American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

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[Footnote 30: _American Agriculturist_, IX, 187, 188, reprinted in _DeBow's
Review_, IX, 201-203.]

The ubiquitous Olmsted chose for description two rice plantations operated
as one, which he inspected in company with the owner, whom he calls "Mr.
X." Frame cabins at intervals of three hundred feet constituted the
quarters; the exteriors were whitewashed, the interiors lathed and
plastered, and each family had three rooms and a loft, as well as a chicken
yard and pigsty not far away. "Inside, the cabins appeared dirty and
disordered, which was rather a pleasant indication that their home life
was not much interfered with, though I found certain police regulations
enforced." Olmsted was in a mellow mood that day. At the nursery "a number
of girls eight or ten years old were occupied in holding and tending the
youngest infants. Those a little older--the crawlers--were in the pen, and
those big enough to toddle were playing on the steps or before the house.
Some of these, with two or three bigger ones, were singing and dancing
about a fire they had made on the ground.... The nurse was a kind-looking
old negro woman.... I watched for half an hour, and in all that time not a
baby of them began to cry; nor have I ever heard one, at two or three other
plantation nurseries which I have visited." The chief slave functionary was
a "gentlemanly-mannered mulatto who ... carried by a strap at his waist a
very large bunch of keys and had charge of all the stores of provisions,
tools and materials on the plantations, as well as of their produce before
it was shipped to market. He weighed and measured out all the rations of
the slaves and the cattle.... In all these departments his authority was
superior to that of the overseer; ... and Mr. X. said he would trust him
with much more than he would any overseer he had ever known." The master
explained that this man and the butler, his brother, having been reared
with the white children, had received special training to promote their
sense of dignity and responsibility. The brothers, Olmsted further
observed, rode their own horses the following Sunday to attend the same
church as their master, and one of them slipped a coin into the hand of the
boy who had been holding his mount. The field hands worked by tasks under
their drivers. "I saw one or two leaving the field soon after one o'clock,
several about two; and between three and four I met a dozen men and women
coming home to their cabins, having finished their day's work." As to
punishment, Olmsted asked how often it was necessary. The master replied:
"'Sometimes perhaps not once for two or three weeks; then it will seem as
if the devil had gotten into them all and there is a good deal of it.'" As
to matings: "While watching the negroes in the field, Mr. X. addressed a
girl who was vigorously plying a hoe near us: 'Is that Lucy?--Ah, Lucy,
what's this I hear about you?' The girl simpered, but did not answer or
discontinue her work. 'What is this I hear about you and Sam, eh?' The girl
grinned and still hoeing away with all her might whispered 'Yes, sir.' 'Sam
came to see me this morning,' 'If master pleases.' 'Very well; you may come
up to the house Saturday night, and your mistress will have something for
you.'"[31] We may hope that the pair whose prospective marriage was thus
endorsed with the promise of a bridal gift lived happily ever after.

[Footnote 31: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_,418-448.]

The most detailed record of rice operations available is that made by
Charles Manigault from the time of his purchase in 1833 of "Gowrie," on the
Savannah River, twelve miles above the city of Savannah.[32] The plantation
then had 220 acres in rice fields, 80 acres unreclaimed, a good pounding
mill, and 50 slaves. The price of $40,000 was analyzed by Manigault as
comprising $7500 for the mill, $70 per acre for the cleared, and $37 for
the uncleared, and an average of $300 for the slaves. His maintenance
expense per hand he itemized at a weekly peck of corn, $13 a year; summer
and winter clothes, $7; shoes, $1; meat at times, salt, molasses and
medical attention, not estimated. In reward for good service, however,
Manigault usually issued broken rice worth $2.50 per bushel, instead of
corn worth $1. Including the overseer's wages the current expense for the
plantation for the first six years averaged about $2000 annually. Meanwhile
the output increased from 200 barrels of rice in 1833 to 578 in 1838. The
crop in the latter year was particularly notable, both in its yield of
three barrels per acre, or 161-1/2 barrels per working hand, and its price
of four cents per pound or $24 per barrel. The net proceeds of the one crop
covered the purchase in 1839 of two families of slaves, comprising sixteen
persons, mostly in or approaching their prime, at a price of $640 each.

[Footnote 32: The Manigault MSS. are in the possession of Mrs. H.K.
Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C. Selections from them are printed in _Plantation
and Frontier_, I, 134-139 _et passim_.]

Manigault and his family were generally absent every summer and sometimes
in winter, at Charleston or in Europe, and once as far away as China. His
methods of administration may be gathered from his letters, contracts and
memoranda. In January, 1848, he wrote from Naples to I.F. Cooper whom his
factor had employed at $250 a year as a new overseer on Gowrie: "My negroes
have the reputation of being orderly and well disposed; but like all
negroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to. I expect
the kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been a
principal thing with me. I never suffer them to work off the place, or
exchange work with any plantation....It has always been my plan to give out
allowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, because
this has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if they
received allowance on Saturday for instance some of them would be off with
it that same evening to the shops to trade, and perhaps would not get back
until Monday morning. I allow no strange negro to take a wife on my place,
and none of mine to keep a boat."[33]

[Footnote 33: MS. copy in Manigault letter book.]

A few years after this, Manigault bought an adjoining plantation, "East
Hermitage," and consolidated it with Gowrie, thereby increasing his rice
fields to 500 acres and his slaves to about 90 of all ages. His draught
animals appear to have comprised merely five or six mules. A new overseer,
employed in 1853 at wages of $500 together with corn and rice for his table
and the services of a cook and a waiting boy, was bound by a contract
stipulating the duties described in the letter to Cooper above quoted,
along with a few additional items. He was, for example, to procure a book
of medical instructions and a supply of the few requisite "plantation
medicines" to be issued to the nurses with directions as needed. In case of
serious injury to a slave, however, the sufferer was to be laid upon a door
and sent by the plantation boat to Dr. Bullock's hospital in Savannah.
Except when the work was very pressing the slaves were to be sent home for
the rest of the day upon the occurrence of heavy rains in the afternoon,
for Manigault had found by experience "that always after a complete
wetting, particularly in cold rainy weather in winter or spring, one
or more of them are made sick and lie up, and at times serious illness
ensues."[34]

[Footnote 34: _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 122-126.]

In 1852 and again in 1854 storms and freshets heavily injured Manigault's
crops, and cholera decimated his slaves. In 1855 the fields were in
bad condition because of volunteer rice, and the overseer was dying of
consumption. The slaves, however, were in excellent health, and the crop,
while small, brought high prices because of the Crimean war. In 1856 a new
overseer named Venters handled the flooding inexpertly and made but half
a crop, yielding $12,660 in gross proceeds. For the next year Venters was
retained, on the maxim "never change an overseer if you can help it,"
and nineteen slaves were bought for $11,850 to fill the gaps made by the
cholera. Furthermore a tract of pine forest was bought to afford summer
quarters for the negro children, who did not thrive on the malarial
plantation, and to provide a place of isolation for cholera cases. In 1857
Venters made a somewhat better crop, but as Manigault learned and wrote at
the end of the year, "elated by a strong and very false religious feeling,
he began to injure the plantation a vast deal, placing himself on a par
with the negroes by even joining in with them at their prayer meetings,
breaking down long established discipline which in every case is so
difficult to preserve, favoring and siding in any difficulty with the
people against the drivers, besides causing numerous grievances." The
successor of the eccentric Venters in his turn proved grossly neglectful;
and it was not until the spring of 1859 that a reliable overseer was found
in William Capers, at a salary of $1000. Even then the year's experience
was such that at its end Manigault recorded the sage conclusion: "The truth
is, on a plantation, to attend to things properly it requires both master
and overseer."

The affairs of another estate in the Savannah neighborhood, "Sabine
Fields," belonging to the Alexander Telfair estate, may be gleaned from
its income and expense accounts. The purchases of shoes indicate a
working force of about thirty hands. The purchases of woolen clothing and
waterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather;
but the scale of the doctor's bills suggest either epidemics or serious
occasional illnesses. The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeen
and eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the record
they included both rice and sea-island cotton. The gross receipts were
highest at $1,695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied from
a surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2,035 in the two years 1853 and
1854 for which the accounting was consolidated. Under E.S. Mell, who was
overseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until
1849, losses thereafter. The following items of expense in this latter
period, along with high doctor's bills, may explain the reverse: for taking
a negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of a
boy prosecuted for larceny, $9.26; jail fees of Cesar, $2.69; for the
apprehension of a runaway, $5; paid Jones for trying to capture a negro,
$5. In February, 1854, Mell was paid off, and a voucher made record of a
newspaper advertisement for another overseer. What happened to the new
incumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855: "Paid ... amount
Jones' bill for capturing negroes, $25. Expenses of Overseer Page's burial
as follows, Ferguson's bill, $25; Coroner's, $14; Dr. Kollock's, $5; total
$69." A further item in 1856 of twenty-five dollars paid for the arrest of
Bing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing of
the overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean that
disorders continued under Page's successor.[35]

[Footnote 35: Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the Telfair
MSS. in the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.]

Other lowland plantations on a scale similar to that of Sabine Fields
showed much better earnings. One of these, in Liberty County, Georgia,
belonged to the heirs of Dr. Adam Alexander of Savannah. It was devoted to
sea-island cotton in the 'thirties, but rice was added in the next decade.
While the output fluctuated, of course, the earnings always exceeded the
expenses and sometimes yielded as much as a hundred dollars per hand for
distribution among the owners.[36]

[Footnote 36: The accounts for selected years are printed in _Plantation
and Frontier_, I, 150-165.]

The system of rice production was such that plantations with less than
a hundred acres available for the staple could hardly survive in the
competition. If one of these adjoined another estate it was likely to be
merged therewith; but if it lay in isolation the course of years would
probably bring its abandonment. The absence of the proprietors every summer
in avoidance of malaria, and the consequent expense of overseer's wages,
hampered operations on a small scale, as did also the maintenance of
special functionaries among the slaves, such as drivers, boatswains, trunk
minders, bird minders, millers and coopers. In 1860 Louis Manigault listed
the forty-one rice plantations on the Savannah River and scheduled their
acreage in the crop. Only one of them had as little as one hundred acres
in rice, and it seems to have been an appendage of a larger one across the
river. On the other hand, two of them had crops of eleven hundred, and two
more of twelve hundred acres each. The average was about 425 acres per
plantation, expected to yield about 1200 pounds of rice per acre each
year.[37] A census tabulation in 1850, ignoring any smaller units, numbered
the plantations which produced annually upwards of 20,000 pounds of rice at
446 in South Carolina, 80 in Georgia, and 25 in North Carolina.[38]

[Footnote 37: MS. in the possession of Mrs. H.K. Jenkins, Pinopolis, S.C.]

[Footnote 38: _Compendium of the Seventh U.S. Census_, p. 178.]

Indigo and sea-island cotton fields had no ditches dividing them
permanently into task units; but the fact that each of these in its day was
often combined with rice on the same plantations, and that the separate
estates devoted to them respectively lay in the region dominated by the
rice regime, led to the prevalence of the task system in their culture
also. The soils used for these crops were so sandy and light, however, that
the tasks, staked off each day by the drivers, ranged larger than those in
rice. In the cotton fields they were about half an acre per hand, whether
for listing, bedding or cultivation. In the collecting and spreading of
swamp mud and other manures for the cotton the work was probably done
mostly by gangs rather than by task, since the units were hard to measure.
In cotton picking, likewise, the conditions of the crop were so variable
and the need of haste so great that time work, perhaps with special rewards
for unusually heavy pickings, was the common resort. Thus the lowland
cotton regime alternated the task and gang systems according to the work
at hand; and even the rice planters of course abandoned all thoughts of
stinted performance when emergency pressed, as in the mending of breaks in
the dikes, or when joint exertion was required, as in log rolling, or when
threshing and pounding with machinery to set the pace.

That the task system was extended sporadically into the South Carolina
Piedmont, is indicated by a letter of a certain Thomas Parker of the
Abbeville district, in 1831,[39] which not only described his methods but
embodied an essential plantation precept. He customarily tasked his hoe
hands, he said, at rates determined by careful observation as just both to
himself and the workers. These varied according to conditions, but ranged
usually about three quarters of an acre. He continued: "I plant six acres
of cotton to the hand, which is about the usual quantity planted in my
neighborhood. I do not make as large crops as some of my neighbors. I am
content with three to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with my
provisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of my
neighbors made five bales to the hand. In such cases I have vanity enough,
however, to attribute this to better lands. I have no overseer, nor indeed
is there one in the neighborhood. We personally attend to our planting,
believing that as good a manure as any, if not the best we can apply to our
fields, is the print of the master's footstep."

[Footnote 39: _Southern Agriculturist_, March. 1831, reprinted in the
_American Farmer_, XIII, 105, 106.]

CHAPTER XIV

PLANTATION MANAGEMENT

Typical planters though facile in conversation seldom resorted to their
pens. Few of them put their standards into writing except in the form of
instructions to their stewards and overseers. These counsels of perfection,
drafted in widely separated periods and localities, and varying much in
detail, concurred strikingly in their main provisions. Their initial topic
was usually the care of the slaves. Richard Corbin of Virginia wrote in
1759 for the guidance of his steward: "The care of negroes is the first
thing to be recommended, that you give me timely notice of their wants
that they may be provided with all necessarys. The breeding wenches more
particularly you must instruct the overseers to be kind and indulgent to,
and not force them when with child upon any service or hardship that will
be injurious to them, ... and the children to be well looked after, ... and
that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care."
P.C. Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856: "The proprietor, in the first
place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first
object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the
negroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may
proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty,
severity or want of care towards the negroes. For the well being, however,
of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and
discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed,
and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the
one hand or harshness on the other." Charles Manigault likewise required of
his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindness
and consideration in sickness and health." On J.W. Fowler's plantation in
the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter
such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed
in 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline and
obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency
of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being
indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable
dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about
the Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby
establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my
Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all
overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1]

[Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are
printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 109-129.]

Joseph A.S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of
applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2]
His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the
most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read in
part: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the
maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its
time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for
everything and everything done according to rule. In this way labor becomes
easy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he
himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage
negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of
his temper."

[Footnote 2: They were also printed in _DeBow's Review_, XXII, 617-620,
XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).]

[Footnote 3: _See above_, p. 239.]

James H. Hammond's "plantation manual" which is the fullest of such
documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to
subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good crop
means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land,
mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which
must be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not be
merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but
as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value
of the rest of the property.... There should be an increase in number and
improvement in condition of negroes."[4]

[Footnote 4: MS. bound volume, "Plantation Manual," among the Hammond
papers in the Library of Congress.]

For the care of the sick, of course, all these planters were solicitous.
Acklen, Manigault and Weston provided that mild cases be prescribed for by
the overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness a
doctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwife
and general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks and
whites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey is
the doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, when
she thinks she can do no more for the sick, you will employ a physician."
Hammond, however, was such a devotee of homeopathy that in the lack of an
available physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote in
his manual: "No negro will be allowed to remain at his own house when sick,
but must be confined to the hospital. Every reasonable complaint must be
promptly attended to; and with any marked or general symptom of sickness,
however trivial, a negro may lie up a day or so at least.... Each case
has to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain the
disease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination;
... the directions for treatment, diet, etc., most implicitly followed; the
effects and changes cautiously observed.... In cases where there is the
slightest uncertainty, the books must be taken to the bedside and a careful
and thorough examination of the case and comparison of remedies made before
administering them. The overseer must record in the prescription book
every dose of medicine administered." Weston said he would never grudge a
doctor's bill, however large; but he was anxious to prevent idleness under
pretence of illness. "Nothing," said he, "is so subversive of discipline,
or so unjust, as to allow people to sham, for this causes the well-disposed
to do the work of the lazy."

Pregnancy, childbirth and the care of children were matters of special
concern. Weston wrote: "The pregnant women are always to do some work up
to the time of their confinement, if it is only walking into the field and
staying there. If they are sick, they are to go to the hospital and stay
there until it is pretty certain their time is near." "Lying-in women are
to be attended by the midwife as long as is necessary, and by a woman put
to nurse them for a fortnight. They will remain at the negro houses for
four weeks, and then will work two weeks on the highland. In some cases,
however, it is necessary to allow them to lie up longer. The health of many
women has been ruined by want of care in this particular." Hammond's rules
were as follows: "Sucklers are not required to leave their homes until
sunrise, when they leave their children at the children's house before
going to field. The period of suckling is twelve months. Their work lies
always within half a mile of the quarter. They are required to be cool
before commencing to suckle--to wait fifteen minutes at least in summer,
after reaching the children's house before nursing. It is the duty of the
nurse to see that none are heated when nursing, as well as of the overseer
and his wife occasionally to do so. They are allowed forty-five minutes at
each nursing to be with their children. They return three times a day until
their children are eight months old--in the middle of the forenoon, at
noon, and in the middle of the afternoon; till the twelfth month but twice
a day, missing at noon; during the twelfth month at noon only...The amount
of work done by a suckler is about three fifths of that done by a full
hand, a little increased toward the last...Pregnant women at five months
are put in the sucklers' gang. No plowing or lifting must be required of
them. Sucklers, old, infirm and pregnant receive the same allowances as
full-work hands. The regular plantation midwife shall attend all women in
confinement. Some other woman learning the art is usually with her during
delivery. The confined woman lies up one month, and the midwife remains in
constant attendance for seven days. Each woman on confinement has a bundle
given her containing articles of clothing for the infant, pieces of cloth
and rag, and some nourishment, as sugar, coffee, rice and flour for the
mother."

The instructions with one accord required that the rations issued to the
negroes be never skimped. Corbin wrote, "They ought to have their belly
full, but care must be taken with this plenty that no waste is committed."
Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, ordered his overseer to "see that
their necessities be supplied, that their food and clothing be good and
sufficient, their houses comfortable; and be kind and attentive to them in
sickness and old age." And further: "There will be stated hours for the
negroes to breakfast and dine [in the field], and those hours must be
regularly observed. The manager will frequently inspect the meals as they
are brought by the cook--see that they have been properly prepared, and
that vegetables be at all times served with the meat and bread." At the
same time he forbade his slaves to use ardent spirits or to have such about
their houses. Weston wrote: "Great care should be taken that the negroes
should never have less than their regular allowance. In all cases of doubt,
it should be given in favor of the largest quantity. The measure should
not be struck, but rather heaped up over. None but provisions of the best
quality should be used." Telfair specified as follows: "The allowance for
every grown negro, however old and good for nothing, and every young one
that works in the field, is a peck of corn each week and a pint of salt,
and a piece of meat, not exceeding fourteen pounds, per month...The
suckling children, and all other small ones who do not work in the field,
draw a half allowance of corn and salt....Feed everything plentifully, but
waste nothing." He added that beeves were to be killed for the negroes in
July, August and September. Hammond's allowance to each working hand was a
heaping peck of meal and three pounds of bacon or pickled pork every week.
In the winter, sweet potatoes were issued when preferred, at the rate of a
bushel of them in lieu of the peck of meal; and fresh beef, mutton or pork,
at increased weights, were to be substituted for the salt pork from time to
time. The ditchers and drivers were to have extra allowances in meat and
molasses. Furthermore, "Each ditcher receives every night, when ditching, a
dram (jigger) consisting of two-thirds whiskey and one-third water, with as
much asafoetida as it will absorb, and several strings of red peppers added
in the barrel. The dram is a large wine-glass full. In cotton picking time
when sickness begins to be prevalent, every field hand gets a dram in the
morning before leaving for the field. After a soaking rain all exposed to
it get a dram before changing their clothes; also those exposed to the
dust from the shelter and fan in corn shelling, on reaching the quarter at
night; or anyone at any time required to keep watch in the night. Drams are
not given as rewards, but only as medicinal. From the second hoeing, or
early in May, every work hand who uses it gets an occasional allowance of
tobacco, about one sixth of a pound, usually after some general operation,
as a hoeing, plowing, etc. This is continued until their crops are
gathered, when they can provide for themselves." The families, furthermore,
shared in the distribution of the plantation's peanut crop every fall. Each
child was allowed one third as much meal and meat as was given to each
field hand, and an abundance of vegetables to be cooked with their meat.
The cooking and feeding was to be done at the day nursery. For breakfast
they were to have hominy and milk and cold corn bread; for dinner,
vegetable soup and dumplings or bread; and cold bread or potatoes were to
be kept on hand for demands between meals. They were also to have molasses
once or twice a week. Each child was provided with a pan and spoon in
charge of the nurse.