The quantity of cotton raised and secured by good management most commonly averages about five or six bales to the hand: and the quantity, among the mass of planters, more frequently falls below, than rises above this estimate. Some, with a few choice hands, may sometimes average nine or ten bales to the hand by picking until January.
When the crop is all secured, which, as we observed before, varies from the first of December until some time in January, according to the season, hands, and extent of the crop, the hands are employed during the winter in clearing, chopping logs in the field, splitting rails, or ditching, if necessary. About the middle of February they resume preparations for "another crop."
Note D.—Page 258.
A recent writer, in speculating upon the possible result of an insurrectionary movement in the south, says, in the course of his remarks,—
"Here, where the whites so far outnumber the blacks, as to render such a struggle hopeless on their part, there is little or nothing to apprehend; but in the south, where the case is reversed, the consequences will probably be what they were in St. Domingo—the extermination or expatriation of the whites, the loss of tens of hundreds of thousands of lives, and hundreds or perhaps of millions of property."
In reply, and in confutation of this opinion, Gen. Houston of Natchez, addressed a very sensible and well-written paper to the editor of the New-York Courier and Enquirer, in which he says—
"There are but two states in the Union where the slaves are equal in numbers to the whites, and in these they have a bare majority; in other states they have but a third and in others a fourth or fifth. Now is there any man who supposes that an equal number of negroes, unacquainted with arms, undisciplined, without combination, without officers, without a rifle or a musket, or a single cartridge, can in any way be formidable to an equal number of whites, well armed and equipped, well supplied with all the necessaries of war, well organized, and well officered? The notion is absurd. I will go farther; take a body of negroes, furnish them with arms, equipments, and every thing necessary for war; let them have twelve months to combine, to train, and to acquire a knowledge of the use of arms, and my life on it, they would be nothing more at the end of the time than an ignorant disorderly rabble, who could not form a line of battle, a thousand of them would not stand the charge of a single volunteer corps, they would disperse at the first volley of musketry, and a body of white men would feel debased to compete with such foes.
"There is no southern state that apprehends any injury from its slaves—that seeks protection from any power on earth—not one of them values the Union one particle as the means of guarding them on that score.
"There are no people on earth better supplied with arms, more accustomed to their daily use, and I may say more ready to use them, than the people of the south. Go into any house in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, or any other southern state, and you will generally see a good rifle and fowling-piece; and every neighbourhood has its men who can throw a deer running at full speed at the distance of one hundred yards. Do such men seek protection or apprehend danger from an inferior number of unarmed, ignorant and enslaved negroes? Most assuredly not.
"Experience has shown that the militia of the United States are frequently able to combat successfully with the regular troops of Europe. And many a well-fought field has shown that the militia of the southern states are equal to any in the Union, I will not be invidious and say superior. If such is the case, what lessons do the wars and experience of Europe teach us? There it is a received maxim that ten thousand disciplined troops are superior to an army of forty thousand undisciplined peasantry, even when they are equally supplied with arms. And to this maxim history shows but few exceptions, as in Switzerland and the Tyrolese mountains, where the peasantry are much favoured by the mountains and defiles, are inured to hardships, trained in the chase and in the use of arms.