ULRICH BONNELL PHILLIPS AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY A Survey of the Supply, Employment and ControlOf Negro LaborAs 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 TENDENCIESXVIII. ECONOMIC VIEWS OF SLAVERY: A SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE XIX. BUSINESS ASPECTS OF SLAVERY XX. TOWN SLAVES XXI. FREE NEGROES XXII. SLAVE CRIMEXXIII. THE FORCE OF THE LAWINDEX AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY CHAPTER I THE DISCOVERY AND EXPLOITATION OF GUINEA The Portuguese began exploring the west coast of Africa shortly beforeChristopher Columbus was born; and no sooner did they encounter negroesthan they began to seize and carry them in captivity to Lisbon. The courtchronicler Azurara set himself in 1452, at the command of Prince Henry, torecord the valiant exploits of the negro-catchers. Reflecting the spiritof the time, he praised them as crusaders bringing savage heathen forconversion to civilization and christianity. He gently lamented themassacre and sufferings involved, but thought them infinitely outweighed bythe salvation of souls. This cheerful spirit of solace was destined long toprevail among white peoples when contemplating the hardships of the coloredraces. But Azurara was more than a moralizing annalist. He acutely observedof the first cargo of captives brought from southward of the Sahara, lessthan a decade before his writing, that after coming to Portugal "they nevermore 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 ofdisplay, so that they took great delight in robes of showy colors, and suchwas their love of finery that they picked up the rags that fell from thecoats 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 greaterperfection. "[1] These few broad strokes would portray with equally happyprecision a myriad other black servants born centuries after the writer'sdeath and dwelling in a continent of whose existence he never dreamed. Azurara wrote further that while some of the captives were not able toendure the change and died happily as Christians, the others, dispersedamong Portuguese households, so ingratiated themselves that many wereset free and some were married to men and women of the land and acquiredcomfortable estates. This may have been an earnest of future conditions inBrazil and the Spanish Indies; but in the British settlements it fell outfar otherwise. [Footnote 1: Gomez Eannes de Azurara _Chronicle of the Discovery andConquest of Guinea_, translated by C. R. Beazley and E. P. Prestage, in theHakluyt Society _Publications_, XCV, 85. ] As the fifteenth century wore on and fleets explored more of the Africancoast with the double purpose of finding a passage to India and exploitingany incidental opportunities for gain, more and more human cargoes werebrought from Guinea to Portugal and Spain. But as the novelty of the blackswore 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 occupantshad recently been expelled. The labor demand was not great, however, andwhen early in the sixteenth century West Indian settlers wanted negroesfor their sugar fields, Spain willingly parted with some of hers. Thus didEurope begin the coercion of African assistance in the conquest of theAmerican wilderness. Guinea comprises an expanse about a thousand miles wide lying behindthree undulating stretches of coast, the first reaching from Cape Verdesoutheastward nine hundred miles to Cape Palmas in four degrees northlatitude, the second running thence almost parallel to the equator athousand miles to Old Calabar at the head of "the terrible bight ofBiafra, " the third turning abruptly south and extending some fourteenhundred miles to a short distance below Benguela where the southern desertbegins. 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 bedistinguished as having different systems of economy: in the jungle beltalong the equator bananas are the staple diet; in the belts bordering thison the north and south the growing of millet and manioc respectively, insmall clearings, are the characteristic industries; while beyond the edgesof the continental forest cattle contribute much of the food supply. Thebanana, millet and manioc zones, and especially their swampy coastalplains, were of course the chief sources of slaves for the transatlantictrade. Of all regions of extensive habitation equatorial Africa is the worst. Theclimate is not only monotonously hot, but for the greater part of each yearis excessively moist. Periodic rains bring deluge and periodic tornadoesplay havoc. The dry seasons give partial relief, but they bring occasionalblasts from the desert so dry and burning that all nature droops and isgrateful at the return of the rains. The general dank heat stimulatesvegetable growth in every scale from mildew to mahogany trees, andmultiplies the members of the animal kingdom, be they mosquitoes, elephantsor boa constrictors. There would be abundant food but for the superabundantcreatures that struggle for it and prey upon one another. For mankind lifeis 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 humanlife is endangered by beasts and reptiles in the forest, crocodiles andhippopotami in the rivers, and sharks in the sea, and existence is made aburden to all but the happy-hearted by plagues of insects and parasites. Inmany districts tse-tse flies exterminate the cattle and spread the fatalsleeping-sickness among men; everywhere swarms of locusts occasionallydestroy the crops; white ants eat timbers and any other useful thing, shortof metal, which may come in their way; giant cockroaches and dwarfbrown ants and other pests in great variety swarm in the dwellingscontinuously--except just after a village has been raided by the greatblack ants which are appropriately known as "drivers. " These drivers marchin solid columns miles on miles until, when they reach food resources totheir fancy, they deploy for action and take things with a rush. To stayamong them is to die; but no human being stays. A cry of "Drivers!" willdepopulate a village instantly, and a missionary who at one moment has beencombing brown ants from his hair will in the next find himself standingsafely in the creek or the water barrel, to stay until the drivers havetaken their leave. Among less spectacular things, mosquitoes fly in crowdsand leave fevers in their wake, gnats and flies are always on hand, chigoesbore and breed under toe-nails, hook-worms hang themselves to the walls ofthe intestines, and other threadlike worms enter the eyeballs and the fleshof the body. Endurance through generations has given the people largeimmunity from the effects of hook-worm and malaria, but not from theindigenous diseases, kraw-kraw, yaws and elephantiasis, nor of course fromdysentery and smallpox which the Europeans introduced. Yet robust health isfairly common, and where health prevails there is generally happiness, forthe negroes have that within their nature. They could not thrive in Guineawithout their temperament. It is probable that no people ever became resident on or near the westcoast except under compulsion. From the more favored easterly regionssuccessive hordes have been driven after defeat in war. The Fangs on theOgowe are an example in the recent past. Thus the inhabitants of Guinea, and of the coast lands especially, have survived by retreating andadapting themselves to conditions in which no others wished to dwell. Therequirements of adaptation were peculiar. To live where nature suppliesTurkish baths without the asking necessitates relaxation. But since unduephysical indolence would unfit people for resistance to parasites andhostile neighbors, the languid would perish. Relaxation of mind, however, brought no penalties. The climate in fact not only discourages butprohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroeshave submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countlessgenerations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts ofnature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, someof them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, otherscalculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of thedignitaries. [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 surveyis Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of thesources. Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularlynotable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture ofcoast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincingdiscussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A. B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe-and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along theGold Coast. ] No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans theforces of nature were often injurious and always impressive. To invest themwith spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was perhapsan obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate system ofsuperstition. Not only did the wind and the rain have their gods but eachriver and precipice, and each tribe and family and person, a tutelaryspirit. These might be kept benevolent by appropriate fetish ceremonies;they might be used for evil by persons having specially great powers overthem. The proper course for common-place persons at ordinary times was tofollow routine fetish observances; but when beset by witch-work the onlyescape lay in the services of witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices werecalled for, and on the greatest occasions nothing short of human sacrificewas acceptable. As to diet, vegetable food was generally abundant, but the negroes were notwillingly complete vegetarians. In the jungle game animals were scarce, andeverywhere the men were ill equipped for hunting. In lieu of better theywere often fain to satisfy their craving for flesh by eating locusts andlarvae, as tribes in the interior still do. In such conditions cannibalismwas fairly common. Especially prized was an enemy slain in war, for notonly would his body feed the hungry but fetish taught that his braverywould pass to those who shared the feast. In African economy nearly all routine work, including agriculture, wasclassed as domestic service and assigned to the women for performance. Thewife, 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 childrenin but moderate comfort. Two or more could perform the family tasks muchbetter. Thus a man who could pay the customary price would be inclined toadd a second wife, whom the first would probably welcome as a lightener ofher burdens. Polygamy prevailed almost everywhere. Slavery, too, was generally prevalent except among the few tribes whogained their chief sustenance from hunting. Along with polygamy, it perhapsoriginated, if it ever had a distinct beginning, from the desire to lightenand improve the domestic service. [3] Persons became slaves throughcapture, debt or malfeasance, or through the inheritance of the status. While the ownership was absolute in the eyes of the law and captiveswere often treated with great cruelty, slaves born in the locality weregenerally regarded as members of their owner's family and were shown muchconsideration. In the millet zone where there was much work to be done theslaveholdings were in many cases very large and the control relativelystringent; but in the banana districts an easy-going schedule prevailed forall. One of the chief hardships of the slaves was the liability of beingput to death at their master's funeral in order that their spirits mightcontinue in his service. In such case it was customary on the Gold Coastto give the victim notice of his approaching death by suddenly thrusting aknife through each cheek with the blades crossing in his mouth so that hemight not curse his master before he died. With his hands tied behind himhe would then be led to the ceremonial slaughter. The Africans were ingeneral eager traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before thetime when the transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raidingand trading, transformed the native economy and deranged the social order. [Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples hasbeen elaborately discussed by H. J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an IndustrialSystem: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900). ] Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in Guineawas wholly on a village basis, each community dwelling in its own clearingand having very slight intercourse with its neighbors. Politically eachvillage was governed by its chief and its elders, oftentimes in completeindependence. In occasional instances, however, considerable states ofloose organization were under the rule of central authorities. Such stateswere likely to be the creation of invaders from the eastward, the Dahomansand Ashantees for example; but the kingdom of Benin appears to have arisenindigenously. In many cases the subordination of conquered villages merelyresulted in their paying annual tribute. As to language, Lower Guinea spokemultitudinous dialects of the one Bantu tongue, but in Upper Guinea therewere many dialects of many separate languages. Land was so abundant and so little used industrially that as a rule itwas not owned in severalty; and even the villages and tribes had littleoccasion to mark the limits of their domains. For travel by land there werenothing but narrow, rough and tortuous foot-paths, with makeshift bridgesacross the smaller streams. The rivers were highly advantageous both asavenues and as sources of food, for the negroes were expert at canoeing andfishing. Intertribal wars were occasional, but a crude comity lessened theirfrequency. Thus if a man of one village murdered one of another, theaggrieved village if too weak to procure direct redress might save itsface by killing someone in a third village, whereupon the third must byintertribal convention make common cause with the second at once, or elsecoerce a fourth into the punitive alliance by applying the same sort ofpersuasion that it had just felt. These later killings in the series werenot regarded as murders but as diplomatic overtures. The system was hardupon those who were sacrificed in its operation, but it kept a check uponoutlawry. A skin stretched over the section of a hollow tree, and usually soconstructed as to have two tones, made an instrument of extraordinary usein communication as well as in music. By a system long anticipating theMorse code the Africans employed this "telegraph drum" in sendingmessages 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 histaps 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 thetom toms doubtless carried the news throughout Ashantee land that KingQuamina's funeral had just been repeated and two hundred more slaves slainto do him honor. In 1806 they perhaps reported the ending of Mungo Park'stravels by his death on the Niger at the hands of the Boussa people. Againand again drummers hired as trading auxiliaries would send word along thecoast 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 incalico, rum or Yankee notions for all slaves that might be brought. In music the monotony of the tom tom's tone spurred the drummers toelaborate variations in rhythm. The stroke of the skilled performer couldmake it mourn a funeral dirge, voice the nuptial joy, throb the pageant'smarch, and roar the ambush alarm. Vocal music might be punctuated by tomtoms and primitive wind or stringed instruments, or might swell in soloor chorus without accompaniment. Singing, however, appears not socharacteristic of Africans at home as of the negroes in America. On theother 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 questionremains, and may long remain, whether the manner in which the negroes werebrought into touch with civilization resulted in the greater blessing orthe greater curse. That manner was determined in part at least by thenature 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 ElizabethanEngland esteemed them as such; and so great a connoisseur in householdservice as the Czar Alexander added to his palace corps in 1810 two freenegroes, one a steward on an American merchant ship and the other abody-servant whom John Quincy Adams, the American minister, had broughtfrom Massachusetts to St. Petersburg. [4] [Footnote 4: _Writings of John Quincy Adams_, Ford ed. , III, 471, 472 (NewYork, 1914). ] The impulse for the enslavement of negroes by other peoples came from theArabs who spread over northern Africa in the eighth century, conquering andconverting as they went, and stimulating the trade across the Sahara untilit attained large dimensions. The northbound caravans carried the peculiarvariety of pepper called "grains of paradise" from the region later knownas 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 variousgoods was distributed in southern Europe and the Levant. And in the samegeneral period Arab dhows began to take slave cargoes from the east coastof Africa as far south as Mozambique, for distribution in Arabia, Persiaand western India. On these northern and eastern flanks of Guinea where theMohammedans operated and where the most vigorous of the African peoplesdwelt, the natives lent ready assistance in catching and buying slaves inthe interior and driving them in coffles to within reach of the Moorish andArab traders. Their activities, reaching at length the very center of thecontinent, constituted without doubt the most cruel of all branches of theslave-trade. The routes across the burning Sahara sands in particular cameto be strewn with negro skeletons. [5] [Footnote 5: Jerome Dowd, "The African Slave Trade, " in the _Journal ofNegro History_, II (1917), 1-20. ] This overland trade was as costly as it was tedious. Dealers in Timbuctooand other centers of supply must be paid their price; camels must beprocured, many of which died on the journey; guards must be hired toprevent escapes in the early marches and to repel predatory Bedouins in thelater ones; food supplies must be bought; and allowance must be made forheavy mortality among the slaves on their terrible trudge over the burningsands and the chilling mountains. But wherever Mohammedanism prevailed, which gave particular sanction to slavery as well as to polygamy, thevirtues of the negroes as laborers and as eunuch harem guards were sohighly esteemed that the trade was maintained on a heavy scale almost ifnot quite to the present day. The demand of the Turks in the Levant and theMoors in Spain was met by exportations from the various Barbary ports. Partof this Mediterranean trade was conducted in Turkish and Moorish vessels, and part of it in the ships of the Italian cities and Marseilles andBarcelona. Venice for example had treaties with certain Saracen rulers atthe beginning of the fourteenth century authorizing her merchants not onlyto frequent the African ports, but to go in caravans to interior points andstay at will. The principal commodities procured were ivory, gold, honeyand negro slaves. [6] [Footnote 6: The leading authority upon slavery and the slave-trade in theMediterranean countries of Europe is J. A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavituddesde 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 Romeand barbaric Teutondom. The chattel form of bondage, however, had quitegenerally given place to serfdom; and even serfdom was disappearing inmany districts by reason of the growth of towns and the increase of ruralpopulation to the point at which abundant labor could be had at wageslittle above the cost of sustaining life. On the other hand so long aspetty wars persisted the enslavement of captives continued to be at leastsporadic, particularly in the south and east of Europe, and a considerabletraffic in white slaves was maintained from east to west on theMediterranean. The Venetians for instance, in spite of ecclesiasticalprohibitions, imported frequent cargoes of young girls from the countriesabout the Black Sea, most of whom were doomed to concubinage andprostitution, and the rest to menial service. [7] The occurrence of theCrusades led to the enslavement of Saracen captives in Christendom as wellas 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 theTurkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 destroyed the Italian trade onthe Black Sea. No source of supply now remained, except a trickle fromAfrica, to sustain the moribund institution of slavery in any part ofChristian Europe east of the Pyrenees. But in mountain-locked Roussillonand Asturias remnants of slavery persisted from Visigothic times to theseventeenth century; and in other parts of the peninsula the intermittentwars against the Moors of Granada supplied captives and to some extentreinvigorated slavery among the Christian states from Aragon to Portugal. Furthermore the conquest of the Canaries at the end of the fourteenthcentury and of Teneriffe and other islands in the fifteenth led to thebringing of many of their natives as slaves to Castille and the neighboringkingdoms. Occasional documents of this period contain mention of negro slaves atvarious places in the Spanish peninsula, but the number was clearly smalland it must have continued so, particularly as long as the supply was drawnthrough Moorish channels. The source whence the negroes came was known tobe a region below the Sahara which from its yield of gold and ivory wascalled by the Moors the land of wealth, "Bilad Ghana, " a name which on thetongues of European sailors was converted into "Guinea. " To open a directtrade thither was a natural effort when the age of maritime explorationbegan. The French are said to have made voyages to the Gold Coast in thefourteenth century, though apparently without trading in slaves. But inthe absence of records of their activities authentic history must confineitself to the achievements of the Portuguese. In 1415 John II of Portugal, partly to give his five sons opportunity towin knighthood in battle, attacked and captured the Moorish stronghold ofCeuta, facing Gibraltar across the strait. For several years thereafter thetown was left in charge of the youngest of these princes, Henry, who thereacquired an enduring desire to gain for Portugal and Christianity theregions whence the northbound caravans were coming. Returning home, hefixed his residence at the promontory of Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, and made his main interest for forty years the promotion of maritimeexploration southward. [8] His perseverance won him fame as "PrinceHenry the Navigator, " though he was not himself an active sailor; andfurthermore, after many disappointments, it resulted in exploration as faras the Gold Coast in his lifetime and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hopetwenty-five years after his death. The first decade of his endeavor broughtlittle result, for the Sahara shore was forbidding and the sailors timid. Then in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador and found its dangersimaginary. Subsequent voyages added to the extent of coast skirted untilthe desert began to give place to inhabited country. The Prince was noweager for captives to be taken who might inform him of the country, and in1441 Antam Gonsalvez brought several Moors from the southern edge of thedesert, who, while useful as informants, advanced a new theme of interestby offering to ransom themselves by delivering on the coast a larger numberof non-Mohammedan negroes, whom the Moors held as slaves. Partly for thesake of profit, though the chronicler says more largely to increase thenumber of souls to be saved, this exchange was effected in the followingyear in the case of two of the Moors, while a third took his libertywithout delivering his ransom. After the arrival in Portugal of theseexchanged negroes, ten in number, and several more small parcels ofcaptives, a company organized at Lagos under the direction of Prince Henrysent forth a fleet of six caravels in 1444 which promptly returned with 225captives, the disposal of whom has been recounted at the beginning of thischapter. [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-sixvessels which discovered the Senegal River and brought back many nativestaken in raids thereabout; and by 1448 nearly a thousand captives had beencarried to Portugal. Some of these were Moorish Berbers, some negroes, but most were probably Jolofs from the Senegal, a warlike people of mixedancestry. Raiding in the Jolof country proved so hazardous that from about1454 the Portuguese began to supplement their original methods by planting"factories" on the coast where slaves from the interior were bought fromtheir native captors and owners who had brought them down in caravansand canoes. Thus not only was missionary zeal eclipsed but the desire ofconquest likewise, and the spirit of exploration erelong partly subdued, bycommercial greed. By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460 Portugal wasimporting seven or eight hundred negro slaves each year. From this timeforward the traffic was conducted by a succession of companies andindividual grantees, to whom the government gave the exclusive right forshort terms of years in consideration of money payments and pledges ofadding specified measures of exploration. As new coasts were reachedadditional facilities were established for trade in pepper, ivory and goldas well as in slaves. When the route round Africa to India was opened atthe end of the century the Guinea trade fell to secondary importance, butit was by no means discontinued. Of the negroes carried to Portugal in the fifteenth century a largeproportion were set to work as slaves on great estates in the southernprovinces recently vacated by the Moors, and others were employed asdomestic servants in Lisbon and other towns. Some were sold into Spainwhere they were similarly employed, and where their numbers were recruitedby a Guinea trade in Spanish vessels in spite of Portugal's claim ofmonopoly rights, even though Isabella had recognized these in a treaty of1479. In short, at the time of the discovery of America Spain as well asPortugal had quite appreciable numbers of negroes in her population andboth were maintaining a system of slavery for their control. When Columbus returned from his first voyage in the spring of 1493 andannounced his great landfall, Spain promptly entered upon her careerof American conquest and colonization. So great was the expectation ofadventure and achievement that the problem of the government was not howto enlist participants but how to restrain a great exodus. Under heavypenalties emigration was restricted by royal decrees to those who procuredpermission to go. In the autumn of the same year fifteen hundred men, soldiers, courtiers, priests and laborers, accompanied the discovereron his second voyage, in radiant hopes. But instead of wealth and highadventure these Argonauts met hard labor and sickness. Instead of the richcities of Japan and China sought for, there were found squalid villages ofCaribs and Lucayans. Of gold there was little, of spices none. Columbus, when planting his colony at Isabella, on the northern coastof Hispaniola (Hayti), promptly found need of draught animals and otherequipment. He wrote to his sovereigns in January, 1494, asking for thesupplies needed; and he offered, pending the discovery of more preciousthings, to defray expenses by shipping to Spain some of the island natives, "who are a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned and veryintelligent, and who when they have got rid of their cruel habits to whichthey have been accustomed will be better than any other kind of slaves. "[9]Though this project was discouraged by the crown, Columbus actually took acargo of Indians for sale in Spain on his return from his third voyage;but Isabella stopped the sale and ordered the captives taken home andliberated. Columbus, like most of his generation, regarded the Indiansas infidel foreigners to be exploited at will. But Isabella, and to someextent her successors, considered them Spanish subjects whose helplessnesscalled for special protection. Between the benevolence of the distantmonarchs and the rapacity of the present conquerors, however, the fate ofthe natives was in little doubt. The crown's officials in the Indies werethe very conquerors themselves, who bent their soft instructions to fittheir own hard wills. A native rebellion in Hispaniola in 1495 was crushedwith such slaughter that within three years the population is said to havebeen reduced by two thirds. As terms of peace Columbus required annualtribute in gold so great that no amount of labor in washing the sands couldfurnish it. As a commutation of tribute and as a means of promoting theconversion of the Indians there was soon inaugurated the encomienda systemwhich afterward spread throughout Spanish America. To each Spaniardselected as an encomendero was allotted a certain quota of Indians bound tocultivate land for his benefit and entitled to receive from him tutelagein civilization and Christianity. The grantees, however, were not assignedspecified Indians but merely specified numbers of them, with power to seizenew ones to replace any who might die or run away. Thus the encomendero wasgiven little economic interest in preserving the lives and welfare of hisworkmen. [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 ofdwelling in their own villages under their own chiefs. But the encomenderoscomplained that the aloofness of the natives hampered the work ofconversion and asked that a fuller and more intimate control be authorized. This was promptly granted and as promptly abused. Such limitations as thelaw still imposed upon encomendero power were made of no effect by the lackof machinery for enforcement. The relationship in short, which the lawdeclared to be one of guardian and ward, became harsher than if it had beenthat of master and slave. Most of the island natives were submissive indisposition and weak in physique, and they were terribly driven at theirwork in the fields, on the roads, and at the mines. With smallpox and otherpestilences added to their hardships, they died so fast that before 1510Hispaniola was confronted with the prospect of the complete disappearanceof its laboring population. [10] Meanwhile the same régime was being carriedto Porto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba with similar consequences in its train. [Footnote 10: E. G. Bourne, _Spain in America_ (New York, 1904); WilhelmRoscher, _The Spanish Colonial System_, Bourne ed. (New York, 1904); KonradHabler, "The Spanish Colonial Empire, " in Helmolt, _History of the World_, vol I. ] As long as mining remained the chief industry the islands failed toprosper; and the reports of adversity so strongly checked the Spanishimpulse for adventure that special inducements by the government wererequired to sustain any flow of emigration. But in 1512-1515 theintroduction of sugar-cane culture brought the beginning of a change inthe industrial situation. The few surviving gangs of Indians began to beshifted from the mines to the fields, and a demand for a new labor supplyarose which could be met only from across the sea. Apparently no negroes were brought to the islands before 1501. In thatyear, however, a royal decree, while excluding Jews and Moors, authorizedthe transportation of negroes born in Christian lands; and some of thesewere doubtless carried to Hispaniola in the great fleet of Ovando, the newgovernor, 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 theIndians. But after another year had elapsed he requested that more negroesbe sent. In this interim the humane Isabella died and the more callousFerdinand acceded to full control. In consequence a prohibition of thenegro trade in 1504 was rescinded in 1505 and replaced by orders that thebureau in charge of colonial trade promote the sending of negroes fromSpain in large parcels. For the next twelve years this policy wasmaintained--the sending of Christian negroes was encouraged, while thedirect slave trade from Africa to America was prohibited. The number ofnegroes who reached the islands under this régime is not ascertainable. Itwas clearly almost negligible in comparison with the increasing demand. [11] [Footnote 11: The chief authority upon the origin and growth of negroslavery in the Spanish colonies is J. A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitudde la Raza Africana en el Nuevo Mundo y en especial en los PaisesAmerico-Hispanos_. (Barcelona, 1879. ) This book supplements the sameauthor's _Historia de la Esclavitud desde los Tiempos remotos_ previouslycited. ] The policy of excluding negroes fresh from Africa--"bozal negroes" theSpaniards called them--was of course a product of the characteristicresolution to keep the colonies free from all influences hostile toCatholic orthodoxy. But whereas Jews, Mohammedans and Christian hereticswere considered as champions of rival faiths, the pagan blacks cameincreasingly to be reckoned as having no religion and therefore as a merepassive element ready for christianization. As early as 1510, in fact, theSpanish crown relaxed its discrimination against pagans by ordering thepurchase of above a hundred negro slaves in the Lisbon market for dispatchto Hispaniola. To quiet its religious scruples the government hit uponthe device of requiring the baptism of all pagan slaves upon theirdisembarkation in the colonial ports. The crown was clearly not prepared to withstand a campaign for suppliesdirect from Africa, especially after the accession of the youth Charles Iin 1517. At that very time a clamor from the islands reached its climax. Not only did many civil officials, voicing public opinion in their islandcommunities, urge that the supply of negro slaves be greatly increased asa means of preventing industrial collapse, but a delegation of Jeronimitefriars and the famous Bartholomeo de las Casas, who had formerly been aCuban encomendero and was now a Dominican priest, appeared in Spain topress the same or kindred causes. The Jeronimites, themselves concerned inindustrial enterprises, were mostly interested in the labor supply. But thewell-born and highly talented Las Casas, earnest and full of the milkof human kindness, was moved entirely by humanitarian and religiousconsiderations. He pleaded primarily for the abolition of the encomiendasystem and the establishment of a great Indian reservation under missionarycontrol, and he favored the increased transfer of Christian negroes fromSpain as a means of relieving the Indians from their terrible sufferings. The lay spokesmen and the Jeronimites asked that provision be made for thesending of thousands of negro slaves, preferably bozal negroes for the sakeof cheapness and plenty; and the supporters of this policy were able toturn to their use the favorable impression which Las Casas was making, eventhough his programme and theirs were different. [12] The outcome was thatwhile 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 inmuch need, by letting the slave trade under contract or by levying taxesupon it. The young king, however, freshly arrived from the Netherlands witha crowd of Flemish favorites in his train, proceeded to issue gratuitouslya license for the trade to one of the Flemings at court, Laurent deGouvenot, known in Spain as Garrevod, the governor of Breza. This licenseempowered the grantee and his assigns to ship from Guinea to the Spanishislands four thousand slaves. All the historians until recently have placedthis grant in the year 1517 and have called it a contract (asiento); butGeorges Scelle has now discovered and printed the document itself whichbears the date August 18, 1518, and is clearly a license of grace bearingnone of the distinctive asiento features. [13] Garrevod, who wanted readycash rather than a trading privilege, at once divided his license into twoand sold them for 25, 000 ducats to certain Genoese merchants domiciled atSeville, who in turn split them up again and put them on the market wherethey became an object of active speculation at rapidly rising prices. Theresult was that when slaves finally reached the islands under Garrevod'sgrant the prices demanded for them were so exorbitant that the purposesof the original petitioners were in large measure defeated. Meanwhile theking, in spite of the nominally exclusive character of the Garrevod grant, issued various other licenses on a scale ranging from ten to four hundredslaves each. For a decade the importations were small, however, and theisland clamor increased. [Footnote 13: Georges Scelle, _Histoire Politique de la Traité Négrière auxIndes de Castille: Contrats et Traités d'Asíento_ (Paris, 1906), I, 755. Book I, chapter 2 of the same volume is an elaborate discussion of theGarrevod grant. ] In 1528 a new exclusive grant was issued to two German courtiers atSeville, Eynger and Sayller, empowering them to carry four thousand slavesfrom 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, 000ducats to the crown and restricted the price at which the slaves were tobe sold in the islands to forty ducats each. In so far it approached theasientos of the full type which became the regular recourse of the Spanishgovernment in the following centuries; but it fell short of the ultimateplan by failing to bind the grantees to the performance of theirundertaking and by failing to specify the grades and the proportion of thesexes among the slaves to be delivered. In short the crown's regard wasstill directed more to the enrichment of courtiers than to the promotion ofprosperity in the islands. After the expiration of the Eynger and Sayller grant the king left thecontrol of the slave trade to the regular imperial administrative boards, which, rejecting all asiento overtures for half a century, maintained apolicy of granting licenses for competitive trade in return for paymentsof eight or ten ducats per head until 1560, and of thirty ducats or morethereafter. At length, after the Spanish annexation of Portugal in 1580, the government gradually reverted to monopoly grants, now however in thedefinite form of asientos, in which by intent at least the authorities madethe public interest, with combined regard to the revenue and a guaranteedlabor supply, the primary consideration. [14] The high prices charged forslaves, however, together with the burdensome restrictions constantlymaintained upon trade in general, steadily hampered the growth of Spanishcolonial industry. Furthermore the allurements of Mexico and Peru drainedthe older colonies of virtually all their more vigorous white inhabitants, in spite of severe penalties legally imposed upon emigration but nevereffectively enforced. [Footnote 14: Scelle, I, books 1-3. ] The agricultural régime in the islands was accordingly kept relativelystagnant as long as Spain preserved her full West Indian domination. Thesugar industry, which by 1542 exported the staple to the amount of 110, 000arrobas of twenty-five pounds each, was standardized in plantations of twotypes--the _trapiche_ whose cane was ground by ox power and whose laborforce was generally thirty or forty negroes (each reckoned as capable ofthe labor of four Indians); and the _inqenio_, equipped with a water-powermill and employing about a hundred slaves. [15] Occasional slave revoltsdisturbed the Spanish islanders but never for long diminished theireagerness for slave recruits. The slave laws were relatively mild, thepolice administration extremely casual, and the plantation managementseasy-going. In short, after introducing slavery into the new world theSpaniards maintained it in sluggish fashion, chiefly in the islands, as aninstitution which peoples more vigorous industrially might borrow and adaptto a more energetic plantation régime. [Footnote 15: Saco, pp. 127, 128, 188; Oviedo, _Historia General de lasIndias_, book 4. Chap. 8. ] CHAPTER II THE MARITIME SLAVE TRADE At the request of a slaver's captain the government of Georgia issued in1772 a certificate to a certain Fenda Lawrence reciting that she, "a freeblack woman and heretofore a considerable trader in the river Gambia on thecoast of Africa, hath voluntarily come to be and remain for some time inthis province, " and giving her permission to "pass and repass unmolestedwithin the said province on her lawfull and necessary occations. "[1] Thisinstance is highly exceptional. The millions of African expatriates wentagainst their own wills, and their transporters looked upon the businessnot as passenger traffic but as trade in goods. Earnings came from sellingin America the cargoes bought in Africa; the transportation was but an itemin the trade. [Footnote 1: U. B. Phillips, _Plantation and Frontier Documents_, printedalso as vols. I and II of the _Documentary History of American IndustrialSociety_ (Cleveland, O. , 1909), II, 141, 142. This publication will becited hereafter as _Plantation and Frontier_. ] The business bulked so large in the world's commerce in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries that every important maritime community on theAtlantic sought a share, generally with the sanction and often with theactive assistance of its respective sovereign. The preliminaries to thecommercial strife occurred in the Elizabethan age. French traders in goldand 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 firmcontrol of her colonies which were then virtually the world's only slavemarket. The test of this was made by Sir John Hawkins who at the beginning of hiscareer as a great English sea captain had informed himself in the CanaryIslands of the Afro-American opportunity awaiting exploitation. Backed bycertain English financiers, he set forth in 1562 with a hundred men inthree small ships, and after procuring in Sierra Leone, "partly by thesword and partly by other means, " above three hundred negroes he sailed toHispaniola where without hindrance from the authorities he exchanged themfor colonial produce. "And so, with prosperous success, and much gain tohimself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in themonth of September, 1563. "[2] Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkinsagain captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, andproceeded to peddle them in the Spanish islands. When the authoritiesinterfered he coerced them by show of arms and seizure of hostages, andwhen the planters demurred at his prices he brought them to terms through amixture of diplomacy and intimidation. After many adventures by the way hereached home, as the chronicler concludes, "God be thanked! in safety: withthe loss of twenty persons in all the voyage; as with great profit to theventurers in the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bringinghome both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store. His nametherefore be praised for evermore! Amen. " Before two years more had passedHawkins put forth for a third voyage, this time with six ships, two of themamong the largest then afloat. The cargo of slaves, procured by aiding aGuinea tribe in an attack upon its neighbor, had been duly sold in theIndies when dearth of supplies and stress of weather drove the fleet intothe Mexican port of San Juan de Ulloa. There a Spanish fleet of thirteenships attacked the intruders, capturing their treasure ship and three ofher consorts. Only the _Minion_ under Hawkins and the bark _Judith_ underthe young Francis Drake escaped to carry the harrowing tale to England. Oneresult of the episode was that it filled Hawkins and Drake with desire forrevenge on Spain, which was wreaked in due time but in European waters. Another consequence was a discouragement of English slave trading fornearly a century to follow. [Footnote 2: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, ed. 1589. This and the accounts ofHawkins' later exploits in the same line are reprinted with a valuableintroduction 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 ofSpain's maritime power, but only in the lapse of decades did the suspicionof her helplessness become a certainty. Meantime Portugal was for sixtyyears an appanage of the Spanish crown, while the Netherlands were at theirheroic labor for independence. Thus when the Dutch came to prevail at seain the early seventeenth century the Portuguese posts in Guinea fell theirprey, and in 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered to take themover. Closely identified with the Dutch government, this company notonly founded the colony of New Netherland and endeavored to foster theemployment of negro slaves there, but in 1634 it seized the Spanish islandof Curaçao near the Venezuelan coast and made it a basis for smugglingslaves into the Spanish dominions. And now the English, the French and theDanes began to give systematic attention to the African and West Indianopportunities, whether in the form of buccaneering, slave trading orcolonization. The revolt of Portugal in 1640 brought a turning point. For aquarter-century thereafter the Spanish government, regarding the Portugueseas rebels, suspended all trade relations with them, the asiento included. But the trade alternatives remaining were all distasteful to Spain. TheEnglish were heretics; the Dutch were both heretics and rebels; the Frenchand the Danes were too weak at sea to handle the great slave tradingcontract with security; and Spain had no means of her own for large scalecommerce. The upshot was that the carriage of slaves to the Spanishcolonies was wholly interdicted during the two middle decades of thecentury. But this gave the smugglers their highest opportunity. The Spanishcolonial police collapsed under the pressure of the public demand forslaves, and illicit trading became so general and open as to be pseudolegitimate. Such a boom came as was never felt before under Protestantflags in tropical waters. The French, in spite of great exertions, werenot yet able to rival the Dutch and English. These in fact had such anascendency that when in 1663 Spain revived the asiento by a contract withtwo Genoese, the contractors must needs procure their slaves by arrangementwith Dutch and English who delivered them at Curaçao and Jamaica. Soonafter this contract expired the asiento itself was converted from an itemof Spanish internal policy into a shuttlecock of international politics. Itbecame 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 theEnglish as a trophy in the treaty of Utrecht. By this time, however, the Spanish dominions were losing their primacyas slave markets. Jamaica, Barbados and other Windward Islands under theEnglish; Hayti, Martinique and Guadeloupe under the French, and Guianaunder the Dutch were all more or less thriving as plantation colonies, while Brazil, Virginia, Maryland and the newly founded Carolina werebeginning to demonstrate that slave labor had an effective calling withoutas well as within the Caribbean latitudes. The closing decades of theseventeenth century were introducing the heyday of the slave trade, and theEnglish were preparing for their final ascendency therein. In West African waters in that century no international law prevailed butthat of might. Hence the impulse of any new country to enter the Guineatrade led to the project of a chartered monopoly company; for withoutthe resources of share capital sufficient strength could not be had, andwithout the monopoly privilege the necessary shares could not be sold. Thefirst English company of moment, chartered in 1618, confined its trade togold and other produce. Richard Jobson while in its service on the Gambiawas offered some slaves by a native trader. "I made answer, " Jobsonrelates, "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; atwhich he seemed to marvel much, and told us it was the only merchandizethey carried down, and that they were sold to white men, who earnestlydesired them. We answered, they were another kind of people, different fromus; but for our part, if they had no other commodities, we would returnagain. "[3] This company speedily ending its life, was followed by anotherin 1631 with a similarly short career; and in 1651 the African privilegewas 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 charteredin 1662; but this promptly fell into such conflict with the Dutch that itscapital of £122, 000 vanished. In a drastic reorganization its affairs weretaken over by a new corporation, the Royal African Company, chartered in1672 with the Duke of York at its head and vested in its turn with monopolyrights under the English flag from Sallee on the Moroccan coast to the Capeof Good Hope. [4] For two decades this company prospered greatly, sellingsome two thousand slaves a year in Jamaica alone, and paying large cashdividends on its £100, 000 capital and then a stock dividend of 300per cent. But now came reverses through European war and through thecompetition of English and Yankee private traders who shipped slaveslegitimately from Madagascar and illicitly from Guinea. Now came also aclamor from the colonies, where the company was never popular, and fromEngland also where oppression and abuses were charged against it bywould-be free traders. After a parliamentary investigation an act of 1697restricted the monopoly by empowering separate traders to traffic in Guineaupon 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 oncertain 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 ofEngland till 1720, " in the _American Historical Review_, VIII. 241-259. ] The company soon fell upon still more evil times, and met them by evilpractices. To increase its capital it offered new stock for sale atreduced prices and borrowed money for dividends in order to encouragesubscriptions. The separate traders meanwhile were winning nearly all itstrade. In 1709-1710, for example, forty-four of their vessels made voyagesas compared with but three ships of the company, and Royal African stocksold as low as 2-1/8 on the £100. A reorganization in 1712 however addedlargely to the company's funds, and the treaty of Utrecht brought it newprosperity. In 1730 at length Parliament relieved the separate tradersof all dues, substituting a public grant of £10, 000 a year toward themaintenance of the company's forts. For twenty years more the company, managed in the early thirties by James Oglethorpe, kept up the unequalcontest until 1751 when it was dissolved. The company régime under the several flags was particularly dominant on thecoasts most esteemed in the seventeenth century; and in that century theyreached a comity of their own on the basis of live and let live. The Frenchwere secured in the Senegal sphere of influence and the English on theGambia, while on the Gold Coast the Dutch and English divided the tradebetween them. Here the two headquarters were in forts lying within sightof 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 ofsoldiers; and each with its outlying factories had a staff of perhaps adozen factors, as many sub-factors, twice as many assistants, and a fewbookkeepers and auditors, as well as a corps of white artisans and anabundance of native interpreters, boatmen, carriers and domestic servants. The Dutch and English stations alternated in a series east and west, oftenstanding no further than a cannon-shot apart. Here and there one of themhad acquired a slight domination which the other respected; but in the caseof the Coromantees (or Fantyns) William Bosman, a Dutch company factorabout 1700, wrote that both companies had "equal power, that is none atall. For when these people are inclined to it they shut up the passes soclose that not one merchant can come from the inland country to trade withus; and sometimes, not content with this, they prevent the bringing ofprovisions to us till we have made peace with them. " The tribe was in factable to exact heavy tribute from both companies; and to stretch the treatyengagements at will to its own advantage. [5] Further eastward, on thedensely populated Slave Coast, the factories were few and the tradevirtually open to all comers. Here, as was common throughout Upper Guinea, the traits and the trading practices of adjacent tribes were likely tobe in sharp contrast. The Popo (or Paw Paw) people, for example, were sonotorious for cheating and thieving that few traders would go thitherunless prepared to carry things with a strong hand. The Portuguese alonebore their grievances without retaliation, Bosman said, because their goodswere 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. Thepeople were honest and polite, and the red-tape requirements definite andreasonable. A ship captain after paying for a license and buying the king'sprivate stock of slaves at somewhat above the market price would have thenews of his arrival spread afar, and at a given time the trade would beopened with prices fixed in advance and all the available slaves herdedin 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 Dutchcompany were promptly branded to prevent their being confused in the crowdbefore being carried on shipboard. The Whydahs were so industrious in thetrade, with such far reaching interior connections, that they could delivera 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 thejournal of Francis Moore, a factor of the Royal African Company from 1730to 1735. [8] Here the Jolofs on the north and the Mandingoes on the southand west were divided into tribes or kingdoms fronting from fiveto twenty-five leagues on the river, while tributary villages ofArabic-speaking Foulahs were scattered among them. In addition there wasa small independent population of mixed breed, with very slight Europeaninfusion 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 anisland in the river some thirty miles from its mouth, while its tradingstations dotted the shores for many leagues upstream, for no native kingwas content without a factory near his "palace. " The slaves bought werepartly of local origin but were mostly brought from long distances inland. These came generally in strings or coffles of thirty or forty, tied withleather thongs about their necks and laden with burdens of ivory and cornon their heads. Mungo Park when exploring the hinterland of this coastin 1795-1797, traveling incidentally with a slave coffle on part ofhis journey, estimated that in the Niger Valley generally the slavesoutnumbered the free by three to one. [9] But as Moore observed, thedomestic slaves were rarely sold in the trade, mainly for fear it wouldcause their fellows to run away. When captured by their master's enemieshowever, they were likely to be sent to the coast, for they were seldomransomed. [Footnote 8: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_ (London, 1738). ] [Footnote 9: Mungo Park, _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_ (4thed. , London, 1800), pp. 287, 428. ] The diverse goods bartered for slaves were rated by units of value whichvaried in the several trade centers. On the Gold Coast it was a certainlength of cowrie shells on a string; at Loango it was a "piece" which hadthe value of a common gun or of twenty pounds of iron; at Kakongo it wastwelve- or fifteen-yard lengths of cotton cloth called "goods";[10] whileon the Gambia it was a bar of iron, apparently about forty pounds inweight. But in the Gambia trade as Moore described it the unit or "bar"in rum, cloth and most other things became depreciated until in somecommodities it was not above a shilling's value in English money. Ironitself, on the other hand, and crystal beads, brass pans and spreadeagledollars appreciated in comparison. These accordingly became distinguishedas the "heads of goods, " and the inclusion of three or four units of themwas required in the forty or fifty bars of miscellaneous goods making upthe price of a prime slave. [11] In previous years grown slaves alone hadbrought standard prices; but in Moore's time a specially strong demand forboys and girls in the markets of Cadiz and Lisbon had raised the prices ofthese almost to a parity. All defects were of course discounted. Moore, forexample, in buying a slave with several teeth missing made the seller abatea bar for each tooth. The company at one time forbade the purchase ofslaves from the self-styled Portuguese because they ran the prices up; butthe factors protested that these dealers would promptly carry their waresto 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 latterwere less easily able to adjust their merchandise to the market. A RhodeIsland captain, for instance, wrote his owners from Anamabo in 1736, "heareis 7 sails of us rume men, that we are ready to devour one another, for ourcase is desprit"; while four years afterward another wrote after tradingat the same port, "I have repented a hundred times ye lying in of them drygoods", which he had carried in place of the customary rum. [12] Again, aveteran Rhode Islander wrote from Anamabo in 1752, "on the whole I neverhad so much trouble in all my voiges", and particularized as follows: "Ihave Gott on bord 61 Slaves and upards of thirty ounces of Goold, and haveGott 13 or 14 hhds of Rum yet Left on bord, and God noes when I shall GettClear of it ye trade is so very Dull it is actuly a noof to make a manCreasey my Cheef mate after making foor or five Trips in the boat was takenSick 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 ComRite home with my slaves, for my vesiel will not Last to proceed farrwe can see Day Lite al Roond her bow under Deck. .. . Heare Lyes Captainshamlet, James, Jepson, Carpenter, Butler, Lindsay; Gardner is Due; Fergusonhas 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 setadrift. Soon afterward certain Jolofs took another ship's officers captiveand required the value of twenty slaves as ransom. And in 1733 the nativesat Yamyamacunda, up the Gambia, sought revenge upon Captain Samuel Moorefor having paid them in pewter dollars on his previous voyage, and werequieted through the good offices of a company factor. [14] The companysuffered far less from native disorders, for a threat of removing itsfactory would bring any chief to terms. In 1731, however, the king ofBarsally brought a troop of his kinsmen and subjects to the Joar factorywhere Moore was in charge, got drunk, seized the keys and rifled thestores. [15] But the company's chief trouble was with its own factors. The climate and conditions were so trying that illness was frequent andinsanity and suicide occasional; and the isolation encouraged fraudulentpractices. It was usually impossible to tell the false from the true in thereports of the loss of goods by fire and flood, theft and rapine, mildewand white ants, or the loss of slaves by death or mutiny. The expenseof the salary list, ship hire, provisions and merchandise was heavy andcontinuous, while the returns were precarious to a degree. Not often didsuch great wars occur as the Dahomey invasion of the Whidah country in1726[16] and the general fighting of the Gambia peoples in 1733-1734[17] toglut the outward bound ships with slave cargoes. As a rule the company'sadvantage of steady markets and friendly native relations appears to havebeen more than offset by the freedom of the separate traders from fixedcharges 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 andthe 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, andcasting anchor here and there upon sighting signal smokes raised by nativeswho had slaves to sell, [18] the separate traders began before the closeof the colonial period to get their slaves from white factors at the"castles, " which were then a relic from the company régime. So advantageouswas this that in 1772 a Newport brig owned by Colonel Wanton cleared £500on her voyage, and next year the sloop _Adventure_, also of Newport, Christopher and George Champlin owners, made such speedy trade that afterlosing by death one slave out of the ninety-five in her cargo she landedthe remainder in prime order at Barbados and sold them immediately in onelot 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 theinfluence of the Catholic priests. The Capuchin missionary Merolla, forexample, relates that while he was in service at the mouth of the Congo in1685 word came that the college of cardinals had commanded the missionariesin Africa to combat the slave trade. Promptly deciding this to be ahopeless project, Merolla and his colleagues compromised with theirinstructions by attempting to restrict the trade to ships of Catholicnations 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 Dutchtrading captain set things awry by spreading Protestant doctrine among thenatives, declaring baptism to be the only sacrament required for salvation, and confession to be superfluous. The priests then put all the Dutch underthe ban, but the natives raised a tumult saying that the Portuguese, theonly Catholic traders available, not only paid low prices in poor goods butalso aspired to a political domination. The crisis was relieved by a timelyplague of small-pox which the priests declared and the natives agreed was adivinely sent punishment for their contumacy, --and for the time at least, the exclusion of heretical traders was made effective. [20] The Englishappear never to have excelled the Portuguese on the Congo and southwardexcept perhaps about the close of the eighteenth century. [Footnote 20: Jerom Merolla da Sorrente, _Voyage to Congo_ (translated fromthe Italian), in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 253-260. ] The markets most frequented by the English and American separate traderslay on the great middle stretches of the coast--Sierra Leone, the GrainCoast (Liberia), the Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts, the Oil Rivers as theNiger Delta was then called, Cameroon, Gaboon and Loango. The swarm oftheir ships was particularly great in the Gulf of Guinea upon whose shoresthe vast fan-shaped hinterland poured its exiles along converging lines. The coffles came from distances ranging to a thousand miles or more, onrivers and paths whose shore ends the European traders could see butdid not find inviting. These paths, always of single-file narrowness, tortuously winding to avoid fallen trees and bad ground, never straightenedeven when obstructions had rotted and gone, branching and crossing inendless network, penetrating jungles and high-grass prairies, passingvillages that were and villages that had been, skirting the lairs of savagebeasts and the haunts of cannibal men, beset with drought and famine, stormand 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 thecoffles to die. The survivors were sorted by the purchasers on the coastinto the fit and the unfit, the latter to live in local slavery or to meeteither violent or lingering deaths, the former to be taken shackled onboard the strange vessels of the strange white men and carried to anunknown fate. The only consolations were that the future could hardly beworse than the recent past, that misery had plenty of company, and thatthings were interesting by the way. The combination of resignation andcuriosity was most helpful. It was reassuring to these victims to see an occasional American negroserving in the crew of a slaver and to know that a few specially favoredtribesmen had returned home with vivid stories from across the sea. On theGambia for example there was Job Ben Solomon who during a brief slaveryin Maryland attracted James Oglethorpe's attention by a letter written inArabic, 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 Africanship with credentials requiring the governor and factors to show him everyrespect. Thereafter, a celebrity on the river, he spread among his fellowFoulahs and the neighboring Jolofs and Mandingoes his cordial praises ofthe English nation. [21] And on the Gold Coast there was Amissa to testifyto British justice, for he had shipped as a hired sailor on a Liverpoolslaver in 1774, had been kidnapped by his employer and sold as a slave inJamaica, but had been redeemed by the king of Anamaboe and brought homewith an award by Lord Mansfield's court in London of £500 damages collectedfrom the slaving captain who had wronged him. [22] The bursting of the South Sea bubble in 1720 shifted the bulk of theseparate trading from London to the rival city of Bristol. But the removalof the duties in 1730 brought the previously unimportant port of Liverpoolinto the field with such vigor that ere long she had the larger half ofall the English slave trade. Her merchants prospered by their necessaryparsimony. The wages they paid were the lowest, and the commissions andextra allowances they gave in their early years were nil. [23] By 1753 herships in the slave traffic numbered eighty-seven, totaling about eightthousand tons burthen and rated to carry some twenty-five thousand slaves. Eight of these vessels were trading on the Gambia, thirty-eight on the Goldand 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 numberof slavers bound from Liverpool was reported at one hundred and seven witha capacity of 29, 250 negroes, while fifty-eight went from London ratedto carry 8, 136, twenty-five from Bristol to carry 8, 810, and five fromLancaster with room for 950. Of this total of 195 ships 43 traded inSenegambia, 29 on the Gold Coast, 56 on the Slave Coast, 63 in the bightsof Benin and Biafra, and 4 in Angola. In addition there were sixty orseventy slavers from North America and the West Indies, and these wereyearly increasing. [25] By 1801 the Liverpool ships had increased to 150, with capacity for 52, 557 slaves according to the reduced rating of fiveslaves to three tons of burthen as required by the parliamentary act of1788. About half of these traded in the Gulf of Guinea, and half in theports of Angola. [26] The trade in American vessels, particularly those ofNew England, was also large. The career of the town of Newport in fact wasa small scale replied of Liverpool's. But acceptable statistics of theAmerican ships are lacking. [Footnote 21: Francis Moore, _Travels in Africa_, pp. 69, 202-203. ] [Footnote 22: Gomer Williams, _History of the Liverpool Privateers, with anAccount of the Liverpool Slave Trade_ (London, 1897), pp. 563, 564. ] [Footnote 23: _Ibid_. , p. 471, quoting _A General and Descriptive Historyof Liverpool_ (1795). ] [Footnote 24: _Ibid_. , p. 472 and appendix 7. ] [Footnote 25: Edward Long, _History of Jamaica_ (London, 1774), p. 492note. ] [Footnote 26: Corner Williams, Appendix 13. ] The ship captains in addition to their salaries generally receivedcommissions of "4 in 104, " on the gross sales, and also had the privilegeof buying, transporting and selling specified numbers of slaves on theirprivate account. When surgeons were carried they also were allowedcommissions and privileges at a smaller rate, and "privileges" were oftenallowed the mates likewise. The captains generally carried more or lessdefinite instructions. Ambrose Lace, for example, master of the Liverpoolship _Marquis of Granby_ bound in 1762 for Old Calabar, was ordered tocombine with any other ships on the river to keep down rates, to buy550 young and healthy slaves and such ivory as his surplus cargo wouldpurchase, and to guard against fire, fever and attack. When laden he wasto carry the slaves to agents in the West Indies, and thence bring homeaccording 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, wasinstructed by his owners: "Make yr Cheaf Trade with The Blacks and littleor none with the white people if possible to be avoided. Worter yr Rum asmuch as possible and sell as much by the short mesuer as you can. " Andagain: "Order them in the Bots to worter thear Rum, as the proof will Riseby the Rum Standing in ye Son. "[28] As to the care of the slave cargo aMassachusetts captain was instructed in 1785 as follows: "No people requiremore kind and tender treatment: to exhilarate their spirits than theAfricans; and while on the one hand you are attentive to this, rememberthat on the other hand too much circumspection cannot be observed byyourself and people to prevent their taking advantage of such treatmentby insurrection, etc. When you consider that on the health of your slavesalmost your whole voyage depends--for all other risques but mortality, seizures and bad debts the underwriters are accountable for--you willtherefore particularly attend to smoking your vessel, washing her withvinegar, to the clarifying your water with lime or brimstone, and tocleanliness 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 inMassachusetts_ (New York, 1866), pp. 66, 67, citing J. O. Felt, _Annals ofSalem_, 2d ed. , II, 289, 290. ] Ships were frequently delayed for many months on the pestilent coast, forafter buying their licenses in one kingdom and finding trade slack therethey could ill afford to sail for another on the uncertain chance of a morespeedy supply. Sometimes when weary of higgling the market, they triedpersuasion by force of arms; but in some instances as at Bonny, in1757, [30] this resulted in the victory of the natives and the destructionof the ships. In general the captains and their owners appreciated thenecessity 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 itbrought them pompous trappings as well as useful goods. "Grandy KingGeorge" of Old Calabar, for example, asked of his friend Captain Lacea mirror six feet square, an arm chair "for my salf to sat in, " a goldmounted cane, a red and a blue coat with gold lace, a case of razors, pewter plates, brass flagons, knives and forks, bullet and cannon-ballmolds, and sailcloth for his canoes, along with many other things for usein trade. [31] [Footnote 31: _Ibid_. , pp. 545-547. ] The typical New England ship for the slave trade was a sloop, schooner orbarkentine of about fifty tons burthen, which when engaged in ordinaryfreighting would have but a single deck. For a slaving voyage a secondflooring was laid some three feet below the regular deck, the space betweenforming the slave quarters. Such a vessel was handled by a captain, twomates, and from three to six men and boys. It is curious that a vessel ofthis type, with capacity in the hold for from 100 to 120 hogsheads of rumwas reckoned by the Rhode Islanders to be "full bigg for dispatch, "[32]while among the Liverpool slave traders such a ship when offered forsale could not find a purchaser. [33] The reason seems to have been thatdry-goods and sundries required much more cargo space for the same valuethan 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 twicethe height in their 'tween decks. But this did not mean that the slavescould stand erect in their quarters except along the center line; for whenfull cargoes were expected platforms of six or eight feet in width werelaid on each side, halving the 'tween deck height and nearly doubling thefloor space on which the slaves were to be stowed. Whatever the size of theship, 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 becrowded. "[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 thenegroes were generally kept in a temporary stockade on deck for the sakeof fresh air. But on departure for the "middle passage, " as the trip toAmerica was called by reason of its being the second leg of the ship'striangular voyage in the trade, the slaves were kept below at night and infoul weather, and were allowed above only in daylight for food, air andexercise while the crew and some of the slaves cleaned the quarters andswabbed the floors with vinegar as a disinfectant. The negro men wereusually kept shackled for the first part of the passage until the chancesof mutiny and return to Africa dwindled and the captain's fears gave placeto confidence. On various occasions when attacks of privateers were to berepelled weapons were issued and used by the slaves in loyal defense ofthe vessel. [35] Systematic villainy in the handling of the human cargowas perhaps not so characteristic in this trade as in the transport ofpoverty-stricken white emigrants. Henry Laurens, after withdrawing fromAfrican factorage at Charleston because of the barbarities inflicted bysome of the participants in the trade, wrote in 1768: "Yet I never saw aninstance of cruelty in ten or twelve years' experience in that branch equalto the cruelty exercised upon those poor Irish. .. . Self interest promptedthe baptized heathen to take some care of their wretched slaves for amarket, but no other care was taken of those poor Protestant Christiansfrom Ireland but to deliver as many as possible alive on shoar upon thecheapest terms, no matter how they fared upon the voyage nor in whatcondition 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 1768see _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 372-373] William Snelgrave, long a ship captain in the trade, relates that he wasaccustomed when he had taken slaves on board to acquaint them through hisinterpreter that they were destined to till the ground in America and notto be eaten; that if any person on board abused them they were to complainto the interpreter and the captain would give them redress, but if theystruck one of the crew or made any disturbance they must expect to beseverely punished. Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutiniesin his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that henever 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 deathitself. " In one case when a Coromantee had brained a sentry he was notifiedby Snelgrave that he was to die in the sight of his fellows at the end ofan hour's time. "He answered, 'He must confess it was a rash action in himto kill him; but he desired me to consider that if I put him to death Ishould lose all the money I had paid for him. '" When the captain professedhimself unmoved by this argument the negro spent his last moments assuringhis 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 Grainand Slave Coasts. ] The discomfort in the densely packed quarters of the slave ships may beimagined by any who have sailed on tropic seas. With seasickness added itwas wretched; when dysentery prevailed it became frightful; if water orfood ran short the suffering was almost or quite beyond endurance; and inepidemics of scurvy, small-pox or ophthalmia the misery reached the limitof human experience. The average voyage however was rapid and smoothby virtue of the steadily blowing trade winds, the food if coarse wasgenerally plenteous and wholesome, and the sanitation fairly adequate. Ina word, under stern and often brutal discipline, and with the poorestaccommodations, the slaves encountered the then customary dangers andhardships of the sea. [38] [Footnote 38: Voluminous testimony in regard to conditions on the middlepassage 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 andthe Remedy_ (London, 1840), part I, chap. 2; and in W. O. Blake, _History ofSlavery and the Slave Trade_ (Columbus, Ohio, 1859), chaps, 9, 10. ] Among the disastrous voyages an example was that of the Dutch West IndiaCompany's ship _St. John_ in 1659. After buying slaves at Bonny in Apriland May she beat about the coast in search of provisions but found barelyenough for daily consumption until at the middle of August on the island ofAmebo she was able to buy hogs, beans, cocoanuts and oranges. Meanwhile badfood had brought dysentery, the surgeon, the cooper and a sailor had died, and the slave cargo was daily diminishing. Five weeks of sailing thencarried the ship across the Atlantic, where she put into Tobago to refillher leaking water casks. Sailing thence she struck a reef near herdestination at Curaçao and was abandoned by her officers and crew. Finallya sloop sent by the Curaçao governor to remove the surviving slaves wascaptured by a privateer with them on board. Of the 195 negroes comprisingthe cargo on June 30, from one to five died nearly every day, and oneleaped overboard to his death. At the end of the record on October 29 theslave loss had reached 110, with the mortality rate nearly twice as highamong the men as among the women. [39] About the same time, on the otherhand, Captain John Newton of Liverpool, who afterwards turned preacher, made a voyage without losing a sailor or a slave. [40] The mortality on theaverage ship may be roughly conjectured from the available data at eight orten per cent. [Footnote 39: E. B. O'Callaghan ed. , _Voyages of the Slavers St. John andArms of Amsterdam_ (Albany, N. Y. , 1867), pp. 1-13. ] [Footnote 40: Corner Williams, p. 515. ] Details of characteristic outfit, cargo, and expectations in the NewEngland branch of trade may be had from an estimate made in 1752 for aprojected voyage. [41] A sloop of sixty tons, valued at £300 sterling, wasto be overhauled and refitted, armed, furnished with handcuffs, medicinesand miscellaneous chandlery at a cost of £65, and provisioned for £50 more. Its officers and crew, seven hands all told, were to draw aggregate wagesof £10 per month for an estimated period of one year. Laden with eightthousand gallons of rum at 1_s. 8_d_. Per gallon and with forty-fivebarrels, 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 theGold Coast. There, after paying the local charges from the cargo, some35 slave men were to be bought at 100 gallons per head, 15 women at 85gallons, and 15 boys and girls at 65 gallons; and the residue of the rumand miscellaneous cargo was expected to bring some seventy ounces of goldin 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 andtwo 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-thirdwas to be spent for a cargo of 105 hogsheads of molasses at 8_d_. Pergallon, and the rest of the money remitted to London, whither the gold dustwas also to be sent. The molasses upon reaching Newport was expected tobring twice as much as it had cost in the tropics. After deducting factor'scommissions 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 providingfor insurance at four per cent. On ship and cargo for each leg of thevoyage, and for leakage of ten per cent. Of the rum and five per cent. Ofthe molasses, and after charging off the whole cost of the ship's outfitand 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 ofGuinea and from thence to Jamaica and so back to Rhode Island for a sloopof 60 Tons. " The authorities of Yale University, which possesses themanuscript, have kindly permitted the publication of these data. Theestimates in Rhode Island and Jamaica currencies, which were thendepreciated, as stated in the document, to twelve for one and seven forfive sterling respectively, are here changed into their approximatesterling equivalents. ] As to the gross volume of the trade, there are few statistics. As early as1734 one of the captains engaged in it estimated that a maximum of seventythousand slaves a year had already been attained. [42] For the next halfcentury and more each passing year probably saw between fifty thousand anda hundred thousand shipped. The total transportation from first to last maywell have numbered more than five million souls. Prior to the nineteenthcentury far more negro than white colonists crossed the seas, though lessthan one tenth of all the blacks brought to the western world appear tohave been landed on the North American continent. Indeed, a statisticianhas reckoned, though not convincingly, that in the whole period before 1810these 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 wantedminimum delay and maximum prices. But as a rule quickness and high returnswere not mutually compatible. The Royal African Company tended to lay chiefstress upon promptness of sale. Thus at the end of 1672 it announced thatif persons would contract to receive whole cargoes upon their arrival andto accept all slaves between twelve and forty years of age who were able togo 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 inVirginia. [44] The colonists were for a time disposed to accept thisarrangement where they could. For example Charles Calvert, governor ofMaryland, had already written Lord Baltimore in 1664: "I have endeavored tosee if I could find as many responsible men that would engage to take 100or 200 neigros every year from the Royall Company at that rate mentionedin your lordship's letter; but I find that we are nott men of estates goodenough to undertake such a buisnesse, but could wish we were for we arenaturally inclined to love neigros if our purses could endure it. "[45] Butsoon complaints arose that the slaves delivered on contract were of thepoorest quality, while the better grades were withheld for other means ofsale at higher prices. Quarrels also developed between the company on theone hand and the colonists and their legislatures on the other over therating of colonial moneys and the obstructions placed by law about thecollection of debts; and the colonists proceeded to give all possibleencouragement to the separate traders, legal or illegal as their trafficmight 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), partI, vol. I, chap. 5. ] Most of the sales, in the later period at least, were without previouscontract. A practice often followed in the British West Indian ports was toadvertise that the cargo of a vessel just arrived would be sold on board atan hour scheduled and at a uniform price announced in the notice. At thetime set there would occur a great scramble of planters and dealers to grabthe choicest slaves. A variant from this method was reported in 1670 fromGuadeloupe, where a cargo brought in by the French African company wasfirst sorted into grades of prime men, (_pièces d'Inde_), prime women, boysand girls rated at two-thirds of prime, and children rated at one-half. Toeach slave was attached a ticket bearing a number, while a correspondingticket was deposited in one of four boxes according to the grade. At pricesthen announced for the several grades, the planters bought the privilege ofdrawing tickets from the appropriate boxes and acquiring thereby title tothe slaves to which the numbers they drew were attached. [47] [Footnote 47: Lucien Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises avant1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122, 123. ] In the chief ports of the British continental colonies the maritimetransporters usually engaged merchants on shore to sell the slaves asoccasion permitted, whether by private sale or at auction. At Charlestonthese merchants charged a ten per cent commission on slave sales, thoughtheir 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 theproceeds. [48] The following advertisement, published at Charleston in 1785jointly by Ball, Jennings and Company, and Smiths, DeSaussure and Darrellis 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 cargoof negroes imported in the ship _Success_, Captain John Conner, consistingchiefly of likely young boys and girls in good health, and having beenhere through the winter may be considered in some degree seasoned to thisclimate. The conditions of the sale will be credit to the first of January, 1786, on giving bond with approved security where required--the negroes notto be delivered till the terms are complied with. "[49] But in such coloniesas Virginia where there was no concentration of trade in ports, the shipsgenerally sailed from place to place peddling their slaves, with noticepublished in advance when practicable. The diseased or otherwise unfitnegroes were sold for whatever price they would bring. In some of the portsit appears that certain physicians made a practise of buying these to sellthe 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 issuggested by a traveler's note at Columbia, South Carolina, in 1806: "Wemet . .. A number of new negroes, some of whom had been in the country longenough to talk intelligibly. Their likely looks induced us to enter intoa talk with them. One of them, a very bright, handsome youth of aboutsixteen, could talk well. He told us the circumstances of his being caughtand 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 withindignation. .. . He spoke of his master and his work as though all wereright, and seemed not to know he had a right to be anything but aslave. "[51] [Footnote 51: "Diary of Edward Hooker, " in the American HistoricalAssociation _Report_ for 1906, p. 882. ] In the principal importing colonies careful study was given to thecomparative qualities of the several African stocks. The consensusof opinion in the premises may be gathered from several contemporarypublications, the chief ones of which were written in Jamaica. [52] TheSenegalese, who had a strong Arabic strain in their ancestry, wereconsidered the most intelligent of Africans and were especially esteemedfor domestic service, the handicrafts and responsible positions. "They aregood commanders over other negroes, having a high spirit and a tolerableshare of fidelity; but they are unfit for hard work; their bodies are notrobust nor their constitutions vigorous. " The Mandingoes were reputed to beespecially gentle in demeanor but peculiarly prone to theft. They easilysank under fatigue, but might be employed with advantage in the distilleryand the boiling house or as watchmen against fire and the depredations ofcattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts ashardy and stalwart of mind and body. Long calls them haughty, ferocious andstubborn; Edwards relates examples of their Spartan fortitude; and itwas generally agreed that they were frequently instigators of slaveconspiracies and insurrections. Yet their spirit of loyalty made them themost highly prized of servants by those who could call it forth. Of themChristopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward Islands, wrote in 1701 tothe English Board of Trade: "The Corramantes are not only the best andmost faithful of our slaves, but are really all born heroes. There is adifferance between them and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possiblefor your Lordships to conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of thatnation. Intrepid to the last degree, not a man of them but will stand tobe cut to pieces without a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kindmaster, but implacably revengeful when ill-treated. My father, who hadstudied the genius and temper of all kinds of negroes forty-five years witha very nice observation, would say, noe man deserved a Corramante thatwould 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 Slavesin the Sugar Colonies_ (London, 1803), pp. 39-48. The pertinent portion ofthis last is reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 127-133. For thesimilar 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 WestIndies_, 1701, pp. 720, 721. ] The Whydahs, Nagoes and Pawpaws of the Slave Coast were generally the mosthighly esteemed of all. They were lusty and industrious, cheerful andsubmissive. "That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel, and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Pawpaws as thechastisement of legal authority to which it is their duty to submitpatiently. " As to the Eboes or Mocoes, described as having a sickly yellowtinge in their complection, jaundiced eyes, and prognathous faces likebaboons, the women were said to be diligent but the men lazy, despondentand prone to suicide. "They require therefore the gentlest and mildesttreatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence beonce obtained they manifest as great fidelity, affection and gratitude ascan reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery. " The "kingdom of Gaboon, " which straddled the equator, was the worst reputedof all. "From thence a good negro was scarcely ever brought. They arepurchased so cheaply on the coast as to tempt many captains to freight withthem; but they generally die either on the passage or soon aftertheir arrival in the islands. The debility of their constitutions isastonishing. " From this it would appear that most of the so-called Gaboonsmust have been in reality Pygmies caught in the inland equatorial forests, for Bosman, who traded among the Gaboons, merely inveighed against theirgarrulity, their indecision, their gullibility and their fondness forstrong drink, while as to their physique he observed: "they are mostlylarge, robust well shaped men. "[54] Of the Congoes and Angolas the Jamaicanwriters had little to say except that in their glossy black theywere slender and sightly, mild in disposition, unusually honest, butexceptionally stupid. [Footnote 54: Bosman in Pinkerton's _Voyages_, XVI, 509, 510. ] In the South Carolina market Gambia negroes, mainly Mandingoes, were thefavorites, and Angolas also found ready sale; but cargoes from Calabar, which were doubtless comprised mostly of Eboes, were shunned because oftheir suicidal proclivity. Henry Laurens, who was then a commission dealerat Charleston, wrote in 1755 that the sale of a shipload from Calabar thenin port would be successful only if no other Guinea ships arrived beforeits quarantine was ended, for the people would not buy negroes of thatstock 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 proneto run away, or perhaps particularly easy to capture when fugitive, foramong the 1046 native Africans advertised as runaways held in the Jamaicaworkhouses in 1803 there were 284 Eboes and Mocoes, 185 Congoes and 259Angolas as compared with 101 Mandingoes, 60 Chambas (from Sierra Leone), 70Coromantees, 57 Nagoes and Pawpaws, and 30 scattering, along with a totalof 488 American-born negroes and mulattoes, and 187 unclassified. [56] [Footnote 56: These data were generously assembled for me by ProfessorChauncey S. Boucher of Washington University, St. Louis, from a file of the_Royal Gazette_ of Kingston, Jamaica, for the year 1803, which is preservedin the Charleston, S. C. Library. ] This huge maritime slave traffic had great consequences for all thecountries concerned. In Liverpool it made millionaires, [57] and elsewherein England, Europe and New England it brought prosperity not only to shipowners but to the distillers of rum and manufacturers of other trade goods. In the American plantation districts it immensely stimulated the productionof the staple crops. On the other hand it kept the planters constantlyin debt for their dearly bought labor, and it left a permanent andincreasingly complex problem of racial adjustments. In Africa, it largelytransformed the primitive scheme of life, and for the worse. It created newand often unwholesome wants; it destroyed old industries and it corruptedtribal institutions. The rum, the guns, the utensils and the gewgaws wereirresistible temptations. Every chief and every tribesman acquireda potential interest in slave getting and slave selling. Charges ofwitchcraft, adultery, theft and other crimes were trumped up that thenumber of convicts for sale might be swelled; debtors were pressed thatthey might be adjudged insolvent and their persons delivered to thecreditors; the sufferings of famine were left unrelieved that parents mightbe forced to sell their children or themselves; kidnapping increased untilno man or woman and especially no child was safe outside a village; andwars and raids were multiplied until towns by hundreds were swept from theearth 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 itsEffects 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 lootinggot nothing but deceptive rewards, while the victims of the rapine werequite possibly better off on the American plantations than the captorswho remained in the African jungle. The only participants who gotunquestionable profit were the English, European and Yankee traders andmanufacturers. CHAPTER III THE SUGAR ISLANDS As regards negro slavery the history of the West Indies is inseparable fromthat of North America. In them the plantation system originated and reachedits greatest scale, and from them the institution of slavery was extendedto the continent. The industrial system on the islands, and particularlyon those occupied by the British, is accordingly instructive as anintroduction and a parallel to the continental régime. The early career of the island of Barbados gives a striking instance ofa farming colony captured by the plantation system. Founded in 1624 by agroup of unprosperous English emigrants, it pursued an even and commonplacetenor until the Civil War in England sent a crowd of royalist refugeesthither, together with some thousands of Scottish and Irish prisonersconverted into indentured servants. Negro slaves were also imported to workalongside the redemptioners in the tobacco, cotton, ginger, and indigocrops, and soon proved their superiority in that climate, especially whenyellow fever, to which the Africans are largely immune, decimated the whitepopulation. In 1643, as compared with some five thousand negroes of allsorts, there were about eighteen thousand white men capable of bearingarms; and in the little island's area of 166 square miles there were nearlyten thousand separate landholdings. Then came the introduction ofsugar culture, which brought the beginning of the end of the island'stransformation. A fairly typical plantation in the transition period wasdescribed by a contemporary. Of its five hundred acres about two hundredwere planted in sugar-cane, twenty in tobacco, five in cotton, five inginger and seventy in provision crops; several acres were devoted topineapples, bananas, oranges and the like; eighty acres were in pasturage, and one hundred and twenty in woodland. There were a sugar mill, a boilinghouse, 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 comprisedninety-eight "Christians, " ninety-six negroes and three Indian womenwith their children. In general, this writer said, "The slaves and theirposterity, being subject to their masters forever, are kept and preservedwith greater care than the (Christian) servants, who are theirs for butfive years according to the laws of the island. [1] So that for the timebeing the servants have the worser lives, for they are put to very hardlabor, 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 recentlygraduated 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. Ibeleive they have bought this year no lesse than a thousand Negroes, andthe more they buie the better they are able to buye, for in a yeare andhalfe they will earne (with God's blessing) as much as they cost. "[2]Ten years later, with bonanza prices prevailing in the sugar market, theBarbadian planters declared their colony to be "the most envyed of theworld" and estimated the value of its annual crops at a million poundssterling. [3] But in the early sixties a severe fall in sugar prices put anend to the boom period and brought the realization that while sugar was therich man's opportunity it was the poor man's ruin. By 1666 emigration toother colonies had halved the white population; but the slave trade hadincreased the negroes to forty thousand, most of whom were employed on theeight hundred sugar estates. [4] For the rest of the century Barbados heldher place as the leading producer of British sugar and the most esteemedof the British colonies; but as the decades passed the fertility of herlimited fields became depleted, and her importance gradually fell secondaryto 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 Jamaicacame to be. The planters nevertheless not only controlled their communitywholly in their interest but long maintained a unique "planters' committee"at London to make representations to the English government on behalf oftheir class. They pleaded for the colony's freedom of trade, for example, with no more vigor than they insisted that England should not interferewith the Barbadian law to prohibit Quakers from admitting negroes to theirmeetings. An item significant of their attitude upon race relations isthe following from the journal of the Crown's committee of trade andplantations, Oct. 8, 1680: "The gentlemen of Barbados attend, . .. Whodeclare that the conversion of their slaves to Christianity would not onlydestroy their property but endanger the island, inasmuch as convertednegroes grow more perverse and intractable than others, and hence of lessvalue 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 benecessary to teach them all English. The negroes are a sort of people soaverse to learning that they will rather hang themselves or run away thansubmit to it. " The Lords of Trade were enough impressed by this argument toresolve that the question be left to the Barbadian government. [5] [Footnote 5: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and WestIndies_, 1677-1680, p. 611. ] As illustrating the plantation régime in the island in the period of itsfull industrial development, elaborate instructions are extant which wereissued about 1690 to Richard Harwood, manager or overseer of the Drax Halland Hope plantations belonging to the Codrington family. These includeddirections for planting, fertilizing and cultivating the cane, for theoperation of the wind-driven sugar mill, the boiling and curing houses andthe distillery, and for the care of the live stock; but the main concernwas with the slaves. The number in the gangs was not stated, but theexpectation was expressed that in ordinary years from ten to twenty newnegroes would have to be bought to keep the ranks full, and it was advisedthat Coromantees be preferred, since they had been found best for the workon these estates. Plenty was urged in provision crops with emphasis uponplantains and cassava, --the latter because of the certainty of itsharvest, the former because of the abundance of their yield in years of nohurricanes and because the negroes especially delighted in them andfound them particularly wholesome as a dysentery diet. The services of aphysician had been arranged for, but the manager was directed to take greatcare of the negroes' health and pay special attention to the sick. Theclothing was not definitely stated as to periods. For food each wasto receive weekly a pound of fish and two quarts of molasses, tobaccooccasionally, salt as needed, palm oil once a year, and home-grownprovisions in abundance. Offenses committed by the slaves were to bepunished immediately, "many of them being of the houmer of avoidingpunishment when threatened: to hang themselves. " For drunkenness the stockswere 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 usedthrough the courtesy of Dr. F. W. Pitman of Yale University. ] Jamaica, which lies a thousand miles west of Barbados and has twenty-fivetimes her area, was captured by the English in 1655 when its few hundredsof Spaniards had developed nothing but cacao and cattle raising. Englishsettlement began after the Restoration, with Roundhead exiles supplementedby immigrants from the Lesser Antilles and by buccaneers turned farmers. Lands were granted on a lavish scale on the south side of the island wherean abundance of savannahs facilitated tillage; but the development ofsugar culture proved slow by reason of the paucity of slaves and theunfamiliarity of the settlers with the peculiarities of the soil andclimate. With the increase of prosperity, and by the aid of managersbrought from Barbados, sugar plantations gradually came to prevailall round the coast and in favorable mountain valleys, while smallerestablishments here and there throve more moderately in the production ofcotton, pimento, ginger, provisions and live stock. For many years thelegislature, prodded by occasional slave revolts, tried to stimulate theincrease of whites by requiring the planters to keep a fixed proportion ofindentured servants; but in the early eighteenth century this policy provedfutile, and thereafter the whites numbered barely one-tenth as many asthe 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 lastdate some 10, 000 negroes legally free, and 1400 maroons or escaped slavesdwelling permanently in the mountain fastnesses. The number of sugarplantations was 651 in 1768, and 767 in 1791; and they contained aboutthree-fifths of all the slaves on the island. Throughout this latter partof the century the average holding on the sugar estates was about 180slaves 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 madein the eighteen-thirties there were no single Jamaica holdings reported aslarge as that of 1598 slaves held by James Blair in Guiana; but occasionalitems were of a scale ranging from five to eight hundred each, and hundredsnumbered above one hundred each. In many of these instances the samepersons are listed as possessing several holdings, with Sir Edward HydeEast particularly notable for the large number of his great squads. Thedegree of absenteeism is indicated by the frequency of English nobles, knights and gentlemen among the large proprietors. Thus the Earl ofBalcarres had 474 slaves; the Earl of Harwood 232; the Earl and Countess ofAirlie 59; Earl Talbot and Lord Shelborne jointly 79; Lord Seaford 70; LordHatherton jointly with Francis Downing, John Benbow and the Right ReverendH. Philpots, Lord Bishop of Exeter, two holdings of 304 and 236 slaveseach; and the three Gladstones, Thomas, William and Robert 468 slavesjointly. [8] [Footnote 8: "Accounts of Slave Compensation Claims, " in the Britishofficial _Account: and Papers, 1837-1838_, vol. XLVIII. ] Such an average scale and such a prevalence of absenteeism never prevailedin any other Anglo-American plantation community, largely because none ofthe other staples required so much manufacturing as sugar did in preparingthe crops for market. As Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793: "the business ofsugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages mustengage deeply. .. . It requires a capital of no less than thirty thousandpounds sterling to embark in this employment with a fair prospect ofsuccess. " Such an investment, he particularized, would procure andestablish as a going concern a plantation of 300 acres in cane and 100acres each in provision crops, forage and woodland, together with theappropriate buildings and apparatus, and a working force of 80 steers, 60mules and 250 slaves, at the current price for these last of £50 sterlinga head. [9] So distinctly were the plantations regarded as capitalisticventures that they came to be among the chief speculations of their timefor 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 helearned "that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for thatthe rich East and West Indians had secured them all at the rate of threethousand pounds at the least. "[10] And an Englishman after traveling in theFrench and British Antilles in 1825 wrote: "The French colonists, whetherCreoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they castno wistful looks toward France. .. . In our colonies it is quite different;. .. Every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging place where theymust sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgages will let them liveelsewhere. They call England their home though many of them have neverbeen there. .. . The French colonist deliberately expatriates himself; theEnglishman never. "[11] Absenteeism was throughout a serious detriment. Manyand perhaps most of the Jamaica proprietors were living luxuriously inEngland instead of industriously on their estates. One of them, thetalented author "Monk" Lewis, when he visited his own plantation in1815-1817, near the end of his life, found as much novelty in the doings ofhis slaves as if he had been drawing his income from shares in the Banc ofEngland; but even he, while noting their clamorous good nature was chieflyimpressed by their indolence and perversity. [12] It was left for an invalidtraveling for his health to remark most vividly the human equation: "Thenegroes cannot be silent; they talk in spite of themselves. Every passionacts upon them with strange intensity, their anger is sudden and furious, their mirth clamorous and excessive, their curiosity audacious, and theirlove the sheer demand for gratification of an ardent animal desire. Yetby their nature they are good-humored in the highest degree, and I knownothing more delightful than to be met by a group of negro girls and to besaluted 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, keptduring 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 toomuch like that in most modern factories. The laborers were considered moreas work-units than as men, women and children. Kindliness and comfort, cruelty and hardship, were rated at balance-sheet value; births and deathswere reckoned in profit and loss, and the expense of rearing children wasbalanced against the cost of new Africans. These things were true in somedegree in the North American slaveholding communities, but in the WestIndies they excelled. In buying new negroes a practical planter having a preference for those ofsome particular tribal stock might make sure of getting them only by takingwith him to the slave ships or the "Guinea yards" in the island ports aslave of the stock wanted and having him interrogate those for sale inhis native language to learn whether they were in fact what the dealersdeclared them to be. Shrewdness was even more necessary to circumvent othertricks of the trade, especially that of fattening up, shaving and oilingthe skins of adult slaves to pass them off as youthful. The ages mostdesired in purchasing were between fifteen and twenty-five years. If thesewere 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 learnEnglish readily, and their service would increase instead of decreasingafter 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. Someplanters distributed their new purchases among the seasoned households, thus delegating the task largely to the veteran slaves. Others housed andtended them separately under the charge of a select staff of nurses andguardians and with frequent inspection from headquarters. The mortalityrate was generally high under either plan, ranging usually from twenty tothirty per cent, in the seasoning period of three or four years. The deathscame from diseases brought from Africa, such as the yaws which was similarto syphilis; from debilities and maladies acquired on the voyage; from thechange of climate and food; from exposure incurred in running away; frommorbid habits such as dirt-eating; and from accident, manslaughter andsuicide. [14] [Footnote 14: Long, _Jamaica_, II, 435; Edwards, _West Indies_, book4, 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 ofthe plantation on which to raise their own provision crops. Allowances ofclothing, dried fish, molasses, rum, salt, etc. , were issued them from thecommissary, together with any other provisions needed to supplement theirown produce. The field force of men and women, boys and girls was generallydivided according to strength into three gangs, with special details forthe mill, the coppers and the still when needed; and permanent corps wereassigned to the handicrafts, to domestic service and to various incidentalfunctions. The larger the plantation, of course, the greater theopportunity of differentiating tasks and assigning individual slaves toemployments fitted to their special aptitudes. The planters put such emphasis upon the regularity and vigor of the routinethat they generally neglected other equally vital things. They ignored thevalue of labor-saving devices, most of them even shunning so obviouslydesirable an implement as the plough and using the hoe alone in breakingthe land and cultivating the crops. But still more serious was the passiveacquiescence in the depletion of their slaves by excess of deaths overbirths. This decrease amounted to a veritable decimation, requiring thefrequent importation of recruits to keep the ranks full. Long estimatedthis loss at about two per cent. Annually, while Edwards reckoned that inhis day there were surviving in Jamaica little more than one-third as manynegroes as had been imported in the preceding career of the colony. [15] Thestaggering mortality rate among the new negroes goes far toward accountingfor this; but even the seasoned groups generally failed to keep up theirnumbers. The birth rate was notoriously small; but the chief secret of thesituation appears to have lain in the poor care of the newborn children. Asurgeon of long experience said that a third of the babies died in theirfirst month, and that few of the imported women bore children; and anotherveteran resident said that commonly more than a quarter of the babies diedwithin the first nine days, of "jaw-fall, " and nearly another fourth beforethey passed their second year. [16] At least one public-spirited planteradvocated in 1801 the heroic measure of closing the slave trade in orderto raise the price of labor and coerce the planters into saving it both byimproving their apparatus and by diminishing the death rate. [17] But hisfellows 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 thewhole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), pp. 48, 80. ] [Footnote 17: Clement Caines, _Letters on the Cultivation of the OtaheiteCane_ (London, 1801), pp. 274-281. ] While in the other plantation staples the crop was planted and reaped ina single year, sugar cane had a cycle extending through several years. Atypical field in southside Jamaica would be "holed" or laid off in furrowsbetween March and June, planted in the height of the rainy season betweenJuly and September, cultivated for fifteen months, and harvested in thefirst half of the second year after its planting. Then when the rainsreturned new shoots, "rattoons, " would sprout from the old roots to yielda second though diminished harvest in the following spring, and so on forseveral years more until the rattoon or "stubble" yield became too small tobe worth while. The period of profitable rattooning ran in some speciallyfavorable districts as high as fourteen years, but in general a field wasreplanted after the fourth crop. In such case the cycles of the severalfields were so arranged on any well managed estate that one-fifth of thearea in cane was replanted each year and four-fifths harvested. This coördination of cycles brought it about that oftentimes almost everysort of work on the plantation was going on simultaneously. Thus on theLodge and Grange plantations which were apparently operated as a singleunit, 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 ofthe "little gang" were stumping a new clearing, "holing" or laying off astubble field for replanting, weeding and filling the gaps in the field ofyoung 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 fromthe fields in harvest; fifteen were in a "top heap" squad whose work wasconjecturally the saving of the green cane tops for forage and fertilizer;nine were tending the cane mill, seven were in the boiling house, producinga hogshead and a half of sugar daily, and two were at the two stills makinga puncheon of rum every four days; six watchmen and fence menders, twelveartisans, eight stockminders, two hunters, four domestics, and two sicknurses were at their appointed tasks; and eighteen invalids and pregnantwomen, four disabled with sores, forty infants and one runaway were doingno work. There were listed thirty horses, forty mules and a hundred oxenand 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 threeiron-sheathed cylinders, two of them set against the third, turned bywind, water or cattle. The canes, tied into small bundles for greatercompression, were given a double squeezing while passing through the mill. The juice expressed found its way through a trough into the boiling housewhile the flattened stalks, called mill trash or megass in the Britishcolonies and bagasse in Louisiana, were carried to sheds and left to dryfor 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 wasseparated from its grosser impurities. It then passed into the firstor great copper, where evaporation by boiling began and some furtherimpurities, rising in scum, were taken off. After further evaporation insmaller coppers the thickened fluid was ladled into a final copper, theteache, for a last boiling and concentration; and when the product of theteache was ready for crystallization it was carried away for the curing. InLouisiana the successive caldrons were called the grande, the propre, theflambeau and the batterie, the last of these corresponding to the Jamaicanteache. The curing house was merely a timber framework with a roof above and agreat shallow sloping vat below. The sugary syrup from the teache wasgenerally potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, andallowed to cool with occasional stirrings. Most of the sugar stayed in thehogsheads, while some of it trickled with the mother liquor, molasses, through perforations in the bottoms into the vat beneath. When thehogsheads were full of the crudely cured, moist, and impure "muscovado"sugar, they were headed up and sent to port. The molasses, the scum, andthe juice of the canes tainted by damage from rats and hurricanes werecarried to vats in the distillery where, with yeast and water added, themixture fermented and when distilled yielded rum. The harvest was a time of special activity, of good feeling, and even of acertain degree of pageantry. Lafcadio Hearn, many years after the slaveswere freed, described the scene in Martinique as viewed from the slopesof Mont Pélée: "We look back over the upreaching yellow fan-spread ofcane-fields, and winding of tortuous valleys, and the sea expandingbeyond an opening to the west. .. . Far down we can distinguish a line offield-hands--the whole _atelier_, as it is called, of a plantation--slowlydescending a slope, hewing the canes as they go. There is a woman to everytwo 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 sobeautifully that it is a delight to watch them. One cannot often enjoy sucha spectacle nowadays; for the introduction of the piece-work system hasdestroyed the picturesqueness of plantation labor throughout the islands, with rare exceptions. Formerly the work of cane-cutting resembled the marchof 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;--andlastly the black Commandeur, for general. "[19] [Footnote 19: Lafcadio Hearn, _Two Years in the French West Indies_ (NewYork, 1890), p. 275. ] After this bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may beabundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation, elaborated expressly for posterity's information. This estate, lying inSt. John's parish on the southern slope of the Jamaica mountain chain, comprised not only the plantation proper, which had some 560 acres in sugarcane and smaller fields in food and forage crops, but also Spring Garden, anearby cattle ranch, and Mickleton which was presumably a relay station forthe teams hauling the sugar and rum to Port Henderson. The records, whichare available for the years from 1792 to 1796 inclusive, treat the threeproperties as one establishment. [20] [Footnote 20: These records have been analyzed in U. B. Phillips, "A JamaicaSlave Plantation, " in the _American Historical Review_, XIX, 543-558. ] The slaves of the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, apparentlyall seasoned negroes, of whom 150 were in the main field gang. But thisforce 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 perday and at a total cost of £1832, reckoned probably in Jamaican currencywhich stood at thirty per cent, discount. In order to relieve the need ofthis outside labor the management began that year to buy new Africans on ascale considered reckless by all the island authorities. In March five menand five women were bought; and in October 25 men, 27 women, 16 boys, 16girls and 6 children, all new Congoes; and in the next year 51 males and 30females, part Congoes and part Coromantees and nearly all of them eighteento twenty years old. Thirty new huts were built; special cooks and nurseswere 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 outlayfor equipment was for a large new hospital in 1794, costing £341 forbuilding its brick walls alone. Yaws became serious, but that was a trifleas compared with dysentery; and pleurisy, pneumonia, fever and dropsy hadalso to be reckoned with. About fifty of the new negroes were quarteredfor several years in a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where theroutine 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 inthe spring of 1794 the heavy mortality began. In that year at least 31 ofthe 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 nowended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still alive. Theloss was perhaps less than usual where such large batches were bought; butit demonstrates the strength of the shock involved in the transplantationfrom Africa, even after the severities of the middle passage had beensurvived and after the weaklings among the survivors had been culled out atthe ports. The outlay for jobbing gangs on Worthy Park rapidly diminished. [Footnote 21: The "fatal habit of eating dirt" is described by ThomasRoughley in his _Planter's Guide_ (London. 1823) pp. 118-120. ] The list of slaves at the beginning of 1794 is the only one giving fulldata as to ages, colors and health as well as occupations. The ages were ofcourse in many cases mere approximations. The "great house negroes" headthe list, fourteen in number. They comprised four housekeepers, one ofwhom however was but eight years old, three waiting boys, a cook, twowasherwomen, two gardeners and a grass carrier, and included nominallyQuadroon Lizette who after having been hired out for several years to PeterDouglass, the owner of a jobbing gang, was this year manumitted. The overseer's house had its proportionate staff of nine domestics with twoseamstresses added, and it was also headquarters both for the nursing corpsand a group engaged in minor industrial pursuits. The former, with a "blackdoctor" named Will Morris at its head, included a midwife, two nurses forthe hospital, four (one of them blind) for the new negroes, two for thechildren in the day nursery, and one for the suckling babies of the womenin the gangs. The latter comprised three cooks to the gangs, one of whomhad 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 idlersincluding Quashy Prapra and Abba's Moll to mend pads, Yellow's Cuba andPeg's Nancy to tend the poultry house, and the rest to gather grass and hogfeed. Next were listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, to guard againstdepredations of men, cattle and rats and against conflagrations which mightsweep the ripening cane-fields and the buildings. All of these were blackbut the mulatto foreman, and only six were described as able-bodied. Thedisabilities noted were a bad sore leg, a broken back, lameness, partialblindness, distemper, weakness, and cocobees which was a malady of theblood. A considerable number of the slaves already mentioned were in suchcondition that little work might be expected of them. Those completely laidoff were nine superannuated ranging from seventy to eighty-five years old, three invalids, and three women relieved of work as by law required forhaving reared six children each. Among the tradesmen, virtually all the blacks were stated to be fit forfield work, but the five mulattoes and the one quadroon, though mostlyyouthful and healthy, were described as not fit for the field. There wereeleven carpenters, eight coopers, four sawyers, three masons and twelvecattlemen, each squad with a foreman; and there were two ratcatchers whosework was highly important, for the rats swarmed in incredible numbers andspoiled the cane if left to work their will. A Jamaican author wrote, forexample, that in five or six months on one plantation "not less than nineand 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 eightyears old were kept as much for control as for achievement, there weretwenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress, " who hadborne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children weretoo young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two ofthese 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 Blossomthe 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 includedWashington, Franklin, Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume andSheridan; the women Spring, Summer, July, Bashfull, Virtue, Frolic, Gamesome, Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle and Cowslip. Seventeen of thisdistinguished company died within the year. The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 64 men from nineteento sixty years old and 73 women from nineteen to fifty years, though butfour 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 plowmanon the place, a head muleman, three distillers, a boiler, two sugarpotters, and two "sugar guards" for the wagons carrying the crop to port. All of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied and black. Aconsiderable number in it were new negroes, but only seven of the wholedied in this year of heaviest mortality. The "second gang, " employed in a somewhat lighter routine under Sharper asforeman, comprised 40 women and 27 men ranging from fifteen to sixty years, all black. While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, fourwere ulcerated, one was "inclined to be bloated, " one was "very weak, " andPheba was "healthy but worthless. " Finally in the third or "small gang, " for yet lighter work under Baddy asdriveress with Old Robin as assistant, there were 68 boys and girls, allblack, mostly between twelve and fifteen years old. The draught animalscomprised about 80 mules and 140 oxen. Among the 528 slaves all told--284 males and 244 females--74, equallydivided between the sexes, were fifty years old and upwards. If the newnegroes, virtually all of whom were doubtless in early life, be subtractedfrom the gross, it appears that one-fifth of the seasoned stock had reachedthe half century, and one-eighth were sixty years old and over. This is agood showing of longevity. About eighty of the seasoned women were within the age limits ofchildbearing. The births recorded were on an average of nine for each ofthe five years covered, which was hardly half as many as might have beenexpected under favorable conditions. Special entry was made in 1795 of thenumber of children each woman had borne during her life, the numberof these living at the time this record was made, and the number ofmiscarriages each woman had had. The total of births thus recorded was 345;of children then living 159; of miscarriages 75. Old Quasheba and BettyMadge had each borne fifteen children, and sixteen other women had bornefrom six to eleven each. On the other hand, seventeen women of thirty yearsand upwards had had no children and no miscarriages. The childbearingrecords of the women past middle age ran higher than those of the youngerones to a surprising degree. Perhaps conditions on Worthy Park had beenmore favorable at an earlier period, when the owner and his family maypossibly have been resident there. The fact that more than half of thechildren whom these women had borne were dead at the time of the recordcomports with the reputation of the sugar colonies for heavy infantmortality. With births so infrequent and infant deaths so many it may wellappear that the notorious failure of the island-bred stock to maintain itsnumbers was not due to the working of the slaves to death. The poor careof the young children may be attributed largely to the absence of a whitemistress, an absence characteristic of Jamaica plantations. There appearsto have been no white woman resident on Worthy Park during the time of thisrecord. In 1795 and perhaps in other years the plantation had a contractfor medical service at the rate of £140 a year. "Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great Britain Esquire" was theabsentee owner of Worthy Park. His kinsman Rose Price Esquire who was inactive charge was not salaried but may have received a manager's commissionof six per cent, on gross crop sales as contemplated in the laws of thecolony. 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 whiteplowman at £56. The overseer was changed three times during the five yearsof the record, and the bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. Thebachelor staff was most probably responsible for the mulatto and quadroonoffspring and was doubtless responsible also for the occasional manumissionof a woman or child. Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the "drivers" or gangforemen. Each of these had for example every year a "doubled milled clothcolored great coat" costing 11$. 6_d_ and a "fine bound hat with girdle andbuckle" costing 10$. 6_d_. As a more direct and frequent stimulus a quartof rum was served weekly to each of three drivers, three carpenters, fourboilers, 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 thehead home wainman, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's fieldnurse. These allowances totaled about three hundred gallons yearly. Buta considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly atChristmas 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 themother was given a Scotch rug and a silver dollar. No record of whippings appears to have been kept, nor of any offensesexcept absconding. Of the runaways, reports were made to the parish vestryof those lying out at the end of each quarter. At the beginning of therecord there were no runaways and at the end there were only four; butduring 1794 and 1795 there were eight or nine listed in each report, mostof 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 oldnegroes among them than might have been expected. Most of them were men;but the women Ann, Strumpet and Christian Grace made two flights each, andthe old pad-mender Abba's Moll stayed out for a year and a quarter. Afew of those recovered were returned through the public agency of theworkhouse. 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 andbetter surveillance into a special "vagabond gang. " This comprised BillyScott, who was usually a mason and sugar guard, Oxford who as head cooperhad enjoyed a weekly quart of rum, Cesar a sawyer, and Moll the oldpad-mender, along with three men and two women from the main gangs, andthree half-grown boys. The vagabond gang was so wretchedly assorted forindustrial purposes that it was probably soon disbanded and its membersdistributed to their customary tasks. For use in marking slaves a brandingiron was inventoried, but in the way of arms there were merely two muskets, a fowling piece and twenty-four old guns without locks. Evidently noturbulence was anticipated. Worthy Park bought nearly all of its hardware, dry goods, drugs and sundries in London, and its herrings for the negroesand salt pork and beef for the white staff in Cork. Corn was cultivatedbetween the rows in some of the cane fields on the plantation, and someguinea-corn was bought from neighbors. The negroes raised their own yamsand other vegetables, and doubtless pigs and poultry as well; and plantainswere 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 forchildren. The first was to be made into coats, trousers and frocks, thesecond into shirts and waists, the third into bedclothes. The cutting andsewing were done in the cabins. A hat and a cap were also issued to eachnegro old enough to go into the field, and a clasp-knife to each one abovethe age of the third gang. From the large purchases of Scotch rugs recordedit seems probable that these were issued on other occasions than those ofchildbirth. As to shoes, however, the record is silent. The Irish provisions cost annually about £300, and the English suppliesabout £1000, not including such extra outlays as that of £1355 in 1793 fornew stills, worms, and coppers. Local expenditures were probably reckonedin currency. Converted into sterling, the salary list amounted to about£500, and the local outlay for medical services, wharfage, and pettysupplies came to a like amount. Taxes, manager's commissions, and thedepreciation of apparatus must have amounted collectively to £800. Thenet death-loss of slaves, not including that from the breaking-in of newnegroes, averaged about two and a quarter per cent. ; that of the mules andoxen ten per cent. When reckoned upon the numbers on hand in 1796 when theplantation with 470 slaves was operating with very little outside help, these losses, which must be replaced by new purchases if the scale ofoutput was to be maintained, amounted to about £900. Thus a total of £4000sterling is reached as the average current expense in years when no mishapsoccurred. 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 manyhogsheads as there were slaves of all ages on a plantation. [23] If theprices had been those current in the middle of the eighteenth century thesecrops would have yielded the proprietor great profits. But at £15 perhogshead and £10 per puncheon, the prices generally current in the islandin the seventeen-nineties, the gross return was but about £6000 sterling, and the net earnings of the establishment accordingly not above £2000. Theinvestment in slaves, mules and oxen was about £28, 000, and that in land, buildings and equipment according to the island authorities, would reach alike sum. [24] The net earnings in good years were thus less than four percent. On the investment; but the liability to hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, epidemics and mutinies would bring the safe expectationsconsiderably lower. A mere pestilence which carried off about sixty mulesand two hundred oxen on Worthy Park in 1793-1794 wiped out more than ayear'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 morethan one-third of all the sugar plantations in Jamaica had gone throughbankruptcy. It was generally agreed that, within the limits of efficientoperation, the larger an estate was, the better its prospect for netearnings. But though Worthy Park had more than twice the number of slavesthat the average plantation employed, it was barely paying its way. In the West Indies as a whole there was a remarkable repetition ofdevelopments and experiences in island after island, similar to thatwhich occurred in the North American plantation regions, but even morepronounced. The career of Barbados was followed rapidly by the other LesserAntilles under the English and French flags; these were all exceeded by thegreater scale of Jamaica; she in turn yielded the primacy in sugar to Haytionly to have that French possession, when overwhelmed by its great negroinsurrection, give the paramount place to the Spanish Porto Rico and Cuba. In each case the opening of a fresh area under imperial encouragement wouldpromote rapid immigration and vigorous industry on every scale; the landwould be taken up first in relatively small holdings; the prosperity of thepioneers would prompt a more systematic husbandry and the consolidation ofestates, involving the replacement of the free small proprietors by slavegangs; but diminishing fertility and intensifying competition would in thecourse of years more than offset the improvement of system. Meanwhile morepioneers, including perhaps some of those whom the planters had bought outin the original colonies, would found new settlements; and as these in turndeveloped, the older colonies would decline and decay in spite of desperateefforts by their plantation proprietors to hold their own through theincrease 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 publicwhich gave it sanction were profit for the investors and aggrandizementfor the nation, along with the reduction of pauperism at home and theconversion of the heathen abroad. For income the original promoters lookedmainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, andthe production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they wereon the alert for unexpected opportunities to be exploited. The following ofthe line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobaccoculture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. Atthe outset, however, these developments were utterly unforeseen. In short, Virginia was launched with varied hopes and vague expectations. The projectwas on the knees of the gods, which for a time proved a place of extremediscomfort and peril. The first comers in the spring of 1607, numbering a bare hundred men andno women, were moved by the spirit of adventure. With a cumbrous andoppressive government over them, and with no private ownership of land norother encouragement for steadygoing thrift, the only chance for personalgain was through a stroke of discovery. No wonder the loss of time andstrength in futile excursions. No wonder the disheartening reaction in themalaria-stricken camp of Jamestown. A second hundred men arriving early in 1608 found but forty of the firstalive. The combined forces after lading the ships with "gilded dirt" andcedar logs, were left facing the battle with Indians and disease. The dirtwhen it reached London proved valueless, and the cedar, of course, worthlittle. The company that summer sent further recruits including two womenand several Poles and Germans to make soap-ashes, glass and pitch--"skilledworkmen from foraine parts which may teach and set ours in the way where wemay set thousands a work in these such like services. "[1] At the same timeit instructed the captain of the ship to explore and find either a lump ofgold, the South Sea passage, or some of Raleigh's lost colonists, and itsent the officials at Jamestown peremptory notice that unless the £2000spent on the present supply be met by the proceeds of the ship's returncargo, the settlers need expect no further aid. The shrewd and redoubtableCaptain John Smith, now president in the colony, opposed the vainexplorings, and sent the council in London a characteristic "rude letter. "The ship, said he, kept nearly all the victuals for its crew, while thesettlers, "the one halfe sicke, the other little better, " had as their diet"a little meale and water, and not sufficient of that. " The foreign expertshad been set at their assigned labors; but "it were better to give fivehundred pound a tun for those grosse commodities in Denmarke than send forthem hither till more necessary things be provided. For in over-toyling ourweake and unskilfull bodies to satisfie this desire of present profit wecan scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another. .. . As yet youmust 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 thisletter. ] This unwelcome advice while daunting all mercenary promoters gave spur tostrong-hearted patriots. The prospect of profits was gone; the hope ofan overseas empire survived. The London Company, with a greatly improvedcharter, appealed to the public through sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, and personal canvassing, with such success that subscriptions to its stockpoured in from "lords, knights, gentlemen and others, " including the tradeguilds and the town corporations. In lieu of cash dividends the companypromised that after a period of seven years, during which the settlers wereto work on the company's account and any surplus earnings were to be spenton the colony or funded, a dividend in land would be issued. In this thesettlers were to be embraced as if instead of emigrating each of them hadinvested £12 10s. In a share of stock. Several hundred recruits were sentin 1609, and many more in the following years; but from the successivegovernors at Jamestown came continued reports of disease, famine andprostration, and pleas ever for more men and supplies. The company, bravelykeeping 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 highmarshal along with Sir Thomas Gates as governor. Both of these were menof military training, and they carried with them a set of stringentregulations quite in keeping with their personal proclivities. These rulersproperly regarded their functions as more industrial than political. Theyfor the first time distributed the colonists into a series of settlementsup and down the river for farming and live-stock tending; they spurred thewilling workers by assigning them three-acre private gardens; and theymercilessly coerced the laggard. They transformed the colony from adistraught camp into a group of severely disciplined farms, owned by theLondon Company, administered by its officials, and operated partly by itsservants, partly by its tenants who paid rent in the form of labor. That isto say, Virginia was put upon a schedule of plantation routine, producingits own food supply and wanting for the beginning of prosperity only amarketable crop. This was promptly supplied through John Rolfe's experimentin 1612 in raising tobacco. The English people were then buying annuallysome £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 andyield substantial earnings; and so rapid was the resort to the staple inVirginia that soon the very market place in Jamestown was planted in it. The government in fact had to safeguard the food supply by forbiddinganyone to plant tobacco until he had put two acres in grain. When the Gates-Dale administration ended, the seven year period from 1609was on the point of expiry; but the temptation of earnings from tobaccopersuaded the authorities to delay the land dividend. Samuel Argall, thenew governor, while continuing the stringent discipline, robbed the companyfor his own profit; and the news of his misdeeds reaching London in 1618discredited the faction in the company which had supported his régime. Thecapture of control by the liberal element among the stockholders, ledby Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton, was promptly signalized bymeasures for converting Virginia into a commonwealth. A land distributionwas provided on a generous scale, and Sir George Yeardley was dispatched asgovernor with instructions to call a representative assembly of the peopleto share in the making of laws. The land warrants were issued at the rateof a hundred acres on each share of stock and a similar amount to eachcolonist of the time, to be followed in either case by the grant of asecond hundred acres upon proof that the first had been improved; and fiftyacres 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 becomewives for the bachelor settlers, it now offered special stimulus to itsmembers to supplement its exertions. To this end it provided that groupsof its stockholders upon organizing themselves into sub-companies orpartnerships might consolidate their several grants into large units calledparticular plantations; and it ordered that "such captaines or leaders ofperticulerr plantations that shall goe there to inhabite by vertue of theirgraunts 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 theircompanies, to make orders, ordinances and constitutions for the betterorderinge and dyrectinge of their servants and buisines, provided they benot 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 plantationswere taken out during the remaining life of the London Company. Among themwere Southampton Hundred and Martin's Hundred, to each of which two orthree hundred settlers were sent prior to 1620, [4] and Berkeley Hundredwhose records alone are available. The grant for this last was issuedin February, 1619, to a missionary enthusiast, George Thorpe, and hispartners, whose collective holdings of London Company stock amounted tothirty-five shares. To them was given and promised land in proportion tostock and settlers, together with a bonus of 1500 acres in view of theirproject for converting the Indians. Their agent in residence was as usualvested with public authority over the dwellers on the domain, limitedonly by the control of the Virginia government in military matters and injudicial cases on appeal. [5] After delays from bad weather, the initialexpedition set sail in September comprising John Woodleaf as captain andthirty-four other men of diverse trades bound to service for terms rangingfrom three to eight years at varying rates of compensation. Several ofthese were designated respectively as officers of the guard, keeper of thestores, caretaker of arms and implements, usher of the hall, and clerkof the kitchen. Supplies of provisions and equipment were carried, andinstructions in detail for the building of houses, the fencing of land, the keeping of watch, and the observances of religion. Next spring thesettlement, which had been planted near the mouth of the Appomattox River, was joined by Thorpe himself, and in the following autumn by William Tracywho had entered the partnership and now carried his own family togetherwith a preacher and some forty servants. Among these were nine women andthe two children of a man who had gone over the year before. As givinglight upon indented servitude in the period it may be noted that many ofthose sent to Berkeley Hundred were described as "gentlemen, " and that fiveof them within the first year besought their masters to send them eachtwo indented servants for their use and at their expense. Tracy's vesselhowever was too small to carry all whom it was desired to send. It was infact so crowded with plantation supplies that Tracy wrote on the eve ofsailing: "I have throw out mani things of my own yet is ye midill and upperextre[m]li pestered so that ouer men will not lie like men and ye marenershath not rome to stir God is abel in ye gretest weknes to helpe we willtrust to marsi for he must help be yond hope. " Fair winds appear to havecarried the vessel to port, whereupon Tracy and Thorpe jointly tookcharge of the plantation, displacing Woodleaf whose services had givendissatisfaction. Beyond this point the records are extremely scant; butit may be gathered that the plantation was wrecked and most of itsinhabitants, including Thorpe, slain in the great Indian massacre of 1622. The restoration of the enterprise was contemplated in an after year, buteventually 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 othersof the same sort; and the extinction of the London Company in 1624 endedthe granting of patents on that plan. The owners of the few survivingparticular plantations, furthermore, found before long that ownership bygroups of absentees was poorly suited to the needs of the case, and thatthe exercise of public jurisdiction was of more trouble than it was worth. The particular plantation system proved accordingly but an episode, yet itfurnished a transition, which otherwise might not readily have been found, from Virginia the plantation of the London Company, to Virginia the colonyof private plantations and farms. When settlement expanded afresh after theIndians were driven away many private estates gradually arose to follow theindustrial routine of those which had been called particular. The private plantations were hampered in their development by dearth ofcapital and labor and by the extremely low prices of tobacco which began atthe end of the sixteen-twenties as a consequence of overproduction. Butby dint of good management and the diversification of their industry theexceptional men led the way to prosperity and the dignity which it carried. Of Captain Samuel Matthews, for example, "an old Planter of above thirtyyears 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 toit; he sowes yeerly store of hempe and flax, and causes it to be spun; hekeeps weavers, and hath a tan-house, causes leather to be dressed, hatheight shoemakers employed in this trade, hath forty negroe servants, bringsthem 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 ofbeeves, and sells them to victuall the ships when they come thither; hathabundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poltery. Hemarried the daughter of Sir Tho. Hinton, and in a word, keeps a goodhouse, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia. He is worthy of muchhonour. "[6] Many other planters were thriving more modestly, most of themgiving nearly all their attention to the one crop. The tobacco output wasof course increasing prodigiously. The export from Virginia in 1619 hadamounted to twenty thousand pounds; that from Virginia and Maryland in 1664aggregated fifty thousand hogsheads of about five hundred pounds each. [7] [Footnote 6: _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649), reprintedin Peter Force _Tracts_, vol. II. ] [Footnote 7: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the SeventeenthCentury_ (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 generalno freemen arriving in the colony would engage for such wages as employerscould afford to pay. Workers must be imported. Many in England were willingto come, and more could be persuaded or coerced, if their passage were paidand employment assured. To this end indentured servitude had already beeninaugurated by the London Company as a modification of the long used systemof apprenticeship. And following that plan, ship captains brought hundreds, then thousands of laborers a year and sold their indentures to the planterseither directly or through dealers in such merchandize. The courts tookthe occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts todeportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisonersduring the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose thesupply 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 apayment in advance and a stipulation for outfit in clothing, foodstuffsand diverse equipment at the end of service. The quality of redemptionersvaried from the very dregs of society to well-to-do apprentice planters;but the general run was doubtless fairly representative of the Englishworking classes. Even the convicts under the terrible laws of that centurywere 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 anacclimating fever with a high death rate; its term generally expired notlong after its adjustment and training were completed; and no sooner wasits service over than it set up for itself, often in tobacco production, tocompete with its former employers and depress the price of produce. If theplantation system were to be perpetuated an entirely different labor supplymust be had. "About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twentynegars. " Thus wrote John Rolfe in a report of happenings in 1619;[8] andthus, after much antiquarian dispute, the matter seems to stand as to thefirst bringing of negroes to Virginia. The man-of-war, or more accuratelythe privateer, had taken them from a captured slaver, and it seems to havesold them to the colonial government itself, which in turn sold them toprivate settlers. At the beginning of 1625, when a census of the colony wasmade, [9] the negroes, then increased to twenty-three in a total populationof 1232 of which about one-half were white servants, were distributed inseven localities along the James River. In 1630 a second captured cargo wassold in the colony, and from 1635 onward small lots were imported nearlyevery year. [10] Part of these came from England, part from New Netherlandand most of the remainder doubtless from the West Indies. In 1649 Virginiawas reckoned to have some three hundred negroes mingled with its fifteenthousand whites. [11] After two decades of a somewhat more rapid importationGovernor 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 untilnear the end of the century, when the English government had restrictedkidnapping, when the Virginia assembly had forbidden the bringing in ofconvicts, and when the direct trade from Guinea had reached considerabledimensions, did the negroes begin to form the bulk of the Virginiaplantation 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 alongsidethe white servants, and in many cases were members of their masters'households. They had by far the best opportunity which any of their racehad been given in America to learn the white men's ways and to adjustthe lines of their bondage into as pleasant places as might be. Theirimportation was, for the time, on but an experimental scale, and even theirlegal status was during the early decades indefinite. The first comers were slaves in the hands of their maritime sellers; butthey were not fully slaves in the hands of their Virginian buyers, forthere was neither law nor custom then establishing the institution ofslavery in the colony. The documents of the times point clearly to a vaguetenure. In the county court records prior to 1661 the negroes are callednegro servants or merely negroes--never, it appears, definitely slaves. Afew were expressly described as servants for terms of years, and otherswere conceded property rights of a sort incompatible with the institutionof slavery as elaborated in later times. Some of the blacks were in factliberated by the courts as having served out the terms fixed either bytheir indentures or by the custom of the country. By the middle of thecentury several had become free landowners, and at least one of them owneda negro servant who went to court for his freedom but was denied it becausehe could not produce the indenture which he claimed to have possessed. Nevertheless as early as the sixteen-forties the holders of negroes werefalling into the custom of considering them, and on occasion selling themalong 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 ashigh as £30, while the most valuable white redemptioners were worth notabove £15 shows also the tendency toward the crystallization of slaverybefore any statutory enactments declared its existence. [13] [Footnote 13: The substance of this paragraph is drawn mainly from theilluminating 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 anyway between the races. The tax laws were an index of the situation. Theact of 1649, for example, confined the poll tax to male inhabitants of allsorts above sixteen years old. But the act of 1658 added imported femalenegroes, along with Indian female servants; and this rating of negrowomen as men for tax purposes was continued thenceforward as a permanentpractice. A special act of 1668, indeed, gave sharp assertion to the policyof using taxation as a token of race distinction: "Whereas some doubts havearisen whether negro women set free were still to be accompted tithableaccording to a former act, it is declared by this grand assembly thatnegro women, though permitted to enjoy their freedome yet ought not in allrespects to be admitted to a full fruition of the exemptions and impunitiesof 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 establishthe institution but merely recognized it, first indirectly then directly, as in existence by force of custom. The initial act of this series, passedin 1656, promised the Indian tribes that when they sent hostages theVirginians would not "use them as slaves. "[15] The next, an act of1660, removing impediments to trade by the Dutch and other foreigners, contemplated specifically their bringing in of "negro slaves. "[16] Thethird, in the following year, enacted that if any white servants ran awayin company with "any negroes who are incapable of making satisfaction byaddition of time, " the white fugitives must serve for the time of thenegroes' absence in addition to suffering the usual penalties on their ownscore. [17] A negro whose time of service could not be extended must needshave been a servant for life--in other words a slave. Then in 1662 it wasenacted that "whereas some doubts have arrisen whether children got by anyEnglishman upon a negro woman shall be slave or free, . .. All children bornin this colony shall be bond or free only according to the condition of themother. "[18] Thus within six years from the first mention of slaves in theVirginia laws, slavery was definitely recognized and established as thehereditary legal status of such negroes and mulattoes as might be heldtherein. Eighteen years more elapsed before a distinctive police law forslaves was enacted; but from 1680 onward the laws for their control were asdefinite and for the time being virtually as stringent as those which inthe 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 plantationand farm clearings broke the Virginian wilderness only in a narrow line oneither bank of the James River from its mouth to near the present site ofRichmond, and in a small district on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. Virtually all the settlers were then raising tobacco, all dwelt at theedge of navigable water, and all were neighbors to the Indians. As furtherdecades passed the similar shores of the parallel rivers to the northward, the York, then the Rappahannock and the Potomac, were occupied in a similarway, though with an increasing predominance of large landholdings. Thisbroadened the colony and gave it a shape conducive to more easy frontierdefence. It also led the way to an eventual segregation of industrialpursuits, for the tidewater peninsulas were gradually occupied more or lesscompletely by the planters; while the farmers of less estate, weaned fromtobacco by its fall in price, tended to move west and south to new areas onthe mainland, where they dwelt in self-sufficing democratic neighborhoods, and formed incidentally a buffer between the plantations on the seaboardand the Indians round about. With the lapse of years the number of planters increased, partly throughthe division of estates, partly through the immigration of propertiedEnglishmen, and partly through the rise of exceptional yeomen to theplanting estate. The farmers increased with still greater speed; for theplanters in recruiting their gangs of indented laborers were servingconstantly as immigration agents and as constantly the redemptioners uponcompleting their terms were becoming yeomen, marrying and multiplying. Meanwhile the expansion of Maryland was extending an identical régime ofplanters and farmers from the northern bank of the Potomac round the headof the Chesapeake all the way to the eastern shore settlements of Virginia. In Maryland the personal proprietorship of Lord Baltimore and his desire tofound a Catholic haven had no lasting effect upon the industrial and socialdevelopment. The geographical conditions were so like those in Virginia andthe adoption of her system so obviously the road to success that no otherplans were long considered. Even the few variations attempted assimilatedthemselves more or less promptly to the régime of the older colony. Thecareer of the manor system is typical. The introduction of that medievalrégime was authorized by the charter for Maryland and was provided for inturn by the Lord Proprietor's instructions to the governor. Every grant ofone thousand, later two thousand acres, was to be made a manor, with itsappropriate court to settle differences between lord and tenant, to adjudgecivil cases between tenants where the issues involved did not exceed thevalue of two pounds sterling, and to have cognizance of misdemeanorscommitted on the manor. The fines and other profits were to go to themanorial lord. Many of these grants were made, and in a few instances the manorial courtsduly held their sessions. For St. Clement's Manor, near the mouth of thePotomac, for example, court records between 1659 and 1672 are extant. JohnRyves, steward of Thomas Gerard the proprietor, presided; RichardFoster 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 astick"; that John Mansell illegally entertained strangers; that land lines"are at this present unperfect and very obscure"; that a Cheptico Indianhad 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 apaire of stocks, pillory and ducking stoole--Ordered that these instrumentsof justice be provided by the next court by a general contributionthroughout the manor"; that certain freeholders had failed to appear, "todo 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 hishoggs 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 ofMr. Robte Sly there is a reliefe due to the lord and that Mr. Gerard Sly ishis 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 truemanor; and it probably discarded its medieval machinery not long after theend of the existing record. In general, since public land was to be hadvirtually free in reward for immigration whether in freedom or service, most of the so-called manors doubtless procured neither leaseholders noressoines nor any other sort of tenants, and those of them which survived asestates found their salvation in becoming private plantations with servantand slave gangs tilling their tobacco fields. In short, the Maryland manorsbegan and ended much as the Virginia particular plantations had done beforethem. Maryland on the whole assumed the features of her elder sister. Hertobacco was of lower grade, partly because of her long delay in providingpublic inspection; her people in consequence were generally lessprosperous, her plantations fewer in proportion to her farms, and herlabor supply more largely of convicts and other white servants andcorrespondingly less of negroes. But aside from these variations in degreethe developments and tendencies in the one were virtually those of theother. Before the end of the seventeenth century William Fitzhugh of Virginiawrote that his plantations were being worked by "fine crews" of negroes, the majority of whom were natives of the colony. Mrs. Elizabeth Diggesowned 108 slaves, John Carter 106, Ralph Wormeley 91, Robert Beverly 42, Nathaniel Bacon, Sr. , 40, and various other proprietors proportionatenumbers. [20] The conquest of the wilderness was wellnigh complete ontidewater, and the plantation system had reached its full type forthe Chesapeake latitudes. Broad forest stretches divided most of theplantations from one another and often separated the several fields onthe same estate; but the cause of this was not so much the paucity ofpopulation as the character of the land and the prevalent industry. Thesandy expanses, and the occasional belts of clay likewise, had but asurface fertility, and the cheapness of land prevented the conservation ofthe soil. Hence the fields when rapidly exhausted by successive cropping intobacco were as a rule abandoned to broomsedge and scrub timber while newand still newer grounds were cleared and cropped. Each estate therefore, ifits owner expected it to last a lifetime, must comprise an area in forestrymuch larger than that at any one time in tillage. The great reaches of thebay and the deep tidal rivers, furthermore, afforded such multitudinousplaces of landing for ocean-going ships that all efforts to modify thewholly rural condition of the tobacco colonies by concentrating settlementwere thwarted. It is true that Norfolk and Baltimore grew into consequenceduring the eighteenth century; but the one throve mainly on the trade oflandlocked North Carolina, and the other on that of Pennsylvania. Notuntil the plantation area had spread well into the piedmont hinterland didRichmond and her sister towns near the falls on the rivers begin to focusVirginia and Maryland trade; and even they had little influence upon lifeon the tidewater peninsulas. [Footnote 20: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia_, II, 88. ] The third tobacco-producing colony, North Carolina, was the product ofsecondary colonization. Virginia's expansion happened to send some ofher people across the boundary, where upon finding themselves under thejurisdiction of the Lord Proprietors of Carolina they took pains to keepthat authority upon a strictly nominal basis. The first comers, about 1660, and most of those who followed, were and continued to be small farmers; butin the course of decades a considerable number of plantations arose in thefertile districts about Albemarle Sound. Nearly everywhere in the lowlands, however, the land was too barren for any distinct prosperity. Thesettlements were quite isolated, the communications very poor, and thesocial tone mostly that of the backwoods frontier. An Anglican missionarywhen describing his own plight there in 1711 discussed the industrialrégime about him: "Men are generally of all trades and women the likewithin their spheres, except some who are the posterity of old plantersand have great numbers of slaves who understand most handicraft. Men aregenerally 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, orhath not slaves that can, over and above all the common occupations of bothsexes, will have but a bad time of it; for help is not to be had at anyrate, every one having business enough of his own. This makes tradesmenturn planters, and these become tradesmen. No society one with another, butall study to live by their own hands, of their own produce; and what theycan spare goes for foreign goods. Nay, many live on a slender diet to buyrum, sugar and molasses, with other such like necessaries, which are soldat such a rate that the planter here is but a slave to raise a provisionfor other colonies, and dare not allow himself to partake of his owncreatures, except it be the corn of the country in hominy bread. "[21] Someof the farmers and probably all the planters raised tobacco according tothe methods prevalent in Virginia. Some also made tar for sale from theabounding pine timber; but with most of the families intercourse withmarkets must have been at an irreducible minimum. [Footnote 21: Letter of Rev. John Urmstone, July 7, 1711, to the secretaryof the Society for Propagating the Gospel, printed in F. L. Hawks, _Historyof 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 plantand the difficulty of producing leaf of good quality, whether of theoriginal varieties, oronoko and sweet-scented, or of the many others laterdeveloped. The seed must be sown in late winter or early spring in aspecial bed of deep forest mold dressed with wood ashes; and the fieldsmust be broken and laid off by shallow furrows into hills three or fourfeet apart by the time the seedlings were grown to a finger's length. Thencame the first crisis. During or just after an April, May or June rain theyoung plants must be drawn carefully from their beds, distributed in thefields, and each plant set in its hill. Able-bodied, expert hands could setthem at the rate of thousands a day; and every nerve must be strained forthe task's completion before the ground became dry enough to endanger theseedlings' lives. Then began a steady repetition of hoeings and plowings, broken by the rush after a rain to replant the hills whose first plants haddied 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 heightto leave a specified number of leaves growing on the stalk, and each stalkmust 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 thedestruction of the horn-worms. These came each year in two successivearmies or "gluts, " the one when the plants were half grown, the other whenthey were nearly ready for harvest. When the crop began to turn yellow thestalks must be cut off close to the ground, and after wilting carried toa well ventilated tobacco house and there hung speedily for curing. Eachstalk must hang at a proper distance from its neighbor, attached to lathslaid 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 thestriking, sorting and prizing in weather moist enough to make the leavespliable. Part of the gang would lower the stalks to the floor, where therest working in trios would strip them, the first stripper taking theculls, the second the bright leaves, the third the remaining ones of dullcolor. Each would bind his takings into "hands" of about a quarter of apound 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 abottom, would be set atop the first and likewise filled, and then perhapsa third, when the whole stack would be put under blocks and leverscompressing the contents into the one hogshead at the bottom, which whenheaded up was ready for market. Oftentimes a crop was not cured enough forprizing until the next crop had been planted. Meanwhile the spare time ofthe gang was employed in clearing new fields, tending the subsidiary crops, mending fences, and performing many other incidental tasks. With someexaggeration an essayist wrote, "The whole circle of the year is onescene of bustle and toil, in which tobacco claims a constant and chiefshare. "[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, "PrizeEssay on the Cultivation and Management of Tobacco, " in the U. S. PatentOffice _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 cannotbe determined prior to the close of the American Revolution; but thestatistics then available may be taken as fairly representative for theeighteenth century at large. A state census taken in certain Virginiacounties in 1782-1783[23] permits the following analysis for eight of themselected for their large proportions of slaves. These counties, Amelia, Hanover, Lancaster, Middlesex, New Kent, Richmond, Surry and Warwick, arescattered through the Tidewater and the lower Piedmont. For each one oftheir citizens, fifteen altogether, who held upwards of one hundred slaves, there were approximately three who had from 50 to 99; seven with from 30 to49; thirteen with from 20 to 29; forty with from 10 to 19; forty with from5 to 9; seventy with from 1 to 4; and sixty who had none. In the threechief plantation counties of Maryland, viz. Ann Arundel, Charles, andPrince George, the ratios among the slaveholdings of the several scales, according to the United States census of 1790, were almost identicalwith those just noted in the selected Virginia counties, but thenon-slaveholders were nearly twice as numerous in proportion. In all theseVirginia and Maryland counties the average holding ranged between 8. 5and 13 slaves. In the other districts in both commonwealths, where theplantation system was not so dominant, the average slaveholding wassmaller, 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 wasthat of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, comprising 316 slaves. Among thelargest reported in Virginia in 1782-1783 were those of John Tabb, AmeliaCounty, 257; William Allen, Sussex County, 241; George Chewning, 224, andThomas Nelson, 208, in Hanover County; Wilson N. Gary, Fluvanna County, 200; and George Washington, Fairfax County, 188. Since the great plantersoccasionally owned several scattered plantations it may be that thecensuses reported some of the slaves under the names of the overseersrather than under those of the owners; but that such instances wereprobably few is indicated by the fact that the holdings of Chewning andNelson above noted were each listed by the census takers in severalparcels, with the names of owners and overseers both given. The great properties were usually divided, even where the lands lay insingle tracts, into several plantations for more convenient operation, eachunder a separate overseer or in some cases under a slave foreman. If theworking squads of even the major proprietors were of but moderate scale, those in the multitude of minor holdings were of course lesser still. Onthe whole, indeed, slave industry was organized in smaller units by farthan 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 withdissension. Sir John Colleton, one of the leading planters in that littleisland, proposed to several of his powerful Cavalier friends in Englandthat they join him in applying for a proprietary charter to the vacantregion between Virginia and Florida, with a view of attracting Barbadiansand 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, LordAshley (afterward the Earl of Shaftesbury), Lord Berkeley, Sir GeorgeCarteret, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir John Colleton. Most of these had noacquaintance with America, and none of them had knowledge of Carolina orpurpose of going thither. They expected that the mere throwing open of theregion under their distinguished patronage would bring settlers in a rush;and to this end they published proposals in England and Barbados offeringlands on liberal terms and providing for a large degree of popularself-government. A group of Barbadians promptly made a tentative settlementat the mouth of the Cape Fear River; but finding the soil exceedinglybarren, they almost as promptly scattered to the four winds. Meanwhile inthe more southerly region nothing was done beyond exploring the shore. Finding their passive policy of no avail, the Lords Proprietors bestirredthemselves in 1669 to the extent of contributing several hundred poundseach toward planting a colony on their southward coast. At the same timethey adopted the "fundamental constitutions" which John Locke had framedfor the province. These contemplated land grants in huge parcels to aprovincial nobility, and a cumbrous oligarchical government with a minimumparticipation of popular representatives. The grandiloquent feudalism ofthe scheme appealed so strongly to the aristocratic Lords Proprietorsthat in spite of their usual acumen in politics they were blinded to itsconflicts with their charter and to its utter top-heaviness. They rewardedLocke with the first patent of Carolina nobility, which carried with ita grant of forty-eight thousand acres. For forty years they clung to thefundamental constitutions, notwithstanding repeated rejections of them bythe colonists. The fund of 1669 was used in planting what proved a permanent settlement ofEnglish and Barbadians on the shores of Charleston Harbor. Thereafter theLords Proprietors relapsed into passiveness, commissioning a new governornow and then and occasionally scolding the colonists for disobedience. Theprogress 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 themto Carolina. But in the early decades Indian trading, lumbering andmiscellaneous farming were the only means of livelihood, none of which gavedistinct occasion for employing negroes. The inhabitants, furthermore, hadno surplus income with which to buy slaves. The recruits who continued tocome from the West Indies doubtless brought some blacks for their service;but the Huguenot exiles from France, who comprised the chief otherstreamlet of immigration, had no slaves and little money. Most of thepeople were earning their bread by the sweat of their brows. The Huguenotsin particular, settling mainly in the interior on the Cooper and SanteeRivers, labored with extraordinary diligence and overcame the severesthandicaps. That many of the settlers whether from France or the West Indieswere of talented and sturdy stock is witnessed by the mention of the familynames of Legaré, Laurens, Marion and Ravenel among the Huguenots, Drayton, Elliot, Gibbes and Middleton among the Barbadians, Lowndes and Rawlinsfrom St. Christopher's, and Pinckney from Jamaica. Some of the people weresluggards, of course, but the rest, heterogeneous as they were, were livingand laboring as best they might, trying such new projects as they could, building a free government in spite of the Lords Proprietors, and awaitingthe discovery of some staple resource from which prosperity might be won. Among the crops tried was rice, introduced from Madagascar by LandgraveThomas Smith about 1694, which after some preliminary failures proved sogreat a success that from about the end of the seventeenth century itsproduction became the absorbing concern. Now slaves began to be importedrapidly. An official account of the colony in 1708[1] reckoned thepopulation at about 3500 whites, of whom 120 were indentured servants, 4100negro slaves, and 1400 Indians captured in recent wars and held for thetime being in a sort of slavery. Within the preceding five years, while thewhites had been diminished by an epidemic, the negroes had increased byabout 1, 100. The negroes were governed under laws modeled quite closelyupon the slave code of Barbados, with the striking exception that in thisperiod of danger from Spanish invasion most of the slave men were requiredby 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 theProprietary Government_ (New York, 1897). Pp. 477-481. ] During the rest of the colonial period the production of rice advanced atan accelerating rate and the slave population increased in proportion, while the whites multiplied somewhat more slowly. Thus in 1724 the whiteswere estimated at 14, 000, the slaves at 32, 000, and the rice export wasabout 4000 tons; in 1749 the whites were said to be nearly 25, 000, theslaves at least 39, 000, and the rice export some 14, 000 tons, valued atnearly £100, 000 sterling;[2] and in 1765 the whites were about 40, 000, theslaves 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 replacedfor the better by that of the crown, with South Carolina politicallyseparated from her northern sister; and indigo had been introduced as asupplementary staple. The Charleston district was for several decadesperhaps the most prosperous area on the continent. [Footnote 2: Governor Glen, in B. R. Carroll, _Historical Collections ofSouth Carolina_ (New York, 1836), II, 218, 234, 266. ] [Footnote 3: McCrady, _South Carolina under the Royal Government_ (NewYork, 1899), pp. 389, 390, 807. ] While rice culture did not positively require inundation, it wasfacilitated by the periodical flooding of the fields, a practice which wasintroduced into the colony about 1724. The best lands for this purpose werelevel bottoms with a readily controllable water supply adjacent. Duringmost 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 irregularand necessitated many hoeings of the crop. Furthermore, the dearth ofwatersheds within reach of the great cypress swamps on the river bordershampered the use of these which were the most fertile lands in the colony. Beginning about 1783 there was accordingly a general replacement of thereservoir system by the new one of tide-flowing. [4] For this method tractswere chosen on the flood-plains of streams whose water was fresh but whoseheight was controlled by the tide. The land lying between the levels ofhigh and low tide was cleared, banked along the river front and on thesides, elaborately ditched for drainage, and equipped with "trunks" orsluices piercing the front embankment. On a frame above either end of eachtrunk 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 innerdoor was lowered, the water in the stream at high tide would sluice throughand flood the field, whereas at low tide the water pressure from the landside would shut the door and keep the flood in. But when the elevation ofthe doors was reversed the tide would be kept out and at low tide any watercollected in the ditches from rain or seepage was automatically drainedinto the river. Occasional cross embankments divided the fields for greaterconvenience of control. The tide-flow system had its own limitations andhandicaps. Many of the available tracts were so narrow that the cost ofembankment was very high in proportion to the area secured; and hurricanesfrom oceanward sometimes raised the streams until they over-topped thebanks and broke them. If these invading waters were briny the standing cropwould be killed and the soil perhaps made useless for several years untilfresh water had leached out the salt. At many places, in fact, the waterfor the routine flowing of the crop had to be inspected and the timeawaited 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. GovernorGlen wrote about 1760, "They reckon thirty slaves a proper number for arice plantation, and to be tended by one overseer. "[5] Upon the resort totide-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 thenineteenth century the single plantation of Governor Aiken on JehosseeIsland, South Carolina, of which more will be said in another chapter, hadsome 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-flowsystem led to a fairly general standard of routine. After perhaps apreliminary breaking of the soil in the preceding fall, operations began inthe early spring with smoothing the fields and trenching them with narrowhoes into shallow drills about three inches wide at the bottom and twelveor fourteen inches apart. In these between March and May the seed rice wascarefully strewn and the water at once let on for the "sprout flow. " Abouta week later the land was drained and kept so until the plants appearedplentifully above ground. Then a week of "point flow" was followed by afortnight of dry culture in which the spaces between the rows were lightlyhoed and the weeds amidst the rice pulled up. Then came the "long flow"for two or three weeks, followed by more vigorous hoeing, and finallythe "lay-by flow" extending for two or three months until the crop, thenstanding 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 andmatting by storms. A curious item in the routine just before the grain was ripe was theguarding of the crop from destruction by rice birds. These bobolinks timedtheir southward migration so as to descend upon the fields in myriads whenthe grain was "in the milk. " At that stage the birds, clinging to thestalks, could squeeze the substance from within each husk by pressure ofthe beak. Negroes armed with guns were stationed about the fields withinstructions to fire whenever a drove of the birds alighted nearby. Thisfusillade checked but could not wholly prevent the bobolink ravages. Tokeep the gunners from shattering the crop itself they were generally givencharges of powder only; but sufficient shot was issued to enable the guardsto kill enough birds for the daily consumption of the plantation. Whendressed and broiled they were such fat and toothsome morsels that in theirseason other sorts of meat were little used. For the rice harvest, beginning early in September, as soon as a field wasdrained the negroes would be turned in with sickles, each laborer cuttinga swath of three or four rows, leaving the stubble about a foot high tosustain the cut stalks carefully laid upon it in handfuls for a day'sdrying. Next day the crop would be bound in sheaves and stacked for a briefcuring. When the reaping was done the threshing began, and then followedthe tedious labor of separating the grain from its tightly adhering husk. In colonial times the work was mostly done by hand, first the flail forthreshing, then the heavy fat-pine pestle and mortar for breaking off thehusk. Finally the rice was winnowed of its chaff, screened of the "riceflour" 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 isprinted also in _DeBow's Review_, XVI, 589-615. ] The ditches and pools in and about the fields of course bred swarms ofmosquitoes which carried malaria to all people subject. Most of the whiteswere afflicted by that disease in the warmer half of the year, but theAfricans were generally immune. Negro labor was therefore at such a premiumthat whites were virtually never employed on the plantations except asoverseers and occasionally as artisans. In colonial times the planters, except the few quite wealthy ones who had town houses in Charleston, livedon their places the year round; but at the close of the eighteenth centurythey began to resort in summer to "pine land" villages within an hour ortwo's riding distance from their plantations. In any case the intercoursebetween the whites and blacks was notably less than in the tobacco region, and the progress of the negroes in civilization correspondinglyslighter. The plantations were less of homesteads and more of businessestablishments; the race relations, while often cordial, were seldomintimate. The introduction of indigo culture was achieved by one of America'sgreatest women, Eliza Lucas, afterward the wife of Charles Pinckney(chief-justice of the province) and mother of the two patriot statesmenThomas and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Her father, the governor of theBritish island of Antigua, had been prompted by his wife's ill healthto settle his family in South Carolina, where the three plantations heacquired near Charleston were for several years under his daughter'smanagement. This girl while attending her father's business found time tokeep up her music and her social activities, to teach a class of youngnegroes to read, and to carry on various undertakings in economic botany. In 1741 her experiments with cotton, guinea-corn and ginger were defeatedby frost, and alfalfa proved unsuited to her soil; but in spite of twopreliminary failures that year she raised some indigo plants with success. Next year her father sent a West Indian expert named Cromwell to manage herindigo crop and prepare its commercial product. But Cromwell, in fear ofinjuring the prosperity of his own community, purposely mishandled themanufacturing. With the aid of a neighbor, nevertheless, Eliza not onlydetected Cromwell's treachery but in the next year worked out the trueprocess. She and her father now distributed indigo seed to a number ofplanters; 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 in1748 Parliament established a bounty of sixpence a pound on indigo producedin the British dominions. The Carolina output remained of mediocre qualityuntil in 1756 Moses Lindo, after a career in the indigo trade in London, emigrated to Charleston and began to teach the planters to distinguish thegrades and manufacture the best. [9] At excellent prices, ranging generallyfrom four to six shillings a pound, the indigo crop during the rest of thecolonial period, reaching a maximum output of somewhat more than a millionpounds from some twenty thousand acres in the crop, yielded the communityabout half as much gross income as did its rice. The net earnings of theplanters were increased in a still greater proportion than this, for thework-seasons in the two crops could be so dovetailed that a single gangmight cultivate both staples. [Footnote 8: _Journal and Letters of Eliza Lucas_ (Wormesloe, Ga. , 1850);Mrs. St. Julien Ravenel, _Eliza Pinckney_ (New York, 1896); _Plantation andFrontier_, 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. Atthat stage the plants were cut off near the ground and laid under water ina shallow vat for a fermentation which in the course of some twelve hourstook the dye-stuff out of the leaves. The solution then drawn into anothervat was vigorously beaten with paddles for several hours to renew andcomplete the foaming fermentation. Samples were taken at frequent intervalsduring the latter part of this process, and so soon as a blue tinge becameapparent lime water, in carefully determined proportions, was gentlystirred in to stop all further action and precipitate the "blueing. " Whenthis had settled, the water was drawn off, the paste on the floor wascollected, drained in bags, kneaded, pressed, cut into cubes, dried in theshade and packed for market. [10] A second crop usually sprang from theroots 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 didthe furrows have to be carefully weeded and the caterpillars kept off theplants, but when the stalks were being cut and carried to the vats greatpains were necessary to keep the bluish bloom on the leaves from beingrubbed off and lost, and the fermentation required precise control forthe sake of quality in the product. [11] The production of the blue staplevirtually ended with the colonial period. The War of Independence not onlycut off the market for the time being but ended permanently, of course, thereceipt of the British bounty. When peace returned the culture was revivedin a struggling way; but its vexations and vicissitudes made it promptlygive 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 tospread 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 ofthe peculiar province of Georgia. The launching of this colony was thebeginning of modern philanthropy. Upon procuring a charter in 1732constituting them trustees of Georgia, James Oglethorpe and his colleaguesbegan to raise funds from private donations and parliamentary grants foruse in colonizing English debtor-prisoners and other unfortunates. Thebeneficiaries, chosen because of their indigence, were transported at theexpense of the trust and given fifty-acre homesteads with equipment andsupplies. Instruction in agriculture was provided for them at Savannah, andvarious regulations were established for making them soberly industrious ona small-farming basis. The land could not be alienated, and neither slavesnor rum could be imported. Persons immigrating at their own expense mightprocure larger land grants, but no one could own more than five hundredacres; and all settlers must plant specified numbers of grape vines andmulberry trees with a view to establishing wine and silk as the staples ofthe colony. In the first few years, while Oglethorpe was in personal charge at Savannahand supplies from England were abundant, there was an appearance ofsuccess, which soon proved illusory. Not only were the conditions unfitfor silk and wine, but the fertile tracts were malarial and the healthydistricts barren, and every industry suited to the climate had to meet thecompetition of the South Carolinians with their slave labor and plantationsystem. The ne'er-do-weels from England proved ne'er-do-weels again. Theycomplained of the soil, the climate, and the paternalistic regulationsunder which they lived. They protested against the requirements of silk andwine culture; they begged for the removal of all peculiar restrictions andfor the institution of self-government They bombarded the trustees withpetitions saying "rum punch is very wholesome in this climate, " askingfee-simple title to their lands, and demanding most vigorously the right ofimporting slaves. But the trustees were deaf to complaints. They maintainedthat the one thing lacking for prosperity from silk and wine wasperseverance, that the restriction on land tenure was necessary on the onehand to keep an arms-bearing population in the colony and on the otherhand to prevent the settlers from contracting debts by mortgage, that theprohibitions of rum and slaves were essential safeguards of sobriety andindustry, and that discontent under the benevolent care of the trusteesevidenced a perversity on the part of the complainants which woulddisqualify them for self-government. Affairs thus reached an impasse. Contributions stopped; Parliament gave merely enough money for routineexpenses; the trustees lost their zeal but not their crotchets; the colonywent from bad to worse. Out of perhaps five thousand souls in Georgia about1737 so many departed to South Carolina and other free settlements that in1741 there were barely more than five hundred left. This extreme depressionat length forced even the staunchest of the trustees to relax. First theexclusion of rum was repealed, then the introduction of slaves on leasewas winked at, then in 1749 and 1750 the overt importation of slaves wasauthorized and all restrictions on land tenure were canceled. Finally thestoppage of the parliamentary subvention in 1751 forced the trustees in thefollowing year to resign their charter. Slaveholders had already crossed the Savannah River in appreciablenumbers to erect plantations on favorable tracts. The lapse of a fewmore transition years brought Georgia to the status on the one hand of aself-governing royal province and on the other of a plantation communityprospering, modestly for the time being, in the production of rice andindigo. Her peculiarities under the trustee régime were gone but notforgotten. The rigidity of paternalism, well meant though it had been, wasa lesson against future submission to outward control in any form; andtheir failure as a peasantry in competition with planters across the riverpersuaded the Georgians and their neighbors that slave labor was essentialfor prosperity. It is curious, by the way, that the tender-hearted, philanthropicOglethorpe at the very time of his founding Georgia was the manager of thegreat slave-trading corporation, the Royal African Company. The conflict ofthe two functions cannot be relieved except by one of the greatest of allreconciling considerations, the spirit of the time. Whatever else theradicals of that period might wish to reform or abolish, the slave tradewas held either as a matter of course or as a positive benefit to thepeople who constituted its merchandise. The narrow limits of the rice and indigo régime in the two coloniesmade the plantation system the more dominant in its own area. Detailedstatistics are lacking until the first federal census, when indigo wasrapidly giving place to sea-island cotton; but the requirements of the newstaple differed so little from those of the old that the plantations nearthe end of the century were without doubt on much the same scale as beforethe 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 1790found 393 slaveholders with an average of 33. 7 slaves each, as comparedwith a total of 28 non-slaveholding families. In these and seven moreparishes, comprising together the rural portion of the area knownpolitically as the Charleston District, there were among the 1643 heads offamilies 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 hisplantations and 13 in Charleston; William Washington had 380 in the countryand 13 in town; and three members of the Horry family had 340, 229 and 222respectively in a single neighborhood. Altogether there were 79 separateparcels 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, 206of 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 statisticsof the Georgetown and Beaufort districts, which comprised the rest of theSouth Carolina coast, show a like analysis except for a somewhat largerproportion of non-slaveholders and very small slaveholders, who were, of course, located mostly in the towns and on the sandy stretches ofpine-barren. The detailed returns for Georgia in that census have beenlost. Were those for her coastal area available they would surely show asimilar 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 PopulationGrowth_ (Washington, 1909), pp. 190, 191, 197, 198. ] Avenues of transportation abundantly penetrated the whole district in theform of rivers, inlets and meandering tidal creeks. Navigation on them wasso easy that watermen to the manner born could float rafts or barges forscores of miles in any desired direction, without either sails or oars, bycatching the strong ebb and flow of the tides at the proper points. Butunlike the Chesapeake estuaries, the waterways of the rice coast weregenerally too shallow for ocean-going vessels. This caused a notablegrowth of seaports on the available harbors. Of those in South Carolina, Charleston stood alone in the first rank, flanked by Georgetown andBeaufort. In the lesser province of Georgia, Savannah found supplement inDarien and Sunbury. The two leading ports were also the seats of governmentin their respective colonies. Charleston was in fact so complete a focusof commerce, politics and society that South Carolina was in a sense acity-state. The towns were in sentiment and interest virtually a part of the plantationcommunity. The merchants were plantation factors; the lawyers and doctorshad country patrons; the wealthiest planters were town residents from timeto time; and many prospering townsmen looked toward plantation retirement, carrying as it did in some degree the badge of gentility, as the crown oftheir careers. Furthermore the urban negroes, more numerous proportionatelythan anywhere else on the continent, kept the citizens as keenly aliveas the planters to the intricacies of racial adjustments. For exampleCharleston, which in 1790 had 8089 whites, 7864 slaves and 586 freenegroes, felt as great anxiety as did the rural parishes at rumors ofslave conspiracies, and on the other hand she had a like interest in theimprovement of negro efficiency, morality and good will. The rice coast community was a small one. Even as measured in its numberof slaves it bulked only one-fourth as large, say in 1790, as the group oftobacco commonwealths or the single sugar island of Jamaica. Neverthelessit was a community to be reckoned with. Its people were awake to theirpeculiar conditions and problems; it had plenty of talented citizens toformulate policies; and it had excellent machinery for uniting publicopinion. In colonial times, plying its trade mainly with England and theWest Indies, it was in little touch with its continental neighbors, and itdeveloped a sense of separateness. As part of a loosely administeredempire its people were content in prosperity and self-government. But in aconsolidated nation of diverse and conflicting interests it would be likelyon occasion to assert its own will and resist unitedly anything savoring ofcoercion. 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 Indiansand negroes, the history of slavery therein would quite surely have beena blank. But this was the case nowhere. A certain number of Indians wereenslaved in nearly every settlement as a means of disposing of captivestaken in war; and negro slaves were imported into every prosperous colonyas a mere incident of its prosperity. Among the Quakers the extent ofslaveholding was kept small partly, or perhaps mainly, by scruples ofconscience; in virtually all other cases the scale was determined byindustrial conditions. Here the plantation system flourished and slaveswere many; there the climate prevented profits from crude gang labor infarming, and slaves were few. The nature and causes of the contrast will appear from comparing thecareers of two Puritan colonies launched at the same time but separated bysome thirty degrees of north latitude. The one was planted on the islandof Old Providence lying off the coast of Nicaragua, the other was on theshores of Massachusetts bay. The founders of Old Providence were a score ofPuritan dignitaries, including the Earl of Warwick, Lord Saye and Sele, andJohn Pym, incorporated into the Westminster Company in 1630 with acombined purpose of erecting a Puritanic haven and gaining profits forthe investors. The soil of the island was known to be fertile, the nearbySpanish Main would yield booty to privateers, and a Puritan governmentwould maintain orthodoxy. These enticements were laid before John Winthropand his companions; and when they proved steadfast in the choice of NewEngland, several hundred others of their general sort embraced the tropicalProvidence alternative. Equipped as it was with all the apparatus of a "NewEngland Canaan, " the founders anticipated a far greater career than seemedlikely of achievement in Massachusetts. Prosperity came at once in the formof good crops and rich prizes taken at sea. Some of the latter containedcargoes of negro slaves, as was of course expected, who were distributedamong the settlers to aid in raising tobacco; and when a certain SamuelRishworth undertook to spread ideas of liberty among them he was officiallyadmonished that religion had no concern with negro slavery and thathis indiscretions must stop. Slaves were imported so rapidly that theoutnumbered whites became apprehensive of rebellion. In the hope ofpromoting the importation of white labor, so greatly preferable from thepublic point of view, heavy impositions were laid upon the employmentof negroes, but with no avail. The apprehension of evils was promptlyjustified. A number of the blacks escaped to the mountains where they dweltas maroons; and in 1638 a concerted uprising proved so formidable that thesuppression of it strained every resource of the government and the whiteinhabitants. Three years afterward the weakened settlement was capturedby a Spanish fleet; and this was the end of the one Puritan colony in thetropics. [1] [Footnote 1: A. P. Newton, _The Colonizing Activities of the EnglishPuritans_ (New Haven, 1914). ] Massachusetts was likewise inaugurated by a corporation of Puritans, whichat the outset endorsed the institution of unfree labor, in a sense, bysending over from England 180 indentured servants to labor on the company'saccount. A food shortage soon made it clear that in the company's servicethey could not earn their keep; and in 1630 the survivors of them were setfree. [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 theirtransportation, and the chagrin of the officials, materially hastened theconversion of the colony from a company enterprise into an industrialdemocracy. The use of unfree labor nevertheless continued on a privatebasis and on a relatively small scale. Until 1642 the tide of Puritanimmigration continued, some of the newcomers of good estate bringingservants in their train. The authorities not only countenanced this butforbade the freeing of servants before the ends of their terms, and in atleast one instance the court fined a citizen for such a manumission. [3]Meanwhile the war against the Pequots in 1637 yielded a number ofcaptives, whereupon the squaws and girls were distributed in the towns ofMassachusetts and Connecticut, and a parcel of the boys was shipped offto the tropics in the Salem ship _Desire_. On its return voyage thisthoroughly Puritan vessel brought from Old Providence a cargo of tobacco, cotton, and negroes. [4] About this time the courts began to take noticeof Indians as runaways; and in 1641 a "blackmore, " Mincarry, procured theinscription of his name upon the public records by drawing upon himselfan admonition from the magistrates. [5] This negro, it may safely beconjectured, was not a freeman. That there were at least several otherblacks in the colony, one of whom proved unamenable to her master'simproper command, is told in the account of a contemporary traveler. [6] Inthe same period, furthermore, the central court of the colony condemnedcertain white criminals to become slaves to masters whom the courtappointed. [7] In the light of these things the pro-slavery inclination ofthe much-disputed paragraph in the Body of Liberties, adopted in 1641, admits of no doubt. The passage reads: "There shall never be any bondslaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull captivestaken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves orare sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usageswhich the law of God established in Israell concerning such persons doethmorally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judgedthereto 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 ofMassachusetts Bay, 1630-1692_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 135, 136. ] [Footnote 4: Letter of John Winthrop to William Bradford, MassachusettsHistorical 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 MassachusettsHistorical 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 EmanuelDowning in a letter to his brother-in-law John Winthrop were not seriouslyout of harmony with the prevailing sentiment. Downing was in hopes of a warwith the Narragansetts for two reasons, first to stop their "worship of thedevill, " and "2lie, If upon a just warre the Lord should deliver them intoour hands, we might easily have men, women and children enough to exchangefor 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 slavessufficient to doe all our buisines, for our children's children will hardlysee this great continent filled with people, soe that our servants willstill desire freedome to plant for themselves, and not stay but for veriegreat wages. [10] And I suppose you know verie well how we shall mayntayne20 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 reciprocalaction in matters of common concern, they provided not only for theintercolonial rendition of runaway servants, including slaves of course, but also for the division of the spoils of Indian wars, "whether it be inlands, goods or persons, " among the participating colonies. [11] But perhapsthe most striking action taken by the Confederation in these regards wasa resolution adopted by its commissioners in 1646, in time of peaceand professedly in the interests of peace, authorizing reprisals fordepredations. This provided that if any citizen's property suffered injuryat the hands of an Indian, the offender's village or any other whichhad harbored him might be raided and any inhabitants thereof seized insatisfaction "either to serve or to be shipped out and exchanged fornegroes as the cause will justly beare. "[12] Many of these captives were infact exported as merchandise, whether as private property or on the publicaccount of the several colonies. [13] The value of Indians for export wasgreater than for local employment by reason of their facility in escapingto 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 inMassachusetts_ (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 theworth of their labor under ordinary circumstances in New England led theYankee participants in the African trade to market their slave cargoes inthe plantation colonies instead of bringing them home. Thus John Winthropentered in his journal in 1645: "One of our ships which went to theCanaries with pipestaves in the beginning of November last returned nowand brought wine and sugar and salt, and some tobacco, which she had atBarbadoes in exchange for Africoes which she carried from the Isle ofMaio. "[15] In their domestic industry the Massachusetts people foundby experience that "many hands make light work, many hands make a fullfraught, but many mouths eat up all";[16] and they were shrewd enough toapply the adage in keeping the scale of their industrial units within thefrugal requirements of their lives. [Footnote 15: Winthrop, _Journal_, II, 227. ] [Footnote 16: John Josslyn, "Two Voyages to New England, " in MassachusettsHistorical Society _Collections_, XXIII, 332. ] That the laws of Massachusetts were enforced with special severity againstthe blacks is indicated by two cases before the central court in 1681, bothof them prosecutions for arson. Maria, a negress belonging to Joshua Lambof Roxbury, having confessed the burning of two dwellings, was sentenced bythe Governor "yt she should goe from the barr to the prison whence shecame and thence to the place of execution and there be burnt. --ye Lord bemercifull to thy soule, sd ye Govr. " The other was Jack, a negro belongingto Samuel Wolcott of Weathersfield, who upon conviction of having set fireto a residence by waving a fire brand about in search of victuals, wascondemned to be hanged until dead and then burned to ashes in the fire withthe 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, andthe number of negroes was not great enough to call for special policelegislation. Governor Bradstreet, for example, estimated the "blacks orslaves" in the colony in 1680 at "about one hundred or one hundred andtwenty. "[18] But in 1708 Governor Dudley reckoned the number in Boston atfour hundred, one-half of whom he said had been born there, and those inthe rest of the colony at one hundred and fifty; and in the followingdecades their number steadily mounted, as a concomitant of the colony'sincreasing prosperity, until on the eve of the American Revolution theywere reckoned at well above five thousand. Although they never exceeded twoper cent. Of the gross population, their presence prompted characteristiclegislation dating from about the beginning of the eighteenth century. This on one hand taxed the importation of negros unless they were promptlyexported again on the other hand it forbade trading with slaves, restrainedmanumission, established a curfew, provided for the whipping of anynegro or mulatto who should strike a "Christian, " and prohibited theintermarriage of the races. On the other hand it gave the slaves theprivilege of legal marriage with persons of their own race, though it didnot attempt to prevent the breaking up of such a union by the sale andremoval of the husband or wife. [19] Regarding the status of children therewas no law enacted, and custom ruled. The children born of Indian slavemothers appear generally to have been liberated, for as willingly would aman nurse a viper in his bosom as keep an aggrieved and able-bodied redskinin his household. But as to negro children, although they were valued soslightly that occasionally it is said they were given to any one who wouldtake them, there can be no reasonable doubt that by force of custom theywere 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 apoor wilderness. .. . Their lives were to the last degree matter offact, realistic, hard. " [21] Shrewd in consequence of their poverty, self-righteous in consequence of their religion, they took theirslave-trading and their slaveholding as part of their day's work and aspart of God's goodness to His elect. In practical effect the policy ofcolonial Massachusetts toward the backward races merits neither praise norcensure; 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 equalfidelity to Connecticut. [22] The number of negroes in that colony washardly appreciable before 1720. In that year Governor Leete when replyingto queries from the English committee on trade and plantations tookoccasion 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, aswe judge, in the colony. For English, Scotts and Irish, there are so fewcome 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 sometimes3 or 4 in a year from Barbadoes; and they are sold usually at the rate of22l a piece, sometimes more and sometimes less, according as men can agreewith the master of vessels or merchants that bring them hither. " Fewnegroes had been born in the colony, "and but two blacks christened, as weknow of. "[23] A decade later the development of a black code was begun byan enactment declaring that any negro, mulatto, or Indian servant wanderingoutside his proper town without a pass would be accounted a runaway andmight be seized by any person and carried before a magistrate for return tohis master. A free negro so apprehended without a pass must pay the courtcosts. An act of 1702 discouraged manumission by ordering that if anyfreed negroes should come to want, their former owners were to be heldresponsible for their maintenance. Then came legislation forbidding thesale of liquors to slaves without special orders from their masters, prohibiting the purchase of goods from slaves without such orders, andproviding a penalty of not more than thirty lashes for any negro who shouldoffer to strike a white person; and finally a curfew law, in 1723, orderingnot above ten lashes for the negro, and a fine of ten shillings upon themaster, for every slave without a pass apprehended for being out of doorsafter nine o'clock at night. [24] These acts, which remained in effectthroughout the colonial period, constituted a code of slave police whichdiffered only in degree and fullness from those enacted by the moresoutherly colonies in the same generation. A somewhat unusual note, however, was struck in an act of 1730 which while penalizing with stripesthe speaking by a slave of such words as would be actionable if uttered bya free person provided that in his defence the slave might make the samepleas and offer the same evidence as a freeman. The number of negroes inthe colony rose to some 6500 at the eve of the American Revolution. Mostof them were held in very small parcels, but at least one citizen, CaptainJohn 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 andliberalism 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 twoso-called towns of North and South Kingstown, lay on the western shore ofthe bay, in the southern corner of the colony. Prosperity from tillage, and especially from dairying and horse-breeding, caused the rise in thatneighborhood of landholdings and slaveholdings on a scale more commensuratewith those in Virginia than with those elsewhere in New England. TheHazards, Champlins, Robinsons, and some others accumulated estates rangingfrom five to ten thousand acres in extent, each with a corps of bondsmensomewhat in proportion. In 1730, for example, South Kingstown had apopulation of 965 whites, 333 negroes and 233 Indians; and for a numberof 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 thefree inhabitants. [25] It may be noted that the prevalent husbandry was notsuch as generally attracted unfree labor in other districts, and that theclimate was poorly suited to a negro population. The question then arises, Why was there so large a recourse to negro slave labor? The answer probablylies in the proximity of Newport, the main focus of African trading inAmerican ships. James Browne wrote in 1737 from Providence, which was alsobusy in the trade, to his brother Obadiah who was then in Southern waterswith an African cargo and who had reported poor markets: "If you cannotsell all your slaves to your mind, bring some of them home; I believe theywill sell well. " [26] This bringing of remainders home doubtless enabledthe nearby townsmen and farmers to get slaves from time to time at bargainprices. The whole colony indeed came to have a relatively large proportionof blacks. In 1749 there were 33, 773 whites and 3077 negroes; in 1756 therewere 35, 939 and 4697 respectively; and in 1774, 59, 707 and 3668. Of thislast number Newport contained 1246, South Kingstown 440, Providence 303, Portsmouth 122, and Bristol 114. [27] [Footnote 25: Edward Channing, _The Narragansett Planters_ (Johns HopkinsUniversity _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 RhodeIsland Historical Society _Publications_, new series, II, 126, 127. ] The earliest piece of legislation in Rhode Island concerning negroes was ofan anti-slavery character. This was an act adopted by the joint governmentof Providence and Warwick in 1652, when for the time being those towns wereindependent of the rest. It required, under a penalty of £40, that allnegroes be freed after having rendered ten years of service. [28] Thisact may be attributed partly perhaps to the liberal influence of RogerWilliams, and partly to the virtual absence of negroes in the towns nearthe head of the bay. It long stood unrepealed, but it was probably neverenforced, for no sooner did negroes become numerous than a conservativereaction set in which deprived this peculiar law of any public sanction itmay have had at the time of enactment. When in the early eighteenth centurylegislation was resumed in regard to negroes, it took the form of a slavecode much like that of Connecticut but with an added act, borrowed perhapsfrom a Southern colony, providing that slaves charged with theft be triedby impromptu courts consisting of two or more justices of the peace or townofficers, and that appeal might be taken to a court of regular session onlyat the master's request and upon his giving bond for its prosecution. Someof the towns, furthermore, added by-laws of their own for more thoroughpolice. South Kingstown for instance adopted an order that if any slavewere found in the house of a free negro, both guest and host were to bewhipped. [29] The Rhode Island Quakers in annual meeting began as early as1717 to question the propriety of importing slaves, and other persons fromtime to time echoed their sentiments; but it was not until just before theAmerican Revolution that legislation began to interfere with the trade orthe 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 separateexistence, and the colonies of Maine and New Hampshire throughout theircareers, are negligible in a general account of negro slavery becausetheir 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 greatslave-trading corporation--the Dutch West India Company--which endeavoredto extend the market for its human merchandise whithersoever its influencereached. This pro-slavery policy was not wholly selfish, for the directorsappear to have believed that the surest way to promote a colony's welfarewas to make slaves easy to buy. In the infancy of New Netherland, when itconsisted merely of two trading posts, the company delivered its firstbatch of negroes at New Amsterdam. But to its chagrin, the settlers wouldbuy very few; and even the company's grant of great patroonship estatesfailed to promote a plantation régime. Devoting their energies more to theIndian trade than to agriculture, the people had little use for farm hands, while in domestic service, if the opinion of the Reverend Jonas Michaeliusbe 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 successin slave management, were it not that those who settled in Guiana becamereputed the severest of all plantation masters. The bulk of the slaves inNew Netherland, left on the company's hands, were employed now in buildingfortifications, now in tillage. But the company, having no adequate meansof supervising them in routine, changed the status of some of the olderones in 1644 from slavery to tribute-paying. That is to say, it gave elevenof them their freedom on condition that each pay the company every yearsome twenty-two bushels of grain and a hog of a certain value. At the sametime it provided, curiously, that their children already born or yet to beborn were to be the company's slaves. It was proposed at one time by someof the inhabitants, and again by Governor Stuyvesant, that negroes be armedwith tomahawks and sent in punitive expeditions against the Indians, butnothing seems to have come of that. The Dutch settlers were few, and the Dutch farmers fewer. But as years wenton a slender stream of immigration entered the province from New England, settling mainly on Long Island and in Westchester; and these came to beamong the company's best customers for slaves. The villagers of Gravesend, indeed, petitioned in 1651 that the slave supply might be increased. Soonafterward the company opened the trade to private ships, and then sentadditional supplies on its own account to be sold at auction. It developedhopes, even, that New Amsterdam might be made a slave market for theneighboring English colonies. A parcel sold at public outcry in 1661brought an average price of 440 florins, [30] which so encouraged theauthorities that larger shipments were ordered. Of a parcel arriving inthe spring of 1664 and described by Stuyvesant as on the average old andinferior, six men were reserved for the company's use in cutting timber, five women were set aside as unsalable, and the remaining twenty-nine, ofboth 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 sameyear reached port only in time for the vessel to be captured by the Englishfleet which took possession of New Netherland and converted it into theprovince 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 inNew 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 ofAmsterdam, with additional papers illustrative of the slave trade under theDutch_ (Albany, 1867), pp. 99-213. ] The change of the flag was very slow in bringing any pronounced change inthe colony's general régime. The Duke of York's government was autocraticand pro-slavery and the inhabitants, though for some decades they boughtfew slaves, were nothing averse to the institution. After the colony wasconverted into a royal province by the accession of James II to the Englishthrone popular self-government was gradually introduced and a light importduty was laid upon slaves. But increasing prosperity caused the rise ofslave importations to an average of about one hundred a year in the firstquarter of the eighteenth century;[32] and in spite of the rapid increaseof the whites during the rest of the colonial period the proportion of thenegroes was steadily maintained at about one-seventh of the whole. Theybecame fairly numerous in all districts except the extreme frontier, but inthe counties fronting New York Harbor their ratio was somewhat above theaverage. [33] In 1755 a special census was taken of slaves older thanfourteen years, and a large part of its detailed returns has beenpreserved. These reports from some two-score scattered localities enumerate2456 slaves, about one-third of the total negro population of thespecified age; and they yield unusually definite data as to the scale ofslaveholdings. Lewis Morris of Morrisania had twenty-nine slaves abovefourteen years old; Peter DeLancy of Westchester Borough had twelve; andthe following had ten each: Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, MartinusHoffman of Dutchess County, David Jones of Oyster Bay, Rutgert Van Brunt ofNew Utrecht, and Isaac Willett of Westchester Borough. Seventy-two othershad from five to nine each, and 1048 had still smaller holdings. [34] Theaverage quota was two slaves of working age, and presumably the same numberof slave children. That is to say, the typical slaveholding family had asingle small family of slaves in its service. From available data it may beconfidently surmised, furthermore, that at least one household in every tenamong the eighty-three thousand white inhabitants of the colony held one ormore slaves. These two features--the multiplicity of slaveholdings and thevirtually uniform pettiness of their scale--constituted a régime neverparalleled in equal volume elsewhere. The economic interest in slaveproperty, nowhere great, was widely diffused. The petty masters, however, maintained so little system in the management of their slaves that thepublic problem of social control was relatively intense. It was a stateof affairs conducing to severe legislation, and to hysterical action inemergencies. [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 prohibitionagainst trading with slaves; authorized masters to chastise their slaves atdiscretion; forbade the meeting of more than three slaves at any time orplace unless in their masters' service or by their consent; penalized withimprisonment and lashes the striking of a "Christian" by a slave; made theseductor or harborer of a runaway slave liable for heavy damages to theowner; and excluded slave testimony from the courts except as against otherslaves charged with conspiracy. In order, however, that undue loss tomasters might be averted, it provided that if by theft or other trespass aslave injured any person to the extent of not more than five pounds, theslave was not to be sentenced to death as in some cases a freeman mighthave been under the laws of England then current, but his master was to beliable for pecuniary satisfaction and the slave was merely to be whipped. Three years afterward a special act to check the fleeing to Canada provideda death penalty for any slave from the city and county of Albany foundtraveling more than forty miles north of that city, the master to becompensated from a special tax on slave property in the district. And in1706 an act, passed mainly to quiet any fears as to the legal consequencesof Christianization, declared that baptism had no liberating effect, andthat 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 onlyled to their execution, by burning in one case, but prompted an enactmentin 1708 that slaves charged with the murder of whites might be triedsummarily by three justices of the peace and be put to death in such manneras the enormity of their crimes might be deemed to merit, and that slavesexecuted under this act should be paid for by the public. Thus stood thelaw when a negro uprising in the city of New York in 1712 and a reputedconspiracy there in 1741 brought atrociously numerous and severepunishments, as will be related in another chapter. [35] On the former ofthese occasions the royally appointed governor intervened in several casesto prevent judicial murder. The assembly on the other hand set to workat once on a more elaborate negro law which restricted manumissions, prohibited free negroes from holding real estate, and increased the rigorof slave control. Though some of the more drastic provisions were afterwardrelaxed in response to the more sober sense of the community, the negrocode continued for the rest of the colonial period to be substantially aselaborated between 1702 and 1712. [36] The disturbance of 1741 promptedlittle new legislation and left little permanent impress upon thecommunity. When the panic passed the petty masters resumed their customaryindolence of control and the police officers, justly incredulous of publicdanger, 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 "Slaveryin 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 HistoricalAssociation _Papers_ (New York, 1891), V, 335-350. ] As to New Jersey, the eastern half, settled largely from New England, waslike in conditions and close in touch with New York, while the westernhalf, peopled considerably by Quakers, had a much smaller proportion ofnegroes and was in sentiment akin to Pennsylvania. As was generally thecase in such contrast of circumstances, that portion of the province whichfaced the greater problem of control determined the legislation forthe whole. New Jersey, indeed, borrowed the New York slave code in allessentials. The administration of the law, furthermore, was about as it wasin New York, in the eastern counties at least. An alleged conspiracy nearSomerville in 1734 while it cost the reputed ringleader his life, cost hissupposed colleagues their ears only. On the other hand sentences to burningat the stake were more frequent as punishment for ordinary crimes; and onsuch occasions the citizens of the neighborhood turned honest shillingsby providing faggots for the fire. For the western counties the publishedannals concerning slavery are brief wellnigh to blankness. [37] [Footnote 37: H. S. Cooley, _A Study of Slavery in New Jersey_ (JohnsHopkins University _Studios_, XIV, nos. 9, 10, Baltimore, 1896). ] Pennsylvania's place in the colonial slaveholding sisterhood was a littleunusual in that negroes formed a smaller proportion of the population thanher 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 thedisrelish of slaveholding felt by many of her Quaker and German inhabitantsand to the greater abundance of white immigrant labor whether wage-earningor indentured. Negroes were present in the region before Penn's colony wasfounded. The new government recognized slavery as already instituted. Pennhimself acquired a few slaves; and in the first quarter of the eighteenthcentury the assembly legislated much as New York was doing, though somewhatmore mildly, for the fuller control of the negroes both slave and free. Thenumber of blacks and mulattoes reached at the middle of the centuryabout eleven thousand, the great majority of them slaves. They were mostnumerous, of course, in the older counties which lay in the southeasterncorner of the province, and particularly in the city of Philadelphia. Occasional owners had as many as twenty or thirty slaves, employed eitheron country estates or in iron-works, but the typical holding was on a pettyscale. There were no slave insurrections in the colony, no plots of anymoment, and no panics of dread. The police was apparently a little morethorough than in New York, partly because of legislation, which the whitemechanics procured, lessening negro competition by forbidding masters tohire out their slaves. From travelers' accounts it would appear that therelation of master and slave in Pennsylvania was in general more kindlythan anywhere else on the continent; but from the abundance of newspaperadvertisements for runaways it would seem to have been of about averagecharacter. The truth probably lies as usual in the middle ground, thatPennsylvania masters were somewhat unusually considerate. The assemblyattempted at various times to check slave importations by levyingprohibitive duties, which were invariably disallowed by the English crown. On the other hand, in spite of the endeavors of Sandiford, Lay, Woolmanand Benezet, all of them Pennsylvanians, it took no steps toward relaxingracial 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 generallydrawn from the West Indies than directly from Africa. The reasons wereseveral. Small parcels, better suited to the retail demand, might bebrought more profitably from the sugar islands whither New England, NewYork and Pennsylvania ships were frequently plying than from Guinea whencespecial voyages must be made. Familiarity with the English language andthe rudiments of civilization at the outset were more essential to pettymasters than to the owners of plantation gangs who had means for breakingin fresh Africans by deputy. But most important of all, a sojourn in theWest Indies would lessen the shock of acclimatization, severe enough underthe best of circumstances. The number of negroes who died from it wasprobably not small, and of those who survived some were incapacitated andbedridden with each recurrence of winter. Slavery did not, and perhaps could not, become an important industrialinstitution in any Northern community; and the problem of racialadjustments was never as acute as it was generally thought to be. In notmore than two or three counties do the negroes appear to have numbered morethan one fifth of the population; and by reason of being distributedin detail they were more nearly assimilated to the civilization of thedominant 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 eventhough they were in bondage. By many they were somewhat unreasonablyfeared; by few were they even reasonably loved. The spirit not of love butof justice and the public advantage was destined to bring the end of theirbondage. CHAPTER VII REVOLUTION AND REACTION After the whole group of colonies had long been left in salutary neglectby the British authorities, George III and his ministers undertook thecreation of an imperial control; and Parliament was too much at the king'scommand for opposing statesmen to stop the project. The Americans wakenedresentfully to the new conditions. The revived navigation laws, the stampact, the tea duty, and the dispatch of redcoats to coerce Massachusettswere a cumulation of grievances not to be borne by high-spirited people. For some years the colonial spokesmen tried to persuade the Britishgovernment that it was violating historic and constitutional rights; butthese efforts had little success. To the argument that the empire wascomposed of parts mutually independent in legislation, it was replied thatParliament had legislated imperially ever since the empire's beginning, andthat the colonial assemblies possessed only such powers as Parliament mightallow. The plea of no taxation without representation was answered by thedoctrine that all elements in the empire were virtually represented inParliament. The stress laid by the colonials upon their rights as Britonsmet the administration's emphasis upon the duty of all British subjectsto obey British laws. This countering of pleas of exemption withpronouncements of authority drove the complainants at length from proposalsof reform to projects of revolution. For this the solidarity of thecontinent was essential, and that was to be gained only by the mostvigorous agitation with the aid of the most effective campaign cries. Theclaim of historic immunities was largely discarded in favor of the moreglittering doctrines current in the philosophy of the time. The demands forlocal self-government or for national independence, one or both of whichwere the genuine issues at stake, were subordinated to the claim of theinherent and inalienable rights of man. Hence the culminating formulationin the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to beself-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed bytheir Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. " The cause of the community was to bewon under the guise of the cause of individuals. In Jefferson's original draft of the great declaration there was aparagraph indicting the king for having kept open the African slave tradeagainst colonial efforts to close it, and for having violated thereby the"most sacred rights of life and liberty of a distant people, who neveroffended him, captivating them into slavery in another hemisphere, or toincur miserable death in their transportation thither. " This passage, according to Jefferson's account, "was struck out in complaisance to SouthCarolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importationof slaves and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our Northernbrethren also I believe, " Jefferson continued, "felt a little tender underthese censures, for though their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they have been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. "[1] Byreason 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_ (NewYork, 1904), pp. 130, 272. ] Negroes had a barely appreciable share in precipitating the Revolutionand in waging the war. The "Boston Massacre" was occasioned in part by aninsult offered by a slave to a British soldier two days before; and in thatcelebrated affray itself, Crispus Attucks, a mulatto slave, was one of thefive inhabitants of Boston slain. During the course of the war free negroand slave enlistments were encouraged by law in the states where racialcontrol was not reckoned vital, and they were informally permitted in therest. The British also utilized this resource in some degree. As early asNovember 7, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the ousted royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves "appertaining torebels" who would join him "for the more speedy reducing this colony to aproper sense of their duty to his Majesty's crown and dignity. "[2] In replythe Virginia press warned the negroes against British perfidy; and therevolutionary government, while announcing the penalties for servilerevolt, promised freedom to such as would promptly desert the Britishstandard. Some hundreds of negroes appear to have joined Dunmore, but theydid 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 theextreme South, where the whites were few and the blacks many, the problemof negro enlistments became at once more pressing and more delicate. HenryLaurens 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 moreguardedly. Congress recommended it to the states concerned, and pledgeditself to reimburse the masters and to set the slaves free with a paymentof fifty dollars to each of these at the end of the war. Eventually ColonelJohn Laurens, the son of Henry, went South as an enthusiastic emissary ofthe scheme, only to meet rebuff and failure. [4] Had the negroes in generalpossessed any means of concerted action, they might conceivably have playedoff the British and American belligerents to their own advantage. Inactuality, however, they were a passive element whose fate was affectedonly so far as the master race determined. [Footnote 4: G. W. Williams, _History of the Negro Race in America_ (NewYork [1882]), I, 353-362. ] Some of the politicians who championed the doctrine of liberty inherent anduniversal used it merely as a means to a specific and somewhat unrelatedend. Others endorsed it literally and with resolve to apply it whereverconsistency might require. How could they justly continue to hold men inbondage when in vindication of their own cause they were asserting theright of all men to be free? Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, EdmundRandolph and many less prominent slaveholders were disquieted by thequestion. Instances of private manumission became frequent, and memorialswere fairly numerous advocating anti-slavery legislation. Indeed SamuelHopkins of Rhode Island in a pamphlet of 1776 declared that slavery inAnglo-America was "without the express sanction of civil government, " andcensured the colonial authorities and citizens for having connived in themaintenance of the wrongful institution. As to public acts, the Vermont convention of 1777 when claiming statehoodfor its community framed a constitution with a bill of rights asserting theinherent freedom of all men and attaching to it an express prohibition ofslavery. The opposition of New York delayed Vermont's recognition until1791 when she was admitted as a state with this provision unchanged. Similar inherent-liberty clauses but without the expressed anti-slaveryapplication were incorporated into the bills of rights adopted severally byVirginia in 1776, Massachusetts in 1780, and New Hampshire in 1784. In thefirst of these the holding of slaves persisted undisturbed by this action;and in New Hampshire the custom died from the dearth of slaves rather thanfrom the natural-rights clause. In Massachusetts likewise it is plainfrom copious contemporary evidence that abolition was not intended by theframers of the bill of rights nor thought by the people or the officials tohave been accomplished thereby. [5] One citizen, indeed, who wanted to keephis woman slave but to be rid of her child soon to be born, advertised inthe _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 totake it, and money with it. "[6] The courts of the commonwealth, however, soon began to reflect anti-slavery sentiment, as Lord Mansfield had done inthe preceding decade in England, [7] and to make use of the bill of rightsto destroy the masters' dominion. The decisive case was the prosecution ofNathaniel Jennison of Worcester County for assault and imprisonment allegedto have been committed upon his absconded slave Quork Walker in the processof his recovery. On the trial in 1783 the jury responded to a stronganti-slavery charge from Chief Justice Cushing by returning a verdictagainst Jennison, and the court fined him £50 and costs. [Footnote 5: G. H. Moore, _Notes on the History of Slavery inMassachusetts_, pp. 181-209. ] [Footnote 6: _Ibid_. , p. 208. So far as the present writer's knowledgeextends, 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, thoughsome were deterred "on account of their age and infirmities, or becausethey did not know how to provide for themselves, or for some pecuniaryconsideration. "[8] The former slaveholders now felt a double grievance:they were deprived of their able-bodied negroes but were not relieved ofthe legal obligation to support such others as remained on their hands. Petitions for their relief were considered by the legislature but neveracted upon. The legal situation continued vague, for although an act of1788 forbade citizens to trade in slaves and another penalized the sojournfor more than two months in Massachusetts of negroes from other states, [9]no legislation defined the status of colored residents. In the federalcensus of 1790, however, this was the only state in which no slaves werelisted. [Footnote 8: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 386. ] [Footnote 9: Moore, pp. 227-229. ] Racial antipathy and class antagonism among the whites appear tohave contributed to this result. John Adams wrote in 1795, with someexaggeration and incoherence: "Argument might have [had] some weight inthe abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause was themultiplication of labouring white people, who would no longer suffer therich to employ these sable rivals so much to their injury . .. If thegentlemen had been permitted by law to hold slaves, the common white peoplewould have put the negroes to death, and their masters too, perhaps . .. The common white people, or rather the labouring people, were the cause ofrendering negroes unprofitable servants. Their scoffs and insults, theircontinual 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 ofeconomy. "[10] [Footnote 10: Massachusetts Historical Society _Collections_, XLIII, 402. ] Slavery in the rest of the Northern states was as a rule not abolished, butrather put in process of gradual extinction by legislation of a peculiarsort enacted in response to agitations characteristic of the times. Pennsylvania set the pattern in an act of 1780 providing that all childrenborn thereafter of slave mothers in the state were to be the servants oftheir mothers' owners until reaching twenty-eight years of age, and then tobecome free. Connecticut followed in 1784 with an act of similar purportbut with a specification of twenty-five years, afterward reduced totwenty-one, as the age for freedom; and in 1840 she abolished her remnantof slavery outright. In Rhode Island an act of the same year, 1784, enactedthat the children thereafter born of slave mothers were to be free at theages of twenty-one for males and eighteen for females, and that thesechildren were meanwhile to be supported and instructed at public expense;but an amendment of the following year transferred to the mothers' ownersthe burden of supporting the children, and ignored the matter of theireducation. New York lagged until 1799, and then provided freedom for theafter-born only at twenty-eight and twenty-five years for males and femalesrespectively; but a further act of 1817 set the Fourth of July in 1827 as atime for the emancipation for all remaining slaves in the state. NewJersey fell into line last of all by an act of 1804 giving freedom to theafter-born at the ages of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for females;and in 1846 she converted the surviving slaves nominally into apprenticesbut without materially changing their condition. Supplementary legislationhere and there in these states bestowed freedom upon slaves in militaryservice, restrained the import and export of slaves, and forbade thecitizens 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 ColonialRecords_, X, 132, 133; A. J. Northrup, "Slavery in New York, " in the NewYork State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 286-298; H. S. Cooley, "Slaveryin 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 putin train, generally by the device of emancipating the _post nati_; and inconsequence the slave population in that quarter dwindled before the middleof the nineteenth century to a negligible residue. To the southward thetobacco states, whose industry had reached a somewhat stationary condition, found it a simple matter to prohibit the further importation of slaves fromAfrica. Delaware did this in 1776, Virginia in 1778, Maryland in 1783 andNorth Carolina in 1794. But in these commonwealths as well as in their moresoutherly neighbors, the contemplation of the great social and economicproblems involved in disestablishing slavery daunted the bulk of thecitizens and impelled their representatives to conservatism. The advocacyof abolition, whether sudden or gradual, was little more than sporadic. The people were not to be stampeded in the cause of inherent rights orany other abstract philosophy. It was a condition and not a theory whichconfronted them. In Delaware, however, the problem was hardly formidable, for at the time ofthe first federal census there were hardly nine thousand slaves and a thirdas many colored freemen in her gross population of some sixty thousandsouls. Nevertheless a bill for gradual abolition considered by thelegislature in 1786 appears not to have been brought to a vote, [12] and noaction in the premises was taken thereafter. The retention of slavery seemsto have been mainly due to mere public inertia and to the pressure ofpolitical sympathy with the more distinctively Southern states. Because ofher border position and her dearth of plantation industry, the slaves inDelaware steadily decreased to less than eighteen hundred in 1860, whilethe 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 Quakersbetween 1785 and 1791 and supported by William Pinckney and CharlesCarroll, were successively defeated in the legislature; and effortsto remove the legal restraints on private manumission were likewisethwarted. [13] These restrictions, which applied merely to the freeing ofslaves above middle age, were in fact very slight. The manumissions indeedwere so frequent and the conditions of life in Maryland were so attractiveto free negroes, or at least so much less oppressive than in most otherstates, that while the slave population decreased between 1790 and 1860from 103, 036 to 87, 189 souls the colored freemen multiplied from 8046 to83, 942, a number greater by twenty-five thousand than that in any othercommonwealth. [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 thesouthward of Chesapeake Bay as they were common to the north of it, whilein Maryland, and still more in Virginia, the bulk of the people approvedthe doctrine and a respectable minority were ready to adopt it in practice, "a minority which for weight and worth of character preponderates againstthe greater number who have not the courage to divest their families ofa property which, however, keeps their conscience unquiet. " Virginia, he continued, "is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for theinteresting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression, aconflict in which the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influxinto office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in theprinciples of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is tothem 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 forrevising the Virginia laws, appointed in 1776 with himself a member, framea special amendment for disestablishing slavery. This contemplated agradual emancipation of the after-born children, their tutelage by thestate, their colonization at maturity, and their replacement in Virginiaby white immigrants. [15] But a knowledge that such a project would raisea storm caused even its framers to lay it aside. The abolition ofprimogeniture 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 theslaveholding system in phrases afterward classic among abolitionists: "Withwhat execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one-half ofthe citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms thoseinto despots and these into enemies . .. And can the liberties of a nationbe thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a convictionin the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? Thatthey are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for mycountry when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleepforever. "[16] In the course of the same work, however, he deprecatedabolition unless it were to be accompanied with deportation: "Why notretain and incorporate the blacks into the state. .. ? Deep rooted prejudicesentertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections by the blacks of theinjuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions whichnature has made, and many other circumstances, will divide us intoparties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in theextermination of the one or the other race . .. This unfortunate differenceof colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to theemancipation of these people. Many of their advocates while they wish tovindicate the liberty of human nature are anxious also to preserve itsdignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question 'Whatfurther is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with thosewho are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans, emancipationrequired but one effort. The slave when made free might mix withoutstaining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessaryunknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach ofmixture. "[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 someplan might be adopted "by which slavery may be abolished by slow, sure andimperceptible degrees. " But he noted in the same year that some abolitionpetitions presented to the Virginia legislature had barely been given areading. [18] [Footnote 18: Washington, _Writings_, W. C. Ford ed. , XI, 20, 62. ] Seeking to revive the issue, Judge St. George Tucker, professor of law inWilliam and Mary College, inquired of leading citizens of Massachusetts in1795 for data and advice, and undaunted by discouraging reports received inreply or by the specific dissuasion of John Adams, he framed an intricateplan for extremely gradual emancipation and for expelling the freedmenwithout expense to the state by merely making their conditions of lifeunbearable. This was presented to the legislature in a pamphlet of 1796at the height of the party strife between the Federalists andDemocratic-Republicans; and it was impatiently dismissed fromconsideration. [19] Tucker, still nursing his project, reprinted his"dissertation" as an appendix to his edition of Blackstone in 1803, wherethe people and the politicians let it remain buried. In public opinion, theproblem as to the freedmen remained unsolved and insoluble. [Footnote 19: St. George Tucker, _A Dissertation on Slavery, with aproposal for the gradual abolition of it in the State of Virginia_(Philadelphia, 1796, reprinted New York, 1860). Tucker's Massachusettscorrespondence is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Society_Collections_, XLIII (Belknap papers), 379-431. ] Meanwhile the Virginia black code had been considerably moderated duringand after the Revolution; and in particular the previous almost iron-cladprohibition of private manumission had been wholly removed in effect by anact of 1782. In spite of restrictions afterward imposed upon manumissionand upon the residence of new freedmen in the state, the free negroesincreased on a scale comparable to that in Maryland. As compared with anestimate 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 moreslowly until it reached 58, 042, about one-eighth as many as the slavesnumbered, in 1860. In the more southerly states condemnation of slavery was rare. Amongthe people of Georgia, the depressing experience of the colony under aprohibition of it was too fresh in memory for them to contemplate withfavor a fresh deprivation. In South Carolina Christopher Gadsden hadwritten in 1766 likening slavery to a crime, and a decade afterward HenryLaurens wrote: "You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery. .. . The day, I hopeis approaching when from principles of gratitude as well as justice everyman will strive to be foremost in showing his readiness to comply with thegolden rule. Not less than twenty thousand pounds sterling would all mynegroes produce if sold at public auction tomorrow. .. . Nevertheless I amdevising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entailof 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 ifI deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but notinsuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest toa better hand. I am not one of those . .. Who dare trust in Providence fordefence and security of their own liberty while they enslave and wishto continue in slavery thousands who are as well entitled to freedom asthemselves. I perceive the work before me is great. I shall appear to manyas a promoter not only of strange but of dangerous doctrines; it willtherefore be necessary to proceed with caution. "[20] Had either Gadsdenor Laurens entertained thoughts of launching an anti-slavery campaign, however, the palpable hopelessness of such a project in their communitymust have dissuaded them. The negroes of the rice coast were sooutnumbering and so crude that an agitation applying the doctrine ofinherent liberty and equality to them could only have had the effect ofdiscrediting 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 theAfrican 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 inhis _Life of Henry Laurens_, p. 446, which varies from the present one, wasderived from a paraphrase by John Laurens to whom the original was written. Cf. _South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine_, X. 49. Forrelated items in the Laurens correspondence _see_ D. D. Wallace, _Life ofHenry Laurens_, pp. 445, 447-455. ] In North Carolina the prevailing lack of enterprise in public affairs hadno exception in regard to slavery. The Quakers alone condemned it. When in1797 Nathaniel Macon, a pronounced individualist and the chief spokesman ofhis state in Congress, discussed the general subject he said "there was nota gentleman in North Carolina who did not wish there were no blacks in thecountry. It was a misfortune--he considered it a curse; but there was noway of getting rid of them. " Macon put his emphasis upon the negro problemrather than upon the question of slavery, and in so doing he doubtlessreflected the thought of his community. [21] The legislation of NorthCarolina regarding racial control, like that of the period in SouthCarolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky, was more conservative thanliberal. [Footnote 21: _Annals of Congress_, VII, 661. American historians, throughpreoccupation or inadvertence, have often confused anti-negro withanti-slavery expressions. In reciting the speech of Macon here quotedMcMaster has replaced "blacks" with "slaves"; and incidentally he has madethe whole discussion apply to Georgia instead of North Carolina. Rhodesin 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 theConfederation was little concerned with slavery problems except in itsdiplomatic affairs, where the question was merely the adjustment ofproperty in slaves, and except in regard to the western territories. Proposals for the prohibition of slavery in these wilderness regions wereincluded in the first projects for establishing governments in them. Timothy Pickering and certain military colleagues framed a plan in 1780 fora state beyond the Ohio River with slavery excluded; but it was allowedto drop out of consideration. In the next year an ordinance drafted byJefferson was introduced into Congress for erecting territorial governmentsover the whole area ceded or to be ceded by the states, from theAlleghanies to the Mississippi and from Canada to West Florida; and one ofits features was a prohibition of slavery after the year 1800 throughoutthe region concerned. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Congresscould enact legislation only by the affirmative votes of seven statedelegations. When the ballot was taken on the anti-slavery clause the sixstates from Pennsylvania eastward voted aye: Maryland, Virginia and SouthCarolina voted no; and the other states were absent. Jefferson was notalone in feeling chagrin at the defeat and in resolving to persevere. Pickering expressed his own views in a letter to Rufus King: "To suffer thecontinuance of slaves till they can be gradually emancipated, in statesalready overrun with them, may be pardonable because unavoidable withouthazarding greater evils; but to introduce them into countries where nonealready exist . .. Can never be forgiven. " King in his turn introduced aresolution virtually restoring the stricken clause, but was unable to bringit to a vote. After being variously amended, the ordinance without thisclause was adopted. It was, however, temporary in its provision andineffectual in character; and soon the drafting of one adequate forpermanent 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 hugetract of Ohio land. When the bill was put to the final vote it wassupported by every member with the sole exception of the New Yorker, Abraham Yates. Delegations from all of the Southern states but Marylandwere present, and all of them voted aye. Its enactment gave to the countrya basic law for the territories in phrasing and in substance comparable tothe Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. Applyingonly to the region north of the Ohio River, the ordinance provided forthe erection of territories later to be admitted as states, guaranteed inrepublican government, secured in the freedom of religion, jury trial andall concomitant rights, endowed with public land for the support of schoolsand universities, and while obligated to render fugitive slaves on claimof their masters in the original states, shut out from the régime ofslaveholding itself. [22] "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntaryservitude in the said territory, " it prescribed, "otherwise than inpunishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. " Thefirst Congress under the new constitution reënacted the ordinance, whichwas the first and last antislavery achievement by the central government inthe 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. Theexcessive stress which the Revolution had laid upon the liberty ofindividuals had threatened for a time to break the community's grasp uponthe essentials of order and self-restraint. Social conventions of manysorts were flouted; local factions resorted to terrorism against theiropponents; legislatures abused their power by confiscating loyalistproperty and enacting laws for the dishonest promotion of debtor-classinterests, and the central government, made pitiably weak by the prevailingjealousy of control, was kept wholly incompetent through the shirkingof burdens by states pledged to its financial support. But populism andparticularism brought their own cure. The paralysis of government nowenabled sober statesmen to point the prospect of ruin through chaos andget a hearing in their advocacy of sound system. Exalted theorising on theprinciples of liberty had merely destroyed the old régime: matter-of-factreckoning on principles of law and responsibility must build the new. Theplan of organization, furthermore, must be enough in keeping with thepopular will to procure a general ratification. Negro slavery in the colonial period had been of continental extent butunder local control. At the close of the Revolution, as we have seen, its area began to be sectionally confined while the jurisdiction over itcontinued to lie in the several state governments. The great conventionat Philadelphia in 1787 might conceivably have undertaken the transfer ofauthority over the whole matter to the central government; but on the onehand the beginnings of sectional jealousy made the subject a delicateone, and on the other hand the members were glad enough to lay aside allproblems not regarded as essential in their main task. Conscious ignoranceby even the best informed delegates from one section as to affairs inanother was a dissuasion from the centralizing of doubtful issues; and thesecrecy of the convention's proceedings exempted it from any pressure ofanti-slavery sentiment from outside. On the whole the permanence of any critical problem in the premises wasdiscredited. Roger Sherman of Connecticut "observed that the abolition ofslavery seemed to be going on in the United States, and that the good senseof the people of the several states would by degrees compleat it. " Hiscolleague Oliver Ellsworth said, "The morality or wisdom of slavery areconsiderations belonging to the states themselves"; and again, "Let us notintermeddle. As population increases poor laborers will be so plenty as torender 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 theconduct of states as to slaves, but ought to be careful not to give anysanction to it. " The agreement was general that the convention keep itshands off so far as might be; but positive action was required uponincidental phases which involved some degree of sanction for theinstitution itself. These issues concerned the apportionment ofrepresentation, the regulation of the African trade, and the rendition offugitives. This last was readily adjusted by the unanimous adoption of aclause introduced by Pierce Butler of South Carolina and afterward changedin its phrasing to read: "No person held to service or labour in one stateunder the laws thereof escaping into another shall in consequence of anylaw or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, butshall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labourmay be due. " After some jockeying, the other two questions were settled bycompromise. Representation in the lower house of Congress was apportionedamong the states "according to their several members, which shall bedetermined by adding to the whole number of free persons . .. Three fifthsof all other persons. " As to the foreign slave trade, Congress wasforbidden to prohibit it prior to the year 1808, and was merely permittedmeanwhile to levy an import duty upon slaves at a rate of not more than tendollars each. [23] [Footnote 23: Max Farrand ed. , _The Records of the Federal Convention_ (NewHaven, 1911), _passim_] In the state conventions to which the Constitution was referred forratification the debates bore out a remark of Madison's at Philadelphiathat the real difference of interests lay not between the large and smallstates but between those within and without the slaveholding influence. Theopponents of the Constitution at the North censured it as a pro-slaveryinstrument, while its advocates apologized for its pertinent clauses on theground that nothing more hostile to the institution could have been carriedand that if the Constitution were rejected there would be no prospect ofa federal stoppage of importations at any time. But at the South theopposition, except in Maryland and Virginia where the continuance of theAfrican trade was deprecated, declared the slavery concessions inadequate, while the champions of the Constitution maintained that the utmostpracticable advantages for their sectional interest had been achieved. Among the many amendments to the Constitution proposed by the ratifyingconventions the only one dealing with any phase of slavery was offered, strange to say, by Rhode Island, whose inhabitants had been and stillwere so active in the African trade. It reads: "As a traffic tending toestablish and continue the slavery of the human species is disgraceful tothe cause of liberty and humanity, Congress shall as soon as may be promoteand establish such laws as may effectually prevent the importation ofslaves of every description. "[24] The proposal seems to have received nofurther attention at the time. [Footnote 24: This was dated May 29, 1790. H. V. Ames, "Proposed Amendmentto the Constitution of the United States, " in the American HistoricalAssociation _Report_ for 1896, p. 208] In the early sessions of Congress under the new Constitution most of thefew debates on slavery topics arose incidentally and ended without positiveaction. The taxation of slave imports was proposed in 1789, but was neverenacted: sundry petitions of anti-slavery tenor, presented mostly byQuakers, were given brief consideration in 1790 and again at the closeof the century but with no favorable results; and when, in 1797, a moreconcrete issue was raised by memorials asking intervention on behalf ofsome negroes whom Quakers had manumitted in North Carolina in disregard oflegal restraints and who had again been reduced to slavery, a committeereported that the matter fell within the scope of judicial cognizancealone, and the House dismissed the subject. For more than a decade, indeed, the only legislation enacted by Congress concerned at all with slavery wasthe act of 1793 empowering the master of an interstate fugitive to seizehim wherever found, carry him before any federal or state magistrate in thevicinage, and procure a certificate warranting his removal to the statefrom which he had fled. Proposals to supplement this rendition act on theone hand by safeguarding free negroes from being kidnapped under fraudulentclaims and on the other hand by requiring employers of strange negroes topublish 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 selfinterest was regaining its wonted supremacy. While the rising cottonindustry was giving the blacks in the South new value as slaves, Northernspokesmen were frankly stating an antipathy of their people toward negroesin any capacity whatever. [25] The succession of disasters in San Domingo, meanwhile, gave warning against the upsetting of racial adjustments in theblack belts, and the Gabriel revolt of 1800 in Virginia drove the lessonhome. On slavery questions for a period of several decades the policyof each of the two sections was merely to prevent itself from beingoverreached. The conservative trend, however, could not wholly remove theRevolution's impress of philosophical liberalism from the minds of men. Slavery was always a thing of appreciable disrelish in many quarters; andthe slave trade especially, whether foreign or domestic, bore a permanentstigma. [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 theimportation of slaves were uniformly thwarted, as we have seen, by theBritish government. The desire for prohibition, however, had been far fromconstant or universal. [1] The first Continental Congress when declaring theAssociation, on October 18, 1774, resolved: "We will neither import, norpurchase any slave imported, after the first day of December next; afterwhich time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neitherbe concerned in it ourselves nor will we hire our vessels nor sell ourcommodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it. "[2] But eventhis was mainly a political stroke against the British government; and thegeneral effect of the restraint lasted not more than two or three years. [3]The ensuing war, of course, hampered the trade, and the legislatures ofseveral Northern states, along with Delaware and Virginia, took occasionto prohibit slave importations. The return of peace, although followed byindustrial depression, revived the demand for slave labor. Nevertheless, Maryland prohibited the import by an act of 1783; North Carolina laid aprohibitive duty in 1787; and South Carolina in the spring of that yearenacted the first of a series of temporary laws which maintained acontinuous prohibition for sixteen years. Thus at the time when the framersof the Federal Constitution were stopping congressional action for twentyyears, the trade was legitimate only in a few of the Northern states, allof which soon enacted prohibitions, and in Georgia alone at the South. The San Domingan cataclysm prompted the Georgia legislature in an actof December 19, 1793, to forbid the importation of slaves from the WestIndies, the Bahamas and Florida, as well as to require free negroes toprocure magisterial certificates of industriousness and probity. [4] TheAfrican trade was left open by that state until 1798, when it was closedboth by legislative enactment and by constitutional provision. [Footnote 1: The slave trade enactments by the colonies, the states andthe federal government are listed and summarized in W. E. B. DuBois, _TheSuppression 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 permittedthem appears to have been small. For the year 1796, for example, theimports at Savannah were officially reported at 2084, including some whohad been brought coastwise from the northward for sale. [5] A foreigntraveler who visited Savannah in the period noted that the demand was lightbecause of the dearth of money and credit, that the prices were about threehundred dollars per head, that the carriers were mainly from New England, and that one third of each year's imports were generally smuggled intoSouth 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 wasobvious but not isolated. At the North it was supplemented, often inthe same breasts, by the inhumane feeling of personal repugnance towardnegroes. The anti-slave-trade agitation in England also had a contributinginfluence; and there were no economic interests opposing the exclusion. At the South racial repugnance was fainter, and humanitarianism though ofpositive weight was but one of several factors. The distinctively Southernconsiderations against the trade were that its continuance would lower theprices of slaves already on hand, or at least prevent those prices fromrising; that it would so increase the staple exports as to spoil theworld's market for them; that it would drain out money and keep thecommunity in debt; that it would retard the civilization of the negroesalready on hand; and that by raising the proportion of blacks in thepopulation it would intensify the danger of slave insurrections. Theseveral arguments had varying degrees of influence in the several areas. In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-goingcomfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer districts thesettlers were more confident in their own alertness. Again, whereprosperity was declining the planters were fairly sure to favor anythingcalculated to raise the prices of slaves which they might wish in future tosell, while on the other hand the people in districts of rising industrywere tempted by programmes tending to cheapen the labor they needed. The arguments used in South Carolina for and against exclusion may begathered from scattering reports in the newspapers. In September, 1785, thelower house of the legislature upon receiving a message from the governoron the distressing condition of commerce and credit, appointed a committeeof fifteen on the state of the republic. In this committee there was avigorous debate on a motion by Ralph Izard to report a bill prohibitingslave importations for three years. John Rutledge opposed it. Since thepeace with Great Britain, said he, not more than seven thousand slaveshad been imported, which at £50 each would be trifling as a cause of theexisting stringency; and the closing of the ports would therefore fail torelieve the distress[7] Thomas Pinckney supported Rutledge with an argumentthat the exclusion of the trade from Charleston would at once drivecommerce in general to the ports of Georgia and North Carolina, and thatthe advantage of low prices, which he said had fallen from a level of £90in 1783, would be lost to the planters. Judge Pendleton, on the other hand, stressed the need of retrenchment. Planters, he said, no longer enjoyed thelong loans which in colonial times had protected them from distress; andthe short credits now alone available put borrowers in peril of bankruptcyfrom a single season of short crops and low prices. [8] The committeereported Izard's bill; but it was defeated in the House by a vote of 47 to51, and an act was passed instead for an emission of bills of credit by thestate. The advocacy of the trade by Thomas Pinckney indicates that at thistime 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 thelegislature demanded a law to stay the execution of debts, while the nowunified conservatives proposed again the stoppage of the slave trade. Inthe course of the debate David Ramsay "made a jocose remark that everyman who went to church last Sunday and said his prayers was bound by aspiritual obligation to refuse the importation of slaves. They had devoutlyprayed not to be led into temptation, and negroes were a temptation toogreat to be resisted. "[9] The issue was at length adjusted by combiningthe two projects of a stay-law and a prohibition of slave importations forthree years in a single bill. This was approved on March 28, 1787; and afurther act of the same day added a penalty of fine to that of forfeiturefor the illegal introduction of slaves. The exclusion applied to slavesfrom every source, except those whose masters should bring them whenentering the state as residents. [10] [Footnote 9: Charleston _Morning Post_, March 23, 1787. ] [Footnote 10: _Ibid_. , March 29, 1787; Cooper and McCord, _Statutes atLarge of South Carolina_, VII, 430. ] Early in the next year an attempt was made to repeal the prohibition. Itsleading advocate was Alexander Gillon, a populistic Charleston merchantwho had been made a commodore by the State of South Carolina but had neversailed a ship. The opposition was voiced so vigorously by Edward Rutledge, Charles Pinckney, Chancellor Matthews, Dr. Ramsay, Mr. Lowndes, and othersthat the project was crushed by 93 votes to 40. The strongest weapon inthe hands of its opponents appears to have been a threat of repealing thestay-law in retaliation. [11] At the end of the year the prohibitory acthad its life prolonged until the beginning of 1793; and continuation actsadopted every two or three years thereafter extended the régime until theend of 1803. The constitutionality of the prohibition was tested before thejudiciary of the state in January, 1802, when the five assembled judgesunanimously 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 governorin a message of November 24, 1803, recited that his best exertions toenforce the law had been of no avail. Inhabitants of the coast and thefrontier, said he, were smuggling in slaves abundantly, while the people ofthe central districts were suffering an unfair competition in having topay high prices for their labor. He mentioned a recently enacted law ofCongress reinforcing the prohibitory acts of the several states only topronounce it already nullified by the absence of public sanction; and hedismissed any thought of providing the emancipation of smuggled slavesas "a remedy more mischievous than their introduction in servitude. "[13]Having thus described the problem as insoluble by prohibitions, he left thesolution to the legislature. [Footnote 13: Charleston _Courier_, Dec. 5, 1803. ] In spite of the governor's assertion, supported soon afterward by astatement of William Lowndes in Congress, [14] there is reason to believethat violations of the law had not been committed on a great scale. Slaveprices could not have become nearly doubled, as they did during the periodof legal prohibition, if African imports had been at all freely made. Thegovernor may quite possibly have exaggerated the facts with a view tobringing 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 Senateto repeal all acts against importations. Mr. Barnwell opposed this onthe ground that the immense influx of slaves which might be expected inconsequence would cut in half the value of slave property, and that theincrease in the cotton output would lower the already falling prices ofcotton to disastrous levels. The resumption of the great war in Europe, said he, had already diminished the supply of manufactured goods and raisedtheir prices. "Was it under these circumstances that we ought to layout the savings of our industry, the funds accumulated in many years ofprosperity and peace, to increase that produce whose value had alreadyfallen so much? He thought not. The permission given by the bill would leadto ruinous speculations. Everyone would purchase negroes. It was well knownthat 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 andfavorable markets for making their payments; and it would be found thatSouth Carolina would in a few years, if this trade continued open, be inthe same situation of debt, and subject to all misfortunes which thatsituation had produced, as at the close of the Revolutionary war. " Thenewspaper closed its report of the speech by a concealment of its furtherburden: "The Hon. Member adduced in support of his opinion various otherarguments, still more cogent and impressive, which from reasons veryobvious we decline making public. "[15] It may be surmised that thesuppressed remarks dealt with the danger of slave revolts. In the furthercourse of the debate, "Mr. Smith said he would agree to put a stop to theimportation of slaves, but he believed it impossible. For this reason hewould 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 thewhole, "that the laws prohibiting the importation of negroes and otherpersons of colour in this state can be so amended as to prevent theirintroduction amongst us, " and had recommended that a select committee beappointed to draft a bill accordingly. [16] Within the following week, however, the sentiment of the House was swung to the policy of repeal, andthe Senate bill was passed. On the test vote the ayes were 55 and thenoes 46. [17] The act continued the exclusion of West Indian negroes, andprovided that slaves brought in from sister states of the Union must haveofficial certificates of good character; but as to the African trade itremoved all restrictions. In 1805 a bill to prohibit imports again wasintroduced 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 HistoricalAssociation _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 justopened a new importation of fifty thousand volumes. As he wrote in afteryears, the news that the legislature had reopened the slave trade "had notbeen five hours in the city, before two large British Guineamen, that hadbeen lying on and off the port for several days expecting it, came up totown; and from that day my business began to decline. .. . A great change atonce took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for thecoast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were boughtup with avidity, not only consuming the large funds that had beenaccumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting creditand mortgaging the slaves for payment. .. . For myself, I was upwards of fiveyears disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more than a half, inall 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 5386slaves 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 alater time placed the total at 39, 310, and analysed the statistics asfollows: slaves brought by British vessels, 19, 449; by French vessels, 1078; by American vessels, operated mostly for the account of RhodeIslanders and foreigners, 18, 048. [21] If an influx no greater than thiscould produce the effect which Thomas described, notwithstanding that manyof the slaves were immediately reshipped to New Orleans and many morewere almost as promptly sold into the distant interior, the scale ofthe preceding illicit trade must have been far less than the officialstatements 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 otherstates. The North Carolina legislature, by a vote afterwards described asvirtually unanimous in both houses, adopted resolutions in December, 1804, instructing the Senators from North Carolina and requesting her Congressmento use their utmost exertions at the earliest possible time to procurean amendment to the Federal Constitution empowering Congress at once toprohibit the further importation of slaves and other persons of colorfrom Africa and the West Indies. Copies were ordered sent not only to thestate's delegation in Congress but to the governors of the other states fortransmission to the legislatures with a view to their concurrence. [22] Inthe next year similar resolutions were adopted by the legislatures of NewHampshire, Vermont, Maryland and Tennessee;[23] but the approach of thetime when Congress would acquire the authority without a change of theConstitution caused a shifting of popular concern from the scheme ofamendment to the expected legislation of Congress. Meanwhile, a bill forthe temporary government of the Louisiana purchase raised the question ofAfrican importations there which occasioned a debate in the Senate at thebeginning of 1804[24] nearly as vigorous as those to come on the generalquestion three years afterward. [Footnote 22: Broadside copy of the resolution, accompanied by a letter ofGovernor James Turner of North Carolina to the governor of Connecticut, inthe possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. ] [Footnote 23: H. V. Ames, _Proposed Amendments to the Constitution_, in theAmerican Historical Association _Report_ for 1896, pp. 208, 209. ] [Footnote 24: Printed from Senator Plumer's notes, in the _AmericanHistorical Review_, XXII, 340-364. ] In the winter of 1804-1805 bills were introduced in both Senate and Houseto prohibit slave importations at large; but the one was postponed for ayear and the other was rejected, [25] doubtless because the time was notnear enough when they could take effect. At last the matter was formallypresented by President Jefferson. "I congratulate you, fellow-citizens, "he said in his annual message of December 2, 1806, "on the approach ofthe period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally towithdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participationin those violations of human rights which have been so long continuedon the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, thereputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager toproscribe. Although no law you can pass can take effect until the day ofthe year one thousand eight hundred and eight, yet the intervening periodis not too long to prevent, by timely notice, expeditions which cannot becompleted before that day. "[26] Next day Senator Bradley of Vermont gavenotice of a bill which was shortly afterward introduced and which, afteran unreported discussion, was passed by the Senate on January 27. Itsconspicuous provisions were that after the close of the year 1807 theimportation of slaves was to be a felony punishable with death, and thatthe 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. Theparagraph of the President's message was referred on December 3 to acommittee of seven with Peter Early of Georgia as chairman and three otherSoutherners in the membership. The committee's bill reported on December15, proposed to prohibit slave importations, to penalize the fitting out ofvessels for the trade by fine and forfeiture, to lay fines and forfeitureslikewise upon the owners and masters found within the jurisdictional watersof the United States with slaves from abroad on board, and empowered thePresident to use armed vessels in enforcement. It further provided that ifslaves illegally introduced should be found within the United States theyshould be forfeited, and any person wittingly concerned in buying orselling them should be fined; it laid the burden of proof upon defendantswhen charged on reasonable grounds of presumption with having violated theact; and it prescribed that the slaves forfeited should, like othergoods in the same status, be sold at public outcry by the proper federalfunctionaries. [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 theforfeited slaves be entitled to freedom. Mr. Early replied that this wouldrob the bill of all effect by depriving it of public sanction in thedistricts whither slaves were likely to be brought. Those communities, hesaid, would never tolerate the enforcement of a law which would set freshAfricans at large in their midst. Mr. Smilie, voicing the sentiment andindicating the dilemma of most of his fellow Pennsylvanians, declaredhis unconquerable aversion to any measure which would make the federalgovernment a dealer in slaves, but confessed that he had no programme ofhis own. Nathaniel Macon, the Speaker, saying that he thought the desireto enact an effective law was universal, agreed with Early that Sloan'samendment would defeat the purpose. Early himself waxed vehement, prophesying the prompt extermination of any smuggled slaves emancipated inthe Southern states. The amendment was defeated by a heavy majority. Next day, however, Mr. Bidwell of Massachusetts renewed Sloan's attack bymoving to strike out the provision for the forfeiture of the slaves; buthis colleague Josiah Quincy, supported by the equally sagacious TimothyPitkin of Connecticut, insisted upon the necessity of forfeiture; and Earlycontended that this was particularly essential to prevent the smuggling ofslaves across the Florida border where the ships which had brought themwould keep beyond the reach of congressional laws. The House finding itselfin an impasse referred the bill back to the same committee, which soonreported it in a new form declaring the illegal importation of slavesa felony punishable with death. Upon Early's motion this provision waspromptly stricken out in committee of the whole by a vote of 60 to 41;whereupon Bidwell renewed his proposal to strike out the forfeiture ofslaves. He was numerously supported in speeches whose main burden was thatthe United States government must not become the receiver of stolen goods. The speeches in reply stressed afresh the pivotal quality of forfeiture inan effective law; and Bidwell when pressed for an alternative plan couldonly say that he might if necessary be willing to leave them to thedisposal of the several states, but was at any rate "opposed to disgracingour statute book with a recognition of the principle of slavery. " Quincyreplied that he wished Bidwell and his fellows "would descend from theirhigh abstract ground to the level of things in their own state--suchas have, do and will exist after your laws, and in spite of them. " TheSouthern members, said he, were anxious for nothing so much as a totalprohibition, and for that reason were insistent upon forfeiture. For thesake of enforcing the law, and for the sake of controlling the futurecondition of the smuggled slaves, forfeiture was imperative. Such aprovision would not necessarily admit that the importers had had a titlein the slaves before capture, but it and it alone would effectively divestthem of any color of title to which they might pretend. The amendment wasdefeated by a vote of 36 to 63. When the bill with amendments was reported to the House by the committee ofthe whole, on December 31, there was vigorous debate upon the question ofsubstituting imprisonment of from five to ten years in place of the deathpenalty. Mr. Talmadge of Connecticut supported the provision of death witha biblical citation; and Mr. Smilie said he considered it the very marrowof the bill. Mr. Lloyd of Maryland thought the death penalty would beout of proportion to the crime, and considered the extract from Exodusinapplicable since few of the negroes imported had been stolen in Africa. But Mr. Olin of Vermont announced that the man-stealing argument hadpersuaded 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 largemajority of the people in the Southern states do not . .. Believe it immoralto hold human flesh in bondage. Many deprecate slavery as an evil; as apolitical evil; but not as a crime. Reflecting men apprehend, at somefuture day, evils, incalculable evils, from it; but it is a fact thatfew, very few, consider it as a crime. It is best to be candid on thissubject. .. . I will tell the truth. A large majority of people in theSouthern states do not consider slavery as an evil. Let the gentleman goand travel in that quarter of the Union; let him go from neighborhood toneighborhood, and he will find that this is the fact. Some gentlemen appearto legislate for the sake of appearances. .. . I should like to know whathonor you will derive from a law that will be broken every day of yourlives. "[29] Mr. Stanton said with an air of deprecation on behalf of hisstate of Rhode Island: "I wish the law made so strong as to prevent thistrade in future; but I cannot believe that a man ought to be hung for onlystealing 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 endof the exhausting day showed 63 in favor and 53 against the substitution ofimprisonment. The North was divided, 29 to 37, with the nays coming mostlyfrom Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut; the South, although SouthCarolina 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. Bidwellrenewed his original attack by moving to strike out the confiscation ofslaves; and when this was defeated by 39 to 77, he attempted to reach thesame end by a proviso "That no person shall be sold as a slave by virtue ofthis act, " This was defeated only by the casting vote of the Speaker. Thosevoting aye were all from Northern states, except Archer of Maryland, Broomof Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky and Williams of North Carolina. The noeswere all from the South except one from New Hampshire, ten from New York, and one from Pennsylvania. The outcome was evidently unsatisfactory to thebulk of the members, for on the next day a motion to recommit the bill toa new committee of seventeen prevailed by a vote of 76 to 46. Among themembers who shifted their position over night were six of the ten from NewYork, four from Maryland, three from Virginia, and two from North Carolina. In the new committee Bedinger of Kentucky, who was regularly on theNorthern side, was chairman, and Early was not included. This committee reported in February a bill providing, as a compromise, thatforfeited negroes should be carried to some place in the United Stateswhere slavery was either not permitted or was in course of gradualextinction, and there be indentured or otherwise employed as the Presidentmight deem best for them and the country. Early moved that for this therebe substituted a provision that the slaves be delivered to the severalstates in which the captures were made, to be disposed of at discretion;and he said that the Southern people would resist the indenture provisionwith their lives. This reckless assertion suggests that Early was eitherset against the framing of an effective law, or that he spoke in mere blindrage. Before further progress was made the House laid aside its bill in favor ofthe one which the Senate had now passed. An amendment to this, striking outthe death penalty, was adopted on February 12 by a vote of 67 to 48. TheNorth 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 andSouth Carolina. A considerable shifting of votes appeared since the balloton the same question six weeks before. Knight of Rhode Island, Sailly andWilliams of New York, Helms of New Jersey and Wynns of North Carolinachanged in favor of the extreme penalty; but they were more than offset bythe opposite change of Bidwell of Massachusetts, Van Cortlandt of New York, Lambert of New Jersey, Clay and Gray of Virginia and McFarland of NorthCarolina. Numerous members from all quarters who voted on one of theseroll-calls were silent at the other, and this variation also had a netresult against the infliction of death. The House then filled the blankit had made in the bill by defining the offense as a high misdemeanor andproviding a penalty of imprisonment of not less than five nor more thanten years. John Randolph opposed even this as excessive, but found himselfunsupported. The House then struck out the prohibition of the coastingtrade in slaves, and returned the bill as amended to the Senate. The latterconcurred in all the changes except that as to the coastwise trade, andsent the bill back to the House. John Randolph now led in the insistence that the House stand firm. If thebill should pass without the amendment, said he, the Southern people wouldset the law at defiance, and he himself would begin the violation of sounconstitutional an infringement of the rights of property. The House votedto insist upon its amendment, and sent the bill to conference where incompromise the prohibition as to the coastwise carriage of slaves for salewas made to apply only to vessels of less than forty tons burthen. TheSenate agreed to this. In the House Mr. Early opposed it as improper in lawand so easy of evasion that it would be perfectly futile for the preventionof smuggling from Florida. John Randolph said: "The provision of the billtouched the right of private property. He feared lest at a future period itmight be made the pretext of universal emancipation. He had rather lose thebill, he had rather lose all the bills of the session, he had rather loseevery bill passed since the establishment of the government, than agreeto the provision contained in this slave bill. It went to blow up theConstitution in ruins. "[30] Concurrence was carried, nevertheless, by avote of 63 to 49, in which the North cast 51 ayes to 12 noes, and the South12 ayes to 37 noes. The Southern ayes were four from Maryland, fourfrom North Carolina, two from Tennessee, and one each from Virginia andKentucky. The Northern noes were five from New York, two each from NewHampshire and Vermont, and one each from Massachusetts, Connecticut andPennsylvania. [Footnote 30: _Annals of Congress_, 1806-1807, p. 626. ] The bill then passed the House. Its variance from the original House billwas considerable, for it made the importation of slaves from abroad a highmisdemeanor punishable with imprisonment; it prohibited the coastwise tradeby sea in vessels of less than forty tons, and required the masters oflarger vessels transporting negroes coastwise to deliver to the portofficials classified manifests of the negroes and certificates that to thebest of their knowledge and belief the slaves had not been imported sincethe beginning of 1808; and instead of forfeiture to the United States itprovided that all smuggled slaves seized under the act should be subject tosuch disposal as the laws of the state or territory in which the seizuremight be made should prescribe. [31] Randolph, still unreconciled, offeredan explanatory act, February 27, that nothing in the preceding act shouldbe construed to affect in any manner the absolute property right of mastersin their slaves not imported contrary to the law, and that such mastersshould not be liable to any penalty for the coastwise transportation ofslaves in vessels of less than forty tons. In attempting to force thismeasure through, he said that if it did not pass the House at once he hopedthe Virginia delegation would wait on the President and remonstrate againsthis approving the act which had passed. [32] By a vote of 60 to 49 this billwas made the order for the next day; but its further consideration wascrowded out by the rush of business at the session's close. The Presidentsigned the prohibitory bill on March 2, without having received thethreatened 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 inthe course of these complex proceedings, six may be taken as tests. Theywere on striking out the death penalty, December 31; on striking out theforfeiture of slaves, January 7; on the proviso that no person shouldbe sold by virtue of the act, January 7; on referring the bill to a newcommittee, January 8; on striking out the death penalty from the Senatebill, February 12; and on the prohibition of the coasting trade in slavesin vessels of under forty tons, February 26. In each case a majority ofthe Northern members voted on one side of the question, and a yet largermajority of Southerners voted on the other. Twenty-two members voted inevery case on the side which the North tended to adopt. These comprisedseven from Massachusetts, six from Pennsylvania, three from Connecticut, and one or two from each of the other Northern states except Rhode Islandand Ohio. They comprised also Broom of Delaware, Bedinger of Kentucky, andMorrow of Virginia; while Williams of North Carolina was almost equallyconstant in opposing the policies advocated by the bulk of his fellowSoutherners. On the other hand the regulars on the Southern side comprisednot only ten Virginians, all of the six South Carolinians, except three oftheir number on the punishment questions, all of the four Georgians, threeNorth Carolinians, two Marylanders and one Kentuckian, but in additionTenney of New Hampshire, Schuneman, Van Rensselaer and Verplanck of NewYork on all but the punishment questions. On the whole, sectional divergence was fairly pronounced, but only onmatters of detail. The expressions from all quarters of a common desireto make the prohibition of importations effective were probably sincerewithout material exception. As regards the Virginia group of states, theireconomic interest in high prices for slaves vouches for the genuine purposeof their representatives, while that of the Georgians and South Caroliniansmay at the most be doubted and not disproved. The South in generalwished to prevent any action which might by implication stigmatize theslaveholding régime, and was on guard also against precedents tending toinfringe state rights. The North, on the other hand, was largely dividedbetween a resolve to stop the sanction of slavery and a desire to enactan effective law in the premises directly at issue. The outcome was a lawwhich 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 systematicsmuggling began to prevail from Amelia Island on the Florida border, and ona smaller scale on the bayous of the Barataria district below New Orleans;but these operations were checked upon the passage of a congressional actin 1818 increasing the rewards to informers. Another act in the followingyear directed the President to employ armed vessels for police in bothAfrican and American waters, and incidentally made provisions contemplatingthe return of captured slaves to Africa. Finally Congress by an act of 1820declared the maritime slave trade to be piracy. [33] Smuggling thereafterdiminished 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 seventythousand. [34] Most of the documents in the premises, however, bear palpablemarks of unreliability. It may suffice to say that these importations werenever great enough to affect the labor supply in appreciable degree. So faras the general economic régime was concerned, the foreign slave trade waseffectually closed in 1808. [Footnote 34: W. H. Collins, _The Domestic Slave Trade of the SouthernStates_ (New York [1904], pp. 12-20). _See also_ W. E. B. DuBois, "Enforcement of the Slave Trade Laws, " in the American HistoricalAssociation _Report_ for 1891, p. 173. ] At that time, however, there were already in the United States about onemillion slaves to serve as a stock from which other millions were to beborn to replenish the plantations in the east and to aid in the peopling ofthe west. These were ample to maintain a chronic racial problem, and had noman invented a cotton gin their natural increase might well have gluttedthe market for plantation labor. Had the African source been kept freelyopen, the bringing of great numbers to meet the demand in prosperous timeswould quite possibly have so burdened the country with surplus slaves insubsequent periods of severe depression that slave prices would have fallenvirtually to zero, and the slaveholding community would have been drivento emancipate them wholesale as a means of relieving the masters from theburden of the slaves' support. The foes of slavery had long reckoned thatthe abolition of the foreign trade would be a fatal blow to slaveryitself. The event exposed their fallacy. Thomas Clarkson expressed thedisappointment of the English abolitionists in a letter of 1830: "Wecertainly have been deceived in our first expectations relative to thefruit of our exertions. We supposed that when by the abolition of the slavetrade the planters could get no more slaves, they would not only treatbetter those whom they then had in their power, but that they wouldgradually find it to their advantage to emancipate them. A part of ourexpectations have been realized; . .. But, alas! where the heart has beendesperately wicked, we have found no change. We did not sufficiently takeinto account the effect of unlimited power on the human mind. No man likesto part with power, and the more unbounded it is, the less he likes topart with it. Neither did we sufficiently take into account the ignominyattached to a black skin as the badge of slavery, and how difficult itwould be to make men look with a favourable eye upon what they had looked[upon] formerly as a disgrace. Neither did we take sufficiently intoaccount the belief which every planter has, that such an unnatural stateas that of slavery can be kept up only by a system of rigour, and howdifficult therefore it would be to procure a relaxation from the ordinarydiscipline of a slave estate. "[35] [Footnote 35: MS. In private possession. ] If such was the failure in the British West Indies, the change inconditions in the United States was even greater; for the rise of thecotton industry concurred with the prohibition of the African trade toenhance immensely the preciousness of slaves and to increase in similardegree 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 theplantation districts. The tobacco industry, upon which half of the Southernpeople depended in greater or less degree, was entering upon a half centuryof such wellnigh constant low prices that the opening of each new tract forits culture was offset by the abandonment of an old one, and the exportremained stationary at a little less than half a million hogsheads. Indigoproduction was decadent; and rice culture was in painful transition to thenew tide-flow system. Slave prices everywhere, like those of most otherinvestments, were declining in so disquieting a manner that as late as theend of 1794 George Washington advised a friend to convert his slaves intoother forms of property, and said on his own account: "Were it not that Iam principled against selling negroes, as you would cattle in a market, Iwould 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 troublesomespecies of property ere many years have passed over our heads. "[1] But atthat very time the addition of cotton and sugar to the American staples wason 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. Thiscontinued to be the case even when the original sources in the Orient wereconsiderably supplemented from the island of Bourbon and from the coloniesof Demarara, Berbice and Surinam which dotted the tropical South Americancoast now known as Guiana. Then, in the latter half of the eighteenthcentury, the great English inventions of spinning and Weaving machinery socheapened the manufacturing process that the world's demand for textileswas immensely stimulated. Europe was eagerly inquiring for new fibersupplies at the very time when the plantation states of America were underthe strongest pressure for a new source of income. The green-seed, short-staple variety of cotton had long been cultivatedfor domestic use in the colonies from New Jersey to Georgia, but on such apetty scale that spinners occasionally procured supplies from abroad. ThusGeorge Washington, who amid his many activities conducted a considerablecloth-making establishment, wrote to his factor in 1773 that a bale ofcotton received from England had been damaged in transit. [2] The cuttingoff of the foreign trade during the war for independence forced theAmericans to increase their cotton production to supply their necessitiesfor apparel. A little of it was even exported at the end of the war, eightbags of which are said to have been seized by the customs officers atLiverpool in 1784 on the ground that since America could not produce sogreat a quantity the invoice must be fraudulent. But cotton was as yet keptfar from staple rank by one great obstacle, the lack of a gin. The fibersof the only variety at hand clung to the seed as fast as the wool to thesheep's back. It had to be cut or torn away; and because the seed-tuftswere so small, this operation when performed by hand was exceedingly slowand correspondingly expensive. The preparation of a pound or two of lint aday 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 amachine for cleaning the lint from the seed of the sort already at hand, or the introduction of some different variety whose lint was more lightlyattached. Both solutions were applied, and the latter first in point oftime though not in point of importance. About 1786 seed of several strains was imported from as many quartersby planters on the Georgia-Carolina coast. Experiments with the Bourbonvariety, which yielded the finest lint then in the market, showed thatthe growing season was too short for the ripening of its pods; but seedprocured from the Bahama Islands, of the sort which has ever since beenknown as sea-island, not only made crops but yielded a finer fiber thanthey had in their previous home. This introduction was accomplished bythe simultaneous experiments of several planters on the Georgia coast. Ofthese, Thomas Spaulding and Alexander Bissett planted the seed in 1786 butsaw their plants fail to ripen any pods that year. But the ensuing winterhappened to be so mild that, although the cotton is not commonly aperennial outside the tropics, new shoots grew from the old roots in thefollowing spring and yielded their crop in the fall. [3] Among those whopromptly adopted the staple was Richard Leake, who wrote from Savannah atthe end of 1788 to Tench Coxe: "I have been this year an adventurer, andthe 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 theexperiment. I shall raise about 5000 pounds in the seed from about eightacres of land, and the next year I expect to plant from fifty to onehundred 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 ofCotton_ (New York, 1872), p. 45. ] The first success in South Carolina appears to have been attained byWilliam Elliott, on Hilton Head near Beaufort, in 1790. He bought five anda half bushels of seed in Charleston at 14s per bushel, and sold his cropat 10-1/2d per pound. In the next year John Screven of St. Luke's parishplanted 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 adjacentmainland now joined the movement. Some of them encountered failure, amongthem General Moultrie of Revolutionary fame who planted one hundred andfifty acres in St. John's Berkeley in 1793 and reaped virtually nothing. [5] [Footnote 5: Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, _Memoir on the Origin, Cultivation andUses of Cotton_ (Charleston, 1844), pp. 19, 20. ] The English market came promptly to esteem the long, strong, silkysea-island fiber as the finest of all cottons; and the prices at Liverpoolrose 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 cropof three hundred acres on his plantation, "Belvedere, " in 1794 gathered216 pounds to the acre, which at prices ranging from fifty to seventy-fivecents 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 sameyear an average of $340 per hand; and William Brisbane of St. Paul's earnedso much in the three years from 1796 to 1798 that he found himself richenough to retire from work and spend several years in travel at the Northand abroad. He sold his plantation to William Seabrook at a price which theneighbors thought ruinously high, but Seabrook recouped the whole of itfrom the proceeds of two years' crops. [7] [Footnote 6: Samuel DuBose, _Address delivered before the Black OakAgricultural Society, April 28, 1858_, in T. G. Thomas, _The Huguenots ofSouth 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 plantsgrown 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 thisvariety prevented the planters from attaining generally more than abouthalf the output per acre which their upland colleagues came to reap fromtheir crops of the shorter staple. A hundred and fifty pounds to the acreand three or four acres to the hand was esteemed a reasonable crop on theseaboard. [8] The exports of the sea-island staple rose by 1805 to nearlynine million pounds, but no further expansion occurred until 1819 when anincrease carried the exports for a decade to about eleven million pounds ayear. In the course of the twenties Kinsey Burden and Hugh Wilson, both ofSt. John's Colleton, began breeding superfine fiber through seed selection, with such success that the latter sold two of his bales in 1828 at theunequaled price of two dollars a pound. The practice of raising fancygrades became fairly common after 1830, with the result, however, that forthe following decade the exports fell again to about eight million pounds ayear. [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 inlength, had the advantages of easy detachment from its glossy black seed bysqueezing it between a pair of simple rollers, and of a price for even itscommon grades ranging usually more than twice that of the upland staple. The disadvantages were the slowness of the harvesting, caused by thefailure of the bolls to open wide; the smallness of the yield; and thenecessity of careful handling at all stages in preparing the lint formarket. Climatic requirements, furthermore, confined its culture withina strip thirty or forty miles wide along the coast of South Carolina andGeorgia. In the first flush of the movement some of the rice fields wereconverted to cotton;[10] but experience taught the community ere long thatthe labor expense in the new industry absorbed too much of the gross returnfor it to displace rice from its primacy in the district. [Footnote 10: F. A. Michaux, _Travels_, in R. G. Thwaites, ed. , _EarlyWestern Travels_, III, 303. ] In the Carolina-Georgia uplands the industrial and social developmentsof the eighteenth century had been in marked contrast with those on theseaboard. These uplands, locally known as the Piedmont, were separated fromthe tide-water tract by a flat and sandy region, the "pine barrens, " ahundred miles or more in breadth, where the soil was generally too lightfor prosperous agriculture before the time when commercial fertilizers cameinto use. The Piedmont itself is a rolling country, extending without abreak from Virginia to Alabama and from the mountains of the Blue Ridge tothe line of the lowest falls on the rivers. The soil of mingled clayand sand was originally covered with rich forest mold. The climate wasmoderately suited to a great variety of crops; but nothing was found forwhich it had a marked superiority until short-staple cotton was madeavailable. In the second half of the eighteenth century this region had come tobe occupied in scattered homesteads by migrants moving overland fromPennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, extending their régime of frontierfarms until the stubborn Creek and Cherokee Indian tribes barred furtherprogress. Later comers from the same northeastward sources, some of thembringing a few slaves, had gradually thickened the settlement withoutchanging materially its primitive system of life. Not many recruits hadentered from the rice coast in colonial times, for the régime there was notsuch as to produce pioneers for the interior. The planters, unlike those ofMaryland and Virginia, had never imported appreciable numbers of indenturedservants to become in after years yeomen and fathers of yeomen; the slavesbegat slaves alone to continue at their masters' bidding; and the plantersthemselves had for the time being little inducement to forsake thelowlands. The coast and the Piedmont were unassociated except by a trickleof trade by wagon and primitive river-boat across the barrens. The captureof Savannah and Charleston by the British during the War for Independence, however, doubtless caused a number of the nearby inhabitants to move intothe Piedmont as refugees, carrying their slaves with them. The commercial demands of the early settlers embraced hardly anythingbeyond salt, ammunition and a little hardware. The forest and theirhalf-cleared fields furnished meat and bread; workers in the householdsprovided rude furniture and homespun; and luxuries, except home-madeliquors, were unknown. But the time soon came when zealous industry yieldedmore grain and cattle than each family needed for its own supply. Thesurplus required a market, which the seaboard was glad to furnish. The roadand river traffic increased, and the procurement of miscellaneous goodsfrom 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 marketcrops. Flax and hemp were tried, and tobacco with some success. Several newvillages were founded, indeed, on the upper courses of the rivers to serveas stations for the inspection and shipment of tobacco; but their buddinghopes of prosperity from that staple were promptly blighted. The productwas 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 in1799, but rapidly declined thereafter. Tobacco, never more than a makeshiftstaple, was gladly abandoned for cotton at the first opportunity. [11] [Footnote 11: U. B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the EasternCotton Belt to 1860_ (New York, 1908), pp. 46-55. ] At the time of the federal census of 1790 there were in the main group ofupland counties of South Carolina, comprised then in the two "districts" ofCamden and Ninety-six, a total of 91, 704 white inhabitants, divided into15, 652 families. Of these 3787 held slaves to the number of 19, 934--anaverage of 5-1/4 slaves in each holding. No more than five of these parcelscomprised as many as one hundred slaves each, and only 156 masters, aboutfour per cent, of the whole, had as many as twenty each. These largerholdings, along with the 335 other parcels ranging from ten to nineteenslaves each, were of course grouped mainly in the river counties in thelower part of the Piedmont, while the smallest holdings were scattered farand wide. That is to say, there was already discoverable a tendency towarda plantation régime in the localities most accessible to market, whileamong the farmers about one in four had one or more slaves to aid in thefamily's work. The Georgia Piedmont, for which the returns of the earlycensuses have been lost, probably had a somewhat smaller proportion ofslaves by reason of its closer proximity to the Indian frontier. A sprinkling of slaves was enough to whet the community's appetite foropportunities to employ them with effect and to buy more slaves with theproceeds. It is said that in 1792 some two or three million poundsof short-staple cotton was gathered in the Piedmont, [12] perhaps inanticipation of a practicable gin, and that the state of Georgia hadappointed a commission to promote the desired invention. [13] It is certainthat many of the citizens were discussing the problem when in the spring of1793 young Eli Whitney, after graduating at Yale College, left his home inMassachusetts intending to teach school in the South. While making a visitat the home of General Greene's widow, near Savannah, he listened to aconversation on the subject by visitors from upland Georgia, and he wasurged by Phineas Miller, the manager of the Greene estate, to apply hisYankee ingenuity to the solution. When Miller offered to bear the expensesof the project, Whitney set to work, and within ten days made a model whichmet the essential requirements. This comprised a box with a slatted sideagainst 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, thesharp wires passing between the slats would engage the lint and pull itthrough as they passed out in the further revolution of the cylinder. Theseed, which were too large to pass through the grating, would stay withinthe hopper until virtually all the wool was torn off, whereupon they wouldfall through a crevice on the further side. The minor problem which nowremained of freeing the cylinder's teeth from their congestion of lintfound a solution in Mrs. Greene's stroke with a hearth-broom. Whitney, seizing the principle, equipped his machine with a second cylinder studdedwith brushes, set parallel to the first but revolving in an oppositedirection and at a greater speed. This would sweep the teeth clean as fastas they emerged lint-laden from the hopper. Thus was the famous cotton-gindevised. [14] [Footnote 12: Letter of Phineas Miller to the Comptroller of SouthCarolina, 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 withWhitney not only to manufacture gins but also to monopolize the businessof operating them, charging one-third of the cotton as toll. They evenventured into the buying and selling of the staple on a large scale. Millerwrote Whitney in 1797, for example, that he was trying to raise money forthe purchase of thirty or forty thousand pounds of seed cotton at theprevailing price of three cents, and was projecting a trade in the lint tofar-off Tennessee. [15] By this time the partners had as many as thirty ginsin operation at various points in Georgia; but misfortune had already begunto pursue them. Their shop on the Greene plantation had been forced by amob even before their patent was procured in 1793, and Jesse Bull, CharlesM. Lin and Edward Lyons, collaborating near Wrightsboro, soon put forth animproved gin in which saw-toothed iron discs replaced the wire points ofthe Whitney model. [16] Whitney had now returned to New Haven to establisha gin factory, and Miller wrote him in 1794 urging prompt shipments andsaying: "The people of the country are running mad for them, and much canbe said to justify their importunity. When the present crop is harvestedthere will be a real property of at least fifty thousand dollars lyinguseless unless we can enable the holders to bring it to market, " But anepidemic prostrated Whitney's workmen that year, and a fire destroyed hisfactory in 1795. Meanwhile rival machines were appearing in the market, andWhitney and Miller were beginning their long involvement in lawsuits. Theiroverreaching policy of monopolizing the operation of their gins turnedpublic sentiment against them and inclined the juries, particularly inGeorgia, to decide in favor of their opponents. Not until 1807, when theirpatent was on the point of expiring did they procure a vindication in theGeorgia courts. Meanwhile a grant of $50, 000 from the legislature of SouthCarolina to extinguish the patent right in that state, and smaller grantsfrom North Carolina and Tennessee did little more than counterbalanceexpenses. [17] A petition which Whitney presented to Congress in 1812 for arenewal of his expired patent was denied, and Whitney turned his talents tothe 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 theInvention 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 battleof advertisers in the newspapers. Thomas Spaulding offered to supply JosephEve's gins from the Bahama Islands at fifty guineas each;[18] and Evehimself shortly immigrated to Augusta to contend for his patent rights onroller-gins, for some of his workmen had changed his model in such a way asto increase the speed, and had put their rival gins upon the market. [19]Among these may have been John Currie, who offered exclusive county rightsat $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 owndevising at $150 each, [21] and Robert Watkins of the short-lived town ofPetersburg, Georgia, who denounced Longstreet as an infringer of his patentand advertised local non-exclusive rights for making and using his ownstyle of gins at the bargain rate of sixty dollars. [22] All of these weredescribed as roller gins; but all were warranted to gin upland as well assea-island cotton. [23] By the year 1800 Miller and Whitney had alsoadopted the practice of selling licenses in Georgia, as is indicated by anadvertisement from their agent at Augusta. Meanwhile ginners were callingfor negro boys and girls ten or twelve years old on hire to help at themachines;[24] and were offering to gin for a toll of one-fifth of thecotton. [25] As years passed the rates were still further lowered. AtAugusta in 1809, for example, cotton was ginned and packed in square balesof 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 tothe new opportunity. By 1800 even Tennessee had joined the movement, anda gin of such excellence was erected near Nashville that the proprietorsexacted fees from visitors wishing to view it;[27] and by 1802 not onlywere consignments being shipped to New Orleans for the European market, butpart of the crop was beginning to be peddled in wagons to Kentucky and inpole-boats on the Ohio as far as Pittsburg, for the domestic making ofhomespun. [28] In 1805 John Baird advertised at Nashville that, havingreceived a commission from correspondents at Baltimore, he was ready tobuy as much as one hundred thousand pounds of lint at fifteen cents apound. [29] In the settlements about Vicksburg in the Mississippi Territory, cotton was not only the staple product by 1809, but was also for the timebeing the medium of exchange, while in Arkansas the squatters were debarredfrom the new venture only by the poverty which precluded them from gettinggins. [30] In Virginia also, in such of the southerly counties as hadsummers long enough for the crop to ripen in moderate security, cottongrowing became popular. But for the time being these were merely anout-lying fringe of cotton's principality. The great rush to cotton growingprior to the war of 1812 occurred in the Carolina-Georgia Piedmont, withits 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 newstaple required no large capital and involved no exposure to disease. Riceand indigo, said he, had offered the poorer whites, except the few employedas overseers, no livelihood "without the degradation of working withslaves"; but cotton, stimulating and elevating these people into the rankof substantial farmers, tended "to fill the country with an independentindustrious yeomanry. "[31] True as this was, it did not mean that producerson a plantation scale were at a disadvantage. Settlers of every type, in fact, adopted the crop as rapidly as they could get seed and ginningfacilities, 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 themat rising prices until 1801 when the short-staple output was about fortymillion 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; andmigrants coming from the northward and the rice coast brought additionalslaves in their train. General Wade Hampton was the first conspicuous oneof these. With the masterful resolution which always characterized him, hecarried his great gang from the seaboard to the neighborhood of Columbiaand there in 1799 raised six hundred of the relatively light weight balesof that day on as many acres. [32] His crop was reckoned to have a value ofsome 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 tooperate on a minor scale; and the high cost of transportation caused themgenerally to continue producing miscellaneous goods to meet their domesticneeds. The diversified régime is pictured in Michaux's description of aNorth Carolina plantation in 1802: "In eight hundred acres of which it iscomposed, a hundred and fifty are cultivated in cotton, Indian corn, wheatand oats, and dunged annually, which is a great degree of perfection in thepresent state of agriculture in this part of the country. Independent ofthis [the proprietor] has built in his yard several machines that the samecurrent 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 distilleryto make peach brandy, and a small forge where the inhabitants of thecountry go to have their horses shod. Seven or eight negro slaves areemployed in the different departments, some of which are only occupied atcertain periods of the year. Their wives are employed under the directionof the mistress in manufacturing cotton and linen for the use of thefamily. "[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 mayeasily be exaggerated. In those counties of South Carolina which lay whollywithin the Piedmont the fifteen thousand slaves on hand in 1790 formedslightly less than one-fifth of the gross population there. By 1800the number of slaves increased by seventy per cent. , and formed nearlyone-fourth of the gross; in the following decade they increased by ninetyper cent. , until they comprised one-third of the whole; from 1810 to 1820their number grew at the smaller rate of fifty per cent, and reachedtwo-fifths of the whole; and by 1830, with a further increase of forty percent. , the number of slaves almost overtook that of the whites. The slaveswere then counted at 101, 982, the whites at 115, 318, and the free negroesat 2, 115. In Georgia the slave proportion grew more rapidly than thisbecause it was much smaller at the outset; in North Carolina, on theother hand, the rise was less marked because cotton never throve there sogreatly. In its industrial requirements cotton was much closer to tobacco than torice or sugar. There was no vital need for large units of production. Onsoils of the same quality the farmer with a single plow, if his family didthe hoeing and picking, was on a similar footing with the greatest planteras to the output per hand, and in similar case as to cost of production perbale. The scale of cotton-belt slaveholdings rose not because free laborwas unsuited to the industry but because slaveholders from the outsidemoved in to share the opportunity and because every prosperingnon-slaveholder and small slaveholder was eager to enlarge his personalscale of operations. Those who could save generally bought slaves withtheir savings; those who could not, generally continued to raise cottonnevertheless. The gross cotton output, in which the upland crop greatly and increasinglyoutweighed that of the sea-island staple, rapidly advanced from aboutforty-eight million pounds in 1801 to about eighty million in 1806; then itwas kept stationary by the embargo and the war of 1812, until the returnof peace and open trade sent it up by leaps and bounds again. The pricedropped abruptly from an average of forty-four cents in the New York marketin 1801 to nineteen cents in 1802, but there was no further decline untilthe 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 becomeexcessive. In 1790 South Carolina had sent abroad a surplus of corn fromthe back country measuring well over a hundred thousand bushels. But by1804 corn brought in brigs was being advertised in Savannah to meet thelocal deficit;[36] and in the spring of 1807 there seems to have been adearth of grain in the Piedmont itself. At that time an editorial in the_Augusta Chronicle_ ran as follows: "A correspondent would recommend to theplanters of Georgia, now the season is opening, to raise more corn and lesscotton . .. The dear bought experience of the present season should teach usto be more provident for the future. " [37] Under the conditions of the timethis 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 prevailinglack of transportation facilities food could not be brought from adistance at a price within reach. The systematic basis of industry was theproduction, whether by planters or farmers, of such food as was locallyneeded and such supplies of cloth together with such other outfit as it waseconomical to make at home, and the devotion of all further efforts to themaking 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 thatof sugar in the delta lands of southeastern Louisiana. In this triangulardistrict, whose apex is the junction of the Red and Mississippi rivers, thecountry is even more amphibious than the rice coast. Everywhere in fact thesoil is too waterlogged for tillage except close along the Father of Watershimself and his present or aforetime outlets. Settlement must, therefore, take the form of strings of plantations and farms on these elevatedriparian strips, with the homesteads fronting the streams and the fieldsstretching a few hundred or at most a few thousand yards to the rear; andevery new establishment required its own levee against the flood. So longas there were great areas of unrestricted flood-plain above Vicksburg toimpound the freshets and lower their crests, the levees below required nogreat height or strength; but the tasks of reclamation were at best arduousenough to make rapid expansion depend upon the spur of great expectations. The original colony of the French, whose descendants called themselvesCreoles, was clustered about the town of New Orleans. A short distance upstream the river banks in the parishes of St. Charles and St. John theBaptist were settled at an early period by German immigrants; thence thesettlements were extended after the middle of the eighteenth century, firstby French exiles from Acadia, next by Creole planters, and finally byAnglo-Americans who took their locations mostly above Baton Rouge. As tothe westerly bayous, the initial settlers were in general Acadian smallfarmers. Negro slaves were gradually introduced into all these districts, though the Creoles, who were the most vigorous of the Latin elements, werethe chief importers of them. Their numbers at the close of the colonialperiod equalled those of the whites, and more than a tenth of them had beenemancipated. The people in the later eighteenth century were drawing their livelihoodsvariously from hunting, fishing, cattle raising and Indian trading, fromthe 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 asthe principal export crop. Attempts at sugar production had been made in1725 and again in 1762, but the occurrence of winter frosts before the canewas fully ripe discouraged the enterprise; and in most years no more canewas raised than would meet the local demand for sirup and rum. In theclosing decades of the century, however, worm pests devoured the indigoleaves with such thoroughness as to make harvesting futile; and thereby theplanters were driven to seek an alternative staple. Projects of cotton werebaffled by the lack of a gin, and recourse was once more had to sugar. ASpaniard named Solis had built a small mill below New Orleans in 1791 andwas making sugar with indifferent success when, in 1794-1795, Etienne deBoré, a prominent Creole whose estate lay just above the town, bought asupply of seed cane from Solis, planted a large field with it, engaged aprofessional sugar maker, and installed grinding and boiling apparatusagainst the time of harvest. The day set for the test brought a throng ofonlookers whose joy broke forth at the sight of crystals in the coolingfluid--for the good fortune of Boré, who received some $12, 000 for his cropof 1796, was an earnest of general prosperity. Other men of enterprise followed the resort to sugar when opportunitypermitted them to get seed cane, mills and cauldrons. In spite of a dearthof both capital and labor and in spite of wartime restrictions on maritimecommerce, the sugar estates within nine years reached the number ofeighty-one, a good many of which were doubtless the property of SanDomingan refugees who were now pouring into the province with whateverslaves and other movables they had been able to snatch from the blackrevolution. Some of these had fled first to Cuba and after a sojourn there, during which they found the Spanish government oppressive, removed afreshto Louisiana. As late as 1809 the year's immigration from the two islandswas reported by the mayor of New Orleans to the governor of Louisiana at2, 731 whites and 3, 102 free persons of color, together with 3, 226 slaveswarranted as the property of the free immigrants. [38] The volume of theSan Domingan influx from first to last was great enough to double theFrench-speaking population. The newcomers settled mainly in the New Orleansneighborhood, the whites among them promptly merging themselves with theoriginal Creole population. By reason of their previous familiarity withsugar 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 hadtransformed the political destinies of the community and considerablychanged its economic prospects. After prohibiting in 1804 the importationinto the territory of any slaves who had been brought from Africa since1798, Congress passed a new act in 1805 which, though probably intended tocontinue the prohibition, was interpreted by the attorney-general to permitthe inhabitants to bring in any slaves whatever from any place within theUnited States. [39] This news was published with delight by the New Orleansnewspapers at the end of February, 1806;[40] and from that time until theend of the following year their columns bristled with advertisements ofslaves from African cargoes "just arrived from Charleston. " Of these thefollowing, issued by the firm of Kenner and Henderson, June 24, 1806, isan example: "The subscribers offer for sale 74 prime slaves of the Fanteenation 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 issold. [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 andConstitutions_ (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 slavedemand of the sugar parishes was diverted to the Atlantic plantation stateswhere it served to advertise the Louisiana boom. Wade Hampton of SouthCarolina responded in 1811 by carrying a large force of his slaves toestablish a sugar estate of his own at the head of Bayou Lafourche, and afew others followed his example. The radical difference of the industrialmethods in sugar from those in the other staples, however, together withthe predominance of the French language, the Catholic religion and aCreole social régime in the district most favorable for sugar, madeAnglo-Americans chary of the enterprise; and the revival of cotton pricesafter 1815 strengthened the tendency of migrating planters to stay withinthe cotton latitudes. Many of those who settled about Baton Rouge and onthe Red River with cotton as their initial concern shifted to sugar at theend of the 'twenties, however, in response to the tariff of 1828 whichheightened sugar prices at a time when the cotton market was depressed. This was in response, also, to the introduction of ribbon cane whichmatured earlier than the previously used Malabar and Otaheite varieties andcould accordingly be grown in a somewhat higher latitude. The territorial spread was mainly responsible for the sudden advance of thenumber of sugar estates from 308 operating in 1827, estimated as employing21, 000 able-bodied slaves and having a gross value of $34, 000, 000, to 691plantations in 1830, [42] with some 36, 000 working slaves and a gross valueof $50, 000, 000. At this time the output was at the rate of about 75, 000hogsheads containing 1, 000 pounds of sugar each, together with some fortyor fifty gallons of molasses per hogshead as a by-product. Louisiana was atthis time supplying about half of the whole country's consumption of sugarand bade fair to meet the whole demand ere long. [43] The reduction ofprotective tariff rates, coming simultaneously with a rise of cottonprices, then checked the spread of the sugar industry, and the substitutionof steam engines for horse power in grinding the cane caused someconsolidation of estates. In 1842 accordingly, when the slaves numbered50, 740 and the sugar crop filled 140, 000 hogsheads, the plantations werebut 668. [44] The raising of the tariff anew in that year increased theplantations to 762 in 1845 and they reached their maximum number of 1, 536in 1849, when more than half of their mills were driven by steam[45] andtheir slaves numbered probably somewhat more than a hundred thousand ofall ages. [46] Thereafter the recovery of the cotton market from the severedepression of the early 'forties caused a strong advance in slave priceswhich again checked the sugar spread, while the introduction of vacuum pansand other improvements in apparatus[47] promoted further consolidations. The number of estates accordingly diminished to 1, 298 in 1859, on 987 ofwhich the mills were steam driven, and on 52 of which the extraction andevaporation of the sugar was done by one sort or another of the newlyinvented devices. The gross number of slaves in the sugar parishes wasnearly doubled between 1830 and 1850, but in the final ante-bellum decadeit advanced only at about the rate of natural increase. [48] The sugaroutput advanced to 200, 000 hogsheads in 1844 and to 450, 000 in 1853. Badseasons then reduced it to 74, 000 in 1856; and the previous maximum was notequaled in the remaining ante-bellum years. [49] The liability of thecrop to damage from drought and early frost, and to destruction from theoutpouring of the Mississippi through crevasses in the levees, explains thefluctuations in the yield. Outside of Louisiana the industry took no gripexcept on the Brazos River in Texas, where in 1858 thirty-seven plantationsproduced 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_ (NewOrleans, 1845). ] [Footnote 45: P. A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop Made inLouisiana_ (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 anoverestimate. ] [Footnote 47: Some of these are described by Judah P. Benjamin in _DeBow'sReview_, 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 theclose of the nineteenth century. ] [Footnote 50: P. A. Champonier, _Statement of the Sugar Crop . .. In1858-1859_, p. 40. ] In Louisiana in the banner year 1853, with perfect weather and nocrevasses, each of some 50, 000 able-bodied field hands cultivated, besidesthe incidental food crops, about five acres of cane on the average andproduced about nine hogsheads of sugar and three hundred gallons ofmolasses per head. On certain specially favored estates, indeed, theproduct reached as much as fifteen hogsheads per hand[51]. In the total of1407 fully equipped plantations 103 made less than one hundred hogsheadseach, while forty produced a thousand hogsheads or more. That year'soutput, however, was nearly twice the size of the average crop in theperiod. A dozen or more proprietors owned two or more estates each, some ofwhich were on the largest scale, while at the other extreme several dozenfarmers who had no mills of their own sent cane from their few acres to beworked up in the spare time of some obliging neighbor's mill. In generalthe bulk of the crop was made on plantations with cane fields ranging fromrather more than a hundred to somewhat less than a thousand acres, and witheach acre producing in an ordinary year somewhat more than a hogshead ofsugar. [Footnote 51: _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 199, 200. ] Until about 1850 the sugar district as well as the cotton belt was callingfor labor from whatever source it might be had; but whereas the uplands hadwork for people of both races and all conditions, the demand of the deltalands, to which the sugar crop was confined, was almost wholly for negroslaves. The only notable increase in the rural white population of thedistrict came through the fecundity of the small-farming Acadians who hadlittle to do with sugar culture. CHAPTER X THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT The flow of population into the distant interior followed the lines ofleast resistance and greatest opportunity. In the earlier decades these laychiefly in the Virginia latitudes. The Indians there were yielding, themountains afforded passes thither, and the climate permitted the familiartobacco industry. The Shenandoah Valley had been occupied mainly byScotch-Irish and German small farmers from Pennsylvania; but the glowingreports, which the long hunters brought and the land speculators spreadfrom beyond the further mountains, made Virginians to the manner bornresolve to compete with the men of the backwoods for a share of theKentucky lands. During and after the war for independence they threadedthe gorges, some with slaves but most without. Here and there one found amountain glade so fertile that he made it his permanent home, while hisfellows pushed on to the greater promised land. Some of these emerging upona country of low and uniform hills, closely packed and rounded like thebacks of well-fed pigs crowding to the trough, staked out their claims, setup their cabins, deadened their trees, and planted wheat. Others went onto the gently rolling country about Lexington, let the luxuriant nativebluegrass wean them from thoughts of tobacco, and became breeders of horsesfor evermore. A few, settling on the southerly edge of the bluegrass, mainly in and about Garrard County, raised hemp on a plantation scale. Therest, resisting all these allurements, pressed on still further to thepennyroyal country where tobacco would have no rival. While thousands madethe whole journey overland, still more made use of the Ohio River forthe later stages. The adjutant at Fort Harmar counted in seven months of1786-1787, 177 boats descending the Ohio, carrying 2, 689 persons, 1, 333horses, 766 cattle, 102 wagons and one phaëton, while still others passedby night uncounted. [1] The family establishments in Kentucky were alwayson a smaller scale, on an average, than those in Virginia. Yet the peoplemigrating to the more fertile districts tended to maintain and even toheighten the spirit of gentility and the pride of type which they carriedas part of their heritage. The laws erected by the community were favorableto the slaveholding régime; but after the first decades of the migrationperiod, the superior attractions of the more southerly latitudes forplantation 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, wasattracting Virginia and Carolina emigrants as well as those from thenortherly states. The soil there was excellent, and some districts weresuited to tobacco culture. The Ordinance of 1787, however, though it wasnot strictly enforced, made slaveholdings north of the Ohio negligible fromany but an antiquarian point of view. The settlement of Tennessee was parallel, though subsequent, to that of theShenandoah and Kentucky. The eastern intramontane valley, broad and fertilebut unsuited to the staple crops, gave homes to thousands of small farmers, while the Nashville basin drew planters of both tobacco and cotton, and thecounties along the western and southern borders of the state made cottontheir one staple. The scale of slaveholdings in middle and westernTennessee, while superior to that in Kentucky, was never so great as thosewhich prevailed in Virginia and the lower South. Missouri, whose adaptation to the southern staples was much poorer, cameto be colonized in due time partly by planters from Kentucky but mostlyby farmers from many quarters, including after the first decades a largenumber of Germans, some of whom entered through the eastern ports andothers through New Orleans. This great central region as a whole acquired an agricultural régimeblending the features of the two national extremes. The staples wereprominent but never quite paramount. Corn and wheat, cattle and hogs wereproduced regularly nearly everywhere, not on a mere home consumption basis, but for sale in the cotton belt and abroad. This diversification causedthe region to wane in the esteem of the migrating planters as soon as theAlabama-Mississippi country was opened for settlement. Preliminaries of the movement into the Gulf region had begun as early as1768, when a resident of Pensacola noted that a group of Virginians hadbeen prospecting thereabouts with such favorable results that five of themhad applied for a large grant of lands, pledging themselves to bring in ahundred slaves and a large number of cattle. [2] In 1777 William Bartram meta group of migrants journeying from Georgia to settle on the lower courseof the Alabama River;[3] and in 1785 a citizen of Augusta wrote that "avast number" of the upland settlers were removing toward the Mississippi inconsequence of the relinquishment of Natchez by the Spaniards. [4] But thesewere merely forerunners. Alabama in particular, which comprises for themost part the basin draining into Mobile Bay, could have no safe marketfor its produce until Spain was dispossessed of the outlet. The takingof Mobile by the United States as an episode of the war of 1812, and thesimultaneous breaking of the Indian strength, removed the obstacles. Theinflux then rose to immense proportions. The roads and rivers becamethronged, and the federal agents began to sell homesteads on a scale whichmade 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 in1810 to 200, 000 in 1820, 445, 000 in 1830, 965, 000 in 1840, 1, 377, 000 in1850, and 1, 660, 000 in 1860, while the proportion of slaves advanced fromforty to forty-seven per cent. In the same period the tide flowed on intothe cotton lands of Arkansas and Louisiana and eventually into Texas. Florida alone of the newer southern areas was left in relative neglectby reason of the barrenness of her soil. The states and territories fromAlabama and Tennessee westward increased their proportion of the wholecountry'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 in1860; and all this was in spite of continued and substantial enlargementsof the eastern output. In the western cotton belt the lands most highly esteemed in theante-bellum period lay in two main areas, both of which had soils far morefertile and lasting than any in the interior of the Atlantic states. One ofthese formed a crescent across south-central Alabama, with its western hornreaching up the Tombigbee River into northeastern Mississippi. Its soil ofloose black loam was partly forested, partly open, and densely matted withgrass and weeds except where limestone cropped out on the hill crests andwhere prodigious cane brakes choked the valleys. The area was locallyknown as the prairies or the black belt. [6] The process of opening it forsettlement was begun by Andrew Jackson's defeat of the Creeks in 1814 butwas not completed until some twenty years afterward. The other and greatertract extended along both sides of the Mississippi River from northernTennessee and Arkansas to the mouth of the Red River. It comprised thebroad alluvial bottoms, together with occasional hill districts of richloam, especially notable among the latter of which were those lying aboutNatchez and Vicksburg. The southern end of this area was made availablefirst, and the hills preceded the delta in popularity for cotton culture. It was not until the middle thirties that the broadest expanse of thebottoms, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, began to receive its great influx. The rest of the western cotton belt had soils varying through much the samerange as those of Georgia and the Carolinas. Except in the bottoms, wherethe planters themselves did most of the pioneering, the choicer lands ofthe whole district were entered by a pellmell throng of great planters, lesser planters and small farmers, with the farmers usually a little inthe 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 theplanter class; or if they sold their homesteads at high prices they mightbuy slaves with the proceeds and remove to become planters in still newerdistricts. [Footnote 6: This use of the term "black belt" is not to be confused withthe other and more general application of it to such areas in the South atlarge as have a majority of negroes in their population. ] The process was that which had already been exemplified abundantly in theeastern cotton belt. A family arriving perhaps in the early spring with afew implements and a small supply of food and seed, would build in a fewdays a cabin of rough logs with an earthen floor and a roof of bark or ofriven clapboards. To clear a field they would girdle the larger trees andclear away the underbrush. Corn planted in April would furnish roastingears in three months and ripe grain in six weeks more. Game was plenty;lightwood was a substitute for candles; and housewifely skill furnishedhomespun garments. Shelter, food and clothing and possibly a small cottoncrop 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 framehouses, plant kitchen gardens and watermelon patches, set out orchards andincrease the cotton acreage. The further earnings of a year or two wouldsupply 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 decreasedand the homely comforts grew with every passing year of thrift. But theorchard yield of stuff for the still, and the cotton field's furnishingthe wherewithal to buy more slaves, brought temptations. Distilleries andslaves, a contemporary said, were blessings or curses according as theywere used or abused; for drunkenness and idleness were the gates of theroad 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 theirlabors to reach the western opportunity are exemplified in a local itemfrom an Augusta newspaper in 1819: "Passed through this place fromGreenville District [South Carolina] bound for Chatahouchie, a man and hiswife, his son and his wife, with a cart but no horse. The man had a beltover his shoulders and he drew in the shafts; the son worked by traces tiedto the end of the shafts and assisted his father to draw the cart; theson's wife rode in the cart, and the old woman was walking, carryinga rifle, and driving a cow. "[8] This example, while extreme, was notunique. [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] inprivate letters, in newspaper reports, and by word of mouth. A typicalcommunication was sent home in 1817 by a Marylander who had moved toLouisiana: "In your states a planter with ten negroes with difficultysupports a family genteelly; here well managed they would be a fortune tohim. With you the seasons are so irregular your crops often fail; here thecrops are certain, and want of the necessaries of life never for a momentcauses the heart to ache--abundance spreads the table of the poor man, andcontentment smiles on every countenance. "[11] Other accounts told glowinglyof quick fortunes made and to be made by getting lands cheaply in the earlystages of settlement and selling them at greatly enhanced prices when thetide of migration arrived in force. [12] Such ebullient expressions weretaken at face value by thousands of the unwary; and other thousands of themore cautious followed in the trek when personal inquiries had reinforcedthe tug of the west. The larger planters generally removed only aftersomewhat thorough investigation and after procuring more or lessacquiescence from their slaves; the smaller planters and farmers, withlighter stake in their homes and better opportunity to sell them, withlighter impedimenta for the journey, with less to lose by misadventure, and with poorer facilities for inquiry, responded more readily to theenticements. [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 unconquerablerestlessness. An extraordinary illustration of this is given in the careerof Gideon Lincecum as written by himself. In 1802, when Gideon was tenyears old, his father, after farming successfully for some years in theGeorgia uplands was lured by letters from relatives in Tennessee to sellout and remove thither. Taking the roundabout road through the Carolinas toavoid the Cherokee country, he set forth with a wagon and four horses tocarry a bed, four chests, four white and four negro children, and hismother who was eighty-eight years old. When but a few days on the road anillness of the old woman caused a halt, whereupon Lincecum rented a nearbyfarm and spent a year on a cotton crop. The journey was then resumed, butbarely had the Savannah River been crossed when another farm was rented andanother crop begun. Next year they returned to Georgia and worked a farmnear Athens. Then they set out again for Tennessee; but on the road inSouth Carolina the wreck of the wagon and its ancient occupant gaveabundant excuse for the purchase of a farm there. After another crop, successful as usual, the family moved back to Georgia and cropped stillanother farm. Young Gideon now attended school until his father movedagain, this time southward, for a crop near Eatonton. Gideon then left hisfather after a quarrel and spent several years as a clerk in stores hereand there, as a county tax collector and as a farmer, and began to readmedicine in odd moments. He now married, about the beginning of the year1815, and rejoined his father who was about to cross the Indian country tosettle in Alabama. But they had barely begun this journey when the father, while tipsy, bought a farm on the Georgia frontier, where the two familiessettled and Gideon interspersed deer hunting with his medical reading. Nextspring the cavalcade crossed the five hundred miles of wilderness in sixweeks, and reached the log cabin village of Tuscaloosa, where Gideon builta house. But provisions were excessively dear, and his hospitality to otherland seekers from Georgia soon consumed his savings. He began whipsawinglumber, but after disablement from a gunpowder explosion he found lighteremployment in keeping a billiard room. He then set out westward again, breaking a road for his wagon as he went. Upon reaching the Tombigbee Riverhe 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 andraccoons gathered a hundred and fifty bushels from six acres. When the townof Columbus, Mississippi, was founded nearby in 1819 he sawed boards tobuild a house on speculation. From this he was diverted to the Indiantrade, bartering whiskey, cloth and miscellaneous goods for peltries. Hethen became a justice of the peace and school commissioner at Columbus, surveyed and sold town lots on public account, and built two school houseswith the proceeds. He then moved up the river to engage anew in the Indiantrade with a partner who soon proved a drunkard. He and his wife theretook a fever which after baffling the physicians was cured by his ownprescription. 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 ofcarrying 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 builtup a practice, however, than he became dissatisfied with allopathy andwent to study herb remedies among the Indians; and thereafter he practicedbotanic medicine. In 1834 he went as surgeon with an exploring party toTexas and found that country so attractive that after some years furtherat 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 ageof eighty years. [13] [Footnote 13: F. L. Riley, ed. , "The Autobiography of Gideon Lincecum, " inthe Mississippi Historical Society _Publications_, VIII, 443-519. ] The descriptions and advice which prospectors in the west sent home areexemplified 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 mostremunerative in the whole country; a planter near Natchez was earning $270per hand each year. The Opelousas and Attakapas districts for sugar, and the Red River bottoms for cotton, he thought, offered the bestopportunities because of the cheapness of their lands. As to the journeyfrom North Carolina, he advised that the start be made about the first ofSeptember and the course be laid through Knoxville to Nashville. Travelingthence through the Indian country, safety would be assured by a junctionwith other migrants. Speed would be greater on horseback, but the route wasfeasible for vehicles, and a traveler would find a tent and a keg ofwater conducive to his comfort. The Indians, who were generally short ofprovisions in spring and summer, would have supplies to spare in autumn;and the prevailing dryness of that season would make the streams and swampsin the path less formidable. An alternative route lay through Georgia;but its saving of distance was offset by the greater expanse of Indianterritory to be crossed, the roughness of the road and the frequency ofrivers. The viewing of the delta country, he thought, would require threeor four months of inspection before a choice of location could safely bemade. [14] [Footnote 14: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 197-200. ] The procedure of planters embarking upon long distance migration may begathered from the letters which General Leonard Covington of CalvertCounty, Maryland, wrote to his brother and friends who had preceded him tothe Natchez district. In August, 1808, finding a prospect of sellinghis Maryland lands, he formed a project of carrying his sixty slaves toMississippi and hiring out some of them there until a new plantation shouldbe ready for routine operation. He further contemplated taking with him tenor fifteen families of non-slaveholding whites who were eager to migrateunder his guidance and wished employment by him for a season while theycast about for farms of their own. Covington accordingly sent inquiries asto the prevailing rates of hire and the customary feeding and treatment ofslaves. He asked whether they were commonly worked only from "sun to sun, "and explained his thought by saying, "It is possible that so much labormay be required of hirelings and so little regard may be had for theirconstitutions as to render them in a few years not only unprofitable butexpensive. " He asked further whether the slaves there were contented, whether they as universally took wives and husbands and as easily rearedchildren as in Maryland, whether cotton was of more certain yield andsale than tobacco, what was the cost of clearing land and erecting roughbuildings, what the abundance and quality of fruit, and what the nature ofthe climate. The replies he received were quite satisfactory, but a failure to sell partof his Maryland lands caused him to leave twenty-six of his slaves in theeast. The rest he sent forward with a neighbor's gang. Three white men werein charge, but one of the negroes escaped at Pittsburg and was apparentlynot recaptured. Covington after detention by the delicacy of his wife'shealth and by duties in the military service of the United States, setout at the beginning of October, 1809, with his wife and five children, a neighbor named Waters and his family, several other white persons, andeleven slaves. He described his outfit as "the damnedest cavalcade thatever man was burdened with; not less than seven horses compose my troop;they convey a close carriage (Jersey stage), a gig and horse cart, sothat my family are transported with comfort and convenience, though atconsiderable expense. All these odd matters and contrivances I design totake with me to Mississippi if possible. Mr. Waters will also take downhis waggon and team. " Upon learning that the Ohio was in low water hecontemplated journeying by land as far as Louisville; but he embarked atWheeling instead, and after tedious dragging "through shoals, sandbars andripples" he reached Cincinnati late in November. When the last letter onthe journey was written he was on the point of embarking afresh on aboat so crowded, that in spite of his desire to carry a large stock ofprovisions he could find room for but a few hundredweight of pork and a fewbarrels of flour. He apparently reached his destination at the end of theyear and established a plantation with part of his negroes, leaving therest on hire. The approach of the war of 1812 brought distress; cotton waslow, bacon was high, and the sale of a slave or two was required in makingends meet. Covington himself was now ordered by the Department of War totake the field in command of dragoons, and in 1813 was killed in a battlebeyond the Canadian border. The fate of his family and plantation does notappear 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-waterestate, Elmington, in Gloucester County, Virginia, he was prompted toremove by the prospective needs of his rapidly growing family. The justiceof his anticipations appears from the fact that his second wife bore himeventually sixteen children, ten of whom survived her. After a land-lookingtour through Alabama and Louisiana, Dabney chose a tract in Hinds County, Mississippi, some forty miles east of Vicksburg, where he bought theproperty of several farmers as the beginning of a plantation which finallyengrossed some four thousand acres. Returning to Virginia, he was given agreat farewell dinner at Richmond, at which Governor Tyler presided andmany speakers congratulated Mississippi upon her gain of such a citizenat Virginia's expense. [16] Several relatives and neighbors resolved toaccompany him in the migration. His brother-in-law, Charles Hill, tookcharge of the carriages and the white families, while Dabney himself hadthe care of the wagons and the many scores of negroes. The journey wasaccomplished without mishap in two months of perfect autumn weather. Uponarriving at the new location most of the log houses were found in ruinsfrom a recent hurricane; but new shelters were quickly provided, and in afew months the great plantation, with its force of two hundred slaves, wasin routine operation. In the following years Dabney made it a practice toclear about a hundred acres of new ground annually. The land, rich androlling, was so varied in its qualities and requirements that a generalfailure of crops was never experienced--the bottoms would thrive in dryseasons, the hill crops in wet, and moderation in rainfall would prosperthem all. The small farmers who continued to dwell nearby included Dabneyat first in their rustic social functions; but when he carried twenty ofhis slaves to a house-raising and kept his own hands gloved while directingtheir work, the beneficiary and his fellows were less grateful for theservice than offended at the undemocratic manner of its rendering. WhenDabney, furthermore, made no return calls for assistance, the restraint wasincreased. The rich might patronize the poor in the stratified societyof old Virginia; in young Mississippi such patronage was an unpleasantsuggestion that stratification was beginning. [17] With the passage of yearsand the continued influx of planters ready to buy their lands at goodprices, such fanners as did not thrive tended to vacate the richer soils. The Natchez-Vicksburg district became largely consolidated into greatplantations, [18] and the tract extending thence to Tuscaloosa, as likewisethe district about Montgomery, Alabama, became occupied mostly by smallerplantations on a scale of a dozen or two slaves each, [19] while thenon-slaveholders drifted to the southward pine-barrens or the western ornorthwestern 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 travelersin the period. Basil Hall wrote of one which he overtook in South Carolinain 1828: "It . .. Did not consist of above thirty persons in all, of whomfive-and-twenty at least were slaves. The women and children were stowedaway in wagons, moving slowly up a steep, sandy hill; but the curtainsbeing let down we could see nothing of them except an occasional glance ofan eye, or a row of teeth as white as snow. In the rear of all came a lightcovered vehicle, with the master and mistress of the party. Along theroadside, scattered at intervals, we observed the male slaves trudging infront. 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. Whenwe came nearer, accordingly, we discovered that this couple were boltedtogether by a short chain or bar riveted to broad iron clasps secured inlike manner round the wrists. 'What have you been doing, my boys, ' said ourcoachman in passing, 'to entitle you to these ruffles?' 'Oh, sir, ' criedone of them quite gaily, 'they are the best things in the world to travelwith. ' The other man said nothing. I stopped the carriage and asked one ofthe slave drivers why these men were chained, and how they came to take thematter so differently. The answer explained the mystery. One of them, itappeared, was married, but his wife belonged to a neighboring planter, notto his master. When the general move was made the proprieter of the femalenot choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. Thewretched husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man whohaving no such tie to draw him back might be more safely trusted on thejourney. "[20] [Footnote 20: Basil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 128, 129. _See also_ for similar scenes, Adam Hodgson, _Letters fromNorth America_ (London, 1854), I, 113. ] Timothy Flint wrote after observing many of these caravans: "The slavesgenerally seem fond of their masters, and as much delighted and interestedin their migration as their masters. It is to me a very pleasing andpatriarchal sight. "[21] But Edwin L. Godkin, who in his transit of aMississippi swamp in 1856 saw a company in distress, used the episode as apeg on which to hang an anti-slavery sentiment: "I fell in with an emigrantparty on their way to Texas. Their mules had sunk in the mud, . .. Thewagons 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, throughthe brake, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and were nowcrouching forlorn and woebegone under the shelter of a tree. .. . The menwere making feeble attempts to light a fire. .. . 'Colonel, ' said one of themas I rode past, 'this is the gate of hell, ain't it?' . .. The hardships thenegroes go through who are attached to one of these emigrant parties baffledescription. .. . They trudge on foot all day through mud and thicket withoutrest or respite. .. . Thousands of miles are traversed by these wearywayfarers without their knowing or caring why, urged on by the whip and inthe full assurance that no change of place can bring any change to them. .. . Hard work, coarse food, merciless floggings, are all that await them, andall that they can look to. I have never passed them, staggering along inthe rear of the wagons at the close of a long day's march, the weakestfurthest in the rear, the strongest already utterly spent, withoutwondering how Christendom, which eight centuries ago rose in arms for asentiment, can look so calmly on at so foul and monstrous a wrong as thisAmerican slavery. "[22] If instead of crossing the Mississippi bottoms andascribing to slavery the hardships he observed, Godkin had been crossingthe Nevada desert that year and had come upon, as many others did, a trainof emigrants with its oxen dead, its women and children perishingof thirst, and its men with despairing eyes turned still toward thegold-fields of California, would he have inveighed against freedom as thecause? Between Flint's impression of pleasure and Godkin's of gloom nochoice need be made, for either description was often exemplified. Ingeneral the slaves took the fatigues and the diversions of the route merelyas 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 accessibleto deep water made their transit by sea. Thus on the brig _Calypso_ sailingfrom Norfolk to New Orleans in April, 1819, Benjamin Ballard and Samuel T. Barnes, both of Halifax County, North Carolina, carrying 30 and 196 slavesrespectively, wrote on the margins of their manifests, the one "The ownerof these slaves is moving to the parish of St. Landry near Opelousas wherehe has purchased land and intends settling, and is not a dealer in humanflesh, " the other, "The owner of these slaves is moving to Louisiana tosettle, and is not a dealer in human flesh. " On the same voyage AugustinPugh of the adjoining Bertie County carried seventy slaves whose manifest, though it bears no such asseveration, gives evidence that they likewisewere not a trader's lot; for some of the negroes were sixty years old, andthere were as many children as adults in the parcel. Lots of such sizesas these were of course exceptional. In the packages of manifests nowpreserved in the Library of Congress the lists of from one to a dozenslaves outnumbered those of fifty or more by perhaps a hundred fold. The western cotton belt not only had a greater expanse and richer landsthan the eastern, but its cotton tended to have a longer fiber, ranging, particularly in the district of the "bends" of the Mississippi north ofVicksburg, as much as an inch and a quarter in length and commanding apremium in the market. Its far reaching waterways, furthermore, madefreighting easy and permitted the planters to devote themselves the morefully 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 forgrain and meat contributed much toward the calling of the northwesternsettlements 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 olderplantation states. [24] In 1813 John Randolph wrote: "The whole countrywatered by the rivers which fall into the Chesapeake is in a state ofparalysis. .. The distress is general and heavy, and I do not see how thepeople can pay their taxes. " And again: "In a few years more, those of uswho are alive will move off to Kaintuck or the Massissippi, where corn canbe had for sixpence a bushel and pork for a penny a pound. I do not wonderat the rage for emigration. What do the bulk of the people get here thatthey cannot have there for one fifth the labor in the western country?"Next year, after a visit to his birthplace, he exclaimed: "What a spectacledoes our lower country present! Deserted and dismantled country-houses oncethe seats of cheerfulness and plenty, and the temples of the Most Highruinous and desolate, 'frowning in portentous silence upon the land, '" Andin 1819 he wrote from Richmond: "You have no conception of the gloom anddistress that pervade this place. There has been nothing like it since 1785when from the same causes (paper money and a general peace) there was ageneral 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 werepersistent and widespread. News items from here and there continued fordecades to tell of movement in large volume from Tide-water and Piedmont, from the tobacco states and the eastern cotton-belt, and even from Alabamain its turn, for destinations as distant and divergent as Michigan, Missouri and Texas. The communities which suffered cast about for bothsolace and remedy. An editor in the South Carolina uplands remarked at thebeginning of 1833 that if emigration should continue at the rate of thepast year the state would become a wilderness; but he noted with grimsatisfaction that it was chiefly the "fire-eaters" that were movingout. [26] In 1836 another South Carolinian wrote: "The spirit of emigrationis still rife in our community. From this cause we have lost many, and weare destined, we fear, to lose more, of our worthiest citizens. " Thoughefforts to check it were commonly thought futile, he addressed himself tosuasion. The movement, said he, is a mistaken one; South Carolina plantersshould let well enough alone. The West is without doubt the place forwealth, but prosperity is a trial to character. In the West money iseverything. Its pursuit, accompanied as it is by baneful speculation, lawlessness, gambling, sabbath-breaking, brawls and violence, preventsmoral attainment and mental cultivation. Substantial people should stay inSouth Carolina to preserve their pristine purity, hospitality, freedom ofthought, fearlessness and nobility. [27] [Footnote 26: Sumterville, S. C. , _Whig_, Jan. 5, 1833. ] [Footnote 27: "The Spirit of Emigration, " signed "A South Carolinian, " inthe _Southern Literary Journal_, II, 259-262 (June, 1836). ] An Alabama spokesman rejoiced in the manual industry of the white people inhis state, and said if the negroes were only thinned off it would become agreat and prosperous commonwealth. [28] But another Alabamian, A. B. Meek, found reason to eulogize both emigration and slavery. He said theroughness of manners prevalent in the haphazard western aggregation ofNew Englanders, Virginians, Carolinians and Georgians would prove buta temporary phase. Slavery would be of benefit through its tendency tostratify society, ennoble the upper classes, and give even the poorerwhites a stimulating pride of race. "In a few years, " said he, "owing tothe operation of this institution upon our unparalleled natural advantages, we shall be the richest people beneath the bend of the rainbow; and thenthe arts and the sciences, which always follow in the train of wealth, willflourish 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 abeginning was made in seed selection, manuring and crop rotation toenhance the harvests; horses were largely replaced by mules, whose earliermaturity, greater hardihood and longer lives made their use more economicalfor plow and wagon work;[30] the straight furrows of earlier times gaveplace in the Piedmont to curving ones which followed the hill contoursand when supplemented with occasional grass balks and ditches checked thescouring of the rains and conserved in some degree the thin soils of theregion; a few textile factories were built to better the local market forcotton and lower the cost of cloth as well as to yield profits to theirproprietors; the home production of grain and meat supplies was in somemeasure increased; and river and highway improvements and railroadconstruction were undertaken to lessen the expenses of distantmarketing. [31] Some of these recourses were promptly adopted in the newersettlements also; and others proved of little avail for the time being. Thenet effect of the betterments, however, was an appreciable offsettingof the western advantage; and this, when added to the love of home, thedisrelish of primitive travel and pioneer life, and the dread of the costsand risks involved in removal, dissuaded multitudes from the project ofmigration. The actual depopulation of the Atlantic states was less than theplaints of the time would suggest. The volume of emigration was undoubtedlygreat, and few newcomers came in to fill the gaps. But the birth rate alonein those generations of ample families more than replaced the losses yearby year in most localities. The sense of loss was in general the productnot of actual depletion but of disappointment in the expectation ofincrease. [Footnote 30: H. T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (NewYork, 1916), pp. 166-168. ] [Footnote 31: U. B. Phillips, _History of Transportation in the EasternCotton Belt to 1860_. ] The non-slaveholding backwoodsmen formed the vanguard of settlement oneach frontier in turn; the small slaveholders followed on their heels andcrowded each fertile district until the men who lived by hunting as well asby farming had to push further westward; finally the larger planters withtheir crowded carriages, their lumbering wagons and their trudging slavesarrived 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 inthe 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 ThompsonPhillips who was about to sail for Jamaica exchanged a half interest in hisone-legged negro man for a similar share in Isaac Lathrop's negro boy whowas to sail with Phillips and be sold on the voyage. Lathrop was meanwhileto teach the man the trade of cordwaining, and was to resell his shareto Phillips at the end of a year at a price of £40 sterling. [1] Thistransaction, which was duly concluded in the following year, suggests theexistence of a trade in slaves on a small scale from north to south incolonial times. Another item in the same connection is an advertisement inthe _Boston Gazette_ of August 17, 1761, offering for sale young slavesjust from Africa and proposing to take in exchange "any negro men, strongand hearty though not of the best moral character, which are propersubjects of transportation";[2] and a third instance appears in a letter ofJames Habersham of Georgia in 1764 telling of his purchase of a parcelof negroes at New York for work on his rice plantation. [3] That thedisestablishment of slavery in the North during and after the AmericanRevolution enhanced the exportation of negroes was recited in a Vermontstatute 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 NewLondon in 1787 for a mulatto boy "as a servant for the term of ten yearsonly, at the expiration of which time he is to be free. "[5] Another is areport from an official at Norfolk to the Governor of Virginia, in 1795, relating that the captain of a sloop from Boston with three negroes onboard pleaded ignorance of the Virginia law against the bringing in ofslaves. [6] [Footnote 1: Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XXIV, 335, 336. ] [Footnote 2: Reprinted in Joshua Coffin, _An Account of Some of thePrincipal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860), p. 15. ] [Footnote 3: "The Letters of James Habersham, " in the Georgia HistoricalSociety _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 Disturbancesin 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 thenumber of slaves in the Northern states was more than counterbalanced bythe increase of their free negroes. This means either that the selling ofslaves to the southward was very slight, or that the statistical effectof it was canceled by the northward flight of fugitive slaves and themigration of negroes legally free. There seems to be no evidence that thetraffic across Mason and Dixon's line was ever of large dimensions, thefollowing curious item from a New Orleans newspaper in 1818 to the contrarynotwithstanding: "Jersey negroes appear to be peculiarly adapted to thismarket--especially those that bear the mark of Judge Van Winkle, as it isunderstood that they offer the best opportunity for speculation. We havethe right to calculate on large importations in future, from the successwhich hitherto attended the sale. "[7] [Footnote 7: Augusta, Ga. , _Chronicle_, Aug. 22, 1818, quoting the NewOrleans _Chronicle_, July 14, 1818. ] The internal trade at the South began to be noticeable about the end of theeighteenth century. A man at Knoxville, Tennessee, in December, 1795, sentnotice to a correspondent in Kentucky that he was about to set out withslaves for delivery as agreed upon, and would carry additional ones onspeculation; and he concluded by saying "I intend carrying on the businessextensively. "[8] In 1797 La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt met a "drove ofnegroes" about one hundred in number, [9] whose owner had abandoned theplanting business in the South Carolina uplands and was apparently carryingthem to Charleston for sale. In 1799 there was discovered in the Georgiatreasury a shortage of some ten thousand dollars which a contemporary newsitem explained as follows: Mr. Sims, a member of the legislature, havingborrowed the money from the treasurer, entrusted it to a certain Speers forthe purchase of slaves in Virginia. "Speers accordingly went and purchaseda considerable number of negroes; and on his way returning to this statethe negroes rose and cut the throats of Speers and another man whoaccompanied him. The slaves fled, and about ten of them, I think, werekilled. In consequence of this misfortune Mr. Sims was rendered unable toraise the money at the time the legislature met. "[10] Another transactionachieved record because of a literary effusion which it prompted. CharlesMott Lide of South Carolina, having inherited a fortune, went to Virginiaearly in 1802 to buy slaves, and began to establish a sea-island cottonplantation in Georgia. But misfortune in other investments forced him nextyear to sell his land, slaves and crops to two immigrants from the BahamaIslands. Thereupon, wrote he, "I composed the following valedictory, whichbreathes something of the tenderness of Ossian. "[11] Callous history is notconcerned in the farewell to his "sweet asylum, " but only in the fact thathe bought slaves in Virginia and carried them to Georgia. A grand juryat Alexandria presented as a grievance in 1802, "the practice of personscoming from distant parts of the United States into this district for thepurpose of purchasing slaves. "[12] Such fugitive items as these make up thewhole record of the trade in its early years, and indeed constitute themain body of data upon its career from first to last. [Footnote 8: Unsigned MS. Draft in the Wisconsin Historical Society, Drapercollection, 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 ofDebates_, V, 177. ] As soon as the African trade was closed, the interstate traffic began toassume the aspect of a regular business though for some years it not onlycontinued to be of small scale but was oftentimes merely incidental incharacter. That is to say, migrating planters and farmers would in somecases carry extra slaves bought with a view to reselling them at westernprices and applying the proceeds toward the expense of their newhomesteads. The following advertisement by William Rochel at Natchez in1810 gives an example of this: "I have upwards of twenty likely Virginiaborn slaves now in a flat bottomed boat lying in the river at Natchez, forsale cheaper than has been sold here in years. [13] Part of said negroesI wish to barter for a small farm. My boat may be known by a large canestanding on deck. " [Footnote 13: Natchez, Miss. , _Weekly Chronicle_, April 2, 1810. ] The heyday of the trade fell in the piping times of peace and migrationfrom 1815 to 1860. Its greatest activity was just prior to the panic of1837, for thereafter the flow was held somewhat in check, first by thehard times in the cotton belt and then by an agricultural renaissance inVirginia. A Richmond newspaper reported in the fall of 1836 that estimatesby intelligent men placed Virginia's export in the preceding year at120, 000 slaves, of whom at least two thirds had been carried by emigratingowners, and the rest by dealers. [14] This was probably an exaggerationfor even the greatest year of the exodus. What the common volume of thecommercial 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 everypublic auctioneer handled slaves along with other property, and in eachcity there were brokers buying them to sell again or handling them oncommission. One of these at New Orleans in 1854 was Thomas Foster whoadvertised that he would pay the highest prices for sound negroes aswell as sell those whom merchants or private citizens might consign him. Expecting to receive negroes throughout the season, he said, he would havea constant stock of mechanics, domestics and field hands; and in additionhe would house as many as three hundred slaves at a time, for such aswere importing them from other states. [16] Similarly Clark and Grubb, ofWhitehall Street in Atlanta, when advertising their business as wholesalegrocers, commission merchants and negro brokers, announced that they keptslaves of all classes constantly on hand and were paying the highest marketprices 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 inthe 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 1859Corbin Thompson and Bernard M. Lynch were the principal slave dealers. Therates of the latter, according to his placard, were 37-1/2 cents per dayfor board and 2-1/2 per cent, commission on sales; and all slaves entrustedto 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 wouldcommonly pass the word round among his neighbors or publish a notice in thecounty newspaper. To this would sometimes be appended a statement that theslave 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 orgood paper, a negro woman, 22 years old, and her two female children. Sheis 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 slavewas sent about to find his or her purchaser. In the city of Washingtonin 1854, for example, a woman, whose husband had been sold South, wasfurnished with the following document: "The bearer, Mary Jane, and her twodaughters, are for sale. They are sold for no earthly fault whatever. Sheis one of the most ladylike and trustworthy servants I ever knew. She isa first rate parlour servant; can arrange and set out a dinner or partysupper with as much taste as the most of white ladies. She is a pretty goodmantua maker; can cut out and make vests and pantaloons and roundaboutsand joseys for little boys in a first rate manner. Her daughters' ages areeleven and thirteen years, brought up exclusively as house servants. Theeldest can sew neatly, both can knit stockings; and all are accustomed toall kinds of house work. They would not be sold to speculators or tradersfor any price whatever. " The price for the three was fixed at $1800, but amemorandum stated that a purchaser taking the daughters at $1000 might havethe mother on a month's trial. The girls were duly bought by Dr. EdwardMaynard, who we may hope took the mother also at the end of the stipulatedmonth. [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 fiftytickets at twenty dollars each, the lucky drawer to receive his girlAmelia, thirteen years old. [21] [Footnote 19: Charleston, Md. , _Telegraph_, Nov. 7, 1828. ] [Footnote 20: MSS. In the New York Public Library, MSS. Division, filedunder "slavery. "] [Footnote 21: _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Aug. 17, 1819. ] The long distance trade, though open to any who would engage in it, appearsto have been conducted mainly by firms plying it steadily. Each of thesewould have an assembling headquarters with field agents collecting slavesfor it, one or more vessels perhaps for the coastwise traffic, and aselling agency at one of the centers of slave demand. The methods followedby some of the purchasing agents, and the local esteem in which they wereheld, may be gathered by an item written in 1818 at Winchester in theShenandoah Valley: "Several wretches, whose hearts must be as black as theskins of the unfortunate beings who constitute their inhuman traffic, havefor several days been impudently prowling about the streets of this placewith labels on their hats exhibiting in conspicuous characters the words'Cash for negroes, '"[22] That this repugnance was genuine enough to causelocal sellers to make large concessions in price in order to keep faithfulservants out of the hands of the long-distance traders is evidenced bythe following report in 1824 from Hillsborough on the eastern shore ofMaryland: "Slaves in this county, and I believe generally on this shore, have always had two prices, viz. A neighbourhood or domestic and a foreignor Southern price. The domestic price has generally been about a third lessthan 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 theindolent, the unruly, and those under suspicion. A Creole settler at Mobilewrote in 1748, for example, to a friend living on the Mississippi: "I amsending you l'Eveille and his wife, whom I beg you to sell for me at thebest 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 themis that l'Eveille is accused of being the head of a plot of some thirtyMobile slaves to run away. He stoutly denies this; but since there israrely smoke without fire I think it well to take the precaution. "[24] Theconverse of this is a laconic advertisement at Charleston in 1800:"Wanted to purchase one or two negro men whose characters will not berequired. "[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 thestates in which their crimes had been committed. The purchasers of thesewere generally required to give bond to transport them beyond the limitsof the United States; but some of the traders broke their pledges on thechance that their breaches would not be discovered. One of these, a certainW. H. Williams, when found offering his outlawed merchandize of twenty-fourconvict slaves at New Orleans in 1841, was prosecuted and convicted. Hispenalty included the forfeiture of the twenty-four slaves, a fine of $500to the state of Louisiana for each of the felons introduced, and theforfeiture to the state of Virginia of his bond in the amount of $1, 000 perslave. 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 "likelynegroes from ten to thirty years old. "[27] Faithfulness and skill inhusbandry were of minor importance, for the trader could give little proofof them to his patrons. Demonstrable talents in artisanry would of courseenhance a man's value; and unusual good looks on the part of a young womanmight stimulate the bidding of men interested in concubinage. Episodes ofthe latter sort were occasionally reported; but in at least one instanceinquiry on the spot showed that sex was not involved. This was the case ofthe girl Sarah, who was sold to the highest bidder on the auction block inthe rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel at New Orleans in 1841 at a price ofeight thousand dollars. The onlookers were set agog, but a newspaper manpromptly found that the sale had been made as a mere form in the course oflitigation and that the bidding bore no relation to the money which was tochange hands. [28] Among the thousands of bills of sale which the presentwriter has scanned, in every quarter of the South, many have borne recordof exceptional prices for men, mostly artisans and "drivers"; but the fewwomen who brought unusually high prices were described in virtually everycase as fine seamstresses, parlor maids, laundresses, hotel cooks, andthe like. Another indication against the multiplicity of purchases forconcubinage is that the great majority of the women listed in these recordswere bought in family groups. Concubinage itself was fairly frequent, particularly in southern Louisiana; but no frequency of purchases for it asa 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 theassembling of their slaves, while others had stockades of their own. Thatof Franklin and Armfield at Alexandria, managed by the junior member ofthe firm, was described by a visitor in July, 1835. In addition to a brickresidence and office, it comprised two courts, for the men and womenrespectively, each with whitewashed walls, padlocked gates, cleanlybarracks and eating sheds, and a hospital which at this time had nooccupants. In the men's yards "the slaves, fifty or sixty in number, werestanding or moving about in groups, some amusing themselves with rudesports, and others engaged in conversation which was often interruptedby loud laughter in all the varied tones peculiar to negroes. " They weremostly young men, but comprised a few boys of from ten to fifteen yearsold. In the women's yard the ages ranged similarly, and but one woman had ayoung child. The slaves were neatly dressed in clothes from a tailor shopwithin the walls, and additional clothing was already stored ready to besent with the coffle and issued to its members at the end of the southwardjourney. In a yard behind the stockade there were wagons and tents madeready for the departure. Shipments were commonly made by the firm onceevery two months in a vessel for New Orleans, but the present lot was tomarch overland. Whether by land or sea, the destination was Natchez, wherethe senior partner managed the selling end of the business. Armfieldhimself was "a man of fine personal appearance, and of engaging andgraceful manners"; and his firm was said to have gained the confidence ofall the countryside by its honorable dealings and by its resolute effortsto discourage kidnapping. It was said to be highly esteemed even among thenegroes. [29] [Footnote 29: E. A. Andrews, _Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in theUnited States_ (Boston, 1836), pp. 135, 143, 150. ] Soon afterward this traveler made a short voyage on the Potomac with atrader of a much more vulgar type who was carrying about fifty slaves, mostly women with their children, to Fredericksburg and thence across theCarolinas. Overland, the trader said, he was accustomed to cover sometwenty-five miles a day, with the able-bodied slaves on foot and thechildren in wagons. The former he had found could cover these marches, after the first few days, without much fatigue. His firm, he continued, hadformerly sent most of its slaves by sea, but one of the vessels carryingthem had been driven to Bermuda, where all the negroes had escaped to landand 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 theship manifests made under the requirements of the congressional act of1808 and now preserved in large numbers in the manuscripts division of theLibrary of Congress. Its volume appears to have ranged commonly, between1815 and 1860, at from two to five thousand slaves a year. Several score ofthese, or perhaps a few hundred, annually were carried as body servants bytheir owners when making visits whether to southern cities or to New Yorkor Philadelphia. Of the rest about half were sent or carried without intentof sale. Thus in 1831 James L. Pettigru and Langdon Cheves sent fromCharleston to Savannah 85 and 64 slaves respectively of ages ranging fromninety and seventy years to infancy, with obvious purpose to develop newlyacquired 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 therecurrence of shippers' and consignees' names. The Chesapeake ports werethe 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 toWilliam Kenner and Co. At New Orleans, whereas by 1832 Robinson had himselfremoved to the latter place and was receiving shipments from Henry Kingat Norfolk. In the latter year Franklin and Armfield sent from Alexandria_via_ New Orleans to Isaac Franklin at Natchez three cargoes of 109, 117and 134 slaves, mainly of course within the traders' ages; R. C. Ballard andCo. Sent batches from Norfolk to Franklin at Natchez and to John Hogan andCo. At New Orleans; and William T. Foster, associated with William Rollinswho was master of the brig _Ajax_, consigned numerous parcels to variousNew Orleans correspondents. About 1850 the chief shippers were JosephDonovan of Baltimore, B. M. And M. L. Campbell of the same place, DavidCurrie of Richmond and G. W. Apperson of Norfolk, each of whom sent eachyear several shipments of several score slaves to New Orleans. Theprincipal recipients there were Thomas Boudar, John Hogan, W. F. Talbott, Buchanan, Carroll and Co. , Masi and Bourk, and Sherman Johnson. The outwardmanifests from New Orleans show in turn a large maritime distribution fromthat port, mainly to Galveston and Matagorda Bay. The chief bulk of thiswas obviously migrant, not commercial; but a considerable dependence of allthe smaller Gulf ports and even of Montgomery upon the New Orleans labormarket is indicated by occasional manifests bulking heavily in the traders'ages. In 1850 and thereabouts, it is curious to note, there were manifestsfor perhaps a hundred slaves a year bound for Chagres _en route_ for SanFrancisco. They were for the most part young men carried singly, and wereobviously intended to share their masters' adventures in the Californiagold fields. Many slaves carried by sea were covered by marine insurance. Among a numberof policies issued by the Louisiana Insurance Company to William Kenner andCompany 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 themarine insurance of goods, with the words "on goods" stricken out and "onslaves" inserted. The risks, specified as assumed in the printed form werethose "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 whatnation, condition or quality soever, barratry of the master and mariners, and all other perils, losses and misfortunes that have or shall come to thehurt, detriment or damage of the said goods or merchandize, or any partthereof. " In manuscript was added: "This insurance is declared to be madeon one hundred slaves, valued at $40, 000 and warranted by the insured to befree from insurrection, elopement, suicide and natural death. " The premiumwas one and a quarter per cent, of the forty thousand dollars. [31] Thatthe insurers were not always free from serious risk is indicated by a NewOrleans news item in 1818 relating that two local insurance companieshad recently lost more than forty thousand dollars in consequence of therobbery of seventy-two slaves out of a vessel from the Chesapeake by apiratical 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 southwesternVirginia bound through the Tennessee Valley and wrote of it as follows: "Itwas a camp of negro slave drivers, just packing up to start. They had aboutthree hundred slaves with them, who had bivouacked the preceding nightin chains in the woods. These they were conducting to Natchez on theMississippi River to work upon the sugar plantations in Louisiana. Itresembled one of the coffles spoken of by Mungo Park, except that they hada caravan of nine wagons and single-horse carriages for the purpose ofconducting 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 werestanding, and a great many little black children, were warming themselvesat the fire of the bivouac. In front of them all, and prepared for themarch, stood in double files about two hundred men slaves, manacled andchained 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 fora sugar mill hand does not exceed seven years. "[33] Sir Charles Lyell, who was less disposed to moralize or to repeat slanders of the Louisianarégime, wrote upon reaching the outskirts of Columbus, Georgia, in January, 1846: "The first sight we saw there was a long line of negroes, men, womenand boys, well dressed and very merry, talking and laughing, who stopped tolook 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 thislaughing 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_ (NewYork, 1849), II, 35. ] Some of the slaves in the coffles were peddled to planters and townsmenalong the route; the rest were carried to the main distributing centers andthere either kept in stock for sale at fixed prices to such customers asmight apply, or sold at auction. Oftentimes a family group divided for salewas reunited by purchase. Johann Schoepf observed a prompt consummation ofthe sort when a cooper being auctioned continually called to the biddersthat whoever should buy him must buy his son also, an injunction to whichhis purchaser duly conformed. [35] Both hardness of heart and shortnessof sight would have been involved in the neglect of so ready a means ofpromoting the workman's equanimity; and the good nature of the competingbidders doubtless made the second purchase easy. More commonly the sellersoffered the slaves in family groups outright. By whatever method the saleswere made, the slaves of both sexes were subjected to such examination ofteeth and limbs as might be desired. [36] Those on the block oftentimespraised their own strength and talents, for it was a matter of pride tofetch high prices. On the other hand if a slave should bear a grudgeagainst his seller, or should hope to be bought only by someone who wouldexpect but light service, he might pretend a disability though he had itnot. The purchasers were commonly too shrewd to be deceived in either way;yet they necessarily took risks in every purchase they made. If horsetrading is notoriously fertile in deception, slave trading gave opportunityfor it in as much greater degree as human nature is more complex anduncertain 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 byBasil Hall, _Travels in North America_ (Edinburgh, 1829), III, 143-145; andby 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 offeredmight prove to be kidnapped freemen, or stolen slaves, or to have beenillegally sold by their former owners in defraud of mortgagees. The lastof these considerations was particularly disquieting in times of financialstress, for suspicion of wholesale frauds then became rife. At thebeginning of 1840, for example, the offerings of slaves from Mississippi inlarge numbers and at bargain prices in the New Orleans market prompted alocal editor to warn the citizens against buying cheap slaves who mightshortly be seized by the federal marshal at the suit of citizens in otherstates. A few days afterward the same journal printed in its local news thefollowing: "Many slaves were put up this day at the St. Louis exchange. Fewif any were sold. It is very difficult now to find persons willing to buyslaves from Mississippi or Alabama on account of the fears entertained thatsuch property may be already mortgaged to the banks of the above namedstates. Our moneyed men and speculators are now wide awake. It will take apretty 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 generalin the Southern community as to produce a social ostracism. The prevailingsentiment was expressed, with perhaps a little exaggeration, by D. R. Hundley of Alabama in his analysis of Southern social types: "Preëminent invillainy and a greedy love of filthy lucre stands the hard-hearted negrotrader. .. . Some of them, we do not doubt, are conscientious men, but thenumber is few. Although honest and honorable when they first go into thebusiness, the natural result of their calling seems to corrupt them; forthey usually have to deal with the most refractory and brutal of the slavepopulation, since good and honest slaves are rarely permitted to fall intothe unscrupulous clutches of the speculator. .. . [He] is outwardly a coarse, ill-bred person, provincial in speech and manners, with a cross-lookingphiz, a whiskey-tinctured nose, cold hard-looking eyes, a dirtytobacco-stained mouth, and shabby dress. .. . He is not troubled evidentlywith a conscience, for although he habitually separates parent from child, brother from sister, and husband from wife, he is yet one of the jolliestdogs alive, and never evinces the least sign of remorse. .. . Almost everysentence he utters is accompanied by an oath. .. . Nearly nine tenths of theslaves 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 wouldcost him; but he sells them as both honest and healthy, mark you! So soonas he has completed his 'gang' he dresses them up in good clothes, makesthem comb their kinky heads into some appearance of neatness, rubs oil ontheir dusky faces to give them a sleek healthy color, gives them a dramoccasionally to make them sprightly, and teaches each one the part he orshe has to play; and then he sets out for the extreme South. .. . At everyvillage 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 hisappearance the oily speculator button-holes him immediately and begins todescant in the most highfalutin fashion upon the virtuous lot of darkeys hehas for sale. Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom was not a circumstance to any one ofthe dozens he points out. So honest! so truthful! so dear to the heartsof their former masters and mistresses! Ah! Messrs. Stock-brokers of WallStreet--you who are wont to cry up your rotten railroad, mining, steamboatand other worthless stocks[38]--for ingenious lying you should take lessonsfrom the Southern negro trader!" Some of the itinerant traders were said, however, and probably with truth, to have had silent partners among themost substantial capitalists in the Southern cities. [39] [Footnote 38: D. R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (NewYork, 1860), pp. 139-142. ] [Footnote 39: _Ibid_. , p. 145. ] The social stigma upon slave dealing doubtless enhanced the profits of thetraders by diminishing the competition. The difference in the scales ofprices prevailing at any time in the cheapest and the dearest local marketswas 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 monthscommonly elapsing between purchase and sale in the trade, but alsoallowances for such loss as might occur in transit by death, illness, accident or escape. At some periods, furthermore, slave prices fell sorapidly that the prospect of profit for the speculator vanished. AtColumbus, Georgia, in December, 1844, for example, it was reported that acoffle 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 upwardtrend of prices which was in effect throughout the most of the ante-bellumperiod. The Southern planters sometimes cut into the business of thetraders by going to the border states to buy and bring home in person theslaves they needed. [41] The building of railways speeded the journeys andcorrespondingly reduced the costs. The Central of Georgia Railroadimproved its service in 1858 by instituting a negro sleeping car [42]--anaccommodation which apparently no railroad has furnished in the post-bellumdecades. [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 effectsof their traffic were viewed with mixed emotions. Its employment ofshackles was excused only on the ground of necessary precaution. Itsbreaking up of families was generally deplored, although it was apologizedfor by thick-and-thin champions of everything Southern with arguments thatnegro domestic ties were weak at best and that the separations were no morefrequent than those suffered by free laborers at the North under the stressof economic necessity. Its drain of money from the districts importing theslaves was regretted as a financial disadvantage. On the other hand, thecitizens of the exporting states were disposed to rejoice doubly at beingsaved from loss by the depreciation of property on their hands [43] and atseeing the negro element in their population begin to dwindle;[44] but eventhese considerations were in some degree offset, in Virginia at least, by thoughts that the shrinkage of the blacks was not enough to lessenmaterially the problem of racial adjustments, that it was prime youngworkmen and women rather than culls who were being sold South, that whiteimmigration was not filling their gaps, and that accordingly land priceswere 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 tohave made serious effort to restrict the outgoing trade in slaves; but allthe states from Maryland and Kentucky to Louisiana legislated from time totime for the prohibition of the inward trade. [46] The enforcement of theselaws was called for by citizen after citizen in the public press, asdemanded by "every principle of justice, humanity, policy and interest, "and particularly on the ground that if the border states were drained ofslaves they would be transferred from the pro-slavery to the anti-slaverygroup in politics. [47] The state laws could not constitutionally debartraders from the right of transit, and as a rule they did not prohibitcitizens from bringing in slaves for their own use. These two apertures, together with the passiveness of the public, made the legislative obstaclesof 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 SlaveTrade_, 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; _FederalUnion_ (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 responsiveto new industrial opportunity than if it had been free. The long distanceslave trade found its principal function in augmenting the westwardmovement. No persuasion of the ignorant and inert was required; the fiat ofone master set them on the road, and the fiat of another set them to newtasks. The local branch of the trade had its main use in transferring laborfrom impoverished employers to those with better means, from passive ownersto active, and from persons with whom relations might be strained toothers whom the negroes might find more congenial. That this last was notnegligible is suggested by a series of letters in 1860 from William Capers, overseer on a Savannah River rice plantation, to Charles Manigault hisemployer, concerning a slave foreman or "driver" named John. In the firstof these letters, August 5, Capers expressed pleasure at learning thatJohn, who had in previous years been his lieutenant on another estate, wasfor sale. He wrote: "Buy him by all means. There is but few negroesmore competent than he is, and he was not a drunkard when under mymanagement. .. . 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 onSavannah. " A week later Capers wrote: "John arrived safe and handed meyours 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. Allon 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 onSantee. Bad management was the cause of his being sold, and [I] am glad youhave 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 theeconomics of slavery, the questions of the market breeding of slaves in theborder states and the working of them to death in the lower South, as wellas the subject of inflations and depressions in slave prices, it remainsto mention the chief defect of the slave trade as an agency for thedistribution of labor. This lay in the fact that it dealt only in lifetimeservice. Employers, it is true, might buy slaves for temporary employmentand sell them when the need for their labor was ended; but the fluctuationsof slave prices and of the local opportunity to sell those on hand wouldinvolve such persons in slave trading risks on a scale eclipsing that oftheir industrial earnings. The fact that slave hiring prevailed extensivelyin all the Southern towns demonstrates the eagerness of short termemployers to avoid the toils of speculation. CHAPTER XII THE COTTON RÉGIME It would be hard to overestimate the predominance of the special crops inthe industry and interest of the Southern community. For good or ill theyhave shaped its development from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Each characteristic area had its own staple, and those districts which hadnone were scorned by all typical Southern men. The several areas expandedand contracted in response to fluctuations in the relative prices of theirproducts. Thus when cotton was exceptionally high in the early 'twentiesmany Virginians discarded tobacco in its favor for a few years, [1] and onthe Louisiana lands from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, the planters from timeto time changed from sugar to cotton and back again. [2] There were localvariations also in scale and intensity; but in general the system in eacharea tended to be steady and fairly uniform. The methods in the severalstaples, furthermore, while necessarily differing in their details, were sosimilar in their emphasis upon routine that each reinforced the influenceof the others in shaping the industrial organization of the South as awhole. [Footnote 1: _Richmond Compiler_, Nov. 25, 1825, and _Alexandria Gazette_, Feb. 11, 1826, quoted in the _Charleston City Gazette_, Dec. 1, 1825 andFeb. 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, indigoproduction was a thing of the past; hemp was of negligible importance;tobacco was losing in the east what it gained in the west; rice andsea-island cotton were stationary; but sugar was growing in localintensity, and upland cotton was "king" of a rapidly expanding realm. The culture of sugar, tobacco and rice has been described in precedingchapters; that of the fleecy staple requires our present attention. The outstanding features of the landscape on a short-staple cottonplantation were the gin house and its attendant baling press. The formerwas commonly a weatherboarded structure some forty feet square, raisedabout eight feet from the ground by wooden pillars. In the middle of thespace on the ground level, a great upright hub bore an iron-cogged pinionand 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 pathwould revolve the hub and furnish power for transmission by cogs and beltsto the gin on the floor above. At the front of the house were a stair and aplatform for unloading seed cotton from the wagons; inside there were binsfor storage, as well as a space for operating the gin; and in the rear alean-to room extending to the ground level received the flying lint and letit settle on the floor. The press, a skeleton structure nearby, had in thecenter a stout wooden box whose interior length and width determined theheight and thickness of the bales but whose depth was more than twice asgreat as the intended bale's width. The floor, the ends and the upperhalves of the sides of the box were built rigidly, but the lower sides werehinged at the bottom, and the lid was a block sliding up and down accordingas 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 breakunder strain without warning, worked through a block mortised into a timberframe above the box, and at its upper end it supported two gaunt beamswhich sloped downward and outward to a horse path encircling the whole. A cupola roof was generally built on the revolving apex to give a slightshelter to the apparatus; and in some cases a second roof, with the screwpenetrating its peak, was built near enough the ground to escape the whirlof 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 wasattached to the face of the raised lid; the sides of the press were thenmade fast, and the box was filled with cotton. The draught animals at thebeam ends were then driven round the path until the descent of the lidpacked the lint firmly; whereupon the sides were lowered, the edges of thebagging drawn into place, ropes were passed through transverse slots inthe lid and floor and tied round the bale in its bagging, the pressurewas released, and the bale was ready for market. Between 1820 and 1860improvements in the apparatus promoted an increase in the average weightof the bales from 250 to 400 pounds; while in still more recent times thereplacement of horse power by steam and the substitution of iron ties forrope have caused the average bale to be yet another hundredweight heavier. The only other distinctive equipment for cotton harvesting comprised clothbags with shoulder straps, and baskets of three or four bushels capacitywoven of white-oak splits to contain the contents of the pickers' bagsuntil 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 incotton growing were the same. In an average year a given force of laborerscould plant and cultivate about twice as much cotton as it could pick. Theacreage to be seeded in the staple was accordingly fixed by a calculationof the harvesting capacity, and enough more land was put into other cropsto fill out the spare time of the hands in spring and summer. To thiseffect it was customary to plant in corn, which required less than half asmuch work, an acreage at least equal to that in cotton, and to devote theremaining energy to sweet potatoes, peanuts, cow peas and small grain. In1820 the usual crop in middle Georgia for each full hand was reported atsix acres of cotton and eight of corn;[3] but in the following decadesduring which mules were advantageously substituted for horses and oxen, and the implements of tillage were improved and the harvesters grew moreexpert, the annual stint was increased to ten acres in cotton and ten incorn. [Footnote 3: _The American Farmer_ (Baltimore), II, 359. ] At the Christmas holiday when the old year's harvest was nearly or quitecompleted, well managed plantations had their preliminaries for the newcrop already in progress. The winter months were devoted to burningcanebrakes, 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 thefields to be planted. Some planters broke the fields completely each yearand then laid off new rows. Others merely "listed" the fields by firstrunning a furrow with a shovel plow where each cotton or corn row was to beand filling it with a single furrow of a turn plow from either side; thenwhen planting time approached they would break out the remaining balks withplows, turning the soil to the lists and broadening them into rounded plantbeds. This latter plan was advocated as giving a firm seed bed while makingthe field clean of all grass at the planting. The spacing of the cottonrows 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 grownwould lightly interlace their branches across the middles. In March the corn fields were commonly planted, not so much because thisforehandedness was better for the crop as for the sake of freeing thechoicer month of April for the more important planting of cotton. In thisoperation a narrow plow lightly opened the crests of the beds; cotton seedwere drilled somewhat thickly therein; and a shallow covering of earth wasgiven by means of a concave board on a plow stock, or by a harrow, a rolleror a small shallow plow. Within two or three weeks, as soon as the young plants had put forth threeor four leaves, thinning and cultivation was begun. Hoe hands, underorders to chop carefully, stirred the crust along the rows and reduced theseedlings to a "double stand, " leaving only two plants to grow at eachinterval of twelve or eighteen inches. The plows then followed, stirringthe soil somewhat deeply near the rows. In another fortnight the hoes gaveanother chopping, cutting down the weaker of each pair of plants, thusreducing the crop to a "single stand"; and where plants were missing theyplanted fresh seed to fill the gaps. The plows followed again, with broadwings to their shares, to break the crust and kill the grass throughout themiddles. Similar alternations of chipping and plowing then ensued untilnear the end of July, each cultivation shallower than the last in orderthat the roots of the cotton should not be cut. [4] [Footnote 4: Cotton Culture is described by M. W. Philips in the _AmericanAgriculturist_, II (New York, 1843), 51, 81, 117, 149; by various writersin 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 othertasks until in late August or early September the harvest began. Thecorn, which had been worked at spare times previously, now had its bladesstripped and bundled for fodder; the roads were mended, the gin house andpress put in order, the premises in general cleaned up, and perhaps a fewspare days given to recreation. The cotton bolls ripened and opened in series, those near the center of theplant first, then the outer ones on the lower branches, and finally thetop crop. If subjected unduly to wind and rain the cotton, drooping in thebolls, would be blown to the ground or tangled with dead leaves or stainedwith mildew. It was expedient accordingly to send the pickers through thefields as early and as often as there was crop enough open to reward thelabor. Four or five compartments held the contents of each boll; from sixty toeighty bolls were required to yield a pound in the seed; and three or fourpounds of seed cotton furnished one pound of lint. When a boll was wideopen a deft picker could empty all of its compartments by one snatch ofthe fingers; and a specially skilled one could keep both hands flyingindependently, and still exercise the small degree of care necessary tokeep the lint fairly free from the trash of the brittle dead calyxes. Asto the day's work, a Georgia planter wrote in 1830: "A hand will pick orgather 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] Butactual records in the following decades made these early pickers appearvery inept. On Levin Covington's plantation near Natchez in 1844, in atypical 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-eightmen and boys together picked an average of 160 pounds, and all the eighteenwomen and girls an average of 125. [6] But these were dwarfed in turn by thepickings 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 aday, and twelve other men and five women ranged above two hundred, whilethe whole gang of fifty-one men and women, boys and girls average 157pounds 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 apremium, but the labors of the slow, the youthful and the aged were allcalled into requisition. When the fields were white with their fleece andeach day might bring a storm to stop the harvesting, every boll pickedmight well be a boll saved from destruction. Even the blacksmith was calledfrom his forge and the farmer's children from school to bend their backs inthe cotton rows. The women and children picked steadily unless rains drovethem in; the men picked as constantly except when the crop was fairly undercontrol and some other task, such as breaking in the corn, called the wholegang for a day to another field or when the gin house crew had to clear thebins by working up their contents to make room for more seed cotton. In the Piedmont where the yield was lighter the harvest was generally endedby December; but in the western belt, particularly when rains interruptedthe work, it often extended far into the new year. Lucien Minor, forexample, wrote when traveling through the plantations of northern Alabama, near Huntsville, in December, 1823: "These fields are still white withcotton, which frequently remains unpicked until March or April, when theground is wanted to plant the next crop. "[8] Planters occasionally noted intheir 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 anddo 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 theclods 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 survivingstalks, which upon attaining their full growth became quite hardy; butundue moisture would then cause a shedding of the bolls, and the firstfrost of autumn would stop the further fruiting. The plants, furthermore, were liable to many diseases and insect ravages. In infancy cut-worms mightsever the stalks at the base, and lice might sap the vitality; in the fullflush of blooming luxuriance, wilt and rust, the latter particularly onolder lands, might blight the leaves, or caterpillars in huge armies reducethem to skeletons and blast the prospect; and even when the fruit wasformed, boll-worms might consume the substance within, or dry-rot preventthe top crop from ripening. The ante-bellum planters, however, were exemptfrom the Mexican boll-weevil, the great pest of the cotton belt in thetwentieth century. While every planter had his fat years and lean, and the yield of the beltas a whole alternated between bumper crops and short ones, the industry wasin general of such profit as to maintain a continued expansion of its areaand a never ending though sometimes hesitating increase of its product. Thecrop 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. Extremelylow prices for the staple in the early 'forties and again in 1849 prompteda campaign for crop reduction; and in that decade the increase was onlyfrom 830, 000, 000 to 1, 000, 000, 000 pounds. But the return of good prices inthe 'fifties caused a fresh and huge enlargement to 2, 300, 000, 000 pounds inthe final census year of the ante-bellum period. While this was little morethan one fourth as great as the crops of sixteen million bales in 1912 and1915, it was justly reckoned in its time, at home and abroad, a prodigiousoutput. 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 grossexport trade of the United States, while the tobacco export had hardly atenth of the cotton's worth. In competition with all the other staples, cotton engaged the services of some three fourths of all the country'splantation labor, in addition to the labor of many thousands of whitefarmers and their families. The production and sale of the staple engrossed no less of the people'sthought than of their work. A traveler who made a zig-zag journey fromCharleston to St. Louis in the early months of 1827, found cotton "aplague. " At Charleston, said he, the wharves were stacked and the storesand ships packed with the bales, and the four daily papers and allthe patrons of the hotel were "teeming with cotton. " At Augusta thethoroughfares were thronged with groaning wagons, the warehouses wereglutted, the open places were stacked, and the steamboats and barges hiddenby their loads. On the road beyond, migrating planters and slaves boundfor the west, "'where the cotton land is not worn out, '" met cotton-ladenwagons townward bound, whereupon the price of the staple was the chieftheme of roadside conversation. Occasionally a wag would have his jest. Thetraveler 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'scotton. Cotton is cotton in Augusta and everywhere else that I ever heardof, ' 'I know that as well as you, ' says the first, 'but what does cottonbring in Augusta?' 'Why, it brings nothing there, but everybody bringscotton, '" Whereupon the baffled inquirer appropriately relieved hisfeelings and drove on. At his crossing of the Oconee River the traveler sawpole-boats laden with bales twelve tiers high; at Milledgeville and Maconcotton was the absorbing theme; in the newly opened lands beyond he "foundcotton land speculators thicker than locusts in Egypt"; in the neighborhoodof Montgomery cotton fields adjoined one another in a solid stretch forfourteen miles along the road; Montgomery was congested beyond the capacityof the boats; and journeying thence to Mobile he "met and overtook nearlyone hundred cotton waggons travelling over a road so bad that a stateprisoner could hardly walk through it to make his escape. " As to Mobile, itwas "a receptacle monstrous for the article. Look which way you will yousee it, and see it moving; keel boats, steamboats, ships, brigs, schooners, wharves, stores, and press-houses, all appeared to be full; and I believethat in the three days I was there, boarding with about one hundred cottonfactors, cotton merchants and cotton planters, I must have heard the wordcotton pronounced more than three thousand times. " New Orleans had asimilar glut. On the journey up the Mississippi the plaint heard by this traveler fromfellow passengers who lived at Natchitoches, was that they could not getenough boats to bring the cotton down the Red. The descending steamers andbarges on the great river itself were half of them heavy laden with cottonand at the head of navigation on the Tennessee, in northwestern Alabama, bales enough were waiting to fill a dozen boats. "The Tennesseeans, " saidhe, "think that no state is of any account but their own; Kentucky, theysay, would be if it could grow cotton, but as it is, it is good fornothing. They count on forty or fifty thousand bales going from Nashvillethis season; that is, if they can get boats to carry it all. " The fleeton the Cumberland River was doing its utmost, to the discomfort of thepassengers; and it was not until the traveler boarded a steamer forSt. Louis at the middle of March, that he escaped the plague which hadsurrounded 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 twicein thirty-six hours. .. I had a pretty tolerable night's sleep, though Idreamed 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 menwere apprehensive lest the one-crop system bring distress to the cottonbelt 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 widespreadprevalence of rot in the crop of the preceding year as a blessing, in thatit staved off the rapidly nearing time when the staple's price would fallbelow the cost of production. [11] A marked rise of the price to abovetwenty cents a pound at the middle of the decade, however, silenced theseprophets until a severe decline in the later twenties prompted the sons ofJeremiah to raise their voices again, and the political crisis procuredthem a partial hearing. Politicians were advocating the home productionof cloth and foodstuffs as a demonstration against the protective tariff, while the economists pleaded for diversification for the sake of permanentprosperity, regardless of tariff rates. One of them wrote in 1827: "That wehave cultivated cotton, cotton, cotton and bought everything else, has longbeen our opprobrium. It is time that we should be aroused by some means orother to see that such a course of conduct will inevitably terminate inour ultimate poverty and ruin. Let us manufacture, because it is our bestpolicy. Let us go more on provision crops and less on cotton, because wehave had everything about us poor and impoverished long enough. .. . We havegood land, unlimited water powers, capital in plenty, and a patriotismwhich 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 yearWilliam Ellison of the South Carolina uplands welcomed even the low priceof cotton as a lever[13] which might pry the planters out of the cotton rutand 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 thecotton market produced merely a querulous complaint that the Virginians, byrushing into the industry several years before when the prices were high, had spoiled the market. Each region, said he, ought to devote itself tothe staples best suited to its climate and soil; this was the basis ofprofitable commerce. The proper policy for Virginia and most of NorthCarolina was to give all their labor spared from tobacco to the growing ofcorn which South Carolina would gladly buy of them if undisturbed in herpeaceful concentration upon cotton. [14] The advance of cotton pricesthroughout most of the thirties suspended the discussion, and the régimewent on virtually unchanged. As an evidence of the specialization of thePiedmont in cotton, it was reported in 1836 that in the town of Columbiaalone the purchases of bacon during the preceding year had amounted tothree 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 speciallyintense cotton crisis of 1839 broke the market so thoroughly that for fiveyears afterward the producers had to take from five to seven cents a poundfor their crops. Planters by thousands were bankrupted, most numerously inthe inflated southwest; and thoughtful men everywhere set themselves afreshto study the means of salvation. Edmund Ruffin, the Virginian enthusiastfor fertilizers, was employed by the authority of the South Carolinalegislature to make an agricultural survey of that state with a view torecommending improvements. Private citizens made experiments on theirestates; and the newspapers and the multiplying agricultural journalspublished their reports and advice. Most prominent among the cotton beltplanters 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 ofAlabama, and Dr. Martin W. Philips of Mississippi. Of these, Hammond waschiefly concerned in swamp drainage, hillside terracing, forage increase, and livestock improvement; Jones was a promoter of the breeding of improvedstrains of cotton; Cloud was a specialist in fertilizing; and Philips wasan all-round experimenter and propagandist. Hammond and Philips, who wereboth spurred to experiments by financial stress, have left voluminousrecords in print and manuscript. Their careers illustrate the handicapsunder which innovators labored. Hammond's estate[16] lay on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, somesixteen miles below Augusta. Impressed by the depletion of his uplandsoils, he made a journey in 1838 through southwestern Georgia and theadjacent portion of Florida in search of a new location; but finding landprices inflated, he returned without making a purchase, [17] and for thetime being sought relief at home through the improvement of his methods. Hewrote in 1841: "I have tried almost all systems, and unlike most plantersdo not like what is old. I hardly know anything old in corn or cottonplanting but what is wrong. " His particular enthusiasm now was for plowcultivation as against the hoe. The best planter within his acquaintance, he said, was Major Twiggs, on the opposite bank of the Savannah, who ranthirty-four plows with but fourteen hoes. Hammond's own plowmen were nownearly as numerous as his full hoe hands, and his crops were on a scale oftwenty acres of cotton, ten of corn and two of oats to the plow. He wasfertilizing each year a third of his corn acreage with cotton seed, and atwentieth of his cotton with barnyard manure; and he was making a surplusof thirty or forty bushels of corn per hand for sale. [18] This wouldperhaps have contented him in normal times, but the severe depression ofcotton prices drove him to new prognostications and plans. His confidencein the staple was destroyed, he said, and he expected the next cropto break the market forever and force virtually everyone east of theChattahoochee to abandon the culture. "Here and there, " he continued, "aplantation may be found; but to plant an acre that will not yield threehundred pounds net will be folly. I cannot make more than sixty dollarsclear to the hand on my whole plantation at seven cents. .. The westernplantations have got fairly under way; Texas is coming in, and the game isup with us. " He intended to change his own activities in the main to theraising of cattle and hogs; and he thought also of sending part of hisslaves to Louisiana or Texas, with a view to removing thither himself aftera few years if the project should prove successful. [19] In an address ofthe same year before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina, headvised those to emigrate who intended to continue producing cotton, and recommended for those who would stay in the Piedmont a diversifiedhusbandry including tobacco but with main emphasis upon cereals andlivestock. [20] Again at the end of 1849, he voiced similar views at thefirst annual fair of the South Carolina Institute. The first phase of thecotton industry, said he, had now passed; and the price henceforward wouldbe fixed by the cost of production, and would yield no great profits evenin 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 apound, for the planters there could produce two thousand pounds of lintper hand while those in the Piedmont could not exceed an average of twelvehundred pounds. This margin of difference would deprive the slaves of theirvalue in South Carolina and cause their owners to send them West, unlessthe local system of industry should be successfully revolutionized. The remedies he proposed were the fertilization of the soil, thediversification of crops, the promotion of commerce, and the largedevelopment 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 SouthCarolina 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 theexception of Harry, were cool toward his advice and example; and he himselfyielded to the temptation of the higher cotton prices in the 'fifties, andwhile not losing interest in cattle and small grain made cotton and cornhis chief reliance. He appears to have salved his conscience in thisrelapse by devoting part of his income to the reclamation of a great marshon his estate. He operated two plantations, the one at his home, "SilverBluff, " the other, "Cathwood, " near by. The field force on the formercomprised in 1850 sixteen plow hands, thirty-four full hoe hands, sixthree-quarter hands, two half hands and a water boy, the whole rated atfifty-five full hands. At Cathwood the force, similarly grouped, was ratedat seventy-one hands; but at either place the force was commonly subject toa deduction of some ten per cent, of its rated strength, on the score ofthe loss of time by the "breeders and suckers" among the women. In additionto their field strength and the children, of whom no reckoning was made inthe schedule of employments, the two plantations together had five stablemen, 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 thereclamation work. At Silver Bluff, the 385 acres in cotton were expected to yield 330 balesof 400 pounds each; the 400 acres in corn had an expectation of 9850bushels; and 10 acres of rice, 200 bushels. At Cathwood the plantings andexpectations were 370 acres in cotton to yield 280 bales, 280 in corn toyield 5000 bushels, 15 in wheat to yield 100 bushels, 11 in rye to yield50, and 2 in rice to yield 50. In financial results, after earning in 1848only $4334. 91, which met barely half of his plantation and family expensesfor the year, his crop sales from 1849 to 1853 ranged from seven to twentythousand dollars annually in cotton and from one and a half to two anda half thousand dollars in corn. His gross earnings in these five yearsaveraged $16, 217. 76, while his plantation expenses averaged $5393. 87, andhis family outlay $6392. 67, leaving an average "clear gain per annum, " ashe called it, of $4431. 10. The accounting, however, included no reckoningof interest on the investment or of anything else but money income andoutgo. In 1859 Hammond put upon the market his 5500 acres of uplands withtheir buildings, livestock, implements and feed supplies, together with 140slaves including 70 full hands. His purpose, it may be surmised, was toconfine 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 ofmedicine, established in the 'thirties a plantation which he named LogHall, in Hinds County, Mississippi. After narrowly escaping the loss of hislands and slaves in 1840 through his endorsement of other men's notes, he launched into experimental farming and agricultural publication. Heprocured various fancy breeds of cattle and hogs, only to have most ofthem die on his hands. He introduced new sorts of grasses and unfamiliarvegetables and field crops, rarely with success. Meanwhile, however, hegained wide reputation through his many writings in the periodicals, and inthe 'fifties he turned this to some advantage in raising fancy strainsof cotton and selling their seed. His frequent attendance at fairs andconventions and his devotion to his experiments and to his pen causedhim to rely too heavily upon overseers in the routine conduct of hisplantation. In consequence one or more slaves occasionally took to thewoods; the whole force was frequently in bad health; and his women, thoughremarkably fecund, lost most of their children in infancy. In some degreePhilips justified the prevalent scorn of planters for "book farming. "[23] [Footnote 23: M. W. Phillips, "Diary, " F. L. Riley, ed. , in the MississippiHistorical 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_, foundedin 1846, joined in the campaign; but the force of habit, the dearth ofmarketable substitutes and the charms of speculation conspired to make allefforts of but temporary avail. The belt was as much absorbed in cotton inthe '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 replacedthe less effective horses and oxen; the introduction of horizontal plowingwith occasional balks and hillside ditches, checked the washing of thePiedmont soils; the use of fertilizers became fairly common; and cottonseed was better selected. These last items of manures and seed were thesubject of special campaigns. The former was begun as early as 1808 by theVirginian John Taylor of Caroline in his "Arator" essays, and was furtheredby the publications of Edmund Ruffin and many others. But an adequateavailable source of fertilizers long remained a problem without solution. Taylor stressed the virtues of dung and rotation; but the dearth of foragehampered the keeping of large stocks of cattle, and soiling crops werethought commonly to yield too little benefit for the expense in labor. Ruffin had great enthusiasm for the marl or phosphate rock of the Carolinacoast; but until the introduction in much later decades of a treatment bysulphuric acid this was too little soluble to be really worth while as aplant food. Lime was also praised; but there were no local sources of it inthe districts where it was most needed. Cotton seed, in fact, proved to be the only new fertilizer generallyavailable in moderate abundance prior to the building of the railroads. Inearly years the seed lay about the gins as refuse until it became a publicnuisance. To abate it the village authorities of Sparta, Georgia, forexample, adopted in 1807 an ordinance "that the owner of each and everycotton machine within the limits of said town shall remove before the firstday of May in each year all seed and damaged cotton that may be about suchmachines, or dispose of such seed or cotton so as to prevent its unhealthyputrefaction. "[24] Soon after this a planter in St. Stephen's Parish, South Carolina, wrote: "We find from experience our cotton seed one of thestrongest manures we make use of for our Indian corn; a pint of fresh seedput 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 practicebecame widespread. In the thirties Harriet Martineau and J. S. Buckinghamnoted that in Alabama the seed was being strewn as manure on a largescale. [26] As an improvement of method the seed was now being given in manycases a preliminary rotting in compost heaps, with a consequent speeding ofits availability as plant food;[27] and cotton seed rose to such esteem asa fertilizer for general purposes that many planters rated it to be worthfrom sixteen to twenty-five cents a bushel of twenty-five pounds. [28] Asearly as 1830, furthermore a beginning was made in extracting cottonseedoil for use both in painting and illumination, and also in utilizing theby-product of cottonseed meal as a cattle feed. [29] By the 'fifties the oilwas coming to be an unheralded substitute for olive oil in table use; butthe improvements which later decades were to introduce in its extractionand refining were necessary for the raising of the manufacture to the scaleof 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. Inthe 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 tothis effect in an essay of 1825 contributed to the _American Farmer_ andreprinted in H. T. Cook, _The Life and Legacy of David R. Williams_ (NewYork, 1916), pp. 226, 227. ] [Footnote 28: J. A. Turner, ed. , _Cotton Planter's Manual_, p. 99; RobertRussell, _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 drieddroppings of countless birds, was discovered in the early 'forties onislands off the coast of Peru;[30] and it promptly rose to such high esteemin England that, according to an American news item, Lloyd's listed for1845 not less than a thousand British vessels as having sailed in search ofguano 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 theuse of fertilizers, the Central of Georgia Railroad Company announcedin 1858 that it would carry all manures for any distance on its line incarload lots at a flat rate of two dollars per ton; and the connectingroads concurred in this policy. In consequence the Central of Georgiacarried nearly two thousand tons of guano in 1859, and more than ninethousand tons in 1860, besides lesser quantities of lime, salt and bonedust. The superintendent reported that while the rate failed to cover thecost of transportation, the effect in increasing the amount of cotton to befreighted, and in checking emigration, fully compensated the road. [31] Acontributor to the _North American Review_ in January, 1861, wrote: "Theuse of guano is increasing. The average return for each pound used in thecotton field is estimated to be a pound and a half of cotton; and theplanter who could raise but three bales to the hand on twelve acres ofexhausted soil has in some instances by this appliance realized ten balesfrom the same force and area. In North Carolina guano is reported toaccelerate the growth of the plant, and this encourages the culture onthe northern border of the cotton-field, where early frosts have provedinjurious. " [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'sReview_ in the 'fifties, taking the form partly of local and generalfairs, partly of efforts at invention. A citizen of Alabama, for example, announced success in devising a cotton picking machine; but as in manysubsequent cases in the same premises, the proclamation was premature. As to improved breeds of cotton, public interest appears to have begunabout 1820 in consequence of surprisingly good results from seed newlyprocured from Mexico. These were in a few years widely distributed underthe name of Petit Gulf cotton. Colonel Vick of Mississippi then began tobreed strains from selected seed; and others here and there followed hisexample, most of them apparently using the Mexican type. The more dignifiedof the planters who prided themselves on selling nothing but cotton, woulddistribute among their friends parcels of seed from any specially fineplants they might encounter in their fields, and make little ado aboutit. 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 forsale at fancy prices. Thus in 1837 the Twin-seed or Okra cotton was invogue, selling at many places for five dollars a quart. In 1839 this waseclipsed by the Alvarado strain, which its sponsors computed from aninstance of one heavily fruited stalk nine feet high and others not soprodigious, might yield three thousand pounds per acre. [32] Single Alvaradoseeds were sold at fifty cents each, or a bushel might be had at $160. Inthe succeeding years Vick's Hundred Seed, Brown's, Pitt's, Prolific, SugarLoaf, Guatemala, Cluster, Hogan's, Banana, Pomegranate, Dean, Multibolus, Mammoth, Mastodon and many others competed for attention and sale. Someproved worth while either in increasing the yield, or in producing largerbolls and thereby speeding the harvest, or in reducing the proportionateweight of the seed and increasing that of the lint; but the test ofplanting proved most of them to be merely commonplace and not worth thecost of carriage. Extreme prices for seed of any strain were of courseobtainable only for the first year or two; and the temptation to makefraudulent announcement of a wonder-working new type was not alwaysresisted. Honest breeders improved the yield considerably; but thesuccession of hoaxes roused abundant skepticism. In 1853 a certain Millerof Mississippi confided to the public the fact that he had discovered bychance a strain which would yield three hundred pounds more of seed cottonper acre than any other sort within his knowledge, and he alluringly namedit Accidental Poor Land Cotton. John Farrar of the new railroad townAtlanta was thereby moved to irony. "This kind of cotton, " he wrote in apublic letter, "would run a three million bale crop up to more than fourmillions; 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 yourseed? You say that you had rather plant your crop with them than take adollar a pint. .. . Let us alone, friend, we are doing pretty well--we mightdo 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 differedconsiderably from those in producing the shorter staple. Seed selection wasmuch more commonly practiced, and extraordinary care was taken in ginningand packing the harvest. The earliest and favorite lands for this cropwere those of exceedingly light soil on the islands fringing the coast ofGeorgia and South Carolina. At first the tangle of live-oak and palmettoroots discouraged the use of the plow; and afterward the need of heavyfertilization with swamp mud and seaweed kept the acreage so small inproportion to the laborers that hoes continued to be the prevalent means oftillage. Operations were commonly on the basis of six or seven acres to thehand, half in cotton and the rest in corn and sweet potatoes. In the swampson the mainland into which this crop was afterwards extended, the use ofthe plow permitted the doubling of the area per hand; but the product ofthe swamp lands was apparently never of the first grade. The fields were furrowed at five-foot intervals during the winter, beddedin early spring, planted in late April or early May, cultivated until theend of July, and harvested from September to December. The bolls opened butnarrowly and the fields had to be reaped frequently to save the preciouslint from damage by the weather. Accordingly the pickers are said to haveaveraged no more than twenty-five pounds a day. The preparation for marketrequired the greatest painstaking of all. First the seed cotton was driedon a scaffold; next it was whipped for the removal of trash and sand; thenit was carefully sorted into grades by color and fineness; then it went tothe roller gins, whence the lint was spread upon tables where women pickedout every stained or matted bit of the fiber; and finally when gentlypacked into sewn bags it was ready for market. A few gin houses wereequipped in the later decades with steam power; but most planters retainedthe system of a treadle for each pair of rollers as the surest safeguardof the delicate filaments. A plantation gin house was accordingly a simplebarn with perhaps a dozen or two foot-power gins, a separate room for thewhipping, a number of tables for the sorting and moting, and a round holein the floor to hold open the mouth of the long bag suspended for thepacking. [34] In preparing a standard bale of three hundred pounds, it wasreckoned that the work required of the laborers at the gin house was asfollows: the dryer, one day; the whipper, two days; the sorters, at fiftypounds of seed cotton per day for each, thirty days; the ginners, eachtaking 125 pounds in the seed per day and delivering therefrom 25 pounds oflint, twelve days; the moters, at 43 pounds, seven days; the inspector andpacker, 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 _AmericanAgriculturist_, 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 ofoperations is illustrated in the diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, of Woodbooplantation, 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'sthumb, placed horizontally and touching each other. On these being put intorapid motion, handfulls of the cotton are cast upon them, which of courseare immediately sucked in. .. . A sort of comb fitted with iron teeth . .. Ismade 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 tothem, with the sharp ends of its teeth almost in contact with them. Bythe quick wagging motion given to this comb by the machinery, the buds ofcotton cast upon the rollers are torn open just as they are beginning to besucked in. The seeds, now released . .. Fly off like sparks to the right andleft, 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 hisexperience from 1830 to 1847 as follows: the harvest average per acreranged from 68 pounds of lint in 1846 to 223 pounds in 1842, with a generalaverage for the whole period of 137 pounds; the crop's average price perpound ranged from 14 cents in 1847 to 41 cents in 1838, with a generalaverage 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 eighteenyears. [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, 031farms and plantations each producing five bales or more, [37] and theyreckoned the crop at 2, 445, 793 bales of four hundred pounds each. Assumingthat five bales were commonly the product of one full hand, and leavingaside a tenth of the gross output as grown perhaps on farms where thecotton was not the main product, it appears that the cotton farms andplantations averaged some thirty bales each, and employed on the averageabout six full hands. That is to say, there were very many more smallfarms than large plantations devoted to cotton; and among the plantations, furthermore, it appears that very few were upon a scale entitling themto be called great, for the nature of the industry did not encourage theengrossment of more than sixty laborers under a single manager. [38] It istrue that some proprietors operated on a much larger scale than this. Itwas reported in 1859, for example, that Joseph Bond of Georgia had marketed2199 bales of his produce, that numerous Louisiana planters, particularlyabout Concordia Parish, commonly exceeded that output; that Dr. Duncan ofMississippi had a crop of 3000 bales; and that L. R. Marshall, who lived atNatchez and had plantations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, wasaccustomed to make more than four thousand bales. [39] The explanation liesof course in the possession by such men of several more or less independentplantations of manageable size. Bond's estate, for example, comprised notless than six plantations in and about Lee County in southwestern Georgia, while his home was in the town of Macon. The areas of these, whethercleared or in forest, ranged from 1305 to 4756 acres. [40] But however largemay have been the outputs of exceptionally great planters, the fact remainson the other hand that virtually half of the total cotton crop each yearwas made by farmers whose slaves were on the average hardly more numerousthan the white members of their own families. The plantation systemnevertheless 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 plantationsfor 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 toenlarge the production of cotton where it was already established and tointroduce it into new regions. The result was a complete failure to lessenthe predominance of the United States as a source. India, Egypt and Brazilmight enlarge their outputs considerably if the rates in the market wereraised to twice or thrice their wonted levels; but so long as the priceheld a moderate range the leadership of the American cotton belt could notbe impaired, for its facilities were unequaled. Its long growing season, hot in summer by day and night, was perfectly congenial to the plant, itsdry autumns permitted the reaping of full harvests, and its frosty wintersdecimated the insect pests. Its soil was abundant, its skilled managerswere in full supply, its culture was well systematized, and its laboradequate for the demand. To these facilities there was added in theSouthern thought of the time, as no less essential for the permanence ofthe cotton belt's primacy, the plantation system and the institution ofslavery. CHAPTER XIII TYPES OF LARGE PLANTATIONS The tone and method of a plantation were determined partly by the crop andthe 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 oftime-work, or the gang system; others on piece-work or the task system. Theformer was earlier begun and far more widely spread, for Sir Thomas Daleused it in drilling the Jamestown settlers at their work, it was adoptedin turn on the "particular" and private plantations thereabout, and it wasspread by the migration of the sons and grandsons of Virginia throughoutthe 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 gangmethod was adaptable to operations on any scale. If a proprietor were ofthe great majority who had but one or two families of slaves, he and hissons commonly labored alongside the blacks, giving not less than step forstep at the plow and stroke for stroke with the hoe. If there were a dozenor two working hands, the master, and perhaps the son, instead of laboringmanually would superintend the work of the plow and hoe gangs. If theslaves numbered several score the master and his family might live inleisure comparative or complete, while delegating the field supervision toan overseer, aided perhaps by one or more slave foremen. When an estatewas inherited by minor children or scattered heirs, or where a singleproprietor had several plantations, an overseer would be put into fullcharge of an establishment so far as the routine work was concerned; andwhen the plantations in one ownership were quite numerous or of a greatscale a steward might be employed to supervise the several overseers. Thusin the latter part of the eighteenth century, Robert Carter of Nomoni Hallon the Potomac had a steward to assist in the administration of his manyscattered properties, and Washington after dividing the Mount Vernon landsinto several units had an overseer upon each and a steward for the wholeduring his own absence in the public service. The neighboring estate ofGunston Hall, belonging to George Mason, was likewise divided into severalunits for the sake of more detailed supervision. Even the 103 slaves ofJames Mercer, another neighbor, were distributed on four plantations underthe management in 1771 of Thomas Oliver. Of these there were 54 slaves onMarlborough, 19 on Acquia, 12 on Belviderra and 9 on Accokeek, besides 9hired for work elsewhere. Of the 94 not hired out, 64 were field workers. Nearly all the rest, comprising the house servants, the young children, theinvalids and the superannuated, were lodged on Marlborough, which was ofcourse the owner's "home place. " Each of the four units had its implementsof husbandry, and three of them had tobacco houses; but the barn andstables were concentrated on Marlborough. This indicates that the fourplantations were parts of a single tract so poor in soil that only pocketshere and there would repay cultivation. [1] This presumption is reinforcedby an advertisement which Mercer published in 1767: "Wanted soon, . .. Afarmer who will undertake the management of about 80 slaves, all settledwithin six miles of each other, to be employed in making of grain. "[2] Insuch a case the superintendent would combine the functions of a regularoverseer on the home place with those of a "riding boss" inspecting thework of the three small outlying squads from time to time. Grain cropswould facilitate this by giving more frequent intermissions than tobacco inthe routine. The Mercer estate might indeed be more correctly describedas a plantation and three subsidiary farms than as a group of fourplantations. The occurrence of tobacco houses in the inventory and of graincrops alone in the advertisement shows a recent abandonment of the tobaccostaple; and the fact of Mercer's financial embarrassment[3] suggests, whatwas common knowledge, that the plantation system was ill suited to grainproduction 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 Hallestate is described in Kate M. Rowland, _Life of George Mason_ (New York, 1892), I, 98-102; many documents concerning Mt. Vernon are among the GeorgeWashington 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 1771is 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 inthe period of an agricultural renaissance are illustrated in the inventoryand work journal of Belmead, in Powhatan County, owned by Philip St. GeorgeCocke and superintended by S. P. Collier. [4] At the beginning of 1854 the125 slaves were scheduled as follows: the domestic staff comprised abutler, two waiters, four housemaids, a nurse, a laundress, a seamstress, adairy maid and a gardener; the field corps had eight plowmen, ten male andtwelve female hoe hands, two wagoners and four ox drivers, with two cooksattached to its service; the stable and pasture staff embraced a carriagedriver, a hostler, a stable boy, a shepherd, a cowherd and a hog herd; inoutdoor crafts there were two carpenters and five stone masons; in indoorindustries a miller, two blacksmiths, two shoemakers, five women spinnersand a woman weaver; and in addition there were forty-five children, oneinvalid, a nurse for the sick, and an old man and two old women hired offthe place, and finally Nancy for whom no age, value or classification isgiven. The classified workers comprised none younger than sixteen yearsexcept the stable boy of eleven, a waiter of twelve, and perhaps some ofthe housemaids and spinners whose ages are not recorded. At the otherextreme there were apparently no slaves on the plantation above sixty yearsold except Randal, a stone mason, who in spite of his sixty-six years wasvalued at $300, and the following who had no appraisable value: Old Jim theshepherd, Old Maria the dairy maid, and perhaps two of the spinners. Thehighest appraisal, $800, was given to Payton, an ox driver, twenty-eightyears old. The $700 class comprised six plowmen, five field hands, thethree remaining ox drivers, both wagoners, both blacksmiths, the carriagedriver, four stone masons, a carpenter, and Ned the twenty-eight year oldinvalid whose illness cannot have been chronic. The other working menranged between $250 and $500 except the two shoemakers whose rating wasonly $200 each. None of the women were appraised above $400, which was therating also of the twelve and thirteen year old boys. The youngest childrenwere valued at $100 each. These ratings were all quite conservative forthat period. The fact that an ox driver overtopped all others in appraisalsuggests that the artisans were of little skill. The masons, the carpentersand various other specialists were doubtless impressed as field hands onoccasion. [Footnote 4: These records are in the possession of Wm. Bridges ofRichmond, 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 broodmare, 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-sixcalves; 150 sheep and 115 swine. The implements included two reapingmachines, three horse rakes, two wheat drills, two straw cutters, threewheat 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-horseplows, six colters, six cultivators, eight harrows, two earth scoops, andmany scythes, cradles, hoes, pole-axes and miscellaneous farm implements aswell as a loom and six spinning wheels. The bottom lands of Belmead appear to have been cultivated in a rotationof tobacco and corn the first year, wheat the second and clover the third, while the uplands had longer rotations with more frequent crops of cloverand occasional interspersions of oats. The work journal of 1854 showshow the gang dovetailed the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of theseveral crops and the general upkeep of the plantation. On specially moist days from January to the middle of April all hands werecalled to the tobacco houses to strip and prize the cured crop; when theground was frozen they split and hauled firewood and rails, built fences, hauled stone to line the ditches or build walls and culverts, hauledwheat to the mill, tobacco and flour to the boat landing, and guano, landplaster, barnyard manure and straw to the fields intended for the comingtobacco crop; and in milder dry weather they spread and plowed in thesefertilizers, prepared the tobacco seed bed by heaping and burning brushthereon and spading it mellow, and also sowed clover and oats in theirappointed fields. In April also the potato patch and the corn fields wereprepared, and the corn planted; and the tobacco bed was seeded at themiddle of the month. In early May the corn began to be plowed, and the soilof the tobacco fields drawn by hoes into hills with additional manure intheir centers. From the end of May until as late as need be in July theoccurrence of every rain sent all hands to setting the tobacco seedlings intheir hills at top speed as long as the ground stayed wet enough to giveprospect of success in the process. In the interims the corn cultivationwas continued, hay was harvested in the clover fields and the meadows, andthe tobacco fields first planted began to be scraped with hoe and plow. Thelatter half of June was devoted mainly to the harvesting of small grainwith the two reaping machines and the twelve cradles; and for the followingtwo months the main labor force was divided between threshing the wheat andplowing, hoeing, worming and suckering the tobacco, while the expert Danielwas day after day steadily topping the plants. In late August the plowsbegan breaking the fallow fields for wheat. Early in September the cuttingand housing of tobacco began, and continued at intervals in good weatheruntil the middle of October. Then the corn was harvested and the sowing ofwheat was the chief concern until the end of November when winter plowingwas begun for the next year's tobacco. Two days in December were devoted tothe housing of ice; and Christmas week, as well as Easter Monday and aday or two in summer and fall, brought leisure. Throughout the year theoverseer inspected the negroes' houses and yards every Sunday morning andregularly 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 theVirginia-North Carolina boundary were reported in 1854 to have slavepopulations aggregating some 1600 souls, and whose gardens at his homesteadin Henry County, Virginia, were likened to paradise. Of his methodsof management nothing more is known than that his overseers weresystematically superintended and that his negroes were commonly both fedand 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 wasthat of Governor David R. Williams, who began operations with about ahundred slaves in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, near the beginningof the nineteenth century and increased their number fivefold before hisdeath in 1830. While each of his four plantations gave adequate yields ofthe 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 bottomtract safeguarded from the floods of the Pee Dee by a levee along the riverfront. The building of this embankment was but one of many enterpriseswhich Williams undertook in the time spared from his varied political andmilitary services. Others were the improvement of manuring methods, thebreeding of mules, the building of public bridges, the erection andmanagement of a textile factory, the launching of a cottonseed oil mill, ofwhich his talents might have made a success even in that early time had nothis untimely death intervened. The prosperity of Williams' main business inthe face of his multifarious diversions proves that his plantationaffairs were administered in thorough fashion. His capable wife must havesupplemented the husband and his overseers constantly and powerfully in theconduct of the routine. The neighboring plantation of a kinsman, BenjaminF. Williams, was likewise notable in after years for its highly improvedupland fields as well as for the excellent specialized work of its slavecraftsmen. [6] [Footnote 6: Harvey T. Cooke, _The Life and Legacy of David RogersonWilliams_ (New York, 1916), chaps. XIV, XVI, XIX, XX, XXV. This book, though bearing a New York imprint, is actually published, as I have been atpains to learn, by Mr. J. W. Norwood of Greenville, South Carolina. ] In the fertile bottoms on the Congaree River not far above Columbia, laythe well famed estate of Colonel Wade Hampton, which in 1846 had somesixteen hundred acres of cotton and half as much of corn. The traveler, when reaching it after long faring past the slackly kept fields andpremises common in the region, felt equal enthusiasm for the drainage andthe fencing, the avenues, the mansion and the mill, the stud of bloodedhorses, the herd of Durham cattle, the flock of long-wooled sheep, and thepens of Berkshire pigs. [7] Senator McDuffie's plantation in the furtheruplands of the Abbeville district was likewise prosperous though on asomewhat smaller scale. Accretions had enlarged it from three hundred acresin 1821 to five thousand in 1847, when it had 147 slaves of all ages. Manyof these were devoted to indoor employments, and seventy were field workersusing twenty-four mules. The 750 acres in cotton commonly yielded crops ofa thousand pounds in the seed; the 325 acres in corn gave twenty-five orthirty 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 thoseof large scale, may be gathered from the overseer's letters and factor'saccounts relating to Retreat, which lay in Jefferson County, Georgia. Thiswas one of several establishments founded by Alexander Telfair of Savannahand 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 glimpsewhich the correspondence affords is in the fall of 1829, some years afterCain had taken charge. He then wrote to Telfair that many of the negroesyoung and old had recently been ill with fever, but most of them hadrecovered without a physician's aid. He reported further that a slave namedJohn had run away "for no other cause than that he did not feel disposed tobe governed by the same rules and regulations that the other negroes onthe land are governed by. " Shortly afterward John returned and showedwillingness 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 amongthem that I am fully at a loss to know what I had best to do. Two of themare down with the venereal disease, Die and Sary. Doctor Jenkins has beenattending Die four weeks, and very little alteration as I can learn. It isvery hard to get the truth; but from what I can learn, Sary got it fromFriday. " A note appended to this letter, presumably by Telfair, reads:"Friday is the house servant sent to Retreat every summer. I have all theservants examined before they leave Savannah. " In a letter of February, 1831, Cain described his winter work and hissummer plans. The teams had hauled away nearly all the cotton crop of 205bales; the hog killing had yielded thirteen thousand pounds of pork, fromwhich 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 thoughtgood for fertilizing corn only; the stable and cowpen manure wasembarrassingly plentiful in view of the pressure of work for the mules andoxen; and the encumbrance of logs and brush on the fields intended forcotton was straining all the labor available to clear them. The sheep, hecontinued, had not had many lambs; and many of the pigs had died in spiteof care and feeding; but "the negroes have been healthy, only colds, andthey have for some time now done their work in as much peace and have beenas obedient as I could wish. " One of the women, however, Darkey by name, shortly became a pestilentsource of trouble. Cain wrote in 1833 that her termagant outbreaks amongher fellows had led him to apply a "moderate correction, " whereupon she hadfurther terrorized her housemates by threats of poison. Cain could thenonly unbosom himself to Telfair: "I will give you a full history of mybelief of Darkey, to wit: I believe her disposition as to temper is as badas any in the whole world. I believe she is as unfaithful as any I haveever been acquainted with. In every respect I believe she has been moreinjury to you in the place where she is than two such negroes would sellfor. .. . I have tryed and done all I could to get on with her, hopeing thatshe would mend; but I have been disappointed in every instant. I can nothope 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 numberof working hands, and the ninety-six pair in 1842 suggests the rate ofincrease. Meanwhile the cotton output rose from 166 bales of about threehundred pounds in 1834 to 407 bales of four hundred pounds in the fineweather of 1841. In 1836 an autumn report from Cain is available, datedNovember 20. Sickness among the negroes for six weeks past had kepteight or ten of them in their beds; the resort to Petit Gulf seed hadsubstantially increased the cotton yield; and the fields were now whitewith a crop in danger of ruin from storms. "My hands, " he said, "havepicked well when they were able, and some of them appear to have a kindof pride in making a good crop. " A gin of sixty saws newly installed hadproved too heavy for the old driving apparatus, but it was now in operationwith shifts of four mules instead of two as formerly. This pressure, inaddition to the hauling of cotton to market had postponed the gathering ofthe corn crop. The corn would prove adequate for the plantation's need, andthe fodder was plentiful, but the oats had been ruined by the blast. Thewinter cloth supply had been spun and woven, as usual, on the place; butCain now advised that the cotton warp for the jeans in future be bought. "The spinning business on this plantation, " said he, "is very ungaining. Inthe present arrangement there is eight hands regular imployed in spinningand weaving, four of which spin warpe, and it could be bought at thefactory at 120 dollars annually. Besides, it takes 400 pounds of cottoneach 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 normeat. Take out $20 to pay their borde, and it leaves them in debt. I givethem their task to spin, and they say they cannot do more. That is, theyhave what is jenerly given as a task. " In 1840 Cain raised one of the slaves to the rank of driver, whereuponseveral of the men ran away in protest, and Cain was impelled to defend hispolicy in a letter to Mary Telfair, explaining that the new functionary hadnot been appointed "to lay off tasks and use the whip. " The increase of thelaborers and the spread of the fields, he said, often required the workingof three squads, the plowmen, the grown hoe hands, and the younger hoehands. "These separate classes are frequently separate a considerabledistance from each other, and so soon as I am absent from either they aresubject 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 tookplace will deny all about the same. I therefore thought, and yet believe, that for the good order of the plantation and faithful performance of theirduty, it was proper to have some faithful and trusty hand whose duty itshould be to report to me those in fault, and that is the only dread theyhave of John, for they know he is not authorized to beat them. You mentionin 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 treatedsevere 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 thepreceding year had yielded eleven monthly allowances to the negroes at therate of 1050 pounds per month, and that the deficit for the twelfth monthhad been filled as usual by a shipment from Savannah. From 407 bales in 1841 the cotton output fell rapidly, perhaps because ofrestriction prompted by the low prices, to 198 bales in 1844. Then it roseto the maximum of 438 bales in 1848. Soon afterwards Cain's long serviceended, 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. Thecotton crops in the 'fifties did not commonly exceed three hundred balesof a weight increasing to 450 pounds, but they were supplemented to someextent by the production of wheat and rye for market. The overseer's wageswere sometimes as low as $600, but were generally $1000 a year. In theexpense accounts the annual charges for shoes, blankets and oznaburgs wereno more regular than the items of "cotton money for the people. " Thesesums, averaging about a hundred dollars a year, were distributed amongthe slaves in payment for the little crops of nankeen cotton which theycultivated in spare time on plots assigned to the several families. Otherexpense items mentioned salt, sugar, bacon, molasses, tobacco, wool andcotton cards, loom sleighs, mules and machinery. Still others dealt withdrugs and doctor's bills. In 1837, for example, Dr. Jenkins was paid $90for attendance on Priscilla. In some years the physician's payment was around hundred dollars, indicating services on contract. In May, 1851, thereare debits of $16. 16 for a constable's reward, a jail fee and a railroadfare, and of $1. 30 for the purchase of a pair of handcuffs, two padlocksand a trace chain. These constitute the financial record of a runaway'srecapture. From 1834 to 1841 the gross earnings on Retreat ranged between eight andfifteen thousand dollars, of which from seven to twelve thousand each yearwas available for division between the owners. The gross then fell rapidlyto $4000 in 1844, of which more than half was consumed in expenses. It thenrose as rapidly to its maximum of $21, 300 in 1847, when more than half ofit again was devoted to current expenses and betterments. Thereafter therange of the gross was between $8000 and $17, 000 except for a singleyear of crop failure, 1856, when the 109 bales brought $5750. During the'fifties the current expenses ranged usually between six and ten thousanddollars, as compared with about one third as much in the 'thirties. This isexplained partly by the resolution of the owners to improve the fields, now grown old, and to increase the equipment. For the crop of 1856, forexample, purchases were made of forty tons of Peruvian guano at $56 perton, and nineteen tons of Mexican guano at $25 a ton. In the followingyears lime, salt and dried blood were included in the fertilizer purchases. At length Hodgson himself gave over his travels and his ethnologicalstudies to take personal charge on Retreat. He wrote in June, 1859, to hisfriend Senator Hammond, of whom we have seen something in the precedingchapter, that he had seriously engaged in "high farming, " and was spreadinghuge quantities of fertilizers. He continued: "My portable steam engineis the _delicia domini_ and of overseer too. It follows the reapersbeautifully in a field of wheat, 130 acres, and then in the rye fields. InAugust it will be backed up to the gin house and emancipate from slaveryeighteen 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 wartime. From the crop of 1861 nothing appears to have been sold but a singlebale of cotton, and the year's deficit was $6, 721. The proceeds from theharvests of 1862 were $500 from nineteen bales of cotton, and some $10, 000from fodder, hay, peanuts and corn. The still more diversified marketproduce of 1863 comprised also wheat, which was impressed by theConfederate government, syrup, cowpeas, lard, hams and vinegar. Theproceeds were $17, 000 and the expenses about $9000, including theoverseer's wages at $1300 and the purchase of 350 bushels of peanuts fromthe slaves at $1. 50 per bushel. The reckonings in the war period were madeof course in the rapidly depreciating Confederate currency. The stoppage ofthe record in 1864 was doubtless a consequence of Sherman's march throughGeorgia. [10] [Footnote 10: The Retreat records are in the possession of the GeorgiaHistorical 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 theeastern, except that the more uniform fertility often permitted the fieldsto lie in solid expanses instead of being sprawled and broken by wastelands as in the Piedmont. The scale of operations tended accordingly to belarger. One of the greatest proprietors in that region, unless his displaywere far out of proportion to his wealth, was Joseph A. S. Acklen whosegroup of plantations was clustered near the junction of the Red andMississippi Rivers. In 1859 he began to build a country house on the styleof a Gothic castle, with a great central hall and fifty rooms exclusive ofbaths and closets. [11] The building was expected to cost $150, 000, andthe furnishings $125, 000 more. Acklen's rules for the conduct of hisplantations will be discussed in another connection;[12] but no descriptionof 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 incidentalcrops 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 whipamong the hoe hands, occasionally playing it lightly upon the shouldersof one or another whom he thought would be stimulated by the suggestion. "There was a nursery for sucklings at the quarters, and twenty women atthis time left their work four times a day, for half an hour, to nurse theyoung ones, and whom the overseer counted as half hands--that is, expectedto do half an ordinary day's work. " At half past nine every night the hoeand plow foremen, serving alternately, sounded curfew on a horn, and halfan hour afterward visited each cabin to see that the households were atrest and the fires safely banked. The food allowance was a peck of corn andfour pounds of pork weekly. Each family, furthermore, had its garden, fowlhouse and pigsty; every Christmas the master distributed among them coffee, molasses, tobacco, calico and "Sunday tricks" to the value of from athousand to fifteen hundred dollars; and every man might rive boards in theswamp on Sundays to buy more supplies, or hunt and fish in leisure times tovary 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 bysale. [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 andquarter, each employing more than a hundred slaves under a separateoverseer, and all directed by a steward whom the traveler described ascultured, poetic and delightful. An observation that women were at someof the plows prompted Olmsted to remark that throughout the Southwest theslaves were worked harder as a rule than in the easterly and northerlyslaveholding states. On the other hand he noted: "In the main the negroesappeared to be well cared for and abundantly supplied with the necessariesof vigorous physical existence. A large part of them lived in commodiousand well built cottages, with broad galleries in front, so that each familyof five had two rooms on the lower floor and a large loft. The remainderlived in log huts, small and mean in appearance;[14] but those of theiroverseers were little better, and preparations were being made to replaceall 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 1817found the shores of the Mississippi from a hundred miles above New Orleansto twenty miles below the city in a high state of cultivation. "The plantations within these limits, " he said, "are superb beyonddescription. .. . The dwelling houses of the planters are not inferior to anyin the United States, either with respect to size, architecture, or themanner in which they are furnished. The gardens and yards contiguous tothem are formed and decorated with much taste. The cotton, sugar and warehouses 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 eachof them will accommodate ten or twelve persons. .. . The planters here deriveimmense profits from the cultivation of their estates. [15] The yearlyincome from them is from twenty thousand to thirty thousand dollars. " [Footnote 15: Estwick Evans, _A Pedestrious Tour . .. Through the WesternStates 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 indeedfairly common then and afterward among Louisiana sugar planters, for theconditions of their industry conduced strongly to a largeness of plantationscale. Had railroad facilities been abundant a multitude of smallcultivators might have shipped their cane to central mills for manufacture, but as things were the weight and the perishableness of the cane mademilling within the reach of easy cartage imperative. It was inexpedienteven for two or more adjacent estates to establish a joint mill, for theimminence of frost in the harvest season would make wrangles over thequestions 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 farmlay alongside a plantation which had a mill of excess capacity availablefor custom grinding on slack days. The type of plantation organization in the sugar bowl was much like thatwhich has been previously described for Jamaica. Mules were used as draughtanimals instead of oxen, however, on account of their greater strengthand speed, and all the seeding and most of the cultivation was done withdeep-running plows. Steam was used increasingly as years passed for drivingthe mills, railways were laid on some of the greater estates for haulingthe cane, more suitable varieties of cane were introduced, guano wasimported soon after its discovery to make the rich fields yet more fertile, and each new invention of improved mill apparatus was readily adopted forthe sake of reducing expenses. In consequence the acreage cultivated perhand came to be several times greater than that which had prevailed inJamaica's heyday. But the brevity of the growing season kept the saccharinecontent of the canes below that in the tropics, and together with themounting price of labor made prosperity depend in some degree uponprotective tariffs. The dearth of land available kept the sugar outputwell below the domestic demand, though the molasses market was sometimesglutted. A typical prosperous estate of which a description and a diary areextant[16] was that owned by Valcour Aime, lying on the right bank of theMississippi about sixty miles above New Orleans. Of the 15, 000 acres whichit comprised in 1852, 800 were in cane, 300 in corn, 150 in crops belongingto the slaves, and most of the rest in swampy forest from which two orthree thousand cords of wood were cut each year as fuel for the sugar milland the boiling house. The slaves that year numbered 215 of all ages, halfof them field hands, [17] and the mules 64. The negroes were well housed, clothed and fed; the hospital and the nursery were capacious, and thestables likewise. The mill was driven by an eighty-horse-power steamengine, 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 machineryat $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 whitecentrifugal 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, 629barrels of coal from up the river, in addition to the outlay for wages andmiscellaneous 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 1850Aime's slaves at that time numbered 231, of whom 58 were below fifteenyears old, 164 were between 15 and 65, and 9 (one of them blind, anotherinsane) were from 66 to 80 years old. Evidently there was a considerablenumber of slaves of working age not classed by him as field hands. ] In the routine of work, each January was devoted mainly to planting freshcanes in the fields from which the stubble canes or second rattoons hadrecently been harvested. February and March gave an interval for cuttingcordwood, cleaning ditches, and such other incidentals as the building andrepair of the plantation's railroad. Warm weather then brought the cornplanting and cane and corn cultivation. In August the laying by of thecrops gave time for incidentals again. Corn and hay were now harvested, theroads and premises put in order, the cordwood hauled from the swamp, thecoal unladen from the barges, and all things made ready for the rush ofthe grinding season which began in late October. In the first phase ofharvesting the main gang cut and stripped the canes, the carters and therailroad crew hauled them to the mill, and double shifts there kept up thegrinding and boiling by day and by night. As long as the weather continuedtemperate the mill set the pace for the cutters. But when frost grewimminent every hand who could wield a knife was sent to the fields to cutthe still standing stalks and secure them against freezing. For the firstfew days of this phase, the stalks as fast as cut were laid, in theirleaves, in great mats with the tops turned south to prevent the entranceof north winds, with the leaves of each layer covering the butts of thatbelow, and with a blanket of earth over the last butts in the mat. Herethese canes usually stayed until January when they were stripped and strewnin the furrows of the newly plowed "stubble" field as the seed of a newcrop. After enough seed cane were "mat-layed, " the rest of the cut wasmerely laid lengthwise in the adjacent furrows to await cartage to themill. [18] In the last phase of the harvest, which followed this work of thegreatest emergency, these "windrowed" canes were stripped and hauled, withthe mill setting the pace again, until the grinding was ended, generally inDecember. [Footnote 18: These processes of matlaying and windrowing are described inL. Bouchereau, _Statement of the Sugar and Rice Crops made in Louisiana in1870-71_ (New Orleans, 1871), p. Xii. ] Another typical sugar estate was that of Dr. John P. R. Stone, comprisingthe two neighboring though not adjacent plantations called Evergreen andResidence, on the right bank of the Mississippi in Iberville Parish. Theproprietor's diary is much like Aime's as regards the major crop routinebut is fuller in its mention of minor operations. These included themending and heightening of the levee in spring, the cutting of staves, the shaving of hoops and the making of hogsheads in summer, and, in theirfitting interims, the making of bricks, the sawing of lumber, enlargingold 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 outsidehelp was employed except for an Irish carpenter during the construction ofa sugar house on Evergreen in 1850. [19] The slaves on Evergreen in 1850numbered 44 between the ages of 15 and 60 years and 26 children; onResidence, 25 between 15 and 65 years and 6 children. [20] The joint cropin 1850, ground in the Residence mill, amounted to 312 hogsheads of brownsugar and sold for 4-3/4 to 5 cents a pound; that of the phenomenal year1853, when the Evergreen mill was also in commission, reached 520 hogsheadson 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 asValcour Aime found occasion to remark, the refining reduced the weight ofthe product nearly as much as it heightened the price, so that the chiefadvantage 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. JohnStone Ware, White Castle, La. For the privilege of using the diary Iam indebted to Mr. V. Alton Moody of the University of Michigan, nowLieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France. ] [Footnote 20: MS. Returns in the U. S. Census Bureau, data procured throughthe courtesy of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Mr. (nowLieutenant) V. Alton Moody. ] All of the characteristic work in the sugar plantation routine calledmainly for able-bodied laborers. Children were less used than in tobaccoand cotton production, and the men and women, like the mules, tended to beof sturdier physique. This was the result partly of selection, partly ofthe vigorous exertion required. Among the fourteen hundred and odd sugar plantations of this period, theaverage one had almost a hundred slaves of all ages, and produced averagecrops of nearly three hundred hogsheads or a hundred and fifty tons. Mostof the Anglo-Americans among the planters lived about Baton Rouge and onthe Red River, where they or their fathers had settled with an initialpurpose of growing cotton. Their fellows who acquired estates in the Creoleparishes were perhaps as often as otherwise men who had been merchants andnot planters in earlier life. One of these had removed from New York in theeighteenth century and had thriven in miscellaneous trade at Pensacola andon the Mississippi. In 1821 he bought for $140, 000 a plantation and itscomplement of slaves on Bayou Lafourche, and he afterward acquired a secondone in Plaquemines Parish. In the conduct of his plantation business heshrewdly bought blankets by the bale in Philadelphia, and he enlarged hisgang by commissioning agents to buy negroes in Virginia and Maryland. Thenature of the instructions he gave may be gathered from the results, forthere duly arrived in several parcels between 1828 and 1832, fully coveredby marine insurance for the coastwise voyage, fifty slaves, male andfemale, virtually all of whom ranged between the ages of ten andtwenty-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 amongthe gentlest of Louisianians. Another was Duncan F. Kenner, who was long aslave trader with headquarters at New Orleans before he became a planter inAscension Parish on a rapidly increasing scale. His crop advanced from 580hogsheads in 1849 to 1, 370 hogsheads in 1853 and 2, 002 hogsheads in 1858when he was operating two mills, one equipped with vacuum pans and theother with Rillieux apparatus. [22] A third example was John Burnside, whoemigrated from the North of Ireland in his youth rose rapidly from groceryclerk in upland Virginia to millionaire merchant in New Orleans, and thenin the fifties turned his talents to sugar growing. He bought the threecontiguous plantations of Col. J. S. Preston lying opposite Donaldsonville, and soon added a fourth one to the group. In 1858 his aggregate crop was3, 701 hogsheads; and in 1861 his fields were described by William H. Russell as exhibiting six thousand acres of cane in an unbroken tract. Byemploying squads of immigrant Irishmen for ditching and other severework he kept his literally precious negroes, well housed and fed, infit condition for effective routine under his well selected staff ofoverseers. [23] Even after the war Burnside kept on acquiring plantations, and with free negro labor kept on making large sugar crops. At the end ofhis 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 ofplanters who had been merchants and the frequency of partnerships andcorporations operating sugar estates, as well as the magnitude of scalecharacteristic of the industry, suggest that methods of a strictly businesskind were more common in sugar production than in that of cotton ortobacco. Domesticity and paternalism were nevertheless by no means alien tothe sugar régime. [Footnote 21: MSS. In private possession, data from which were madeavailable through the kindness of Mr. V. A. Moody. ] [Footnote 22: The yearly product of each sugar plantation in Louisianabetween 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 plantationswere conducted on the gang system. The task system, on the other hand, wasinstituted on the rice coast, where the drainage ditches checkeringthe fields into half or quarter acre plots offered convenient units ofperformance in the successive processes. The chief advantage of the tasksystem lay in the ease with which it permitted a planter or an overseerto delegate much of his routine function to a driver. This official eachmorning would assign to each field hand his or her individual plot, andspend the rest of the day in seeing to the performance of the work. Atevening or next day the master could inspect the results and thereby keepa check upon both the driver and the squad. Each slave when his day's taskwas completed had at his own disposal such time as might remain. The drivercommonly 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 plotto plot would permit the assignment of the stronger and swifter workmen totracts where the work required was greater, and the others to plots wherethe labor was less. Fractional hands were given fractional tasks, or werecombined into full hands for full tasks. Thus a woman rated at threequarters might be helped by her own one quarter child, or two half-handyouths might work a full plot jointly. The system gave some stimulus tospeed of work, at least from time to time, by its promise of afternoonleisure in reward. But for this prospect to be effective the tasks had tobe so limited that every laborer might have the hope of an hour or two'srelease as the fruit of diligence. The performance of every hand tendedaccordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of theweakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, wasalmost equally strong in the gang system also. The task acre was commonly not a square of 210 feet, but a rectangle 300feet long and 150 feet broad, divided into square halves and rectangularquarters, and further divisible into "compasses" five feet wide and 150feet long, making one sixtieth of an acre. The standard tasks for fullhands in rice culture were scheduled in 1843 as follows: plowing with twooxen, with the animals changed at noon, one acre; breaking stiff land withthe hoe and turning the stubble under, ten compasses; breaking such landwith the stubble burnt off, or breaking lighter land, a quarter acre orslightly more; mashing the clods to level the field, from a quarter to halfan acre; trenching the drills, if on well prepared land, three quarters ofan acre; sowing rice, from three to four half-acres; covering the drills, three quarters; the first hoeing, half an acre, or slightly less if theground were lumpy and the drills hard to clear; second hoeing, half anacre, or slightly less or more according to the density of the grass; thirdhoeing 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 weretangled; and threshing with the flail, six hundred sheaves for the men, five hundred for the women. [24] Much of the incidental work was also doneby tasks, such as ditching, cutting cordwood, squaring timber, splittingrails, drawing staves and hoop poles, and making barrels. The scale of thecrop was commonly five acres of rice to each full hand, together with abouthalf 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 andwell. .. Custom has settled the extent of the task, and it is difficult toincrease it. The driver who marks it out has to remain on the ground untilit is finished, and has no interest in over-measuring it; and if it shouldbe systematically increased very much there is the danger of a generalstampede to the 'swamp'--a danger a slave can always hold before hismaster's cupidity. .. It is the driver's duty to make the tasked hands dotheir work well. [25] If in their haste to finish it they neglect to do itproperly he 'sets them back, ' so that carelessness will hinder more thanit hastens the completion of their tasks. " But Olmsted's view was for oncerose colored. A planter who lived in the régime wrote: "The whole tasksystem . .. Is one that I most unreservedly disapprove of, because itpromotes idleness, and that is the parent of mischief. "[26] Again the truthlies in the middle ground. The virtue or vice of the system, as with thegang alternative, depended upon its use by a diligent master or its abuseby 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 elsewherewould lead to fortune is shown by the career of the greatest of all riceplanters, Nathaniel Heyward. At the time of his birth, in 1766, his fatherwas a planter on an inland swamp near Port Royal. Nathaniel himself afterestablishing a small plantation in his early manhood married HarriettManigault, an heiress with some fifty thousand dollars. With this, whenboth lands and slaves were cheap, Heyward bought a tide-land tract anderected four plantations thereon, and soon had enough accrued earnings tobuy the several inland plantations of the Gibbes brothers, who had falleninto debt from luxurious living. With the proceeds of his large crops athigh prices during the great wars in Europe, he bought more slaves yearafter year, preferably fresh Africans as long as that cheap supply remainedavailable, and he bought more land when occasion offered. Joseph Manigaultwrote of him in 1806: "Mr. Heyward has lately made another purchase ofland, consisting of 300 acres of tide swamp, joining one of his Combaheeplantations and belonging to the estate of Mrs. Bell. I believe he has madea 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, therichest, as he is the best planter in the state. The Cooper River landsgive him many a long ride. " Heyward was venturesome in large things, conservative in small. He long continued to have his crops threshed byhand, saying that if it were done by machines his darkies would have nowinter work; but when eventually he instituted mechanical threshers, noone could discern an increase of leisure. In the matter of poundingmills likewise, he clung for many years to those driven by the tides andoperating slowly and crudely; but at length he built two new ones driven bysteam and so novel and complete in their apparatus as to be the marvels ofthe countryside. He necessarily depended much upon overseers; but his ownfrequent visits of inspection and the assistance rendered by his sons keptthe scattered establishments in an efficient routine. The natural increaseof his slaves was reckoned by him to have ranged generally between one andfive per cent. Annually, though in one year it rose to seven per cent. Athis death in 1851 he owned fourteen rice plantations with fields rangingfrom seventy to six hundred acres in each, and comprising in all 4, 390acres in cultivation. He had also a cotton plantation, much pine land and asawmill, nine residences in Charleston, appraised with their furniture at$180, 000; securities and cash to the amount of $200, 000; $20, 000 worth ofhorses, mules and cattle; $15, 000 worth of plate; and $3000 worth of oldwine. His slaves, numbering 2, 087 and appraised at an average of $550, madeup the greater part of his two million dollar estate. His heirs continuedhis policy. In 1855, for example, they bought a Savannah River plantationcalled Fife, containing 500 acres of prime rice land at $150 peracre, 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 GabrielE. Manigault. ] The history of the estate of James Heyward, Nathaniel's brother, was instriking contrast with this. When on a tour in Ireland he met and marriedan actress, who at his death in 1796 inherited his plantation and 214slaves. Two suitors for the widow's hand promptly appeared in AlexanderBaring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, and Charles Baring, his cousin. Mrs. Heyward married the latter, who increased the estate to seven or eighthundred acres in rice, yielding crops worth from twelve to thirty thousanddollars. But instead of superintending its work in person Baring boughta large tract in the North Carolina mountains, built a house there, andcarried thither some fifty slaves for his service. After squandering theincome for nearly fifty years, he sold off part of the slaves and mortgagedthe land; and when the plantation was finally surrendered in settlement ofBaring's debts, it fell into Nathaniel Heyward's possession. [28] [Footnote 28: Notes by Louis Manigault of a conversation with NathanielHeyward 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 foundedby Senator Pierce Butler on and about Butler's Island near the mouth of theAltamaha River. When his two grandsons inherited the estate, they used itas a source of revenue but not as a home. One of these was Pierce Butlerthe younger, who lived in Philadelphia. When Fanny Kemble, with famepreceding her, came to America in 1832, he became infatuated, followedher troupe from city to city, and married her in 1834. The marriage wasa mistake. The slaveholder's wife left the stage for the time being, butretained a militant English abolitionism. When in December, 1838, she andher husband were about to go South for a winter on the plantations, sheregistered her horror of slavery in advance, and resolved to keep a journalof her experiences and observations. The resulting record is gloomy enough. The swarms of negroes were stupid and slovenly, the cabins and hospitalsfilthy, the women overdriven, the overseer callous, the master indifferent, and the new mistress herself, repudiating the title, was more irritable andmeddlesome than helpful. [29] The short sojourn was long enough. A few yearsafterward the ill-mated pair were divorced and Fanny Kemble resumed herown name and career. Butler did not mend his ways. In 1859 his half of theslaves, 429 in number, were sold at auction in Savannah to pay his debts. [Footnote 29: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal of a Residence on a GeorgiaPlantation in 1838-1839_(London, 1863). ] A pleasanter picture is afforded by the largest single unit in rice cultureof which an account is available. This was the plantation of William Aiken, at one time governor of South Carolina, occupying Jehossee Island near themouth of the Edisto River. It was described in 1850 by Solon Robinson, anIowa farmer then on tour as correspondent for the _American Agriculturist_. The two or three hundred acres of firm land above tide comprised thehomestead, the negro quarter, the stables, the stock yard, the threshingmill and part of the provision fields. Of the land which could be floodedwith the tide, about fifteen hundred acres were diked and drained. Abouttwo-thirds of this appears to have been cropped in rice each year, and therest in corn, oats and sweet potatoes. The steam-driven threshing apparatuswas described as highly efficient. The sheaves were brought on the heads ofthe negroes from the great smooth stack yard, and opened in a shed wherethe scattered grain might be saved. A mechanical carrier led thence to thethreshing machines on the second floor, whence the grain descended througha winnowing fan. The pounding mill, driven by the tide, was a half miledistant at the wharf, whence a schooner belonging to the plantation carriedthe hulled and polished rice in thirty-ton cargoes to Charleston. Theaverage product per acre was about forty-five bushels in the husk, eachbushel yielding some thirty pounds of cleaned rice, worth about three centsa pound. The provision fields commonly fed the force of slaves and mules;and the slave families had their own gardens and poultry to supplementtheir fare. The rice crops generally yielded some twenty-fivethousand dollars in gross proceeds, while the expenses, including thetwo-thousand-dollar salary of the overseer, commonly amounted to some tenthousand dollars. During the summer absence of the master, the overseerwas the only white man on the place. The engineers, smiths, carpentersand sailors were all black. "The number of negroes upon the place, " wroteRobinson, "is just about 700, occupying 84 double frame houses, eachcontaining two tenements of three rooms to a family besides thecockloft. .. . There are two common hospitals and a 'lying-in hospital, ' anda very neat, commodious church, which is well filled every Sabbath. .. . Nowthe owner of all this property lives in a very humble cottage, embowered indense shrubbery and making no show. .. . He and his family are as plain andunostentatious in their manners as the house they live in. .. . Nearly allthe land has been reclaimed and the buildings, except the house, erectednew within the twenty years that Governor Aiken has owned the island. Ifully believe that he is more concerned to make his people comfortableand happy than he is to make money. "[30] When the present writer visitedJehossee in the harvest season sixty years after Robinson, the fields weredotted with reapers, wage earners now instead of slaves, but still usingsickles on half-acre tasks; and the stack yard was aswarm with sable menand women carrying sheaves on their heads and chattering as of old in adialect which a stranger can hardly understand. The ante-bellum hospitaland many of the cabins in their far-thrown quadruple row were stillstanding. The site of the residence, however, was marked only by desolatechimneys, a live-oak grove and a detached billiard room, once elegant butnow ruinous, the one indulgence which this planter permitted himself. [Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 187, 188, reprinted in _DeBow'sReview_, IX, 201-203. ] The ubiquitous Olmsted chose for description two rice plantations operatedas one, which he inspected in company with the owner, whom he calls "Mr. X. " Frame cabins at intervals of three hundred feet constituted thequarters; the exteriors were whitewashed, the interiors lathed andplastered, and each family had three rooms and a loft, as well as a chickenyard and pigsty not far away. "Inside, the cabins appeared dirty anddisordered, which was rather a pleasant indication that their home lifewas not much interfered with, though I found certain police regulationsenforced. " Olmsted was in a mellow mood that day. At the nursery "a numberof girls eight or ten years old were occupied in holding and tending theyoungest infants. Those a little older--the crawlers--were in the pen, andthose 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 dancingabout a fire they had made on the ground. .. . The nurse was a kind-lookingold negro woman. .. . I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not ababy of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three otherplantation nurseries which I have visited. " The chief slave functionary wasa "gentlemanly-mannered mulatto who . .. Carried by a strap at his waist avery 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 beforeit was shipped to market. He weighed and measured out all the rations ofthe slaves and the cattle. .. . In all these departments his authority wassuperior to that of the overseer; . .. And Mr. X. Said he would trust himwith much more than he would any overseer he had ever known. " The masterexplained that this man and the butler, his brother, having been rearedwith the white children, had received special training to promote theirsense of dignity and responsibility. The brothers, Olmsted furtherobserved, rode their own horses the following Sunday to attend the samechurch as their master, and one of them slipped a coin into the hand of theboy who had been holding his mount. The field hands worked by tasks undertheir 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 womencoming home to their cabins, having finished their day's work. " As topunishment, Olmsted asked how often it was necessary. The master replied:"'Sometimes perhaps not once for two or three weeks; then it will seem asif the devil had gotten into them all and there is a good deal of it. '" Asto matings: "While watching the negroes in the field, Mr. X. Addressed agirl 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 ordiscontinue her work. 'What is this I hear about you and Sam, eh?' The girlgrinned and still hoeing away with all her might whispered 'Yes, sir. ' 'Samcame to see me this morning, ' 'If master pleases. ' 'Very well; you may comeup to the house Saturday night, and your mistress will have something foryou. '"[31] We may hope that the pair whose prospective marriage was thusendorsed 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 byCharles Manigault from the time of his purchase in 1833 of "Gowrie, " on theSavannah River, twelve miles above the city of Savannah. [32] The plantationthen had 220 acres in rice fields, 80 acres unreclaimed, a good poundingmill, and 50 slaves. The price of $40, 000 was analyzed by Manigault ascomprising $7500 for the mill, $70 per acre for the cleared, and $37 forthe uncleared, and an average of $300 for the slaves. His maintenanceexpense per hand he itemized at a weekly peck of corn, $13 a year; summerand winter clothes, $7; shoes, $1; meat at times, salt, molasses andmedical attention, not estimated. In reward for good service, however, Manigault usually issued broken rice worth $2. 50 per bushel, instead ofcorn worth $1. Including the overseer's wages the current expense for theplantation for the first six years averaged about $2000 annually. Meanwhilethe output increased from 200 barrels of rice in 1833 to 578 in 1838. Thecrop in the latter year was particularly notable, both in its yield ofthree barrels per acre, or 161-1/2 barrels per working hand, and its priceof four cents per pound or $24 per barrel. The net proceeds of the one cropcovered the purchase in 1839 of two families of slaves, comprising sixteenpersons, 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 _Plantationand Frontier_, I, 134-139 _et passim_. ] Manigault and his family were generally absent every summer and sometimesin winter, at Charleston or in Europe, and once as far away as China. Hismethods of administration may be gathered from his letters, contracts andmemoranda. In January, 1848, he wrote from Naples to I. F. Cooper whom hisfactor had employed at $250 a year as a new overseer on Gowrie: "My negroeshave the reputation of being orderly and well disposed; but like allnegroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to. I expectthe kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been aprincipal thing with me. I never suffer them to work off the place, orexchange work with any plantation. .. . It has always been my plan to give outallowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, becausethis has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if theyreceived allowance on Saturday for instance some of them would be off withit that same evening to the shops to trade, and perhaps would not get backuntil 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, "EastHermitage, " and consolidated it with Gowrie, thereby increasing his ricefields to 500 acres and his slaves to about 90 of all ages. His draughtanimals 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 tableand the services of a cook and a waiting boy, was bound by a contractstipulating the duties described in the letter to Cooper above quoted, along with a few additional items. He was, for example, to procure a bookof medical instructions and a supply of the few requisite "plantationmedicines" to be issued to the nurses with directions as needed. In case ofserious injury to a slave, however, the sufferer was to be laid upon a doorand 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 forthe rest of the day upon the occurrence of heavy rains in the afternoon, for Manigault had found by experience "that always after a completewetting, particularly in cold rainy weather in winter or spring, oneor more of them are made sick and lie up, and at times serious illnessensues. "[34] [Footnote 34: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 122-126. ] In 1852 and again in 1854 storms and freshets heavily injured Manigault'scrops, and cholera decimated his slaves. In 1855 the fields were inbad condition because of volunteer rice, and the overseer was dying ofconsumption. The slaves, however, were in excellent health, and the crop, while small, brought high prices because of the Crimean war. In 1856 a newoverseer named Venters handled the flooding inexpertly and made but halfa crop, yielding $12, 660 in gross proceeds. For the next year Venters wasretained, 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 thecholera. Furthermore a tract of pine forest was bought to afford summerquarters for the negro children, who did not thrive on the malarialplantation, and to provide a place of isolation for cholera cases. In 1857Venters made a somewhat better crop, but as Manigault learned and wrote atthe 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 parwith the negroes by even joining in with them at their prayer meetings, breaking down long established discipline which in every case is sodifficult to preserve, favoring and siding in any difficulty with thepeople against the drivers, besides causing numerous grievances. " Thesuccessor of the eccentric Venters in his turn proved grossly neglectful;and it was not until the spring of 1859 that a reliable overseer was foundin William Capers, at a salary of $1000. Even then the year's experiencewas such that at its end Manigault recorded the sage conclusion: "The truthis, on a plantation, to attend to things properly it requires both masterand overseer. " The affairs of another estate in the Savannah neighborhood, "SabineFields, " belonging to the Alexander Telfair estate, may be gleaned fromits income and expense accounts. The purchases of shoes indicate aworking force of about thirty hands. The purchases of woolen clothing andwaterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather;but the scale of the doctor's bills suggest either epidemics or seriousoccasional illnesses. The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeenand eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the recordthey included both rice and sea-island cotton. The gross receipts werehighest at $1, 695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied froma surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2, 035 in the two years 1853 and1854 for which the accounting was consolidated. Under E. S. Mell, who wasoverseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until1849, losses thereafter. The following items of expense in this latterperiod, along with high doctor's bills, may explain the reverse: for takinga negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of aboy prosecuted for larceny, $9. 26; jail fees of Cesar, $2. 69; for theapprehension 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 anewspaper advertisement for another overseer. What happened to the newincumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855: "Paid . .. AmountJones' bill for capturing negroes, $25. Expenses of Overseer Page's burialas 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 ofBing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing ofthe overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean thatdisorders continued under Page's successor. [35] [Footnote 35: Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the TelfairMSS. In the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga. ] Other lowland plantations on a scale similar to that of Sabine Fieldsshowed much better earnings. One of these, in Liberty County, Georgia, belonged to the heirs of Dr. Adam Alexander of Savannah. It was devoted tosea-island cotton in the 'thirties, but rice was added in the next decade. While the output fluctuated, of course, the earnings always exceeded theexpenses and sometimes yielded as much as a hundred dollars per hand fordistribution among the owners. [36] [Footnote 36: The accounts for selected years are printed in _Plantationand Frontier_, I, 150-165. ] The system of rice production was such that plantations with less thana hundred acres available for the staple could hardly survive in thecompetition. If one of these adjoined another estate it was likely to bemerged therewith; but if it lay in isolation the course of years wouldprobably bring its abandonment. The absence of the proprietors every summerin avoidance of malaria, and the consequent expense of overseer's wages, hampered operations on a small scale, as did also the maintenance ofspecial functionaries among the slaves, such as drivers, boatswains, trunkminders, bird minders, millers and coopers. In 1860 Louis Manigault listedthe forty-one rice plantations on the Savannah River and scheduled theiracreage in the crop. Only one of them had as little as one hundred acresin rice, and it seems to have been an appendage of a larger one across theriver. On the other hand, two of them had crops of eleven hundred, and twomore of twelve hundred acres each. The average was about 425 acres perplantation, expected to yield about 1200 pounds of rice per acre eachyear. [37] A census tabulation in 1850, ignoring any smaller units, numberedthe plantations which produced annually upwards of 20, 000 pounds of rice at446 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 thempermanently into task units; but the fact that each of these in its day wasoften combined with rice on the same plantations, and that the separateestates devoted to them respectively lay in the region dominated by therice régime, led to the prevalence of the task system in their culturealso. The soils used for these crops were so sandy and light, however, thatthe tasks, staked off each day by the drivers, ranged larger than those inrice. In the cotton fields they were about half an acre per hand, whetherfor listing, bedding or cultivation. In the collecting and spreading ofswamp mud and other manures for the cotton the work was probably donemostly by gangs rather than by task, since the units were hard to measure. In cotton picking, likewise, the conditions of the crop were so variableand the need of haste so great that time work, perhaps with special rewardsfor unusually heavy pickings, was the common resort. Thus the lowlandcotton régime alternated the task and gang systems according to the workat hand; and even the rice planters of course abandoned all thoughts ofstinted performance when emergency pressed, as in the mending of breaks inthe dikes, or when joint exertion was required, as in log rolling, or whenthreshing and pounding with machinery to set the pace. That the task system was extended sporadically into the South CarolinaPiedmont, is indicated by a letter of a certain Thomas Parker of theAbbeville district, in 1831, [39] which not only described his methods butembodied an essential plantation precept. He customarily tasked his hoehands, he said, at rates determined by careful observation as just both tohimself and the workers. These varied according to conditions, but rangedusually about three quarters of an acre. He continued: "I plant six acresof cotton to the hand, which is about the usual quantity planted in myneighborhood. I do not make as large crops as some of my neighbors. I amcontent with three to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with myprovisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of myneighbors 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 indeedis 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 ourfields, 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 theirpens. Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form ofinstructions to their stewards and overseers. These counsels of perfection, drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much indetail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions. Their initial topicwas usually the care of the slaves. Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in1759 for the guidance of his steward: "The care of negroes is the firstthing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wantsthat they may be provided with all necessarys. The breeding wenches moreparticularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to, and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that willbe injurious to them, . .. And the children to be well looked after, . .. Andthat 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 firstplace, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his firstobject is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of thenegroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as mayproceed 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 anddiscipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed, and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on theone hand or harshness on the other. " Charles Manigault likewise required ofhis overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindnessand consideration in sickness and health. " On J. W. Fowler's plantation inthe Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chaptersuch excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framedin 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline andobedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiencyof good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast beingindispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonabledividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything aboutthe Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do herebyestablish the following rules and regulations for the management of myPrairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and alloverseers I may at any time have in charge thereof. "[1] [Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions areprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 109-129. ] Joseph A. S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information ofapplicants 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 themost pretentious, [3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read inpart: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and themaxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in itstime, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule foreverything and everything done according to rule. In this way labor becomeseasy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless hehimself conforms strictly to rules. .. No man should attempt to managenegroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control ofhis 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 suchdocuments available, began with the subject of the crop, only tosubordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good cropmeans one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land, mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc. , etc. , all of whichmust be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not bemerely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, butas much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in valueof the rest of the property. .. . There should be an increase in number andimprovement in condition of negroes. "[4] [Footnote 4: MS. Bound volume, "Plantation Manual, " among the Hammondpapers 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 bythe overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness adoctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwifeand general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks andwhites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey isthe doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, whenshe 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 anavailable physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote inhis 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 bepromptly 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 casehas to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain thedisease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination;. .. The directions for treatment, diet, etc. , most implicitly followed; theeffects and changes cautiously observed. .. . In cases where there is theslightest uncertainty, the books must be taken to the bedside and a carefuland thorough examination of the case and comparison of remedies made beforeadministering them. The overseer must record in the prescription bookevery dose of medicine administered. " Weston said he would never grudge adoctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness underpretence of illness. "Nothing, " said he, "is so subversive of discipline, or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposedto do the work of the lazy. " Pregnancy, childbirth and the care of children were matters of specialconcern. Weston wrote: "The pregnant women are always to do some work upto the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field andstaying there. If they are sick, they are to go to the hospital and staythere until it is pretty certain their time is near. " "Lying-in women areto be attended by the midwife as long as is necessary, and by a woman putto nurse them for a fortnight. They will remain at the negro houses forfour 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 manywomen has been ruined by want of care in this particular. " Hammond's ruleswere as follows: "Sucklers are not required to leave their homes untilsunrise, when they leave their children at the children's house beforegoing to field. The period of suckling is twelve months. Their work liesalways within half a mile of the quarter. They are required to be coolbefore commencing to suckle--to wait fifteen minutes at least in summer, after reaching the children's house before nursing. It is the duty of thenurse to see that none are heated when nursing, as well as of the overseerand his wife occasionally to do so. They are allowed forty-five minutes ateach nursing to be with their children. They return three times a day untiltheir children are eight months old--in the middle of the forenoon, atnoon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twicea day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only. .. The amountof work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a fullhand, a little increased toward the last. .. Pregnant women at five monthsare put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required ofthem. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances asfull-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women inconfinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her duringdelivery. The confined woman lies up one month, and the midwife remains inconstant attendance for seven days. Each woman on confinement has a bundlegiven her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of clothand rag, and some nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice and flour for themother. " The instructions with one accord required that the rations issued to thenegroes be never skimped. Corbin wrote, "They ought to have their bellyfull, but care must be taken with this plenty that no waste is committed. "Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, ordered his overseer to "see thattheir necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing be good andsufficient, their houses comfortable; and be kind and attentive to them insickness and old age. " And further: "There will be stated hours for thenegroes to breakfast and dine [in the field], and those hours must beregularly observed. The manager will frequently inspect the meals as theyare brought by the cook--see that they have been properly prepared, andthat vegetables be at all times served with the meat and bread. " At thesame time he forbade his slaves to use ardent spirits or to have such abouttheir houses. Weston wrote: "Great care should be taken that the negroesshould never have less than their regular allowance. In all cases of doubt, it should be given in favor of the largest quantity. The measure shouldnot be struck, but rather heaped up over. None but provisions of the bestquality should be used. " Telfair specified as follows: "The allowance forevery grown negro, however old and good for nothing, and every young onethat 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. .. Thesuckling children, and all other small ones who do not work in the field, draw a half allowance of corn and salt. .. . Feed everything plentifully, butwaste nothing. " He added that beeves were to be killed for the negroes inJuly, August and September. Hammond's allowance to each working hand was aheaping 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 abushel 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 totime. The ditchers and drivers were to have extra allowances in meat andmolasses. Furthermore, "Each ditcher receives every night, when ditching, adram (jigger) consisting of two-thirds whiskey and one-third water, with asmuch asafoetida as it will absorb, and several strings of red peppers addedin the barrel. The dram is a large wine-glass full. In cotton picking timewhen sickness begins to be prevalent, every field hand gets a dram in themorning before leaving for the field. After a soaking rain all exposed toit get a dram before changing their clothes; also those exposed to thedust from the shelter and fan in corn shelling, on reaching the quarter atnight; or anyone at any time required to keep watch in the night. Drams arenot given as rewards, but only as medicinal. From the second hoeing, orearly in May, every work hand who uses it gets an occasional allowance oftobacco, about one sixth of a pound, usually after some general operation, as a hoeing, plowing, etc. This is continued until their crops aregathered, when they can provide for themselves. " The families, furthermore, shared in the distribution of the plantation's peanut crop every fall. Eachchild was allowed one third as much meal and meat as was given to eachfield 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 breakfastthey were to have hominy and milk and cold corn bread; for dinner, vegetable soup and dumplings or bread; and cold bread or potatoes were tobe kept on hand for demands between meals. They were also to have molassesonce or twice a week. Each child was provided with a pan and spoon incharge of the nurse. Hammond's clothing allowance was for each man in the fall two cottonshirts, a pair of woolen pants and a woolen jacket, and in the spring twocotton shirts and two pairs of cotton pants, with privilege of substitutionwhen desired; for each woman six yards of woolen cloth and six yards ofcotton cloth in the fall, six yards of light and six of heavy cotton clothin the spring, with needles, thread and buttons on each occasion. Eachworker was to have a pair of stout shoes in the fall, and a heavy blanketevery third year. Children's cloth allowances were proportionate and theirmothers were required to dress them in clean clothes twice a week. In the matter of sanitation, Acklen directed the overseer to see that thenegroes kept clean in person, to inspect their houses at least once a weekand especially during the summer, to examine their bedding and see to itsbeing well aired, to require that their clothes be mended, "and everythingattended to which conduces to their comfort and happiness. " In theseregards, as in various others, Fowler incorporated Acklen's rules in hisown, almost verbatim. Hammond scheduled an elaborate cleaning of the housesevery spring and fall. The houses were to be completely emptied and theircontents sunned, the walls and floors were to be scrubbed, the mattressesto be emptied and stuffed with fresh hay or shucks, the yards swept and theground under the houses sprinkled with lime. Furthermore, every house wasto be whitewashed inside and out once a year; and the negroes must appearonce a week in clean clothes, "and every negro habitually uncleanly inperson must be washed and scrubbed by order of the overseer--the driver andtwo other negroes officiating. " As to schedules of work, the Carolina and Georgia lowlanders dealt intasks; all the rest in hours. Telfair wrote briefly: "The negroes to betasked when the work allows it. I require a reasonable day's work, welldone--the task to be regulated by the state of the ground and the strengthof the negro. " Weston wrote with more elaboration: "A task is as much workas 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 taskexcept under the most urgent necessity; which over-work is to be reportedto the proprietor, who will pay for it. No negro is to be put into a taskwhich [he] cannot finish with tolerable ease. It is a bad plan to punishfor not finishing tasks; it is subversive of discipline to leave tasksunfinished, and contrary to justice to punish for what cannot be done. Innothing does a good manager so much excel a bad as in being able to discernwhat a hand is capable of doing, and in never attempting to make him domore. " In Hammond's schedule the first horn was blown an hour beforedaylight as a summons for work-hands to rise and do their cooking and otherpreparations for the day. Then at the summons of the plow driver, at firstbreak of day, the plowmen went to the stables whose doors the overseeropened. At the second horn, "just at good daylight, " the hoe gang set outfor the field. At half past eleven the plowmen carried their mules to ashelter 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 intermissionwas extended to a maximum of three and a half hours. The plowmen led theway home by a quarter of an hour in the evening, and the hoe hands followedat sunset. "No work, " said Hammond, "must ever be required after dark. "Acklen contented himself with specifying that "the negroes must all rise atthe ringing of the first bell in the morning, and retire when the lastbell rings at night, and not leave their houses after that hour unless onbusiness or called. " Fowler's rule was of the same tenor: "All hands shouldbe required to retire to rest and sleep at a suitable hour and permitted toremain there until such time as it will be necessary to get out in time toreach their work by the time they can see well how to work. " Telfair, Fowler and Hammond authorized the assignment of gardens andpatches to such slaves as wanted to cultivate them at leisure times. Toprevent these from becoming a cloak for thefts from the planter's crops, Telfair and Fowler forbade the growing of cotton in the slaves' privatepatches, and Hammond forbade both cotton and corn. Fowler specificallygave his negroes the privilege of marketing their produce and poultry "atsuitable leisure times. " Hammond had a rule permitting each work hand to goto Augusta on some Sunday after harvest; but for some reason he noted inpencil below it: "This is objectionable and must be altered. " Telfairand Weston directed that their slaves be given passes on application, authorizing them to go at proper times to places in the neighborhood. Thenegroes, however, were to be at home by the time of the curfew horn aboutnine o'clock each night. Mating with slaves on other plantations wasdiscouraged 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 greaterincrease. Permission must always be obtained from the master beforemarriage, but no marriage will be allowed with negroes not belonging to themaster. When sufficient cause can be shewn on either side, a marriage maybe annulled; but the offending party must be severely punished. Where bothare in wrong, both must be punished, and if they insist on separating musthave a hundred lashes apiece. After such a separation, neither can marryagain for three years. For first marriage a bounty of $5. 00, to be investedin household articles, or an equivalent of articles, shall be given. Ifeither has been married before, the bounty shall be $2. 50. A third marriageshall be not allowed but in extreme cases, and in such cases, or where bothhave 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 anddegrade all. I therefore want all of my people encouraged to cultivatereligious feeling and morality, and punished for inhumanity to theirchildren or stock, for profanity, lying and stealing. " And again: "I wouldthat every human being have the gospel preached to them in its originalpurity and simplicity. It therefore devolves upon me to have thesedependants properly instructed in all that pertains to the salvation oftheir souls. To this end whenever the services of a suitable person can besecured, have them instructed in these things. In view of the fanaticismof the age, it behooves the master or overseer to be present on allsuch occasions. They should be instructed on Sundays in the day time ifpracticable; if not, then on Sunday night. " Acklen wrote in his usualperemptory tone: "No negro preachers but my own will be permitted to preachor remain on any of my places. The regularly appointed minister for myplaces must preach on Sundays during daylight, or quit. The negroes mustnot be suffered to continue their night meetings beyond ten o'clock. "Telfair in his rules merely permitted religious meetings on Saturday nightsand Sunday mornings. Hammond encouraged his negroes to go to church onSundays, but permitted no exercises on the plantation beyond singing andpraying. He, and many others, encouraged his negroes to bring him theircomplaints against drivers and overseers, and even against their ownecclesiastical authorities in the matter of interference with recreations. Fighting among the negroes was a common bane of planters. Telfairprescribed: "If there is any fighting on the plantation, whip all engagedin it, for no matter what the cause may have been, all are in the wrong. "Weston wrote: "Fighting, particularly amongst women, and obscene or abusivelanguage, is to be always rigorously punished. " "Punishment must never be cruel or abusive, " wrote Acklen, closely followedby Fowler, "for it is absolutely mean and unmanly to whip a negro from merepassion and malice, and any man who can do so is utterly unfit to havecontrol of negroes; and if ever any of my negroes are cruelly or inhumanlytreated, bruised, maimed or otherwise injured, the overseer will bepromptly discharged and his salary withheld. " Weston recommended the lapseof a day between the discovery of an offense and the punishment, and herestricted the overseer's power in general to fifteen lashes. He continued:"Confinement (not in the stocks) is to be preferred to whipping; but thestoppage of Saturday's allowance, and doing whole task on Saturday, willsuffice to prevent ordinary offenses. Special care must be taken to preventany indecency in punishing women. No driver or other negro is to be allowedto punish any person in any way except by order of the overseer and in hispresence. " And again: "Every person should be made perfectly to understandwhat they are punished for, and should be made to perceive that they arenot punished in anger or through caprice. All abusive language or violenceof demeanor should be avoided; they reduce the man who uses them to a levelwith the negro, and are hardly ever forgotten by those to whom they areaddressed. " Hammond directed that the overseer "must never threaten anegro, but punish offences immediately on knowing them; otherwise he willsoon have runaways. " As a schedule he wrote: "The following is the orderin 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 afterhorn-blow at night; 7th, unclean house or person; 8th, neglect of tools;9th, neglect of work. The highest punishment must not exceed a hundredlashes in one day, and to that extent only in extreme cases. The whip lashmust be one inch in width, or a strap of one thickness of leather 1-1/2inches in width, and never severely administered. In general fifteen totwenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging. The hands in every case mustbe secured by a cord. Punishment must always be given calmly, and neverwhen angry or excited. " Telfair was as usual terse: "No negro to havemore than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime. "Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sentspecial directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You hadbest think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the importantold plantation maxim, viz: 'never to threaten a negro, ' or he will do asyou and I would when at school--he will run. But with such a one, . .. Ifyou wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail andgive him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, forthree weeks, when he will be glad to get home again. .. . Mind then and tellhim that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrelswith him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends onhimself, 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 hisconduct, and say if he don't change for the better I'll sell him to a slavetrader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent severalof the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause. " In onecase Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver broughthim 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 themdefinitely. His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driverthree dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each everyChristmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for everyactual increase of two on the place. Further, "for every infant thirteenmonths old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, themother shall receive a muslin or calico frock. " "The head driver, " Hammond wrote, "is the most important negro on theplantation, and is not required to work like other hands. He is tobe treated with more respect than any other negro by both master andoverseer. .. . He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at alltimes; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and topunish it with discretion on the spot. .. . He is a confidential servant, andmay be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer. " Weston, forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer'sorder and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance ofquiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slavesto the fields each morning, the assignment and supervision of tasks, and the inspection of "such things as the overseer only generallysuperintends. " Telfair informed his overseer: "I have no driver. You are totask the negroes yourself, and each negro is responsible to you for his ownwork, and nobody's else. " Of the master's own functions Hammond wrote in another place: "A plantershould have all his work laid out, days, weeks, months, seasons and yearsahead, according to the nature of it. He must go from job to job withoutlosing a moment in turning round, and he must have all the parts of hiswork so arranged that due proportion of attention may be bestowed upon eachat the proper time. More is lost by doing work out of season, and doing itbetter or worse than is requisite, than can readily be supposed. Negroesare harassed by it, too, instead of being indulged; so are mules, andeverything else. A halting, vacillating, undecided course, now idle, nowoverstrained, is more fatal on a plantation than in any other kind ofbusiness--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'sobedience added. Corbin enjoined upon his staff that they "attend theirbusiness with diligence, keep the negroes in good order, and enforceobedience by the example of their own industry, which is a more effectualmethod in every respect than hurry and severity. The ways of industry, " hecontinued, "are constant and regular, not to be in a hurry at one time anddo nothing at another, but to be always usefully and steadily employed. A man who carries on business in this manner will be prepared for everyincident that happens. He will see what work may be proper at the distanceof some time and be gradually and leisurely preparing for it. By thisforesight he will never be in confusion himself, and his business, insteadof a labor, will be a pleasure to him. " Weston wrote: "The proprietorwishes particularly to impress upon the overseer the criterions by whichhe will judge of his usefullness and capacity. First, by the generalwell-being of all the negroes; their cleanly appearance, respectfulmanners, active and vigorous obedience; their completion of their taskswell and early; the small amount of punishment; the excess of births overdeaths; the small number of persons in hospital; and the health of thechildren. Secondly, the condition and fatness of the cattle and mules; thegood repair of all the fences and buildings, harness, boats, flats andploughs; more particularly the good order of the banks and trunks, and thefreedom of the fields from grass and volunteer [rice]. Thirdly, the amountand quality of the rice and provision crops. .. . The overseer is expresslyforbidden from three things, viz. : bleeding, giving spirits to any negrowithout a doctor's order, and letting any negro on the place have or keepany gun, powder or shot. " One of Acklen's prohibitions upon his overseerswas: "Having connection with any of my female servants will most certainlybe visited with a dismissal from my employment, and no excuse can or willbe taken. " Hammond described the functions as follows: "The overseer will never beexpected to work in the field, but he must always be with the hands whennot otherwise engaged in the employer's business. .. . The overseer mustnever be absent a single night, nor an entire day, without permissionpreviously obtained. Whenever absent at church or elsewhere he must be onthe plantation by sundown without fail. He must attend every night andmorning 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 thekeys, in a safe place, and never allow anyone to unlock a barn, smoke-houseor other depository of plantation stores but himself. He must endeavor, also, to be with the plough hands always at noon. " He must also see thatthe negroes are out promptly in the morning, and in their houses aftercurfew, and must show no favoritism among the negroes. He must carry on allexperiments as directed by the employer, and use all new implements andmethods which the employer may determine upon; and he must keep a fullplantation diary and make monthly inventories. Finally, "The negroes mustbe made to obey and to work, which may be done, by an overseer who attendsregularly to his business, with very little whipping. Much whippingindicates a bad tempered or inattentive manager, and will not be allowed. "His overseer might quit employment on a month's notice, and might bedischarged without notice. Acklen's dicta were to the same general effect. As to the relative importance of the several functions of an overseer, allthese planters were in substantial agreement. As Fowler put it: "Aftertaking proper care of the negroes, stock, etc. , the next most importantduty of the overseer is to make, if practicable, a sufficient quantity ofcorn, hay, fodder, meat, potatoes and other vegetables for the consumptionof the plantation, and then as much cotton as can be made by requiring goodand 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 tomake less rice and keep my negroes at home in some degree of happiness inpreference to large crops acquired by rigour and barbarity to those poorcreatures. " And to a new incumbent: "I have now to recommend to you thecare 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 badloosenesses; let them be well attended night and day, and if one wench isnot sufficient add another to nurse them. With the well ones use gentlemeans mixed with easy authority first--if that does not succeed, makechoice of the most stubborn one or two and chastise them severely butproperly and with mercy, that they may be convinced that the end ofcorrection is to be amendment, " Again, alluding to one of his slaveswho had been gathering the pennies of his fellows: "Amos has a greatinclination to turn rum merchant. If his confederate comes to thatplantation, I charge you to discipline him with thirty-nine sound lashesand 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 withthese instructions to overseers. About 1809, for example, John Taylor, ofCaroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day, wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows: "The addition ofcomfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for theadvantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by aligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniarypoint of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflectionsthroughout life, which will cost him nothing. " He recommended fireproofbrick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food. Customary plentyin meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions forpilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; forupon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his wholeforce of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to thethief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressureto inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations. "A dailyallowance of cyder, " Taylor continued, "will extend the success of thissystem for the management of slaves, and particularly its effect ofdiminishing corporal punishments. But the reader is warned that a sternauthority, strict discipline and complete subordination must be combinedwith it to gain any success at all. "[8] [Footnote 8: John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, _Arator, Beinga Series of Agricultural Essays_ (2d ed. , Georgetown, D. C, 1814), pp. 122-125. ] Another Virginian's essay, of 1834, ran as follows: Virginia negroes aregenerally better tempered than any other people; they are kindly, grateful, attached to persons and places, enduring and patient in fatigue andhardship, contented and cheerful. Their control should be uniform andconsistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity. Punishment for realfaults should be invariable but moderate. "The best evidence of the goodmanagement of slaves is the keeping up of good discipline with little orno punishment. " The treatment should be impartial except for good conductwhich should bring rewards. Praise is often a better cure for laziness thanstripes. The manager should know the temper of each slave. The proud andhigh spirited are easily handled: "Your slow and sulky negro, although hemay have an even temper, is the devil to manage. The negro women are allharder to manage than the men. The only way to get along with them is bykind words and flattery. If you want to cure a sloven, give her somethingnice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she hason anything tolerably decent. " Eschew suspicion, for it breeds dishonesty. Promote harmony and sound methods among your neighbors. "A gooddisciplinarian in the midst of bad managers of slaves cannot do much; andwithout discipline there cannot be profit to the master or comfort to theslaves. " Feed and clothe your slaves well. The best preventive of theft isplenty of pork. Let them have poultry and gardens and fruit trees to attachthem to their houses and promote amenability. "The greatest bar to gooddiscipline in Virginia is the number of grog shops in every farmer'sneighborhood. " There is no severity in the state, and there will be nooccasion for it again if the fanatics will only let us alone. [9] [Footnote 9: "On the Management of Negroes. Addressed to the Farmers andOverseers 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 liberaltreatment on the part of the owner, and the requirement of properdiscipline and strict obedience on the part of the slave . .. Every attemptto force the slave beyond the limits of reasonable service by cruelty orhard treatment, so far from extorting more work, only tends to make himunprofitable, unmanageable, a vexation and a curse. " The quarters shouldbe well shaded, the houses free of the ground, well ventilated, and largeenough for comfort; the bedding and blankets fully adequate. "In formeryears the writer tried many ways and expedients to economize in theprovision of slaves by using more of the vegetable and cheap articles ofdiet, and less of the costly and substantial. But time and experience havefully proven the error of a stinted policy . .. The allowance now given perweek to each hand . .. Is five pounds of good clean bacon and one quart ofmolasses, with as much good bread as they require; and in the fall, orsickly season of the year, or on sickly places, the addition of one pint ofstrong coffee, sweetened with sugar, every morning before going to work. "The slaves may well have gardens, but the assignment of patches for marketproduce too greatly "encourages a traffic on their own account, andpresents a temptation and opportunity, during the process of gathering, foran unscrupulous fellow to mix a little of his master's produce with hisown. It is much better to give each hand whose conduct has been such as tomerit it an equivalent in money at the end of the year; it is much lesstrouble, and more advantageous to both parties. " Collins further advocatedplenty of clothing, moderate hours, work by tasks in cotton picking andelsewhere when feasible, and firm though kindly discipline. "Slaves, " hesaid, "have no respect or affection for a master who indulges them overmuch. .. . Negroes are by nature tyrannical in their dispositions, and ifallowed, the stronger will abuse the weaker, husbands will often abusetheir wives and mothers their children, so that it becomes a prominent dutyof owners and overseers to keep peace and prevent quarrelling and disputesamong them; and summary punishment should follow any violation of thisrule. Slaves are also a people that enjoy religious privileges. Manyof them place much value upon it; and to every reasonable extent thatadvantage should be allowed them. They are never injured by preaching, butthousands become wiser and better people and more trustworthy servantsby their attendance at church. Religious services should be provided andencouraged on every plantation. A zealous and vehement style, both indoctrine and manner, is best adapted to their temperament. They are goodbelievers in mysteries and miracles, ready converts, and adhere with muchpertinacity to their opinions when formed. "[10] It is clear that Collinshad 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 theform of manuals at the front of blank books for the keeping of plantationrecords;[11] and various planters described their own methods in operationas based on the same principles. One of these living at Chunnennuggee, Alabama, signing himself "N. B. P. , " wrote in 1852 an account of the problemshe had met and the solutions he had applied. Owning some 150 slaves, he hadlived away from his plantation until about a decade prior to this writing;but in spite of careful selection he could never get an overseer combiningthe qualities necessary in a good manager. "They were generally onextremes; those celebrated for making large crops were often too severe, and did everything by coercion. Hence turmoil and strife ensued. Thenegroes were ill treated and ran away. On the other hand, when he employeda good-natured man there was a want of proper discipline; the negroesbecame unmanageable and, as a natural result, the farm was brought intodebt, " The owner then entered residence himself and applied methods whichresulted in contentment, health and prolific increase among the slaves, andin consistently good crops. The men were supplied with wives at home so faras was practicable; each family had a dry and airy house to itself, with apoultry house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly werethree and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, togetherwith a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nurserywere fed from the master's kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables andbread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women weregiven time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all handshad to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; anda clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday. The chiefdistinction of this plantation, however, lay in its device for profitsharing. To each slave was assigned a half-acre plot with the promise thatif he worked with diligence in the master's crop the whole gang would inturn be set to work his crop. This was useful in preventing night andSunday work by the negroes. The proceeds of their crops, ranging from tento fifty dollars, were expended by the master at their direction for Sundayclothing and other supplies. [12] On a sugar plantation visited by Olmsteda sum of as many dollars as there were hogsheads in the year's crop wasdistributed among the slaves every Christmas. [13] [Footnote 11: Pleasant Suit, _Farmer's Accountant and Instructions forOverseers_ (Richmond, Va. , 1828); _Affleck's Cotton Plantation Record andAccount Book_, reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVIII, 339-345, and in ThomasW. Knox, _Campfire and Cotton Field_ (New York, 1865), pp. 358-364. _Seealso_ for varied and interesting data as to rules, experience and advice;Thomas S. Clay (of Bryan County, Georgia), _Detail of a Plan for the MoralImprovement 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, theirscales of operation and their personal qualities make sweeping assertionshazardous. Some were at just one remove from the authority of a greatplanter, as is suggested by the following advertisement: "Wanted, a managerto superintend several rice plantations on the Santee River. As thebusiness is extensive, a proportionate salary will be made, and one or twoyoung men of his own selection employed under him. [14] A healthful summerresidence on the seashore is provided for himself and family. " Otherswere hardly more removed from the status of common field hands. LawrenceTompkins, for example, signed with his mark in 1779 a contract to overseethe four slaves of William Allason, near Alexandria, and to work steadilywith them. He was to receive three barrels of corn and three hundred poundsof pork as his food allowance, and a fifth share of the tobacco, hemp andflax crops and a sixth of the corn; but if he neglected his work he mightbe dismissed without pay of any sort. [15] Some overseers were formerplanters who had lost their property, some were planters' sons working fora start in life, some were English and German farmers who had brought theirtalents to what they hoped might prove the world's best market, but most ofthem were of the native yeomanry which abounded in virtually all partsof the South. Some owned a few slaves whom they put on hire into theiremployers' gangs, thereby hastening their own attainment of the means tobecome 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 theNew 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, theoverseer's responsibilities were usually confined to the daily execution oforders in supervising the slaves in the fields and the quarters. But whenthe master was an absentee the opportunity for abuses and misunderstandingsincreased. Jurisdiction over slaves and the manner of its exercise were thegrounds of most frequent complaint. On the score of authority, for example, a Virginia overseer in the employ of Robert Carter wrote him in 1787 indespair at the conduct of a woman named Suckey: "I sent for hir to Come inthe morning to help Secoure the foder, but She Sent me word that She wouldnot come to worke that Day, and that you had ordered her to wash hirCloaiths and goo to Any meeting She pleased any time in the weke without myleafe, and on monday when I Come to Reken with hir about it She Said it wasyour orders and She would do it in Defiance of me. .. . I hope if Suckey isaloud that privilige more than the Rest, that she will bee moved to someother place, and one Come in her Room. "[17] On the score of abuses, StancilBarwick, an overseer in southwestern Georgia, wrote in 1855 to John B. Lamar: "I received your letter on yesterday ev'ng. Was vary sorry to hearthat you had heard that I was treating your negroes so cruely. Now, sir, Ido 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 theplace. " After declaring that miscarriages by two of the women had been dueto no requirement of work, he continued: "The reports that have been sentmust have been carried from this place by negroes. The fact is I have madethe negro men work, an made them go strait. That is what is the matter, anis the reason why my place is talk of the settlement. I have found amongthe negro men two or three hard cases an I have had to deal rite ruff, butnot cruly at all. Among them Abram has been as triflin as any man on theplace. Now, sir, what I have wrote you is truth, and it cant be disputed byno 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 theoverseers 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 casesgiven the store-house keys in preference to the overseer; and sometimeseven when the master was an absentee an overseer was wholly dispensed withand a slave foreman was given full charge. This practice would have beenstill more common had not the laws discouraged it. [19] Some plantersrefused to leave their slaves in the full charge of deputies of any kind, even for short periods. For example, Francis Corbin in 1819 explainedto James Madison that he must postpone an intended visit because of theabsence of his son. "Until he arrives, " Corbin wrote, "I dare not, incommon prudence, leave my affairs to the sole management of overseers, whoin these days are little respected by our intelligent negroes, many of whomare far superior in mind, morals and manners to those who are placed inauthority 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 ofA. H. Pemberton of the South Carolina midlands to James H. Hammond at theend of 1846. The writer described himself as unwilling to sacrifice hisagricultural reading in order to superintend his slaves in person, but ashaving too small a force to afford the employment of an overseer pure andsimple. For the preceding year he had had one charged with the doublefunction of working in person and supervising the slaves' work also; butthis 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 coursetake advantage of this, what he did was more than counterbalanced by whatthey did not. " Furthermore, this employee, "who worked harder than any manI ever saw, " used little judgment or foresight. "Withal, he has always beenaccustomed to the careless Southern practice generally of doing thingstemporarily and in a hurry, just to last for the present, and allowing thenegroes 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 whenwanted. And as to stock, he had no idea of any more attention to them thanis common in the ordinarily cruel and neglectful habits of the South. "Pemberton then turned to lamentation at having let slip a recentopportunity to buy at auction "a remarkably fine looking negro as to sizeand strength, very black, about thirty-five or forty, and so intelligentand trustworthy that he had charge of a separate plantation and eight orten hands some ten or twelve miles from home. " The procuring of such aforeman would precisely have solved Pemberton's problem; the failure todo so left him in his far from hopeful search for a paragon manager andworkman 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 classfor dishonesty, inattention and self indulgence. The demand for newand better ones was constant. For example, the editor of the _AmericanAgriculturist_, whose office was at New York, announced in 1846: "We arealmost daily beset with applications for properly educated managersfor farms and plantations--we mean for such persons as are up to theimprovements of the age, and have the capacity to carry them intoeffect. "[22] Youths occasionally offered themselves as apprentices. One ofthem, in Louisiana, published the following notice in 1822: "A young manwishing to acquire knowledge of cotton planting would engage for twelvemonths as overseer and keep the accounts of a plantation. .. . Unquestionablereference as to character will be given. "[23] And a South Carolinian in1829 proposed that the practice be systematized by the appointment of localcommittees to bring intelligent lads into touch with planters willing totake 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 commonlybetter than the reputation of their class, [25] but this is not to say thatthey were conspicuous either for expertness or assiduity. On the wholethey had about as much human nature, with its merits and failings, as theplanters 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 tolerantemployers and masters who put themselves upon record. [26] This wasdoubtless due to his own punctiliousness and thorough devotion to system aswell as to his often baffled wish to diversify his crops and upbuild hisfields. When in 1793 he engaged William Pearce as a new steward for thegroup of plantations comprising the Mount Vernon estate, he enjoined strictsupervision of his overseers "to keep them from running about and to obligethem to remain constantly with their people, and moreover to see at whattime they turn out in the morning--for, " said he, "I have strong suspicionsthat this with some of them is at a late hour, the consequences of whichto the negroes is not difficult to foretell. " "To treat them civilly, "Washington continued, "is no more than what all men are entitled to; but myadvice to you is, keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow uponfamiliarity in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not. Passby no faults or neglects, particularly at first, for overlooking one onlyserves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some ofthem, one in particular, will try at first what lengths he may go. "Particularizing as to the members of his staff, Washington described theirseveral characteristics: Stuart was intelligent and apparently honest andattentive, but vain and talkative, and usually backward in his schedule;Crow would be efficient if kept strictly at his duty, but seemed prone tovisiting and receiving visits. "This of course leaves his people too muchto themselves, which produces idleness or slight work on the one side andflogging on the other, the last of which, besides the dissatisfactionwhich it creates, has in one or two instances been productive of seriousconsequences. " McKay was a "sickly, slothful and stupid sort of fellow, "too much disposed to brutality in the treatment of the slaves in hischarge; Butler seemed to have "no more authority over the negroes . .. Thanan old woman would have"; and Green, the overseer of the carpenters, wastoo much on a level with the slaves for the exertion of control. Davy, thenegro foreman at Muddy Hole, was rated in his master's esteem higher thansome of his white colleagues, though Washington had suspicions concerningthe fate of certain lambs which had vanished while in his care. Indeed theoverseers all and several were suspected from time to time of drunkenness, waste, theft and miscellaneous rascality. In the last of these categoriesWashington seems to have included their efforts to secure higher wages. [Footnote 26: Voluminous plantation data are preserved in the WashingtonMSS. In the Library of Congress. Those here used are drawn from the lettersof Washington published in the Long Island Historical Society _Memoirs_, vol. IV; entitled _George Washington and Mount Vernon_. A map of the MountVernon 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 atnight, and of embezzling grain issued for planting, as well as of lying andmalingering in general. The carpenters, Washington said, were notoriouspiddlers; 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 weekstogether?. .. If they are not made to do what their age and strength willenable them, it will be a very bad example to others, none of whom wouldwork if by pretexts they can avoid it. " And again: "By the reports Iperceive that for every day Betty Davis works she is laid up two. If sheis indulged in this idleness she will grow worse and worse, for she has adisposition to be one of the most idle creatures on earth, and is besidesone of the most deceitful. " Pearce seems to have replied that he was at aloss to tell the false from the true. Washington rejoined: "I never foundso much difficulty as you seem to apprehend in distinguishing between realand feigned sickness, or when a person is much afflicted with pain. Nobodycan be very sick without having a fever, or any other disorder continuelong 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 theircountenance nor the loss of an ounce of flesh is discoverable; and theirallowance of provision is going on as if nothing ailed them. " Runaways wereoccasional. Of one of them Washington directed: "Let Abram get his desertswhen taken, by way of example; but do not trust Crow to give it to him, forI have reason to believe he is swayed more by passion than by judgment inall his corrections. " Of another, whom he had previously described as anidler beyond hope of correction: "Nor is it worth while, except for thesake 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 companywith a neighbor's slave: "If Mr. Dulany is disposed to pursue any measurefor the purpose of recovering his man, I will join him in the expence sofar as it may respect Paul; but I would not have my name appear in anyadvertisement, or other measure, leading to it. " Again, when asking that awoman of his who had fled to New Hampshire be seized and sent back if itcould be done without exciting a mob: "However well disposed I might be togradual abolition, or even to an entire emancipation of that description ofpeople (if the latter was in itself practicable), at this moment it wouldneither be politic nor just to reward unfaithfulness with a prematurepreference, and thereby discontent beforehand the minds of all her fellowserv'ts who, by their steady attachment, are far more deserving thanherself of favor. "[27] Finally: "The running off of my cook has been a mostinconvenient thing to this family, and what rendered it more disagreeableis that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave bypurchase. But this resolution I fear I must break. I have endeavored tohire, black or white, but am not yet supplied. " As to provisions, theslaves were given fish from Washington's Potomac fishery while the supplylasted, "meat, fat and other things . .. Now and then, " and of meal "asmuch as they can eat without waste, and no more. " The housing and clothingappear to have been adequate. The "father of his country" displayed littletenderness for his slaves. He was doubtless just, so far as a business-likeabsentee master could be; but his only generosity to them seems to havebeen the provision in his will for their manumission after the death of hiswife. [Footnote 27: Marion G. McDougall, _Fugitive Slaves_( Boston, 1891), p. 36. ] Lesser men felt the same stresses in plantation management. An owner ofninety-six slaves told Olmsted that such was the trouble and annoyancehis negroes caused him, in spite of his having an overseer, and such theloneliness of his isolated life, that he was torn between a desire to sellout at once and a temptation to hold on for a while in the expectation ofhigher prices. At the home of another Virginian, Olmsted wrote: "Duringthree hours or more in which I was in company with the proprietor I donot think there were ten consecutive minutes uninterrupted by some of theslaves requiring his personal direction or assistance. He was even obligedthree times to leave the dinner table. 'You see, ' said he smiling, as hecame in the last time, 'a farmer's life in this country is no sinecure, '" Athird Virginian, endorsing Olmsted's observations, wrote that a planter'scares 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 dailywants 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 haveno 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 memore than the patience of slave-owners . .. With their slaves . .. When Iconsidered how they love to be called 'fiery Southerners, ' I could not butmarvel at their mild forbearance under the hourly provocations to whichthey are liable in their homes. Persons from New England, France orEngland, becoming slaveholders, are found to be the most severe mastersand mistresses, however good their tempers may always have appearedpreviously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half anhour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possiblemanner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated, their infants slighted, --themselves deluded by artifices--they cannot, likethe native proprietor, endure all this unruffled. "[29] It is clear fromevery sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negroslaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnighnecessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness andpatience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financialruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; thepossession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern notvital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns wereturned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineauand most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, wrote after a journey toCharleston in 1855: "The change to a Northerner in coming South is alwaysa great one when he steps over the boundary of the free states; and thefarther you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness andcareless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution andskilful management. .. . The outside first aspect of slavery has nothinghorrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about lookingunhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips andchains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in thefree as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone tentimes as far, I dare say, without seeing the first sign of negro miseryor white tyranny. "[30] If, indeed, the neatness of aspect be the test ofsuccess, most plantations were failures; if the test of failure be the lackof harmony and good will, it appears from the available evidence that mostplantations were successful. [Footnote 29: Harriet Martineau, _Society in America_ (London, 1837), II315, 316. ] [Footnote 30: Charles Eliot Norton, _Letters_ (Boston, 1913), I, 121. ] The concerns and the character of a high-grade planter may be gathered fromthe correspondence of John B. Lamar, who with headquarters in the town ofMacon administered half a dozen plantations belonging to himself and hiskinsmen scattered through central and southwestern Georgia and northernFlorida. [31] The scale of his operations at the middle of the nineteenthcentury may be seen from one of his orders for summer cloth, presumablyat the rate of about five yards per slave. This was to be shipped fromSavannah to the several plantations as follows: to Hurricane, the propertyof Howell Cobb, Lamar's brother-in-law, 760 yards; to Letohatchee, a trustestate in Florida belonging to the Lamar family, 500 yards; and to Lamar'sown plantations the following: Swift Creek, 486; Harris Place, 360; Domine, 340; and Spring Branch, 229. Of his course of life Lamar wrote: "I am onehalf the year rattling over rough roads with Dr. Physic and Henry, stoppingat farm houses in the country, scolding overseers in half a dozen countiesand two states, Florida and Georgia, and the other half in the largestcities of the Union, or those of Europe, living on dainties and riding onrail-cars and steamboats. When I first emerge from Swift Creek into thehotels and shops on Broadway of a summer, I am the most economical bodythat you can imagine. The fine clothes and expensive habits of the peoplestrike me forcibly. .. . In a week I become used to everything, and in amonth I forget my humble concern on Swift Creek and feel as much a nabob asany of them. .. . At home where everything is plain and comfortable we lookon anything beyond that point as extravagant. When abroad where things areon a greater scale, our ideas keep pace with them. I always find such to bemy 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 hundreddollars for services at Hurricane in 1844, or when overseers were detectedin drunkenness or cruelty; but his most characteristic complaints were ofhis own short-comings as a manager and of the crotchets of his relatives. His letters were always cheery, and his repeated disappointments inoverseers never damped his optimism concerning each new incumbent. Hisold 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 atoad under the harrow; but rising markets would set him to counting balesbefore the seed had more than sprouted and to building new plantations inthe air. In actual practice his log-cabin slave quarters gave place toframe houses; his mules were kept in full force; his production of corn andbacon was nearly always ample for the needs of each place; his slaves werepermitted to raise nankeen cotton on their private accounts; and his ownfrequent journeys of inspection and stimulus, as he said, kept up an_esprit du corps_. When an overseer reported that his slaves were down withfever by the dozen and his cotton wasting in the fields, Lamar would hastenthither with a physician and a squad of slaves impressed from anotherplantation, to care for the sick and the crop respectively. Heredistributed slaves among his plantations with a view to a betterbalancing of land and labor, but was deterred from carrying this policy asfar as he thought might be profitable by his unwillingness to separate thefamilies. His absence gave occasion sometimes for discontent among hisslaves; yet when the owners of others who were for sale authorized themto find their own purchasers his well known justice, liberality and goodnature made "Mas John" a favorite recourse. As to crops and management, Lamar indicated his methods in criticizingthose of a relative: "Uncle Jesse still builds air castles and blindshimself to his affairs. Last year he tinkered away on tobacco and sugarcane, things he knew nothing about. .. . He interferes with the arrangementsof his overseers, and has no judgment of his own. .. . If he would employ acompetent overseer and move off the plantation with his family he couldmake good crops, as he has a good force of hands and good lands. .. . I havefound that it is unprofitable to undertake anything on a plantation out ofthe regular routine. If I had a little place off to itself, and my businesswould admit of it, I should delight in agricultural experiments. " In hisreliance upon staple routine, as in every other characteristic, Lamar ringstrue to the planter type. CHAPTER XV PLANTATION LABOR WHILE produced only in America, the plantation slave was a product ofold-world forces. His nature was an African's profoundly modified buthardly transformed by the requirements of European civilization. The wrenchfrom Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting hisancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperamentthan upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee, Ebo or Angola, he became instead the American negro. The Caucasian was also changed by thecontact in a far from negligible degree; but the negro's conversionwas much the more thorough, partly because the process in his case wascoercive, partly because his genius was imitative. The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit reservationas to limits, that a negro was what a white man made him. The molding, however, was accomplished more by groups than by individuals. The purposesand policies of the masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence thenegroes, though with many variants, became largely standardized into thepredominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed were an eagernessfor society, music and merriment, a fondness for display whether of person, dress, vocabulary or emotion, a not flagrant sensuality, a receptivenesstoward any religion whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness tosuperstition, a courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity forpraise, a readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least, ahealthy 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 waitingfor today's work, while today was ready for tomorrow's share of play. Onthe other hand it was a satisfaction to work sturdily for a hard boss, andso be able to say in an interchange of amenities: "Go long, half-pricednigger! 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 Nedthe carpenter is idle or nearly so at the plantation. He is fixing gatesand, like the idle groom in Pickwick, trying to fool himself into thebelief that he is doing something. .. . He is an eye servant. If I was withhim I could have the work done soon and cheap; but I am afraid to trust himoff where there is no one he fears. "[2] On the other hand, M. W. Philipsinscribed 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 primenegro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch theroustabouts at work--those chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging, lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of NewOrleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made. [4] Readyat every touching of the shore day and night, resting and sleeping onlybetween landings, they carry their loads almost at running speed, and whenreturning for fresh burdens they "coonjine" by flinging their feet insemi-circles at every step, or cutting other capers in rhythm to show theirfellows and the gallery that the strain of the cotton bales, the grainsacks, the oil barrels and the timbers merely loosen their muscles andlighten their spirits. [Footnote 4: Captain L. V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society ofEconomics, New Orleans, April 11th, 1911, on River Transportation and ItsRelation to New Orleans, Past, Present and Future_. [New Orleans, 1911. ]] Such an exhibit would have been the despair of the average ante-bellumplanter, for instead of choosing among hundreds of applicants and rejectingor discharging those who fell short of a high standard, he had to makeshift with such laborers as the slave traders chanced to bring or as hiswomen chanced to rear. His common problem was to get such income andcomfort as he might from a parcel of the general run; and the creationof roustabout energy among them would require such vigor and such ironresolution on his own part as was forthcoming in extremely few cases. Theoretically the master might be expected perhaps to expend the minimumpossible to keep his slaves in strength, to discard the weaklings and theaged, to drive his gang early and late, to scourge the laggards hourly, tosecure the whole with fetters by day and with bolts by night, and to keepthem in perpetual terror of his wrath. But Olmsted, who seems to have goneSouth 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 inthe slave states than, with a somewhat extended travelling experience, inany other country I ever visited";[5] and Nehemiah Adams, who went fromBoston to Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himselflaughing 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 Monthsin the South in 1854_ (Boston, 1854), chap. 2. ] The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was as strange tothe bulk of the planters as the doctrine and practice of moderation was tothose who viewed the régime from afar and with the mind's eye. A planterin explaining his mildness might well have said it was due to his beingneither a knave nor a fool He refrained from the use of fetters not so muchbecause they would have hampered the slaves in their work as because thegeneral use of them never crossed his mind. And since chains and bolts wereout of the question, the whole system of control must be moderate; slavesmust be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might be byloyalty, pride and the prospect of reward. Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional degree. Acertain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked success even when his wholeforce was of fresh Africans. In a pamphlet of the late eighteen-twentieshe told of his method as follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settleda 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 youngmen and women, and nearly in equal numbers. I never interfered in theirconnubial concerns nor domestic affairs, but let them regulate these aftertheir own manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and what Ithought would add to their physical and moral happiness. I encouraged asmuch as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoonand night and Sunday morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] wasusually employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for theweek. Both men and women were very industrious. Many of them made twentybushels of corn to sell, and they vied with each other in dress anddancing. .. . They were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared perfectlyhappy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever hadto apply other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, thepunishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing their workwell. 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 of1812 most of these negroes were killed or carried off in a Seminole raid. When peace returned and Kingsley attempted to restore his Eden with amixture of African and American negroes, a serpent entered in the guise ofa negro preacher who taught the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sundayand eating the catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves"became poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was only todo justice--to take what belonged to them, because I kept them in unjustbondage. " They came to believe "that all pastime or pleasure in thisiniquitous world was sinful; that this was only a place of sorrow andrepentance, and the sooner they were out of it the better; that they wouldthen 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 wouldpardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and askforgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to thechurch, etc. .. . Finally myself and the overseer became completely divestedof all authority over the negroes. .. . Severity had no effect; it only madeit worse. "[7] [Footnote 7: [Z. Kingsley] _A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Societyas 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 liberalismand profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the plantation régime. To support this contention further he cited an experiment by a SouthCarolinian who established four or five plantations in a group on BroadRiver, with a slave foreman on each and a single overseer with very limitedfunctions 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 thesale of any surplus. The output proved large, "and the owner had no furthertrouble nor expense than furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying theoverseer's wages, so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that hecould realize his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without payingthe customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on the operationof his slaves. " In Kingsley's opinion the system "answered extremely well, and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivatingutility, 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 slavesis probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on theirplantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi. Therethe slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in everyway they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courtscomposed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to beinflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with hispower of pardon. The régime was maintained for a number of years in fulleffect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops. [9] [Footnote 9: W. L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the NegroProblem, " in the _Sewanee Review_ (October, 1908). ] These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend tocounterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme. In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, therelation 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 theindications in the preceding chapters that crude comfort was the rule. Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776 that a Georgia slaveholder withwhom he stopped sold no dairy products from his forty cows in milk. Theproprietor explained this by saying: "I have a considerable family of blackpeople who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for Those I havewere either chosen for their good qualities or born in the family; and Ifind from long experience and observation that the better they are fed, clothed and treated, the more service and profit we may expect to derivefrom their labour. In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or anyarticle of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best advantageamongst my family and slaves. " At another place Bartram noted the arrivalat a plantation of horse loads of wild pigeons taken by torchlight fromtheir 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 Carolinacoast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a detail of four slaves wasshifted from the field work each week for a useful holiday in anglingfor the huge drumfish which abounded in those waters; and their catchesaugmented the fare of the white and black families alike. [11] Game andfish, however, were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combinedthe virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness. OnFowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands numbered a little lessthan half a hundred, the pork harvest throughout the eighteen-fifties, except for a single year of hog cholera, yielded from eleven totwenty-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 1764on behalf of himself and two neighbors for 120 men's jackets and breechesand 80 women's gowns to be made in assorted sizes from strong and heavycloth. 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 thewoolen weaving had nearly supplied the full needs of the place at the rateof six or six and a half yards for each adult and proportionately for thechildren. [14] In 1847, in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrotefrom Paris to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroesand 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 toyou, together with the same quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and alarge woolen Scotch cap for each man and youth on the place. .. . Send backanything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs. Habersham andSon the twilled wool and cotton, called by some 'Hazzard's cloth, ' for allthe women and children, and get two or three dozen handkerchiefs so as togive each woman and girl one. .. . The shoes you will procure as usual fromMr. Habersham by sending down the measures in time. "[15] Finally, theregister of A. L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont containsrecord of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a steady schedule. Everyspring each man drew two cotton shirts and two pair of homespun woolentrousers, each woman a frock and chemises, and each child clothing or clothin proportion; and every fall the men drew shirts, trousers and coats, thewomen shifts, petticoats, frocks and sacks, the children again on a similarscale, 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 whichhave stood abandoned for half a century, denote in many cases a sounderconstruction and greater comfort than most of the negroes in freedom havesince 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 andanxiety for their sustenance, could hardly have more of them than theywanted. A Virginian told Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fastas they did on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and inGeorgia, Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits. "[18] In MississippiM. W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when at the age ofthirty she was married by her master to a new husband, and had eight morethereafter, including a set of triplets. [19] But the culminating instanceis the following as reported by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERYREMARKABLE. There is now living in the vicinity of Campbell a negrowoman belonging to a gentleman by the name of Todd; this woman is in herforty-second year and has had forty-one children and at this time ispregnant with her forty-second child, and possibly with her forty-third, asshe has frequently had doublets. "[20] Had childbearing been regulatedin the interest of the masters, Todd's woman would have had less thanforty-one and Amy less than her nineteen, for such excesses impaired thevitality of the children. Most of Amy's, for example, died a few hours ordays 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 theLynchburg _Press_. ] A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie. " Virtuallyall of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and wives except Carolinewho in twenty years bore ten children. Her husband was presumably the slaveof 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 seventeenyears with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa likewise hadfive in nineteen years with Bob as the father of all but the first; andHector and Mary had five in seven years. On the other hand, two old couplesand one in their thirties had had no children, while eight young pairs hadfrom one to four each. [21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisianaplantation called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole. Theslaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards comprisedthirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre des naissances"showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859 distributed amongtwenty-three women, two of whom were still in their teens when the recordended. Rhodé bore six children between her seventeenth and thirty-fourthyears; Henriette bore six between twenty-one and forty; Esther six betweentwenty-one and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two;Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore from oneto three children each, including Celestine who had her first baby whenfifteen and her second two years after. None of the matings or paternitiesappear in the record, though the christenings and the slave godparents areregistered. [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 beillustrated from the journal for 1859-1860 of the Magnolia plantation, forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its record of rations to 138hands, and of the occasional births, deaths, runaways and recaptures, andof the purchase of a man slave for $2300, it contains the following summaryunder date of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen monthsover 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping cough, and thenthe diphtheria, all of which we have gone through with but little loss savein the whooping cough when we lost some twelve children. " This entry was inthe spirit of rejoicing at escape from disasters. But on December 18 therewere two items of another tone. One of these was entered by an overseernamed Kellett: "[I] shot the negro boy Frank for attempting to cut at meand three boys with his cane knife with intent to kill. " The other, in adifferent handwriting, recorded tersely: "J. A. Randall commenst buisnassthis mornung. J. Kellett discharged this morning. " The owner could notafford to keep an overseer who killed negroes even though it might be inself 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, fornegroes were largely immune to it; but cholera sometimes threatened toexterminate the slaves and bankrupt their masters. After a visitation ofthis 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 issupposed that five or six thousand souls, black and white, were carried offin fourteen days. "[24] The pecuniary loss in Louisiana from slave deathsin that epidemic was estimated at four million dollars. [25] Two yearsafterward it raged in the Savannah neighborhood. On Mr. Wightman'splantation, ten miles above the city, there were in the first week ofSeptember fifty-three cases and eighteen deaths. The overseer then checkedthe spread by isolating the afflicted ones in the church, the barn and themill. The neighboring planters awaited only the first appearance of thedisease on their places to abandon their crops and hurry their slaves tolodges in the wilderness. [26] Plagues of smallpox were sometimes of similardimensions. [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 andOct. 22, 1834. ] Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin. A seriesof them drove M. W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation journal: "Oh! mylosses almost make me crazy. God alone can help. " In short, planters mustguard their slaves' health and life as among the most vital of their owninterests; for while crops were merely income, slaves were capital. Thetendency appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrantlabor when available for such work as would involve strain and exposure. The documents bearing on this theme are scattering but convincing. ThusE. J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the extension of the sugar fields, said thousands of Irishmen were seen in every direction digging plantationditches;[27] T. B. Thorpe when describing plantation life on the Mississippiin 1853 said the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planterwhen describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish werehired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at their usualroutine. [29] Olmsted noted on the Virginia seaboard that "Mr. W. .. . Had anIrish gang draining for him by contract. " Olmsted asked, "why he shouldemploy Irishmen in preference to doing the work with his own hands. 'It'sdangerous work, ' the planter replied, 'and a negro's life is too valuableto be risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss youknow, '"[30] On a Louisiana plantation W. H. Russell wrote in 1860: "Thelabor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands and hewing down theforests is generally done by Irish laborers who travel about the countryunder 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 wasmuch better to have Irish do it, who cost nothing to the planter if theydied, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment, '" Russelladded on his own score: "There is a wonderful mine of truth in thisobservation. Heaven knows how many poor Hibernians have been consumed andburied in these Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshopkeeper and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the planter. "On another plantation the same traveller was shown the débris left by thelast Irish gang and was regaled by an account of the methods by which theircontractor made them work. [31] Robert Russell made a similar observation ona plantation near New Orleans, and was told that even at high wages Irishlaborers were advisable for the work because they would do twice asmuch 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 Yazoodistrict, "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin, 'straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chiefelement among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day. [33]Likewise Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his boat withcotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed for the work atthe top of the chute, while Irish deck hands were kept below to capture thewildly bounding bales and stow them. As to the reason for this divisionof labor and concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmiseconfirmed when the captain answered his question by saying, "The niggersare worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34] To these chanceobservations it may be added that many newspaper items and canal andrailroad company reports from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that theconstruction gangs were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attractedthose whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor wastheir capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished the livesof their slaves. [Footnote 27: Edward J. Forstall, _The Agricultural Productions ofLouisiana_ (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), pp272, 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 theSouth_ (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, disabilityand death, since for industrial purposes a slave absent was no better thana slave sick, and a permanent escape was the equivalent of a death on theplantation. The character of the absconding was various. Some slaves merelytook vacations without leave, some fled in postponement of threatenedpunishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to escape frombondage altogether. Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a protest againstseverities. An episode of this sort was recounted in a letter of a Georgiaoverseer to his absent employer: "Sir: I write you a few lines in order tolet you know that six of your hands has left the plantation--every man butJack. They displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a fewlashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were missing. I thinkthey are lying out until they can see you or your uncle Jack, as he isexpected daily. They may be gone off, or they may be lying round in thisneighbourhood, but I don't know. I blame Tom for the whole. I don't thinkthe rest would of left the plantation if Tom had not of persuaded them offor some design. I give Tom but a few licks, but if I ever get him in mypower I will have satisfaction. There was a part of them had no cause forleaving, 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 Ithink the cause is they have been treated too well. They want more whippingand no protecter; but if our country is so that negroes can quit theirhomes and run of when they please without being taken they will have theadvantage of us. If they should come in I will write to you immediately andlet 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. Punctuationand capitals, which are conspicuously absent in the original, have herebeen supplied for the sake of clarity. ] Such a case is analogous to that of wage-earning laborers on strike forbetter conditions of work. The slaves could not negotiate directly at sucha time, but while they lay in the woods they might make overtures to theoverseer through slaves on a neighboring plantation as to terms upon whichthey would return to work, or they might await their master's posthastearrival and appeal to him for a redress of grievances. Humble as theirdemeanor might be, their power of renewing the pressure by repeating theirflight could not be ignored. A happy ending for all concerned might bereached by mutual concessions and pledges. That the conclusion might betragic is illustrated in a Louisiana instance where the plantation was incharge of a negro foreman. Eight slaves after lying out for some weeksbecause of his cruelty and finding their hardships in the swamp intolerablereturned home together and proposed to go to work again if granted amnesty. When the foreman promised a multitude of lashes instead, they killed himwith their clubs. The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia, told what they had done, and surrendered themselves. The coroner went tothe 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 chronicoffenders were likely to be given exemplary punishment when recaptured. Inthe earlier decades branding and shackling were fairly frequent. Some ofthe punishments were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflictedupon talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quiteas fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period the more commonresorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale. The menace of this lastwas shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hellon 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 slaverefrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and theslanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for theyrecognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turnblackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiablepurpose of keeping their own slaves content. Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered moreor less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper advertisements forfugitives reinforces the impression that the need of deterrence was vital. Whippings, instead of proving a cure, might bring revenge in the form ofsabotage, arson or murder. Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter mightprove of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical. Thepreventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and festivities tocreate lightness of heart; overtime and overtask payments to promote zealand satisfaction; kindliness and care to call forth loyalty in return;and the special device of crop patches to give every hand a stake in theplantation. This last raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaveswere allowed to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might bestimulated more than industry and punishments become more necessarythan before. In the cotton belt a solution was found at last in nankeencotton. [37] This variety had been widely grown for domestic use as early asthe beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was left largely in neglectuntil when in the thirties it was hit upon for negro crops. While theprices it brought were about the same as those of the standard uplandstaple, its distinctive brown color prevented the admixture of theplanter's own white variety without certain detection when it reachedthe gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations isindicated by the proceeds of $1, 969. 65 in 1859 from the nankeen of thenegroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in Taylor County, Georgia. [38] Suchreturns might be distributed in cash; but planters generally preferred forthe 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 oftickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed the followingto the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg in the Christmas season of1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let the bearer George have ten dollars value inanything he chooses"; and the merchants entered a memorandum that Georgechose two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a pairof 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'sReview_, XXIX, 362, note. ] [Footnote 39: MS. Among the Allen and Ellis papers in the Library ofCongress. ] In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to avoid theoccasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too heavy, the simplestrecourse was to reduce the schedule. If jobs were slackly done, acquiescence was easier than correction. The easy-going and plausibledisposition of the blacks conspired with the heat of the climate to softenthe resolution of the whites and make them patient. Severe and unyieldingrequirements would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied withgeniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization would makeplantation life not only tolerable but charming. In the actual régime severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness therule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote in 1820: "After travellingthrough three slave states I am obliged to go back to theory to raise anyabhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an instance ofcruel treatment nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in'the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and appear atleast as independent as their masters; in animal spirits they have greatlythe advantage. "[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828: "I have no wish, God knows!to defend slavery in the abstract; . .. But . .. Nothing during my recentjourney gave me more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I wasgradually brought that the planters of the Southern states of America, generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage their estates withthe least possible severity. I do not say that undue severity is nowhereexercised; but the discipline, taken upon the average, as far as I couldlearn, is not more strict than is necessary for the maintenance of a properdegree of authority, without which the whole framework of society in thatquarter would be blown to atoms. "[41] And Olmsted wrote: "The only whippingof slaves that I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild, lazychildren 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 withthe hustle prevailing on the Northern farms, "in Carolina all mankindappeared comparatively idle. "[43] Olmsted, when citing a Virginian's remarkthat his negroes never worked enough to tire themselves, said on his ownaccount: "This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves atwork--they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strengthinto them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps. "[44] And Solon Robinson reported tersely from a rice plantationthat the negroes plied their hoes "at so slow a rate, the motion would havegiven 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 therégime. There was, furthermore, little of that curse of impersonalityand indifference which too commonly prevails in the factories of thepresent-day world where power-driven machinery sets the pace, where theemployers have no relations with the employed outside of work hours, wherethe proprietors indeed are scattered to the four winds, where the directorsconfine their attention to finance, and where the one duty of thesuperintendent is to procure a maximum output at a minimum cost. No, theplanters were commonly in residence, their slaves were their chief propertyto be conserved, and the slaves themselves would not permit indifferenceeven if the masters were so disposed. The generality of the negroesinsisted upon possessing and being possessed in a cordial but respectfulintimacy. While by no means every plantation was an Arcadia there were manyon which the industrial and racial relations deserved almost as glowingaccounts as that which the Englishman William Faux wrote in 1819 of the"goodly plantation" of the venerable Mr. Mickle in the uplands of SouthCarolina. [46] "This gentleman, " said he, "appears to me to be a rareexample of pure and undefiled religion, kind and gentle in manners. .. . Seeing a swarm, or rather herd, of young negroes creeping and dancingabout the door and yard of his mansion, all appearing healthy, happy andfrolicsome and withal fat and decently clothed, both young and old, I feltinduced to praise the economy under which they lived. 'Aye, ' said he, 'Ihave 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 needno taskmaster, no overseer. They will do all and more than I expect themto do, and I can trust them with untold gold. All the adults are wellinstructed, and all are members of Christian churches in the neighbourhood;and their conduct is becoming their professions. I respect them as mychildren, and they look on me as their friend and father. Were they to betaken from me it would be the most unhappy event of their lives, ' Thisconversation induced me to view more attentively the faces of the adultslaves; and I was astonished at the free, easy, sober, intelligent andthoughtful impression which such an economy as Mr. Mickle's had indeliblymade 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 themewas the project of American colonization; and when a settlement was plantedat Jamestown, at Boston or at Providence as the case might be, it wascalled, regardless of the type, a plantation. This usage of the word in thesense of a colony ended only upon the rise of a new institution to whichthe original name was applied. The colonies at large came then to be knownas provinces or dominions, while the sub-colonies, the privatelyowned village estates which prevailed in the South, were alone calledplantations. In the Creole colonies, however, these were known as_habitations_--dwelling places. This etymology of the name suggests thenature of the thing--an isolated place where people in somewhat peculiargroups settled and worked and had their being. The standard communitycomprised 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 weremembers; the one was teacher, the many were pupils. The scheme of the buildings reflected the character of the group. The "bighouse, " as the darkies loved to call it, might be of any type from a doublelog cabin to a colonnaded mansion of many handsome rooms, and its settingmight range from a bit of primeval forest to an elaborate formal garden. Most commonly the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretenseto distinction without nor to luxury within. The two fairly constantfeatures were the hall running the full depth of the house, and theverandah spanning the front. The former by day and the latter at eveningserved in all temperate seasons as the receiving place for guests and thegathering place for the household at all its leisure times. The house waslikely to have a quiet dignity of its own; but most of such beauty as thehomestead possessed was contributed by the canopy of live-oaks if on therice 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 orguests. Behind the house and at a distance of a rod or two for the sake ofisolating its noise and odors, was the kitchen. Near this, unless a springwere available, stood the well with its two buckets dangling from thepulley; and near this in turn the dairy and the group of pots and tubswhich constituted the open air laundry. Bounding the back yard there werethe smoke-house where bacon and hams were cured, the sweet potato pit, theice pit except in the southernmost latitudes where no ice of local originwas to be had, the carriage house, the poultry house, the pigeon cote, andthe lodgings of the domestic servants. On plantations of small or mediumscale the cabins of the field hands generally stood at the border of themaster's own premises; but on great estates, particularly in the lowlands, they were likely to be somewhat removed, with the overseer's house, thesmithy, and the stables, corn cribs and wagon sheds nearby. At otherconvenient spots were the buildings for working up the crops--the tobaccohouse, the threshing and pounding mills, the gin and press, or the sugarhouse as the respective staples required. The climate conduced so stronglyto out of door life that as a rule each roof covered but a single unit ofresidence, industry or storage. The fields as well as the buildings commonly radiated from the planter'shouse. Close at hand were the garden, the orchards and the horse lot; andbehind them the sweet potato field, the watermelon patch and the forageplots of millet, sorghum and the like. Thence there stretched the fieldsof the main crops in a more or less solid expanse according to the localconditions. Where ditches or embankments were necessary, as for sugar andrice fields, the high cost of reclamation promoted compactness; elsewherethe prevailing cheapness of land promoted dispersion. Throughout theuplands, accordingly, the area in crops was likely to be broken by woodlots and long-term fallows. The scale of tillage might range from a fewscore acres to a thousand or two; the expanse of unused land need have nolimit but those of the proprietor's purse and his speculative proclivity. The scale of the orchards was in some degree a measure of the domesticityprevailing. On the rice coast the unfavorable character of the soil and theabsenteeism of the planter's families in summer conspired to keep the fruittrees 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 peachesexcelled 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 thoseof clinging stones and firm flesh for drying, preserving, and making pies. From June to September every creature, hogs included, commonly had as manypeaches as he cared to eat; and in addition great quantities might becarried to the stills. The abandoned fields, furthermore, contributeddewberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild plums in summer, andpersimmons in autumn, when the forest also yielded its muscadines, foxgrapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts and chinquapins, and along theGulf 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 andmarshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks andrivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapinand turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. Inmost localities it required little time for a household, slave or free, tolay forest, field or stream under tribute. The planter's own dietary, while mostly home grown, was elaborate. Beef andmutton were infrequent because the pastures were poor; Irish potatoes wereused only when new, for they did not keep well in the Southern climate;and wheaten loaves were seldom seen because hot breads were universallypreferred. The standard meats were chicken in its many guises, ham andbacon. Wheat flour furnished relays of biscuit and waffles, while cornyielded lye hominy, grits, muffins, batter cakes, spoon bread, hoe cakeand pone. The gardens provided in season lettuce, cucumbers, radishes andbeets, mustard greens and turnip greens, string beans, snap beans andbutter beans, asparagus and artichokes, Irish potatoes, squashes, onions, carrots, turnips, okra, cabbages and collards. The fields added green cornfor boiling, roasting, stewing and frying, cowpeas and black-eyed peas, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, which last were roasted, fried or candiedfor variation. The people of the rice coast, furthermore, had a specialfondness for their own pearly staple; and in the sugar district _strop debatterie_ was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves and jellies werein variety and quantity limited only by the almost boundless resources andindustry of the housewife and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breadsand relishes would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpectedguests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal than wouldbe taken away at the end, never to return. If ever tables had a habit ofgroaning it was those of the planters. Frugality, indeed, was reckoned avice to be shunned, and somewhat justly so since the vegetables and eggswere perishable, the bread and meat of little cost, and the surplus fromthe table found sure disposal in the kitchen or the quarters. Lucky was theman whose wife was the "big house" cook, for the cook carried a basket, andthe basket was full when she was homeward bound. The fare of the field hands was, of course, far more simple. Hoecake andbacon were its basis and often its whole content. But in summer fruitand vegetables were frequent; there was occasional game and fish at allseasons; and the first heavy frost of winter brought the festival ofhog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, allother parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spareribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlingsgreased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made ofcorn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by broughtrecreation, but the hog-killing brought fat satisfaction. [1] [Footnote 1: This account of plantation homesteads and dietary is drawnmainly 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 PhilipFithian _Journal_ (Princeton, 1900); A. De Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of aYear's Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich. , 1859); Susan D. Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (Baltimore, 1887); Mary B. Chestnutt, _ADiary from Dixie_ (New York, 1905); and many other memoirs and traveller'saccounts. ] The warmth of the climate produced some distinctive customs. One was thehigh seasoning of food to stimulate the appetite; another was the afternoonsiesta of summer; a third the wellnigh constant leaving of doors ajar evenin winter when the roaring logs in the chimney merely took the chill fromthe draughts. Indeed a door was not often closed on the plantation exceptthose of the negro cabins, whose inmates were hostile to night air, andthose of the storerooms. As a rule, it was only in the locks of the latterthat keys were ever turned by day or night. The lives of the whites and the blacks were partly segregate, partlyintertwined. If any special link were needed, the children supplied it. The whites ones, hardly knowing their mothers from their mammies or theiruncles by blood from their "uncles" by courtesy, had the freedom of thekitchen and the cabins, and the black ones were their playmates in theshaded sandy yard the livelong day. Together they were regaled withfolklore in the quarters, with Bible and fairy stories in the "big house, "with pastry in the kitchen, with grapes at the scuppernong arbor, withmelons at the spring house and with peaches in the orchard. The half-grownboys were likewise almost as undiscriminating among themselves as the dogswith which they chased rabbits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, whenthe fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found somethingto envy in the freedom of their fellows' feet from the cramping weight ofshoes and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. Withthe approach of maturity came routine and responsibility for the whites, routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of eachrace grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, someof the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most ofboth races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a somewhatdistinctive plantation type. In amusements and in religion the activities of the whites and blacks wereboth mingled and separate. Fox hunts when occurring by day were as a rulediversions only for the planters and their sons and guests, but when theyoccurred by moonlight the chase was joined by the negroes on foot withhalloos which rivalled the music of the hounds. By night also the blacks, with the whites occasionally joining in, sought the canny 'possum and theembattled 'coon; in spare times by day they hied their curs after thefleeing Brer Rabbit, or built and baited seductive traps for turkeys andquail; and fishing was available both by day and by night. At the horseraces 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, whitemen and boys were not always absent. Festivities were somewhat more separate than sports, though by no meanswholly so. In the gayeties of Christmas the members of each race werespectators of the dances and diversions of the other. Likewise marriagemerriment in the great house would have its echo in the quarters; andsometimes marriages among the slaves were grouped so as to give occasionfor a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a generalinvitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple weddingamong his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow. [2] On the whole, thefiddle, 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 dancingand religion were held to be incompatible. At one time on Thomas Dabney'splantation in Mississippi, for instance, the whole negro force fell captivein a Baptist "revival" and forswore the double shuffle. "I done buss' myfiddle an' my banjo, and done fling 'em away, " the most music-lovingfellow on the place said to the preacher when asked for his religiousexperiences. [3] Such a condition might be tolerable so long as it wasvoluntary; but the planters were likely to take precautions against itsbecoming coercive. James H. Hammond, for instance, penciled a memorandumin his plantation manual: "Church members are privileged to dance on allholyday occasions; and the class-leader or deacon who may report them shallbe reprimanded or punished at the discretion of the master. "[4] The logicwith which sin and sanctity were often reconciled is illustrated in IrwinRussell'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 thosewhich relied least upon ritual and most upon exhilaration. The Baptist andMethodist were foremost, and the latter had the special advantage of thechain of camp meetings which extended throughout the inland regions. Ateach chosen spot the planters and farmers of the countryside would jointlyerect a great shed or "stand" in the midst of a grove, and would severallybuild wooden shelters or "tents" in a great square surrounding it. When thecrops were laid by in August, the households would remove thither, theirwagons piled high with bedding, chairs and utensils to keep "open house"with heavy-laden tables for all who might come to the meeting. With lesselaborate equipment the negroes also would camp in the neighborhood andattend the same service as the whites, sitting generally in a section ofthe stand set apart for them. The camp meeting, in short, was the chiefsocial and religious event of the year for all the Methodist whites andblacks within reach of the ground and for such non-Methodists as caredto attend. For some of the whites this occasion was highly festive, forothers, intensely religious; but for any negro it might easily be both atonce. Preachers in relays delivered sermons at brief intervals fromsunrise until after nightfall; and most of the sermons were followed byexhortations for sinners to advance to the mourners' benches to receivethe more intimate and individual suasion of the clergy and their corps ofassisting brethren and sisters. The condition was highly hypnotic, and theprofessions of conversion were often quite as ecstatic as the most fervidministrant could wish. The negroes were particularly welcome to thepreachers, for they were likely to give the promptest response to thepulpit's challenge and set the frenzy going. A Georgia preacher, forinstance, in reporting from one of these camps in 1807, wrote: "The firstday of the meeting, we had a gentle and comfortable moving of the spirit ofthe Lord among us; and at night it was much more powerful than before, andthe meeting was kept up all night without intermission. However, beforeday the white people retired, and the meeting was continued by the blackpeople. " It is easy to see who led the way to the mourners' bench. "Nextday, " the preacher continued, "at ten o'clock the meeting was remarkablylively, and many souls were deeply wrought upon; and at the close of thesermon there was a general cry for mercy, and before night there were agood many persons who professed to get converted. That night the meetingcontinued all night, both by the white and black people, and many soulswere 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 atnight, . .. 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 aconsiderable time before he came to himself. From that the work ofconvictions and conversions spread, and a large number were convertedduring the night, and there was no intermission until the break of day. Atthat time many stout hearted sinners were conquered. On Saturday we hadpreaching at the rising of the sun; and then with many tears we took leaveof 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 theMethodist camps. In either case the rampant emotionalism, effective enoughamong the whites, was with the negroes a perfect contagion. With some ofthese the conversion brought lasting change; with others it provided agarment of piety to be donned with "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes" anddoffed as irksome on week days. With yet more it merely added to the joysof life. The thrill of exaltation would be followed by pleasurable "sin, "to give place to fresh conversion when the furor season recurred. Therivalry of the Baptist and Methodist churches, each striving by similarmethods to excel the other, tempted many to become oscillating proselytes, yielding to the allurements first of the one and then of the other, and oneach occasion holding the center of the stage as a brand snatched from theburning, a lost sheep restored to the fold, a cause and participant ofrapture. In these manifestations the negroes merely followed and enlarged upon theexample of some of the whites. The similarity of practices, however, did not promote a permanent mingling of the two races in the samecongregations, for either would feel some restraint upon its rhapsodyimposed by the presence of the other. To relieve this there developed ingreater or less degree a separation of the races for purposes of worship, white ministers preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantationmissions, and home talent among the negroes filling the intervals. Whilesome of the black exhorters were viewed with suspicion by the whites, others were highly esteemed and unusually privileged. One of these atLexington, Kentucky, for example, was given the following pass duly signedby his master: "Tom is my slave, and has permission to go to Louisville fortwo or three weeks and return here after he has made his visit. Tom is apreacher of the reformed Baptist church, and has always been a faithfulservant. "[7] As a rule the greater the proportion of negroes in a districtor a church connection, the greater the segregation in worship. If thewhites were many and the negroes few, the latter would be given the galleryor some other group of pews; but if the whites were few and the negroesmany, the two elements would probably worship in separate buildings. Evenin such case, however, it was very common for a parcel of black domesticsto flock with their masters rather than with their fellows. [Footnote 7: Dated Aug. 6, 1856, and signed E. McCallister. MS. In the NewYork Public Library. ] The general régime in the fairly typical state of South Carolina wasdescribed in 1845 in a set of reports procured preliminary to a conventionon 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 severaldistricts, others in detail of systems on the writers' own plantations. Inthe 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 hisslaves, aside from the rector of the parish. He read the service and taughtthe catechism to all every Sunday afternoon, and taught such as camevoluntarily to be instructed after family prayers on Wednesday nights. Hiswife and sons taught the children "constantly during the week, " chiefly inthe catechism. On the other hand R. F. W. Allston, a fellow Episcopalian ofPrince George, Winyaw, had on his plantation a place of worship open to alldenominations. 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 hisslaves in his own faith, Allston encouraged them to seek salvation by suchcreed as they might choose. An Episcopal clergyman in the same parish with Allston wrote that he heldfortnightly services among the negroes on ten plantations, and enlistedsome of the literate slaves as lay readers. His restriction of these to thetext of the prayer book, however, seems to have shorn them of power. Thebulk of the slaves flocked to the more spontaneous exercises elsewhere;and the clergyman could find ground for satisfaction only in saying thatfrequently as many as two hundred slaves attended services at one of theparish churches in the district. The Episcopal failure was the "evangelical" opportunity. Of the thirteenthousand slaves in Allston's parish some 3200 were Methodists and 1500Baptists, as compared with 300 Episcopalians. In St. Peter's parish aMethodist reported that in a total of 6600 slaves, 1335 adhered to hisfaith, about half of whom were in mixed congregations of whites and blacksunder the care of two circuit-riders, and the rest were in charge of twomissionaries who ministered to negroes alone. Every large plantation, furthermore, had one or more "so-called negro preachers, but more properlyexhorters. " In St. Helena parish the Baptists led with 2132 communicants;the Methodists followed with 314 to whom a missionary holding services ontwenty plantations devoted the whole of his time; and the Episcopalians asusual brought up the rear with fifty-two negro members of the church atBeaufort and a solitary additional one in the chapel on St. Helena island. Of the progress and effects of religion in the lowlands Allston andMiddleton thought well. The latter said, "In every respect I feelencouraged to go on. " The former wrote: "Of my own negroes and those in myimmediate neighborhood I may speak with confidence. They are attentive toreligious instruction and greatly improved in intelligence and morals, indomestic relations, etc. Those who have grown up under religious trainingare more intelligent and generally, though not always, more improved thanthose who have received religious instruction as adults. Indeed the degreeof intelligence which as a class they are acquiring is worthy of deepconsideration. " Thomas Fuller, the reporter from the Beaufort neighborhood, however, was as much apprehensive as hopeful. While the negroes had greatlyimproved in manners and appearance as a result of coming to worship in townevery Sunday, said he, the freedom which they were allowed for the purposewas often misused in ways which led to demoralization. He strongly advisedthe planters to keep the slaves at home and provide instruction there. From the upland cotton belt a Presbyterian minister in the Chester districtwrote: "You are all aware, gentlemen, that the relation and intercoursebetween the whites and the blacks in the up-country are very different fromwhat they are in the low-country. With us they are neither so numerous norkept so entirely separate, but constitute a part of our households, and aredaily either with their masters or some member of the white family. Fromthis circumstance they feel themselves more identified with their ownersthan they can with you. I minister steadily to two different congregations. More than one hundred blacks attend. .. . The gallery, or a quarter of thehouse, is appropriated to them in all our churches, and they enjoy thepreached gospel in common with the whites. " Finally, from the Greenvilledistrict, on the upper edge of the Piedmont, where the Methodists andBaptists were completely dominant among whites and blacks alike, it wasreported: "About one fourth of the members in the churches are negroes. In the years 1832, '3 and '4 great numbers of negroes joined the churchesduring a period of revival. Many, I am sorry to say, have since beenexcommunicated. As the general zeal in religion declined, they backslid. "There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer continued, who werethought to do some good; but the general improvement in negro character, hethought, was mainly due to the religious and moral training given by theirmasters, and still more largely by their mistresses. From all quarters theexpression was common that the promotion of religion among the slaves wasnot only the duty of masters but was to their interest as well in that itelevated the morals of the workmen and improved the quality of the servicethey 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 Reportof the Committee and the Address to the Public_ (Charleston, 1845). Thereports of the Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes inLiberty County, Georgia, printed annually for a dozen years or more in the'thirties and 'forties, relate the career of a particularly interestingmissionary work in that county on the rice coast, under the charge of theReverend C. C. Jones. The tenth report in the series (1845) summarizes thework of the first decade, and the twelfth (1847) surveys the conditionsthen prevalent. In C. F. Deems ed. , _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_(Nashville, [1857]) the ninth chapter is made up of reports on the missionactivities of that church among the negroes in various quarters of theSouth. ] In general, the less the cleavage of creed between master and man, thebetter for both, since every factor conducing to solidarity of sentimentwas of advantage in promoting harmony and progress. When the planter wentto 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 particularlyunfortunate that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had noco-religionists except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they hadmore conflict than community of economic and sentimental interest. Onthe whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion of irresponsiblereligious preachments and manifestations, the generality of the negroeseverywhere realized, like the whites, that virtue was to be acquired byconsistent self-control in the performance of duty rather man by thealternation of spasmodic reforms and relapses. Occasionally some hard-headed negro would resist the hypnotic suggestionof his preacher, and even repudiate glorification on his death-bed. ALouisiana physician recounts the final episode in the career of "Old UncleCaleb, " who had long been a-dying. "Before his departure, Jeff, the negropreacher of the place, gathered his sable flock of saints and sinnersaround the bed. He read a chapter and prayed, after which they sang ahymn. .. . Uncle Caleb lay motionless with closed eyes, and gave no sign. Jeff approached and took his hand. 'Uncle Caleb, ' said he earnestly, 'dedoctor says you are dying; and all de bredderin has come in for to see youde last time. And now, Uncle Caleb, dey wants to hear from your own mouf deprecious words, dat you feels prepared to meet your God, and is ready andwillin' to go, ' Old Caleb opened his eyes suddenly, and in a very peevish, irritable tone, rebuffed the pious functionary in the following unexpectedmanner: 'Jeff, don't talk your nonsense to me! You jest knows dat I an'tready 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 ofthe heavenly kingdom, as a land flowing with milk and honey, etc. 'Dis olecabin suits me mon'sus well!' was the only reply he could elicit from theold 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, hadindustrial and police authority; nurses were minor despots in sick roomsand plantation hospitals; many an Uncle Remus was an oracle in folklore;and many an Aunt Dinah was arbitress of style in turbans and of eleganciesin general. Even in the practice of medicine a negro here and there gaineda 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 curesof diseases. For the sake of his freedom he has revealed the medicine, aconcoction of roots and barks. .. . There is no room to doubt of its beinga certain remedy here, and of singular use among the negroes--it is wellworth the price (£60) of the negro's freedom, since it is now known how tocure slaves without mercury. "[10] And in colonial South Carolina a slavenamed Caesar was particularly famed for his cure for poison, which was adecoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rumand lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum incase of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescriptionpublished for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal whichprinted it found its copies exhausted by the demand. [11] An example of morecommon episodes appears in a letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, to Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall, asking that "Brother Tom, " Carter'scoachman, 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 anywhite doctor; and as I wrote you in a former letter I cannot expect you tolose your man's time, etc. , for nothing, but am quite willing to pay forsame. "[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. Thelatter, mother of a romping brood of her own and over-mother of thepickaninny throng, was the chatelaine of the whole establishment. Workingwith a never flagging constancy, she carried the indoor keys, directed thehousehold routine and the various domestic industries, served as head nursefor the sick, and taught morals and religion by precept and example. Her hours were long, her diversions few, her voice quiet, her influencefirm. [13] Her presence made the plantation a home; her absence would havemade it a factory. The master's concern was mainly with the able-bodied inthe routine of the crops. He laid the plans, guessed the weather, orderedthe work, and saw to its performance. He was out early and in late, directing, teaching, encouraging, and on occasion punishing. Yet he foundtime 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, andhis disappointments keen, hearty diversions were at hand to restore hisequanimity. His horn hung near and his hounds made quick response onReynard's trail, and his neighbors were ready to accept his invitations andgive 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 thepublic service, they were not unlikely upon return to meet such a receptionas Henry Laurens described: "I found nobody there but three of our olddomestics--Stepney, Exeter and big Hagar. These drew tears from me by theirhumble 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, butfull--buss of my lips would satisfy the old man weeping and sobbing in myface. .. . They . .. Held my hands, hung upon me; I could scarce get fromthem. 'Ah, ' said the old man, 'I never thought to see you again; now I amhappy; 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 twoNorthern tutors who wrote of their Southern sojourns. One was PhilipFithian who went from Princeton in 1773 to teach the children of ColonelRobert Carter of Nomoni Hall in the "Northern Neck" of Virginia, probablythe most aristocratic community of the whole South: the other was A. De PuyVan Buren who left Battle Creek in the eighteen-fifties to seek health andemployment in Mississippi and found them both, and happiness too, amid thefreshly settled folk on the banks of the Yazoo River. Each of these madejottings now and then of the work and play of the negroes, but both of themwere mainly impressed by the social régime in which they found themselvesamong the whites. Fithian marveled at the evidences of wealth and thestratification of society, but he reckoned that a well recommendedPrinceton graduate, with no questions asked as to his family, fortune orbusiness, would be rated socially as on an equal footing with the ownerof a £10, 000 estate, though this might be discounted one-half if he wereunfashionably ignorant of dancing, boxing, fencing, fiddling and cards. [15]He was attracted by the buoyancy, the good breeding and the cordiality ofthose whom he met, and particularly by the sound qualities of Colonel andMrs. Carter with whom he dwelt; but as a budding Presbyterian preacher hewas a little shocked at first by the easy-going conduct of the Episcopalianplanters on Sundays. The time at church, he wrote, falls into threedivisions: first, that before service, which is filled by the giving andreceiving of business letters, the reading of advertisements and thediscussion of crop prices and the lineage and qualities of favorite horses;second, "in the church at service, prayrs read over in haste, a sermonseldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made up of soundmorality or deep, studied metaphysicks;"[16] third, "after service is over, three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the church among thecrowd, in which time you will be invited by several different gentlemenhome 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 beentitled to places on the map; he found the planters' houses to be commonlymere log structures, as the farmers' houses about his own home in Michiganhad been twenty years before; and he found the roads so bad that the muleteams could hardly draw their wagons nor the spans of horses their chariotsexcept in dry weather. But when on his horseback errands in search of aposition he learned to halloo from the roadway and was regularly met ateach gate with an extended hand and a friendly "How do you do, sir? Won'tyou alight, come in, take a seat and sit awhile?"; when he was invariablymade a member of any circle gathered on the porch and refreshed with coolwater 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 andto spend the night or day, he discovered charms even in the crudities ofthe pegs for hanging saddles on the porch and the crevices between the logsof the wall for the keeping of pipes and tobacco, books and newspapers. Finally, when the planter whose house he had made headquarters for twomonths declined to accept a penny in payment, Van Buren's heart overflowed. The boys whom he then began to teach he found particularly apt inhistorical studies, and their parents with whom he dwelt were thoroughgentlefolk. Toward the end of his narrative, Van Buren expressed the thought thatMississippi, the newly settled home of people from all the older Southernstates, exemplified the manners of all. He was therefore prompted togeneralize and interpret: "A Southern gentleman is composed of the samematerial that a Northern gentleman is, only it is tempered by a Southernclime and mode of life. And if in this temperament there is a little moreurbanity and chivalry, a little more politeness and devotion to the ladies, a little more _suaviter in modo_, why it is theirs--be fair and acknowledgeit, and let them have it. He is from the mode of life he lives, especiallyat home, more or less a cavalier; he invariably goes a-horseback. His bootis always spurred, and his hand ensigned with the riding-whip. Aside fromthis he is known by his bearing--his frankness and firmness. " Furthermorehe is a man of eminent leisureliness, which Van Buren accounts for asfollows: "Nature is unloosed of her stays there; she is not crowded fortime; the word haste is not in her vocabulary. In none of the seasons isshe stinted to so short a space to perform her work as at the North. Shehas leisure enough to bud and blossom--to produce and mature fruit, and doall her work. While on the other hand in the North right the reverse istrue. Portions are taken off the fall and spring to lengthen out thewinter, making his reign nearly half the year. This crowds the work ofthe whole year, you might say, into about half of it. This . .. Makes theessential difference between a Northerner and a Southerner. They arechildren of their respective climes; and this is why Southrons are soindifferent about time; they have three months more of it in a year than wehave. " [17] [Footnote 17: A. De Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in theSouth_, pp. 232-236. ] A key to Van Buren's enthusiasm is given by a passage in the diary ofthe great English reporter, William H. Russell: "The more one sees of aplanter's life the greater is the conviction that its charms come from aparticular turn of mind, which is separated by a wide interval from modernideas in Europe. The planter is a denomadized Arab;--he has fixed himselfwith horses and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women withOriental care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tenderand hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly charming, because one is astonished to find the graces and accomplishments ofwomanhood displayed in a scene which has a certain sort of savage rudenessabout it after all, and where all kinds of incongruous accidents arevisible in the service of the table, in the furniture of the house, inits decorations, menials, and surrounding scenery. "[18] The Southernersthemselves took its incongruities much as a matter of course. The régimewas to their minds so clearly the best attainable under the circumstancesthat 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 elementin the home itself. The problem of accommodation, which was the centralproblem 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. Theywere always within the social mind and conscience of the whites, as thewhites in turn were within the mind and conscience of the blacks. Theadjustments and readjustments were mutually made, for although the mastershad by far the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by nomeans devoid of influence. A sagacious employer has well said, after longexperience, "a negro understands a white man better than the white manunderstands the negro. "[19] This knowledge gave a power all its own. Thegeneral régime was in fact shaped by mutual requirements, concessionsand understandings, producing reciprocal codes of conventional morality. Masters of the standard type promoted Christianity and the customs ofmarriage and parental care, and they instructed as much by example asby precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences, andpermitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought the slaves could betrusted not to abuse; they refrained from selling slaves except underthe stress of circumstances; they avoided cruel, vindictive and captiouspunishments, and endeavored to inspire effort through affection ratherthan through fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderateindustrial results. In short their despotism, so far as it might properlybe so called was benevolent in intent and on the whole beneficial ineffect. [Footnote 19: Captain L. V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society ofEconomics_ [New Orleans, 1911], p. 8. ] Some planters there were who inflicted severe punishments for disobedienceand particularly for the offense of running away; and the communitycondoned and even sanctioned a certain degree of this. Otherwise no planterwould have printed such descriptions of scars and brands as were fairlycommon in the newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the recaptureof absconders. [20] When severity went to an excess that was reckoned aspositive cruelty, however, the law might be invoked if white witnessescould be had; or the white neighbors or the slaves themselves might applyextra-legal retribution. The former were fain to be content with inflictingsocial ostracism or with expelling the offender from the district;[21] thelatter sometimes went so far as to set fire to the oppressor's house or toaccomplish 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 theSlave 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. Themaster was ruled by a sense of dignity, duty and moderation, and theslaves by a moral code of their own. This embraced a somewhat obsequiousobedience, the avoidance of open indolence and vice, the attainment ofmoderate skill in industry, and the cultivation of the master's goodwill and affection. It winked at petty theft, loitering and other littlelaxities, while it stressed good manners and a fine faithfulness in majorconcerns. While the majority were notoriously easy-going, very many madetheir master's interests thoroughly their own; and many of the masters hadperfect confidence in the loyalty of the bulk of their servitors. When onthe eve of secession Edmund Ruffin foretold[23] the fidelity which theslaves actually showed when the war ensued, he merely voiced the faith ofthe planter class. [Footnote 23: _Debowfs Review_, XXX, 118-120 (January, 1861). ] In general the relations on both sides were felt to be based on pleasurableresponsibility. The masters occasionally expressed this in their letters. William Allason, for example, who after a long career as a merchant atFalmouth, Virginia, had retired to plantation life, declined his niece'sproposal in 1787 that he return to Scotland to spend his declining years. In enumerating his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing whichin your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithfulslaves, 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 notin my disposition. "[24] [Footnote 24: Letter dated Jan. 22, 1787, in the Allason MS. Mercantilebooks, 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 testamentin 1817 which made his body-servant "to be what he is really deserving, afree 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 wasprevented by a belief that the care of generous and humane masters wouldbe much better for them than a state of freedom. Accordingly he bequeathedthese to his wife who he knew from her goodness of temper would treat themwith unflagging kindness. But should the widow remarry, thereby putting herproperty under the control of a stranger, the slaves and the plantationwere at once to revert to the testator's brother who was recommended tobequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he were deemed worthy of thetrust. "It is my most ardent desire that in whatsoever hands fortunemay place said negroes, " the will enjoined, "that all the justice andindulgence may be shown them that is consistent with a state of slavery. Iflatter myself with the hope that none of my relations or connections willbe so ungrateful to my memory as to treat or use them otherwise. " Surelyupon the death of such a master the slaves might, with even more than usualunction, 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 Confederateprominence. ] 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 bitof the frontier. Commerce was rudimentary, capital scant, and industryprimitive. Each family had to suffice itself in the main with its owndirect produce. No one could afford to specialize his calling, for theversatility of the individual was wellnigh a necessity of life. This phaselasted only until some staple of export was found which permitted the riseof external trade. Then the fruit of such energy as could be spared fromthe works of bodily sustenance was exchanged for the goods of the outerworld; and finally in districts of special favor for staples, the bulk ofthe community became absorbed in the special industry and procured most ofits consumption goods from without. In the hidden coves of the Southern Alleghanies the primitive régime hasproved permanent. In New England where it was but gradually replacedthrough the influence first of the fisheries and then of manufacturing, itsurvived long enough to leave an enduring spirit of versatile enterprise, evidenced in the plenitude of "Yankee notions. " In the Southern lowlandsand Piedmont, however, the pristine advantages of self-sufficing industrywere so soon eclipsed by the profits to be had from tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar or cotton, that in large degree the whole community adopted astereotyped economy with staple production as its cardinal feature. The earnings obtained by the more efficient producers brought an earlyaccumulation of capital, and at the same time the peculiar adaptability ofall the Southern staples to production on a large scale by unfree laborprompted the devotion of most of the capital to the purchase of servantsand slaves. Thus in every district suited to any of these staples, thegrowth of an industrial and social system like that of Europe and theNorthern States was cut short and the distinctive Southern scheme of thingsdeveloped instead. This régime was conditioned by its habitat, its products and the racialquality of its labor supply, as well as by the institution of slavery andthe traditional predilections of the masters. The climate of the South wasgenerally favorable to one or another of the staples except in the elevatedtracts in and about the mountain ranges. The soil also was favorable exceptin the pine barrens which skirted the seaboard. Everywhere but in thealluvial districts, however, the land had only a surface fertility, and allthe staples, as well as their great auxiliary Indian corn, required thefields to be kept clean and exposed to the weather; and the heavy rainfallof the region was prone to wash off the soil from the hillsides and toleach the fertile ingredients through the sands of the plains. But sospacious was the Southern area that the people never lacked fresh fieldswhen their old ones were outworn. Hence, while public economy for the longrun might well have suggested a conservation of soil at the expense ofimmediate crops, private economy for the time being dictated the oppositepolicy; and its dictation prevailed, as it has done in virtually allcountries and all ages. Slaves working in squads might spread manure andsow soiling crops if so directed, as well as freemen working individually;and their failure to do so was fully paralleled by similar neglect at theNorth in the same period. New England, indeed, was only less noted than theSouth for exhausted fields and abandoned farms. The newness of the country, the sparseness of population and the cheapness of land conspired withcrops, climate and geological conditions to promote exploitive methods. The planters were by no means alone in shaping their program to fit thesecircumstances. [1] The heightened speed of the consequences was in a sensemerely an unwelcome proof of their system's efficiency. Their laborers, byreason of being slaves, must at word of command set forth on a trek ofa hundred or a thousand miles. No racial inertia could hinder nor localattachments hold them. In the knowledge of this the masters were even morealert than other men of the time for advantageous new locations; and theywere accordingly fain to be content with rude houses and flimsy fences inany place of sojourn, and to let their hills remain studded with stumps aswell as to take the exhaustion of the soil as a matter of course. [2] [Footnote 1 Edmund Ruffin, _Address on the opposite results of exhaustingand fertilizing systems of agriculture. Read before the South CarolinaInstitute, November 18, 1852_ (Charleston, 1853), pp. 12, 13. ] [Footnote 2 W. L. Trenholm, "The Southern States, their social andindustrial history, conditions and needs, " in the _Journal of SocialScience_, no. IX (January, 1878). ] Migration produced a more or less thorough segregation of types, forplanters and farmers respectively tended to enter and remain in thedistricts most favorable to them. [3] The monopolization of the rice andsugar industries by the planters, has been described in previous chapters. At the other extreme the farming régime was without a rival throughout themountain regions, in the Shenandoah and East Tennessee Valleys and inlarge parts of Kentucky and Missouri where the Southern staples would notflourish, and in great tracts of the pine barrens where the quality ofthe soil repelled all but the unambitious. The tobacco and cotton beltsremained as the debatable ground in which the two systems might compete onmore nearly even terms, though in some cotton districts the planters hadalways an overwhelming advantage. In the Mississippi bottoms, for example, the solid spread of the fields facilitated the supervision of large gangsat work, and the requirement of building and maintaining great levees onthe river front virtually debarred operations by small proprietors. Theextreme effects of this are illustrated in Issa-quena County, Mississippi, and Concordia Parish, Louisiana, where in 1860 the slaveholdings averagedthirty and fifty slaves each, and where except for plantation overseersand their families there were virtually no non-slaveholders present. TheAlabama prairies, furthermore, showed a plantation predominance almost ascomplete. In the six counties of Dallas, Greene, Lowndes, Macon, Perry, Sumter and Wilcox, for example, the average slaveholdings ranged fromseventeen to twenty-one each, and the slaveholding families were from twiceto six times as numerous as the non-slaveholding ones. Even in the morerugged parts of the cotton belt and in the tobacco zone as well, the sametendency toward the engrossment of estates prevailed, though in milderdegree and with lesser effects. [Footnote 3 F. V. Emerson, "Geographical Influences in American Slavery, " inthe American Geographical Society _Bulletin_, XLIII (1911), 13-26, 106-118, 170-181. ] This widespread phenomenon did not escape the notice of contemporaries. Twomembers of the South Carolina legislature described it as early as 1805 insubstance as follows: "As one man grows wealthy and thereby increases hisstock of negroes, he wants more land to employ them on; and being fullyable, he bids a large price for his less opulent neighbor's plantation, whoby selling advantageously here can raise money enough to go into the backcountry, where he can be more on a level with the most forehanded, can getlands cheaper, and speculate or grow rich by industry as he pleases. "[4]Some three decades afterward another South Carolinian spoke sadly "on theincompatibleness of large plantations with neighboring farms, and theiruniform tendency to destroy the yeoman. "[5] Similarly Dr. Basil Manly, [6]president of the University of Alabama, spoke in 1841 of the inveteratehabit of Southern farmers to buy more land and slaves and plod on captiveto 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 Tennesseeborder: "I can show you . .. The sad memorials of the artless and exhaustingculture of cotton. Our small planters, after taking the cream off theirlands, unable to restore them by rest, manures or otherwise, are goingfurther west and south in search of other virgin lands which they may andwill despoil and impoverish in like manner. Our wealthier planters, withgreater means and no more skill, are buying out their poorer neighbors, extending their plantations and adding to their slave force. The wealthyfew, who are able to live on smaller profits and to give their blastedfields some rest, are thus pushing off the many who are merelyindependent. .. . In traversing that county one will discover numerous farmhouses, once the abode of industrious and intelligent freemen, now occupiedby slaves, or tenantless, deserted and dilapidated; he will observefields, once fertile, now unfenced, abandoned, and covered with those evilharbingers fox-tail and broomsedge; he will see the moss growing on themouldering walls of once thrifty villages; and will find 'one only mastergrasps the whole domain' that once furnished happy homes for a dozen whitefamilies. Indeed, a country in its infancy, where fifty years ago scarcea forest tree had been felled by the axe of the pioneer, is alreadyexhibiting the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in Virginia andthe Carolinas; the freshness of its agricultural glory is gone, the vigorof its youth is extinct, and the spirit of desolation seems brooding overit. "[7] [Footnote 4: "Diary of Edward Hooker, " in the American HistoricalAssociation _Report_ for 1896, p. 878. ] [Footnote 5: Quoted in Francis Lieber, _Slavery, Plantations and theYeomanry_ (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 grosspopulation 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 hadincreased 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 Georgiawhere earlier settlements gave a longer experience and where fullerstatistics permit a more adequate analysis. In the county of Oglethorpe, typical of that area, the whites in the year 1800 were more than twice asmany as the slaves, the non-slaveholding families were to the slaveholdersin the ratio of 8 to 5, and slaveholders on the average had but 5slaves each. In 1820 the county attained its maximum population for theante-bellum period, and competition between the industrial types wasalready exerting its full effect. The whites were of the same number astwenty years before, but the slaves now exceeded them; the slaveholdingfamilies also slightly exceeded those who had none, and the scale of theaverage slaveholding had risen to 8. 5. Then in the following forty yearswhile the whites diminished and the number of slaves remained virtuallyconstant, the scale of the average slaveholding rose to 12. 2; the number ofslaveholders 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 thefarmers of Oglethorpe appear to have been twice as many as the planterseven in 1860. But this is properly offset by rating the average plantationthere at four or five times the industrial scale of the average farm, whichmakes it clear that the plantation régime had grown dominant. [Footnote 8: U. B. Phillips, "The Origin and Growth of the Southern BlackBelts, " in the _American Historical Review_, XI, 810-813 (July, 1906). ] In such a district virtually everyone was growing cotton to the top of hisability. When the price of the staple was high, both planters and farmersprospered in proportion to their scales. Those whose earnings were greatestwould be eager to enlarge their fields, and would make offers for adjoininglands too tempting for some farmers to withstand. These would sell out andmove west to resume cotton culture to better advantage than before. Whencotton prices were low, however, the farmers, feeling the stress mostkeenly, would be inclined to forsake staple production. But in such casethere was no occasion for them to continue cultivating lands best fit forcotton. The obvious policy would be to sell their homesteads to neighboringplanters and move to cheaper fields beyond the range of planters'competition. Thus the farmers were constantly pioneering in districts ofall sorts, while the plantation régime, whether by the prosperity andenlargement of the farms or by the immigration of planters, or both, wasconstantly 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 weresucceeded in their turn by farmers, partly native whites and free negroesand 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 aterritorial progression. The régime was a broad billow moving irresistiblywestward and leaving a trough behind. At the middle of the nineteenthcentury it was entering Texas, its last available province, whose cottonarea it would have duly filled had its career escaped its catastrophicinterruption. What would have occurred after that completion, without thewar, it is interesting to surmise. Probably the crest of the billow wouldhave subsided through the effect of an undertow setting eastward again. Belated immigrants, finding the good lands all engrossed, would havereturned to their earlier homes, to hold their partially exhausted soilsin higher esteem than before and to remedy the depletion by reformedcultivation. That the billow did not earlier give place to a level floodwas partly due to the shortage of slaves; for the African trade was closedtoo soon for the stock to fill the country in these decades. To the sameshortage was owing such opportunity as the white yeomanry had in stapleproduction. The world offered a market, though not at high prices, for agreater volume of the crops than the plantation slaves could furnish; thefarmers supplied the deficit. Free workingmen in general, whether farmers, artisans or unskilled wageearners, merely filled the interstices in and about the slave plantations. One year in the eighteen-forties a planter near New Orleans, attempting todispense with slave labor, assembled a force of about a hundred Irish andGerman immigrants for his crop routine. Things went smoothly until themidst of the grinding season, when with one accord the gang struck fordouble pay. Rejecting the demand the planter was unable to proceed withhis harvest and lost some ten thousand dollars worth of his crop. [9] Thegenerality of the planters realized, without such a demonstration, thateach year must bring its crop crisis during which an overindulgence by thelaborers in the privileges of liberty might bring ruin to the employers. To secure immunity from this they were the more fully reconciled to thelimitations of their peculiar labor supply. Freemen white or black mightbe convenient as auxiliaries, and were indeed employed in many instanceswhether on annual contract as blacksmiths and the like or temporarilyas emergency helpers in the fields; but negro slaves were the standardcomposition of the gangs. This brought it about that whithersoever theplanters went they carried with them crowds of negro slaves and all theproblems and influences to which the presence of negroes and the prevalenceof 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 thecolonial period the trade in indentured servants recruited the whitepopulation, and most of those who came in that status remained as permanentcitizens of the South; but such Europeans as came during the nineteenthcentury were free to follow their own reactions without submitting to acompulsory adjustment. Many of them found the wage-earning opportunityscant, for the slaves were given preference by their masters when steadyoccupations were to be filled, and odd jobs were often the only recoursefor outsiders. This was an effect of the slavery system. Still moreimportant, however, was the repugnance which the newcomers felt at workingand living alongside the blacks; and this was a consequence not of thenegroes being slaves so much as of the slaves being negroes. It wasa racial antipathy which when added to the experience of industrialdisadvantage pressed the bulk of the newcomers northwestward beyond theconfines of the Southern staple belts, and pressed even many of the nativewhites in the same direction. This intrenched the slave plantations yet more strongly in their localdomination, and by that very fact it hampered industrial development. Greatlanded proprietors, it is true, have oftentimes been essential for makingbeneficial innovations. Thus the remodeling of English agriculture whichJethro Tull and Lord Townsend instituted in the eighteenth century couldnot have been set in progress by any who did not possess their combinationof talent and capital. [10] In the ante-bellum South, likewise, it was theplanters, and necessarily so, who introduced the new staples of sea-islandcotton and sugar, the new devices of horizontal plowing and hillsideterracing, the new practice of seed selection, and the new resource ofcommercial fertilizers. Yet their constant bondage to the staples debarredthe whole community in large degree from agricultural diversification, andtheir dependence upon gangs of negro slaves kept the average of skill andassiduity 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 apolice; and the plantation system contributed the machinery of direction. The assignment of special functions to slaves of special aptitudes wouldenhance the general efficiency; the coördination of tasks would preventwaste of effort; and the conduct of a steady routine would lessen themischiefs of irresponsibility. But in the work of a plantation squad nodelicate implements could be employed, for they would be broken; and nodiscriminating care in the handling of crops could be had except at a costof supervision which was generally prohibitive. The whole establishmentwould work with success only when the management fully recognized andallowed for the crudity of the labor. The planters faced this fact with mingled resolution and resignation. Thesluggishness of the bulk of their slaves they took as a racial trait tobe conquered by discipline, even though their ineptitude was not tobe eradicated; the talents and vigor of their exceptional negroes andmulattoes, on the other hand, they sought to foster by special training andrewards. But the prevalence of slavery which aided them in the one policyhampered them in the other, for it made the rewards arbitrary instead ofautomatic and it restricted the scope of the laborers' employments and oftheir ambitions as well. The device of hiring slaves to themselves, whichhad an invigorating effect here and there in the towns, could find littleapplication in the country; and the paternalism of the planters couldprovide no fully effective substitute. Hence the achievements of theexceptional workmen were limited by the status of slavery as surely asthe progress of the generality was restricted by the fact of their beingnegroes. A further influence of the plantation system was to hamper the growth oftowns. This worked in several ways. As for manufactures, the chronic demandof the planters for means with which to enlarge their scales of operationsabsorbed most of the capital which might otherwise have been available forfactory promotion. A few cotton mills were built in the Piedmont wherewater 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 emergencieswhen transport could not be awaited; and the slaves for their part, whilewilling enough to buy of any merchant within reach, rarely had either moneyor credit. Towns grew, of course, at points on the seaboard where harbors were good, and where rivers or railways brought commerce from the interior. Othersrose where the fall line marked the heads of river navigation, and on theoccasional bluffs of the Mississippi, and finally a few more at railroadjunctions. All of these together numbered barely three score, some of whichcounted their population by hundreds rather than by thousands; and in thewide intervals between there was nothing but farms, plantations and thinlyscattered villages. In the Piedmont, country towns of fairly respectabledimensions rose here and there, though many a Southern county-seat couldboast little more than a court house and a hitching rack. Even as regardsthe seaports, the currents of trade were too thin and divergent to permitof large urban concentration, for the Appalachian water-shed shut offthe Atlantic ports from the commerce of the central basin; and even theambitious construction of railroads to the northwest, fostered by theseaboard cities, merely enabled the Piedmont planters to get theirprovisions overland, and barely affected the volume of the seaboard trade. New Orleans alone had a location promising commercial greatness; but herprospects were heavily diminished by the building of the far away ErieCanal and the Northern trunk line railroads which diverted the bulk ofNorthwestern trade from the Gulf outlet. As conditions were, the slaveholding South could have realized ametropolitan life only through absentee proprietorships. In the Roman_latifundia_, which overspread central and southern Italy after theHannibalic war, absenteeism was a chronic feature and a curse. Theoverseers there were commonly not helpers in the proprietors' dailyroutine, but sole managers charged with a paramount duty of procuringthe greatest possible revenues and transmitting them to meet the urbanexpenditures of their patrician employers. The owners, having no morepersonal touch with their great gangs of slaves than modern stockholdershave with the operatives in their mills, exploited them accordingly. Wherehumanity and profits were incompatible, business considerations were likelyto prevail. Illustrations of the policy may be drawn from Cato the Elder'streatise on agriculture. Heavy work by day, he reasoned, would not onlyincrease the crops but would cause deep slumber by night, valuable as asafeguard against conspiracy; discord was to be sown instead of harmonyamong the slaves, for the same purpose of hindering plots; capitalsentences when imposed by law were to be administered in the presence ofthe whole corps for the sake of their terrorizing effect; while rations forthe able-bodied were not to exceed a fixed rate, those for the sick were tobe still more frugally stinted; and the old and sick slaves were to besold along with other superfluities. [11] Now, Cato was a moralist of widerepute, a stoic it is true, but even so a man who had a strong sense ofduty. If such were his maxims, the oppressions inflicted by his fellowproprietors and their slave drivers must have been stringent indeed. [Footnote 11: A. H. J. Greenidge, _History of Rome during the later Republicand the early Principate_ (New York, 1905), I, 64-85; M. Porcius Cato, _DeAgri Cultura_, Keil ed. (Leipsig, 1882). ] The heartlessness of the Roman _latifundiarii_ was the product partly oftheir absenteeism, partly of the cheapness of their slaves which werepoured into the markets by conquests and raids in all quarters of theMediterranean world, and partly of the lack of difference between mastersand slaves in racial traits. In the ante-bellum South all these conditionswere reversed: the planters were commonly resident; the slaves were costly;and the slaves were negroes, who for the most part were by racial qualitysubmissive rather than defiant, light-hearted instead of gloomy, amiableand ingratiating instead of sullen, and whose very defects invitedpaternalism rather than repression. Many a city slave in Rome was the booncompanion of his master, sharing his intellectual pleasures and his revels, while most of those on the _latifundia_ were driven cattle. It was hard tomaintain a middle adjustment for them. In the South, on the other hand, themedium course was the obvious thing. The bulk of the slaves, because theywere negroes, because they were costly, and because they were in personaltouch, were pupils and working wards, while the planters were teachers andguardians as well as masters and owners. There was plenty of coercion inthe South; but in comparison with the harshness of the Roman system theAmerican régime was essentially mild. Every plantation of the standard Southern type was, in fact, a schoolconstantly training and controlling pupils who were in a backward state ofcivilization. Slave youths of special promise, or when special purposeswere 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 feedand clothe the boy, pay for any necessary medical attention, teach him histrade, and treat him with proper kindness. Before six months were endedAlexander 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 havethe care of slaves, especially when on hire, and advised Hammond to takethe boy home. Soon afterward Stephens reported that Henderson had returnedand had been whipped, though not cruelly, by Axt. [12] The further historyof this episode is not ascertainable. Enough of it is on record, however, to suggest reasons why for the generality of slaves home training wasthought 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 ofthe negroes most needed. They were in an alien land, in an essentiallyslow process of transition from barbarism to civilization. New industrialmethods of a simple sort they might learn from precepts and occasionaldemonstrations; the habits and standards of civilized life they could onlyacquire in the main through examples reinforced with discipline. These theplantation régime supplied. Each white family served very much the functionof a modern social settlement, setting patterns of orderly, well bredconduct which the negroes were encouraged to emulate; and the plantersfurthermore were vested with a coercive power, salutary in the premises, ofwhich settlement workers are deprived. The very aristocratic nature of thesystem permitted a vigor of discipline which democracy cannot possess. Onthe whole the plantations were the best schools yet invented for the masstraining of that sort of inert and backward people which the bulk of theAmerican negroes represented. The lack of any regular provision for thedischarge of pupils upon the completion of their training was, of course, acardinal shortcoming which the laws of slavery imposed; but even in viewof this, the slave plantation régime, after having wrought the initial andirreparable misfortune of causing the negroes to be imported, did atleast as much as any system possible in the period could have done towardadapting 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 isolationof workers and assembling them in more productive coördination. Wherepopulation is scant and money little used it is almost a necessity in theconduct of large undertakings, and therefore more or less essential forthe advancement of civilization. It is a means of domesticating savage orbarbarous men, analogous in kind and in consequence to the domestication ofthe beasts of the field. [1] It was even of advantage to some of the peopleenslaved, in that it saved them from extermination when defeated in war, and in that it gave them touch with more advanced communities than theirown. But this was counterbalanced by the stimulus which the profits ofslave catching gave to wars and raids with all their attendant injuries. Any benefit to the slave, indeed, was purely incidental. The reason for theinstitution's existence was the advantage which accrued to the masters. So positive and pronounced was this reckoned to be, that such highlyenlightened people as the Greeks and Romans maintained it in the palmiestdays of their supremacies. [Footnote 1: This thought was expressed, perhaps for the first time, inT. R. Dew's essay on slavery (1832); it is elaborated in Gabriel Tarde, _TheLaws of Imitation_ (Parsons tr. , New York, 1903), pp. 278, 279. ] Western Europe in primitive times was no exception. Slavery in a more orless fully typical form was widespread. When the migrations ended in themiddle ages, however, the rise of feudalism gave the people a thoroughterritorial regimentation. The dearth of commerce whether in goods or inmen led gradually to the conversion of the unfree laborers from slavesinto serfs or villeins attached for generations to the lands on which theywrought. Finally, the people multiplied so greatly and the landless wereso pressed for livelihood that at the beginning of modern times Europeansociety found the removal of bonds conducive to the common advantage. Serfsfreed from their inherited obligations could now seek employment whereverthey would, and landowners, now no longer lords, might employ whom theypleased. Bondmen gave place to hirelings and peasant proprietors, status gave place to contract, industrial society was enabled to makeredistributions and readjustments at will, as it had never been before. Inview of the prevailing traits and the density of the population a generalreturn whether to slavery or serfdom was economically unthinkable. Anintelligent Scotch philanthropist, Fletcher of Saltoun, it is true, proposed at the end of the seventeenth century that the indigent and theirchildren be bound as slaves to selected masters as a means of relievingthe terrible distresses of unemployment in his times;[2] but his projectappears to have received no public sanction whatever. The fact that hepublished such a plan is more a curious antiquarian item than one ofsignificance in the history of slavery. Not even the thin edge of a wedgecould possibly be inserted which might open a way to restore what everyonewas 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 resourcesinvited industry in large units, but wage labor was not to be had. TheSpaniards found a temporary solution in impressing the tropical Americanaborigines, and the English in a recourse to indented white immigrants. Butboth soon resorted predominantly for plantation purposes to the importationof Africans, for whom the ancient institution of slavery was revived. Thusfrom purely economic considerations the sophisticated European colonistsof the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involved themselves and theirdescendants, with the connivance of their home governments, in the toils ofa system which on the one hand had served their remote forbears with goodeffect, but which on the other hand civilized peoples had long and almostuniversally discarded as an incubus. In these colonial beginnings thenegroes were to be had so cheaply and slavery seemed such a simple andadvantageous device when applied to them, that no qualms as to the futurewere felt. At least no expressions of them appear in the records of thoughtextant for the first century and more of English colonial experience. And when apprehensions did arise they were concerned with the dangers ofservile revolt, not with any deleterious effects to arise from the economicnature of slavery in time of peace. Now, slavery and indented servitude are analogous to serfdom in that theymay yield to the employers all the proceeds of industry beyond what isrequired for the sustenance of the laborers; but they have this difference, immense for American purposes, that they permit labor to be territoriallyshifted, while serfdom keeps it locally fixed. By choosing thesefacilitating forms of bondage instead of the one which would have attachedthe laborers to the soil, the founders of the colonial régime in industrydoubtless thought they had avoided all economic handicaps in the premises. Their device, however, was calculated to meet the needs of a situationwhere the choice was between bond labor and no labor. As generations passedand workingmen multiplied in America, the system of indentures for whiteimmigrants was automatically dissolved; but slavery for the bulk of thenegroes persisted as an integral feature of economic life. Whether thiswas conducive or injurious to the prosperity of employers and to thecommunity's welfare became at length a question to which students far andwide applied their faculties. Some of the participants in the discussionconsidered the problem as one in pure theory; others examined not only theabstract ratio of slave and free labor efficiency but included in theirview the factor of negro racial traits and the prospects and probableconsequences of abolition under existing circumstances. On the one pointthat an average slave might be expected to accomplish less in an hour'swork than an average free laborer, agreement was unanimous; on virtuallyevery other point the views published were so divergent as to leave thepublic more or less distracted. Adam Smith, whose work largely shaped thecourse of economic thought for a century following its publication in 1776, said of slave labor merely that its cost was excessive by reason of itslack of zest, frugality and inventiveness. The tropical climate of thesugar colonies, he conceded, might require the labor of negro slaves, but even there its productiveness would be enhanced by liberal policiespromoting intelligence among the slaves and assimilating their condition tothat of freemen. [3] To some of these points J. B. Say, the next economist toconsider 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, sincethe master will impose a more drastic frugality than a freeman will adoptunless a dearth of earnings requires it. The slave's work, furthermore, is more constant, for the master will not permit so much leisure andrelaxation as the freeman customarily enjoys. Say agreed, however, thatslavery, causing violence and brutality to usurp the place of intelligence, both hampered the progress of invention and enervated such free laborers aswere 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 onslavery by Adam Hodgson, an Englishman with anti-slavery bent who had madean American tour; but his essay, though fortified with long quotations, was too rambling and ill digested to influence those who were not alreadydesirous of being convinced. [5] More substantial was an essay of 1827 bya Marylander, James Raymond, who cited the experiences of his owncommonwealth to support his contentions that slavery hampered economy bypreventing seasonal shiftings of labor, by requiring employers to supporttheir operatives in lean years as well as fat, and by hindering theaccumulation of wealth by the laborers. The system, said he, could yieldprofits to the masters only in specially fertile districts; and even thereit kept down the growth of population and of land values. [6] [Footnote 5: Adam Hodgson, _A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, on thecomparative expense of free and slave labour_ (Liverpool, 1823; New York, 1823). ] [Footnote 6: James Raymond, _Prize Essay on the Comparative Economy of Freeand 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 allforced, and forced too from a class of human beings who have the leastpropensity to voluntary labour even when it is to benefit themselvesalone. " The cost of rearing a slave to the age of self support, hereckoned, including insurance, at forty dollars a year for fifteen years. The usual work of a slave field hand, he thought, was barely two-thirds ofwhat a white laborer at usual wages would perform, and from his earningsabout forty dollars a year must be deducted for his maintenance. Wheninterest on the investment and a proportion of an overseer's wages werededucted in addition, he thought the prevalent rate, six to eight dollarsa month and board valued at forty or fifty dollars a year, for free whitefarm hands in the Northern states gave a decisive advantage to those whohired laborers over those who owned them. "Nothing will justify slavelabour in point of economy, " he concluded, "but the nature of the soil andclimate which incapacitates a white man from labouring in the summer time, as on the rich lands in Carolina and Georgia extending one hundred milesfrom the seaboard. "[7] [Footnote 7: Thomas Cooper, _Lectures on the Elements of PoliticalEconomy_, (Columbia [S. C. ], 1826), pp. 94, 95. ] The economic vices of slavery as exemplified in Virginia were elaborated inan 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 hirehimself to work in the fields under the overseer"; it causes exhaustion ofthe soil by reason of the negligence it promotes in the workmen andthe stress which overseers are fain to put upon immediate returns; itdiscourages all forms of industry but plantation tillage, furthermore, foralthough it has not and perhaps cannot be proved that slaves may not besuccessfully employed in manufactures, the community has gone and tendsstill to go, on that assumption; it discourages mechanic skill, for theslaves never acquire more than the rudiments of artisanry, and the plantersdiscourage white craftsmen by giving preference uniformly to theirown laborers. Slave labor is dearer than free, because of its lack ofincentive; the régime costs the community the services of the immigrantswho would otherwise enter; and finally it promotes waste instead offrugality on the part of both masters and slaves. The only means by whichVirginia could procure profit from slaves, it concluded, was that ofraising them for sale to the lower South; but such profit could only begained 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 butwith original arguments. Beginning with an exposition of the South'scomparative backwardness in economic development, he showed a twofoldworking of the institution of slavery as the cause. For one thing itlessened the vigor of industry by degrading labor in the estimation of thepoor and engendering pride in the rich; but far more important, it requiredemployers to sink large amounts of capital in the purchase of laborersinstead of permitting them to pay for work, as the wage system does, outof current proceeds. It thereby particularly hampered the growth ofmanufactures, for in such lines, as well as in commerce, "the fact thatslavery absorbs the bulk of Southern capital must always present anobstacle to extensive operations. " The holding of laborers as property, hecontinued, can contribute nothing to production, for the destruction of theproperty by the liberation of the slaves would not impair their laboringefficiency. Hence all the individual wealth which has assumed that shapehas added nothing to the resources of the community. "Slavery merely servesto appropriate the wages of labor--it distributes wealth, but cannot createit. " It involves expenditure in acquiring early population, then operatesto prevent land improvements and the diversification of industry, restricting, indeed, even the range of agriculture. The monopoly which theSouth has enjoyed in the production of the staples has palliated the evilsof slavery, but at the same time has expanded the system to the point ofgreat injury to the public. Goodloe accordingly advocated the riddance ofthe institution, contending that both landowners and laborers would therebybenefit. The continued maintenance of the institution, on the other hand, would bring severe loss to the slaveholders, for within the coming decadethe demand of the Southwest for slaves would be sated, he thought, andnothing but a great advancement of cotton prices and an unlimited supply offertile land for its production could sustain slave prices. "It isevident that the Southern country approaches a period of great and suddendepreciation in the value of slave property. "[9] [Footnote 9: [D. R. Goodloe], _Inquiry into the Causes which have retardedthe Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in theSouthern States, in which the question of slavery is considered in apolitico-economic point of view. By a Carolinian_. (Washington, 1846. )_See also_ a similar essay by the same author in the U. S. Commissioner ofAgriculture's _Report_ for 1865, pp. 102-135. ] The statistical theme of the South's backwardness was used by many otheressayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding régime. With mostof these, however, exemplified saliently by H. R. Helper, logic was to suchextent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from theproper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy. On the other hand, Thomas R. Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turnof the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery, attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of theUnited States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency. His central theme was the imperative necessity of maintaining theenslavement of the negroes on hand until a sound plan was devised and madeapplicable for their peaceful and prosperous disposal elsewhere. AmongDew's disciples, William Harper of South Carolina admitted that slave laborwas dear and unskillful, though he thought it essential for productiveindustry in the tropics and sub-tropics, and he considered coercionnecessary for the negroes elsewhere in civilized society. James H. Hammond, likewise, agreed that "as a general rule . .. Free labor is cheaper thanslave labor, " but in addition to the factor of race he stressed thesparsity of population in the South as a contributing element ineconomically 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 andsystematic reasoning. N. A. Ware, on the other hand who in 1844 issued inthe capacity of a Southern planter a slender volume of _Notes on PoliticalEconomy_ was both obscure and irresponsible. Contending as his main themethat protective tariffs were of no injury to the plantation interests, heasserted that slave labor was incomparably cheaper than free, and attemptedto prove it by ignoring the cost of capital and by reckoning the priceof bacon at four cents a pound and corn at fifteen cents a bushel. Then, curiously, he delivered himself of the following: "When slavery shall haverun 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 andworthless habit left to remind the country of its ruinous effects. Thepolitical economist, as well as all wise statesmen in this country, cannotthink of any measure going to discharge slavery that would not be a worsestate than its existence. " His own remedy for the depression prevailing atthe time when he wrote, was to divert a large proportion of the slaves fromthe glutted business of staple agriculture into manufacturing, for which hethought them well qualified. [11] Equally fantastic were the ideas of H. C. Carey of Pennsylvania who dealt here and there with slavery in the courseof his three stout volumes on political economy. His lucubrations arenegligible for the present survey. [Footnote 11: [N. A. Ware] _Notes on Political Economy as applicable to theUnited States_. By a Southern Planter (New York, 1844), pp. 200-204. ] All these American writers except Goodloe accomplished little ofsubstantial quality in the field of economic thought beyond adding detailsto the doctrines of Adam Smith and Say. John Stuart Mill in turn did littlemore than combine the philosophies of his predecessors. "It is a truismto assert, " said he, "that labour extorted by fear of punishment isinsufficient and unproductive"; yet some people can be driven by thelash to accomplish what no feasible payment would have induced them toundertake. In sparsely settled regions, furthermore, slavery may affordthe otherwise unobtainable advantages of labour combination, and it hasundoubtedly hastened industrial development in some American areas. Yet, since all processes carried on by slave labour are conducted in the rudestmanner, virtually any employer may pay a considerably greater value inwages to free labour than the maintenance of his slaves has cost him and bea 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 whichEdmund Ruffin of Virginia published in a well reasoned essay of 1857, _ThePolitical Economy of Slavery_. "Slave labor in each individual case and foreach small measure of time, " he said, "is more slow and inefficient thanthe labor of a free man. " On the other hand it is more continuous, forhirelings 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 thegaining of a bare livelihood. Furthermore, the consolidation of domesticestablishments, which slavery promotes, permits not only an economy in thepurchase of supplies but also a great saving by the specialization of laborin cooking, washing, nursing, and the care of children, thereby releasinga large proportion of the women from household routine and rendering themavailable for work in the field. An increasing density of population, however, would depress the returns of industry to the point where slaveswould merely earn their keep, and free laborers would of necessity lengthentheir hours. Finally a still greater glut of labor might come, and indeedhad occurred in various countries of Europe, carrying wages so low thatonly the sturdiest free laborers could support themselves and all theweaker ones must enter a partial pauperism. At such a stage the employmentof slaves could only be continued at a steady deficit, to relievethemselves from which the masters must resort to a general emancipation. Inthe South, however, there were special public reasons, lying in the racialtraits of the slave population, which would make that recourse particularlydeplorable; for the industrial collapse ensuing upon emancipation in theBritish West Indies on the one hand, and on the other the pillage andmassacre which occurred in San Domingo and the disorder still prevailingthere, were alternative examples of what might be apprehended from orderlyor revolutionary abolition as the case might be. The Southern people, inshort, might well congratulate themselves that no ending of their existingrégime 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 thatthe comparative advantages of slavery and freedom depended wholly upon theattainments of the laboring population concerned. "Both are necessarilyrecurring types of social organization, and each suited to its peculiarphase of society. " "When a nation or society is in a condition unfit forself-government, . .. Often the circumstance of contact with or subjectionby more enlightened nations has been the means of transition to a higherdevelopment. " "All that is now needed for the defence of United Statesnegro slavery and its entire exoneration from reproach is a thoroughinvestigation of fact; . .. And political economy . .. Must . .. Pronounce oursystem . .. No disease, but the normal and healthy condition of a societyformed of such mixed material as ours. " "The strong race and the weak, thecivilized and the savage, " the one by nature master, the other slave, "arehere not only cast together, but have been born together, grown together, lived together, worked together, each in his separate sphere striving forthe good of each. .. . These two races of men are mutually assistant to eachother and are contributing in the largest possible degree consistent withtheir mutual powers to the good of each other and mankind. " A generalemancipation therefore could bring nothing but a detriment. [14] [Footnote 14: _DeBow's Review_, XXI, 331-349, 443-467 (October andNovember, 1856). ] What proved to be the last work in the premises before the overthrow ofslavery in the United States was _The Slave Power, its Character, Careerand Probable Designs_, by J. E. Cairnes, professor of political economy inthe University of Dublin and in Queen's College, Galway. It was publishedin 1862 and reissued with appendices in the following year. Cairnes at theoutset scouted the factors of climate and negro racial traits. The soleeconomic advantage of slavery, said he, consists in its facilitationof control in large units; its defects lay in its causing reluctance, unskilfulness and lack of versatility. The reason for its prevalence in theSouth he found in the high fertility and the immense abundance of soil onthe one hand, and on the other the intensiveness of staple cultivation. Asingle operative, said he, citing as authority Robert Russell's erroneousassertion, "might cultivate twenty acres in wheat or Indian corn, but couldnot manage more than two in tobacco or three in cotton; therefore thesupervision of a considerable squad is economically feasible in thesethough it would not be so in the cereals. " These conditions might once havemade slave labor profitable, he conceded; but such possibility was nowdoubtless a thing of the distant past. The persistence of the system didnot argue to the contrary, for it would by force of inertia persist as longas it continued to be self-supporting. Turning to a different theme, Cairnes announced that slave labor, since ithad never been and never could be employed with success in manufacturing orcommercial pursuits, must find its whole use in agriculture; and even thereit required large capital, at the same time that the unthrifty habitsinculcated in the masters kept them from accumulating funds. Theconsequence was that slaveholding society must necessarily be and remainheavily in debt. The imperative confinement of slave labor to the mostfertile soils, furthermore, prevented the community from utilizing anyareas of inferior quality; for slaveholding society is so exclusive that iteither expels free labor from its vicinity or deprives it of all industrialvigor. It is true that some five millions of whites in the South have noslaves; but these "are now said to exist in this manner in a conditionlittle removed from savage life, eking out a wretched subsistence byhunting, 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 isthe 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 intothree classes, broadly distinguished from each other and connected by nocommon interest--the slaves on whom devolves all the regular industry, theslaveholders who reap all its fruits, and an idle and lawless rabble wholive dispensed over vast plains in a condition little removed from absolutebarbarism. "[16] Nowhere can any factors be found which will promote anyprogress of civilization so long as slavery persists. The non-slaveholderswill continue in "a life alternating between listless vagrancy and theexcitement of marauding expeditions. " "If civilization is to spring upamong the negro race, it will scarcely be contended that this will happenwhile they are still slaves; and if the present ruling class are ever torise above the existing type, it must be in some other capacity thanas slaveholders. "[17] Even as a "probationary discipline" to prepare abackward people for a higher form of civilized existence, slavery as itexists in America cannot be justified; for that effect is vitiated byreason of the domestic slave trade. "Considerations of economy, . .. Whichunder a natural system afford some security for humane treatment byidentifying the master's interest with the slave's preservation, when oncetrading in slaves is practised become reasons for racking to the utmost thetoil of the slave; for when his place can at once be supplied from foreignpreserves the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment thanits productiveness while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slavemanagement in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy isthat which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time theutmost 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 ofcontrary data prevented impeachment on the one side of the Atlantic, andon the other side the whole Northern people would hardly criticise such avindication of their cause in war by a writer from whose remoteness mightbe presumed fairness, and whose professional position might be taken asgiving a stamp of thoroughness and accuracy. Yet the very conditions andmethod of the writer made his interpretations hazardous. An economist, using great caution, might possibly have drawn the whole bulk of his datafrom travelers' accounts, as Cairnes did, and still have reached fairlysound conclusions; but Cairnes gave preference not to the concreteobservations of the travelers but to their generalizations, often biasedor amateurish, and on them erected his own. Furthermore, he ignored suchmaterial as would conflict with his preconceptions. His conclusions, accordingly, are now true, now false, and while always vivid are seldomsubstantially illuminating. His picture of the Southern non-slaveholders, which, be it observed, he applied in his first edition to five millionsor ten-elevenths of that whole white population, and which he restricted, under stress of contemporary criticism, only to four million souls in thesecond edition, [19] is merely the most extreme of his grotesqueries. Thebook 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 ofhis predecessors in the field. Those who sought the truth merely were ingeneral short of data; those who could get the facts in any fullness weretoo filled with partisan purpose. What was begun as a study was continuedas a dispute, necessarily endless so long as the political issue remainedactive. Many data which would have been illuminating, such as plantationrecords and slave price quotations, were never systematically assembled;and the experience resulting from negro emancipation was then too slightfor use in substantial generalizations. The economist M'Culloch, forexample, concluded from the experience of San Domingo and Jamaica thatcane sugar production could not be sustained without slavery;[20] but theindustrial careers of Cuba, Porto Rico and Louisiana since his time haverefuted him. He, like virtually all his contemporaries in economic thought, confused the several factors of slavery, race traits and the plantationsystem; the consequent liability to error was inevitable. [Footnote 20: J. R. M'Culloch, _Principles of Political Economy_ (fourthedition, Edinburgh, 1849), p. 439. ] Economists of later times have nearly all been too much absorbed in currentproblems to give attention to a discarded institution. Most of them haveignored the subject of slavery altogether, and the concern of the rest withit 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, " andagain as "the original and universal form of bankruptcy. " Smart deals withit only as concerns the care of workingmen's children: "The one good thingin 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 atleast a valuable asset. .. . But there is no such continuity in therelation between the employer [of free labor] and his human cattle. Thebest-intentioned employer cannot be expected to be much concerned about theefficient upkeep of the workman's child when the child is free to go wherehe likes. .. . The child's future is bound up with the father's wage. Thewage may be enough, even when low, to support the father's efficiency, butit is not necessarily enough to keep up the efficiency of the young laboreron which the future depends. "[22] Loria deals more extensively withslavery as affected by the valuation of labor, [23] and Gibson[24] examineselaborately the nature of hypothetically absolute slavery in analyzing theearnings of labor. The contributions of both Loria and Gibson will be usedbelow. The economic bearings of the institution in history still awaitsatisfactory 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 slaveas an annuity extending throughout the slave's working life and amountingto the annual surplus which the labor of the slave produced over and abovethe cost of his maintenance. [1] Before any profit accrued to the masterin any year, however, various deductions had to be subtracted from thissurplus. These included interest on the slave's cost, regardless ofwhether he had been reared by his owner or had been bought for a price;amortization of the capital investment; insurance against the slave'spremature 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 thesecharges 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 ismostly in close accord with Gibson's analysis. ] The maintenance of the slave at the full rate required for the preservationof lusty physique was essential. The master could not reduce it below thatstandard without impairing his property as well as lessening its immediatereturn; 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. Onthe other hand, he was often induced to raise the scale above the minimumstandard in order to increase the zeal and efficiency of his corps. In anycase, medical attendance and the like was necessarily included in the costof maintenance. The capital investment in a slave reared by his master would includecharges for the insurance of the child's mother at the time of his birthand for her deficit of routine work before and afterward; the food, clothing, nurse's care and incidentals furnished in childhood; the surplusof supplies over earnings in the period of youth while the slave was notfully earning his own keep and his overhead charges; compound interest onall of these until the slave reached adolescence or early manhood; and aproportion of similar charges on behalf of other children in his originalgroup who had died in youth. In his teens the slave's earnings wouldgradually increase until they covered all his current charges, includingthe cost of supervision; and shortly before the age of twenty he wouldperhaps begin to yield a net return to the owner. A slave's highest rate of earning would be reached of course when hisphysical maturity and his training became complete, and would normallycontinue until his bodily powers began to flag. This period would extendin the case of male field hands from perhaps twenty-five to possibly fiftyyears of age, and in the case of artizans from say thirty to fifty-fiveyears. The maximum valuation of the slave as property, however, would comeearlier, at the point when the investment in his production was firstcomplete and when his maximum earnings were about to begin; and his valuewould thereafter decline, first slowly and then more swiftly with everypassing year, in anticipation of the decline and final cessation of hisearning power. Thus the ratio between the capital value of a slave and hisannual net earnings, far from remaining constant, would steadily recedefrom the beginning to the end of his working life. At the age of twentyit might well be as ten to one; at the age of fifty it would probably notexceed 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 ofproduction, or of reproduction, bears a definite relation to the marketprice, in that it fixes a limit below which owners will not continue toproduce and sell. In the case of slaves, however, the cost of rearing hadno practical bearing upon the market price, for the reason that the ownerscould not, or at least did not, increase or diminish the production atwill. [2] It has been said by various anti-slavery spokesmen that manyslaveowners systematically bred slaves for the market. They have adduced noshred of supporting evidence however; and although the present writer haslong been alert for such data he has found but a single concrete item inthe premises. This one came, curiously enough, from colonial Massachusetts, where John Josslyn recorded in 1636: "Mr. Maverick's negro woman came to mychamber window and in her own country language and tune sang very loud andshril. Going out to her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, andwillingly would have expressed her grief in English. But I apprehended itby her countenance and deportment, whereupon I repaired to my host to learnof him the cause, for that I understood before that she had been a queen inher own countrey, and observed a very humble and dutiful garb used towardsher by another negro who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have abreed of negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield to perswasionsto 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 thanshe 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, professedlydealing always in pure hypothesis, assumes a state of "perfect" slavery inwhich breeding is controlled on precisely the same basis as in the case ofcattle. ] [Footnote 3: John Josslyn, "Account of two Voyages to New England, " in theMassachusetts 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. JesseBurton Harrison, a Virginian in touch with planters' conversation andhimself hostile to slavery, [4] went so far as to write, "It may be thatthere is a small section of Virginia (perhaps we could indicate it) wherethe theory of population is studied with reference to the yearly incomefrom the sale of slaves, " but he went no further; and this, be it noted, isnot clearly to hint anything further than that the owners of multiplyingslaves reckoned their own gains from the unstimulated increase. If pressurewere commonly applied James H. Hammond would not merely have inserted thecharacteristic provision in his schedule of rewards: "For every infantthirteen 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 andthere may have exerted a control of matings in the interest of industrialand commercial eugenics, but it is extremely doubtful that any appreciablenumber of masters attempted any direct hastening of slave increase. Thewhole tone of the community was hostile to such a practice. Masters werein fact glad enough to leave the slaves to their own inclinations in allregards so long as the day's work was not obstructed and good order wasundisturbed. They had of course everywhere and at all times an interestin the multiplication of their slaves as well as the increase of theirindustrial aptitudes. Thus William Lee wrote in 1778 concerning hisplantation in Virginia: "I wish particular attention may be paid to rearingyoung negroes, and taking care of those grown up, that the number may beincreased as much as possible; also putting several of the most promisingand 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 havecreated but a partial and one-sided relationship between cost of productionand market price. To make the connection complete it would have beenrequisite for them to check slave breeding when prices were low; and eventhe abolitionists, it seems, made no assertion to that effect. No, themarket might decline indefinitely without putting an appreciable check uponthe birth rate; and the master had virtually no choice but to rear everychild in his possession. The cost of production, therefore, could not serveas a nether limit for slave prices at any time. An upper limit to the price range was normally fixed by the reckoning of aslave's prospective earnings above the cost of his maintenance. The slavemay here be likened to a mine operated by a corporation leasing theproperty. The slave's claim to his maintenance represents the prior claimof the land-owner to his rent; the master's claim to the annual surplusrepresents the equity of the stockholders in the corporation. But the orewill some day be exhausted and the dividends cease. Purchasers of the stockshould accordingly consider amortization and pay only such price as willbe covered by the discounted value of the prospective dividends during thelife of the mine. The price of the output fluctuates, however, and therate of any year's earnings can only be conjectured. Precise reckoning istherefore impracticable, and the stock will rise and fall in the market inresponse to the play of conjectures as to the present value of the totalfuture earnings applicable to dividends. So also a planter entering theslave market might have reckoned in advance the prospect of working lifewhich a slave of given age would have, and the average earnings abovemaintenance which might be expected from his labor. By discounting each ofthose annual returns at the prevailing rate of interest to determine theirpresent values, and adding up the resulting sums, he would ascertain theprice which his business prospects would justify him in paying. Havingbought a slave at such a price, an equally thoroughgoing caution would haveled him to take out a life, health and accident insurance policy on theslave; but even then he must personally have borne the risk of the slave'srunning away. In practice the lives of a few slaves engaged in steamboatoperation and other hazardous pursuits were insured, [7] but the totalnumber of policies taken on their lives, except as regards marine insurancein the coasting slave trade, was very small. The planters as a rule carriedtheir own risks, and they generally dispensed with actuarial reckonings indetermining their bids for slaves. About 1850 a rule of thumb was currentthat a prime hand was worth a hundred dollars for every cent in the currentprice of a pound of cotton. In general, however, the prospective purchasermerely "reckoned" in the Southern sense of conjecturing, at what pricehe could employ an added slave with probable advantage, and made his bidaccordingly. [Footnote 7: J. C. Nott, in J. B. D. DeBow, ed. , _Industrial Resources of theSouthern 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 offeringlife and accident insurance on slaves. A typical policy is preserved in the MSS. Division of the Library ofCongress. It was issued Dec. 31, 1851, by the Louisville agent of theMutual Benefit Fire and Life Insurance Company of Louisiana, to T. P. Linthicum of Bairdstown, Ky. , insuring for $650 each the lives of Jack, 26years old and Alexander, 31 years old, for one year, at the rates of 2 and2-1/2 per cent, respectively, plus one per cent, for permission to employthe slaves on steamboats during the first half of the period. They wereemployed 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 thesecould be ascertained. The laws of most of the states presumed a seller'swarrant of health at the time of sale, unless expressly withheld, and inLouisiana this warrant extended to mental and moral soundness. The periodin which the buyer might apply for redress, however, was limited to a fewmonths, and the verdicts of juries were uncertain. On the whole, therefore, if the buyer were unacquainted with the slave's previous career and withhis attitude toward the transfer of possession, he necessarily incurredconsiderable risk in making each purchase. But in general the taking ofreasonable precautions would cause the loss through unsuspected vices inone case to be offset by gains through unexpected virtues in another. The scale and the trend of slave prices are essential features of therégime which most economists have ignored and for which the rest have hadtoo little data. For colonial times the quotations are scant. An historianof the French West Indies, however, has ascertained from the archivesthat whereas the prices ranged perhaps as low as 200 francs for importedAfricans there at the middle of the seventeenth century, they rose to450 francs by the year 1700 and continued in a strong and steady advancethereafter, except in war times, until the very eve of the FrenchRevolution. Typical prices for prime field hands in San Domingo were 650francs 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 avant1789_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 122-127. ] In the British West Indies it is apparent from occasional documents thatthe trend was similar. A memorial from Barbados in 1689, for example, recited that in earlier years the planters had been supplied with Africansat £7 sterling per head, of which forty shillings covered the Guinea costand £5 paid the freightage; but now since the establishment of the RoyalAfrican 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 areforced to scramble for them in so shameful a manner that one of the greatburdens of our lives is the going to buy negroes. But we must have them; wecannot be without them. "[9] The overthrow of the monopoly, however, broughtno relief. In 1766 the price of new negroes in the West Indies ranged atabout £26;[10] and in 1788-1790 from £41 to £49. At this time the valueof a prime field hand, reared in the islands, was reported to be twice asgreat 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 thewhole House: The Slave Trade_, no. 2 (London, 1790), p. 37. ] [Footnote 11: "An Old Member of Parliament, " _Doubts on the Abolition ofthe 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 hispurchase of a negro for £26. 10_s_ and said he supposed the price was thehighest ever paid in those parts; but a few years afterward a lot of fourmen brought £30 a head, two women the same rate, and two more women £25apiece; and before the end of the seventeenth century men were beingappraised at £40. [12] An official report from the colony in 1708 noted agreat increase of the slave supply in recent years, but observed that theprices had nevertheless risen. [13] In 1754 George Washington paid £52 for aman 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 negrofor £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, athird £75, and the remaining two £90 each;[14] and in the same year he wasoffered £80 for a slave named Will Shagg whom his overseer described as anincorrigible runaway. [15] [Footnote 12: P. A. Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the SeventeenthCentury_, 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 theevidence conclusive that there was a general and substantially continuousrise throughout colonial times. The advances which occurred in theprincipal British West India islands and in Virginia, indeed, were aconsequence of advances elsewhere, for by the middle of the eighteenthcentury all of these colonies were already passing the zenith of theirprosperity, whereas South Carolina, Georgia, San Domingo and Brazil, aswell as minor new British tropical settlements, were in course of rapidplantation expansion. Prices in the several communities tended of course tobe equalized partly by a slender intercolonial slave trade but mainly bythe Guineamen's practice of carrying their wares to the highest of the manycompeting markets. The war for American independence, bringing hard times, depressed allproperty values, those of slaves included. But the return of peace broughtprompt inflation in response to exaggerated anticipations of prosperity tofollow. Wade Hampton, for example, wrote to his brother from Jacksonboroughin the South Carolina lowlands, January 30, 1782: "All attempts to purchasenegroes have been fruitless, owing to the flattering state of our affairsin this quarter. "[16] The sequel was sharply disappointing. The indigoindustry was virtually dead, and rice prices, like those of tobacco, didnot maintain their expected levels. The financial experience was describedin 1786 by Henry Pendleton, a judge on the South Carolina bench, in wordswhich doubtless would have been similarly justified in various otherstates: "No sooner had we recovered and restored the country to peace andorder than a rage for running into debt became epidemical. .. . A happyspeculation was almost every man's object and pursuit. .. . What a loadof debt was in a short time contracted in the purchase of Britishsuperfluities, and of lands and slaves for which no price was too high ifcredit for the purchase was to be obtained!. .. How small a pittance of theproduce of the years 1783, '4, '5, altho' amounting to upwards of 400, 000sterling a year on an average, hath been applied toward lessening oldburdens!. .. What then was the consequence? The merchants were driven to theexportation of gold and silver, which so rapidly followed; . .. A diminutionof the value of the capital as well as the annual produce of estates inconsequence of the fallen price; . .. The recovery of new debts as wellas old in effect suspended, while the numerous bankruptcies which havehappened in Europe amongst the merchants trading to America, the reproachof which is cast upon us, have proclaimed to all the trading nationsto guard against our laws and policy, and even against our moralprinciples. "[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 followingdecade, when it appears that many of the planters in the Charlestondistrict were saved from ruin only by the wages happily drawn from theSantee Canal Company in payment for the work of their slaves in the canalconstruction gangs. [18] The conditions and prospects in Virginia at thesame time are suggested by a remark of George Washington in 1794 on slaveinvestments: "I shall be happily mistaken if they are not found to be avery troublesome species of property ere many years have passed over ourheads. "[19] [Footnote 18: Samuel DuBose, "Reminiscences of St. Stephen's Parish, " inT. 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 hasbeen quoted at greater length at the beginning of chapter VIII above. ] Prices in this period were so commonly stated in currency of uncertaindepreciation that a definite schedule by years may not safely be made. Itis clear, however, that the range in 1783 was little lower than it had beenon 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 wasa heavy and disquieting fall in slave prices. This was an earnest ofconditions in the nineteenth century when advances and declines alternated. From about 1795 onward the stability of the currency and the increasingabundance of authentic data permit the fluctuations of prices to bemeasured and their causes and effects to be studied with some assurance. The materials extant comprise occasional travellers' notes, fairly numerousnewspaper items, and quite voluminous manuscript collections of appraisalsand bills of sale, all of which require cautious discrimination in theiranalysis. [20] The appraisals fall mainly into two groups: the valuation ofestates in probate, and those for the purpose of public compensation tothe owners of slaves legally condemned for capital crimes. The former wereoftentimes purely perfunctory, and they are generally serviceable only asaids in ascertaining the ratios of value between slaves of the diverse agesand sexes. The appraisals of criminals, however, since they prescribedactual payments on the basis of the market value each slave would have hadif his crime had not been committed, may be assumed under such laws asVirginia maintained in the premises to be fairly accurate. A file of morethan a thousand such appraisals, with vouchers of payment attached, whichis preserved among the Virginia archives in the State Library at Richmond, is particularly copious in regard to prices as well as in regard to crimesand punishments. [Footnote 20: The difficulties to be encountered in ascertaining the valuesat any time and place are exemplified in the documents pertaining to slaveprices in the various states in the year 1815, printed in the _AmericanHistorical Review_, XIX, 813-838. In the gleaning of slave prices I havebeen actively assisted by Professor R. P. Brooks of the University ofGeorgia and Miss Lillie Richardson of New Orleans. ] The bills of sale recording actual market transactions remain as the chiefand central source of information upon prices. Some thousands of these, originating in the city of Charleston, are preserved in a single file amongthe state archives of South Carolina at Columbia; other thousands arescattered through the myriad miscellaneous notarial records in the courthouse at New Orleans; many smaller accumulations are to be found incounty court houses far and wide, particularly in the cotton belt; andconsiderable numbers are in private possession, along with plantationjournals and letters which sometimes contain similar data. Now these documents more often than otherwise record the sale of slavesin groups. One of the considerations involved was that a gang alreadyorganized would save its purchaser time and trouble in establishing a newplantation as a going concern, and therefore would probably bring a highergross price than if its members were sold singly. Another motive was thatof keeping slave families together, which served doubly in comporting withscruples of conscience and inducing to the greater contentment of slavesin their new employ. The documents of the time demonstrate repeatedly theappreciation of equanimity as affecting value. But group sales give slightinformation upon individual prices; and even the bills of individualsale yield much less than a statistician could wish. The sex is alwayspresumable from the slave's name, the color is usually stated or implied, and occasionally deleterious proclivities are specified, as of a confirmeddrunkard or a persistent runaway; but specifications of age, strength andtalents are very often, one and all, omitted. The problem is how may thesebare quotations of price be utilized. To strike an average of all pricesin any year at any place would be fruitless, since an even distribution ofslave grades cannot be assumed when quotations are not in great volume: theprices of young children are rarely ascertainable from the bills, sincethey were hardly ever sold separately; the prices of women likewise are tooseldom segregated from those of their children to permit anything to beestablished beyond a ratio to some ascertained standard; and the prices ofartizans varied too greatly with their skill to permit definite schedulesof them. The only market grade, in fact, for which basic price tabulationscan be made with any confidence is that of young male prime field hands, for these alone may usually be discriminated even when ages and qualitiesare not specified. The method here is to select in the group of bills forany time and place such maximum quotations for males as occur with anynotable degree of frequency. Artizans, foremen and the like are therebygenerally excluded by the infrequency of their sales, while themiddle-aged, the old and the defective are eliminated by leaving aside thequotations of lower range. The more scattering bills in which agesand crafts are given will then serve, when supplemented from probateappraisals, to establish valuation ratios between these able-bodiedunskilled young men and the several other classes of slaves. Thus, artizansoften brought twice as much as field hands of similar ages, prime womengenerally brought three-fourths or four-fifths as much as prime men; boysand girls entering their teens, and men and women entering their fifties, brought about half of prime prices for their sexes; and infants weregenerally appraised at about a tenth or an eighth of prime. The averageprice for slaves of all ages and both sexes, furthermore, was generallyabout one-half of the price for male prime field hands. The fluctuationof prime prices, therefore, measures the rise and fall of slave values ingeneral. The accompanying chart will show the fluctuations of the average pricesof prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, inmiddle Georgia, and at New Orleans, a£ well as the contemporary range ofaverage 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 fromabout $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence of the initialimpulse of cotton and sugar production and of the contemporary prohibitionof the African slave trade by the several states. At those levels pricesremained virtually fixed, in most markets, for nearly a decade as an effectof South Carolina's reopening of her ports and of the hampering of exportcommerce by the Napoleonic war. The latter factor prevented even thecongressional stoppage of the foreign slave trade in 1808 from exertingany strong effect upon slave prices for the time being except in the sugardistrict. 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 pricesleaped with parallel perpendicularity in all the markets from $400-$500 in1814 to twice that range in 1818, only to be upset by the world-wide panicof 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 aheightened price of their staples, but for once not evoking a sympatheticmovement in the other markets. A small decline then ensuing gave place toa soaring movement at New Orleans, in response to the great stimulus whichthe protective tariff of 1828 gave to sugar production. The other marketsbegan in the early thirties to make up for the tardiness of their rise; andas a feature of the general inflation of property values then prevalenteverywhere, slave prices rose to an apex in 1837 of $1, 300 in thepurchasing markets and $1, 100 in Virginia. The general panic of 1837began promptly to send them down; and though they advanced in 1839 as aconsequence of a speculative bolstering of the cotton market that year, they fell all the faster upon the collapse of that project, finding newlevels of rest only at a range of $500-$700. A final advance then set inat the middle of the forties which continued until the highest levels onrecord were attained on the eve of secession and war. [Illustration: PRICESOF SLAVES AND OF COTTON. ] There are thus in the slave price diagram for the nineteenth century aplateau, with a local peak rising from its level in the sugar district, andthree solid peaks--all of them separated by intervening valleys, and allcorresponding more or less to the elevations and depressions in the cottonrange. The plateau, 1803-1812, was prevented from producing a peak in theeastern markets by the South Carolina repeal of the slave trade prohibitionand by the European imbroglio. The first common peak, 1818, and its ensuingtrough came promptly upon the establishment of the characteristic régime ofthe ante-bellum period, in which the African reservoir could no longerbe drawn upon to mitigate labor shortages and restrain the speculativeenhancement of slave prices. The trough of the 'twenties was deeper andbroader in the upper and eastern South than elsewhere partly because thepanic of 1819 had brought a specially severe financial collapse there fromthe wrecking of mushroom canal projects and the like. [21] It is remarkablethat so wide a spread of rates in the several districts prevailed for solong a period as here appears. The statistics may of course be somewhat atfault, but there is reason for confidence that their margin of error is notgreat enough to vitiate them. [Footnote 21: _E. G. , The Papers of Archibald D. Murphey_ (North CarolinaHistorical Commission _Publications_, Raleigh, 1914), I, 93ff] The next peak, 1837-1839, was in most respects like the preceding one, andthe drop was quite as sudden and even more severe. The distresses of thetime in the district where they were the most intense were described in adiary of 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in thehope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrinwas promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster. "Speculation, "said he, "has been making poor men rich and rich men princes. " But now "arevulsion 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 themall. .. . Lands . .. That once commanded from thirty to fifty dollars per acremay now be bought for three or five dollars, and that with considerableimprovements, while many have been sold at sheriff's sales at fifty centsthat were considered worth ten to twenty dollars. The people, too, arerunning their negroes to Texas and to Alabama, and leaving their realestate and perishable property to be sold, or rather sacrificed. .. . Sogreat is the panic and so dreadful the distress that there are a great manyfarms prepared to receive crops, and some of them actually planted, and yetdeserted, not a human being to be found upon them. I had prepared myself tosee hard times here, but unlike most cases, the actual condition of affairsis 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 andeven anticipating it in the later phase of the movement, until extremedepths were reached in the middle forties, though at New Orleans and in theGeorgia uplands the decline was arrested in 1842 at a level of about $700. The sugar planters began prospering from the better prices established fortheir staple by the tariff of that year, and were able to pay more thanpanic prices for slaves; but as has been noted in an earlier chapter, suspicion of fraud in the cases of slaves offered from Mississippimilitated against their purchase. A sugar planter would be willing to payconsiderably more for a neighbor's negro than for one who had come down theriver and who might shortly be seized on a creditor's attachment. At the middle of the forties, with a rising cotton market, there begana strong and sustained advance, persisting throughout the fifties andcarrying slave prices to unexampled heights. By 1856 the phenomenon wasreceiving comment in the newspapers far and wide. In the early months ofthat year the _Republican_ of St. Louis reported field hand sales inPike County, Missouri, at from $1, 215 to $1, 642; the _Herald_ of LakeProvidence, Louisiana, recorded the auction of General L. C. Folk's slavesat 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 asale, we venture to say, has never been equaled in the state of Louisiana. "In Virginia, likewise, the Richmond _Despatch_ in January told of the saleof an estate in Halifax County at which "among other enormous prices, oneman brought $1, 410 and another $1, 425, and both were sold again privatelythe same day at advances of $50. They were ordinary field hands, notconsidered 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 theRichmond _Despatch_ noted that instead of the customary summer dullness inthe demand for slaves, it was unprecedentedly vigorous, with men's pricesranging 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 priceof slave labor and slave property at the South is at present too high whencompared with the prices of everything else. There must ere long be achange; and . .. We advise parties interested to 'stand from under!'"[24]But the market belied the apprehensions. A neighboring journal noted at thebeginning of 1858, that in the face of the current panic, slave pricesas indicated in newspapers from all quarters of the South held upastonishingly. "This argues a confidence on the part of the planters thatthere is a good time coming. Well, " the editor concluded with a hint ofhis own persistent doubts, "we trust they may not be deceived in theircalculations. "[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 quondamwife made notorious were auctioned to defray his debts, bidders whogathered from near and far offered prices which yielded an average rateof $708 per head for the 429 slaves of all ages. [26] And in January andFebruary the still greater auction at Albany, Georgia, of the estate ofJoseph 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 agesand conditions. [27] Sales at similar prices were at about the same timereported from various other quarters. [28] [Footnote 23: These items were reprinted in George M. Weston, _Who are andwho may be Slaves in the U. S. _ [1856]. ] [Footnote 24: _Southern Banner_, Jan. 11, 1855, endorsing an editorial ofsimilar 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 AuctionSale 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 anarticle in the New York _Tribune_. The slaves were sold in family parcelscomprising from two to seven persons each. ] [Footnote 27: MS. Record in the Ordinary's office at Macon, Ga. ProbateReturns, 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 _FederalUnion_ of Milledgeville said for example: "There is a perfect fever ragingin Georgia now on the subject of buying negroes. .. . Men are borrowing moneyat exorbitant rates of interest to buy negroes at exorbitant prices. Thespeculation will not sustain the speculators, and in a short time we shallsee many negroes and much land offered under the sheriff's hammer, with fewbuyers for cash; and then this kind of property will descend to its realvalue. The old rule of pricing a negro by the price of cotton by thepound--that is to say, if cotton is worth twelve cents a negro man isworth $1, 200. 00, if at fifteen cents then $1, 500. 00--does not seem to beregarded. Negroes are 25 per cent. Higher now with cotton at ten and onehalf cents than they were two or three years ago when it was worth fifteenand sixteen cents. Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surelycome. "[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 persisteduntil the end of 1860. Indeed the peak of this price movement was evidentlycut off by the intervention of war. How great an altitude it might havereached, and what shape its downward slope would have taken had peacecontinued, it is idle to conjecture. But that a crash must have come isbeyond 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 thefifties mainly to the demand of the railroads for labor. This was borneout in some degree by the transactions of the railroad companies whoseheadquarters were in that city. The president of the Charleston andSavannah Railroad Company, endorsing the arguments which had been advancedby 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. Andlife insurance at 2-1/2 per cent. The annual charge would be little morethan half the current cost in wages at $180. The yearly cost of maintenanceand superintendence, reckoned at $20 for clothing, $15 for corn, molassesand tobacco, $1 for physician's fees, $10 for overseer's wages and $15 fortools and repairs, he said, would be the same whether the slaves were hiredor bought. [33] How largely the company adopted its president's plan is notknown. 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 createdin 1843 by the merging of two earlier corporations, one of which alreadypossessed eleven slaves. In February, 1845, the new company bought threemore slaves, two of which cost $400 apiece and the third $686. At the endof the next year the superintendent reported: "After hands for many yearsin the company's service have acquired the knowledge and skill necessary tomake them valuable, the company are either compelled to submit to higherrates of wages imposed or to pass others at a lower rate of compensationthrough the same apprenticeship, with all the hazard of a strike, in theirturn, by the owners. "[34] The directors, after studying the problem thuspresented, launched upon a somewhat extensive slave-purchasing programme, buying one in 1848 and seven in 1849 at uniform prices of $900; one in1851 at $800 thirty-seven in 1852, all but two of which were procured in asingle 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 varioustimes between 1853 and 1859, at prices rising to $1, 500. Finally, when twoor three years of war had put all property, of however precarious a nature, at a premium over Confederate currency, the company bought another slavein August, 1863, for $2, 050, and thirty-two more in 1864 at prices rangingfrom $2, 450 to $6, 005. [35] All of these slaves were males. No ages ortrades are specified in the available records, and no statement of theadvantages 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 identicalwith the Mississippi and Alabama Railroad Company, bought prior to 1839, $159, 000 worth of slaves for railroad employment, but it presumably lostthem shortly after that year when the bank and the railroad together wentbankrupt. [36] The state of Georgia had bought about 190 slaves in andbefore 1830 for employment in river and road improvements, but it sold themin 1834, [37] and when in the late 'forties and the 'fifties it built andoperated the Western and Atlantic Railroad it made no repetition of theearlier experiment. In the 'fifties, indeed, the South Carolina RailroadCompany was almost unique in its policy of buying slaves for railroadpurposes. [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 slavesincreased the current charges, but that their purchase involved thediversion of capital in a way which none but abnormal circumstances couldjustify. In the year 1846 when the superintendent of the South Carolinacompany made his recommendation, slave prices were abnormally low andcotton prices were leaping in such wise as to make probable a strongadvance in the labor market. By 1855, however, the price of slaves hadnearly doubled, and by 1860 it was clearly inordinate. The special occasionfor a company to divert its funds or increase its capital obligations hadaccordingly vanished, and sound policy would have suggested the sale ofslaves 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 ithad used on river improvements long enough for many of its members to havegrown 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 itemof 1849 reported that an outbreak of cholera at the Hillman Iron Works nearClarksville, Tenn. , had brought the death of four or five slaves and theremoval of the remainder from the vicinity until the epidemic should havepassed. [40] A more normal episode of mere financial failure was that whichwrecked the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company whose plant was located on BroadRiver in South Carolina. To complete its works and begin operations thiscompany procured a loan of some $92, 000 in 1837 from the Bank of the Stateof South Carolina on the security of the land and buildings and a hundredslaves owned by the company. After several years of operation during whichthe purchase of additional slaves raised the number to 194, twenty-seven ofwhom were mechanics, the company admitted its insolvency. When the mortgagewas foreclosed in 1845 the bank bought in virtually the whole property tosave its investment, and operated the works for several years until a newcompany, with a manager imported from Sweden, was floated to take theconcern off its hands. [41] [Footnote 40: New Orleans _Delta_, Mch. 10, 1849. ] [Footnote 41: _Report of the Special Joint Committee appointed to examinethe Bank of the State of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1849); _Report ofthe 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 fewmade experiments with slave staffs. One of these was in operation in MauryCounty, Tennessee, in 1827, [42] and another near Pensacola, Florida, twentyyears afterward. Except for their foremen, each of these was run by slaveoperatives exclusively; and in the latter case, at least, all the slaveswere owned by the company. These comprised in 1847 some forty boys andgirls, who were all fed, and apparently well fed, at the company'stable. [43] The career of these enterprises is not ascertainable. A betterknown case is that of the Saluda Factory, near Columbia, South Carolina. When J. Graves came from New England in 1848 to assume the management ofthis mill he found several negroes among the operatives, all of whom wereon hire. His first impulse was to replace all the negroes with whites; butbefore this was accomplished the newcomer was quite converted by their"activity and promptness, " and he recommended that the number of blackoperatives be increased instead of diminished. "They are easily trainedto habits of industry and patient endurance, " he said, "and by theconcentration of all their faculties . .. Their imitative faculties becomecultivated to a very high degree, their muscles become trained and obedientto the will, so that whatever they see done they are quick in learning todo. "[44] The company was impelled by Graves' enthusiasm to resort to slavelabor exclusively, partly on hire from their owners and partly by purchase. At the height of this régime, in 1851, the slave operatives numbered158. [45] But whether from the incapacity of the negroes as mill hands orfrom the accumulation of debt through the purchase of slaves, the companywas 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 ofthe 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 overslaves even on hire, for in so doing they escaped liabilities for injuriesby fellow servants. When a firm of contractors, for example, advertisedin 1833 for five hundred laborers at $15 per month to work on the MuscleShoals canal in northern Alabama, it deemed it necessary to say that incases of accidents to slaves it would assume financial responsibility "forany injury or damage that may hereafter happen in the process of blastingrock 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 forgrading in his locality, to be done under his own supervision in the sparetime of his gang, slaves were generally called for in canal and railroadwork only when the supply of free labor was inadequate. [Footnote 47: Reprinted in E. S. Abdy, _Journal of a Residence in the UnitedStates_ (London, 1835), II, 109. ] Slaveowners, on the other hand, were equally reluctant to hire their slavesto 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 asplaces of slave residence. High wages were no adequate compensation forthe liability to contagious and other diseases, demoralization, and thechecking of the birth rate by the separation of husbands and wives. Thehigher the valuation of slave property, the greater would be the strengthof these considerations. Slaves were a somewhat precarious property under all circumstances. Losseswere incurred not only through disease[48] and flight but also throughsudden death in manifold ways, and through theft. A few items will furnishillustration. An early Charleston newspaper printed the following: "On theninth instant Mr. Edward North at Pon Pon sent a sensible negro fellow toMoon'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 sevenhours. "[49] From the Eutaws in the same state a correspondent wrote in 1798of a gin-house disaster: "I yesterday went over to Mr. Henry Middleton'splantation to view the dreadful effects of a flash of lightning which theday before fell on his machine house in which were about twenty negro men, fourteen of which were killed immediately. "[50] In 1828 the followingappeared in a newspaper at New Orleans: "Yesterday towards one o'clockP. M. , as one of the ferry boats was crossing the river with sixteen slaveson board belonging to General Wade Hampton, with their baggage, a few rodsdistant from the shore these negroes, being frightened by the motion of theboat, all threw themselves on the same side, which caused the boat to fill;and notwithstanding the prompt assistance afforded, four or five of theseunfortunates perished. "[51] In 1839 William Lowndes Yancey, who was then aplanter in South Carolina, lost his whole gang through the poisoning of aspring on his place, and was thereby bankrupted. [52] About 1858 certainbandits in western Louisiana abducted two slaves from the home of the WidowBernard on Bayou Vermilion. After the lapse of several months they werediscovered in the possession of one Apcher, who was tried for the theftbut acquitted. The slaves when restored to their mistress were put in thekitchen, bound together by their hands. But while the family was at dinnerthe two ran from the house and drowned themselves in the bayou. Thenarrator of the episode attributed the impulse for suicide to the taste forvagabondage and the hatred for work which the negroes had acquired from thebandit. [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 auxAttakapas_] (Louisiana, 1861), pp. 182-185. The governor of South Carolina reported the convictions of five whitemen for the crime of slave stealing in the one year;[54] and in thepenitentiary lists of the several states the designation of slave stealerswas fairly frequent, in spite of the fact that the death penalty wasgenerally prescribed for the crime. One method of their operation wasdescribed in a Georgia newspaper item of 1828 which related that twowagoners upon meeting a slave upon the road persuaded him to lend a hand inshifting their load. When the negro entered the wagon they overpowered himand 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] Thegreatest activities in this line, however, were doubtless those of theMurrell gang of desperadoes operating throughout the southwest in the earlythirties with a shrewd scheme for victimizing both whites and blacks. Theywould conspire with a slave, promising him his freedom or some other rewardif he would run off with them and suffer himself to be sold to some unwarypurchaser and then escape to join them again. [56] Sometimes they repeatedthis process over and over again with the same slave until a threat ofexposure from him led to his being silenced by murder. In the same period asmaller gang with John Washburn as its leading spirit and with Natchez asinformal headquarters, was busy at burglary, highway and flatboat robbery, pocket picking and slave stealing. [57] In 1846 a prisoner under arrest atCheraw, South Carolina, professed to reveal a new conspiracy for slavestealing with ramifications from Virginia to Texas; but the details appearnot to have been published. [58] [Footnote 54: H. M. Henry, _The Police Control of the Slave in SouthCarolina_ [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 andhis Adventure in capturing and exposing the great "Western Land Pirate" andhis Gang_ (New York, 1836), pp. 63-68, 104, _et passim_. The truth of theseaccounts of slave stealings is vouched for in a letter to the editor of theNew Orleans _Bulletin_, reprinted in the _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga. ), Nov. 5, 1835. ] [Footnote 57: The manifold felonies of the gang were described by Washburnin 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 Orleansjournals: _Louisiana Gazette_, Apr. 1 and Sept. 10, 1819; _MercantileAdvertiser_, 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 anothermasters made reckonings favorable to such driving of slaves at their workas would bring premature death. Thus Fanny Kemble wrote in 1838, when onthe Georgia coast: "In Louisiana . .. The humane calculation was not onlymade but openly and unhesitatingly avowed that the planters found it uponthe whole their most profitable plan to work off (kill with labour) theirwhole number of slaves about once in seven years, and renew the wholestock. "[59] The English traveler Featherstonhaugh likewise wrote ofLouisiana 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 sevenyears. "[60] William Goodell supported a similar assertion of his own in1853 by a series of citations. The first of these was to Theodore Weld asauthority, that "Professor Wright" had been told at New York by Dr. Demingof Ashland, Ohio, a story that Mr. Dickinson of Pittsburg had been told bySouthern planters and slave dealers on an Ohio River steamboat. The talethus vouched for contained the assertion that sugar planters found that bythe excessive driving of slaves day and night in the grinding season theycould so increase their output that "they could afford to sacrifice one setof hands in seven years, " and "that this horrible system was now practisedto a considerable extent. " The second citation was likewise to Weld for astatement by Mr. Samuel Blackwell of Jersey City, whose testimonial lay inthe fact of his membership in the Presbyterian church, that while on a tourin Louisiana "the planters generally declared to him that they were obligedso to overwork their slaves during the sugar-making season (from eight toten weeks) as to use them up in seven or eight years. " The third was to theRev. Mr. Reed of London who after a tour in Maryland, Virginia and Kentuckyin 1834 published the following: "I was told, confidentially, fromexcellent authority, that recently at a meeting of planters in SouthCarolina the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is moreprofitable to the owner if well fed, well clothed and worked lightly, or ifmade the most of at once and exhausted in some eight years. The decisionwas in favor of the last alternative"[61] An anonymous writer in 1857repeated this last item without indication of its date or authority butwith a shortening of the period of exhaustion to "some four or fiveyears. "[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 NewOrleans his book does not recur to this topic. ] [Footnote 61: William Goodell, _The American Slave Code in Theory andPractise_ (New York, 1853), pp. 79-81, citing Theodore Weld, _Slavery as itis_, p 39, and Mattheson, _Visit to the American Churches_, II, 173. ] [Footnote 62: _The Suppressed Book about Slavery! Prepared for publicationin 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 hadexperience with negro labor may reasonably be skeptical when told thathealthy, well fed negroes, whether slave or free, can by any routineinsistence of the employer be driven beyond the point at which fatiguebegins to be injurious. In the second place, plantation work as a rule hadthe limitation of daylight hours; in plowing, mules which could notbe hurried set the pace; in hoeing, haste would imperil the plants byenhancing the proportion of misdirected strokes; and in the harvest oftobacco, rice and cotton much perseverance but little strain was involved. The sugar harvest alone called for heavy exertion and for night work in themill. But common report in that regard emphasized the sturdy sleekness aswell as the joviality of the negroes in the grinding season;[63] and evenif exhaustion had been characteristic instead, the brevity of the periodwould have prevented any serious debilitating effect before the coming ofthe more leisurely schedule after harvest. In fact many neighboring Creoleand Acadian farmers, fishermen and the like were customarily enlistedon wages as plantation recruits in the months of stress. [64] The sugardistrict furthermore was the one plantation area within easy reach of aconsiderable city whence a seasonal supply of extra hands might be had tosave the regular forces from injury. The fact that a planter, as reportedby Sir Charles Lyell, failed to get a hundred recruits one year in themidst of the grinding season[65] does not weaken this consideration. It maywell have been that his neighbors had forestalled him in the wage-labormarket, or that the remaining Germans and Irish in the city refused to takethe places of their fellows who were on strike. It is well established thatsugar planters had systematic recourse to immigrant labor for ditching andother severe work. [66] It is incredible that they ignored the same recourseif at any time the requirements of their crop threatened injury to theirproperty in slaves. The recommendation of the old Roman, Varro, thatfreemen be employed in harvesting to save the slaves[67] would apply withno more effect, in case of need, to the pressing of oil and wine than tothe grinding of sugar-cane. Two months' wages to a Creole, a "'Cajun" oran 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 thegrinding was not usually as great as has been fancied. Some of the regularhands in fact were occasionally spared from the harvest at its height andset 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 ofDr. John P. R. Stone, of Iberville Parish, Louisiana. For the use of thisdocument, 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 Universityof Michigan, now Lieutenant in the American Expeditionary Force in France. ] The further question arises: how could a master who set himself to work aslave to death in seven years make sure on the one hand that the demisewould not be precipitated within a few months instead, and on the otherthat the consequence would not be merely the slave's incapacitation insteadof his death? In the one case a serious loss would be incurred at once; inthe other the stoppage of the slave's maintenance, which would be the onlyconceivable source of gain in the premises, would not have been effected, but the planter would merely have an invalid on his hands instead of aworker. Still further, the slaves had recourses of their own, even asidefrom 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 ofsabotage. These possibilities the masters knew as well as the slaves. Merepassive resistance, however, in cases where even that was needed, wouldgenerally prove effective enough. Finally, if all the foregoing arguments be dismissed as fallacious, therestill 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 andprofitable to exhaust the one to increase the other, the opportunity wouldsurely vanish when the price relations were reversed. The trend of themarkets was very strong in that direction. Thus at the beginning of thenineteenth century a prime field hand in the upland cotton belt had thevalue of about 1, 500 pounds of middling cotton; by 1810 this value hadrisen to 4, 500 pounds; by 1820 to 5, 500; by 1830 to 6, 000; by 1840 to8, 300; from 1843 to 1853 it was currently about 10, 000; and in 1860 itreached about 16, 000 pounds. Comparison of slave values as measured in theseveral other staples would show quite similar trends, though these greatappreciations were accompanied by no remotely proportionate increase ofthe slaves' industrial capacities. The figures tell their own tale ofthe mounting preposterousness of any calculated exhaustion of the humanchattels. The tradition in anti-slavery circles was however too strong to die. Various travelers touring the South, keen for corroborative evidence butfinding none, still nursed the belief that a further search would bringreward. It was like the rainbow's end, always beyond the horizon. Thus thetwo Englishmen, Marshall Hall and William H. Russell, after scrutinizingmany Southern localities and finding no slave exhaustion, asserted that itprevailed either in a district or in a type of establishment which they hadnot examined. Hall, who traveled far in the Southern states and then merelytouched at Havana on his way home, wrote: "In the United States the life ofthe slave has been cherished and his offspring promoted. In Cuba the livesof the slaves have been 'used up' by excessive labour, and increase innumber disregarded. It is said, indeed, that the slave-life did not extendbeyond eight or ten years. "[69] Russell recorded his surprise at findingthat the Louisiana planters made no reckoning whatever of the cost of theirslaves' labor, that Irish gangs nevertheless did the ditching, and that theslave children of from nine to eleven years were at play, "exempted fromthat cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining andmanufacturing districts of England"; and then upon glimpsing the homesteadsof some Creole small proprietors, he wrote: "It is among these men that, attimes, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that slaves are exposed tothe severest labor. "[70] Johann Schoepf on the other hand while travellingmany years before on the Atlantic seaboard had written: "They who have thelargest droves [of slaves] keep them the worst, let them run naked mostlyor in rags, and accustom them as much as possible to hunger, but exact ofthem steady work. "[71] That no concrete observations were adduced in anyof these premises is evidence enough, under the circumstances, that thecharges 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 blacksalike. ] The capital value of the slaves was an increasingly powerful insurance oftheir lives and their health. In four days of June, 1836, Thomas Glover ofLowndes County, Alabama, incurred a debt of $35 which he duly paid, forthree visits with mileage and prescriptions by Dr. Salley to his "wenchRina";[72] and in the winter of 1858 Nathan Truitt of Troup County, Georgia, had medical attendance rendered to a slave child of his to theamount of $130. 50. [73] These are mere chance items in the multitude whichconstantly recur in probate records. Business prudence required expenditurewith almost a lavish hand when endangered property was to be saved. Thesame consideration applied when famines occurred, as in Alabama in 1828[74]and 1855. [75] Poverty-stricken freemen might perish, but slaveowners coulduse the slaves themselves as security for credits to buy food at famineprices to feed them. [76] As Olmsted said, comparing famine effects in theSouth and in Ireland, "the slaves suffered no physical want--the peasantstarved. "[77] The higher the price of slaves, the more stringent thepressure upon the masters to safeguard them from disease, injury and riskof 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, quotingcontemporary 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 of1859 Edmund Ruffin analyzed the effects in Virginia. In the last fifteenyears, he said, the value of slaves had been doubled, solely because ofthe demand from the lower South. The Virginians affected fell into threeclasses. The first were those who had slaves to be sold, whether throughpressure of debt or in the legal division of estates or in the rare eventof liquidating a surplus of labor. These would receive advantage from highprices. The second were those who wishing neither to buy nor sell slavesdesired merely to keep their estates intact. These were, of course, unaffected by the fluctuations. The third were the great number ofenterprising planters and farmers who desired to increase the scale oftheir industrial operations and who would buy slaves if conditions werepropitious but were debarred therefrom by the immoderate prices. When thesemen stood aside in the bidding the manual force and the earning power ofthe commonwealth were depleted. The smaller volume of labor then remainingmust be more thinly applied; land values must needs decline; and theshrewdest employers must join the southward movement. The draining ofthe slaves, he continued, would bring compensation in an inflow of whitesettlers only when the removal of slave labor had become virtually completeand had brought in consequence the most extreme prostration of landprices and of the incomes of the still remaining remnant of the originalpopulation. The exporting of labor, at whatever price it might be sold, helikened to a farmer's conversion of his plow teams into cash instead ofusing them in his work. According to these views, he concluded, "thehighest prices yet obtained from the foreign purchasers of our slaves havenever left a profit to the state or produced pecuniary benefit to generalinterests. And even if prices should continue to increase, as there is goodreason to expect and to dread, until they reach $2000 or more for the bestlaborers, or $1200 for the general average of ages and sexes, these prices, though necessarily operating to remove every slave from Virginia, willstill cause loss to agricultural and general interests in every particularsale, 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 yearswhen the African trade was open and slaves were cheap, said he, in theCarolina lowlands "enterprise found a profitable field, and necessarilytherefore the fortunes of the country bloomed and brightened. But whenthe fertilizing stream of labor was cut off, when the opening West hadno further supply to meet its requisitions, it made demands upon theaccumulations of the seaboard. The limited amount became a prize to becontended for. Land in the interior offered itself at less than one dollaran 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 whocame to an estate, or the men of capital who retired from business, soughta location in the West. Lands on the seaboard were forced to seek forpurchasers; purchasers came to the seaboard to seek for slaves. Theirprices were elevated to their value not upon the seaboard where lands werecapital but in the interior where the interest upon the cost of labor wasthe only charge upon production. Labor therefore ceased to be profitablein the one place as it became profitable in the other. Estates which werewealth to their original proprietors became a charge to the descendantswho endeavored to maintain them. Neglect soon came to the relief ofunprofitable care; decay followed neglect. Mansions became tenantless androofless. Trees spring in their deserted halls and wave their branchesthrough dismantled windows. Drains filled up; the swamps returned. Parishchurches in imposing styles of architecture and once attended by a goodlycompany in costly equipages, are now abandoned. Lands which had ready saleat fifty dollars per acre now sell for less than five dollars; and overall these structures of wealth, with their offices of art, and overthese scenes of festivity and devotion, there now hangs the pall of anunalterable gloom. "[79] In a later essay the same writer dealt withdevelopments in the 'fifties in more sober phrases which are corroboratedby the census returns. Within the decade, he said, as many as ten thousandslaves 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. Theslaves had been taken in large numbers from all manufacturing employments, and were now being sold by thousands each year from the rice fields. "Theyare as yet retained by cotton and the culture incident to cotton; but asalmost every negro offered in our markets is bid for by the West, the drainis likely to continue. " In the towns alone was the loss offset in anydegree by an inflow of immigration. [80] [Footnote 79: L. W. Spratt, _The Foreign Slave Trade, the source ofpolitical power, of material progress, of social integrity and of socialemancipation to the South_ (Charleston, 1858), pp. 7, 8. ] [Footnote 80: L. W. Spratt, "Letter to John Perkins of Louisiana, " in theCharleston _Mercury_, Feb. 13, 1861. ] A similar trend as to slaves but with a sharply contrasting effect uponprosperity was described by Gratz Brown as prevailing in Missouri. Theslave population, said he, is in process of rapid decline except in a dozencentral counties along the Missouri River. "Hemp is the only staple hereleft that will pay for investment in negroes, " and that can hardly holdthem against the call of the cotton belt. Already the planters of theupland counties are beginning to send their slaves to southerly marketsin response to the prices there offered. In most parts of Missouri, hecontinued, slavery could not be said to exist as a system. It accordinglyserved, not as an appreciable industrial agency, but only as a deterrenthampering the progress of immigration. Brown therefore advocated thecomplete extirpation of the institution as a means of giving great impetusto the state's prosperity. [81] [Footnote 81: B. Gratz Brown, _Speech in the Missouri Legislature, February12, 1857 on gradual emancipation in Missouri_ (St. Louis, 1857). ] These accounts are colored by the pro-slavery views of Ruffin and Sprattand the opposite predilections of Brown. It is clear nevertheless that thenet industrial effects of the exportation of slaves were strikinglydiverse in the several regions. In Missouri, and in Delaware also, whereplantations had never been dominant and where negroes were few, the lossof slaves was more than counterbalanced by the gain of freemen; in someportions of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky the replacement of the one bythe other was at so evenly compensating a rate that the volume of industrywas not affected; but in other parts of those states and in the ruraldistricts of the rice coast the depletion of slaves was not in anyappreciable measure offset by immigration. This applies also to the olderportions of the eastern cotton belt. Throughout the northern and eastern South doubts had often been expressedthat slave labor was worth its price. Thus Philip Fithian recorded in hisVirginia diary in 1774 a conversation with Mrs. Robert Carter in which sheexpressed an opinion, endorsed by Fithian, "that if in Mr. Carter's or inany gentleman's estate all the negroes should be sold and the money put tointerest in safe hands, and let the land which the negroes now work liewholly uncultivated, the bare interest of the price of the negroes would bea much greater yearly income than what is now received from their workingthe lands, making no allowance at all for the trouble and risk of themasters as to crops and negroes. "[82] In 1824 John Randolph said: "It isnotorious that the profits of slave labor have been for a long time on thedecrease, and that on a fair average it scarcely reimburses the expense ofthe slave, " and concluded by prophesying that a continuance of the tendencywould 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 Elliottof Beaufort, South Carolina, had written that in the sea-island cottonindustry for a decade past the high valuations of lands and slaves had beenwholly unjustified. On the one hand, said he, the return on investmentswas extremely small; on the other, it was almost impossible to relieve anembarrassed estate by the sale of a part, for the reduction of the scale ofoperations 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 tendedto spread the adverse conditions noted by Elliott into all parts of theSouth; and by the close of the 'fifties it is fairly certain that noslaveholders but those few whose plantations lay in the most advantageousparts of the cotton and sugar districts and whose managerial ability wasexceptionally great were earning anything beyond what would cover theirmaintenance and carrying charges. Achille Loria has repeatedly expressed the generalization that slaves havebeen systematically overvalued wherever the institution has prevailed, andhe has attempted to explain the phenomenon by reference to an economic lawof his own formulation that capitalists always and everywhere exploit laborby devices peculiarly adapted to each régime in turn. His latest argumentin the premises is as follows: Man, who is by nature dispersivelyindividualistic, is brought into industrial coordination only by coercion. Isolated labor if on exceptionally fertile soil or if equipped withspecially efficient apparatus or if supernormal in energy may produce asurplus income, but ordinarily it can earn no more than a bare subsistence. Associative labor yields so much greater returns that masters of one sortor another emerge in every progressive society to replace dispersion withconcentration and to engross most of the accruing enhancement of produceto themselves as captains of industry. This "persistent and continuouscoercion, compelling them to labour in conformity to a unitary plan or inaccordance with a concentrating design" is commonly in its earlier formslavery, and slaveholders are thus the first possessors of capital. Ascapitalists they become perpetually concerned with excluding the laborersfrom the proprietorship of land and the other means of production. So longas land is relatively abundant this can be accomplished only by keepinglabor enslaved, and enslavement cannot be maintained unless the slaves areprevented from buying their freedom. This prevention is procured by theheightening of slave prices at such a rate as to keep the cost of freedomalways greater than the generality of the slaves can pay with their ownaccumulated savings or _peculia_. Slave prices in fact, whether in ancientRome or in modern America, advanced disproportionately to the advantagewhich the owners could derive from the ownership. "This shows that anelement of speculation enters into the valuation of the slave, or thatthere 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 labourthat is due the low productivity of slave states, the permanently unstableequilibrium of the slaveholding enterprise, and its inevitable ruin. " Thedecline of earnings and of slave prices promotes a more drastic oppression, as in Roman Sicily, to reduce the slave's _peculium_ and continue theprevention of his self-purchase. When this device is about to fail of itspurpose the masters may foil the intention of the slaves by changing theminto serfs, attaching the lands to the laborers as an additional thing tobe purchased as a condition of freedom. The value of the man may nowbe permitted to fall to its natural level. Finally, when the growth ofpopulation has made land so dear that common laborers in freedom cannotsave enough to buy farms, the occasion for slavery and serfdom lapses. Laborers may now be freed to become a wage-earning proletariat, to taketheir own risks. An automatic coercion replaces the systematic; the laborstimulus is intensified, but the stress of the employer is diminished. Thelaborer does not escape from coercion, but merely exchanges one of itsforms 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 whenhe says that southern lands are generally more fertile than northernand holds that alone, to the exclusion of climate and racial qualities, responsible for the greater prevalence of slavery ancient and modern insoutherly latitudes; or when he follows Cairnes in asserting that upon theAmerican slave plantations "the only form of culture practised was spadeculture, merely agglomerating upon a single area of land a number ofisolated laborers"; or when he contends that either slavery or serfdomsince based on force and fraud "destroys the possibility of fiduciarycredit by cancelling the conditions [of trust and confidence] which alonecan foster it. " [86] Such errors disturb one's faith. In the presentationof his main argument, furthermore, he not only exaggerates the cleavagebetween capitalists and laborers, the class consciousness of the two groupsand the rationality of capitalistic purpose, but he falls into calamitousambiguity and confusion. The central phenomenon of slavery, says he, isspeculation or the overvaluation of the slave. He thereupon assumes thatspeculation always means overvaluation, ignoring its downward possibility, and he accounts for the asserted universal and continuously increasingovervaluation by reference to the desire of masters to prevent slaves frombuying their freedom. Here he ignores essential historic facts. In Americanlaw a slave's _peculium_ had no recognition; and the proportion of slaves, furthermore, who showed any firm disposition to accumulate savings for thepurpose of buying their freedom was very small. Where such efforts weremade, however, they were likely to be aided by the masters throughfacilities for cash earnings, price concessions and honest accountingof instalments, notwithstanding the lack of legal requirements in thepremises. Loria's explanation of the "central phenomenon" is thereforehardly tenable. [Footnote 86: _Ibid_. , pp. 26, 190, 260. ] A far sounder basic doctrine is that of the accountant Gibson, recitedat the beginning of this chapter, that the valuation of a slave istheoretically determined by the reckoning of his prospective earnings abovethe cost of his maintenance. In the actual Southern régime, however, thiswas interfered with by several influences. For one thing, the successfulproprietors of small plantations could afford to buy additional slaves atsomewhat more than the price reckoned on _per capita_ earnings, because theadvance of their establishments towards the scale of maximum efficiencywould reduce the proportionate cost of administration. Again, the scale ofslaveholdings was in some degree a measure of social rank, and men wereaccordingly tempted by uneconomic motives to increase their trains ofretainers. Both of these considerations stimulated the bidding. On theother hand conventional morality deterred many proprietors from sellingslaves except under special stress, and thereby diminished the offers inthe market. If the combination of these factors is not adequate as anexplanation, there remain the spirit of inflation characteristic of a newcountry and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularlysanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesomebusiness. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. Thevariability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred themto borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflatedprices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On theother hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available as arule more tempting than slaves as investments. Corporation securities werefew and unseasoned; lands were liable to wear out and were painfully slowin liquidation; but slaves were a self-perpetuating stock whose ownershipwas a badge of dignity, whose management was generally esteemed apleasurable responsibility, whose labor would yield an income, and whosevalue could be realized in cash with fair promptitude in time of need. Nocalculated overvaluation by proprietors for the sake of keeping the slavesenslaved need be invented. Loria's thesis is a work of supererogation. But whatever may be the true explanation it is clear that slave prices didrise to immoderate heights, that speculation was kept rife, and that invirtually every phase, after the industrial occupation of each area hadbeen accomplished, the maintenance of the institution was a clog uponmaterial progress. The economic virtues of slavery lay wholly in its makinglabor mobile, regular and secure. These qualities accorded remarkably, sofar as they went, with the requirements of the plantation system on the onehand and the needs of the generality of the negroes on the other. Its viceswere more numerous, and in part more subtle. The North was annually acquiring thousands of immigrants who came at theirown expense, who worked zealously for wages payable from current earnings, and who possessed all the inventive and progressive potentialities ofEuropean peoples. But aspiring captains of industry at the South could asa rule procure labor only by remitting round sums in money or credit whichdepleted their working capital and for which were obtained slaves fit onlyfor plantation routine, negroes of whom little initiative could be expectedand little contribution to the community's welfare beyond their meremuscular exertions. The negroes were procured in the first instance mainlybecause white laborers were not to be had; afterward when whites mightotherwise have been available the established conditions repelled them. Thecontinued avoidance of the South by the great mass of incoming Europeans inpost-bellum decades has now made it clear that it was the negro characterof the slaves rather than the slave status of the negroes which was chieflyresponsible. The racial antipathy felt by the alien whites, along withtheir cultural repugnance and economic apprehensions, intrenched thenegroes permanently in the situation. The most fertile Southern areas whenonce 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 perhapsless efficient in freedom than their forbears were as slaves. The drain of funds involved in the purchase of slaves was impressive tocontemporaries. Thus Governor Spotswood wrote from Virginia to the Britishauthorities in 1711 explaining his assent to a £5 tax upon the importationof slaves. The members of the legislature, said he, "urged what is reallytrue, that the country is already ruined by the great number of negrosimported of late years, that it will be impossible for them in many yearsto discharge the debts already contracted for the purchase of those negroesif fresh supplys be still poured upon them while their tobacco continues solittle valuable, but that the people will run more and more in debt. "[87]And in 1769 a Charleston correspondent wrote to a Boston journal: "Acalculation having been made of the amount of purchase money of slaveseffected here the present year, it is computed at £270, 000 sterling, whichsum 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 CharlesLyell noted at Columbus, Georgia, in 1846 that Northern settlers were"struck with the difficulty experienced in raising money here by smallshares for the building of mills. 'Why, ' say they, 'should all our cottonmake so long a journey to the North, to be manufactured there, and comeback to us at so high a price? It is because all spare cash is sunk here inpurchasing negroes. '" And again at another stage of his tour: "That slavelabour is more expensive than free is an opinion which is certainly gainingground in the higher parts of Alabama, and is now professed openly by someNortherners who have settled there. One of them said to me, 'Half thepopulation of the South is employed in seeing that the other half do theirwork, and they who do work accomplish half what they might do under abetter system. ' 'We cannot, ' said another, [89] 'raise capital enough fornew cotton factories because all our savings go to buy negroes, or as haslately 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 avicious circle. They bought lands and slaves wherewith to grow cotton, and with the proceeds ever bought more slaves to make more cotton; andoftentimes they borrowed heavily on their lands and slaves as collateral inorder to enlarge their scale of production the more speedily. When slaveprices rose the possessors of those in the cotton belt seldom took profitfrom the advance, for it was a rare planter who would voluntarily sell hisoperating force. When crops failed or prices fell, however, the loans mightbe called, the mortgages foreclosed, and the property sold out at paniclevels. Thus while the slaves had a guarantee of their sustenance, theirproprietors, themselves the guarantors, had a guarantee of nothing. Byvirtue, or more properly by vice, of the heavy capitalization of thecontrol 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 onmanual labor as to have paralyzed the physical energies of the Southernwhite population. This is a great exaggeration; and yet it is true that thesystem militated in quite positive degree against the productivity of theseveral white classes. Among the well-to-do it promoted leisure by givingrise to an abnormally large number of men and women who whether actuallyor nominally performing managerial functions, did little to bring sweatto their brows. The proportion of white collars to overalls and of muslinfrocks to kitchen aprons was greater than in any other Anglo-Saxoncommunity of equal income. The contrast so often drawn between Southerngentility and Northern thrift had a concrete basis in fact. At the otherextreme the enervation of the poor whites, while mainly due to malariaand hookworm, had as a contributing cause the limitation upon theirwage-earning opportunity which the slavery system imposed. Upon the middleclass and the yeomanry, which were far more numerous and substantial[90]than has been commonly realized, the slavery system exerted an economicinfluence by limiting the availability of capital and by offering thetemptation 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 greatercost than free labor would normally have required. [91] The high price ofslaves, furthermore, prevented many a capable manager from exercising histalents by debarring him from the acquisition of labor and the other meansof large-scale production. [Footnote 90: D. R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (NewYork, 1860), pp. 91-100, 193-303; John M. Aughey, _The Iron Furnace, orSlavery 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 slavelabor itself, caused the South to spoil the market for its distinctivecrops by producing greater quantities than the world would buy atremunerative prices. To this the solicitude of the masters for the healthof their slaves contributed. The harvesting of wheat, for example, as aVirginian planter observed in a letter to his neighbor James Madison, inthe days when harvesting machinery was unknown, required exertion much moresevere than the tobacco routine, and was accordingly, as he put it, "byno means so conducive to the health of our negroes, upon whose increase(_miserabile dictu_!) our principal profit depends. "[92] The sameletter also said: "Where there is negro slavery there will be laziness, carelessness and wastefulness. Nor is it possible to prevent them. Severityincreases the evil, and humanity does not lessen it. " [Footnote 92: Francis Corbin to James Madison, Oct. 10, 1819, in theMassachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 263. ] On the whole, the question whether negro labor in slavery was more or lessproductive than free negro labor would have been is not the crux of thematter. The influence of the slaveholding régime upon the whites themselvesmade it inevitable that the South should accumulate real wealth more slowlythan the contemporary North. The planters and their neighbors were in thegrip of circumstance. The higher the price of slaves the greater was theabsorption of capital in their purchase, the blacker grew the black belts, the more intense was the concentration of wealth and talent in plantationindustry, the more complete was the crystallization of industrial society. Were there any remedies available? Certain politicians masquerading aseconomists advocated the territorial expansion of the régime as a meansof relief. Their argument, however, would not stand analysis. On one handvirtually all the territory on the continent climatically available for thestaples was by the middle of the nineteenth century already incorporatedinto slaveholding states; on the other hand, had new areas been availablethe chief effects of their exploitation would have been to heighten theprices of slaves and lower the prices of crops. Actual expansion had infact been too rapid for the best interests of society, for it had kept thepopulation too sparse to permit a proper development of schools and theagencies of communications. With a view to increase the power of the South to expand, and for otherpurposes mainly political, a group of agitators in the 'fifties raised avehement contention in favor of reopening the African slave trade in fullvolume. This, if accomplished, would have lowered the cost of labor, butits increase of the crops would have depressed staple prices in stillgreater degree; its unsettling of the slave market would have hurt vestedinterests; and its infusion of a horde of savage Africans would haveset back the progress of the negroes already on hand and have magnifiedpermanently the problems of racial adjustment. The prohibition of the interstate slave trade was another project formodifying the situation. It was mooted in the main by politicians alien tothe régime. If accomplished it would have wrought a sharp differentiationin the conditions within the several groups of Southern states. An analogymay be seen in the British possessions in tropical America, where, following the stoppage of the intercolonial slave trade in 1807, a royalcommission found that the average slave prices as gathered from salerecords between 1822 and 1830 varied from a range in the old and stagnantcolonies of £27 4_s_. 11-3/4_d_. In Bermuda, £29 18_s_. 9-3/4_d_. In theBahamas, £47 1_s_. In Barbados and £44 15_s_. 2-1/4_d_. In Jamaica, to £1054_s_. , £114 11_s_. And £120 4_s_. 7-1/2_d_ respectively in the new andbuoyant settlements of Trinidad, Guiana and British Honduras. [93] If theinterstate transfer had been stopped, the Virginia, Maryland and Carolinaslave markets would have been glutted while the markets of everysouthwestern state were swept bare. Slave prices in the former would havefallen to such levels that masters would have eventually resorted tomanumission in self-defence, while in the latter all existing checks to theinflation of prices would have been removed and all the evils consequentupon 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 byserfdom. This would have attached the negroes to whatever lands theychanced to occupy at the time of the legislation. By force of necessity itwould have checked the depletion of soils; but by preventing territorialtransfer it would have robbed the negroes and their masters of alladvantages afforded by the virginity of unoccupied lands. Serfdom couldhardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparselysettled country such as the South then was. Finally the conversion of slaves into freemen by a sweeping emancipationwas a project which met little endorsement except among those who ignoredthe racial and cultural complications. Financially it would work drasticchange in private fortunes, though the transfer of ownership from themasters to the laborers themselves need not necessarily have great effectfor the time being upon the actual wealth of the community as a whole. Emancipation would most probably, however, break down the plantation systemby making the labor supply unstable, and fill the country partly withpeasant farmers and partly with an unattached and floating negropopulation. Exceptional negroes and mulattoes would be sure to thrive upontheir new opportunities, but the generality of the blacks could be countedupon to relax into a greater slackness than they had previously beenpermitted to indulge in. The apprehension of industrial paralysis, however, appears to have been a smaller factor than the fear of social chaos as adeterrent in the minds of the Southern whites from thoughts of abolition. The slaveholding régime kept money scarce, population sparse and landvalues accordingly low; it restricted the opportunities of many men of bothraces, and it kept many of the natural resources of the Southern countryneglected. But it kept the main body of labor controlled, provisioned andmobile. Above all it maintained order and a notable degree of harmony in acommunity where confusion worse confounded would not have been far toseek. Plantation slavery had in strictly business aspects at least as manydrawbacks as it had attractions. But in the large it was less a businessthan 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, andthe dwellings and grounds of the well-to-do were spacious. The dearth ofgas and plumbing and the lack of electric light and central heating madefor heavy chores in the drawing of water, the replenishment of fuel and thecare of lamps. The gathering of vegetables from the kitchen garden, thedressing of poultry and the baking of relays' of hot breads at meal timeslikewise amplified the culinary routine. Maids of all work were thereforeseldom employed. Comfortable circumstances required at least a cook anda housemaid, to which might be added as means permitted a laundress, achildren's nurse, a seamstress, a milkmaid, a butler, a gardener and acoachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none butthe poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the grosspopulation was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menialemployment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection ofhouseholders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate servicesand gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census ofCharleston in 1848, [94] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics ascompared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. The slaves were morenumerous than the free also in the semi-domestic employments of coachmenand porters, and among the dray-men and the coopers and the unskilledlaborers in addition. [Footnote 94: J. L. Dawson and H. W. DeSaussure, _Census of Charleston for1848_ (Charleston, 1849), pp. 31-36. The city's population then comprisedsome 20, 000 whites, a like number of slaves, and about 3, 500 free personsof color. The statistics of occupations are summarized in the accompanyingtable. ] MANUAL OCCUPATIONS IN CHARLESTON, 1848 Slaves | Free Negroes| Whites Men | Women Men |Women Men |WomenDomestic servants 1, 888 | 3, 384 9 | 28 13 | 100Cooks andconfectioners 7 | 12 18 | 18 . .. | 5Nurses and midwives . .. | 2 . .. | 10 . .. | 5Laundresses . .. | 33 . .. | 45 . .. | . .. Seamstresses andmantua makers . .. | 24 . .. | 196 . .. | 125Milliners . .. | . .. . .. | 7 . .. | 44Fruiterers, huckstersand pedlers . .. | 18 6 | 5 46 | 18Gardeners 3 | . .. . .. | . .. 5 | 1Coachmen 15 | . .. 4 | . .. 2 | . .. Draymen 67 | . .. 11 | . .. 13 | . .. Porters 35 | . .. 5 | . .. 8 | . .. Wharfingers andstevedores 2 | . .. 1 | . .. 21 | . .. Pilots and sailors 50 | . .. 1 | . .. 176 | . .. Fishermen 11 | . .. 14 | . .. 10 | . .. Carpenters 120 | . .. 27 | . .. 119 | . .. Masons andbricklayers 68 | . .. 10 | . .. 60 | . .. Painters andplasterers 16 | . .. 4 | . .. 18 | . .. Tinners 3 | . .. 1 | . .. 10 | . .. Ship carpentersand joiners 51 | . .. 6 | . .. 52 | . .. Coopers 61 | . .. 2 | . .. 20 | . .. Coach makers andwheelwrights 3 | . .. 1 | . .. 26 | . .. Cabinet makers 8 | . .. . .. | . .. 26 | . .. Upholsterers 1 | . .. 1 | . .. 10 | . .. Gun, copper andlocksmiths 2 | . .. 1 | . .. 16 | . .. Blacksmiths andhorseshoers 40 | . .. 4 | . .. 51 | . .. Millwrights . .. | . .. 5 | . .. 4 | . .. Boot and shoemakers 6 | . .. 17 | . .. 30 | . .. Saddle and harnessmakers 2 | . .. 1 | . .. 29 | . .. Tailors and cap makers 36 | . .. 42 | 6 68 | 6Butchers 5 | . .. 1 | . .. 10 | . .. Millers . .. | . .. 1 | . .. 14 | . .. Bakers 39 | . .. 1 | . .. 35 | 1Barbers and hairdressers 4 | . .. 14 | . .. . .. | 6Cigarmakers 5 | . .. 1 | . .. 10 | . .. Bookbinders 3 | . .. . .. | . .. 10 | . .. Printers 5 | . .. . .. | . .. 65 | . .. Other mechanics [A] 45 | . .. 2 | . .. 182 | . .. Apprentices 43 | 8 14 | 7 55 | 5Unclassified, unskilledlaborers 838 | 378 19 | 2 192 | . .. Superannuated 38 | 54 1 | 5 . .. | . .. [Footnote A: The slaves and free negroes in this group were designatedmerely as mechanics. The whites were classified as follows: 3 joiners, 1 plumber, 8 gas fitters, 7 bell hangers, 1 paper hanger, 6 carvers andgilders, 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, 3molders, 3 pump and block makers, 2 turners, 2 wigmakers, 1 basketmaker, 1bleacher, 4 dyers, and 4 journeymen. In addition there were enumerated of whites in non-mechanical employmentsin which the negroes did not participate, 7 omnibus drivers and 16barkeepers. ] On the other hand, although Charleston excelled every other city in theproportion of slaves in its population, free laborers predominated in allthe other industrial groups, though but slightly in the cases of the masonsand carpenters. The whites, furthermore, heavily outnumbered the freenegroes in virtually all the trades but that of barbering which theyshunned. Among women workers the free colored ranked first as seamstresses, washerwomen, nurses and cooks, with white women competing strongly in thesewing trades alone. A census of Savannah in the same year shows a similarpredominance of whites in all the male trades but that of the barbers, inwhich there were counted five free negroes, one slave and no whites. [2]From such statistics two conclusions are clear: first, that the repulsionof the whites was not against manual work but against menial service;second, that the presence of the slaves in the town trades was mainly dueto 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 andsons of the cooks and chambermaids, dwelling with them on their masters'premises, where the back yard with its crooning women and rompingvari-colored children was as characteristic a feature as on theplantations. Town slavery, indeed, had a strong tone of domesticity, andthe masters were often paternalistically inclined. It was a townsman, forexample, who wrote the following to a neighbor: "As my boy Reuben hasformed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her for a wife, thisis to let you know that I am perfectly willing that he should, with yourconsent, marry her. His character is good; he is honest, faithful andindustrious. " The patriarchal relations of the country, however, whichdepended much upon the isolation of the groups, could hardly prevail insimilar degree where the slaves of many masters intermingled. Even forthe care of the sick there was doubtless fairly frequent recourse to suchestablishments as the "Surgical Infirmary for Negroes" at Augusta whichadvertised its facilities in 1854, [3] though the more common practice, ofcourse, was for slave patients in town as well as country to be nursedat home. A characteristic note in this connection was written by a youngGeorgia townswoman: "No one is going to church today but myself, as we havea little negro very sick and Mama deems it necessary to remain at home toattend to him. "[4] [Footnote 3: _Southern Business Directory_ (Charleston, 1854), I, 289, advertisement. The building was described as having accommodations forfifty or sixty patients. The charge for board, lodging and nursing was $10per month, and for surgical operations and medical attendance "the usualrates 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 mastersand slaves except as regards domestic service; for whereas a planter couldalways expand his operations in response to an increase of his field handsand could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he mightproduce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hireout or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domesticestablishment. On the other hand a building contractor with an expandingbusiness could not await the raising of children but must buy or hiremasons and carpenters where he could find them. Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs. Thus William Elfe, aCharleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial period, had title tofour sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and he managed to keep some oftheir wives and children in his possession also by having a farm on thefurther side of the harbor for their residence and employment. [5] WilliamRouse, a Charleston leather worker who closed his business in 1825 whenthe supply of tan bark ran short, had for sale four tanners, a currier andseven shoemakers, with, however, no women or children;[6] and the sevenslaves 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 wasoffered for sale in 1820, fourteen slave operatives were included withoutmention 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; athird, 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 aretypical of a multitude of newspaper advertisements: Michael Grantland atRichmond offered "good wages" for the year 1799 by piece or month for sixor eight negro coopers. [9] At the same time Edward Rumsey was calling forstrong negro men of good character at $100 per year at his iron works inBotetourt County, Virginia, and inviting free laboring men also to takeemployment with him. [10] In 1808 Daniel Weisinger and Company wanted threeor four negro men to work in their factory at Frankfort, Kentucky, saying"they will be taught weaving, and liberal wages will be paid for theirservices. "[11] George W. Evans at Augusta in 1818 "Wanted to hire, eight orten white or black men for the purpose of cutting wood. "[12] A citizen ofCharleston in 1821 called for eight good black carpenters on weekly ormonthly wages, and in 1825 a blacksmith and wheel-wright of the same cityoffered to take black apprentices. [13] In many cases whites and blacksworked together in the same employ, as in a boat-building yard on the FlintRiver 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 completeinsurance from the lessee. An instance of this was a contract betweenJames Murray of Wilmington in 1743, when he was departing for a sojourn inScotland, and his neighbor James Hazel. The latter was to take the threenegroes Glasgow, Kelso and Berwick for three years at an annual hire of £21sterling for the lot. If death or flight among them should prevent Hazelfrom returning any of the slaves at the end of the term he was to reimburseMurray at full value scheduled in the lease, receiving in turn a bill ofsale for any runaway. Furthermore if any of the slaves were permanentlyinjured by willful abuse at the hands of Hazel's overseer, Murray was to bepaid 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 towillful injury, and the courts generally so adjudged it where the contractsof hire had no stipulations in the premises. [17] When the Georgia supremecourt awarded the owner a full year's hire of a slave who had died in themidst of his term the decision was complained of as an innovation "signallyoppressive to the poorer classes of our citizens--the large majority--whoare 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 husbandsand sons, and sometimes the daughters, of the cooks and housemaids of themerchants, lawyers and the like whose need of servants was limited but whoin many cases made a point of owning their slaves in families. On the otherhand, many townsmen whose capital was scant or whose need was temporaryused hired slaves even for their kitchen work; and sometimes the filling ofthe demand involved the transfer of a slave from one town to another. Thusan innkeeper of Clarkesville, a summer resort in the Georgia mountains, published in the distant newspapers of Athens and Augusta in 1838 hisoffer of liberal wages for a first rate cook. [19] This hiring of domesticsbrought periodic embarrassments to those who depended upon them. A Virginiaclergyman who found his wife and himself doing their own chores "in theinterval between the hegira of the old hirelings and the coming of thenew"[20] was not alone in his plight. At the same season, a Richmond editorwrote: "The negro hiring days have come, the most woeful of the year! Sohousekeepers think who do not own their own servants; and even this classis but a little better off than the rest, for all darkeydom must haveholiday this week, and while their masters and mistresses are making firesand cooking victuals or attending to other menial duties the negroes arepromenading the streets decked in their finest clothes. "[21] Even thetobacco factories, which were constantly among the largest employers ofhired slaves, were closed for lack of laborers from Christmas day untilwell into January. [22] [Footnote 19: _Southern Banner_ (Athens, Ga. ), June 21, 1838, advertisementordering 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 twoparties is suggested by a New Year's colloquy overheard by Robert Russellon a Richmond street: "I was rather amused at the efforts of a marketgardener to hire a young woman as a domestic servant. The price her ownerput upon her services was not objected to by him, but they could not agreeabout other terms. The grand obstacle was that she would not consent towork in the garden, even when she had nothing else to do. After taking anhour'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 otherprivileges--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 thingslooked. " That the scruples of proprietors occasionally prevented theplacing of slaves is indicated by a letter of a Georgia woman anent hergirl Betty and a free negro woman, Matilda: "I cannot agree for Betty tobe hired to Matilda--her character is too bad. I know her of old; she is adrunkard, and is said to be bad in every respect. I would object her beinghired to any colored person no matter what their character was; and if shecannot get into a respectable family I had rather she came home, and if shecan't work out put her to spinning and weaving. Her relations here beg shemay not be permitted to go to Matilda. She would not be worth a cent at theend of the year. "[24] The coördination of demand and supply was facilitated in some towns bybrokers. Thus J. De Bellievre of Baton Rouge maintained throughout 1826 anotice in the local _Weekly Messenger_ of "Servants to hire by the day ormonth, " including both artizans and domestics; and in the Nashville citydirectory of 1860 Van B. Holman advertised his business as an agent for thehiring 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, toher 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 forunskilled able-bodied hands, ranged materially higher, of course, in thecotton belt than in the upper South. Women usually brought about halfthe wages of men, though they were sometimes let merely for the keep ofthemselves and their children. In middle Georgia the wages of prime menranged 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. Thepanic of the next year sent them down again; and in the 'twenties theycommonly ranged between $100 and $125. Flush times then raised them insuch wise that the contractors digging a canal on the Georgia coast foundthemselves obliged in 1838 to offer $18 per month together with thecustomary weekly rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quartsof corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitutefor life and health insurance. [25] The beginning of the distressful'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville could get itsstreet gang on a scale of $125;[26] at the middle of the decade slaveownerswere willing to take almost any wages offered; and in its final year theGeorgia Railroad paid only $70 to $75 for section hands. In 1850, however, this rate leaped to $100 and $110, and caused a partial substitution ofwhite laborers for the hired slaves;[27] but the brevity of any reliefprocured by this recourse is suggested by a news item from Chattanooga in1852 reporting that the commonest labor commanded a dollar a day, thatmechanics were all engaged far in advance, that much building was perforcebeing postponed, and that all persons who might be seeking employment wereurged to answer the city's call. [28] By 1854 the continuing advance beganto discommode rural employers likewise. A Norfolk newspaper of the timereported that the current wages of $150 for ordinary hands and $225 forthe best laborers, together with life insurance for the full value ofthe slaves, were so high that prudent farmers were curtailing theiroperations. [29] At the beginning of 1856 the wages in the Virginia tobaccofactories advanced some fifteen per cent. Over the rates of the precedingyear;[30] and shortly afterward several of these establishments took refugein the employment of white women for their lighter processes. [31] In 1860there was a culmination of this rise of slave wages throughout the South, contemporaneous with that of their purchase prices. First-rate handswere engaged by the Petersburg tobacco factories at $225;[32] and innorthwestern Louisiana the prime field hands in a parcel of slaves hiredfor the year brought from $300 to $360 each, and a blacksmith $430. [33] Thegeneral average then prevalent for prime unskilled slaves, however, wasprobably not much above two hundred dollars. While the purchase price ofslaves was wellnigh quadrupled in the three score years of the nineteenthcentury, slave wages were little more than doubled, for these were ofcourse controlled not by the fluctuating hopes and fears of what thedistant 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 atMilledgeville, 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, _Whoare 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 muchconcerned with questions of their moral and physical welfare as with thewages to be received, for no wage would compensate for the debilitation ofthe slave or his conversion into an inveterate runaway. The hirers in theirturn had the problem, growing more intense with the advance of costs, ofprocuring full work without resorting to such rigor of discipline aswould disquiet the owners of their employees. The tobacco factories foundsolution in piece work with bonus for excess over the required stint. AtRichmond in the middle 'fifties this was commonly yielding the slaves fromtwo to five dollars a month for their own uses; and these establishments, along with all other slave employers, suspended work for more than a weekat 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 needsof the town industry, for there were many occupations in which the regularsupervision of labor was impracticable. Hucksters must trudge the streetsalone; and market women sit solitary in their stalls. If slaves were tofollow such callings at all, and if other slaves were to utilize theirtalents in keeping cobbler and blacksmith shops and the like for publicpatronage, [35] they must be vested with fairly full control of their ownactivities. To enable them to compete with whites and free negroes in thetrades requiring isolated and occasional work their masters early andincreasingly fell into the habit of hiring many slaves to the slavesthemselves, granting to each a large degree of industrial freedom in returnfor a stipulated weekly wage. The rates of hire varied, of course, with theslave's capabilities and the conditions of business in their trades. Thepractice brought friction sometimes between slaves and owners when wageswere in default. An instance of this was published in a Charlestonadvertisement of 1800 announcing the auction of a young carpenter andsaying as the reason of the sale that he had absconded because of a deficitin his wages. [36] Whether the sale was merely by way of punishment orwas because the proprietor could not give personal supervision to thecarpenter's work the record fails to say. The practice also injured theinterests of white competitors in the same trades, who sometimes bitterlycomplained;[37] it occasionally put pressure upon the slaves to fillout their wages by theft; and it gave rise in some degree to a publicapprehension that the liberty of movement might be perverted to purposes ofconspiracy. The law came to frown upon it everywhere; but the device wastoo great a public and private convenience to be suppressed. [Footnote 35: _E. G_. , "For sale: a strong, healthy Mulatto Man, about24 years of age, by trade a blacksmith, and has had the management of ablacksmith 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 proposedat 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, saideditorially: "Despite the laws of the land forbidding under penalty thehiring of their time by slaves, it is much to be regretted that thepernicious practice still exists, " and it censured the citizens who wereconsciously and constantly violating a law enacted in the public interest. The nearby Darlington _Flag_ endorsed this and proposed in remedy thatthe town police and the rural patrols consider void all tickets issued bymasters authorizing their slaves to pass and repass at large, that allslaves found hiring their time be arrested and punished, and that theirowners be indicted as by law provided. The editor then ranged further. "There is another evil of no less magnitude, " said he, "and perhaps thefoundation of the one complained of. It is that of transferring slave laborfrom its legitimate field, the cultivation of the soil, into that of themechanic arts. .. . Negro mechanics are an ebony aristocracy into whichslaves seek to enter by teasing their masters for permission to learn atrade. Masters are too often seduced by the prospect of gain to yield theirassent, and when their slaves have acquired a trade are forced to theviolation of the law to realize their promised gain. We should thereforehave a law to prevent slave mechanics going off their masters' premises towork. Let such a law be passed, and . .. There will no longer be need of alaw to prohibit slaves hiring their own time, " The _Southern Watchman_ ofAthens, Georgia, reprinted all of this in turn, along with a subscriber'scommunication entitled "free slaves. " There were more negroes enjoyingvirtual freedom in the town of Athens, this writer said, than there were_bona fide_ free negroes in any ten counties of the district. "Everyone whois at all acquainted with the character of the slave race knows that theyhave great ideas of liberty, and in order to get the enjoyment of it theymake large offers for their time. And everyone who knows anything of thenegro knows that he won't work unless he is obliged to. .. . The negro thusset free, in nine cases out of ten, idles away half of his time or gamblesaway what he does make, and then relies on his ingenuity in stealing tomeet the demands pay day inevitably brings forth; and this is the way ourtowns are converted into dens of rogues and thieves. "[39] [Footnote 38: Natchez _Mississippian_, quoted in _Le Courrier de laLouisiane_ (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 communityagainst theft and insurrection as to diminish the competition of slaveswith white mechanics. The strict enforcement of the law would almostwholly deprive the public of the services of jobbing slaves, which wereindispensable under existing circumstances. Let the statute therefore beleft in the obscurity of the lawyers' bookshelves, he concluded, to bebrought forth only in case of an emergency. [40] And so such laws were leftto 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 anilluminating letter of Billy Procter, a slave at Americus, Georgia, in 1854to Colonel John B. Lamar of whom something has been seen in a foregoingchapter. 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, Iwould prefer to have you buy me to any other man. And I am anxious to getyou to do so if you will. You know me very well yourself, but as I wishyou 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 Ihear from you what you will do. I can be bought for $1000--and I think thatyou might get me for 50 Dolls less if you try, though that is Mr. Chapman'sprice. Now Mas John, I want to be plain and honest with you. If you willbuy me I will pay you $600 per year untill this money is paid, or at anyrate will pay for myself in two years. .. . I am fearfull that if you do notbuy me, there is no telling where I may have to go, and Mr. C. Wants me togo where I would be satisfied, --I promise to serve you faithfully, and Iknow that I am as sound and healthy as anyone you could find. You willconfer a great favour, sir, by Granting my request, and I would bevery glad to hear from you in regard to the matter at your earliestconvenience. "[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 beenwell advanced in years or else highly optimistic. Otherwise he could nothave expected to earn his purchase price within two years. ] The hiring of slaves by one citizen to another prevailed to some extentin country as well as town, and the hiring of them to themselves wasparticularly notable in the forest labors of gathering turpentine andsplitting shingles[42]; but slave hire in both its forms was predominantlyan urban resort. On the whole, whereas the plantation system cherishedslavery as a wellnigh fundamental condition, town industry could tolerateit only by modifying its features to make labor more flexibly responsive tothe sharply distinctive urban needs. [Footnote 42: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 153-155. ] As to routine control, urban proprietors were less complete masters evenof slaves in their own employ than were those in the country. For example, Morgan Brown of Clarksville, Tennessee, had occasion to publish thefollowing notice: "Whereas my negroes have been much in the habit ofworking at night for such persons as will employ them, to the great injuryof their health and morals, I therefore forbid all persons employing themwithout my special permission in writing. I also forbid trading with them, buying from or selling to them, without my written permit stating thearticle they may buy or sell. The law will be strictly enforced againsttransgressors, 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 likelyto find themselves champions rather than judges. This may be illustrated bytwo cases tried before the town commissioners of Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1831. In the first of these Edward Gary was ordered to bring before theboard his slave Nathan to answer a charge of assault upon Richard Mayhorn, a member of the town patrol, and show why punishment should not beinflicted. On the day set Cary appeared without the negro and made acounter charge supported by testimony that Mayhorn had exceeded hisauthority under the patrol ordinance. The prosecution of the slave wasthereupon 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 anassault upon Billy Woodliff, a slave apparently of Seaborn Jones. Billybeing sworn related that Hubbard had come to the door of his blacksmithshop and "abused and bruised him with a rock. " Other evidence revealed thatHubbard's grievance lay in Billy's having taken his wife from him. "Thetestimony having been concluded, Mr. Wiggins addressed the board in aspeech containing some lengthy, strengthy and depthy argument: whereuponthe board ordered that the negro man Hubbard receive from the marshall tenlashes, moderately laid on, and be discharged. "[44] Even in the maintenanceof household discipline masters were fain to apply chastisement vicariouslyby having the town marshal whip their offending servants for a small fee. [Footnote 44: MS. Archives in the town hall at Milledgeville, Ga. , selecteditems 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 asomewhat elaborate gradation of colored society. One stratum comprised thefairly numerous quadroons and mulattoes along with certain exceptionalblacks. The men among these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, painters and carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with thecast-off silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread, and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar. This elementwas a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its members were more or lessirked by the knowledge that no matter how great their merits they could notcross the boundary into white society. The bulk of the real negroes on theother hand, with an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, thewomen frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors, carryingtheir burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying as great store intheir kerchief turbans as their paler cousins did in their befloweredbonnets. The men of this class wore their shreds and patches with aneasy swing, doffed their wool hats to white men as they passed, calledthemselves niggers or darkies as a matter of course, took the joys andsorrows of the day as they came, improvised words to the music of theirwork, and customarily murdered the Queen's English, all with a true ifhumble nonchalance and a freedom from carking care. The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more thanrudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work days assumeda grandiloquence of manner when they donned their holiday clothes. Thegayeties of the colored population were most impressive to visitors fromafar. Thus Adam Hodgson wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "Iwas pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day intheir best attire, and was amused with their manners towards each other. They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, and make themost formal and particular inquiries after each other's families. "[45] J. S. Buckingham wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays, when theslaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they move about inevery 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 seenwith parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchiefbefore them in the most fashionable style. The young men among theslaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed hats, and carrywalking-sticks; and from the bowings, curtseying and greetings in thehighway one might almost imagine one's self to be at Hayti and think thatthe coloured people had got possession of the town and held sway, while thewhites were living among them by sufferance. "[46] Olmsted in his turn foundthe 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 theyear, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festiveassemblies 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'sReview_, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199. ] Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasionalcomplaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, amongmatters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grogshops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night, in spite of the prohibitions of the law. [48] A citizen of Charlestonprotested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form ofdissipation. "There are, " said he, "sometimes every evening in the week, funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes . .. Whodisturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of burying grounds in Pittstreet near Boundary street. It appears to be a jubilee for every slave inthe city. They are seen eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters, and such is frequently the crowd and noise made by them that carriagescannot 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 insome official statistics of Charleston. In the year ending September 1, 1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all, were followed in 138 casesby prompt magisterial discharge, by fines in 309 cases, and by punishmentin the workhouse or by remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264of the remainder. The mayor said in summary: "Of the 573 slaves fined orcommitted to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for being out atnight without tickets or being found in the dram shops or other unlawfulplaces. The fines imposed did not in general exceed $1, and where corporalpunishment was inflicted it was always moderate. It is worthy to remarkthat of the 460 cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 wereprosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303 cases, and in118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by a previous examination421 suits. " Arrests of colored freemen in the same period numbered 78, ofwhich 27 were followed by discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentenceto 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 riotingin the streets, following military companies, walking on the batterycontrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or otherviolation of the city and state laws" advanced for some unexplained reasonto an aggregate of 1424. Of those taken into custody 274 were dischargedafter examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecutedor delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines werepaid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners or guardians, 115were runaways who were duly returned to their masters or otherwise disposedof 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 ofSlaves in South Carolina_, pp. 49, 50. ] At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the public whippingof negro offenders at prominent points on the city streets, butcomplaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[51] had brought itsdiscontinuance. For the punishment of misdemeanants under sentences to hardlabor a treadmill was instituted in the workhouse;[52] and the ensuingsubstitution 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 theirworship tended slowly to segregate. A few negroes habitually participatedwith the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal rituals, or listened to thelong and logical sermons of the Presbyterians. Larger numbers occupied thepews appointed for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptistwhites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with their owntastes. But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint. Thewhite preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing ofthe negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptueloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity whendignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their ownmanifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemlyconduct. [54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding of separatecongregations to which the white ministers occasionally preached and inwhich white laymen often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonlyfilled by blacks alone. There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiartalent for "'rousements" and the prayer leader might beseech the Almightyin tones to reach His ears though afar off. There the sisters might swayand croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur thespokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. Therenot only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead ofthe more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermonwould be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm. [Footnote 54: A Methodist preacher wrote of an episode at Wilmington: "Onone occasion I took a summary process with a certain black woman who intheir love-feast, with many extravagant gestures, cried out that she was'young King Jesus, ' I bade her take her seat, and then publicly read herout of membership, stating that we would not have such wild fanaticsamong us, meantime letting them all know that such expressions were evenblasphemous. Poor Aunt Katy felt it deeply, repented, and in a month I tookher back again. The effect was beneficial, and she became a rationaland 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 ofsecession. An example in this line had been set in Philadelphia whensome of the negroes who had been attending white churches of variousdenominations were prompted by the antipathy of the whites and by theambition of the colored leaders to found, in 1791, an African church witha negro minister. In the course of a few years this was divided intocongregations of the several sects. Among these the Methodists prosperedto such degree that in 1816 they launched the African Methodist EpiscopalChurch, with congregations in Baltimore and other neighboring citiesincluded within its jurisdiction. [55] Richard Allen as its first bishopsoon entered into communication with Morris Brown and other coloredMethodists of Charleston who were aggrieved at this time by the loss oftheir autonomy. In former years the several thousand colored Methodists, who outnumbered by tenfold the whites in the congregations there, hadenjoyed a quarterly conference of their own, with the custody of theircollections and with control over the church trials of colored members; buton the ground of abuses these privileges were cancelled in 1815. A secretagitation then ensued which led on the one hand to the increase of thenegro Methodists by some two thousand souls, and on the other to the visitof two of their leaders to Philadelphia where they were formally ordainedfor Charleston pastorates. When affairs were thus ripened, a dispute asto the custody of one of their burial grounds precipitated their intendedstroke in 1818. Nearly all the colored class leaders gave up their paperssimultaneously, and more than three-quarters of their six thousandfellows withdrew their membership from the white Methodist churches. "Thegalleries, hitherto crowded, were almost completely deserted, " wrote acontemporary, "and it was a vacancy that could be _felt_. The absence oftheir responses and hearty songs were really felt to be a loss to those solong accustomed to hear them. .. . The schismatics combined, and aftergreat exertion succeeded in erecting a neat church building. .. . Theirorganization was called the African Church, " and one of its ministers wasconstituted bishop. Its career, however, was to be short lived, for thecity authorities promptly proceeded against them, first by arresting anumber of participants at one of their meetings but dismissing them with awarning that their conduct was violative of a statute of 1800 prohibitingthe assemblage of slaves and free negroes for mental instruction withoutthe presence of white persons; next by refusing, on the grounds that bothpower and willingness were lacking, a plea by the colored preachers for aspecial dispensation; and finally by the seizure of all the attendants atanother of their meetings and the sentencing of the bishop and a dozenexhorters, some to a month's imprisonment or departure from the state, others to ten lashes or ten dollars' fine. The church neverthelesscontinued in existence until 1822 when in consequence of the discovery of aplot for insurrection among the Charleston negroes the city government hadthe church building demolished. Morris Brown moved to Philadelphia, wherehe afterward became bishop of the African Church, and the whole Charlestonproject was ended. [56] The bulk of the blacks returned to the whitecongregations, where they soon overflowed the galleries and even the"boxes" which were assigned them at the rear on the main floors. Some ofthe older negroes by special privilege then took seats forward in the mainbody of the churches, and others not so esteemed followed their example insuch numbers that the whites were cramped for room. After complaints onthis score had failed for several years to bring remedy, a crisis camein Bethel Church on a Sunday in 1833 when Dr. Capers was to preach. Morewhites came than could be seated the forward-sitting negroes refusedto vacate their seats for them; and a committee of young white membersforcibly ejected these blacks At a "love-feast" shortly afterward one ofthe preachers criticized the action of the committee thereby giving theyounger element of the whites great umbrage. Efforts at reconciliationfailing, nine of the young men were expelled from membership, whereupona hundred and fifty others followed them into a new organization whichentered affiliation with the schismatic Methodist Protestant Church. [57]Race relations in the orthodox congregations were doubtless thereafter moreplacid. [Footnote 55: E. R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911), pp. 134-136. ] [Footnote 56: Charleston _Courier_, June 9, 1818; Charleston _CityGazette_, 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 inSouth 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 ordainedand their congregations instituted under the patronage of the whites. At Savannah as early as 1802 the freedom of the slave Henry Francis waspurchased by subscription, and he was ordained by white ministers at theAfrican Baptist Church. After a sermon by the Reverend Jesse Peter ofAugusta, the candidate "underwent a public examination respecting his faithin the leading doctrines of Christianity, his call to the sacred ministryand his ideas of church government. Giving entire satisfaction on theseimportant points, he kneeled down, when the ordination prayer withimposition of hands was made by Andrew Bryant The ordained ministerspresent then gave the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Francis, who wasforthwith presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by Mr. Holcombe. "[58] The Methodists were probably not far behind the Baptists inthis policy. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with much smaller numbersof negro co-religionists to care for, followed the same trend in laterdecades. Thus the presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of$7, 700, a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregationto be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian Church of thecity. The building had a T shape, the transepts appropriated to the use ofwhite persons. The Sunday school of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirtywhite men and women as its teaching staff. [59] [Footnote 58: Henry Holcombe ed. , _The Georgia Analytical Repository_ (aBaptist magazine of Savannah, 1802), I, 20, 21. For further data concerningFrancis and other colored Baptists of his time see the _Journal of NegroHistory_, I, 60-92. ] [Footnote 59: J. H. Thornwell, D. D. , _The Rights and Duties of Masters: asermon 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 theEpiscopalians of Charleston learned about this time. To relieve thecongestion of the negro pews in St. Michael's and St. Philip's, a separatecongregation was organized with a few whites included in its membership. While it was yet occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mobdemolished Calvary Church which was being built for its accommodation. Whenthe proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further use of his premisesthe congregation dispersed. The mob's action was said to be in protestagainst the doings of the "bands" or burial societies among the Calvarynegroes. [60] [Footnote 60: _Public Proceedings relating to Calvary Church and theReligious Instruction of Slaves_ (Charleston, 1850). ] The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave and free wasobstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that it might be pervertedto insurrectionary purposes. Thus when at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two freenegroes petitioned the Virginia legislature on behalf of themselves andseveral hundred slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by thewhites had not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanctionfor the creation of a "Baptist African Church, " the legislature withheldits permission. In 1841, however, this purpose was in effect accomplishedwhen it was found that a negro church would not be in violation of the lawprovided it had a white pastor. At that time the First Baptist Churchof Richmond, having outgrown its quarters, erected a new building toaccommodate its white members and left its old one to the negroes. Thelatter were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white ministerand with the choice of its deacons vested in a white committee. In 1855, when this congregation had grown to three thousand members, theEbenezer church was established as an offshoot, with a similar plan ofgovernment. [61] [Footnote 61: J. B. Earnest, _The Religious Development of the Negro inVirginia_ (Charlottesville, 1914), pp. 72-83. For the similar trend ofchurch segregation in the Northern cities see J. W. Cromwell, _The Negro inAmerican History_ (Washington, 1914). Pp. 61-70. ] At Baltimore there were in 1835 ten colored congregations, with slave andfree 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 coloredcongregations at Norfolk; at Savannah three colored churches were payingsalaries of $800 to $1000 to their colored ministers, [64] and in Atlantaa subscription was in progress for the enlargement of the negro churchbuilding to relieve its congestion. [65] By this time a visitor in virtuallyany Southern city might have witnessed such a scene as William H. Russelldescribed at Montgomery:[66] "As I was walking . .. I perceived a crowdof very well-dressed negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brickbuilding which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into whichwhite people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, orpersons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated muchcomfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all were slaves. One of mycompanions went up to a woman in a straw hat, with bright red and greenribbon trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, anda rainbow-like gown blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigiouscrinoline, and asked her 'Whom do you belong to?' She replied, 'I b'long toMassa 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_ (NewYork, 1860), pp. 350, 351. ] [Footnote 65: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, July 13, 1859, editorial commendingthe 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 generousmasters rated them individually deserving of liberty or when the negroesbought themselves. Typical of the time were the will of Thomas Stanford ofNew Jersey in 1722 directing that upon the death of the testator's wifehis negro man should have his freedom if in the opinion of three neighborsnamed he had behaved well, [1] and a deed signed by Robert Daniell ofSouth Carolina in 1759 granting freedom to his slave David Wilson inconsideration of his faithful service and of £600 currency in hand paid. [2]So long as this condition prevailed, in which the ethics of slaveholdingwere 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 ofreaction, not only wrought the legal disestablishment of slavery throughoutthe North, but prompted private manumissions far and wide. [3] Thus PhilipGraham of Maryland made a deed in 1787 reciting his realization that theholding of his "fellow men in bondage and slavery is repugnant to thegolden law of God and the unalienable right of mankind as well as toevery principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place inAmerica, " and converting his slaves into servants for terms, the adultsto become free at the close of that year and the children as they reachedmaturity. [4] In the same period, upon his coming of age, Richard Randolph, brother of the famous John, wrote to his guardian: "With regard to thedivision of the estate, I have only to say that I want not a single negrofor any other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider everyindividual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to saynations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant ananimal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power. "[5]The Randolph estate, however, was so cumbered with debts that the desiredmanumissions could not then be made. At Richard's death in 1796 he left awill of the expected tenor, providing for a wholesale freeing as promptlyas it could legally be accomplished by the clearance of the mortgage. [6] In1795 John Stratton of Norfolk, asserting his "full persuassion that freedomis the natural right of all men, " set free his able-bodied slave, PeterWakefield. [7] Robert K. Moore of Louisville mingled thrift with liberalismby setting free in 1802 two pairs of married slaves because of hisconviction that involuntary servitude was wrong, and at the same timebinding them by indenture to serve him for some fourteen years longer inconsideration of certain small payments in advance and larger ones at theends 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 publicaffairs 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 atNorfolk, Va. ] [Footnote 8: MSS. In the powers of attorney files, II, 118, 122, 127, atLouisville, 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-fivethousand in 1790 and was nearly doubled in each of the next two decades. The greater caution of their successors, reinforced by the rise of slaveprices, then slackened the rate of increase to twenty-five and finally toten per cent. Per decade. Documents in this later period, reverting to thecolonial basis, commonly recited faithful service or self purchase ratherthan inherent rights as the grounds for manumission. Liberations on a largescale, nevertheless, were not wholly discontinued. John Randolph's will setfree nearly four hundred in 1833;[9] Monroe Edwards of Louisiana manumitted160 by deed in 1840;[10] and George W. P. Custis of Virginia liberated histwo 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 madeprovisions to bring it after the lapse of years. Prominent among these werethree Louisianians. Julien Poydras, who died in 1824, ordered his executorsto sell his six plantations with their respective staffs under contracts tosecure the manumission of each slave after twenty-five years of serviceto the purchaser, together with an annual pension of $25 to each of thoseabove sixty years of age; and years afterward a nephew of the testatorprocured an injunction from the supreme court of the state estopping thesale of some of the slaves by one of their purchasers in such way as wouldhazard the fulfilment of the purpose. [12] Stephen Henderson, a Scotchimmigrant who had acquired several sugar plantations, provided as follows, by will made in 1837 and upheld by the courts: ten and twenty slavesrespectively were to be chosen by lot at periods five and ten years afterhis death to be freed and sent to Liberia, and at the end of twenty-fiveyears the rest were to fare likewise, but any who refused to be deportedwere to be kept as apprentices on the plantations. [13] John McDonogh, themost thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, made a unique bargain withhis whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively toearn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by the overtime work ofSaturday 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 drawupon this fund upon approved occasions; but since the contract was with thewhole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash the others mustdraw theirs _pro rata_, thereby postponing the common day of liberation. Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by themaster, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of therest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule, and after some delayin embarkation they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, withtheir late master's benediction. In concluding his public narration in thepremises McDonogh wrote: "They have now sailed for Liberia, the land oftheir fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a morevirtuous 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. Thewill is quoted in the decision. ] [Footnote 13: _Niles' Register_, LXVIII, 361. The original MS. Is filed inwill 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 feverepidemic of 1819 was bought and freed by popular subscription;[15] that ofSam which was provided by a special act of the Georgia legislature in 1834at a cost of $1, 800 in reward for his having saved the state capitol fromdestruction by fire;[16] and that of Prince which was attained through thegood offices of the United States government. Prince, after many years asa Mississippi slave, wrote a letter in Arabic to the American consul atTangier in which he recounted his early life as a man of rank among theTimboo people and his capture in battle and sale overseas. This led HenryClay on behalf of the Adams administration to inquire at what cost hemight be bought for liberation and return. His master thereupon freed himgratuitously, and the citizens of Natchez raised a fund for the purchase ofhis wife, with a surplus for a flowing Moorish costume in which Princewas promptly arrayed. The pair then departed, in 1828, for Washington _enroute_ for Morocco, Prince avowing that he would soon send back money forthe 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 periodthe Georgia legislature had occasion to reward another slave, Ransom byname, who while hired from his master by the state had heroically savedthe Western and Atlantic Railroad bridge over the Chattahoochee Riverfrom destruction by fire. Since official sentiment was now hostile tomanumission, it was resolved in 1849 that he be bought by the state andensured a permanent home; and in 1853 a further resolution directed thechief engineer of the state-owned railroad to pay him just wages duringgood behavior. Georgia _Acts, 1849-1850_, pp. 416, 417; _1853-1854_, pp. 538, 539. Old citizens relate that a house was built for Ransom on theWestern and Atlantic right of way in Atlanta which he continued to occupyuntil his death many years after the Civil War. For these data I amindebted to Mr. J. Groves Cohen, Secretary of the Western and AtlanticRailroad 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 incolonial 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 manumittedhad to shift their location at the time of changing their status. At leastone of the fugitives, however, made known his preference for his nativedistrict in a manner which cost him his liberty. After two years in Ohioand Canada he returned to the old plantation in Georgia, where he waswelcomed with a command to take up the hoe. Rejecting this implement, heproposed to buy himself if a thousand dollars would suffice. When hismaster, declining to negotiate, ordered him into custody he stabbed one ofthe negroes who seized him. At the end of the episode the returned wandererlay in jail; but where his money was, or whether in truth he had any, isnot recorded. [18] Among some of those manumitted and sent out of theiroriginal states as by law required, disappointment and homesickness weredistressingly keen. A group of them who had been carried to New York in1852 under the will of a Mr. Cresswell of Louisiana, found themselves insuch misery there that they begged the executor to carry them back, sayinghe might keep them as slaves or sell them--that they had been happy beforebut 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 boughtthemselves formed together an element of substantial worth in the Southernfree colored population. Testamentary endorsement like that which AbelP. Upshur gave on freeing his man David Rich--"I recommend him in thestrongest manner to the respect, esteem and confidence of any community inwhich he may live"[20]--are sufficiently eloquent in the premises. Thosewho bought themselves were similarly endorsed in many instances, and thevery fact of their self purchase was usually a voucher of thrift andsobriety. Many of those freed on either of these grounds were of mixedblood; and to them were added the mulatto and quadroon children set free bytheir white fathers, with particular frequency in Louisiana, who by virtueoftentimes of gifts in lands, goods and moneys were in the propertied classfrom the time of their manumission. The recruits joining the free coloredpopulation through all of these channels tended, together with theirdescendants, to be industrious, well-mannered and respected members ofsociety. [Footnote 20: William C. Nell, _The Colored Patriots of the AmericanRevolution_ (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. InGeorgia the most notable was Austin Dabney, who as a mulatto youth servedin the Revolutionary army and attached himself ever afterward to the whitefamily who saved his life when he had been wounded in battle. The Georgialegislature by special act gave him a farm; he was welcomed in the taverncircle of chatting lawyers whenever his favorite Judge Dooly held courtat his home village; and once when the formality of drawing his pensioncarried him to Savannah the governor of the state, seeing him pass, draggedhim from his horse and quartered him as a guest in his house. [21] JohnEady of the South Carolina lowlands by a like service in the War forIndependence earned a somewhat similar recognition which he retainedthroughout a very long life. [22] [Footnote 21: George R. Giltner, _Sketches of Some of the First Settlers ofUpper 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 heroicservices. "Such, " wrote Bishop Capers of the Southern Methodist Church, "were my old friends Castile Selby and John Bouquet of Charleston, WillCampbell and Harry Myrick of Wilmington, York Cohen of Savannah, and othersI might name. These I might call remarkable for their goodness. But I usethe word in a broader sense for Henry Evans, who was confessedly the fatherof the Methodist church, white and black, in Fayetteville, and the bestpreacher of his time in that quarter. " Evans, a free-born full-bloodedblack, as Capers went on to relate, had been a shoemaker and licensedpreacher in Virginia, but while journeying toward Charleston in searchof better employment he had been so struck by the lack of religion andmorality among the negroes in Fayetteville that he determined upon theirconversion as his true mission in life. When the town authorities dispersedhis meetings he shifted his rude pulpit into the woods outside theirjurisdiction and invited surveillance by the whites to prove his lackof offence. The palpable improvement in the morals of his followers lederelong to his being invited to preach within the town again, where thewhite people began to be numerous among his hearers. A regular congregationcomprising members of both races was organized and a church buildingerected. But the white attendance grew so large as to threaten the crowdingout of the blacks. To provide room for these the side walls of thechurch were torn off and sheds built on either flank; and these were theconditions when Capers himself succeeded the aged negro in its pulpit in1810 and found him on his own score an inspiration. Toward the ruling race, Capers records, Evans was unfailingly deferential, "never speaking to awhite but with his hat under his arm; never allowing himself to be seatedin 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. ' Andyet Henry Evans was a Boanerges; and in his duty feared not the face ofman. " [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 principalfigures lived in the eighteenth century. One of them was described in acontemporary news item which suggests that some journalists then were akinto 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, whorealizes all the accomplishments attributed by Boyle and others to theAdmirable Creighton of the Scotch. He is so superior at the sword thatthere is an edict of the Parliament of Paris to make his engagement in anyduel actual death. He is the first dancer (even before the Irish Singsby)in the world. He plays upon seven instruments of music, beyond any otherindividual. He speaks twenty-six languages, and maintains public thesisesin each. He walks round the various circles of science like the master ofeach; and strange to be mentioned to white men, this Mr. St. George is amulatto, the son of an African mother. "[24] Less happy was the career ofFrancis Williams of Jamaica, a plaything of the human gods. Born of negroparents who had earned special privilege in the island, he was used by theDuke of Montague in a test of negro mental capacity and given an educationin an English grammar school and at Cambridge University. Upon his returnto Jamaica his patron sought his appointment as a member of the governor'scouncil but without success; and he then became a schoolmaster and a poeton occasion in the island capital. Williams described himself with somepertinence as "a white man acting under a black skin. " His contempt forhis fellow negroes and particularly for the mulattoes made him lonely, eccentric, haughty and morose. A Latin panegyric which is alone availableamong his writings is rather a language exercise than a poem. [25] Onthe continent Benjamin Banneker was an almanac maker and somewhat of anastronomer, and Phyllis Wheatley of Boston a writer of verses. Bothwere doubtless more noted for their sable color than for their positivequalities. The wonder of them lay in their ambition and enterprise, not intheir eminence among scientific and literary craftsmen at large. [26] Suchcareers as these had no equivalent in the nineteenth century until itsclosing 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 StateGazette 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 NegroHistory_, II, 147-159. The Latin poem is printed in both of theseaccounts. ] [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 coloredproprietor of one of Charleston's most popular hotels who lived in the samemanner as his white patrons, accumulated property to the value of someforty thousand dollars, and maintained a reputation for high businesstalent and integrity. [27] At New Orleans men of such a sort were quitenumerous. Prominent among them by reason of his wealth and philanthropy wasThomy Lafon, a merchant and money lender who systematically accumulatedhouses and lots during a lifetime extending both before and after theCivil War and whose possessions when he died at the age of eighty-two wereappraised 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 tavernin the Louisiana village of Bayou Sara in 1831 was a colored woman of whomAnne Royall wrote: "This _nigger_ or mulatto was rich, owned the tavern andseveral slaves, to whom she was a great tyrant. She owned other valuableproperty and a great deal of money, as report said; and doubtless it istrue. She was very insolent, and, I think, drank. It seems one Tague [anIrishman], smitten with her charms and her property, made love to herand it was returned, and they live together as man and wife. She was theugliest wench I ever saw, and, if possible, he was uglier, so they werewell matched. "[29] One might ascribe the tone of this description to thetartness of Mrs. Royall's pen were it not that she recorded just afterwardthat 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 charitablebequests 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 instanceswere quite numerous in pre-revolutionary San Domingo; and some inthe British West Indies achieved notoriety through the exposure ofcruelties. [31] On the continent a negro planter in St. Paul's Parish, SouthCarolina, was reported before the close of the eighteenth century to havetwo hundred slaves as well as a white wife and son-in-law, and the returnsof the first federal census appear to corroborate it. [32] In Louisianacolored planters on a considerable scale became fairly numerous. Among themwere Cyprien Ricard who bought at a sheriff's sale in 1851 an estate inIberville Parish along with its ninety-one slaves for nearly a quarter ofa million dollars; Marie Metoyer of Natchitoches Parish had fifty-eightslaves 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 slavesand a thousand acres; and Martin Donato of St. Landry dying in 1848bequeathed liberty to his slave wife and her seven children and left themeighty-nine slaves and 4, 500 arpents of land as well as notes and mortgagesto a value of $46, 000. [33] In rural Virginia and Maryland also there werefree 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 censusreturns of 1790 give no such name, but they list James Pendarvis in a groupcomprising a white man, a free colored person and 123 slaves, and also aMrs. Persons, free colored, with 136 slaves. She may have been Pindaim's(or Pendarvis') mulatto daughter, while the white man listed in thePendarvis item was perhaps her husband or an overseer. _Heads of Familiesat 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 hismonograph, "_Free Negroes in Louisiana_, " in manuscript. The arpent was thestandard unit of area in the Creole parishes of Louisiana, the acre in theparishes of Anglo-American settlement. ] [Footnote 34: Calvin D. Wilson, "Black Masters, " in the _North AmericanReview_, CLXXXI, 685-698, and "Negroes who owned Slaves, " in the _PopularScience Monthly_, LXXXI, 483-494; John H. Russell, "Colored Freemen asSlave Owners in Virginia, " in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 233-242. ] Slaveholdings by colored townsmen were likewise fairly frequent. Among the360 colored taxpayers in Charleston in 1860, for example, 130, includingnine persons described as of Indian descent, were listed as possessing 390slaves. [35] The abundance of such holdings at New Orleans is evidenced bythe multiplicity of applications from colored proprietors for authorityto manumit slaves, with exemption from the legal requirement that the newfreedmen must leave the state. [36] A striking example of such petitions wasthat presented in 1832 by Marie Louise Bitaud, free woman of color, which recited that in the preceding year she had bought her daughter andgrandchild at a cost of $700; that a lawyer had now told her that in viewof her lack of free relatives to inherit her property, in case of deathintestate her slaves would revert to the state; that she had become alarmedat this prospect; and she accordingly begged permission to manumit themwithout their having to leave Louisiana. The magistrates gave their consenton condition that the petitioner furnish a bond of $500 to insure thesupport and education of the grandson until his coming of age. This wasduly 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 manumissionsin the archive rooms of the New Orleans city hall. Some were denied on theground that proof was lacking that the slaves concerned were natives ofthe state or that they would be self-supporting in freedom; others weregranted. ] [Footnote 37: For the use of this MS. Petition with its accompanyingcertificates I am indebted to Mr. J. F. Schindler of New York. ] Evidence of slaveholdings by colored freemen occurs also in the bills ofsale filed in various public archives. One of these records that a citizenof Charleston sold in 1828 a man slave to the latter's free colored sisterat a price of one dollar, "provided he is kindly treated and is never sold, he being an unfortunate individual and requiring much attention. " In thesame city a free colored man bought a slave sailmaker for $200. [38] AtSavannah in 1818 Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800to Alex Hunter, guardian of the colored freeman Louis Mirault, in trust forhim; and in 1833 Anthony Ordingsell, free colored, having obtained throughhis guardian an order of court, sold a slave woman to the highest bidderfor $385. [39] [Footnote 38: MSS. In the files of slave sales in the South Carolinaarchives 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 ameans of giving them virtual freedom, an appreciable number of coloredproprietors owned slaves purely as a productive investment. It wasdoubtless a group of these who sent a joint communication to a New Orleansnewspaper when secession and war were impending: "The free coloredpopulation (native) of Louisiana . .. Own slaves, and they are dearlyattached to their native land, . .. And they are ready to shed their bloodfor her defence. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for theNorth, but they have plenty for Louisiana. .. . They will fight for her in1861 as they fought in 1814-'15. .. . If they have made no demonstration itis because they have no right to meddle with politics, but not because theyare not well disposed. All they ask is to have a chance, and they willbe worthy sons of Louisiana. "[40] Oral testimony gathered by the presentwriter from old residents in various quarters of the South supports thesuggestion of this letter that many of the well-to-do colored freementended to prize their distinctive position so strongly as to deplore anyprospect of a general emancipation for fear it would submerge them in thegreat black mass. [Footnote 40: Letter to the editor, signed "A large number of them, " in theNew Orleans _Daily Delta_, Dec. 28, 1860. Men of this element had indeedrendered 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 freenegroes were those who whether in person or through their mothers had beenliberated purely from sentiment and possessed no particular qualificationsfor self-directed careers. The former slaves of Richard Randolph who werecolonized in accordance with his will as petty landed proprietors nearFarmville, Virginia, proved commonly thriftless for half a centuryafterward;[41] and Olmsted observed of the Virginia free negroes in generalthat their poverty was not due to the lack of industrial opportunity. [42]Many of those in the country were tenants. George Washington found one ofthem unprofitable as such;[43] and Robert Carter in 1792 rented farms toseveral in spite of his overseer's remonstrance that they had no adequateoutfit of tools and teams, and against his neighbors' protests. [44] Not afew indeed were mere squatters on waste lands. A Georgia overseer reportedin 1840 that several such families had made clearings in the woods ofthe plantation under his charge, and proposed that rent be required ofthem;[45] and travellers occasionally came upon negro cabins in fieldswhich had been abandoned by their proprietors. [46] The typical rural familyappears to have tilled a few acres on its own account, and to have beenwilling 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 aneighborhood. A memorial signed by thirty-eight citizens of Essex County, Virginia, in 1842 in behalf of a freedman might be paralleled from therecords of many another community: "We would be glad if he could bepermitted to remain with us and have his freedom, as he is a well disposedperson and a very useful man in many respects. He is a good carpenter, agood cooper, a coarse shoemaker, a good hand at almost everything that isuseful to us farmers. "[47] Among the free negroes on the seaboard there wasa special proclivity toward the water pursuits of boating, oystering andthe like. [48] In general they found a niche in industrial society much ona level with the slaves but as free as might be from the pressure ofsystematic competition. [Footnote 41: F. N. Watkins, "The Randolph Emancipated Slaves, " in _DeBow'sReview_, 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 inThwaites 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 thantheir rural fellows, for among them was commonly a larger proportion ofmulattoes and quadroons and of those who had demonstrated their capacityfor self direction by having bought their own freedom. Recruits of someskill in the crafts, furthermore, came in from the country, because ofthe advantages which town industry, in sharp contrast with that of theplantations, gave to free labor. A characteristic state of affairs is shownby the official register of free persons of color in Richmond County, Georgia, wherein lay the city of Augusta, for the year 1819[49]. Of thefifty-three men listed, including a planter and a steamboat pilot, onlyseven were classed as common laborers, while all the rest had specifictrades or employments. The prosperity of the group must have been butmoderate, nevertheless, for virtually all its women were listed as workersat washing, sewing, cooking, spinning, weaving or market vending; andalthough an African church in the town had an aged sexton, its ministermust have drawn most of his livelihood from some week-day trade, for nodesignation of a preacher appears in the list. At Charleston, likewise, according to the city census of 1848, only 19 free colored men in a totalof 239 listed in manual occupations were unclassified laborers, while thegreat majority were engaged in the shop and building trades. The womenagain were very numerous in sewing and washing employments, and anappreciable number of them were domestic servants outright. [50] [Footnote 49: _Augusta Chronicle_, Mch. 13, 1819, reprinted in _Plantationand 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 inparallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored malesabove fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans. Inthe Northern metropolis there were 3337 enumerated, and in the Southern1792. The former had 4 colored lawyers and 3 colored druggists while thelatter had none of either; and the colored preachers and doctors were 21to 1 and 9 to 4 in New York's favor. But New Orleans had 4 coloredcapitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 brokers and 2 collectors, withnone of any of these at New York; and 64 merchants, 5 jewelers and 61clerks 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 asmany butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrastedwith 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers, tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not inmuch better proportion. One-third of all New York's colored men, indeed, were unskilled laborers and another quarter were domestic servants, not tomention the many cooks, coachmen and other semi-domestic employees, whereasat New Orleans the unskilled were but a tenth part of the whole and no maledomestics were listed. This showing, which on the whole is highly favorableto New Orleans, is partly attributable to the more than fourfold excessof mulattoes over the blacks in its free population, in contrast with areversed proportion at New York; for the men of mixed blood filled all theplaces above the rank of artisan at New Orleans, and heavily preponderatedin virtually all the classes but that of unskilled laborers. New York'spoor showing as regards colored craftsmen, however, was mainly due to thegreater discrimination which its white people applied against all who had astrain of negro blood. This antipathy and its consequent industrial repression was palpably moresevere at the North in general than in the South. De Tocqueville remarkedthat "the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase inproportion as they are emancipated. " Fanny Kemble, in her more vehementstyle, wrote of the negroes in the North: "They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their owndespised race, scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, nottolerated even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are freecertainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and theoffscouring of the very dregs of your society. .. . All hands are extended tothrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, themost vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turnthe very name of their race into an insult and a reproach. "[51] MarshallHall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of thatprejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, aprejudice unknown in the South, where the domestic relations between theAfrican and the European are so much more intimate. "[52] Olmsted recordeda conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red Riversteamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "Hesaid that colored people could associate with whites much more easilyand comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason hepreferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance fromwhite people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North thanin Louisiana. "[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who afterbuying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but hadpromptly 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 Icouldn'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 wereprevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors hadbought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in thestate;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a publicmeeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place wouldnot be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke upthe school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for coloredgirls. The legislatures of various Northern states, furthermore, excludedfree immigrants as well as discriminating sharply against those who werealready inhabitants. Wherever the negroes clustered numerously, from Bostonto Philadelphia and Cincinnati, they were not only brow-beaten and excludedfrom the trades but were occasionally the victims of brutal outrage whetherfrom 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_ (NewYork, 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, _TheColor Line in Ohio_, pp. 11-87; C. G. Woodson, "The Negroes of CincinnatiPrior 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 thepractice of the white people was much more kindly. Racial antipathy wasthere mitigated by the sympathetic tie of slavery which promoted anattitude of amiable patronage even toward the freedmen and theirdescendants. [57] The tone of the memorials in which many Southern townsmenpetitioned for legal exemptions to permit specified free negroes to remainin their communities[58] found no echo from the corresponding type ofcommonplace unromantic citizens of the North. A few Southern petitions wereof a contrasting tenor, it is true, one for example presented to the citycouncil of Atlanta in 1859: "We feel aggrieved as Southern citizens thatyour honorable body tolerates a negro dentist (Roderick Badger) in ourmidst; 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 mayreadily be guessed that these petitioners were more moved by the interestof rival dentists than by their concern as Southern citizens. Southernprotests of another class, to be discussed below, against the tolerationof colored freedmen in general, were prompted by considerations of publicsecurity, 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 maintaineda remarkable equality throughout the antebellum period. The chiefconcentration was in the border states of either section. At the oneextreme they were kept few by the chill of the climate; at the otherby stringency of the law and by the high prices of slave labor whichrestrained the practice of manumission. Wherever they dwelt, they livedsomewhat precariously upon the sufferance of the whites, and in a more orless palpable danger of losing their liberty. Not only were escaped slaves liable to recapture anywhere within the UnitedStates, but those who were legally free might be seized on fraudulentclaims and enslaved in circumvention of the law, or they might be kidnappedoutright. One of those taken by fraud described his experience andpredicament as follows in a letter from "Boonvill Missouria" to thegovernor of Georgia: "Mr. Coob Dear Sir I have Embrast this oppertuniny ofRiting a few Lines to you to inform you that I am sold as a Slave for 14hundard dolars By the man that came to you Last may and told you a Packof lies to get you to Sine the warrant that he Brought that warrant was aforged as I have heard them say when I was Coming on to this Countrey andSir I thought that I would write and see if I could get you to do any thingfor me in the way of Getting me my freedom Back a Gain if I had some Papersfrom the Clarkes office in the City of Milledgeville and a little Goodaddvice in a Letter from you or any kind friend that I could get my freedoma Gain and my name can Be found on the Books of the Clarkes office Mr BozalStulers was Clarke when I was thear last and Sir a most any man can Citythat I Charles Covey is lawfuley a free man . .. But at the same time I donot want you to say any thing about this to any one that may acquaint myPreseant mastear of these things as he would quickly sell me and therefore I do not want this known and the men that came after me Carried me toMempears tenessee and after whiping me untill my Back was Raw from my rumpto the Back of my neck sent me to this Place and sold me Pleas to ancerthis as soon as you Can and Sir as soon as I can Get my time Back I willpay you all charges if you will Except of it yours in beast Charles CoveyBorned and Raized in the City of Milledgeville and a Blacksmith by tradeand James Rethearfurd in the City of Macon is my Laller [lawyer?] and cantell you all about these things. "[60] [Footnote 60: Letter of Charles Covey to Howell Cobb, Nov. 30, 1853. MS. Inthe possession of Mrs. A. S. Erwin, Athens, Ga. , for the use of which I amindebted to Professor R. P. Brooks of the University of Georgia. Foranother instance in which Cobb's aid was asked see the American HistoricalAssociation _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 asfree-born, was the consequence of an affray in which he had worsted anotherblack. In revenge the defeated combatant made the fact known that Pierrewas the son of a blind girl who because of her lack of market value hadbeen left by her master many years before to shift for herself when he hadsold his other slaves and gone to France. Thereupon George Heno, the heirof the departed and now deceased proprietor, laid claim to the whole Pierregroup, comprising the blind mother, Alexander himself, his sister, andthat sister's two children. Whether Heno's proceedings at law to procurepossession succeeded or failed is not told in the available record. [61] Ina kindred case not long afterward, however, the cause of liberty triumphed. About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupée Parish had permitted his slaveEulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; andthereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtualfreedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to getofficial sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring anddesiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominalsale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this manproved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, andthe purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit forfreedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the statesupreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was instrict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shallsuffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence inthis state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right ofaction to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall bea 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 theNew Orleans _True Delta_, Dec. 16, 1854. ] Kidnappings without pretense of legal claim were done so furtively thatthey seldom attained record unless the victims had recourse to the courts;and this was made rare by the helplessness of childhood in some cases andin others by the fear of lashes. Indeed when complexion gave presumption ofslave status, as it did, and custody gave color of ownership, the prospectof redress through the law was faint unless the services of some whitefriend could be enlisted. Two cases made conspicuous by the publication ofelaborate narratives were those of Peter Still and Solomon Northrup. Theformer, kidnapped in childhood near Philadelphia, served as a slave someforty years in Kentucky and northern Alabama, until with his own savings hebought his freedom and returned to his boyhood home. The problem which hethen faced of liberating his wife and three children was taken off hishands for a time by Seth Concklin, a freelance white abolitionist whovolunteered to abduct them. This daring emancipator duly went to Alabamain 1851, embarked the four negroes on a skiff and carried them down theTennessee and up the Ohio and the Wabash until weariness at the oars drovethe company to take the road for further travel. They were now capturedand the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; butConcklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohioby the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procuredendorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of NewYork and New England by which he raised funds enough to buy his family'sfreedom. At the conclusion of the narrative of their lives Peter and hiswife were domestics in a New Jersey boardinghouse, one of their twosons was a blacksmith's apprentice in a neighboring town, the other hademployment in a Pennsylvania village, and the daughter was at school inPhiladelphia. [63] [Footnote 63: Kate E. R. Pickard, _The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, being thepersonal recollections of Peter Still and his wife Vina after forty yearsof slavery_ (Syracuse, 1856). The dialogue in which the book abounds is, of course, fictitious, but the outlines of the narrative and the documentsquoted are presumably authentic. ] Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain untilin 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangersoffered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington. Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his freepapers, 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 carpenterhad written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent'scommission from the governor of New York. With the assistance of the localauthorities Northrup's identity was promptly established, his libertyprocured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to hiswife and children at Saratoga. [64] [Footnote 64: [David Wilson ed. ], _Narrative of Solomon Northrup_ (NewYork, 1853). Though the books of this class are generally of dubious valuethis one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantationlife and labor are of particular interest. ] A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of WilliamHouston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who hadcome from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans hadbeen offered passage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne deBlanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc hadordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away hispapers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston wassold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboringmerchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houstonaccompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was soldto one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of title, refusedpayment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J. F. Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of theBritish consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printedhis whole narrative that it might "assist the plaintiff to prove hisfreedom, 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 kidnappingand other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable amongwhich 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 potentialvalue of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so manythousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 therewere 83, 942 of this class in Maryland, 58, 042 in Virginia, 30, 463 in NorthCarolina, 18, 467 in Louisiana, and 250, 787 in the South at large. [Footnote 66: Alexandria, Va. , _Advertiser_, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of thesociety'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 underan act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following twoyears, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictionsranging from arson to petty larceny. [67] Some others were sold in variousstates under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even todefault 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 whohad been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another statepetitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which wasdoubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband"from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flatteringas they are, could not induce her to be separated. "[68] On other groundsWilliam Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859, reciting "That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whomhe comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodiedman, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and livesa thousand times harder and in more destitution than the slaves of manyplanters in this district. " He accordingly asked permission by special actto become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receivehim if he could lawfully do so. [69] To provide systematically for suchoccasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enactedlaws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color attheir own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case toenslave themselves to such masters as they might select. [70] The Virginialaw, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of anycreditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during whichprotests might be entered, and it also required the prospective masterto pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginiaarchives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widelyscattered localities. [71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from$300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuationsof $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy yearsold 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 fivehundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his freewife. [72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surerescape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appearsto be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratiothan 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 ofnegroes was invalid. Texas Supreme Court _Reports_, XXIV, 560. And a negrowho had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retainhis free status, though the contract between him and his employer was notthereby 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_ (NewOrleans), Aug. 26, 1830, and another in the New Orleans _CommercialAdvertiser_, Oct. 25, 1831. The motives are not stated. ] Invitations to American free negroes to try their fortunes in other landswere not lacking. Facilities for emigration to Liberia were steadilymaintained by the Colonization Society from 1819 onward;[74] the Haytiangovernment under President Boyer offered special inducements from thatrepublic in 1824;[75] in 1840 an immigration society in British Guianaproffered free transportation for such as would remove thither;[76] and in1859 Hayti once more sent overtures, particularly to the French-speakingcolored people of Louisiana, promising free lands to all who would come aswell as free transportation to such as could not pay their passage. [77] Butthese opportunities were seldom embraced. With the great bulk of those towhom they were addressed the dread of an undiscovered country from whosebourne few travellers had returned puzzled their wills, as it had doneHamlet's, and made them rather bear those ills they had than to fly toothers that they knew not of. [Footnote 74: J. H. T. McPherson, _History of Liberia_ (Johns HopkinsUniversity _Studies_, IX, no. 10). ] [Footnote 75: _Correspondence relative to the Emigration to Hayti of theFree People of Colour in the United States, together with the instructionsto the agent sent out by President Boyer_ (New York, 1824); _Plantation andFrontier_, II, 155-157. ] [Footnote 76: _Inducements to the Colored People of the United Statesto Emigrate to British Guiana, compiled from statements and documentsfurnished by Mr. Edward Carberry, agent of the immigration society ofBritish Guiana and a proprietor in that colony_. By "A friend to theColored People" (Boston, 1840); The _Liberator_ (Boston), Feb. 28, 1840, advertisement. ] [Footnote 77: E. P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS. ), citing theNew Orleans _Picayune_, July 16, 1859, and Oct. 21 and 23, 1860. ] Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generallyat the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from thewhite schools and poorly provided with schools of their own. [78] Exclusionof the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close ofthe war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was madecomplete by the action of the constitutional convention of North Carolinain 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807and 1838, [79] was a more palpable grievance against which a conventionof colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested. [80]Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites waslikewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in theNorth as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required licenseand registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions uponmovement, education and occupations; and several of them required theprocurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for goodbehavior. [Footnote 78: The schooling facilities are elaborately and excellentlydescribed and discussed in C. G. Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Priorto 1861_ (New York, 1915). ] [Footnote 79: Emil Olbrich, _The Development of Sentiment for NegroSuffrage to 1860_ (University of Wisconsin _Bulletin_, Historical Series, III, no, I). ] [Footnote 80: _Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention ofthe People of Colour, held in Philadelphia from the sixth to the eleventhof June_, 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831). ] These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressionswhich they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment whichcolored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that someof them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularlywhen white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent. Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excessamong the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the coloredinmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratioto the free colored population but half as high as did the correspondingprisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios wereabout six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northernwhites respectively. [81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess ofactual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for thediscriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables, magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negrowas doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth undercircumstances in which white men went free. The more severe industrialdiscrimination at the North, which drove large numbers to an alternative ofdestitution or crime, was furthermore contributive to the special excess ofnegro criminality there. [Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10, 000 of the respectivepopulations 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 and28. 7 for the free colored at the North. _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 166. See also _Southern Literary Messenger_, IX, 340-352; _DeBow'sReview_, 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 aman's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and histrial 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 ofa saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken inslurring 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--butthe landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made allthrough the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increasednumber of guests, but Snow was still absent. " The mob then began to searchthe houses of his associates for him. In that of James Hutton, another freemulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to amagistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held anorganized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee wasappointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council heldsession, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out. Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negrohut and breaking the windows of a negro church. [82] Such outrages appear tohave been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racialsubordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter. [Footnote 82: Washington _Globe_, about August 14, reprinted in the _NorthCarolina Standard_, Aug. 27, 1835. ] Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatlyrefrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freemanwas one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. Theysubmitted to the régime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course, because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because therewere solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes hadreason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carrythemselves 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 Southcommonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic ofboth African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends amongthe whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay infairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarlytheir own. The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stressupon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they weredoubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among thewhites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of theseinstitutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers. There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneylessslaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which thecolored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal andconspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutualaid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one ofthem at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membershipconfined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the freeblacks to found one of their own in emulation. [83] Among the proceedingsof the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequentcancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefitsof the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause afree black to be sold as a slave. [84] At Baltimore in 1835 there werethirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging fromthirty-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 theconstitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of NewOrleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officerswere president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, andsix 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 toits officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellowmembers, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love, " and towear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrearsof dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty asubscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was theduty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of theofficial mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was tosee to the washing of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work fromthe lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to havecharge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such membersas might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extentof 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 ofa member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpseand the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodgewas given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars alltold. [86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signifythat the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was associable as an Irish wake. [Footnote 86: _The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society ofOrleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace_ (Caption). ] Doubtless to some extent in their lodges, and certainly to a great degreein their daily affairs, the lives of the free colored and the slavesintermingled. Colored freemen, except in the highest of their socialstrata, took free or slave wives almost indifferently. Some indeed appearto have preferred the unfree, either because in such case the husband wouldnot be responsible for the support of the family or because he might engagethe protection of his wife's master in time of need. [87] On the other handthe free colored women were somewhat numerously the prostitutes, or in morefavored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereaboutsparticularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon balls, " wasa systematized practice. [88] When this had persisted for enough generationsto produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtlesscut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful thoughclandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions ofsome of those who to this day take the seats assigned to colored passengersin the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossingthe 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 coloredelement in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealouslydisposed on the ground of their competition, the interest and inclinationof citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon thosewhose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, thesemen shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, thefreedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services wereenlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. Oneof the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoesand the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousnessof the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety andcontending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove alliesof the whites. [89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. Thegeneral discussion at the South in the premises did not concern thevirtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as theinfluence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connectionthat the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the groundof their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was morethan matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. Acitizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91]"It is a melancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities ofPhiladelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equalitywith the whites, . .. They are chiefly noted for their aversion to laborand proneness to villainy. Men of this class are peculiarly dangerous ina community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness oftheir manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wickedand deep laid plots. " [Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulatedagainst the Southern and Western States respecting the institution andexistence 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 andcustoms far different from those of their ancestral country; and by beingenslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprivedof that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope ofindividual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected thattheir conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whiteswho were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks, however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and thereckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole wellfounded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave nospecial concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt. Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they werecommonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered andoften lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentencesof whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of thepenitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of seriousinfractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strictslave régime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] forinvestigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in thepremises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trialsof slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 FannieMicklejohn, charged with the murder of an infant was acquitted; and Tom, convicted of murdering a fellow slave was sentenced to branding on eachcheek with the letter M and to thirty-nine lashes on his bare back on eachof three successive days, after which he was to be discharged. In 1816John, a slave of William McGeehee, convicted of the theft of a $100 billwas sentenced to whipping in similar fashion. In 1818 Aleck was foundguilty of an assault with intent to murder, and received sentence of fiftylashes on three days in succession. In 1819 Rodney was capitally sentencedfor arson. In 1821 Peter, charged with murdering a slave, was convicted ofmanslaughter and ordered to be branded with M on the right cheek and to begiven the customary three times thirty-nine lashes; and Edmund, chargedwith involuntary manslaughter, was dismissed on the ground that the courthad no cognizance of such offense. In 1822 Davis was convicted of assaultupon 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 ofburglary but recommended to mercy, was sentenced to be branded with T onthe right cheek and to receive three times thirty-nine lashes; and on thesame day the same slave was sentenced to death for assault upon a whiteman with intent to kill. In 1825 John Ponder's George when convicted ofburglary was recommended by the jury to the mercy of the court but receivedsentence of death nevertheless; and Stephen was sentenced likewise formurderous assault upon a white man. In 1826 Elleck, charged with assaultwith intent of murder and rape, was convicted on the first part of thecharge only, but received sentence of death. In 1828 Elizabeth Smith'sGeorge was acquitted of larceny from the house; and next year Caroline waslikewise acquitted on a charge of maiming a white person. Finally, in 1832Martin, upon pleading guilty to a charge of murderous assault, was given awhipping sentence of the customary thirty-nine lashes on three successivedays. [2] [Footnote 1: W. E. B. DuBois, in the _Annals of the Academy of Political andSocial Science_, XVIII, 132. ] [Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of BaldwinCounty on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences. " MS. In thecourt house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac AmericanHistorical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantationand Frontier_, II, 123-125. ] A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slavecircumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county asthe foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancyas the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master becameskeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect thewhip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negromidwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same timea neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which wasmissing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with itstwo teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky, charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced toreceive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals offour days. [3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because thelaw declared them to be such when committed by persons of that class. Thestriking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them areexamples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were ofsorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of theperpetrators. [Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga. ), Mch. 1, 1864. ] In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume ofcriminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact thatin the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slaveconvicts at a cost of £15, 538 for the compensation of their masters, [4] andthat 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 availablefor two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that thelaws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerableimpartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In itspenitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmatescomprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All theslaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving lifeterms. [6] Classed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 forpoisoning, 5 for attempts to poison, 7 for assault with intent to kill, 2for 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 ofrape, there were no negroes who had accomplished that crime. Likewise ascompared with 52 whites and 4 free negroes serving terms for larceny, therewere no slave prisoners in that category. Doubtless on the one hand thenegro rapists had been promptly put to death, and on the other hand theslaves committing mere theft had been let off with whippings. Furthermorethere were no slaves committed for counterfeiting or forgery, horsestealing, 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 theLouisiana House of Representatives, 3d legislature, 1st session, p, 22. Forthis note I am indebted to Mr. V. A. Moody. ] [Footnote 6: Under an act of 1854, effective at this time, the owner of anyslave executed or imprisoned was to receive indemnity from the state to theextent 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 2slaves who had been sentenced for murder, 2 for arson, and 1 for assaultwith intent to kill. ] The uniquely full view which may be had of the trend of serious crimesamong the Virginia slaves is due to the preservation of vouchers filed inpursuance of a law of that state which for many decades required appraisaland payment by the public for all slaves capitally convicted and sentencedto 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 crimerose gradually decade by decade to a maximum of 242 in the 1820's, andtended to decline slowly thereafter. The gross number of convictions was1, 418, all but 91 of which were of males. For arson there were 90 slavesconvicted, including 29 women. For burglary there were 257, with but onewoman among them. The highway robbers numbered 15, the horse thieves 20, and the thieves of other sorts falling within the purview of the vouchers24, with no women in these categories. It would be interesting to know howthe slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but thisthe vouchers fail to tell. [Footnote 8: The MS. Vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia StateLibrary. 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 themaster 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 werekilled by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of themurderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison, including the administering of ground glass, 40 men and 16 women wereconvicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman foradministering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous assault therewere 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon maleoffenders and only two of which were described as having been directedagainst colored victims. For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This totalof 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but theterritorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewaterdistrict than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slavecrime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; andits notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to thecontemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroesamong them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at leasttwo cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, ifone be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicionof rape, " they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentionedamong the victims is of course far from proving that these were neverviolated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the privatecognizance of the masters. [9] A Delaware instance of the sort attainedrecord through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had runaway after being punished. [Footnote 9: Elkton (Md. ) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertisement, reprintedin _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122. ] For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them inHenrico County in 1800 for participation in Gabriel's revolt, 17 in 1831, mainly in Southampton County as followers of Nat Turner, and the restmostly scattering. Among miscellaneous and unclassified cases there was oneslave convicted of forgery, another of causing the printing of anti-slaverywritings, and 301 sentenced without definite specification of their crimes. Among the vouchers furthermore are incidental records of the killing of aslave in 1788 who had been proclaimed an outlaw, and of the purchase andmanumission by the commonwealth of Tom and Pharaoh in 1801 for servicesconnected with the suppression of Gabriel's revolt. As to punishments, the vouchers of the eighteenth century are largelysilent, though one of them contains the only unusual sentence to be foundin the whole file. This directed that the head of a slave who had murdereda 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 recordexecution. The rest give record of transportation whether under theoriginal sentences or upon commutation by the governor, except for thecases which from 1859 to 1863 were more numerous than any others where thecommutations 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 violatedwhite women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may bedrawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester, Massachusetts in 1768. [10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned todeath, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt atrape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governorissued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, aslave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in1844 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 whitefemale in the peace of God and state of Georgia, " and the criminal was dulyhanged by the sheriff. [12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rapeat Tuscaloosa, [13] and another in Washington County confessed after capturethat while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from herhorse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circumstancestoo horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben wassentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman. [15] InRapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into thewoods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. Thecriminal had been caught when the report went to press. [16] [Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by acontemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Manwho was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed onthe 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 _Plantationand Frontier_, II, 121, 122. ] Other examples will show that lynchings were not altogether lackingin 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 absenceand after having gotten liquor from his wife by threats, "they forciblytook 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 designof 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. " Themiscreants then loaded a horse with plunder from the house and made off, but they were shortly caught by pursuing citizens and hanged. The localeditor said on his own score when recounting the episode: "We have everbeen and now are opposed to any kind of punishment being administeredunder the statutes of Judge Lynch; but . .. A due regard for candor and thepreservation of all that is held most sacred and all that is most dear toman in the domestic circles of life impels us to acknowledge the fact thatif the perpetrators of this excessively revolting crime had been burnedalive, as was at first decreed, their fate would have been too good forsuch 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 anddiscussed 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, waskindly furnished by Prof. R. P. Brooks of the University of Georgia. ] "Our community has just been made to witness the most high-handed andhumiliating 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 condemnedon the charge of having attempted to commit rape upon a little white girlin this county. His trial was a fair one, his counsel was the best ourbar afforded, his jury was one of the most intelligent that sat upon thecriminal side of our court, and on patient and honest hearing he was foundguilty and sentenced to be hung on Tuesday, the 12th inst. This, by theway, was the second conviction. The negro had been tried and convictedbefore, but his counsel had moved and obtained a new trial, which we haveseen resulted like the first in a conviction. "Notwithstanding his conviction, it was believed by some that the negro wasinnocent. Those who believed him innocent, in a spirit of mercy, undertooka short time since to procure his pardon; and a petition to that effect wascirculated among our citizens and, we believe, very numerously signed. Thiswe think was a great error. .. . It is dangerous for the people to undertaketo meddle with the majesty of the jury trial; and strange as it may soundto some people, we regard the unfortunate denouement of this case as butthe extreme exemplification of the very principle which actuated those whooriginated this petition. Each proceeded from a spirit of discontent withthe decisions of the authorized tribunals; the difference being that in theone case peaceful means were used for the accomplishment of mistaken mercy, and in the other violence was resorted to for the attainment of mistakenjustice. "The petition was sent to Governor Towns, and on Monday evening last themessenger returned with a full and free pardon to the criminal. In themeantime the people had begun to flock in from the country to witness theexecution; and when it was announced that a pardon had been received, theexcitement which immediately pervaded the streets was indescribable. Mondaynight passed without any important demonstration. Tuesday morning the crowdin the streets increased, and the excitement with it. A large and excitedmultitude gathered early in the morning at the market house, and afternumerous violent harangues a leader was chosen, and resolutions passed tothe effect that the mob should demand the prisoner at four o'clock in theafternoon, and if he should not be given up he was to be taken by forceand executed. After this decision the mob dispersed, and early in theafternoon, upon the ringing of the market bell, it reassembled andproceeded to the jail. The sheriff of the county of course refused tosurrender 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 donot 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 beextended to an act so outraging, so unpardonable. " A similar occurrence in Sumter County, Alabama, in 1855 was reported withno expression of regret. A negro who had raped and murdered a young girlthere was brought before the superior court in regular session. "When thecase was called for trial a motion for change of venue to the county ofGreene was granted. This so exasperated the citizens of Sumter (many ofwhom were in favor of summary punishment in the outset) that a large numberof them collected on the 23d. Ult. , took him out of prison, chained himto a stake on the very spot where the murder was committed, and in thepresence of two or three thousand negroes and a large number of whitepeople, [19] burned him alive. " This mention of negroes in attendance is insharp contrast with their palpable absence on similar occasions in laterdecades. They were present, of course, as at legal executions, by thecommand of their masters to receive a lesson of deterrence. The wisdom ofthis policy, however, had already been gravely questioned. A Louisianaeditor, for example, had written in comment upon a local hanging: "Thepractice of sending slaves to witness the execution of their fellows asa terror to them has many advocates, but we are inclined to doubt itsefficacy. We took particular pains to notice on this occasion the effectswhich this horrid spectacle would produce on their minds, and ourobservation taught us that while a very few turned with loathing from thescene, a large majority manifested that levity and curiosity superinducedby 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, in1858, there is available merely the court record of a suit brought by theowners of the slave to recover pecuniary damages from those who had lynchedhim. It is incidentally recited, with strong reprehension by the court, that the negro was in legal custody under a charge of rape and murder whencertain citizens, part of whom had signed a written agreement to "stand byeach other, " broke into the jail and hanged the prisoner. [21] [Footnote 21: Head's _Tennessee Reports_, I, 336. For lynchings prompted byother crimes than rape see below, p. 474, footnote 60. ] In general the slaveholding South learned of crimes by individual negroeswith considerable equanimity. It was the news or suspicion of concertedaction by them which alone caused widespread alarm and uneasiness. Thatactual deeds of rebellion by small groups were fairly common is suggestedby the numerous slaves convicted of murdering their masters and overseersin Virginia, as well as by chance items from other quarters. Thus in 1797a planter in Screven County, Georgia, who had recently bought a batch ofnewly imported Africans was set upon and killed by them, and his wife'sescape was made possible only by the loyalty of two other slaves. [22]Likewise in Bullitt County, Kentucky, in 1844, when a Mr. Stewartthreatened one of his slaves, that one and two others turned upon him andbeat him to death;[23] and in Arkansas in 1845 an overseer who was attackedunder similar circumstances saved his life only with the aid of severalneighbors and through the use of powder and ball. [24] Such episodes werelikely to grow as the reports of them flew over the countryside. Forinstance in 1856 when an unruly slave on a plantation shortly below NewOrleans upon being threatened with punishment seized an axe and wasthereupon shot by his overseer, the rumor of an insurrection quickly ran toand 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, wereassembled, the catalogue would reach formidable dimensions. A large numberdoubtless escaped record, for the newspapers esteemed them "a delicatesubject to touch";[26] and many of those which were recorded, we may besure, have not come to the investigator's notice. A survey of the revoltsand conspiracies and the rumors of such must nevertheless be attempted; fortheir 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 longthe chief plantation colonies. No more than twenty years after the firstblacks were brought to Hispaniola a score of Joloff negroes on theplantation of Diego Columbus rose in 1622 and were joined by a like numberfrom other estates, to carry death and desolation in their path until theywere all cut down or captured. [27] In the English islands precedents ofconspiracy were set before the blacks became appreciably numerous. A plotamong the white indentured servants in Barbados in 1634 was betrayed andthe ringleader executed;[28] and another on a larger scale in 1649 had asimilar end. [29] Incoming negroes appear not to have taken a similar courseuntil 1675 when a plot among them was betrayed by one of their number. Thegovernor promptly appointed captains to raise companies, as a contemporarywrote, [30] "for repressing the rebels, which accordingly was done, andabundance taken and apprehended and since put to death, and the rest keptin a more stricter manner. " This quietude continued only until 1692 whenthree negroes were seized on charge of conspiracy. One of these, on promiseof pardon, admitted the existence of the plot and his own participationtherein. The two others were condemned "to be hung in chains on a gibbettill they were starved to death, and their bodies to be burned. " Theseendured the torture "for four days without making any confession, but thengave in and promised to confess on promise of life. One was accordinglytaken down on the day following. The other did not survive. " The tale asthen gathered told that the slaves already pledged were enough to form sixregiments, and that arrangements were on foot for the seizure of the fortsand arsenal through bribery among their custodians. The governor whenreporting these disclosures expressed the hope that the severe punishmentof the leaders, together with a new act offering freedom as reward tofuture informers, would make the colony secure. [31] There seems to havebeen no actual revolt of serious dimensions in Barbados except in 1816 whenthe blacks rose in great mass and burned more than sixty plantations, aswell as killing all the whites they could catch, before troops arrived fromneighboring 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, inClarendon Parish, in 1690. When these latter insurgents were routed by thewhites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearbymountain fastnesses where, under the chieftainship of Cudjoe, they becamesecurely established as a community of marooned freemen. Welcoming runawayslaves and living partly from depredations, they made themselves sotroublesome to the countryside that in 1733 the colonial government builtforts at the mouths of the Clarendon defiles and sent expeditions againstthe Maroon villages. Cudjoe thereupon shifted his tribe to a new and betterbuttressed vale in Trelawney Parish, whither after five years more spent inforays and reprisals the Jamaican authorities sent overtures for peace. Theresulting treaty, signed in 1738, gave recognition to the Maroons, assignedthem lands and rights of hunting, travel and trade, pledged them to renderup runaway slaves and criminals in future, and provided for the residenceof an agent of the island government among the Maroons as theirsuperintendent. Under these terms peace prevailed for more than half acentury, while the Maroon population increased from 600 to 1400 souls. Atlength Major James, to whom these blacks were warmly attached, was replacedas superintendent by Captain Craskell whom they disliked and shortlyexpelled. Tumults and forays now ensued, in 1795, the effect of which uponthe sentiment of the whites was made stronger by the calamitous occurrencesin 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 Maroonsand the ruggedness of their district held all these at bay, however, untila body of Spanish hunters with trained dogs was brought in from Cuba. TheMaroons, conquered more by fright than by force, now surrendered, whereuponthey were transported first to Nova Scotia and thence at the end of thecentury to the British protectorate in Sierra Leone. [34] Other Jamaicantroubles of some note were a revolt in St. Mary's Parish in 1765, [35] anda 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 ofsome $700, 000 more. [36] There were troubles likewise in various othercolonies, as with insurgents in Antigua in 1701[37] and[38] 1736 andMartinique and Guadeloupe in 1752;[39] with maroons in Grenada in 1765, [40]Dominica in 1785[41] and Demarara in[42] 1794; and with conspirators inCuba 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 prodigiousupheaval in San Domingo consequent upon the French Revolution. Under theflag of France the western end of that island had been converted in thecourse of the eighteenth century from a nest of buccaneers into the mostthriving of plantation colonies. By 1788 it contained some 28, 000 whitesettlers, 22, 000 free negroes and mulattoes, and 405, 000 slaves. It hadnearly eight hundred sugar estates, many of them on a huge scale. Thesoil was so fertile and the climate so favorable that on many fields thesugar-cane would grow perennially from the same roots almost without end. Exports of coffee and cotton were considerable, of sugar and molassesenormous; and the volume was still rapidly swelling by reason of the greatannual importations of African slaves. The colony was by far the mostvalued of the French overseas possessions. Some of the whites were descendants of the original freebooters, andretained the temperament of their forbears; others were immigrant fortuneseekers. The white women were less than half as numerous as the men, andblack or yellow concubines were common substitutes for wives. The colonywas the French equivalent of Jamaica, but more prosperous and moreself-willed and self-indulgent. Its whites were impatient of outsidecontrol, and resolute that the slaves be ruled with iron hand and that thecolored freemen be kept passive. A plentiful discontent with bureaucracy and commercial restraint under theold régime caused the planters to welcome the early news of reform projectsin France and to demand representation in the coming States General. Butthe rapid progress of radical republicanism in that assembly threw most ofthese into a royalist reaction, though the poorer whites tended still toendorse the Revolution. But now the agitations of the _Amis des Noirs_at Paris dismayed all the white islanders, while on the other hand theNational Assembly's "Declaration of the Rights of Man, " together with itsdecrees granting political equality in somewhat ambiguous form to freepersons of color, prompted risings in 1791 among the colored freemen in thenorthern part of the colony and among the slaves in the center and south. When reports of these reached Paris, the new Legislative Assembly revokedthe former measures by a decree of September 24, 1791, transferring allcontrol over negro status to the colonial assemblies. Upon receiving newsof this the mulattoes and blacks, with the courage of despair, spread ruinin every district. The whites, driven into the few fortified places, beggedsuccor from France; but the Jacobins, who were now in control at Paris, hada programme of their own. By a decree of April 4, 1792, the LegislativeAssembly granted full political equality to colored freemen and providedfor 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 coloredpeople, who at first welcomed the commissioners, unexpectedly turnedagainst 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 coloredfreemen and the remaining whites rallied to the flag of these invaders; butthe slaves, now commanded by the famous Toussaint L'Ouverture, resistedthem effectually, while yellow fever decimated their ranks and paralyzedtheir energies. By 1795 the two colored elements, the mulattoes who hadimprovised a government on a slaveholding basis in the south, and thenegroes who dominated the north, each had the other alone as an activeenemy; and by the close of the century the mulattoes were either destroyedor driven into exile; and Toussaint, while still acknowledging a nominalallegiance to France, was virtual monarch of San Domingo. The peace ofAmiens at length permitted Bonaparte to send an army against the "BlackNapoleon. " Toussaint soon capitulated, and in violation of the amnestygranted him was sent to his death in a French dungeon. But pestilence againaided the blacks, and the war was still raging when the breach of the peacein Europe brought a British squadron to blockade and capture the remnantof the French army. The new black leader, Dessalines, now proclaimed thecolony's independence, renaming it Hayti, and in 1804 he crowned himselfemperor. In the following year any further conflict with the local whiteswas obviated by the systematic massacre of their small residue. In theother French islands the developments, while on a much smaller scale, wereanalogous. [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 1712and 1741 at New York, both of which were more notable for the frenzy ofthe public than for the formidableness of the menace. Anxiety had beenrecurrent among the whites, particularly since the founding of a missionschool by Elias Neau in 1704 as an agent of the Society for the Propagationof the Gospel. The plot was brewed by some Coromantee and Paw Paw negroeswho had procured the services of a conjuror to make them invulnerable;and it may have been joined by several Spanish or Portuguese Indiansor mestizoes who had been captured at sea and unwarrantably, as theycontended, reduced to slavery. The rebels to the number of twenty-threeprovided themselves with guns, hatchets, knives and swords, and chose thedark of the moon in the small hours of an April night to set a house afireand slaughter the citizens as they flocked thither. But their gunfirecaused the governor to send soldiers from the Battery with such speedthat only nine whites had been killed and several others wounded when theplotters were routed. Six of these killed themselves to escape capture; butwhen the woods were beaten and the town searched next day and an emergencycourt sat upon the cases, more captives were capitally sentenced than thewhole conspiracy had comprised. The prosecuting officer, indeed, houndedone of the prisoners through three trials, to win a final conviction aftertwo acquittals. The maxim that no one may twice be put in jeopardy for thesame offense evidently did not apply to slaves in that colony. Of thoseconvicted one was broken on the wheel, another hanged alive in chains;nineteen more were executed on the gallows or at the stake, one of thesebeing sentenced "to be burned with a slow fire, that he may continue intorment for eight or ten hours and continue burning in said fire until hebe dead and consumed to ashes"; and several others were saved only by theroyal governor's reprieve and the queen's eventual pardon. Such animositywas exhibited by the citizens toward the "catechetical school" that forsome time its teacher hardly dared show himself on the streets. The furorgradually subsided, however, and Mr. Neau continued his work for a dozenyears longer, and others carried it on after his death. [47] [Footnote 47: E. B. O'Callaghan ed. , _Documents Relative to the ColonialHistory of New York_, V, 341, 342, 346, 356, 357, 371; _New YorkGenealogical and Biographical Record_, XXI, 162, 163; New Orleans _DailyDelta_, 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 ofMary Burton, a young white servant concerning her master John Hughson, andthe confessions of Margaret Kerry, a young white woman of many aliases butmost commonly called Peggy, who was an inmate of Hughson's disreputablehouse and a prostitute to negro slaves. When Mary testified under duressthat Hughson was not only a habitual recipient of stolen goods from thenegroes but was the head of a conspiracy among them which had alreadyeffected the burning of many houses and was planning a general revolt, thesupreme court of the colony began a labor of some six months' duration inbringing the alleged plot to light and punishing the alleged plotters. [48]Hughson and his wife and the infamous Peggy were promptly hanged, andlikewise John Ury who was convicted of being a Catholic priest as well as aconspirator; and twenty-nine negroes were sent with similar speed either tothe gallows or the stake, while eighty others were deported. Some of theslaves made confessions after conviction in the hope of saving their lives;and these, dubious as they were, furnished the chief corroborations ofdetail 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 somewhatstereotyped revelations; but the desire of the officials to stay theexecution with a view to definite reprieve was thwarted by their fear oftumult by the throng of resentful spectators. After a staggering number ofsentences had been executed the star witness raised doubts against herselfby her endless implications, "for as matters were then likely to turnout there was no guessing where or when there would be an end ofimpeachments. "[49] At length she named as cognizant of the plot severalpersons "of known credit, fortune and reputations, and of religiousprinciples superior to a suspicion of being concerned in such detestablepractices; at which the judges were very much astonished. "[50] Thisfarcical extreme at length persuaded even the obsessed magistrates to stopthe tragic proceedings. [Footnote 48: Daniel Horsmanden, one of the magistrates who sat in thesetrials, published in 1744 the _Journal of the Proceedings in the Detectionof the Conspiracy formed by some white people in conjunction with negro andother slaves for burning the city of New York in America, and murderingthe Inhabitants_; and this, reprinted under the title, _The New YorkConspiracy, or a History of the Negro Plot_ (New York, 1810), is the chiefsource of knowledge in the premises. See also the contemporary letters ofLieutenant-Governor Clarke in E. B. O'Callaghan, ed. , _Documents Relative tothe 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 andinsolence professed to reveal a plot for insurrection, whereupon he anda fellow slave were capitally convicted. One of them escaped beforeexecution, but the other was hanged. [51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 anegro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burntand half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration. Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to releasethem by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon therestoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were punished for arson. [52] [Footnote 51: MS. Transcript in the New York Public Library from the NewYork _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 centuryand but two discoveries of plots, it seems, both in Virginia. The firstof these, 1663, in which indented white servants and negro slaves inGloucester County were said to be jointly involved, was betrayed by one ofthe servants. The colonial assembly showed its gratification not only byfreeing the informer and giving him five thousand pounds of tobacco but byresolving in commemoration of "so transcendant a favour as the preservingall we have from so utter ruin, " "that the 13th. Of September be annuallykept holy, being the day those villains intended to put the plot inexecution. "[53] The other plot, of slaves alone, in the "Northern Neck" ofthe 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 somewhatmore frequent plots in its early decades. The discovery of one in Isle ofWight County, Virginia, in 1709 brought thirty-nine lashes to each ofthree slaves and fifty lashes to a free negro found to be cognizant, andpresumably more drastic punishments to two other slaves who were held asringleaders to await the governor's order. Still another slave who atleast for the time being escaped the clutches of the law was proclaimedan outlaw. [55] The discovery of another plot in Gloucester and MiddlesexCounties of the same colony in 1723 prompted the assembly to provide forthe 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 uneasinessin 1711 and thereabouts, no conspiracy was discovered until 1720 when someof the participants were burnt, some hanged and some banished. [57] Matterswere then quiet again until 1739 when on a September Sunday a score ofAngola blacks with one Jonny as their leader broke open a store, suppliedthemselves with arms, and laid their course at once for Florida where theyhad been told by Spanish emissaries welcome and liberty awaited them. Marching to the beat of drums, slaughtering with ease the whites they cameupon, and drawing black recruits to several times their initial number, onthe Pon Pon road that day the rebels covered ten prosperous miles. Butwhen at evening they halted to celebrate their exploits with dancing andplundered 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 thespot. Most of the rest fled back to their cabins, but a squad of ten madetheir way thirty miles farther on the route to Florida and sold theirlives in battle when overtaken. Of those captured on the field or in theirquarters some were shot but none were tortured. The toll of lives lostnumbered twenty-one whites and forty-four[58] blacks. [Footnote 57: Letter of June 24, 1720, among the MS. Transcripts in thestate capitol at Columbia of documents in the British Public RecordOffice. ] [Footnote 58: _Gentleman's Magazine_, X, 127; South Carolina HistoricalSociety _Collections_, II, 270; Alexander Hewatt, _Historical Account ofSouth Carolina and Georgia_ (London, 1779), II, 72, 73. Joshua Coffin inhis _Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections_ (New York, 1860)listed a revolt at Savannah, Ga. , in 1728. But Savannah was not foundeduntil 1733, and it contained virtually no negroes prior to 1750. ] Following this and the New York panic of two years later, there wasremarkable quiet in race relations in general for a full half century. Itwas not indeed until the spread of the amazing news from San Domingo andthe influx thence of white refugees and their slaves that a new series ofdisturbances began on the continent. At Norfolk in 1792 some negroes werearrested on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptly discharged for lackof evidence;[59] and close by at Portsmouth in the next year there weresuch savage clashes between the newly come French blacks and those of theVirginia stock that citizens were alarmed for their own safety. [60] InLouisiana an uprising on the plantation of Julien Poydras in PointeCoupée Parish in 1796 brought the execution of a dozen or two negroes andsentences to prison of several whites convicted as their accomplices;[61]and as late as 1811 an outbreak in St. Charles and St. James Parishes wastraced 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 fourstrange 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_ (NewOrleans), Feb. 11, 1811, has mention of the manumission of a mulatto slaveat this time on the ground of his recent valiant defence of his master'shouse against attacking insurgents. ] Gabriel's rising in the vicinity of Richmond, however, eclipsed all othersuch events on the continent in this period. Although this affair wasof prodigious current interest its details were largely obscured by thesecrecy maintained by the court and the legislature in their dealings withit. Reports in the newspapers of the time were copious enough but werevague except as to the capture of the leading participants; and thereminiscent journalism of after years was romantic to the point ofabsurdity. It is fairly clear, however, that Gabriel and other slaveson Thomas H. Prosser's plantation, which lay several miles distant fromRichmond, began to brew the conspiracy as early as June, 1800, and enlistedsome hundreds of confederates, perhaps more than a thousand, beforeSeptember 1, the date fixed for its maturity. Many of these were doubtlessresidents of Richmond, and some it was said lived as far away as Norfolk. The few muskets procured were supplemented by cutlasses made from scytheblades and by plantation implements of other sorts; but the plan ofonslaught contemplated a speedy increase of this armament. From arendezvous six miles from Richmond eleven hundred men in three columnsunder designated officers were to march upon the city simultaneously, oneto seize the penitentiary which then served also as the state arsenal, another to take the powder magazine in another quarter of the town, and thethird to begin a general slaughter with such weapons as were already athand. Things progressed with very little hitch until the very eve of the dayset. But then two things occurred, either of which happening alone wouldprobably have foiled the project. On the one hand a slave on MoseleySheppard's plantation informed his master of the plot; on the other handthere fell such a deluge of rain that the swelling of the streams kept mostof the conspirators from reaching the rendezvous. Meanwhile couriers hadroused the city, and the rebels assembled could only disperse. Scores ofthem were taken, including eventually Gabriel himself who eluded pursuitfor several weeks and sailed to Norfolk as a stowaway. The magistrates, ofcourse, had busy sessions, but the number of death sentences was less thanmight have been expected. Those executed comprised Gabriel and five otherProsser slaves along with nineteen more belonging to other masters; andten others, in scattered ownership, were deported. To provide for a moregeneral riddance of suspected negroes the legislature made secret overturesto the federal government looking to the creation of a territorialreservation to receive such colonists; but for the time being this cameto naught. The legislature furthermore created a permanent guard for thecapitol, and it liberated at the state's expense Tom and Pharaoh, slaves ofthe Sheppard family, as reward for their services in helping to foil theplot. [63] [Footnote 63: T. W. Higginson, "Gabriel's Defeat, " in the _AtlanticMonthly_, X, 337-345, reprinted in the same author's _Travellers andOutlaws_ (Boston, 1889), pp. 185-214; J. C. Ballagh, _History of Slavery inVirginia_, p. 92; J. H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, p. 65; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording public payments forconvicted slaves. ] Set on edge by Gabriel's exploit, citizens far and wide were abnormallyalert for some time thereafter; and perhaps the slaves here and there wereunusually restive. Whether the one or the other of these conditionswas most responsible, revelations and rumors were for several yearsconspicuously numerous. In 1802 there were capital convictions of fourteeninsurgent or conspiring slaves in six scattered counties of Virginia;[64]and panicky reports of uprisings were sent out from Hartford and BertieCounties, North Carolina. [65] In July, 1804, the mayor of Savannah receivedfrom Augusta "information highly important to the safety, peace andsecurity" of his town, and issued appropriate orders to the localmilitia. [66] Among rumors flying about South Carolina in this period, oneon a December day in 1805 telling of risings above and below Columbialed to the planting of cannon before the state house there and to theinstruction of the night patrols to seize every negro found at large. Anover-zealous patrolman thereupon shot a slave who was peacefully followinghis own master, and was indicted next day for murder. The peaceful passingof 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 ofSavannah_ [Savannah, 1900], p. 68. ] [Footnote 67: "Diary of Edward Hooker, " in the American HistoricalAssociation _Report_ for 1896, pp. 881, 882. ] In Virginia, again, there were disturbing rumors at one place or anotherevery year or two from 1809 to 1814, [68] but no occurrence of tangiblecharacter until the Boxley plot of 1816 in Spottsylvania and LouisaCounties. George Boxley, the white proprietor of a country store, was avisionary somewhat of John Brown's type. Participating in the religiousgatherings of the negroes and telling them that a little white bird hadbrought him a holy message to deliver his fellowmen from bondage, heenlisted many blacks in his project for insurrection. But before theplot was ripe it was betrayed by a slave woman, and several negroes werearrested. Boxley thereupon marched with a dozen followers on a Quixoticerrand of release, but on the road the blacks fell away, and he, after sometime in hiding, surrendered himself. Six of the negroes after convictionwere hanged and a like number transported; but Boxley himself broke jailand 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), andJuly 12, 1816; MS. Vouchers in the Virginia State Library recording publicpayments for convicted slaves. ] In the lower South a plot at Camden, South Carolina, in 1816[70] andanother at Augusta, Georgia, [71] three years afterward had like plans ofsetting houses afire at night and then attacking other quarters of therespective towns when the white men had left their homes defenceless. Bothplots were betrayed, and several participants in each were executed. These conspiracies were eclipsed in turn by the elaborate Vesey plot atCharleston in 1822, which, for the variety of the negro types involved, themethods of persuasion used by the leading spirits and the sobriety of thewhites on the occasion is one of the most notable of such episodes onrecord. [Footnote 70: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulatedagainst the Southern and Western States, with historical notes ofinsurrections_ (Charleston, 1822), pp. 75-77; H. T. Cook, _Life and Legacyof David R. Williams_, p. 131; H. M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave inSouth Carolina_, pp. 151, 152. ] [Footnote 71: News item from Augusta in the _Louisiana Courier_ (NewOrleans), June 15, 1819. ] Denmark Vesey, brought from Africa in his youth, had bought his freedomwith part of a $1500 prize drawn by him in a lottery, and was in thisperiod an independent artisan. Harboring a deep resentment against thewhites, however, he began to plan his plot some four years before itsmaturity. He familiarized himself with the Bible account of the deliveranceof the children of Israel, and collected pamphlet and newspaper material onanti-slavery sentiment in England and the North and on occurrences in SanDomingo, with all of which on fit occasions he regaled the blacks with whomhe came into touch. Arguments based on such data brought concurrence ofnegroes of the more intelligent sort, prominent among whom were certainfunctionaries of the African Church who were already nursing grievanceson the score of the suppression of their ecclesiastical project by theCharleston authorities. [72] The chief minister of that church, MorrisBrown, however, was carefully left out of the conspiracy. In appealingto the more ignorant and superstitious element, on the other hand, theservices of Gullah Jack, so called because of his Angola origin, wereenlisted, for as a recognized conjuror he could bewitch the recalcitrantand bestow charmed crabs' claws upon those joining the plot to make theminvulnerable. In the spring of 1822 things were put in train for theoutbreak. The Angolas, the Eboes and the Carolina-born were separatelyorganized under appropriate commanders; arrangements were made looking tothe 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 SanDomingo with view apparently both to getting assistance from that islandand to securing a haven there in case the revolt should prove onlysuccessful enough to permit the seizure of the ships in Charleston harbor. Meanwhile the coachmen and draymen in the plot were told off to mobilizethe horses in their charge, pikes were manufactured, the hardware storesand other shops containing arms were listed for special attention, andplans were laid for the capture of the city's two arsenals as the firststroke 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 strokefor freedom. William upon being seized and questioned by the city councilmade something of a confession incriminating two other slaves, Mingo Harthand Peter Poyas; but these were so staunch in their denials that they weredischarged, with confidential slaves appointed to watch them. William washeld for a week of solitary confinement, at the end of which he revealedthe extensive character of the plot and the date set for its maturity. Thecity guard was thereupon strengthened; but the lapse of several days inquiet was about to make the authorities incredulous, when another citizenbrought them word from another slave of information precisely like thatwhich had first set them on the _qui vive_. This caused the local militiato be called out to stiffen the patrol. Then as soon as the appointedSunday night had passed, which brought no outbreak, the city councilcreated a special court as by law provided, comprising two magistratestogether with five citizens carefully selected for their substantialcharacter and distinguished position. These were William Drayton, NathanielHeyward, James R. Pringle, James Legaré and Robert J. Turnbull. Moresagacious and responsible men could certainly not have been found. Acommittee of vigilance was also appointed to assist the court. This court having first made its own rules that no negro was to be triedexcept in the presence of his master or attorney, that everyone on trialshould be heard in his own defense, and that no one should be capitallysentenced on the bare testimony of a single witness, proceeded to the trialof Peter Poyas, Denmark Vesey and others against whom charges had then beenlodged. By eavesdropping those who were now convicted and confronting themwith their own words, confessions were procured implicating many others whoin turn were put on trial, including Gullah Jack whose necromancy could notsave him. In all 130 negroes were arrested, including nine colored freemen. Of the whole number, twenty-five were discharged by the committee ofvigilance and 27 others by the court. Nine more were acquitted withrecommendations with which their masters readily complied, that they betransported. Of those convicted, 34 were deported by public authorityand 35 were hanged. In addition four white men indicted forcomplicity, comprising a German peddler, a Scotchman, a Spaniard and aCharlestonian, [73] were tried by a regular court having jurisdiction overwhites and sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to twelve months. [Footnote 73: _An Account of the late intended Insurrection among a portionof the Blacks of this City. Published by the Authority of the Corporationof Charleston_ (Charleston, 1822); Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker (thepresiding magistrates of the special court), _An Official Report of theTrials of sundry Negroes charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection, with a report of the trials of four white persons on indictments forattempting 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 assemblyrecommending that all free negroes be expelled, that the penaltiesapplicable to whites conspiring with negroes be made more severe, and thatthe control over the blacks be generally stiffened. [74] The legislaturecomplied except as to the proposal for expulsion. Charlestonians alsoorganized an association for the prevention of negro disturbances; but by1825 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 andHouse 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 broughtfame 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 hisfirst master, was the foreman of a small plantation, a Baptist exhortercapable of reading the Bible, and a pronounced mystic. For some years, ashe told afterward when in custody, he had heard voices from the heavenscommanding him to carry on the work of Christ to make the last to be firstand the first last; and he took the sun's eclipse in February, 1831, as asign that the time was come. He then enlisted a few of his fellows in hisproject, but proceeded to spend his leisure for several months in prayerand brooding instead of in mundane preparation. When at length on Sundaynight, August 21, he began his revolt he had but a petty squad ofcompanions, with merely a hatchet and a broad-axe as weapons, and nodefinite plan of campaign. First murdering his master's household andseizing some additional equipment, he took the road and repeated theprocess at whatever farmhouses he came upon. Several more negroes joinedthe squad as it proceeded, though in at least one instance a slave resistedthem in defense of his master's family at the cost of his own life. Theabsence of many whites from the neighborhood by reason of their attendanceat a camp-meeting across the nearby North Carolina line reduced the numberof victims, and on the other hand made the rally of the citizens lessexpeditious and formidable when the alarm had been spread. By sunrisethe rebels numbered fifteen, part of whom were mounted, and their outfitcomprised a few firearms. Throughout the morning they continued theirsomewhat aimless roving, slaughtering such white households as theyreached, enlisting recruits by persuasion or coercion, and heighteningtheir courage by draughts upon the apple-brandy in which the county, byvirtue of its many orchards and stills, abounded. By noon there were somesixty in the straggling ranks, but when shortly afterward they met a squadof eighteen rallying whites, armed like themselves mainly with fowlingpieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but ascore dispersed. The courage of these whites, however, was so outweighedby their caution that Nat and his fellows were able to continue theirmarauding course in a new direction, gradually swelling their numbers toforty again. That night, however, a false alarm stampeded their bivouac andagain dispersed all the faint-hearted. Nat with his remaining squad thenattacked a homestead just before daybreak on Tuesday, but upon repulseby the five white men and boys with several slave auxiliaries who wereguarding it they retreated only to meet a militia force which completedthe dispersal. All were promptly killed or taken except Nat who secretedhimself near his late master's home until his capture was accomplished sixweeks afterward. The whites slain by the rebels numbered ten men, fourteenwomen and thirty-one children. The militia in scouring the countryside were prompted by the panic and itsvindictive reaction to shoot down a certain number of innocent blacks alongwith the guilty and to make display of some of their severed heads. Themagistrates were less impulsive. They promptly organized a court comprisingall the justices of the peace in the county and assigned attorneys forthe defense of the prisoners while the public prosecutor performed hisappointed task. Forty-seven negroes all told were brought before the court. As to the five free blacks included in this number the magistrates, who hadonly preliminary jurisdiction in their cases, discharged one and remandedfour for trial by a higher court. Of the slaves four, and perhaps a fifthregarding whom the record is blank, were discharged without trial, andthirteen more were acquitted. Of those convicted seven were sentenced todeportation, and seventeen with the ringleader among them, to death byhanging. In addition there were several slaves convicted of complicity inneighboring counties. [76] [Footnote 76: W. S. Drewry, _Slave Insurrections in Virginia, 1830-1865_(Washington, 1900), recounts this revolt in great detail, and gives abibliography. The vouchers in the Virginia archives record only elevenexecutions and four deportations of Southampton slaves in this period. Itmay be that the rest of those convicted were pardoned. ] This extraordinary event, occurring as it did after a century's lapse sincelast an appreciable number of whites on the continent had lost their livesin such an outbreak, set nerves on edge throughout the South, and promptlybrought an unusually bountiful crop of local rumors. In North Carolinaearly in September it was reported at Raleigh that the blacks of Wilmingtonhad burnt the town and slaughtered the whites, and that several thousandof them were marching upon Raleigh itself. [77] This and similarly alarmingrumors from Edenton were followed at once by authentic news telling merelythat conspiracies had been discovered in Duplin and Sampson Counties andalso in the neighborhood of Edenton, with several convictions resulting ineach locality. [78] [Footnote 77: News item dated Warrenton, N. C. , Sept. 15, 1831, in the NewOrleans _Mercantile Advertiser_, Oct. 4, 1831. ] [Footnote 78: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga. ), Oct. 6, 1831, citingthe Fayetteville, N. C. _Observer_ of Sept. 14; _Niles' Register_, XLI, 266. ] At Milledgeville, the village capital of Georgia where in the precedingyear the newspapers and the town authorities had been fluttered by thediscovery of incendiary pamphlets in a citizen's possession, [79] a rumorspread on October 4, 1831, that a large number of slaves had risen a dozenmiles away and were marching upon the town to seize the weapons in thestate arsenal there. Three slaves within the town, and a free mulattopreacher as well, were seized on suspicion of conspiracy but were promptlydischarged 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 andpatrols to take weapons away from irresponsible persons and enforce theordinance against the firing of guns in the streets. [80] Upon the firstcoming of the alarm the governor had appointed Captain J. A. Cuthbert, editor of the _Federal Union_, to the military command of the town; andCuthbert, uniformed and armed to the teeth, dashed about the town allday on his charger, distributing weapons and stationing guards. Upon thepassing of the baseless panic Seaton Grantland, customarily cool andsardonic, ridiculed Cuthbert in the _Southern Recorder_ of which he waseditor. Cuthbert retorted in his own columns that Grantland's conduct inthe emergency had proved him a skulking coward. [81] No blood was shed, evenamong the editors. [Footnote 79: _Federal Union_, Aug. 7, 1830; American HistoricalAssociation _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 collectedby Olmsted applied. "'Where I used to live, '" a backwoodsman formerly ofAlabama told the traveller, "'I remember when I was a boy--must ha' beenabout twenty years ago--folks was dreadful frightened about the niggers. Iremember they built pens in the woods where they could hide, and Christmastime they went and got into the pens, 'fraid the niggers was risin'. ' 'Iremember the same time where we were in South Carolina, ' said his wife, 'wehad all our things put up in bags, so we could tote 'em if we heerd theywas comin' our way. '"[83] [Footnote 82: The discovery of a plot at Shelbyville, Tennessee, wasreported 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 plenitudeof public discussion and of repressive legislation. In Virginia a flood ofmemorials poured upon the legislature. Petitions signed by 1, 188 citizensin twelve counties asked for provision for the expulsion of coloredfreemen; others with 398 signatures from six counties proposed an amendmentto the United States Constitution empowering Congress to aid Virginia torid herself of all the blacks; others from two colonization societiesand 366 citizens in four counties proposed the removal first of thefree negroes and then of slaves to be emancipated by private or publicprocedure; 27 men of Buckingham and Loudon Counties and others inAlbemarle, together with the Society of Friends in Hanover and 347 women, prayed for the abolition of slavery, some on the _post nati_ plan andothers without specification of details. [84] The House of Delegatesresponded by devoting most of its session of that winter to anextraordinarily outspoken and wide-ranging debate on the many phases of thenegro problem, reflecting and elaborating all the sentiments expressed inthe petitions together with others more or less original with the membersthemselves. The Richmond press reported the debate in great detail, andmany of the speeches were given a pamphlet circulation in addition. [85]The only tangible outcome there and elsewhere, however, was in the form ofadded legal restrictions upon the colored population, slave and free. Butwhen the fright and fervor of the year had passed, conditions normal to thecommunity returned. On the one hand the warnings of wiseacres impressedupon the would-be problem solvers the maxim of the golden quality ofsilence, particularly while the attacks of the Northern abolitionists uponthe general Southern régime were so active. On the other hand the newseverities 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 ofsight 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 ofDelegates on the subject of the abolition of slavery and a succinct accountof the doctrines broached by the friends of abolition in debate, and themischievous 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 theRise and Fall of the Slave Power in America_ (Boston, 1872), I, 190-207. ] In the remaining ante-bellum decades, though the actual outbreaks werenegligible except for John Brown's raid, the discoveries, true or false, and the rumors, mostly unwarranted, were somewhat more frequent thanbefore. Revelations in Madison County, Mississippi, in 1835 shortly beforeJuly 4, told of a conspiracy of whites and blacks scheduled for that dayas a ramification of the general plot of the Murrell gang recentlyexposed. [86] A mass meeting thereupon appointed an investigating committeeof thirteen citizens with power to apply capital punishment; and severalwhites 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 theClinton, Miss. , _Gazette_ of July 11. ] Widespread rumors at the beginning of the following December that a generaluprising was in preparation for the coming holiday season caused thesummons of citizens in various Georgia counties to mass meetings which withone accord recommended special precautions by masters, patrols and militia, and appointed committees of vigilance. In this series the resolutionsadopted in Washington County are notable especially for the tone of theirpreamble. Mentioning the method recently followed in Mississippi only todisapprove it, this preamble ran: "We would fain hope that the soil ofGeorgia may never be reddened or her people disgraced by the arbitraryshedding of human blood; for if the people allow themselves but oneparticipation in such lawless proceedings, no human sagacity can foretellwhere the overwhelming deluge will be staid or what portions of our statemay feel its desolating ruin. This course of protection unhinges every tieof social and civil society, dissolves those guards which the laws throwaround property and life, and leaves every individual, no matter howinnocent, at the sport of popular passion, the probable object of popularindignation, and liable to an ignominious death. Therefore we wouldrecommend to our fellow-citizens that if any facts should be elicitedimplicating either white men or negroes in any insurrectionary or abolitionmovements, that they be apprehended and delivered over to the legaltribunals of the country for full and fair judicial trial. "[88] AtClarksville, Tennessee, uneasiness among the citizens on the score of thenegroes employed in the iron works thereabout was such that they procured ashipment of arms from the state capital in preparation for special guard atthe Christmas season. [89] [Footnote 88: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga. ), Dec. 11, 1835. AtDarien on the Georgia coast Edwin C. Roberts, an Englishman by birth, wascommitted for trial in the following August for having told slaves theyought to be free and that half of the American people were in favor oftheir freedom. The local editor remarked when reporting the occurrence:"Mr. Roberts should thank his stars that he did not commence his crusade insome quarters where Judge Lynch presides. Here the majesty of the lawis too highly respected to tolerate the jurisdiction of this despoticdignitary. " Darien _Telegraph_, Aug. 30, quoted in the _Federal Union_, Sept. 6, 1836. ] [Footnote 89: MS. Petition with endorsement noting the despatch of arms, inthe state archives at Nashville. ] In various parts of Louisiana in this period there was a succession ofplots discovered. The first of these, betrayed on Christmas Eve, 1835, involved two white men, one of them a plantation overseer, along with fortyslaves or more. The whites were promptly hanged, and doubtless some of theblacks likewise. [90] The next, exposed in the fall of 1837, was in theneighborhood of Alexandria. Nine slaves and three free negroes were hangedin punishment, [91] and the negro Lewis who had betrayed the conspiracy wasliberated at state expense and was voted $500 to provide for his securityin some distant community. [92] The third was in Lafayette and St. LandryParishes, betrayed in August, 1840, by a slave woman named Lecide who wasfreed by her master in reward. Nine negroes were hanged. Four white menwho were implicated, but who could not be convicted under the laws whichdebarred slave testimony against whites, were severely flogged under alynch-law sentence and ordered to leave the state. [93] Rumors of otherplots were spread in West Feliciana Parish in the summer of 1841, [94] inseveral parishes opposite and above Natchez in the fall of 1842, [95] and atDonaldsonville at the beginning of 1843;[96] but each of these in turn wasfound to be virtually baseless. Meanwhile at Augusta, Georgia, severalnegroes were arrested in February, 1841, and at least one of them wassentenced to death. A petition was circulated for his respite as aninducement for confession; but other citizens, disquieted by the testimonyalready given, prepared a counter petition asking the governor to let thelaw take its course. The plot as described contemplated the seizure of thearsenal 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 Negroesin 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, toJohn 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 periodof comparative quiet; but in 1855 there were rumors in Dorchester andTalbot Counties, Maryland, [98] and the autumn of 1856 brought widespreaddisturbances which the Southern whites did not fail to associate with therise of the Republican Party. In the latter part of that year there wererumors afloat from Williamsburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County in thesame state, from various quarters of Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, fromNew Orleans, and from Atlanta and Cassville, Georgia. [99] A typical episodein the period was described by a schoolmaster from Michigan then sojourningin Mississippi. One night about Christmas of 1858 when the plantationhomestead at which he was staying was filled with house guests, a couriercame in the dead of night bringing news that the blacks in the eastern partof the county had risen in a furious band and were laying their murderouscourse in this direction. The head of the house after scanning thebulletin, calmly told his family and guests that they might get their gunsand prepare for defense, but if they would excuse him he would retire againuntil the crisis came. The coolness of the host sent the guests back to bedexcept 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. Somedetails 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 bythe failure of the blacks to join him, and it was largely overcome by thewave of fierce resentment against the abolitionists who, it was said, hadat last shown their true colors. The final disturbance on the score ofconspiracy among the negroes themselves was in the summer of 1860 atDallas, Texas, where in the preceding year an abolitionist preacher hadbeen whipped and driven away. Ten or more fires which occurred in one dayand laid much of the town in ruins prompted the seizure of many blacks andthe raising of a committee of safety. This committee reported to a publicmeeting on July 24 that three ringleaders in the plot were to be hangedthat afternoon. Thereupon Judge Buford of the district court addressed thegathering. "He stated in the outset that in any ordinary case he wouldbe as far from counselling mob law as any other man, but in the presentinstance the people had a clear right to take the law in their own hands. He counselled moderation, and insisted that the committee should executethe fewest number compatible with the public safety. " [101] [Footnote 101: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga. ), Aug. 21, 1860, quotingthe Nashville _Union_. ] On the whole it is hardly possible to gauge precisely the degree of popularapprehension in the premises. John Randolph was doubtless more picturesquethan accurate when he said, "the night bell never tolls for fire inRichmond that the mother does not hug the infant more closely to herbosom. "[102] The general trend of public expressions laid emphasis upon theneed of safeguards but showed confidence that no great disasters were to befeared. The revolts which occurred and the plots which were discovered weresufficiently serious to produce a very palpable disquiet from time to time, and the rumors were frequent enough to maintain a fairly constant undertoneof uneasiness. The net effect of this was to restrain that progress ofliberalism which the consideration of economic interest, the doctrines ofhuman 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 slaverycould exist only by force of positive legislation. [1] This is nothistorically valid, for in virtually every American community where itexisted at all, the institution was first established by custom alone andwas merely recognized by statutes when these came to be enacted. Indeed thechief purpose of the laws was to give sanction and assurance to the racialand industrial adjustments already operative. [Footnote 1: The source of this error lies doubtless in Lord Mansfield'sfamous but fallacious decision of 1772 in the Somerset case, which isrecorded in Howell's _State Trials_, XX, § 548. That decision is wellcriticized in T. R. R. Cobb, _An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery inthe United States of America_ (vol. I, all published, Philadelphia andSavannah, 1858), pp. 163-175. Cobb's treatise, though dealing with slaves as persons only and not asproperty, is the best of the general analyses of the legal phase of theslaveholding régime. A briefer survey is in the _Cyclopedia of Law andProcedure_, William Mack ed. , XXXVI (New York, 1910), 465-495. The worksof G. M. Stroud, _A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the SeveralStates_ (Philadelphia, 1827), and William Goodell, _The American Slave Codein Theory and Practice_ (New York, 1853), are somewhat vitiated by theanimus 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 aregiven in J. D. Wheeler, _A Practical Treatise on the Law of Slavery_(New York and New Orleans, 1837); and all the thousands of decisions ofpublished record are briefly digested in _The Century Edition of theAmerican 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 legalrégime of slavery in South Carolina at the middle of the nineteenth centuryis described by Judge J. B. O'Neall in _The Industrial Resources of theSouthern 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 careera series of laws of limited scope to meet definite issues as they weresuccessively encountered. Then when accumulated experience had shown acommunity that it had a general problem of regulation on its hands itslegislature commonly passed an act of many clauses to define the status ofslaves, to provide the machinery of their police, and to prescribe legalprocedure in cases concerning them whether as property or as persons. Thereafter the recourse was again to specific enactments from time totime to supplement this general or basic statute as the rise of newcircumstances or policies gave occasion. The likeness of conditions in theseveral communities and the difficulty of devising laws to comply withintricate custom and at the same time to guard against apprehended ills ledto much intercolonial and interstate borrowing of statutes. A perfect chainof this sort, with each link a basic police law for slaves in a separatecolony or state, extended from Barbados through the southeastern trio ofcommonwealths on the continent. The island of Barbados, as we have seen, was the earliest of the permanent English settlements in the tropics andone of the first anywhere to attain a definite régime of plantationswith negro labor. This made its assembly perforce a pioneer in slavelegislation. After a dozen minor laws had been enacted, beginning in 1644, for the control of negroes along with white servants and for the recaptureof runaways, the culmination in a general statute came in 1688. Itsoccasion, as recited in the preamble, was the dependence of plantationindustry upon great numbers of negro slaves whose "barbarous, wild andsavage nature . .. Renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by thelaws, customs and practices of our nation, " and the "absolutely necessaryconsequence that such other constitutions, laws and orders should be inthis island framed and enacted for the good regulating and ordering of themas may . .. Restrain the disorders, rapines and inhumanities to which theyare naturally prone and inclined, with such encouragements and allowancesas are fit and needful for their support, that . .. This island through theblessing of God thereon may be preserved, His Majesty's subjects in theirlives and fortunes secured, and the negroes and other slaves be wellprovided for and guarded against the cruelties and insolences of themselvesor other ill-tempered people or owners. " The statute itself met the purposes of the preamble unevenly. The slaveswere assured merely in annual suits of clothing, and the masters were givenclaim for pecuniary compensation for slaves inveigled away or illegallykilled by other freemen; but the main concern of the statute was withroutine control and the punishment of slave malfeasances. No slaves were toleave their masters' premises at any time unless in company with whites orwhen wearing servants' livery or carrying written passes, and offendersin this might be whipped and taken into custody by any white personsencountering them. No slaves were to blow horns or beat drums; and masterswere to have their negro houses searched at frequent intervals for suchinstruments, as well as for weapons, runaway slaves and stolen goods. Runaways when caught were to be impounded, advertised and restored to theirmasters upon payment of captors' and custodians' fees. Trading with slaveswas restricted for fear of encouraging theft. A negro striking a whiteperson, 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 otherserious infractions, were capital crimes. Negro transgressors were to betried summarily by courts comprising two justices of the peace and threefreeholders nearest the crime and were to be punished immediately uponconviction. To dissuade masters from concealing the crimes of their negroesthe magistrates were to appraise each capitally convicted slave, within alimit of £25, and to estimate also the damage to the person or propertyinjured by the commission of the crime. The colonial treasurer was then totake the amount of the slave's appraisal from the public funds and aftermaking reimbursement for the injury done, pay the overplus, if any, to thecriminal's owner. If it appeared to the magistrates, however, that thecrime had been prompted by the master's neglect and the slave's consequentnecessity for sustenance, the treasurer was to pay the master nothing. Amaster killing his own slave wantonly was to be fined £15, and any otherperson killing a slave illegally was to pay the master double the slave'svalue, to be fined £25, and to give bond for subsequent good behavior. Ifa slave were killed by accident the slayer was liable only to suit bythe owner. The destruction of a slave's life or limb in the course ofpunishment by his master constituted no legal offense, nor did the killingof one by any person, when found stealing or attempting a theft by night. Ascertained hiding places of runaway slaves were to be raided by constablesand posses, and these were to be rewarded for taking the runaways alive ordead. [2] This act was thenceforward the basic law in the premises as longas slavery survived in the island. [Footnote 2: Richard Hall ed. , _Acts Passed in the Island of Barbados from1643 to 1762 inclusive_ (London. 1764), pp. 112-121. ] South Carolina, in a sense the daughter of Barbados and in frequentcommunication with her, had enacted a series of specific laws of her owndevising, when the growth of her slave population prompted the adoption ofa general statute for negro police. Thereupon in 1712 her assembly copiedvirtually verbatim the preamble and some of the ensuing clauses of theBarbadian act of 1688, and added further provisions drawn from othersources or devised for the occasion. This served as her basic law untilthe shock of the Stono revolt in 1739 prompted the legislature to give thestatute a greater elaboration in the following year. The new clauses, asidefrom one limiting the work which might be required by masters to fourteenand fifteen hours per day in winter and summer respectively, and anotherforbidding all but servants in livery to wear any but coarse clothing, were concerned with the restraint of slaves, mainly with a view to theprevention of revolt. No slaves were to be sold liquors without theirmasters' approval; none were to be taught to write; no more than seven menin a group were to travel on the high roads unless in company with whitepersons; no houses or lands were to be rented to slaves, and no slaves wereto 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 inafter years, as by the enhancement of penalties for negroes convicted ofstriking white persons and by the requirement that masters provide adequatefood as well as clothing, was never repealed so long as slavery continuedto exist in South Carolina. Though its sumptuary clauses, along withvarious others, were from first to last of no effect, the statute as awhole so commended itself to the thought of slaveholding communities thatin 1770 Georgia made it the groundwork of her own slave police; Florida inturn, by acts of 1822 and 1828, adopted the substance of the Georgia lawas revised to that period; and in lesser degree still other states gaveevidence of the same influence. Complementary legislation in all thesejurisdictions meanwhile recognized slaves as property, usually of chattelcharacter and with children always following the mother's condition, debarred negro testimony in court in all cases where white persons wereinvolved, and declared the juridical incapacity of slaves in general exceptwhen they were suing for freedom. Contemporaneously and by similar methods, a parallel chain of laws, largely analogous to those here noted, wasextended from Virginia, herself a pioneer in slave legislation, toMaryland, Delaware and North Carolina and in a fan-spread to the west asfar as Missouri and Texas. [4] [Footnote 4: The beginning of Virginia's pioneer slave code has beensketched in chapter IV above; and the slave legislation of the Northerncolonies and states in chapters VI and VII. ] Louisiana alone in all the Union, because of her origin and formativeexperience as a Latin colony, had a scheme of law largely peculiar toherself. The foundation of this lay in the _Code Noir_ decreed by Louis XVfor that colony in 1724. In it slaves were declared to be chattels, butthose of working age were not to be sold in execution of debt apart fromthe lands on which they worked, and neither husbands and wives nor mothersand young children were to be sold into separate ownership under anycircumstances. All slaves, furthermore, were to be baptized into theCatholic church, and were to be exempt from field work on Sundays andholidays; 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 ofconfiscation, and the superannuated were to be maintained on the samebasis as the able-bodied. Slaves might make business contracts under theirmasters' approval, but could not sue or be sued or give evidence againstwhites, except in cases of necessity and where the white testimony was indefault. They might acquire property legally recognized as their own whentheir masters expressly permitted them to work or trade on their personalaccounts, though not otherwise. Manumission was restricted only by therequirement of court approval; and slaves employed by their masters intutorial capacity were declared _ipso facto_ free. In police regards, thetravel and assemblage of slaves were restrained, and no one was allowed totrade with them without their masters' leave; slaves were forbidden to haveweapons except when commissioned by their masters to hunt; fugitives weremade liable to severe punishments, and free negroes likewise for harboringthem. Negroes whether slave or free, however, were to be tried by the samecourts and by the same procedure as white persons; and though masters wereauthorized to apply shackles and lashes for disciplinary purpose, thekilling of slaves by them was declared criminal even to the degree ofmurder. [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 WestIndies, upon which this for Louisiana was modeled, may be consulted inL. Peytraud, _L'Esclavage aux Antilles Françaises_ (Paris, 1897), pp. 158-166. ] Nearly all the provisions of this relatively liberal code were adoptedafresh when Louisiana became a territory and then a state of the Union. Inassimilation to Anglo-American practice, however, such recognition as hadbeen given to slave _peculium_ was now withdrawn, though on the other handslaves were granted by implication a legal power to enter contracts forself-purchase. Slave marriages, furthermore, were declared void of allcivil effect; and jurisdiction over slave crimes was transferred to courtsof inferior grade and informal procedure. By way of reciprocation the stateof Alabama when framing a new slave code in 1852 borrowed in a weakenedform the Louisiana prohibition of the separate sale of mothers and theirchildren below ten years of age. This provision met the praise of citizenselsewhere when mention of it chanced to be published; but no othercommonwealth 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, ascompared with the mildness of the Louisiana code, was largely due tothe historic possession by their citizens of the power of localself-government. A distant autocrat might calmly decree such regulations ashis ministers deemed proper, undisturbed by the wishes and apprehensions ofthe colonial whites; but assemblymen locally elected and responsive to thefears as well as the hopes of their constituents necessarily reflected morefully the desire of social control, and preferred to err on the side ofsafety. If this should involve severity of legislative repression forthe blacks, that might be thought regrettable and yet be done without amoment's qualm. On the eve of the American Revolution a West Indian writerexplained the régime. "Self preservation, " said he, "that first and rulingprinciple of human nature, alarming our fears, has made us jealous andperhaps severe in our _threats_ against delinquents. Besides, if we attendto the history of our penal laws relating to slaves, I believe we shallgenerally find that they took their rise from some very atrocious attemptsmade by the negroes on the property of their masters or after someinsurrection or commotion which struck at the very being of the colonies. Under these circumstances it may very justly be supposed that ourlegislatures when convened were a good deal inflamed, and might be inducedfor the preservation of their persons and properties to pass severe lawswhich they might hold over their heads to terrify and restrain them. "[7] Inthe next generation an American citizen wrote in similar strain and withlike truthfulness: "The laws of the slaveholding states do not furnisha criterion for the character of their present white population or thecondition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted for the most part inseasons of particular alarm produced by attempts at insurrection, or whenthe black inhabitants were doubly formidable by reason of the greaterproportion which they bore to the whites in number and the savage state andunhappy mood in which they arrived from Africa. The real measure of dangerwas not understood but after long experience, and in the interval theprecautions taken were naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. That these have not all been repealed, or that some of them should be stillenforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of legislation, sincethe evils against which they were intended to guard are yet the subject ofjust apprehension. "[8] [Footnote 7: _Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture, or a Defence of the WestIndia Planters_. By a West Indian (Philadelphia, 1773), p. 18, note. ] [Footnote 8: Robert Walsh, Jr. , _An Appeal from the Judgments of GreatBritain respecting the United States of America_ (Philadelphia, 1819), p. 405. ] Wherever colonial statutes were silent the laws of the mother countryfilled the gap. It was under the common law of England, for example, thatthe slaves Mark and Phillis were tried in Massachusetts in 1755 forthe poisoning of their master, duly convicted of petit treason, andexecuted--the woman as the principal in the crime by being burned at thestake, the man as an accessory by being hanged and his body thereafterleft for years hanging in chains on Charlestown common. [9] The severity ofAnglo-American legislation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, furthermore, was in full accord with the tone of contemporary Englishcriminal law. It is not clear, however, that the great mitigation whichbenefit of clergy gave in English criminal administration[10] wascommensurately applied in the colonies when slave crimes were concerned. Even in England, indeed, servants were debarred in various regards, that ofpetit treason, for example, from this avenue of relief. On the other handmany American slaves were saved from death at the hands of the law by thetolerant spirit of citizens toward them and by the consideration of thepecuniary loss to be suffered through their execution. A Jamaican statuteof 1684 went so far as to prescribe that when several slaves were jointlyinvolved in a capital crime one only was to be executed as an example andthe loss caused by his death was to be apportioned among the owners of theseveral. [11] More commonly the mitigation lay not in the laws themselvesbut in the general disposition to leave to the discipline of the masterssuch slave misdeeds as were not regarded as particularly heinous normenacing to the public security. [Footnote 9: A. C. Goodell, Jr. , _The Trial and Execution for Petit Treasonof Mark and Phillis_ (Cambridge, 1883), reprinted from the MassachusettsHistorical Society _Proceedings_, XX, 132-157. ] [Footnote 10: A. L. Cross, "Benefit of Clergy, " in the _American HistoricalReview_, XXII, 544-565. ] [Footnote 11: _Abridgement of the Laws in Force in Her Majesty'sPlantations_ (London, 1704), pp. 104-108. ] Burnings at the stake, breakings on the wheel and other ferocious methodsof execution which were occasionally inflicted by the colonial courts werealmost universally discontinued soon after the beginning of the nineteenthcentury. The general trend of moderation discernible at that time, however, was hampered then and thereafter by the series of untoward events beginningwith the San Domingo upheaval and ending with John Brown's raid. Inparticular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuingNat Turner's revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislationthe whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes, stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing thealready limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration, however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to havegrown milder as the decades passed. The police ordinances of the several cities and other local jurisdictionswere in keeping with the state laws which they supplemented and in somedegree duplicated. At New Orleans an ordinance adopted in 1817 and littlechanged thereafter forbade slaves to live off their masters' premiseswithout written permission, to make any clamorous noise, to show disrespectto any white persons, to walk with canes on the streets unless on accountof infirmity, or to congregate except at church, at funerals, and at suchdances and other amusements as were permitted for them on Sundays alone andin public places. Each offender was to be tried by the mayor or a justiceof the peace after due notice to his master, and upon conviction was to bepunished within a limit of twenty-five lashes unless his master paid a finefor him instead. [12] [Footnote 12: D. Augustin, _A General Digest of the Ordinances andResolutions of the Corporation of New Orleans_ ([New Orleans], 1831), pp. 133-137. ] At Richmond an ordinance effective in 1859 had provisions much like thoseof New Orleans regarding residence, clamor, canes, assemblage and demeanor, and also debarred slaves from the capitol square and other specified publicenclosures unless in attendance on white persons or on proper errands, forbade them to ride in public hacks without the written consent of theirmasters, 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 formsecret societies, or to loiter on the streets near their churches more thanhalf an hour after the conclusion of services; and it required them whenmeeting, overtaking or being overtaken by white persons on the sidewalks topass on the outside, stepping off the walk if necessary to allow the whitesto pass. It also forbade all free persons to hire slaves to themselves, torent houses, rooms or grounds to them, to sell them liquors by retail, ordrugs without written permits from their masters, or to furnish offensiveweapons to negroes whether bond or free. Finally, it forbade anyone to beata slave unlawfully, under fine of not more than twenty dollars if a whiteperson, or of lashes or fine at the magistrate's discretion in case theoffender 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 functionsof the citizens' patrol. As many chiefs of patrol were to be appointedas the parish authorities might think proper, each to be in charge of aspecified district, with duties of listing all citizens liable to patrolservice, dividing them into proper details and appointing a commander foreach squad. Every commander in his turn, upon receiving notice from hischief, was to cover the local beat on the night appointed, searching slavequarters, though with as little disturbance as possible to the inmates, arresting any free negroes or strange whites found where they had no properauthority or business to be, whipping slaves encountered at large withoutpasses 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 codeof the neighboring parish of East Feliciana in 1859 went on further toprescribe trials and penalties for slaves insulting or abusing whitepersons, to restrict their carrying of guns, and their assemblage, toforbid all slaves but wagoners to keep dogs, to restrict citizens in theirtrading with slaves, to require the seizure of self-styled free negroes notpossessing certificates, and to prescribe that all negroes or mulattoesfound on the railroad without written permits be deemed runaway slaves anddealt 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 thesecond 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 ofLouisiana State University. ] [Footnote 15: D. B. Sanford, _Police Jury Code of the Parish of EastFeliciana, Louisiana_ (Clinton, La. , 1859), pp. 98-101. ] In general, the letter of the law in slaveholding states at the middle ofthe nineteenth century presumed all persons with a palpable strain of negroblood to be slaves unless they could prove the contrary, and regarded thepossession of them by masters as presumptive evidence of legal ownership. Property in slaves, though by some of the statutes assimilated to realestate for certain technical purposes, was usually considered as of chattelcharacter. Its use and control, however, were hedged about with variousrestraints and obligations. In some states masters were forbidden tohire slaves to themselves or to leave them in any unusual way to theirself-direction; and everywhere they were required to maintain their slavesin full sustenance whether young or old, able-bodied or incapacitated. The manumission of the disabled was on grounds of public thrift nowherepermitted unless accompanied with provision for their maintenance, and thatof slaves of all sorts was restricted in a great variety of ways. Generallyno consent by the slave was required in manumission, though in somecommonwealths he might lawfully reject freedom in the form bestowed. [16]Masters might vest powers of agency in their slaves, but when so doing themasters themselves became liable for any injuries or derelictions ensuing. In criminal prosecutions, on the other hand, slaves were considered asresponsible persons on their own score and punishable under the lawsapplicable to them. Where a crime was committed at the master's expresscommand, the master was liable and in some cases the slave also. Slaveoffenders were commonly tried summarily by special inferior courts, thoughfor serious crimes in some states by the superior courts by regularprocess. Since the slaves commonly had no funds with which to pay fines, and no liberty of which to be deprived, the penalties imposed upon themfor crimes and misdemeanors were usually death, deportation or lashes. Frequently in Louisiana, however, and more seldom elsewhere, convictedslaves were given prison sentences. By the intent of the law theirpunishments were generally more severe than those applied to white personsfor the same offenses. In civil transactions slaves had no standing aspersons in court except for the one purpose of making claim of freedom;and even this must usually be done through some friendly citizen as aself-appointed guardian bringing suit for trespass in the nature ofravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted;any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to theirmasters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although thewilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation oftheir women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generallystood no slave might raise his hand against a white person even inself-defense unless his life or limb were endangered, nor might he in hisown person apply to the courts for the redress of injuries, nor generallygive evidence except where negroes alone were involved. All white personson the other hand were permitted, and in some regards required, to exercisepolice power over the slaves; and their masters in particular were vestedwith full disciplinary power over them in all routine concerns. If theyshould flee from their masters' dominion, the force of the state and ofother states into which they might escape, and of the United States ifnecessary, might be employed for their capture and resubjection; and anysuspected of being fugitives, though professing to be free, might be heldfor long periods in custody and in the end, in default of proofs of freedomand of masters' claims, be sold by the authorities at public auction. Finally, affecting slaves and colored freemen somewhat alike, andregardless as usual of any distinction of mulattoes or quadroons from thefull-blood negroes, there were manifold restraints of a social characterbuttressing the predominance and the distinctive privileges of theCaucasian 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 propertyand the police of the colored population were as thorough and stringent astheir framers could make them, and that they left an almost irreducibleminimum of rights and privileges to those whose function and place weredeclared to be service and subordination. But in fairness it must alsobe said that in adopting this legislation the Southern community largelybelied itself, for whereas the laws were systematically drastic thecitizens in whose interest they were made and in whose hands theirenforcement lay were in practice quite otherwise. It would have required aEuropean bureaucracy to keep such laws fully effective; the individualisticSouth was incapable of the task. If the regulations were seldom relaxed inthe letter they were as rarely enforced in the spirit. The citizens weretoo fond of their own liberties to serve willingly as martinets in theroutine administration of their own laws;[17] and in consequence themarchings of the patrol squads were almost as futile and farcical as themusters of the militia. The magistrates and constables tended toward asimilar slackness;[18] while on the other hand the masters, easy-going asthey might be in other concerns, were jealous of any infringements of theirown dominion or any abuse of their slaves whether by private persons orpublic functionaries. When in 1787, for example, a slave boy in Marylandreported to his master that two strangers by the name of Maddox had whippedhim for killing a dog while Mr. Samuel Bishop had stood by and let them doit, the master, who presumably had no means of reaching the two strangers, wrote Bishop demanding an explanation of his conduct and intimating thatif this were not satisfactorily forthcoming by the next session of court, proceedings would be begun against him[19]. While this complainant mightnot have been able to procure a judgment against a merely acquiescentbystander, the courts were quite ready to punish actual transgressors. In sustaining the indictment of a private citizen for such offense thechief-justice of North Carolina said in 1823: "For all purposes necessaryto enforce the obedience of the slave and render him useful as property thelaw secures to the master a complete authority over him, and it willnot lightly interfere with the relation thus established. It is a moreeffectual guarantee of his right of property when the slave is protectedfrom wanton abuse by those who have no power over him, for it cannot bedisputed that a slave is rendered less capable of performing his master'sservice when he finds himself exposed by law to the capricious violenceof every turbulent man in the community. Mitigated as slavery is by thehumanity of our laws, the refinement of manners, and by public opinionwhich revolts at every instance of cruelty towards them, it would be ananomaly in the system of police which affects them if the offense stated inthe verdict [the striking of a slave] were not indictable. "[20] Likewisethe South Carolina Court of Appeals in 1850 endorsed the fining of a publicpatrol which had whipped the slaves at a quilting party despite theirpossession of written permission from their several masters. The Court saidof the quilting party: "The occasion was a perfectly innocent one, evenmeritorious. .. . It would simply seem ridiculous to suppose that the safetyof the state or any of its inhabitants was implicated in such an assemblageas this. " And of the patrol's limitations: "A judicious freedom in theadministration of our police laws for the lower order must always haverespect for the confidence which the law reposes in the discretion of themaster. "[21] [Footnote 17: _E. G_. , Letter of "a citizen" in the Charleston _CityGazette_, 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 CarolinaLaw Reports_, V, 21. This is quoted at some length in H. M. Henry, _PoliceControl of the Slave in South Carolina_, pp. 146-148. ] The masters were on their private score, however, prone to disregard thelaw where it restrained their own prerogatives. They hired slaves to theslaves themselves whether legally permitted or not; they sent them onresponsible errands to markets dozens of miles away, often withoutproviding them with passes; they sanctioned and encouraged assemblies underconditions prohibited by law; they taught their slaves at will to read andwrite, and used them freely in forbidden employments. Such practices asthese were often noted and occasionally complained of in the press, butthey were seldom obstructed. When outside parties took legal steps tointerfere in the master's routine administration, indeed, they wereprompted probably as often by personal animosity as by devotion to thelaw. An episode of the sort, where the complainants were envious poorerneighbors, was related with sarcasm and some philosophical moralizing byW. B. Hodgson, of whose plantation something has been previously said, ina letter to Senator Hammond: "I am somewhat 'riled' with Burke. Thebenevolent neighbors have lately had me in court under indictment for crueltreatment of my fat, lazy, rollicking sambos. For fifty years they haveeaten 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 ThomasForeman, executor of Governor Troup. My suit was withdrawn; he wasacquitted. I have some crude notions about that thing slavery in the end. Its tendency, as with landed accumulations in England, or Aaron's rod, isto swallow up other small rods, and inevitably to attract the benevolenceof 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 thefiner sentiments of the heart. The agrarian battle is hard to fight. But'_les amis des noirs_' in our midst have the vantage ground, particularlywhen rejected overseers come in as spies. _C'est un peu dégoutant, mon cherami_; 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 ofinferior grade and amateurish character which dealt with them as persons, and those of superior rank and genuine magisterial quality which handledthem as property and sometimes, on appeal, as persons as well. Theselower courts for the trial of slave crimes had vices in plenty. They wereinformal and largely ignorant of the law, and they were so quickly convenedafter the discovery of a crime that the shock of the deed had no time towane. Such virtues as they sometimes had lay merely in their personnel. The slaveholders of the vicinage who commonly comprised the court wereintimately and more or less tolerantly acquainted with negro nature ingeneral, and usually doubtless with the prisoner on trial. Their judgmentwas therefore likely to be that of informed and interested neighbors, notof jurors carefully selected for ignorance and indifference, a judgmentguided 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 easilybelieve; and the convictions and acquittals were of course oftentimeserroneous. The remodeling of the system was one of the reforms called forby Southerners of the time but never accomplished. Mistaken acquittals bythese courts were beyond correction, for in the South slaves like freemencould 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, ortheir sentences estopped from execution by the governor's pardon. [23] Thethoroughness with which some of the charges against negroes were consideredis illustrated in two cases tried before the county court at Newbern, NorthCarolina, in 1826. In one of these a negro boy was acquitted of highwayrobbery after the jury's deliberation of several hours; in the other thejury on the case of a free negro woman charged with infanticide had beenout for forty-six hours without reaching a verdict when the newspaperdispatch was written. [24] [Footnote 23: The working of these courts and the current criticisms ofthem are illustrated in H. M. Henry _The Police Control of the Slave inSouth Carolina_, pp. 58-65. ] [Footnote 24: News item from Newbern, N. C. , in the Charleston _CityGazette_, May 9, 1826. ] The circuit and supreme courts of the several states, though the slavecases which they tried were for the most part concerned only with such dryquestions 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 mattersof mere property were nominally involved. An example occurred in the caseof Rhame _vs_. Ferguson and Dangerfield, decided by the South CarolinaCourt of Appeals in 1839 in connection with a statute enacted by thelegislature of that state in 1800 restricting manumissions and prescribingthat any slaves illegally set free might be seized by any person asderelicts. George Broad of St. John's Parish, Berkeley County, had diedwithout blood relatives in 1836, bequeathing fourteen slaves and theirprogeny to his neighbor Dangerfield "in trust nevertheless and for thispurpose only that the said John R. Dangerfield, his executors and assignsdo permit and suffer the said slaves . .. To apply and appropriatetheir time and labor to their own proper use and behoof, without theintermeddling or interference of any person or persons whomsoever furtherthan may be necessary for their protection under the laws of this state";and bequeathing also to Dangerfield all his other property in trust for theuse of these negroes and their descendants forever. These provisions werebeing duly followed when on a December morning in 1837 Rebecca Rhame, theremarried widow of Broad's late brother-in-law, descended upon the Broadplantation in a buggy with John J. Singletary whom she had employed for theoccasion under power of attorney. Finding no white person at the residence, Singletary ordered the negroes into the yard and told them they were seizedin Mrs. Rhame's behalf and must go with him to Charleston. At this junctureDangerfield, the trustee, came up and demanded Singletary's authority, whereupon the latter showed him his power of attorney and read him the lawsunder which he was proceeding. Dangerfield, seeking delay, said it would bea pity to drag the negroes through the mud, and sent a boy to bring hisown wagon for them. While this vehicle was being awaited Colonel JamesFerguson, a dignitary of the neighborhood who had evidently been secretlysent for by Dangerfield, galloped up, glanced over the power of attorney, branded the whole affair as a cheat, and told Dangerfield to orderSingletary off the premises, driving him away with a whip if necessary, andto shoot if the conspirators should bring reinforcements. "After givingthis advice, which he did apparently under great excitement, Ferguson rodeoff. " Singletary then said that for his part he had not come to take orlose life; and he and his employer departed. Mrs. Rhame then sued Fergusonand Dangerfield to procure possession of the negroes, claiming that she hadlegally seized them on the occasion described. At the trial in the circuitcourt, Singletary rehearsed the seizure and testified further thatDangerfield had left the negroes customarily to themselves in virtuallycomplete freedom. In rebuttal, Dr. Theodore Gaillard testified that thenegroes, whom he described as orderly by habit, were kept under controlby the trustee and made to work. The verdict of the jury, deciding thequestions of fact in pursuance of the judge's charge as to the law, was infavor 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 thatBroad's will had clearly vested title to the slaves in Dangerfield, whoafter Broad's death was empowered to do with them as he pleased. If he, whowas by the will merely trustee but by law the full owner, had given upthe practical dominion over the slaves and left them to their ownself-government they were liable to seizure under the law of 1800. Thisquestion of fact, the court concluded, had properly been put to the juryalong with the issue as to the effectiveness of the plaintiff's seizure ofthe 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 femalevillain of the piece and her craven henchman were foiled by the sturdybut wily trustee and the doughty Carolina colonel who, in headlong, aristocratic championship of those threatened with oppression againstthe moral sense of the community, charged upon the scene and counseledslaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. Andin the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come tojudgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assuredthe so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, thedecision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to provethat negroes freed by will in South Carolina might be legally enslaved byany person seizing them, and that the bequest of slaves in trust to anexecutor as a merely nominal master was contrary to law;[26] and in latertimes a historian has instanced the traveller's account in support of hisown statement that "Persons who had been set free for years and had noreason to suppose that they were anything else might be seized upon fordefects 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, theseassertions were severally more or less true; but if this particular caseand its outcome have any palpable meaning, it is that the courts connivedat thwarting such provisions by sanctioning, as a proprietorship validagainst the claim of a captor, what was in obvious fact a merely nominaldominion. Another striking case in which the severity of the law was overridden bythe 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 ofthe preceding year Jones had called in his neighbors and their slaves toa corn husking and had sent Allen a message asking him to send help. Sometwenty-five white men and seventy-five slaves gathered on the appointednight, among them Allen's slave Isaac. After supper, about midnight, Jonestold the negroes to go home; but Isaac stayed a while with some otherswrestling in the back yard, during which, while Jones was not present, awhite man named Hager stabbed Isaac to death. Allen thereupon sued Jonesfor damages on the ground that the latter had knowingly and unlawfullysuffered Isaac, without the legally required authorization, to come withother slaves upon his premises, where he had been slain to his owner'sloss. The testimony showed that Allen had not received Jones' message andhad given Isaac no permission to go, but that Jones had not questionedIsaac in this regard; that Jones had given spirituous liquors to the slaveswhile at work, Isaac included, but that no one there was intoxicated exceptHager who had come drunk and without invitation. In the trial court, inRutherford County where the tragedy had occurred, the judge excludedevidence that such corn huskings were the custom of the country without therequirement of written permission for the slaves attending, and he chargedthe jury that Jones' employment of Isaac and Isaac's death on his premisesmade him liable to Allen for the value of the slave. But on Jones' appealthe Supreme Court overruled this, asserting that "under our modified formof slavery slaves are not mere chattels but are regarded in the two-foldcharacter of persons and property; that as persons they are considered byour law as accountable moral agents; . .. That certain rights have beenconferred upon them by positive law and judicial determination, and otherprivileges and indulgences have been conceded to them by the universalconsent of their owners. By uniform and universal usage they areconstituted the agents of their owners and sent on business without writtenauthority. And in like manner they are sent to perform those neighborlygood offices common in every community. .. . The simple truth is, suchindulgences have been so long and so uniformly tolerated, the publicsentiment upon the subject has acquired almost the force of positive law. "The judgment of the lower court was accordingly reversed and Jones wasrelieved 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. Thuswhen one Brazeale of Mississippi carried with him to Ohio and there setfree a slave woman of his and a son whom he had begotten of her, and thenafter taking them home again died bequeathing all his property to themulatto boy, the supreme court of the state, in 1838, declared themanumission void under the laws and awarded the mother and son along withall the rest of Brazeale's estate to his legitimate heirs who had broughtthe suit. [29] In so deciding the court may have been moved by itsrepugnance 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 bylaw rendered the offender liable both to the master's claim for damagesand to criminal prosecution; and the master's suit might be sustained evenwhere the evidence was weak, for as was said in a Louisiana decision, thedeed was "one rarely committed in presence of witnesses, and the most thatcan be expected in cases of this kind are the presumptions that result fromcircumstances. "[30] The requirement of positive proof from white witnessesin criminal cases caused many indictments to fail. [31] A realization ofthis hindrance in the law deprived convicted offenders of some of thetolerance which their crimes might otherwise have met. When in 1775, forexample, William Pitman was found guilty and sentenced by the VirginiaGeneral Court to be hanged for the beating of his slave to death, the_Virginia Gazette_ said: "This man has justly incurred the penalties ofthe law and we hear will certainly suffer, which ought to be a warning toothers to treat their slaves with more moderation. "[32] In the nineteenthcentury the laws generally held the maiming or murder of slaves to befelonies in the same degree and with the same penalties as in cases wherethe victims were whites; and when the statutes were silent in the premisesthe 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 _Williamand 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 thelaxity of officials was such that from time to time other agencies werecalled into play. For example the maraudings of runaway slaves camped inBelle Isle swamp, a score of miles above Savannah, became so serious andlasting that their haven had to be several times destroyed by the Georgiamilitia. On one of these occasions, in 1786, a small force first employedwas obliged to withdraw in the face of the blacks, and reinforcementsmerely succeeded in burning the huts and towing off the canoes, while thenegroes themselves were safely in hiding. Not long afterward, however, the gang was broken up, partly through the services of Creek and CatawbaIndians who hunted the maroons for the prices on their heads. [34] TheSeminoles, on the other hand, gave asylum to such numbers of runaways as toprompt invasions of their country by the United States army both beforeand after the Florida purchase. [35] On lesser occasions raids were made bycitizen volunteers. The swamps of the lower Santee River, for example, weresearched by several squads in 1819, with the killing of two negroes, thecapture of several others and the wounding of one of the whites as theresult. [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 therumors of plots among the blacks and the reports of mischievous doings bywhites. In the same Santee district of the Carolina lowlands, for instance, a public meeting at Black Oak Church on January 3, 1860, appointed threecommittees of five members each to look out for and dispose of anysuspicious characters who might be "prowling about the parish. " Of thesequel nothing is recorded by the local diarist of the time except thefollowing, under date of October 25: "Went out with a party of men to takea fellow by the name of Andrews, who lived at Cantey's Hill and traded withthe negroes. He had been warned of our approach and run off. We went on andbroke up the trading establishment. "[37] [Footnote 37: Diary of Thomas P. Ravenel, which is virtually a continuationof the Diary just cited. MS. In private possession. ] Such transactions were those of the most responsible and substantialcitizens, laboring to maintain social order in the face of the law'sdesuetude. A mere step further in that direction, however, lay outrightlynch law. Lynchings, indeed, while far from habitual, were frequent enoughto link the South with the frontier West of the time. The victims were notonly rapists[38] but negro malefactors of sundry sorts, and occasionallywhite offenders as well. In some cases fairly full accounts of suchepisodes are available, but more commonly the record extant is laconic. Thus the Virginia archives have under date of 1791 an affidavit recitingthat "Ralph Singo and James Richards had in January last, in AccomacCounty, been hung by a band of disguised men, numbering from six tofifteen";[39] and a Georgia newspaper in 1860 the following: "It isreported that Mr. William Smith was killed by a negro on Saturday eveningat Bowling Green, in Oglethorpe County. He was stabbed sixteen times. Thenegro made his escape but was arrested on Sunday, and on Monday morninga number of citizens who had investigated the case burnt him at thestake. "[40] In at least one well-known instance the mob's violence wasdirected against an abuser of slaves. This was at New Orleans in 1834 whena rumor spread that Madame Lalaurie, a wealthy resident, was torturing hernegroes. A great crowd collected after nightfall, stormed her door, foundseven slaves chained and bearing marks of inhuman treatment, and guttedthe house. The woman herself had fled at the first alarm, and made her wayeventually to Paris. [41] Had she been brought before a modern court it maybe doubted whether she would have been committed to a penitentiary or toa lunatic asylum. At the hands of the mob, however, her shrift wouldpresumably 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. Otherinstances, gleaned mostly from _Niles' Register_ and the _Liberator_, aregiven 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. RuralSouthern lynch law in that period, however, was in large part a specialproduct of the sparseness of population and the resulting weakness of legalmachinery, for as Olmsted justly remarked in the middle 'fifties, the wholeSouth was virtually still in a frontier condition. [42] In _post bellum_decades, on the other hand, an increase of racial antipathy has offset theeffect of the densification of settlement and has abnormally prolonged theliability 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 systematicand wholesale torture of slaves, there were thousands of masters andmistresses as tolerant and kindly as she was fiendish; and these werevirtually without restraint of public authority in their benevolent rule. Lawmakers and magistrates by personal status in their own plantationprovinces, they ruled with a large degree of consent and cooperation by thegoverned, for indeed no other course was feasible in the long run by menand women of normal type. Concessions and friendly services beyond thecountenance and contemplation of the statutes were habitual with thosewhose name was legion. The law, for example, conceded no property rightsto the slaves, and some statutes forbade specifically their possessionof horses, but the following characteristic letter of a South Carolinamistress to an influential citizen tells an opposite story: "I hope youwill 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 myfaithful servant Pompey, the first husband of Susy. In the first instance, Pompey owned a horse which he exchanged for a mare, which mare I permittedSusy to use after her marriage with John, but told them both I would sellit and the young colt and give Susy a third of the money, reserving theother two thirds for her children. Before I could do so, however, themare and the colt were exchanged and sent out of my way by this dishonestcouple. I then hoped at least to secure forty-five dollars for whichanother colt was sold to Mr. Haskell, and sent my message to him to saythat Susy had no claim on the colt and that the money was to be paid to mefor the children of Pompey. A few days since I sent to Mr. Haskell againwho informed me that he had paid for the colt, and referred me to you. I doassure 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 Iinfinitely prefer relying on you to do justice to the parties. My manager, who will deliver this to you, is perfectly acquainted with all thecircumstances; and [if] after having a conversation with him you shoulddecide in favor of the children I shall be much gratified. "[43] [Footnote 43: Letter of Caroline Raoul, Belleville, S. C. , Dec. 26, 1829, toJames H. Hammond. MS. Among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress. ] Likewise where the family affairs of slaves were concerned the silence andpassiveness of the law gave masters occasion for eloquence and activity. Thus a Georgian wrote to a neighbor: "I have a girl Amanda that has yourservant Phil for a husband. I should be very glad indeed if you wouldpurchase her. She is a very good seamstress, an excellent cook--makes cakeand preserves beautifully--and washes and irons very nicely, and cannot beexcelled in cleaning up a house. Her disposition is very amiable. I havehad her for years and I assure you that I have not exaggerated as regardsher worth. .. . I will send her down to see you at any time. "[44] That offersof purchase were no less likely than those of sale to be prompted by suchconsiderations is suggested by another Georgia letter: "I have made everyattempt to get the boy Frank, the son of James Nixon; and in order togratify James have offered as far as five hundred dollars for him--morethan 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 SouthCarolinian after long magisterial service remarked: "Experience andobservation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that ofkindness from the master to the slave. With that . .. Slavery becomes afamily 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 ofthe South and West_, II (New Orleans, 1852), 278. ] On the whole, the several sorts of documents emanating from the OldSouth have a character of true depiction inversely proportioned to theirabundance and accessibility. The statutes, copious and easily available, describe a hypothetical régime, not an actual one. The court records are onthe one hand plentiful only for the higher tribunals, whither questions ofhuman adjustments rarely penetrated, and on the other hand the decisionswere themselves largely controlled by the statutes, perverse for ordinarypractical purposes as these often were. It is therefore to the letters, journals and miscellaneous records of private persons dwelling in therégime and by their practices molding it more powerfully than legislaturesand courts combined, that the main recourse for intimate knowledge must behad. Regrettably fugitive and fragmentary as these are, enough it may behoped have been found and used herein to show the true nature of the livingorder. The government of slaves was for the ninety and nine by men, and only forthe hundredth by laws. There were injustice, oppression, brutality andheartburning in the régime, --but where in the struggling world are theseabsent? There were also gentleness, kind-hearted friendship and mutualloyalty to a degree hard for him to believe who regards the system with atheorist's eye and a partisan squint. For him on the other hand who hasknown 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 whollyevil, the law and the prophets to the contrary notwithstanding. INDEX Acklen, Joseph A. S. , plantation home of rules of, for overseersAfrica, West, _see_ GuineaAgriculture, _see_ cotton, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco cultureAiken, William, rice plantation ofAime, Valcour, sugar plantation ofAmissa, enslaved and restored to AfricaAngolas, tribal traits of revolt ofAntipathy, racial, Jefferson's views on in Massachusetts in North and South compared Northern spokesmen ofArabs, in the Guinea tradeAsientoAzurara, Gomez E. Baltimore, negro churches inBarbados, emigration from, to Carolina to Jamaica founding of planters' committee of slave laws of, sugar culture inBelmead plantationBeninBlack 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 SouthBobolinks, in rice fieldsBonnyBoré, Etienne de, sugar planterBosman, William, in the Guinea tradeBranding of slavesBristol, citizens of, in the slave tradeBurial societies, negroBurnside, John, merchant and sugar planterButler, Pierce, the younger, slaves of, sold Cain, Elisha, overseerCairnes, J. E. , views of, on slaveryCalabar, NewCalabar, OldCape Coast CastleCapers, William, overseerCapital, investment of, in slavesCharleston, commerce of, free negroes in industrial census of racial adjustments in, problem of slave misdemeanors in Denmark Vesey's plotChurches, racial adjustments in, rural urbanClarkson, Thomas, views of, on the effects of closing the slave tradeColumbus, Christopher, policy ofConcubinageCongoes, tribal traits ofConnecticut, slavery in, disestablishment ofCooper, Thomas, views of, on the economics of slaveryCorbin, Richard, plantation rules ofCoromantees, conspiracy of, tribal traits ofCorporations, ownership of slaves byCotton culture, sea-island introduction of, methods and scale of upland, engrossment of thought and energy by improvements in methods and scale of stimulates westward migrationCotton gin, invention ofCotton mills slave operatives inCotton plantations, _see_ plantations, cottonCotton prices, sea-island, upland, chart facingCottonseed, oil extracted from used as fertilizerCovington, Leonard, planter, migration ofCreoles, LouisianaCriminality among free negroes among slavesCuba Dabney, Thomas S. , planter, migration ofDahomeysDale, Sir ThomasDavis, Joseph and Jefferson, plantation policy ofDelaware, slaves and free negroes in forbids export of slavesDepression, financial, in Mississippi in VirginiaDirt-eating, among Jamaica slavesDiscipline, of slavesDiseases, characteristic, in Africa among Jamaica slaves venerealDoctors, black, in Jamaica in South Carolina in Virginia"Doctoress, " slave, in GeorgiaDrivers (plantation foremen)Driving of slaves to death, question ofDutch, in the slave tradeDutch West India Company Early, Peter, debates the closing of the foreign slave tradeEast India Company, in the slave tradeEboes, tribal traits ofEl MinaElliott, William, planter economic views ofEllsworth, OliverEmancipation, _see_ manumissionEncomiendia system, in the Spanish West IndiesEngland, policy of, toward the slave tradeEpitaph of Peyton, a slaveEvans, Henry, negro preacher Factorage, in planters' dealingsFactorage, in the slave trade, in American ports in GuineaFarmers, free negro white, in the Piedmont in the plantation colonies segregation of in the westward movementFederal ConventionFestivities, of slavesFithian, Philip V. , observations byForemen, plantationFoulahsFowler, J. W. , cotton picking records of plantation rules ofFranklin and Armfield, slave-dealersFree 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 byFrench, in the slave tradeFugitive slaves, _see_ slaves, runaway, rendition, in the Federal Constitution, act of 1793Funerals, negro Gaboons, tribal traits ofGabriel, insurrection led byGadsden, ChristopherGambia, slave trade on theGang system, in plantation workGenoese, in the slave tradeGeorgia, founding of, free negress visits slave imports forbidden in, permitted in restricted by uplands, development ofGerry, ElbridgeGibson, Arthur H. , views of, on the economics of slaveryGodkin, Edwin L. , on the migration of plantersGold CoastGoodloe, Daniel R. , views of, on slaveryGowrie, rice plantationGrandy King George, African chief, wants ofGuiana, British, invites free negro immigration cotton culture in DutchGuinea, 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, planterHammond, James H. , planter and writerHampton, Wade, planterHarrison, Jesse Burton, views of, on slaveryHawkins, Sir John, adventures of, in the slave tradeHayti (Hispaniola)Hearn, Lafcadio, on sugar-cane harvestingHelper, Hinton R. , views of, on slaveryHempHenry, PatrickHenry, Prince, the NavigatorHeyward, Nathaniel, planterHodgson, W. B. , planterHolidays, of slaves, plantation urbanHundley D. R. , on slave traders Immigrants, in the South _See also_ IrishImportations of slaves prohibition ofIndians, enslaved, in New England in South Carolina in West Indies, subjugated by SpaniardsIndigo culture, introduction of, in Georgia in South Carolina methods ofInsurrection of slaves, _see_ slave plotsIrish, labor of, on plantations Jamaica, capture and development of maroons of nabobs, absentee plantations in runaway slaves in, statistics ofJefferson, Thomas, on the foreign slave trade on negroes and slaveryJennison, Nathaniel, prosecution ofJob Ben Solomon, enslaved and restored to AfricaJoloffs Kentucky, settlement ofKidnapping of free negroesKing, RufusKingsley, Z. , plantation experience of Lace, Ambrose, slave traderLalaurie, MadameLamar, John B. , planterLas Casas, Bartholomeo de laLaurens, Henry, factor and planterLiberiaLincecum, Gideon, peregrinations ofLindo, Moses, indigo merchantLiverpool, in the slave trade, types of ships employedLoangoLodges, negroLondon, in the slave tradeLondon CompanyLoria, Achille, views of, on slavery economicsLouisiana, cotton culture in, slave laws of sugar culture inL'Ouverture, ToussaintLucas, ElizaLynchings M'Culloch, J. R. , views of, on slaveryMcDonogh, John, manumission by, method ofMacon, NathanielMadagascar, slaves procured fromMalaria, in Africa in South CarolinaMandingoes, tribal traits ofManigault, Charles, planter rules ofManors in MarylandManumission, of slavesMaroons, negro, in Jamaica on the Savannah RiverMartiniqueMaryland, founding of free negroes in manors in plantations in slave imports prohibited by slaveholdings in, scale of slavery in, projects for the disestablishment ofMassachusetts, in the slave trade slavery in abolition ofMatthews, Samuel, planterMedical attention to slavesMercer, James, planterMerolla, Jerom, missionaryMiddle passage, _see_ slave trade, AfricanMidwives, slaveMigrationMill, John Stuart, views of, on slaveryMiller, Phineas, partner of Eli WhitneyMisdemeanors of slaves, in CharlestonMissouri, decline of slavery in settlement ofMississippi, depression in product of long-fibre cotton in sale of slaves fromMobs, violence of, toward free negroesMocoes, tribal traits ofMolassesMoore, Francis, Royal African Company factorMoorsMulattoesMules Nagoes, tribal traits ofNegro traits, American Angola Congo Coromantee Ebo Gaboon Mandingo Nago Paw Paw WhydahNegroes, _see_ antipathy, black codes, church adjustments, free negroes, funerals, plantation labor, plantation life, slave plots slave trade, slaveholdings, slavery, slavesNew England, in the slave trade, type of ships employed slavery in, disestablishment ofNew Jersey, slavery in, disestablishment ofNew Netherlands, slavery inNew Orleans, as a slave market, free negroes inNew York, negro plots in slavery in, disestablishment ofNicholson, J. S. , views of, on slaveryNobility, English, as Jamaica plantation ownersNorth Carolina, early conditions in sentiment on slaveryNorthrup, a kidnapped free negro, career ofNorthwest Territory, prohibition of slavery in Oglethorpe, James, administers the Royal African Company founds Georgia restores a slave to AfricaOlmsted, Frederick L. , observations byOverseers, plantation, functions, salaries, and experiences of Panics, financial, effects on slave pricesPark, Mungo, in Guinea"Particular plantations, " in VirginiaPaths, in Guinea, character ofPaw Paws, tribal traits ofPennsylvania, slavery in, disestablishment ofPeyton, a slave, epitaph ofPhilips, Martin W. , planter and writer slave epitaph byPickering, Timothy_Plantation and Frontier_, citation of title in fullPlantation laborPlantation lifePlantation managementPlantation mistressPlantation rulesPlantation 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 ofPlantation tendenciesPlantations, cotton, sea islandPlantations, 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 estatePlanters, 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 ofPoor whites, in the South, Cairnes' assertions concerningPortugal, activities of, in Guinea, an appandage of Spain negroes inPreachers, negroProcter, Billy, a slave, letter ofProvidence, "Old, " a Puritan colony in the tropics, career ofPuritans, attitude of, toward slavery Quakers, relationship of, to slaveryQuincy, Josiah Railroad companies, slave ownership byRandolph, Edmund, disrelishes slaveryRandolph, John, of Roanoke, on the coasting trade in slaves on depression in Virginia manumits his slavesRandolph, Richard, provides for the manumission of his slavesRape, by negroes in the ante-bellum SouthRats, a pest in JamaicaRattoons, of sugar caneReligion, among slaves, rural urbanRetreat, cotton plantationRevolution, American, doctrines of effects of, on slavery Negroes in radicalism of, waning ofRhode Island, in the slave trade resolution advocating the stoppage of the slave trade slavery in, disestablishment ofRice birds (bobolinks), damage fromRice culture, introduced into Georgia into South Carolina methods of plantations in, scale ofRishworth, Samuel, early agitator against slaveryRolfe, John, introduces tobacco culture into VirginiaRoustabouts, Irish, qualities of negroRoyal African CompanyRuffin, Edmund, advocates agricultural reforms views of, on slaveryRum, product of, in Jamaica rations issued to slaves, in Jamaica in South Carolina use of, in the Guinea tradeRunaway slaves, general problem of George Washington in Georgia in Jamaica in MississippiRussell, Irwin, "Christmas in the Quarters, "Sabine Fields, rice plantationSahara, slave trade acrossSaluda factory, slave operatives inSan Domingo, emigration from, to Louisiana revolution inSay, J. B. , views of, on slaverySea-island cotton, introduced into the United States methods and scale of cultureSeasoning of slaves, in JamaicaSecret societies, negroSenegal, slave trade inSenegalese, tribal traits ofSenegambiaSerfdomServants, white indentured, in Barbados in Connecticut in Jamaica in Maryland in Massachusetts in Pennsylvania in South Carolina and Georgia in Virginia revolts byServitude, indentured, tendencies ofShackles, used on slavesShenendoah ValleyShips, types of, in the slave tradeSierra' LeoneSlave CoastSlave felonsSlave 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 conspiracySlave 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 inSlave trade, domestic, beginnings of effects of methods in to Louisiana scale ofSlave traders, domestic, Franklin and Armfield methods and qualities of reputations of, blackened maritimeSlaveholding, vicissitudes ofSlaveholdings, 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 coastSlavery, 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 managementSlaves, 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 ofSmart, William, views of, on slaverySmith, Adam, views of, on slaverySmith, Captain JohnSmith, Landgrave ThomasSnelgrave, William, in the maritime slave tradeSoil exhaustionSouthampton insurrectionSouth 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 ofSpain, annexation of Portugal by asiento instituted by negroes in police of American dominions by policy of, toward Indians and negroesSpaulding, Thomas, planterSpinners, on plantationsSpratt, L. W. , views of, on conditions in South CarolinaStaples, _see_ cotton, hemp, indigo, rice, sugar and tobacco culture and plantationsSteamboat laborers, Irish negroSugar 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 industryTaylor, John, of Caroline, agricultural writings ofTelfair, Alexander, plantations of rules ofTennessee, settlement ofTexasThomas, E. S. , bookseller, experience ofThorpe, George, Virginia colonistTobacco culture, in Maryland method of in North Carolina plantations in, scale of types of in the uplands of South Carolina and Georgia in VirginiaTowns, Southern, growth of, hampered slaves inTucker, St. George, project of, for extinguishing slavery in VirginiaTurner, Nat, insurrection led by Utrecht, treaty of, grants the asiento to England Van Buren, A. De Puy, observations byVenetians, in the Levantine slave tradeVermont, prohibition of slavery byVesey, Denmark, conspiracy ofVigilance committeesVirginia, 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 ofWashington, George apprehensions of, concerning slave property desires the gradual abolition of slavery imports cotton as a planterWest 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 ofWeston, P. C. , plantation rules ofWestward movementWhitney, Eli, invents the cotton ginWhydahs, tribal traits ofWilliams, David R. , planterWilliams, Francis, a free negro, career ofWomen, slave, care of, in pregnancy and childbirth difficulties in controllingWorking of slaves to death, question ofWorthy Park, Jamaica plantation, records of Yeomanry, white, in the South