Dr. Warren spoke of the great eagerness of the blacks to buy or lease land, and have homes of their own. This he said accounted in a great measure for their backwardness in making contracts. He said to one intelligent freedman: “The whites intend to compel you to hire out to them.” The latter replied: “What if we should compel them to lease us lands?”
There were other reasons why the blacks would not contract. At Vicksburg, a gentleman who had been fifty miles up the valley looking for a plantation, said to me: “The negroes everywhere I went have been shamefully abused. They had been promised that if they would remain and work the plantations, they should have a share of the crops; and now the planters refuse to give them anything. They have no confidence in Southern men, and will not hire out to them; but they are very eager to engage with Northern men.”
This was the universal testimony, not only of travellers, but of candid Southern planters. One of the latter class explained to me how it was that the freedman was cheated out of his share of the crop. After the cotton is sent to market, the proprietor calls up his negroes, and tells them he has “furnished them such and such things, for which he has charged so much, and that there are no profits to divide. The darkey don’t understand it,—he has kept no accounts; but he knows he has worked hard and got nothing. He won’t hire to that man again. But I, and any other man who has done as he agreed with his niggers, can hire now as many as we want.”
Colonel Thomas assured me that two thirds of the laborers in the State had been cheated out of their wages during the past year.
Mr. C——, a Northern man who had taken a plantation at ——, (I omit names, for he told me that not only his property but his life depended upon the good-will of his neighbors,) related to me his experience. He hired his plantation of a gentleman noted for his honesty: “He goes by the name of ‘Honest M——’ all through the country. But honesty appeared to be a virtue to be exercised only towards white people: it was too good to be thrown away on niggers. This M—— has four hundred sheep, seventy milch cows, fifteen horses, ten mules, and forty hogs, all of which were saved from the Yankees when they raided through the country, by an old negro who run them off across a swamp. Honest M—— has never given that negro five cents. Another of his slaves had a cow of his own from which he raised a fine pair of oxen: Honest M—— lays claim to those oxen and sells them. A slave-woman that belonged to him had a cow she had raised from a calf: Honest M—— takes that, and adds it to his herd. He promised his niggers a share of the crops this year; but he has sold the cotton, and locked up the corn, and never given one of them a dollar. And all this time he thinks he is honest: he thinks Northern capitalists treat free laborers in this way. You can’t get it through the heads of these Southern planters that the laboring class has any rights.
“Honest M—— has two plantations,” continued Mr. C——: “he rents me one of them. But he gave me notice at the start that he should take all the niggers from my plantation, and that I must look out for my own help. When I went to take possession I was astonished to find the niggers all there.
“’How’s this?’ I said. ‘I thought these people were going with you?’
“He said he couldn’t induce one of them to contract; and he had about given up the idea of running his other plantation, because the niggers wouldn’t work. He had offered twenty-five dollars a month, with board and medical attendance, and they wouldn’t engage to him even for that.
“’Well,’ said I, ‘if you have got through I should like to hire them.’
“He said I was welcome to try. They knew me to be a Northern man, and when I called them around me for a talk, they all came with grinning faces. Said I: ‘Mr. M—— offers you twenty-five dollars a month. That is more than I can afford to pay, and I think you’d better hire to him.’ They looked stolid: they couldn’t see it: they didn’t want to work for him at any price.