The overseer had constantly to plan work two or three weeks in advance to have the greatest success. He had to keep in close touch with the master, especially concerning work after the crops were finished. “I consider it to be the duty of the overseer,” said Lusby, “to do anything that the employer wishes him to do, right or wrong.”
Lusby advocated that an overseer should be a model of personal appearance. He should keep himself close-shaven, wear good clothes, “hold his head up equal to his employer, ride a good, sprightly horse, and have one of the hands to attend to him, and saddle him in the morning.”[23] An overseer was rated by the slaves very largely according to the manner in which he conducted himself. His personal conduct was a determining factor in the degree of control that he was able to exercise. This factor either made or undid all his efforts.
An overseer who was a success in the employment of a master was usually able to buy land and negroes for himself in a few years. In an address given at an agricultural fair in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1855, an account is given of a planter in Haywood County, who had had only four overseers from 1838 to 1855. One of these in six years, with a large family, accumulated nineteen hundred dollars which he invested in lands and negroes in Texas, and was soon doing well. Another accumulated in seven years more than two thousand dollars, and was ready to go to Arkansas and invest his capital in lands and negroes. The other two had similar success.[24]
The slaves in Tennessee undoubtedly were, on the whole, humanely treated. Rev. Arthur Howard says in his history of the Episcopal Church in Tennessee that “it is impossible to deny that the negroes of the South were happier, and better cared for, physically and morally, under the system of slavery existing in the South, than they have been at any time since they obtained their freedom and were suddenly, without any training, endowed with the right of citizenship.”[25]
Rev. J. N. Pendleton, of the Baptist Church, said:
I take great pleasure in testifying that slavery in Kentucky and Tennessee, and I was not acquainted with it elsewhere, was of the mild type. When I went North, nothing surprised me more than to see laborers at work in the rain and snow. In such weather, slaves in Kentucky and Tennessee would have been under shelter.[26]
III. Was Slavery Profitable in Tennessee?
There is a great deal of evidence that slavery was profitable, and some that it was not. Slavery increased very rapidly in the first two decades of the history of the state. From 1790 to 1800 there was an increase of 297.54 per cent, and from 1800 to 1810 an increase of 229.31 per cent.[27] Slave population increased only 79.06 per cent in the next decade, and only 244.19 per cent from 1820 to 1860. This decrease in percentage from 1820 to 1860 is in face of the fact that West Tennessee, the Black Belt part of the state, was settled and populated during this period. This evidently means that slavery was not making much progress in East and Middle Tennessee.
Slaves increased in value very rapidly in Tennessee from 1790 to about 1836. They were worth only $100 each in 1790, but by 1836 they were valued at $584.[28] They decreased in value to $413.72 by 1846. They reached the 1836 mark again in 1854, and by 1860 were valued, for purposes of taxation, at $900.[29] This valuation was largely controlled by the price of cotton. The average price of cotton for the decade ending 1830 was 13.3 cents per pound; for the decade ending 1840, 12.4 cents; for the decade ending 1850, 8.2 cents; and for the five years ending 1855, 9.6 cents.[30] The values and prices of Tennessee slaves and cotton only roughly corresponded to those of the United States at the same time. In 1792, the average value of a slave in the United States was $300, and in 1835 it was $900, and $600 in 1844.[31] Upland cotton was worth 17½ cents per pound in New York City in 1835 and 7½ cents in 1844. It was generally held that a difference of one cent a pound in the price of cotton made a difference of $100 in the price of slaves, but this could not apply to the above prices.
Slavery was undoubtedly very profitable in Middle and West Tennessee. F. A. Michaux in travelling from Nashville to Knoxville in 1802 says: “Between Nashville and Fort Blount (above Nashville on the Cumberland River about sixty miles) the plantations, although isolated in the woods always, are nevertheless, upon the road, within two or three miles of each other. The inhabitants live in comfortable log houses; the major part keep negroes, and appear to live happy and in abundance.”[32] He says West Tennessee (Cumberland), now Middle Tennessee, produced a very fine grade of cotton and that manufacture was encouraged by the legislature.[33] “Emigrants to Tennessee,” he continues, “by at least the third year have gone over to the cotton crop.” He says that a man and his wife could, aside from raising sufficient Indian corn for sustenance “cultivate four acres (of cotton) with the greatest ease.” This would yield a net produce of two hundred and twelve dollars. “This light sketch,” he says, “demonstrates with what facility a poor family may acquire speedily, in West Tennessee, a certain degree of independence, particularly after having been settled five or six years, as they procure the means of purchasing one or two negroes, and of annually increasing this number.”[34]