Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field: Southern Adventure in Time of War. / Life with the Union Armies, and Residence on a Louisiana Plantation

by Thomas Wallace Knox

Cotton-picking requires skill rather than strength. The young women are usually the best pickers, on account of their superior dexterity. The cotton-stalk, or bush, is from two to five or six feet high. It is unlike any plant with which we are familiar in the North. It resembles a large currant-bush more nearly than any thing else I can think of. Where the branches are widest the plant is three or four feet from side to side. The lowest branches are the longest, and the plant, standing by itself, has a shape similar to that of the Northern spruce. The stalk is sometimes an inch and a half in diameter where it leaves the ground. Before the leaves have fallen, the rows in a cotton-field bear a strong resemblance to a series of untrimmed hedges.

When fully opened, the cotton-bolls almost envelop the plant in their snow-white fiber. At a distance a cotton-field ready for the pickers forcibly reminds a Northerner of an expanse covered with snow. Our Northern expression, "white as snow," is not in use in the Gulf States. "White as cotton" is the form of comparison which takes its place.

The pickers walk between the rows, and gather the cotton from the stalks on either side. Each one gathers half the cotton from the row on his right, and half of that on his left. Sometimes, when the stalks are low, one person takes an entire row to himself, and gathers from both sides of it. A bag is suspended by a strap over the shoulder, the end of the bag reaching the ground, so that its weight may not be an inconvenience. The open boll is somewhat like a fully bloomed water-lily. The skill in picking lies in thrusting the fingers into the boll so as to remove all the cotton with a single motion. Ordinary-pickers grasp the boll with one hand and pluck out the cotton with the other. Skillful pickers work with both hands, never touching the bolls, but removing the cotton by a single dextrous twist of the fingers. They can thus operate with great rapidity.

As fast as the bags are filled, they are emptied into large baskets, which are placed at a corner of the field or at the ends of the rows. When the day's work is ended the cotton is weighed. The amount brought forward by each person is noted on a slate, from which it is subsequently recorded on the account-book of the plantation.

From one to four hundred pounds, according to the state of the plants, is the proper allowance for each hand per day.

In the days of slavery the "stint" was fixed by the overseer, and was required to be picked under severe penalties. It is needless to say that this stint was sufficiently large to allow of no loitering during the entire day. If the slave exceeded the quantity required of him, the excess was sometimes placed to his credit and deducted from a subsequent day. This was by no means the universal custom. Sometimes he received a small present or was granted some especial favor. By some masters the stint was increased by the addition of the excess. The task was always regulated by the condition of the cotton in the field. Where it would sometimes be three hundred pounds, at others it would not exceed one hundred.

At the time I commenced my cotton-picking, the circumstances were not favorable to a large return. The picking season begins in August or September, and is supposed to end before Christmas. In my case it was late in January, and the winter rain had washed much of the cotton from the stalks. Under the circumstances I could not expect more than fifty or seventy-five pounds per day for each person engaged.

During the first few days I did not weigh the cotton. I knew the average was not more than fifty pounds to each person, but the estimates which the negroes made fixed it at two hundred pounds. One night I astonished them by taking the weighing apparatus to the field and carefully weighing each basket. There was much disappointment among all parties at the result. The next day's picking showed a surprising improvement. After that time, each day's work was tested and the result announced. The "tell-tale," as the scales were sometimes called, was an overseer from whom there was no escape. I think the negroes worked faithfully as soon as they found there was no opportunity for deception.

I was visited by Mrs. B.'s agent a few days after I became a cotton-planter. We took an inventory of the portable property that belonged to the establishment, and arranged some plans for our mutual advantage. This agent was a resident of Natchez. He was born in the North, but had lived so long in the slave States that his sympathies were wholly Southern. He assured me the negroes were the greatest liars in the world, and required continual watching. They would take every opportunity to neglect their work, and were always planning new modes of deception. They would steal every thing of which they could make any use, and many articles that they could not possibly dispose of. Pretending illness was among the most frequent devices for avoiding labor, and the overseer was constantly obliged to contend against such deception. In short, as far as I could ascertain from this gentleman, the negro was the embodiment of all earthly wickedness. Theft, falsehood, idleness, deceit, and many other sins which afflict mortals, were the especial heritance of the negro.

In looking about me, I found that many of these charges against the negro were true. The black man was deceptive, and he was often dishonest. There can be no effect without a cause, and the reasons for this deception and dishonesty were apparent, without difficult research. The system of slavery necessitated a constant struggle between the slave and his overseer. It was the duty of the latter to obtain the greatest amount of labor from the sinews of the slave. It was the business of the slave to perform as little labor as possible. It made no difference to him whether the plantation produced a hundred or a thousand bales. He received nothing beyond his subsistence and clothing. His labor had no compensation, and his balance-sheet at the end of the month or year was the same, whether he had been idle or industrious. It was plainly to his personal interest to do nothing he could in any way avoid. The negro displayed his sagacity by deceiving the overseer whenever he could do so. The best white man in the world would have shunned all labor under such circumstances. The negro evinced a pardonable weakness in pretending to be ill whenever he could hope to make the pretense successful.