axe as weapons, and no +definite plan of campaign. First murdering his master's household and +seizing some additional equipment, he took the road and repeated the +process at whatever farmhouses he came upon. Several more negroes joined +the squad as it proceeded, though in at least one instance a slave resisted +them in defense of his master's family at the cost of his own life. The +absence of many whites from the neighborhood by reason of their attendance +at a camp-meeting across the nearby North Carolina line reduced the number +of victims, and on the other hand made the rally of the citizens less +expeditious and formidable when the alarm had been spread. By sunrise +the rebels numbered fifteen, part of whom were mounted, and their outfit +comprised a few firearms. Throughout the morning they continued their +somewhat aimless roving, slaughtering such white households as they +reached, enlisting recruits by persuasion or coercion, and heightening +their courage by draughts upon the apple-brandy in which the county, by +virtue of its many orchards and stills, abounded. By noon there were some +sixty in the straggling ranks, but when shortly afterward they met a squad +of eighteen rallying whites, armed like themselves mainly with fowling +pieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but a +score dispersed. The courage of these whites, however, was so outweighed +by their caution that Nat and his fellows were able to continue their +marauding course in a new direction, gradually swelling their numbers to +forty again. That night, however, a false alarm stampeded their bivouac and +again dispersed all the faint-hearted. Nat with his remaining squad then +attacked a homestead just before daybreak on Tuesday, but upon repulse +by the five white men and boys with several slave auxiliaries who were +guarding it they retreated only to meet a militia force which completed +the dispersal. All were promptly killed or taken except Nat who secreted +himself near his late master's home until his capture was accomplished six +weeks afterward. The whites slain by the rebels numbered ten men, fourteen +women and thirty-one children. + +The militia in scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and its +vindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks along +with the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads. The +magistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprising +all the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys for +the defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed his +appointed task. Forty-seven negroes all told were brought before the court. +As to the five free blacks included in this number the magistrates, who had +only preliminary jurisdiction in their cases, discharged one and remanded +four for trial by a higher court. Of the slaves four, and perhaps a fifth +regarding whom the record is blank, were discharged without trial, and +thirteen more were acquitted. Of those convicted seven were sentenced to +deportation, and seventeen with the ringleader among them, to death by +hanging. In addition there were several slaves convicted of complicity in +neighboring counties.[76] + +[Footnote 76: W.S. Drewry, _Slave Insurrections in Virginia, 1830-1865_ +(Washington, 1900), recounts this revolt in great detail, and gives a +bibliography. The vouchers in the Virginia archives record only eleven +executions and four deportations of Southampton slaves in this period. It +may be that the rest of those convicted were pardoned.] + +This extraordinary event, occurring as it did after a century's lapse since +last an appreciable number of whites on the continent had lost their lives +in such an outbreak, set nerves on edge throughout the South, and promptly +brought an unusually bountiful crop of local rumors. In North Carolina +early in September it was reported at Raleigh that the blacks of Wilmington +had burnt the town and slaughtered the whites, and that several thousand +of them were marching upon Raleigh itself.[77] This and similarly alarming +rumors from Edenton were followed at once by authentic news telling merely +that conspiracies had been discovered in Duplin and Sampson Counties and +also in the neighborhood of Edenton, with several convictions resulting in +each locality.[78] + +[Footnote 77: News item dated Warrenton, N.C., Sept. 15, 1831, in the New +Orleans _Mercantile Advertiser_, Oct. 4, 1831.] + +[Footnote 78: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Oct. 6, 1831, citing +the Fayetteville, N.C. _Observer_ of Sept. 14; _Niles' Register_, XLI, +266.] + +At Milledgeville, the village capital of Georgia where in the preceding +year the newspapers and the town authorities had been fluttered by the +discovery of incendiary pamphlets in a citizen's possession,[79] a rumor +spread on October 4, 1831, that a large number of slaves had risen a dozen +miles away and were marching upon the town to seize the weapons in the +state arsenal there. Three slaves within the town, and a free mulatto +preacher as well, were seized on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly +discharged for lack of evidence, and the city council soon had occasion, +because there had been "considerable danger in the late excitement ... +by persons carrying arms that were intoxicated" to order the marshal and +patrols to take weapons away from irresponsible persons and enforce the +ordinance against the firing of guns in the streets.[80] Upon the first +coming of the alarm the governor had appointed Captain J.A. Cuthbert, +editor of the _Federal Union_, to the military command of the town; and +Cuthbert, uniformed and armed to the teeth, dashed about the town all +day on his charger, distributing weapons and stationing guards. Upon the +passing of the baseless panic Seaton Grantland, customarily cool and +sardonic, ridiculed Cuthbert in the _Southern Recorder_ of which he was +editor. Cuthbert retorted in his own columns that Grantland's conduct in +the emergency had proved him a skulking coward.[81] No blood was shed, even +among the editors. + +[Footnote 79: _Federal Union_, Aug. 7, 1830; American Historical +Association _Report_ for 1904, I. 469.] + +[Footnote 80: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, pp. 469, +470.] + +[Footnote 81: _Federal Union_, Oct. 6 and 13 and Dec. 1, 1831.] + +There were doubtless episodes of such a sort in many other localities.[82] +It was evidently to this period that the reminiscences afterward collected +by Olmsted applied. "'Where I used to live,'" a backwoodsman formerly of +Alabama told the traveller, "'I remember when I was a boy--must ha' been +about twenty years ago--folks was dreadful frightened about the niggers. I +remember they built pens in the woods where they could hide, and Christmas +time they went and got into the pens, 'fraid the niggers was risin'.' 'I +remember the same time where we were in South Carolina,' said his wife, 'we +had all our things put up in bags, so we could tote 'em if we heerd they +was comin' our way.'"[83] + +[Footnote 82: The discovery of a plot at Shelbyville, Tennessee, was +reported at the end of 1832. _Niles' Register_, XLI, 340.] + +[Footnote 83: F.L. Olmsted, _A Journey in the Back Country_ (New York, +1863), p. 203.] + +Another sort of sequel to the Southampton revolt was of course a plenitude +of public discussion and of repressive legislation. In Virginia a flood of +memorials poured upon the legislature. Petitions signed by 1,188 citizens +in twelve counties asked for provision for the expulsion of colored +freemen; others with 398 signatures from six counties proposed an amendment +to the United States Constitution empowering Congress to aid Virginia to +rid herself of all the blacks; others from two colonization societies +and 366 citizens in four counties proposed the removal first of the +free negroes and then of slaves to be emancipated by private or public +procedure; 27 men of Buckingham and Loudon Counties and others in +Albemarle, together with the Society of Friends in Hanover and 347 women, +prayed for the abolition of slavery, some on the _post nati_ plan and +others without specification of details.[84] The House of Delegates +responded by devoting most of its session of that winter to an +extraordinarily outspoken and wide-ranging debate on the many phases of the +negro problem, reflecting and elaborating all the sentiments expressed in +the petitions together with others more or less original with the members +themselves. The Richmond press reported the debate in great detail, and +many of the speeches were given a pamphlet circulation in addition.[85] +The only tangible outcome there and elsewhere, however, was in the form of +added legal restrictions upon the colored population, slave and free. But +when the fright and fervor of the year had passed, conditions normal to the +community returned. On the one hand the warnings of wiseacres impressed +upon the would-be problem solvers the maxim of the golden quality of +silence, particularly while the attacks of the Northern abolitionists upon +the general Southern regime were so active. On the other hand the new +severities of the law were promptly relegated, as the old ones had been, +to the limbo of things laid away, like pistols, for emergency use, out of +sight and out of mind in the daily routine of peaceful industry. + +[Footnote 84: _The Letter of Appomattox to the People of Virginia: +Exhibiting a connected view of the recent proceedings in the House of +Delegates on the subject of the abolition of slavery and a succinct account +of the doctrines broached by the friends of abolition in debate, and the +mischievous tendency of those proceedings and doctrines_ (Richmond, 1832). +These letters were first published in the Richmond _Enquirer_, February 4, +1832 et seqq.] + +[Footnote 85: The debate is summarized in Henry Wilson, _History of the +Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_ (Boston, 1872), I, 190-207.] + +In the remaining ante-bellum decades, though the actual outbreaks were +negligible except for John Brown's raid, the discoveries, true or false, +and the rumors, mostly unwarranted, were somewhat more frequent than +before. Revelations in Madison County, Mississippi, in 1835 shortly before +July 4, told of a conspiracy of whites and blacks scheduled for that day +as a ramification of the general plot of the Murrell gang recently +exposed.[86] A mass meeting thereupon appointed an investigating committee +of thirteen citizens with power to apply capital punishment; and several +whites together with ten or fifteen blacks were promptly put to death.[87] + +[Footnote 86: See above, pp. 381, 382.] + +[Footnote 87: _The Liberator_ (Boston, Mass.), Aug. 8, 1835, quoting the +Clinton, Miss., _Gazette_ of July 11.] + +Widespread rumors at the beginning of the following December that a general +uprising was in preparation for the coming holiday season caused the +summons of citizens in various Georgia counties to mass meetings which with +one accord recommended special precautions by masters, patrols and militia, +and appointed committees of vigilance. In this series the resolutions +adopted in Washington County are notable especially for the tone of their +preamble. Mentioning the method recently followed in Mississippi only to +disapprove it, this preamble ran: "We would fain hope that the soil of +Georgia may never be reddened or her people disgraced by the arbitrary +shedding of human blood; for if the people allow themselves but one +participation in such lawless proceedings, no human sagacity can foretell +where the overwhelming deluge will be staid or what portions of our state +may feel its desolating ruin. This course of protection unhinges every tie +of social and civil society, dissolves those guards which the laws throw +around property and life, and leaves every individual, no matter how +innocent, at the sport of popular passion, the probable object of popular +indignation, and liable to an ignominious death. Therefore we would +recommend to our fellow-citizens that if any facts should be elicited +implicating either white men or negroes in any insurrectionary or abolition +movements, that they be apprehended and delivered over to the legal +tribunals of the country for full and fair judicial trial."[88] At +Clarksville, Tennessee, uneasiness among the citizens on the score of the +negroes employed in the iron works thereabout was such that they procured a +shipment of arms from the state capital in preparation for special guard at +the Christmas season.[89] + +[Footnote 88: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Dec. 11, 1835. At +Darien on the Georgia coast Edwin C. Roberts, an Englishman by birth, was +committed for trial in the following August for having told slaves they +ought to be free and that half of the American people were in favor of +their freedom. The local editor remarked when reporting the occurrence: +"Mr. Roberts should thank his stars that he did not commence his crusade in +some quarters where Judge Lynch presides. Here the majesty of the law +is too highly respected to tolerate the jurisdiction of this despotic +dignitary." Darien _Telegraph_, Aug. 30, quoted in the _Federal Union_, +Sept. 6, 1836.] + +[Footnote 89: MS. petition with endorsement noting the despatch of arms, in +the state archives at Nashville.] + +In various parts of Louisiana in this period there was a succession of +plots discovered. The first of these, betrayed on Christmas Eve, 1835, +involved two white men, one of them a plantation overseer, along with forty +slaves or more. The whites were promptly hanged, and doubtless some of the +blacks likewise.[90] The next, exposed in the fall of 1837, was in the +neighborhood of Alexandria. Nine slaves and three free negroes were hanged +in punishment,[91] and the negro Lewis who had betrayed the conspiracy was +liberated at state expense and was voted $500 to provide for his security +in some distant community.[92] The third was in Lafayette and St. Landry +Parishes, betrayed in August, 1840, by a slave woman named Lecide who was +freed by her master in reward. Nine negroes were hanged. Four white men +who were implicated, but who could not be convicted under the laws which +debarred slave testimony against whites, were severely flogged under a +lynch-law sentence and ordered to leave the state.[93] Rumors of other +plots were spread in West Feliciana Parish in the summer of 1841,[94] in +several parishes opposite and above Natchez in the fall of 1842,[95] and at +Donaldsonville at the beginning of 1843;[96] but each of these in turn was +found to be virtually baseless. Meanwhile at Augusta, Georgia, several +negroes were arrested in February, 1841, and at least one of them was +sentenced to death. A petition was circulated for his respite as an +inducement for confession; but other citizens, disquieted by the testimony +already given, prepared a counter petition asking the governor to let the +law take its course. The plot as described contemplated the seizure of the +arsenal and the firing of the city in facilitation of massacre.[97] + +[Footnote 90: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 331.] + +[Footnote 91: _Ibid_., LIII, 129.] + +[Footnote 92: Louisiana, _Acts_ of 1838, p. 118.] + +[Footnote 93: _Niles' Register_, LXIX, 39, 88; E.P. Puckett, "Free Negroes +in Louisiana" (MS.).] + +[Footnote 94: New Orleans _Bee_, July 23, 29 and 31, 1841.] + +[Footnote 95: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 212.] + +[Footnote 96: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Jan. 27 and Feb. 17, +1843.] + +[Footnote 97: Letter of Mrs. S.A. Lamar, Augusta, Ga., Feb. 25, 1841, to +John B. Lamar at Macon. MS. in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, +Ga.] + +The rest of the 'forties and the first half of the 'fifties were a period +of comparative quiet; but in 1855 there were rumors in Dorchester and +Talbot Counties, Maryland,[98] and the autumn of 1856 brought widespread +disturbances which the Southern whites did not fail to associate with the +rise of the Republican Party. In the latter part of that year there were +rumors afloat from Williamsburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County in the +same state, from various quarters of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, from +New Orleans, and from Atlanta and Cassville, Georgia.[99] A typical episode +in the period was described by a schoolmaster from Michigan then sojourning +in Mississippi. One night about Christmas of 1858 when the plantation +homestead at which he was staying was filled with house guests, a courier +came in the dead of night bringing news that the blacks in the eastern part +of the county had risen in a furious band and were laying their murderous +course in this direction. The head of the house after scanning the +bulletin, calmly told his family and guests that they might get their guns +and prepare for defense, but if they would excuse him he would retire again +until the crisis came. The coolness of the host sent the guests back to bed +except for one who stood sentry. "The negroes never came."[100] + +[Footnote 98: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 97.] + +[Footnote 99: _Southern Watchman_ (Athens, Ga.), Dec. 18 and 25, 1856. Some +details of the Texas disturbance, which brought death to several negroes, +is given in documents printed in F.L. Olmsted, _Journey through Texas_, pp. +503. 504] + +[Footnote 100: A. DePuy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Sojourn in the South_ +(Battle Creek, Mich., 1859), pp. 121, 122] + +The shiver which John Brown's raid sent over the South was diminished by +the failure of the blacks to join him, and it was largely overcome by the +wave of fierce resentment against the abolitionists who, it was said, had +at last shown their true colors. The final disturbance on the score of +conspiracy among the negroes themselves was in the summer of 1860 at +Dallas, Texas, where in the preceding year an abolitionist preacher had +been whipped and driven away. Ten or more fires which occurred in one day +and laid much of the town in ruins prompted the seizure of many blacks and +the raising of a committee of safety. This committee reported to a public +meeting on July 24 that three ringleaders in the plot were to be hanged +that afternoon. Thereupon Judge Buford of the district court addressed the +gathering. "He stated in the outset that in any ordinary case he would +be as far from counselling mob law as any other man, but in the present +instance the people had a clear right to take the law in their own hands. +He counselled moderation, and insisted that the committee should execute +the fewest number compatible with the public safety." [101] + +[Footnote 101: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Aug. 21, 1860, quoting +the Nashville _Union_.] + +On the whole it is hardly possible to gauge precisely the degree of popular +apprehension in the premises. John Randolph was doubtless more picturesque +than accurate when he said, "the night bell never tolls for fire in +Richmond that the mother does not hug the infant more closely to her +bosom."[102] The general trend of public expressions laid emphasis upon the +need of safeguards but showed confidence that no great disasters were to be +feared. The revolts which occurred and the plots which were discovered were +sufficiently serious to produce a very palpable disquiet from time to time, +and the rumors were frequent enough to maintain a fairly constant undertone +of uneasiness. The net effect of this was to restrain that progress of +liberalism which the consideration of economic interest, the doctrines of +human rights and the spirit of kindliness all tended to promote. + +[Footnote 102: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph_, I, 295.] + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE FORCE OF THE LAW + + +In many lawyers' briefs and court decisions it has been said that slavery +could exist only by force of positive legislation.[1] This is not +historically valid, for in virtually every American community where it +existed at all, the institution was first established by custom alone and +was merely recognized by statutes when these came to be enacted. Indeed the +chief purpose of the laws was to give sanction and assurance to the racial +and industrial adjustments already operative. + +[Footnote 1: The source of this error lies doubtless in Lord Mansfield's +famous but fallacious decision of 1772 in the Somerset case, which is +recorded in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, Sec. 548. That decision is well +criticized in T.R.R. Cobb, _An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in +the United States of America_ (vol. I, all published, Philadelphia and +Savannah, 1858), pp. 163-175. + +Cobb's treatise, though dealing with slaves as persons only and not as +property, is the best of the general analyses of the legal phase of the +slaveholding regime. A briefer survey is in the _Cyclopedia of Law and +Procedure_, William Mack ed., XXXVI (New York, 1910), 465-495. The works +of G.M. Stroud, _A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several +States_ (Philadelphia, 1827), and William Goodell, _The American Slave Code +in Theory and Practice_ (New York, 1853), are somewhat vitiated by the +animus of their authors. + +The many statutes concerning slavery enacted in the several colonies, +territories and states are listed and many of them summarized in J.C. Hurd, +_The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States_ (Boston, 1858), I, +228-311; II, 1-218. Some hundreds of court decisions in the premises are +given in J.D. Wheeler, _A Practical Treatise on the Law of Slavery_ +(New York and New Orleans, 1837); and all the thousands of decisions of +published record are briefly digested in _The Century Edition of the +American Digest_, XLIV (St. Paul, 1903), 853-1152. + +The development of the slave code in Virginia is traced in J.C. Ballagh, +_A History of Slavery in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1902), supplemented by J.H. +Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Baltimore, 1913); and the legal +regime of slavery in South Carolina at the middle of the nineteenth century +is described by Judge J.B. O'Neall in _The Industrial Resources of the +Southern and Western States_, J.B.D. DeBow ed., II (New Orleans, 1853), +269-292.] + +As a rule each slaveholding colony or state adopted early in its career +a series of laws of limited scope to meet definite issues as they were +successively encountered. Then when accumulated experience had shown a +community that it had a general problem of regulation on its hands its +legislature commonly passed an act of many clauses to define the status of +slaves, to provide the machinery of their police, and to prescribe legal +procedure in cases concerning them whether as property or as persons. +Thereafter the recourse was again to specific enactments from time to +time to supplement this general or basic statute as the rise of new +circumstances or policies gave occasion. The likeness of conditions in the +several communities and the difficulty of devising laws to comply with +intricate custom and at the same time to guard against apprehended ills led +to much intercolonial and interstate borrowing of statutes. A perfect chain +of this sort, with each link a basic police law for slaves in a separate +colony or state, extended from Barbados through the southeastern trio of +commonwealths on the continent. The island of Barbados, as we have seen, +was the earliest of the permanent English settlements in the tropics and +one of the first anywhere to attain a definite regime of plantations +with negro labor. This made its assembly perforce a pioneer in slave +legislation. After a dozen minor laws had been enacted, beginning in 1644, +for the control of negroes along with white servants and for the recapture +of runaways, the culmination in a general statute came in 1688. Its +occasion, as recited in the preamble, was the dependence of plantation +industry upon great numbers of negro slaves whose "barbarous, wild and +savage nature ... renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the +laws, customs and practices of our nation," and the "absolutely necessary +consequence that such other constitutions, laws and orders should be in +this island framed and enacted for the good regulating and ordering of them +as may ... restrain the disorders, rapines and inhumanities to which they +are naturally prone and inclined, with such encouragements and allowances +as are fit and needful for their support, that ... this island through the +blessing of God thereon may be preserved, His Majesty's subjects in their +lives and fortunes secured, and the negroes and other slaves be well +provided for and guarded against the cruelties and insolences of themselves +or other ill-tempered people or owners." + +The statute itself met the purposes of the preamble unevenly. The slaves +were assured merely in annual suits of clothing, and the masters were given +claim for pecuniary compensation for slaves inveigled away or illegally +killed by other freemen; but the main concern of the statute was with +routine control and the punishment of slave malfeasances. No slaves were to +leave their masters' premises at any time unless in company with whites or +when wearing servants' livery or carrying written passes, and offenders +in this might be whipped and taken into custody by any white persons +encountering them. No slaves were to blow horns or beat drums; and masters +were to have their negro houses searched at frequent intervals for such +instruments, as well as for weapons, runaway slaves and stolen goods. +Runaways when caught were to be impounded, advertised and restored to their +masters upon payment of captors' and custodians' fees. Trading with slaves +was restricted for fear of encouraging theft. A negro striking a white +person, except in lawful defense of his master's person, family or goods, +was criminally punishable, though merely with lashes for a first offense; +and thefts to the value of more than a shilling, along with all other +serious infractions, were capital crimes. Negro transgressors were to be +tried summarily by courts comprising two justices of the peace and three +freeholders nearest the crime and were to be punished immediately upon +conviction. To dissuade masters from concealing the crimes of their negroes +the magistrates were to appraise each capitally convicted slave, within a +limit of L25, and to estimate also the damage to the person or property +injured by the commission of the crime. The colonial treasurer was then to +take the amount of the slave's appraisal from the public funds and after +making reimbursement for the injury done, pay the overplus, if any, to the +criminal's owner. If it appeared to the magistrates, however, that the +crime had been prompted by the master's neglect and the slave's consequent +necessity for sustenance, the treasurer was to pay the master nothing. A +master killing his own slave wantonly was to be fined L15, and any other +person killing a slave illegally was to pay the master double the slave's +value, to be fined L25, and to give bond for subsequent good behavior. If +a slave were killed by accident the slayer was liable only to suit by +the owner. The destruction of a slave's life or limb in the course of +punishment by his master constituted no legal offense, nor did the killing +of one by any person, when found stealing or attempting a theft by night. +Ascertained hiding places of runaway slaves were to be raided by constables +and posses, and these were to be rewarded for taking the runaways alive or +dead.[2] This act was thenceforward the basic law in the premises as long +as slavery survived in the island. + +[Footnote 2: Richard Hall ed., _Acts Passed in the Island of Barbados from +1643 to 1762 inclusive_ (London. 1764), pp. 112-121.] + +South Carolina, in a sense the daughter of Barbados and in frequent +communication with her, had enacted a series of specific laws of her own +devising, when the growth of her slave population prompted the adoption of +a general statute for negro police. Thereupon in 1712 her assembly copied +virtually verbatim the preamble and some of the ensuing clauses of the +Barbadian act of 1688, and added further provisions drawn from other +sources or devised for the occasion. This served as her basic law until +the shock of the Stono revolt in 1739 prompted the legislature to give the +statute a greater elaboration in the following year. The new clauses, aside +from one limiting the work which might be required by masters to fourteen +and fifteen hours per day in winter and summer respectively, and another +forbidding all but servants in livery to wear any but coarse clothing, +were concerned with the restraint of slaves, mainly with a view to the +prevention of revolt. No slaves were to be sold liquors without their +masters' approval; none were to be taught to write; no more than seven men +in a group were to travel on the high roads unless in company with white +persons; no houses or lands were to be rented to slaves, and no slaves were +to be kept on any plantation where no white person was resident.[3] + +[Footnote 3: Cooper and McCord, _Statutes at Large of South Carolina_, VII, +408 ff.] + +This act, supplemented by curfew and patrol laws and variously amended in +after years, as by the enhancement of penalties for negroes convicted of +striking white persons and by the requirement that masters provide adequate +food as well as clothing, was never repealed so long as slavery continued +to exist in South Carolina. Though its sumptuary clauses, along with +various others, were from first to last of no effect, the statute as a +whole so commended itself to the thought of slaveholding communities that +in 1770 Georgia made it the groundwork of her own slave police; Florida in +turn, by acts of 1822 and 1828, adopted the substance of the Georgia law +as revised to that period; and in lesser degree still other states gave +evidence of the same influence. Complementary legislation in all these +jurisdictions meanwhile recognized slaves as property, usually of chattel +character and with children always following the mother's condition, +debarred negro testimony in court in all cases where white persons were +involved, and declared the juridical incapacity of slaves in general except +when they were suing for freedom. Contemporaneously and by similar methods, +a parallel chain of laws, largely analogous to those here noted, was +extended from Virginia, herself a pioneer in slave legislation, to +Maryland, Delaware and North Carolina and in a fan-spread to the west as +far as Missouri and Texas.[4] + +[Footnote 4: The beginning of Virginia's pioneer slave code has been +sketched in chapter IV above; and the slave legislation of the Northern +colonies and states in chapters VI and VII.] + +Louisiana alone in all the Union, because of her origin and formative +experience as a Latin colony, had a scheme of law largely peculiar to +herself. The foundation of this lay in the _Code Noir_ decreed by Louis XV +for that colony in 1724. In it slaves were declared to be chattels, but +those of working age were not to be sold in execution of debt apart from +the lands on which they worked, and neither husbands and wives nor mothers +and young children were to be sold into separate ownership under any +circumstances. All slaves, furthermore, were to be baptized into the +Catholic church, and were to be exempt from field work on Sundays and +holidays; and their marriages were to be legally recognized. Children, +of course, were to follow the status and ownership of their mothers. +All slaves were to be adequately clothed and fed, under penalty of +confiscation, and the superannuated were to be maintained on the same +basis as the able-bodied. Slaves might make business contracts under their +masters' approval, but could not sue or be sued or give evidence against +whites, except in cases of necessity and where the white testimony was in +default. They might acquire property legally recognized as their own when +their masters expressly permitted them to work or trade on their personal +accounts, though not otherwise. Manumission was restricted only by the +requirement of court approval; and slaves employed by their masters in +tutorial capacity were declared _ipso facto_ free. In police regards, the +travel and assemblage of slaves were restrained, and no one was allowed to +trade with them without their masters' leave; slaves were forbidden to have +weapons except when commissioned by their masters to hunt; fugitives were +made liable to severe punishments, and free negroes likewise for harboring +them. Negroes whether slave or free, however, were to be tried by the same +courts and by the same procedure as white persons; and though masters were +authorized to apply shackles and lashes for disciplinary purpose, the +killing of slaves by them was declared criminal even to the degree of +murder.[5] + +[Footnote 5: This decree is printed in _Le Code Noir_ (Paris, 1742), pp. +318-358, and in the Louisiana Historical Society _Collections_, IV, 75-90. +The prior decree of 1685 establishing a slave code for the French West +Indies, upon which this for Louisiana was modeled, may be consulted in +L. Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Francaises_ (Paris, 1897), pp. +158-166.] + +Nearly all the provisions of this relatively liberal code were adopted +afresh when Louisiana became a territory and then a state of the Union. In +assimilation to Anglo-American practice, however, such recognition as had +been given to slave _peculium_ was now withdrawn, though on the other hand +slaves were granted by implication a legal power to enter contracts for +self-purchase. Slave marriages, furthermore, were declared void of all +civil effect; and jurisdiction over slave crimes was transferred to courts +of inferior grade and informal procedure. By way of reciprocation the state +of Alabama when framing a new slave code in 1852 borrowed in a weakened +form the Louisiana prohibition of the separate sale of mothers and their +children below ten years of age. This provision met the praise of citizens +elsewhere when mention of it chanced to be published; but no other +commonwealth appears to have adopted it.[6] + +[Footnote 6: _E. g_., Atlanta _Intelligencer_, Feb. 27, 1856.] + +The severity of the slave laws in the commonwealths of English origin, as +compared with the mildness of the Louisiana code, was largely due to +the historic possession by their citizens of the power of local +self-government. A distant autocrat might calmly decree such regulations as +his ministers deemed proper, undisturbed by the wishes and apprehensions of +the colonial whites; but assemblymen locally elected and responsive to the +fears as well as the hopes of their constituents necessarily reflected more +fully the desire of social control, and preferred to err on the side of +safety. If this should involve severity of legislative repression for +the blacks, that might be thought regrettable and yet be done without a +moment's qualm. On the eve of the American Revolution a West Indian writer +explained the regime. "Self preservation," said he, "that first and ruling +principle of human nature, alarming our fears, has made us jealous and +perhaps severe in our _threats_ against delinquents. Besides, if we attend +to the history of our penal laws relating to slaves, I believe we shall +generally find that they took their rise from some very atrocious attempts +made by the negroes on the property of their masters or after some +insurrection or commotion which struck at the very being of the colonies. +Under these circumstances it may very justly be supposed that our +legislatures when convened were a good deal inflamed, and might be induced +for the preservation of their persons and properties to pass severe laws +which they might hold over their heads to terrify and restrain them."[7] In +the next generation an American citizen wrote in similar strain and with +like truthfulness: "The laws of the slaveholding states do not furnish +a criterion for the character of their present white population or the +condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted for the most part in +seasons of particular alarm produced by attempts at insurrection, or when +the black inhabitants were doubly formidable by reason of the greater +proportion which they bore to the whites in number and the savage state and +unhappy mood in which they arrived from Africa. The real measure of danger +was not understood but after long experience, and in the interval the +precautions taken were naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. +That these have not all been repealed, or that some of them should be still +enforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of legislation, since +the evils against which they were intended to guard are yet the subject of +just apprehension."[8] + +[Footnote 7: _Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, or a Defence of the West +India Planters_. By a West Indian (Philadelphia, 1773), p. 18, note.] + +[Footnote 8: Robert Walsh, Jr., _An Appeal from the Judgments of Great +Britain respecting the United States of America_ (Philadelphia, 1819), p. +405.] + +Wherever colonial statutes were silent the laws of the mother country +filled the gap. It was under the common law of England, for example, that +the slaves Mark and Phillis were tried in Massachusetts in 1755 for +the poisoning of their master, duly convicted of petit treason, and +executed--the woman as the principal in the crime by being burned at the +stake, the man as an accessory by being hanged and his body thereafter +left for years hanging in chains on Charlestown common.[9] The severity of +Anglo-American legislation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, +furthermore, was in full accord with the tone of contemporary English +criminal law. It is not clear, however, that the great mitigation which +benefit of clergy gave in English criminal administration[10] was +commensurately applied in the colonies when slave crimes were concerned. +Even in England, indeed, servants were debarred in various regards, that of +petit treason, for example, from this avenue of relief. On the other hand +many American slaves were saved from death at the hands of the law by the +tolerant spirit of citizens toward them and by the consideration of the +pecuniary loss to be suffered through their execution. A Jamaican statute +of 1684 went so far as to prescribe that when several slaves were jointly +involved in a capital crime one only was to be executed as an example and +the loss caused by his death was to be apportioned among the owners of the +several.[11] More commonly the mitigation lay not in the laws themselves +but in the general disposition to leave to the discipline of the masters +such slave misdeeds as were not regarded as particularly heinous nor +menacing to the public security. + +[Footnote 9: A.C. Goodell, Jr., _The Trial and Execution for Petit Treason +of Mark and Phillis_ (Cambridge, 1883), reprinted from the Massachusetts +Historical Society _Proceedings_, XX, 132-157.] + +[Footnote 10: A.L. Cross, "Benefit of Clergy," in the _American Historical +Review_, XXII, 544-565.] + +[Footnote 11: _Abridgement of the Laws in Force in Her Majesty's +Plantations_ (London, 1704), pp. 104-108.] + +Burnings at the stake, breakings on the wheel and other ferocious methods +of execution which were occasionally inflicted by the colonial courts were +almost universally discontinued soon after the beginning of the nineteenth +century. The general trend of moderation discernible at that time, however, +was hampered then and thereafter by the series of untoward events beginning +with the San Domingo upheaval and ending with John Brown's raid. In +particular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuing +Nat Turner's revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislation +the whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes, +stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing the +already limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration, +however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to have +grown milder as the decades passed. + +The police ordinances of the several cities and other local jurisdictions +were in keeping with the state laws which they supplemented and in some +degree duplicated. At New Orleans an ordinance adopted in 1817 and little +changed thereafter forbade slaves to live off their masters' premises +without written permission, to make any clamorous noise, to show disrespect +to any white persons, to walk with canes on the streets unless on account +of infirmity, or to congregate except at church, at funerals, and at such +dances and other amusements as were permitted for them on Sundays alone and +in public places. Each offender was to be tried by the mayor or a justice +of the peace after due notice to his master, and upon conviction was to be +punished within a limit of twenty-five lashes unless his master paid a fine +for him instead.[12] + +[Footnote 12: D. Augustin, _A General Digest of the Ordinances and +Resolutions of the Corporation of New Orleans_ ([New Orleans], 1831), pp. +133-137.] + +At Richmond an ordinance effective in 1859 had provisions much like those +of New Orleans regarding residence, clamor, canes, assemblage and demeanor, +and also debarred slaves from the capitol square and other specified public +enclosures unless in attendance on white persons or on proper errands, +forbade them to ride in public hacks without the written consent of their +masters, or to administer medicine to any persons except at their masters' +residences and with the masters' consent. It further forbade all negroes, +whether bond or free, to possess offensive weapons or ammunition, to form +secret societies, or to loiter on the streets near their churches more than +half an hour after the conclusion of services; and it required them when +meeting, overtaking or being overtaken by white persons on the sidewalks to +pass on the outside, stepping off the walk if necessary to allow the whites +to pass. It also forbade all free persons to hire slaves to themselves, to +rent houses, rooms or grounds to them, to sell them liquors by retail, or +drugs without written permits from their masters, or to furnish offensive +weapons to negroes whether bond or free. Finally, it forbade anyone to beat +a slave unlawfully, under fine of not more than twenty dollars if a white +person, or of lashes or fine at the magistrate's discretion in case the +offender were a free person of color.[13] + +[Footnote 13: _The Charters and Ordinances of the City of Richmond_ +(Richmond, 1859), pp. 193-200.] + +Of rural ordinances, one adopted by the parish of West Baton Rouge, +Louisiana, in 1828 was concerned only with the organization and functions +of the citizens' patrol. As many chiefs of patrol were to be appointed +as the parish authorities might think proper, each to be in charge of a +specified district, with duties of listing all citizens liable to patrol +service, dividing them into proper details and appointing a commander for +each squad. Every commander in his turn, upon receiving notice from his +chief, was to cover the local beat on the night appointed, searching slave +quarters, though with as little disturbance as possible to the inmates, +arresting any free negroes or strange whites found where they had no proper +authority or business to be, whipping slaves encountered at large without +passes or unless on the way to or from the distant homes of their wives, +and seizing any arms and any runaway slaves discovered.[14] The police code +of the neighboring parish of East Feliciana in 1859 went on further to +prescribe trials and penalties for slaves insulting or abusing white +persons, to restrict their carrying of guns, and their assemblage, to +forbid all slaves but wagoners to keep dogs, to restrict citizens in their +trading with slaves, to require the seizure of self-styled free negroes not +possessing certificates, and to prescribe that all negroes or mulattoes +found on the railroad without written permits be deemed runaway slaves and +dealt with as the law regarding such directed.[15] + +[Footnote 14: _Police Regulations of the Parish of West Baton Rouge (La.), +passed at a regular meeting held at the Court House of said Parish on the +second and third days of June, A.D. 1828_ (Baton Rouge, 1828), pp. 8-11. +For a copy of this pamphlet I am indebted to Professor W.L. Fleming of +Louisiana State University.] + +[Footnote 15: D.B. Sanford, _Police Jury Code of the Parish of East +Feliciana, Louisiana_ (Clinton, La., 1859), pp. 98-101.] + +In general, the letter of the law in slaveholding states at the middle of +the nineteenth century presumed all persons with a palpable strain of negro +blood to be slaves unless they could prove the contrary, and regarded the +possession of them by masters as presumptive evidence of legal ownership. +Property in slaves, though by some of the statutes assimilated to real +estate for certain technical purposes, was usually considered as of chattel +character. Its use and control, however, were hedged about with various +restraints and obligations. In some states masters were forbidden to +hire slaves to themselves or to leave them in any unusual way to their +self-direction; and everywhere they were required to maintain their slaves +in full sustenance whether young or old, able-bodied or incapacitated. +The manumission of the disabled was on grounds of public thrift nowhere +permitted unless accompanied with provision for their maintenance, and that +of slaves of all sorts was restricted in a great variety of ways. Generally +no consent by the slave was required in manumission, though in some +commonwealths he might lawfully reject freedom in the form bestowed.[16] +Masters might vest powers of agency in their slaves, but when so doing the +masters themselves became liable for any injuries or derelictions ensuing. +In criminal prosecutions, on the other hand, slaves were considered as +responsible persons on their own score and punishable under the laws +applicable to them. Where a crime was committed at the master's express +command, the master was liable and in some cases the slave also. Slave +offenders were commonly tried summarily by special inferior courts, though +for serious crimes in some states by the superior courts by regular +process. Since the slaves commonly had no funds with which to pay fines, +and no liberty of which to be deprived, the penalties imposed upon them +for crimes and misdemeanors were usually death, deportation or lashes. +Frequently in Louisiana, however, and more seldom elsewhere, convicted +slaves were given prison sentences. By the intent of the law their +punishments were generally more severe than those applied to white persons +for the same offenses. In civil transactions slaves had no standing as +persons in court except for the one purpose of making claim of freedom; +and even this must usually be done through some friendly citizen as a +self-appointed guardian bringing suit for trespass in the nature of +ravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted; +any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to their +masters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although the +wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of +their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally +stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person even in +self-defense unless his life or limb were endangered, nor might he in his +own person apply to the courts for the redress of injuries, nor generally +give evidence except where negroes alone were involved. All white persons +on the other hand were permitted, and in some regards required, to exercise +police power over the slaves; and their masters in particular were vested +with full disciplinary power over them in all routine concerns. If they +should flee from their masters' dominion, the force of the state and of +other states into which they might escape, and of the United States if +necessary, might be employed for their capture and resubjection; and any +suspected of being fugitives, though professing to be free, might be held +for long periods in custody and in the end, in default of proofs of freedom +and of masters' claims, be sold by the authorities at public auction. +Finally, affecting slaves and colored freemen somewhat alike, and +regardless as usual of any distinction of mulattoes or quadroons from the +full-blood negroes, there were manifold restraints of a social character +buttressing the predominance and the distinctive privileges of the +Caucasian caste. + +[Footnote 16: _E. g_., Jones, _North Carolina Supreme Court Reports_, VI. +272.] + +It may fairly be said that these laws for the securing of slave property +and the police of the colored population were as thorough and stringent as +their framers could make them, and that they left an almost irreducible +minimum of rights and privileges to those whose function and place were +declared to be service and subordination. But in fairness it must also +be said that in adopting this legislation the Southern community largely +belied itself, for whereas the laws were systematically drastic the +citizens in whose interest they were made and in whose hands their +enforcement lay were in practice quite otherwise. It would have required a +European bureaucracy to keep such laws fully effective; the individualistic +South was incapable of the task. If the regulations were seldom relaxed in +the letter they were as rarely enforced in the spirit. The citizens were +too fond of their own liberties to serve willingly as martinets in the +routine administration of their own laws;[17] and in consequence the +marchings of the patrol squads were almost as futile and farcical as the +musters of the militia. The magistrates and constables tended toward a +similar slackness;[18] while on the other hand the masters, easy-going as +they might be in other concerns, were jealous of any infringements of their +own dominion or any abuse of their slaves whether by private persons or +public functionaries. When in 1787, for example, a slave boy in Maryland +reported to his master that two strangers by the name of Maddox had whipped +him for killing a dog while Mr. Samuel Bishop had stood by and let them do +it, the master, who presumably had no means of reaching the two strangers, +wrote Bishop demanding an explanation of his conduct and intimating that +if this were not satisfactorily forthcoming by the next session of court, +proceedings would be begun against him[19]. While this complainant might +not have been able to procure a judgment against a merely acquiescent +bystander, the courts were quite ready to punish actual transgressors. +In sustaining the indictment of a private citizen for such offense the +chief-justice of North Carolina said in 1823: "For all purposes necessary +to enforce the obedience of the slave and render him useful as property the +law secures to the master a complete authority over him, and it will +not lightly interfere with the relation thus established. It is a more +effectual guarantee of his right of property when the slave is protected +from wanton abuse by those who have no power over him, for it cannot be +disputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master's +service when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violence +of every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by the +humanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinion +which revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be an +anomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated in +the verdict [the striking of a slave] were not indictable."[20] Likewise +the South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1850 endorsed the fining of a public +patrol which had whipped the slaves at a quilting party despite their +possession of written permission from their several masters. The Court said +of the quilting party: "The occasion was a perfectly innocent one, even +meritorious.... It would simply seem ridiculous to suppose that the safety +of the state or any of its inhabitants was implicated in such an assemblage +as this." And of the patrol's limitations: "A judicious freedom in the +administration of our police laws for the lower order must always have +respect for the confidence which the law reposes in the discretion of the +master."[21] + +[Footnote 17: _E. g_., Letter of "a citizen" in the Charleston _City +Gazette_, Aug. 17, 1825.] + +[Footnote 18: _E. g., L'Abeille_ (New Orleans), Aug. 15, 1841, editorial.] + +[Footnote 19: Letter signed "R.T.," Port Tobacco, Md., Aug. 19, 1787. MS. +in the Library of Congress.] + +[Footnote 20: The State _v_. Hale, in Hawks, _North Carolina Reports_, V, +582. See similarly Munford, _Virginia Reports_, I, 288.] + +[Footnote 21: The State _v_. Boozer _et al_., in Strobhart, _South Carolina +Law Reports_, V, 21. This is quoted at some length in H.M. Henry, _Police +Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 146-148.] + +The masters were on their private score, however, prone to disregard the +law where it restrained their own prerogatives. They hired slaves to the +slaves themselves whether legally permitted or not; they sent them on +responsible errands to markets dozens of miles away, often without +providing them with passes; they sanctioned and encouraged assemblies under +conditions prohibited by law; they taught their slaves at will to read and +write, and used them freely in forbidden employments. Such practices as +these were often noted and occasionally complained of in the press, but +they were seldom obstructed. When outside parties took legal steps to +interfere in the master's routine administration, indeed, they were +prompted probably as often by personal animosity as by devotion to the +law. An episode of the sort, where the complainants were envious poorer +neighbors, was related with sarcasm and some philosophical moralizing by +W.B. Hodgson, of whose plantation something has been previously said, in +a letter to Senator Hammond: "I am somewhat 'riled' with Burke. The +benevolent neighbors have lately had me in court under indictment for cruel +treatment of my fat, lazy, rollicking sambos. For fifty years they have +eaten their own meat and massa's too; but inasmuch as rich massa did not +_buy_ meat, the _poor Benevolens_ indicted him. So was my friend Thomas +Foreman, executor of Governor Troup. My suit was withdrawn; he was +acquitted. I have some crude notions about that thing slavery in the end. +Its tendency, as with landed accumulations in England, or Aaron's rod, is +to swallow up other small rods, and inevitably to attract the benevolence +of the smaller ones. You may have two thousand acres of land in a body. +That is unfeeling--land is. But a body of a thousand negroes appeals to the +finer sentiments of the heart. The agrarian battle is hard to fight. But +'_les amis des noirs_' in our midst have the vantage ground, particularly +when rejected overseers come in as spies. _C'est un peu degoutant, mon cher +ami_; but I can stand the racket."[22] + +[Footnote 22: Letter of W.B. Hodgson, Savannah, Ga., June 19, 1859, to J.H. +Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress. "Burke" +is the county in which Hodgson's plantation lay.] + +The courts exercising jurisdiction over slaves were of two sorts, those of +inferior grade and amateurish character which dealt with them as persons, +and those of superior rank and genuine magisterial quality which handled +them as property and sometimes, on appeal, as persons as well. These +lower courts for the trial of slave crimes had vices in plenty. They were +informal and largely ignorant of the law, and they were so quickly convened +after the discovery of a crime that the shock of the deed had no time to +wane. Such virtues as they sometimes had lay merely in their personnel. +The slaveholders of the vicinage who commonly comprised the court were +intimately and more or less tolerantly acquainted with negro nature in +general, and usually doubtless with the prisoner on trial. Their judgment +was therefore likely to be that of informed and interested neighbors, not +of jurors carefully selected for ignorance and indifference, a judgment +guided more by homely common sense than by the particularities of the law. +Their task was difficult, as anyone acquainted with the rambling, mumbling, +confused and baffling character of plantation negro testimony will easily +believe; and the convictions and acquittals were of course oftentimes +erroneous. The remodeling of the system was one of the reforms called for +by Southerners of the time but never accomplished. Mistaken acquittals by +these courts were beyond correction, for in the South slaves like freemen +could not be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Their convictions, +on the other hand, were sometimes set aside by higher courts on appeal, or +their sentences estopped from execution by the governor's pardon.[23] The +thoroughness with which some of the charges against negroes were considered +is illustrated in two cases tried before the county court at Newbern, North +Carolina, in 1826. In one of these a negro boy was acquitted of highway +robbery after the jury's deliberation of several hours; in the other the +jury on the case of a free negro woman charged with infanticide had been +out for forty-six hours without reaching a verdict when the newspaper +dispatch was written.[24] + +[Footnote 23: The working of these courts and the current criticisms of +them are illustrated in H.M. Henry _The Police Control of the Slave in +South Carolina_, pp. 58-65.] + +[Footnote 24: News item from Newbern, N.C., in the Charleston _City +Gazette_, May 9, 1826.] + +The circuit and supreme courts of the several states, though the slave +cases which they tried were for the most part concerned only with such dry +questions as detinue, trover, bailment, leases, inheritance and reversions, +in which the personal quality of the negroes was largely ignored, +occasionally rendered decisions of vivid human interest even where matters +of mere property were nominally involved. An example occurred in the case +of Rhame _vs_. Ferguson and Dangerfield, decided by the South Carolina +Court of Appeals in 1839 in connection with a statute enacted by the +legislature of that state in 1800 restricting manumissions and prescribing +that any slaves illegally set free might be seized by any person as +derelicts. George Broad of St. John's Parish, Berkeley County, had died +without blood relatives in 1836, bequeathing fourteen slaves and their +progeny to his neighbor Dangerfield "in trust nevertheless and for this +purpose only that the said John R. Dangerfield, his executors and assigns +do permit and suffer the said slaves ... to apply and appropriate +their time and labor to their own proper use and behoof, without the +intermeddling or interference of any person or persons whomsoever further +than may be necessary for their protection under the laws of this state"; +and bequeathing also to Dangerfield all his other property in trust for the +use of these negroes and their descendants forever. These provisions were +being duly followed when on a December morning in 1837 Rebecca Rhame, the +remarried widow of Broad's late brother-in-law, descended upon the Broad +plantation in a buggy with John J. Singletary whom she had employed for the +occasion under power of attorney. Finding no white person at the residence, +Singletary ordered the negroes into the yard and told them they were seized +in Mrs. Rhame's behalf and must go with him to Charleston. At this juncture +Dangerfield, the trustee, came up and demanded Singletary's authority, +whereupon the latter showed him his power of attorney and read him the laws +under which he was proceeding. Dangerfield, seeking delay, said it would be +a pity to drag the negroes through the mud, and sent a boy to bring his +own wagon for them. While this vehicle was being awaited Colonel James +Ferguson, a dignitary of the neighborhood who had evidently been secretly +sent for by Dangerfield, galloped up, glanced over the power of attorney, +branded the whole affair as a cheat, and told Dangerfield to order +Singletary off the premises, driving him away with a whip if necessary, and +to shoot if the conspirators should bring reinforcements. "After giving +this advice, which he did apparently under great excitement, Ferguson rode +off." Singletary then said that for his part he had not come to take or +lose life; and he and his employer departed. Mrs. Rhame then sued Ferguson +and Dangerfield to procure possession of the negroes, claiming that she had +legally seized them on the occasion described. At the trial in the circuit +court, Singletary rehearsed the seizure and testified further that +Dangerfield had left the negroes customarily to themselves in virtually +complete freedom. In rebuttal, Dr. Theodore Gaillard testified that the +negroes, whom he described as orderly by habit, were kept under control +by the trustee and made to work. The verdict of the jury, deciding the +questions of fact in pursuance of the judge's charge as to the law, was in +favor of the defendants; and Mrs. Rhame entered a motion for a new trial. +This was in due course denied by the Court of Appeals on the ground that +Broad's will had clearly vested title to the slaves in Dangerfield, who +after Broad's death was empowered to do with them as he pleased. If he, who +was by the will merely trustee but by law the full owner, had given up +the practical dominion over the slaves and left them to their own +self-government they were liable to seizure under the law of 1800. This +question of fact, the court concluded, had properly been put to the jury +along with the issue as to the effectiveness of the plaintiff's seizure of +the slaves; and the verdict for the defendants was declared conclusive.[25] + +[Footnote 25: Rebecca Rhame _vs_. James Ferguson and John R. Dangerfield, +in Rice, _Law Reports of South Carolina_, I, 196-203.] + +This is the melodrama which the sober court record recites. The female +villain of the piece and her craven henchman were foiled by the sturdy +but wily trustee and the doughty Carolina colonel who, in headlong, +aristocratic championship of those threatened with oppression against +the moral sense of the community, charged upon the scene and counseled +slaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. And +in the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come to +judgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assured +the so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, the +decision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to prove +that negroes freed by will in South Carolina might be legally enslaved by +any person seizing them, and that the bequest of slaves in trust to an +executor as a merely nominal master was contrary to law;[26] and in later +times a historian has instanced the traveller's account in support of his +own statement that "Persons who had been set free for years and had no +reason to suppose that they were anything else might be seized upon for +defects in the legal process of manumission."[27] + +[Footnote 26: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States in America_, II, 32, 33.] + +[Footnote 27: A.B. Hart, _Slavery and Abolition_ (New York, 1906), p. 88.] + +Now according to the letter of certain statutes at certain times, these +assertions were severally more or less true; but if this particular case +and its outcome have any palpable meaning, it is that the courts connived +at thwarting such provisions by sanctioning, as a proprietorship valid +against the claim of a captor, what was in obvious fact a merely nominal +dominion. + +Another striking case in which the severity of the law was overridden by +the court in sanction of lenient custom was that of Jones _vs_. Allen, +decided on appeal by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1858. In the fall of +the preceding year Jones had called in his neighbors and their slaves to +a corn husking and had sent Allen a message asking him to send help. Some +twenty-five white men and seventy-five slaves gathered on the appointed +night, among them Allen's slave Isaac. After supper, about midnight, Jones +told the negroes to go home; but Isaac stayed a while with some others +wrestling in the back yard, during which, while Jones was not present, a +white man named Hager stabbed Isaac to death. Allen thereupon sued Jones +for damages on the ground that the latter had knowingly and unlawfully +suffered Isaac, without the legally required authorization, to come with +other slaves upon his premises, where he had been slain to his owner's +loss. The testimony showed that Allen had not received Jones' message and +had given Isaac no permission to go, but that Jones had not questioned +Isaac in this regard; that Jones had given spirituous liquors to the slaves +while at work, Isaac included, but that no one there was intoxicated except +Hager who had come drunk and without invitation. In the trial court, in +Rutherford County where the tragedy had occurred, the judge excluded +evidence that such corn huskings were the custom of the country without the +requirement of written permission for the slaves attending, and he charged +the jury that Jones' employment of Isaac and Isaac's death on his premises +made him liable to Allen for the value of the slave. But on Jones' appeal +the Supreme Court overruled this, asserting that "under our modified form +of slavery slaves are not mere chattels but are regarded in the two-fold +character of persons and property; that as persons they are considered by +our law as accountable moral agents; ... that certain rights have been +conferred upon them by positive law and judicial determination, and other +privileges and indulgences have been conceded to them by the universal +consent of their owners. By uniform and universal usage they are +constituted the agents of their owners and sent on business without written +authority. And in like manner they are sent to perform those neighborly +good offices common in every community.... The simple truth is, such +indulgences have been so long and so uniformly tolerated, the public +sentiment upon the subject has acquired almost the force of positive law." +The judgment of the lower court was accordingly reversed and Jones was +relieved of liability for his laxness.[28] + +[Footnote 28: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 627-639.] + +There were sharp limits, nevertheless, to the lenity of the courts. Thus +when one Brazeale of Mississippi carried with him to Ohio and there set +free a slave woman of his and a son whom he had begotten of her, and then +after taking them home again died bequeathing all his property to the +mulatto boy, the supreme court of the state, in 1838, declared the +manumission void under the laws and awarded the mother and son along with +all the rest of Brazeale's estate to his legitimate heirs who had brought +the suit.[29] In so deciding the court may have been moved by its +repugnance toward concubinage as well as by its respect for the statutes. + +[Footnote 29: Howard's _Mississippi Reports_, II, 837-844.] + +The killing or injury of a slave except under circumstances justified by +law rendered the offender liable both to the master's claim for damages +and to criminal prosecution; and the master's suit might be sustained even +where the evidence was weak, for as was said in a Louisiana decision, the +deed was "one rarely committed in presence of witnesses, and the most that +can be expected in cases of this kind are the presumptions that result from +circumstances."[30] The requirement of positive proof from white witnesses +in criminal cases caused many indictments to fail.[31] A realization of +this hindrance in the law deprived convicted offenders of some of the +tolerance which their crimes might otherwise have met. When in 1775, for +example, William Pitman was found guilty and sentenced by the Virginia +General Court to be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the +_Virginia Gazette_ said: "This man has justly incurred the penalties of +the law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning to +others to treat their slaves with more moderation."[32] In the nineteenth +century the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to be +felonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases where +the victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premises +the courts felt themselves free to remedy the defect.[33] + +[Footnote 30: Martin, _Louisiana Reports_, XV, 142.] + +[Footnote 31: H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_, +pp. 69-79.] + +[Footnote 32: _Virginia Gazette_, Apr. 21, 1775, reprinted in the _William +and Mary College Quarterly_, VIII, 36.] + +[Footnote 33: The State _vs_. Jones, in Walker, _Mississippi Reports_, p. +83, reprinted in J.D. Wheeler, _The Law of Slavery_, pp. 252-254.] + +Despite the ferocity of the statutes and the courts, the fewness and the +laxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies were +called into play. For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped in +Belle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious and +lasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgia +militia. On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employed +was obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcements +merely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while the +negroes themselves were safely in hiding. Not long afterward, however, +the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and Catawba +Indians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads.[34] The +Seminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as to +prompt invasions of their country by the United States army both before +and after the Florida purchase.[35] On lesser occasions raids were made by +citizen volunteers. The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, were +searched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, the +capture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as the +result.[36] + +[Footnote 34: _Georgia Colonial Records_, XII, 325, 326; _Georgia Gazette_ +(Savannah), Oct. 19, 1786; _Massachusetts Sentinel_ (Boston), June 13, +1787; _Georgia State Gazette and Independent Register_ (Augusta), June 16, +1787.] + +[Footnote 35: Joshua R. Giddings, _The Exiles of Florida_ (Columbus, Ohio, +1858).] + +[Footnote 36: Diary of Dr. Henry Ravenel, Jr., of St. John's Parish, +Berkeley County, S.C. MS. in private possession.] + +More frequent occasions for the creation of vigilance committees were the +rumors of plots among the blacks and the reports of mischievous doings by +whites. In the same Santee district of the Carolina lowlands, for instance, +a public meeting at Black Oak Church on January 3, 1860, appointed three +committees of five members each to look out for and dispose of any +suspicious characters who might be "prowling about the parish." Of the +sequel nothing is recorded by the local diarist of the time except the +following, under date of October 25: "Went out with a party of men to take +a fellow by the name of Andrews, who lived at Cantey's Hill and traded with +the negroes. He had been warned of our approach and run off. We went on and +broke up the trading establishment."[37] + +[Footnote 37: Diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, which is virtually a continuation +of the Diary just cited. MS. in private possession.] + +Such transactions were those of the most responsible and substantial +citizens, laboring to maintain social order in the face of the law's +desuetude. A mere step further in that direction, however, lay outright +lynch law. Lynchings, indeed, while far from habitual, were frequent enough +to link the South with the frontier West of the time. The victims were not +only rapists[38] but negro malefactors of sundry sorts, and occasionally +white offenders as well. In some cases fairly full accounts of such +episodes are available, but more commonly the record extant is laconic. +Thus the Virginia archives have under date of 1791 an affidavit reciting +that "Ralph Singo and James Richards had in January last, in Accomac +County, been hung by a band of disguised men, numbering from six to +fifteen";[39] and a Georgia newspaper in 1860 the following: "It is +reported that Mr. William Smith was killed by a negro on Saturday evening +at Bowling Green, in Oglethorpe County. He was stabbed sixteen times. The +negro made his escape but was arrested on Sunday, and on Monday morning +a number of citizens who had investigated the case burnt him at the +stake."[40] In at least one well-known instance the mob's violence was +directed against an abuser of slaves. This was at New Orleans in 1834 when +a rumor spread that Madame Lalaurie, a wealthy resident, was torturing her +negroes. A great crowd collected after nightfall, stormed her door, found +seven slaves chained and bearing marks of inhuman treatment, and gutted +the house. The woman herself had fled at the first alarm, and made her way +eventually to Paris.[41] Had she been brought before a modern court it may +be doubted whether she would have been committed to a penitentiary or to +a lunatic asylum. At the hands of the mob, however, her shrift would +presumably have been short and sure. + +[Footnote 38: For examples of these see above, pp. 460-463.] + +[Footnote 39: _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, V, 328.] + +[Footnote 40: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga.), June 14, 1860. Other +instances, gleaned mostly from _Niles' Register_ and the _Liberator_, are +given in J.E. Cutler, _Lynch Law_ (New York, 1905), pp. 90-136.] + +[Footnote 41: Harriett Martineau, _Retrospect of Western Travel_ (London, +1838), I, 262-267; V. Debouchel, _Histoire de la Louisiane_ (New Orleans, +1841), p. 155; Alcee Fortier, _History of Louisiana_, III, 223.] + +The violence of city mobs is a thing peculiar to no time or place. Rural +Southern lynch law in that period, however, was in large part a special +product of the sparseness of population and the resulting weakness of legal +machinery, for as Olmsted justly remarked in the middle 'fifties, the whole +South was virtually still in a frontier condition.[42] In _post bellum_ +decades, on the other hand, an increase of racial antipathy has offset the +effect of the densification of settlement and has abnormally prolonged the +liability to the lynching impulse. + +[Footnote 42: F.L. Olmsted, _Journey in the Back Country_, p. 413.] + +While the records have no parallel for Madame Lalaurie in her systematic +and wholesale torture of slaves, there were thousands of masters and +mistresses as tolerant and kindly as she was fiendish; and these were +virtually without restraint of public authority in their benevolent rule. +Lawmakers and magistrates by personal status in their own plantation +provinces, they ruled with a large degree of consent and cooperation by the +governed, for indeed no other course was feasible in the long run by men +and women of normal type. Concessions and friendly services beyond the +countenance and contemplation of the statutes were habitual with those +whose name was legion. The law, for example, conceded no property rights +to the slaves, and some statutes forbade specifically their possession +of horses, but the following characteristic letter of a South Carolina +mistress to an influential citizen tells an opposite story: "I hope you +will pardon the liberty I take in addressing you on the subject of John, +the slave of Professor Henry, Susy his wife, and the orphan children of my +faithful servant Pompey, the first husband of Susy. In the first instance, +Pompey owned a horse which he exchanged for a mare, which mare I permitted +Susy to use after her marriage with John, but told them both I would sell +it and the young colt and give Susy a third of the money, reserving the +other two thirds for her children. Before I could do so, however, the +mare and the colt were exchanged and sent out of my way by this dishonest +couple. I then hoped at least to secure forty-five dollars for which +another colt was sold to Mr. Haskell, and sent my message to him to say +that Susy had no claim on the colt and that the money was to be paid to me +for the children of Pompey. A few days since I sent to Mr. Haskell again +who informed me that he had paid for the colt, and referred me to you. I do +assure you that whatever Susy may affirm, she has no right to the money. +It is not my intention to meddle with the law on the occasion, and I +infinitely prefer relying on you to do justice to the parties. My manager, +who will deliver this to you, is perfectly acquainted with all the +circumstances; and [if] after having a conversation with him you should +decide in favor of the children I shall be much gratified."[43] + +[Footnote 43: Letter of Caroline Raoul, Belleville, S.C., Dec. 26, 1829, to +James H. Hammond. MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.] + +Likewise where the family affairs of slaves were concerned the silence and +passiveness of the law gave masters occasion for eloquence and activity. +Thus a Georgian wrote to a neighbor: "I have a girl Amanda that has your +servant Phil for a husband. I should be very glad indeed if you would +purchase her. She is a very good seamstress, an excellent cook--makes cake +and preserves beautifully--and washes and irons very nicely, and cannot be +excelled in cleaning up a house. Her disposition is very amiable. I have +had her for years and I assure you that I have not exaggerated as regards +her worth.... I will send her down to see you at any time."[44] That offers +of purchase were no less likely than those of sale to be prompted by such +considerations is suggested by another Georgia letter: "I have made every +attempt to get the boy Frank, the son of James Nixon; and in order to +gratify James have offered as far as five hundred dollars for him--more +than I would pay for any negro child in Georgia were it not James' +son."[45] It was therefore not wholly in idyllic strain that a South +Carolinian after long magisterial service remarked: "Experience and +observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of +kindness from the master to the slave. With that ... slavery becomes a +family relation, next in its attachments to that of parent and child."[46] + +[Footnote 44: Letter of E.N. Thompson, Vineville, Ga. (a suburb of Macon), +to J.B. Lamar at Macon, Ga., Aug. 7, 1854. MS. in the possession of Mrs. +A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +[Footnote 45: Letter of Henry Jackson, Jan. 11, 1837, to Howell Cobb. MS. +in the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga.] + +[Footnote 46: J.B. O'Neall in J.B.D. DeBow ed., _Industrial Resources of +the South and West_, II (New Orleans, 1852), 278.] + +On the whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the Old +South have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to their +abundance and accessibility. The statutes, copious and easily available, +describe a hypothetical regime, not an actual one. The court records are on +the one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions of +human adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisions +were themselves largely controlled by the statutes, perverse for ordinary +practical purposes as these often were. It is therefore to the letters, +journals and miscellaneous records of private persons dwelling in the +regime and by their practices molding it more powerfully than legislatures +and courts combined, that the main recourse for intimate knowledge must be +had. Regrettably fugitive and fragmentary as these are, enough it may be +hoped have been found and used herein to show the true nature of the living +order. + +The government of slaves was for the ninety and nine by men, and only for +the hundredth by laws. There were injustice, oppression, brutality and +heartburning in the regime,--but where in the struggling world are these +absent? There were also gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutual +loyalty to a degree hard for him to believe who regards the system with a +theorist's eye and a partisan squint. For him on the other hand who has +known the considerate and cordial, courteous and charming men and women, +white and black, which that picturesque life in its best phases produced, +it is impossible to agree that its basis and its operation were wholly +evil, the law and the prophets to the contrary notwithstanding. + + + + +INDEX + +Acklen, Joseph A.S., + plantation home of + rules of, for overseers +Africa, West, _see_ Guinea +Agriculture, _see_ cotton, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco + culture +Aiken, William, rice plantation of +Aime, Valcour, sugar plantation of +Amissa, enslaved and restored to Africa +Angolas, + tribal traits of + revolt of +Antipathy, racial, + Jefferson's views on + in Massachusetts + in North and South compared + Northern spokesmen of +Arabs, in the Guinea trade +Asiento +Azurara, Gomez E. + +Baltimore, negro churches in +Barbados, + emigration from, + to Carolina + to Jamaica + founding of + planters' committee of + slave laws of, + sugar culture in +Belmead plantation +Benin +Black codes, + administration of + attitude of citizens toward + local ordinances + origin of, + in Barbados + in the Northern colonies + in Louisiana + in South Carolina + in Virginia + tenor of, + in the North + in the South +Bobolinks, in rice fields +Bonny +Bore, Etienne de, sugar planter +Bosman, William, in the Guinea trade +Branding of slaves +Bristol, citizens of, in the slave trade +Burial societies, negro +Burnside, John, merchant and sugar planter +Butler, Pierce, + the younger, + slaves of, sold + +Cain, Elisha, overseer +Cairnes, J.E., views of, on slavery +Calabar, New +Calabar, Old +Cape Coast Castle +Capers, William, overseer +Capital, investment of, in slaves +Charleston, commerce of, + free negroes in + industrial census of + racial adjustments in, problem of + slave misdemeanors in + Denmark Vesey's plot +Churches, + racial adjustments in, + rural + urban +Clarkson, Thomas, views of, on the effects of closing the slave trade +Columbus, Christopher, policy of +Concubinage +Congoes, tribal traits of +Connecticut, + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Cooper, Thomas, views of, on the economics of slavery +Corbin, Richard, plantation rules of +Coromantees, conspiracy of, + tribal traits of +Corporations, ownership of slaves by +Cotton culture, + sea-island + introduction of, + methods and scale of + upland, + engrossment of thought and energy by + improvements in + methods and scale of + stimulates westward migration +Cotton gin, invention of +Cotton mills + slave operatives in +Cotton plantations, _see_ plantations, cotton +Cotton prices, sea-island, + upland, + chart facing +Cottonseed, + oil extracted from + used as fertilizer +Covington, Leonard, planter, migration of +Creoles, Louisiana +Criminality among free negroes + among slaves +Cuba + +Dabney, Thomas S., planter, migration of +Dahomeys +Dale, Sir Thomas +Davis, Joseph and Jefferson, plantation policy of +Delaware, + slaves and free negroes in + forbids export of slaves +Depression, financial, + in Mississippi + in Virginia +Dirt-eating, among Jamaica slaves +Discipline, of slaves +Diseases, + characteristic, + in Africa + among Jamaica slaves + venereal +Doctors, black, + in Jamaica + in South Carolina + in Virginia +"Doctoress," slave, in Georgia +Drivers (plantation foremen) +Driving of slaves to death, question of +Dutch, in the slave trade +Dutch West India Company + +Early, Peter, debates the closing of the foreign slave trade +East India Company, in the slave trade +Eboes, tribal traits of +El Mina +Elliott, William, planter + economic views of +Ellsworth, Oliver +Emancipation, _see_ manumission +Encomiendia system, in the Spanish West Indies +England, policy of, toward the slave trade +Epitaph of Peyton, a slave +Evans, Henry, negro preacher + +Factorage, in planters' dealings +Factorage, in the slave trade, + in American ports + in Guinea +Farmers, + free negro + white, + in the Piedmont + in the plantation colonies + segregation of + in the westward movement +Federal Convention +Festivities, of slaves +Fithian, Philip V., observations by +Foremen, plantation +Foulahs +Fowler, J.W., + cotton picking records of + plantation rules of +Franklin and Armfield, slave-dealers +Free negroes, + antipathy toward + criminality among + discriminations against + emigration projects of + endorsements of + kidnapping of + legal seizure of, attempts at + mob violence against + occupations of, in Augusta + in Charleston + in New Orleans and New York + prominent characters among + processes of procuring freedom by + qualities and status of + reenslavement of + secret societies among + slaveholding by +French, in the slave trade +Fugitive slaves, _see_ slaves, runaway, + rendition, in the Federal Constitution, + act of 1793 +Funerals, negro + +Gaboons, tribal traits of +Gabriel, insurrection led by +Gadsden, Christopher +Gambia, slave trade on the +Gang system, in plantation work +Genoese, in the slave trade +Georgia, founding of, + free negress visits + slave imports forbidden in, + permitted in + restricted by + uplands, development of +Gerry, Elbridge +Gibson, Arthur H., views of, on the economics of slavery +Godkin, Edwin L., on the migration of planters +Gold Coast +Goodloe, Daniel R., views of, on slavery +Gowrie, rice plantation +Grandy King George, African chief, wants of +Guiana, British, + invites free negro immigration + cotton culture in + Dutch +Guinea, + coastal explorations of + life and institutions in + slave exports from, beginnings of, + volume of + tribal traits in + _See also_ negroes and slave trade + +Hairston, Samuel, planter +Hammond, James H., planter and writer +Hampton, Wade, planter +Harrison, Jesse Burton, views of, on slavery +Hawkins, Sir John, adventures of, in the slave trade +Hayti (Hispaniola) +Hearn, Lafcadio, on sugar-cane harvesting +Helper, Hinton R., views of, on slavery +Hemp +Henry, Patrick +Henry, Prince, the Navigator +Heyward, Nathaniel, planter +Hodgson, W.B., planter +Holidays, of slaves, + plantation + urban +Hundley D.R., on slave traders + +Immigrants, in the South + _See also_ Irish +Importations of slaves + prohibition of +Indians, enslaved, + in New England + in South Carolina + in West Indies, subjugated by Spaniards +Indigo culture, + introduction of, + in Georgia + in South Carolina + methods of +Insurrection of slaves, _see_ slave plots +Irish, labor of, on plantations + +Jamaica, + capture and development of + maroons of + nabobs, absentee + plantations in + runaway slaves in, statistics of +Jefferson, Thomas, + on the foreign slave trade + on negroes and slavery +Jennison, Nathaniel, prosecution of +Job Ben Solomon, enslaved and restored to Africa +Joloffs + +Kentucky, settlement of +Kidnapping of free negroes +King, Rufus +Kingsley, Z., plantation experience of + +Lace, Ambrose, slave trader +Lalaurie, Madame +Lamar, John B., planter +Las Casas, Bartholomeo de la +Laurens, Henry, factor and planter +Liberia +Lincecum, Gideon, peregrinations of +Lindo, Moses, indigo merchant +Liverpool, + in the slave trade, + types of ships employed +Loango +Lodges, negro +London, in the slave trade +London Company +Loria, Achille, views of, on slavery economics +Louisiana, cotton culture in, + slave laws of + sugar culture in +L'Ouverture, Toussaint +Lucas, Eliza +Lynchings + +M'Culloch, J.R., views of, on slavery +McDonogh, John, manumission by, method of +Macon, Nathaniel +Madagascar, slaves procured from +Malaria, + in Africa + in South Carolina +Mandingoes, tribal traits of +Manigault, Charles, planter + rules of +Manors in Maryland +Manumission, of slaves +Maroons, negro, in Jamaica + on the Savannah River +Martinique +Maryland, + founding of + free negroes in + manors in + plantations in + slave imports prohibited by + slaveholdings in, scale of + slavery in, projects for the disestablishment of +Massachusetts, + in the slave trade + slavery in + abolition of +Matthews, Samuel, planter +Medical attention to slaves +Mercer, James, planter +Merolla, Jerom, missionary +Middle passage, _see_ slave trade, African +Midwives, slave +Migration +Mill, John Stuart, views of, on slavery +Miller, Phineas, partner of Eli Whitney +Misdemeanors of slaves, in Charleston +Missouri, + decline of slavery in + settlement of +Mississippi, + depression in + product of long-fibre cotton in + sale of slaves from +Mobs, violence of, toward free negroes +Mocoes, tribal traits of +Molasses +Moore, Francis, Royal African Company factor +Moors +Mulattoes +Mules + +Nagoes, tribal traits of +Negro traits, + American + Angola + Congo + Coromantee + Ebo + Gaboon + Mandingo + Nago + Paw Paw + Whydah +Negroes, _see_ antipathy, black codes, church adjustments, free + negroes, funerals, plantation labor, plantation life, slave plots + slave trade, slaveholdings, slavery, slaves +New England, + in the slave trade, + type of ships employed + slavery in, + disestablishment of +New Jersey, + slavery in, + disestablishment of +New Netherlands, slavery in +New Orleans, as a slave market, + free negroes in +New York, + negro plots in + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Nicholson, J.S., views of, on slavery +Nobility, English, as Jamaica plantation owners +North Carolina, + early conditions in + sentiment on slavery +Northrup, a kidnapped free negro, career of +Northwest Territory, prohibition of slavery in + +Oglethorpe, James, + administers the Royal African Company + founds Georgia + restores a slave to Africa +Olmsted, Frederick L., observations by +Overseers, plantation, functions, salaries, and experiences of + +Panics, financial, effects on slave prices +Park, Mungo, in Guinea +"Particular plantations," in Virginia +Paths, in Guinea, character of +Paw Paws, tribal traits of +Pennsylvania, slavery in, + disestablishment of +Peyton, a slave, epitaph of +Philips, Martin W., + planter and writer + slave epitaph by +Pickering, Timothy +_Plantation and Frontier_, citation of title in full +Plantation labor +Plantation life +Plantation management +Plantation mistress +Plantation rules +Plantation system, + cherishment of slaves in + as a civilizing agency + gang and task methods in + severity in, question of + soil exhaustion in + towns and factories hampered in growth by + westward spread of +Plantation tendencies +Plantations, cotton, sea island +Plantations, + cotton, + upland, + J.H. Hammond estate + Retreat + indigo + rice, + Butler's Island + Gowrie and East Hermitage + Jehossee Island + sugar, + in Barbados, + Drax Hall + in Jamaica, + Worthy Park + in Louisiana, + Valcour Aime's estate + tobacco, + Belmead + James Mercer's estate +Planters, + absenteeism among + concern of, for slaves + dietary of + exemplified, + in J.A.S. Acklen + in William Aiken + in John Burnside + in Robert Carter + in Christopher Codrington + in Thomas S. Dabney + in Jefferson and Joseph Davis + in Samuel Hairston + in James H. Hammond + in Wade Hampton + in Nathaniel Heywood + in W.B. Hodgson + in Z. Kingsley + in John B. Lamar + in Henry Laurens + in Charles Manigault + in Samuel Matthews + in James Mercer + in A.H. Pemberton + in Martin W. Philips + in George Washington + in David R. Williams + gentility of + homesteads of + innovations by + management by + migration of + purchases of slaves by + rules of + sales of slaves by + sports of + temper of +Poor whites, + in the South, + Cairnes' assertions concerning +Portugal, activities of, in Guinea, + an appandage of Spain + negroes in +Preachers, negro +Procter, Billy, a slave, letter of +Providence, "Old," a Puritan colony in the tropics, career of +Puritans, attitude of, toward slavery + +Quakers, relationship of, to slavery +Quincy, Josiah + +Railroad companies, slave ownership by +Randolph, Edmund, disrelishes slavery +Randolph, John, of Roanoke, + on the coasting trade in slaves + on depression in Virginia + manumits his slaves +Randolph, Richard, provides for the manumission of his slaves +Rape, by negroes in the ante-bellum South +Rats, a pest in Jamaica +Rattoons, of sugar cane +Religion, among slaves, + rural + urban +Retreat, cotton plantation +Revolution, American, + doctrines of + effects of, on slavery + Negroes in + radicalism of, waning of +Rhode Island, + in the slave trade + resolution advocating the stoppage of the slave trade + slavery in, + disestablishment of +Rice birds (bobolinks), damage from +Rice culture, + introduced into Georgia + into South Carolina + methods of + plantations in, + scale of +Rishworth, Samuel, early agitator against slavery +Rolfe, John, introduces tobacco culture into Virginia +Roustabouts, Irish, + qualities of + negro +Royal African Company +Ruffin, Edmund, + advocates agricultural reforms + views of, on slavery +Rum, + product of, in Jamaica + rations issued to slaves, + in Jamaica + in South Carolina + use of, in the Guinea trade +Runaway slaves, + general problem + of George Washington + in Georgia + in Jamaica + in Mississippi +Russell, Irwin, "Christmas in the Quarters," +Sabine Fields, rice plantation +Sahara, slave trade across +Saluda factory, slave operatives in +San Domingo, + emigration from, to Louisiana + revolution in +Say, J.B., views of, on slavery +Sea-island cotton, + introduced into the United States + methods and scale of culture +Seasoning of slaves, in Jamaica +Secret societies, negro +Senegal, slave trade in +Senegalese, tribal traits of +Senegambia +Serfdom +Servants, + white indentured, + in Barbados + in Connecticut + in Jamaica + in Maryland + in Massachusetts + in Pennsylvania + in South Carolina and Georgia + in Virginia + revolts by +Servitude, indentured, tendencies of +Shackles, used on slaves +Shenendoah Valley +Ships, types of, in the slave trade +Sierra' Leone +Slave Coast +Slave felons +Slave plots and insurrections, + general survey of + disquiet caused by + Gabriel's uprising + in "Old" Providence + in New York + proclivity of Coromantees toward + San Domingan revolution + Stono rebellion + Nat Turner's (Southampton), revolt + Denmark Vesey's conspiracy +Slave trade, African, + the asiento + barter in + chieftains active in + closing of, by various states, + by Congress + effects of + drain of funds by + Liverpool's prominence in + the middle passage + reopening, project of + Royal African Company + ships employed in, + types of + care and custody of slaves on + tricks of + Yankee traders in +Slave trade, + domestic, + beginnings of + effects of + methods in + to Louisiana + scale of +Slave traders, + domestic, + Franklin and Armfield + methods and qualities of + reputations of, blackened + maritime +Slaveholding, vicissitudes of +Slaveholdings, + by corporations + by free negroes, + scale of, in the cotton belt + in Jamaica + in Maryland + in New York + in towns + in Virginia + on the South Carolina coast +Slavery, + in Africa + in the American Revolution + in ancient Rome + in the British West Indies + in Europe + in Georgia + in Louisiana + in the North + disestablishment of + in South Carolina + in Spanish America + in Virginia + _See also_ black codes, negroes, and plantation labor, life + and management +Slaves, negro, + artizans among + as factory operatives + birth rates of + branding of + "breaking in" of + breeding, forced, question of + capital invested in + children, care and control of + church adjustments of + conspiracies of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections + crimes of + crops of, private + dealers in, _see_ slave traders + discipline of + diseases and death rates of + driving of, to death, question of + earnings of private + felons among, disposal of + festivities of + food and clothing of + foemen among + hiring of + to themselves + holidays of + hospitals for + labor of, schedule of + laws concerning + life insurance of + manumission of + marriages of + annulment of + medical and surgical care of + plots and insurrections of + police of + preachers among + prices of + property of + protection of, from strain and exposure + punishments of + purchases of + by themselves + drain of funds, caused by + quarters of + sanitation of + rape by + religion among + revolts of, _see_ slave plots and insurrections + rewards of + rum allowances to + running away by + sales of + shackling of + social stratification among + speculation in + stealing of + strikes by + suicide of + suits by, for freedom, + concerning + temper of + torture of + town adjustments of + undesirable types of + wages of + in the westward movement + women among, care and control of + work, rates of + working of, to death, question of +Smart, William, views of, on slavery +Smith, Adam, views of, on slavery +Smith, Captain John +Smith, Landgrave Thomas +Snelgrave, William, in the maritime slave trade +Soil exhaustion +Southampton insurrection +South Carolina, + closing and reopening of the foreign slave trade in + cotton culture in + emigration from + founding of + indigo culture in + rice culture in + slave imports, + prohibited by + reopened by + slave laws of + slaveholdings in, scale of + uplands, development of +Spain, + annexation of Portugal by + asiento instituted by + negroes in + police of American dominions by + policy of, toward Indians and negroes +Spaulding, Thomas, planter +Spinners, on plantations +Spratt, L.W., views of, on conditions in South Carolina +Staples, _see_ cotton, hemp, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture + and plantations +Steamboat laborers, + Irish + negro +Sugar culture, + in Barbados + in Jamaica + in Louisiana + methods and apparatus of + plantations in, + scale of + types of + in the Spanish West Indies + +Task system, in plantation industry +Taylor, John, of Caroline, agricultural writings of +Telfair, Alexander, + plantations of + rules of +Tennessee, settlement of +Texas +Thomas, E.S., bookseller, experience of +Thorpe, George, Virginia colonist +Tobacco culture, + in Maryland + method of + in North Carolina + plantations in, + scale of + types of + in the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia + in Virginia +Towns, Southern, + growth of, hampered + slaves in +Tucker, St. George, project of, for extinguishing slavery in Virginia +Turner, Nat, insurrection led by + +Utrecht, treaty of, grants the asiento to England + +Van Buren, A. de Puy, observations by +Venetians, in the Levantine slave trade +Vermont, prohibition of slavery by +Vesey, Denmark, conspiracy of +Vigilance committees +Virginia, + founding and early experience of + free negroes in + plantations in, + "particular" + private + servants, indentured, in + slave crimes in + slave imports, prohibited by + slave laws of + slave revolts in + slaveholdings in, scale of + slavery, + introduced in + disestablishment in, projects of + tobacco culture in + +Walker, Quork, suits concerning the freedom of +Washington, George + apprehensions of, concerning slave property + desires the gradual abolition of slavery + imports cotton + as a planter +West Indies, + British, + prosperity and decline in, progression of + servile plots and insurrections in + slave prices in, on the eve of abolition + Spanish, + colonization of + negro slavery in, introduction of +Weston, P.C., plantation rules of +Westward movement +Whitney, Eli, invents the cotton gin +Whydahs, tribal traits of +Williams, David R., planter +Williams, Francis, a free negro, career of +Women, slave, + care of, in pregnancy and childbirth + difficulties in controlling +Working of slaves to death, question of +Worthy Park, Jamaica plantation, records of + +Yeomanry, white, in the South + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's American Negro Slavery, by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY *** + +***** This file should be named 11490.txt or 11490.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/4/9/11490/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Leonard D Johnson and PG Distributed +Proofreaders + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation 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