The negro: the southerner's problem

by Thomas Nelson Page

II

It is well known by those who knew the old plantation-life that there were marked divisions between the Negroes. There were among them what might almost be termed different orders. These were graded by the various relations in which the individuals stood to the “white folks”—that is, to the master and mistress and their family.

The house-servants represented a class quite distinct from and quite above the “field-hands,” of whom they were wont to speak scornfully as “cornfield niggers,” while among the former were degrees as clearly defined as ever existed in an English gentleman’s house, where the housekeeper and the butler held themselves above the rest of the servants, only admitting to occasional fellowship the lady’s maid.

Among the first in station were the mammy, the butler, the body-servant, the carriage-driver, the ladies’ maids, the cook, and the gardener, with, after an interval, the “boys” who were attached to one or the other position as assistants and were in training for the places when the elders should fail. Among the “field-hands” was, first, the “head man.”[58]

The “head man” was the equal of any other servant—a rank due, perhaps, partly to his authority and partly to the character that brought him this authority. He was the foreman, or assistant superintendent of the plantation. He carried the keys; he called the hands to work; directed them, and was, to some extent, in authority over them. Such a one I knew, mighty in word and act, who towered above the hands he led, a “head man,” indeed.

A somewhat inaccurate idea prevails of the Southern plantation life, due, possibly, to the highly colored pictures that have been painted of it in books of a romantic order, in which the romance much outweighed the ha’penny-worth of verisimilitude. The current idea is that a Southern plantation was generally a great estate, teeming with black slaves who groaned under the lash of the drivers and at night were scourged to their dungeons, while their masters revelled in ill-used luxury and steeped themselves in licentiousness, not stopping at times to “traffic in their own flesh and blood.”

It may be well to say in the outset that nothing could be further from the truth.

There were great estates, but they were not numerous. There were, possibly, a score of persons in Virginia who owned over three hundred slaves, and ten or a dozen who owned over five hundred. Such estates were kept up in a certain style which almost always accompanies large wealth. But the great majority of the plantations in Virginia, and, so far as my reading and observation have gone, elsewhere, however extensive were the lands, were modest and simple, and the relation between masters and servants was one of close personal acquaintance and friendliness, beginning at the cradle and scarcely ending at the grave.

At the outbreak of the war, while the number of the white population of the Southern States was about thirteen millions, the number of slave-owners and slave-hirers, including those who owned or hired but one slave, was, perhaps, less than half a million; that is, of the adult whites, men and women, estimating them as one-fifth each of the population, less than one in ten owned or hired slaves.[59]

Thus, while slavery on the great plantations, where the slaves numbered several hundreds, was liable to such abuses as spring readily from absenteeism, on most of the plantations the slaves and the masters were necessarily brought into fairly close contact, and the result of this contact was the relation of friendship which has been the wonder and the mystification of those who considered slavery the sum of all the villainies.

The chief idea that prevails as to the relation is taken from a work of fiction which, as a political pamphlet written under the stress of deep feeling, whatever truth it had as basis, certainly does not present a true picture.

Work was parcelled out among the “hands,” the “hands” being divided into sections: pough-hands, drivers, hoe-hands, etc.

Their homes were known as “the quarters.” On the larger plantations they were divided by streets.

On the plantation which the writer knew best, there were several double-cabins on the quarters-hill and three or four facing on the backyard. In one of the latter was a room which was the joy of his heart, and which, after forty years, is still touched with a light more radiant than many a palace apartment he has seen. It was known as “Unc’ Balla’s room,” and its occupant was so great a man to me that in his own field I have never known his superior. “Uncle Balla” was the carriage-driver, and not from Jehu down was ever one who, in the writer’s mind, could equal him in handling the reins. He was the guide, philosopher, and friend of my boyhood. And no better, saner, or more right-minded guide ever lived.

In that room were “chists,” which I even now think of with an indrawing of the breath, as I imagine their precious and unexplored contents. Verily, they must have held golden ingots! Then, there was his cobbler’s bench, for he was a harness-maker and cobbler—and his cooper’s bench, for he made the noggins and piggins and pails for the milkmaids and housewives, deriving therefrom a little income. And when it came to horses! As I have sat and heard the learned at races and horse-shows air their knowledge, I have often been filled with a sudden longing that Uncle Balla were there to show what real knowledge was.

He lived for thirty years after the war in a little house on the edge of the plantation, and when he began to fail he was brought home, where he could be better looked after. At the end, his funeral services were conducted from the front portico and he was followed to the grave by white and black.

Each cabin had, or might have had, its little yard and garden, and each family had its chicken-house and yard.

On the larger plantations, where the Negroes numbered two hundred or more, nearly everything was made by them, so that such an estate was a little world in itself, substantially self-supporting. On our place, while the spinning and weaving and the carpentry-work were done on the place, most of the cloth for clothing and the shoes were bought in town in the spring and autumn, and the tailor and cobbler kept them in order. In purchasing the shoes, each person brought his measure, a stick the exact length of his foot. This stick had certain marks or notches on it, and the Negro kept a duplicate, by which to identify his shoes when they arrived.