“Why, a good many of them has two or three plantations, but they don’t often live on any of them.”
“Must have ice for their wine, you see,” said Mr. S., “or they’d die. So they have to live in Natchez or New Orleans. A heap of them live in New Orleans.”
“And in summer they go up into Kentucky, do they not? I’ve seen country houses there which were said to belong to cotton-planters from Mississippi.”
“No, sir. They go North. To New York, and Newport, and Saratoga, and Cape May, and Seneca Lake. Somewhere that they can display themselves more than they do here. Kentucky is no place for that. That’s the sort of people, sir, all the way from here to Natchez. And all round Natchez, too. And in all this section of country where there’s good land. Good God! I wouldn’t have my children educated, sir, among them, not to have them as rich as Dr. ——, every one of them. You can know their children as far off as you can see them. Young swell-heads! You’ll take note of ’em in Natchez. You can tell them by their walk. I noticed it yesterday at the Mansion House. They sort o’ throw out their legs as if they hadn’t got strength enough to lift ’em and put them down in any particular place. They do want so bad to look as if they weren’t made of the same clay as the rest of God’s creation.”
Some allowance is of course to be made for the splenetic temperament of this gentleman, but facts evidently afford some justification of his sarcasms. This is easily accounted for. The farce of the vulgar-rich has its foundation in Mississippi, as in New York and in Manchester, in the rapidity with which certain values have advanced, especially that of cotton, and, simultaneously, that of cotton lands and negroes.[15] Of course, there are men of refinement and cultivation among the rich planters of Mississippi, and many highly estimable and intelligent persons outside of the wealthy class, but the number of such is smaller in proportion to that of the immoral, vulgar, and ignorant newly-rich, than in any other part of the United States. And herein is a radical difference between the social condition of this region and that of the sea-board slave States, where there are fewer wealthy families, but where among the few people of wealth, refinement and education are more general.
I asked how rich the sort of men were of whom he spoke.
“Why, sir, from a hundred thousand to ten million.”
“Do you mean that between here and Natchez there are none worth less than a hundred thousand dollars?”
“No, sir, not beyond the ferry. Why, any sort of a plantation is worth a hundred thousand dollars. The niggers would sell for that.”
“How many negroes are there on these plantations?”