The South-West, by a Yankee. In Two Volumes. Volume 2

by J. H. Ingraham

Many of the negroes who swarm in the cities are what are called "hired servants." They belong to planters, or others, who, finding them qualified for some occupation in which they cannot afford to employ them, hire them to citizens, as mechanics, cooks, waiters, nurses, &c., and receive the monthly wages for their services. Some steady slaves are permitted to "hire their own time;" that is, to go into town and earn what they can, as porters, labourers, gardeners, or in other ways, and pay a stipulated sum weekly to their owners, which will be regulated according to the supposed value of the slave's labour. Masters, however, who are sufficiently indulgent to allow them to "hire their time," are seldom rigorous in rating their labour very high. But whether the slave earn less or more than the specified sum, he must always pay that, and neither more nor less than that to his master at the close of each week, as the condition of this privilege. Few fail in making up the sum; and generally they earn more, if industrious, which is expended in little luxuries, or laid by in an old rag among the rafters of their houses, till a sufficient sum is thus accumulated to purchase their freedom. This they are seldom refused, and if a small amount is wanting to reach their value, the master makes it up out of his own purse, or rather, takes no notice of the deficiency. I have never known a planter refuse to aid, by peculiar indulgences, any of his steady and well-disposed slaves, who desired to purchase their freedom. On the contrary, they often endeavour to excite emulation in them to the attainment of this end. This custom of allowing slaves to "hire their time," ensuring the master a certain sum weekly, and the slave a small surplus, is mutually advantageous to both.

The majority of town servants are those who are hired to families by planters, or by those living in town who own more than they have employment for, or who can make more by hiring them out than by keeping them at home. Some families, who possess not an acre of land, but own many slaves, hire them out to different individuals; the wages constituting their only income, which is often very large. There are indeed few families, however wealthy, whose incomes are not increased by the wages of hired slaves, and there are many poor people, who own one or two slaves, whose hire enables them to live comfortably. From three to five dollars a week is the hire of a female, and seventy-five cents or a dollar a day for a male. Thus, contrary to the opinion at the north, families may have good servants, and yet not own one, if they are unable to buy, or are conscientious upon that ground, though there is not a shade of difference between hiring a slave, where prejudices are concerned, and owning one. Those who think otherwise, and thus compound with conscience, are only making a distinction without a difference. Northern people, when they come to this country, who dislike either to hire or purchase, often bring free coloured, or white servants (helps) with them. The first soon marry with the free blacks, or become too lofty in their conceptions of things, in contrasting the situation of their fellows around them, with their own, to be retained. The latter, if they are young and pretty, or even old and ugly, assume the fine lady at once, disdaining to be servants among slaves, and Hymen, in the person of some spruce overseer, soon fulfils their expectations. I have seen but one white servant, or domestic, of either sex, in this country, and this was the body servant of an Englishman who remained a few days in Natchez, during which time, John sturdily refused to perform a single duty of his station.

The expense of a domestic establishment at the south, would appear very great in the estimation of a New-Englander. A gardener, coachman, nurse, cook, seamstress, and a house-maid, are indispensable. Some of the more fashionable families add footmen, chamber-maids, hostler, an additional nurse, if there be many children, and another seamstress. To each of these officials is generally attached a young neophyte, while one constantly stumbles over useless little negroes scattered all about the house and court-yard. Necessary as custom has made so great a number of servants, there seems to be much less domestic labour performed in a family of five, such perfect "eye-servants" are they, than in a northern family, with only one "maid of all work." There are some Yankee "kitchen girls"—I beg their ladyships' pardon for so styling them—who can do more house-work, and do it better, than three or four negro servants, unless the eye of their mistress is upon them. As nearly all manual labour is performed by slaves, there must be one to each department, and hence originates a state of domestic manners and individual character, which affords an interesting field of contemplation to the severer northerner. The city slaves are distinguished as a class, by superior intelligence, acuteness, and deeper moral degradation. A great proportion of them are hired, and, free from restraint in a great degree, compared with their situations under their own masters, or in the country, they soon become corrupted by the vices of the city, and in associating indiscriminately with each other, and the refuse of the white population. Soon the vices of the city, divested of their refinement, become their own unmasked. Although they may once have ranked under the first class, and possessed the characteristics which designate the decent, well-behaved domestic of the planter, they soon lose their identity. There are of course exceptions to these characteristics, as also in the other classes. Some of these exceptions have come within my knowledge, of a highly meritorious character.

The third and lowest class consists of those slaves, who are termed "field hands."[19] Many of them rank but little higher than the brutes that perish, in the scale of intellect, and they are in general, as a class, the last and lowest link in the chain of the human species. Secluded in the solitude of an extensive plantation, which is their world, beyond whose horizon they know nothing—their walks limited by the "quarters" and the field—their knowledge and information derived from the rude gossip of their fellows, straggling runaways, or house servants, and without seeing a white person except their master or overseer, as they ride over the estate, with whom they seldom hold any conversation—they present the singular feature of African savages, disciplined to subordination, and placed in the heart of a civilized community. Mere change of place will not change the savage. Moral and intellectual culture alone, will elevate him to an equality with his civilized brethren. The African transplanted from the arid soil of Ebo, Sene-Gambia, or Guinea, to the green fields of America, without mental culture, will remain still the wild African, though he may wield his ox-whip, whistle after his plough, and lift his hat, when addressed, like his more civilized fellows. His children, born on the plantation to which he is attached, and suffered to grow up as ignorant as himself, will not be one degree higher in the scale of civilization, than they would have been had they been born in Africa. The next generation will be no higher advanced; and though they may have thrown away the idols of their country, and been taught some vague notions of God and the Christian religion, they are in almost every sense of the word Africans, as rude, and barbarous, but not so artless, as their untamed brethren beyond the Atlantic. This has been, till within a few years, the general condition of "field hands" in this country, though there have been exceptions on some plantations highly honourable to their proprietors. Within a few years, gentlemen of intelligence, humanity, and wealth, themselves the owners of great numbers of slaves, have exerted themselves and used their influence in mitigating the condition of this class. They commenced a reformation of the old system, whose chief foundation was unyielding rigour, first upon their own plantations. The influence of their example was manifest by the general change which gradually took place on other estates. This reformation is still in progress, and the condition of the plantation slave is now meliorated, so far as policy will admit, while they remain in their present relation. But still they are, and by necessity, always will be, an inferior class to the two former. It is now popular to treat slaves with kindness; and those planters who are known to be inhumanly rigorous to their slaves, are scarcely countenanced by the more intelligent and humane portion of the community. Such instances, however, are very rare; but there are unprincipled men everywhere, who will give vent to their ill feelings, and bad passions, not with less good-will upon the back of an indented apprentice, than upon that of a purchased slave. Private chapels are now introduced upon most of the plantations of the more wealthy, which are far from any church; Sabbath-schools are instituted for the black children, and Bible-classes for the parents, which are superintended by the planter, a chaplain, or some of the female members of the family. But with all these aids they are still, as I have remarked, the most degraded class of slaves; and they are not only regarded as such by the whites, but by the two other classes, who look upon them as infinitely beneath themselves. It is a difficult matter to impress upon their minds moral or religious truths. They generally get hold of some undefined ideas, but they can go no farther. Their minds seem to want the capacity to receive intellectual impressions, nor are they capable of reasoning from the simplest principles, or of associating ideas. A native planter, who has had the management of between two and three hundred slaves, since he commenced planting, recently informed me, that if he conveyed an order to any of his "field hands," which contained two ideas, he was sure it would not be followed correctly.

"Dick," said he to one of them, "go to the carriage-house, and you will find a side-saddle and a man's saddle there. Put one of them on the roan horse; but don't put on the ladies' saddle, mind you." "Yes, master," said Dick, lifting his cap very respectfully, and then posted off to the carriage-house; whence he returned in a few minutes with the roan caparisoned for a lady.

The last idea seems to thrust out the first. I have frequently tried experiments to ascertain how far this was true of them in general, and have convinced myself, that it is very hard for the uneducated, rude field negro to retain more than a single impression at a time. A gentleman, who has been a leading planter for the last twenty years, and who has nearly one hundred slaves, of all ages, told me, that, finding the established catechism too hard for his slaves, he drew one up in manuscript himself, as simply as he thought it could be done. But a few lessons convinced him that he must make another effort, on a plan still more simple: and he accordingly drew up a series of questions, each containing one idea, and no more; for every question involving two had always puzzled them. Every question he also made a leading one: this he found to be absolutely necessary. "Yet," he observed, "after all my efforts, for many years past, to imbue the minds—not of the children only, but of the parents, who were all included in my list of catechumens—with the plainest rudiments of Christianity, I do not think that I have one on my estate, who comprehends the simplest principle connected with the atonement."

One of these negroes, after a long course of drilling, was asked, "In whose image were you made?" "In de image ob de debil, master," was his prompt reply.

The restrictions upon slaves are very rigorous in law, but not in fact. They are forbidden to leave their estates without a written "pass," or some letter or token, whereby it may appear that they are proceeding by authority. This is a wise regulation, to which I have before alluded; and if its spirit was properly entered into by the community, it would be the best means for public security that could be adopted.

Patrols are organized in the several counties and towns, whose duty it is to preserve order, and apprehend all negroes without passes. This body of men consists of four or five citizens, unarmed, unless with riding whips, headed by one of their number as captain. They are appointed monthly by a justice of the peace, and authorized to visit negro cabins, "quarters," and all places suspected to contain negroes, or unlawful assemblies of slaves; and all whom they may find strolling about, without a "pass," they are empowered to punish upon the spot, with "any number of lashes not exceeding fifteen," or take them to prison. They go out on duty once a week in the towns and villages; but it is considered a bore, and performed reluctantly. But there is no deficiency of energy and activity in case of any actual alarm. Soon after the South-Hampton tragedy, during the Christmas holydays, the public mind was excited by a vague rumour that this drama was to be reacted here, as it was known that some of the negroes, supposed to be engaged in it, had been brought out and sold in this state. During this excitement the patrols were very vigilant. On the high roads they were increased to one hundred armed and mounted men. But this alarm was groundless, and very soon subsided.

The fencibles—a volunteer military corps in Natchez, composed of the first young gentlemen of the city, and now commanded by the late chancellor of the state—the best disciplined and finest looking body of men west of the Alleghanies, constitute the military police of that city. They are also the "firemen;" and a more efficient phalanx to battle with a conflagration, cannot be found, even in New-York or Boston. Patrols go out merely to preserve the peace of the neighbourhood from any disturbance from drunken negroes, rather than to guard against insurrectionary movements.