THE FREEDMEN.
REV. JOSEPH E. ROY, D.D., Field Superintendent, Atlanta, Ga.
STUDIES IN THE SOUTH.
FROM THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A Black Planter.
There is a class of colored men in the South who are laying the foundations of a better state of things than now prevails, by sheer industry and devotion to money-making. I found a conspicuous illustration of this type in the person and work of a negro in one of the old Southern States. He could not read, but had learned within a few years, by instruction from his young wife, to write well enough to enable him to “keep the time” of his hands by recording it in his book of farm accounts. He had “begun without nothin’,” he said. At the end of the war he gathered up some “lame and sick gov’ment mules that had been turned out fuh de crows, an’ doctor’d ’em up.” Then he worked on the plantations near him, at first by the day, but soon began to rent land and “hire hands.” He said he “lived on nothin’, or what other folks frowed away; but I reckon I fed my mules mighty well.” He had bought land, a little at a time, and when I visited him owned many hundred acres of the best land in that region. He still worked hard himself, and exacted, most rigidly, the amount of labor which he thought his hands ought to perform. “I don’t lay out fuh ’em to do as much as I does, boss; but dey mus’n’t shirk.” His residence was but a few miles from a considerable town. The year before I was there a neighboring planter had wanted a twenty-acre wood-lot cleared off. It was heavily timbered, and this black man offered to clear the ground for the wood which was to be removed. This was accepted, and he “had de choppin’ done in de wintah, when dey wusn’t no wuk, an’ han’s wus cheap.” The wood was drawn out and piled up on a vacant lot near the road. “Nex’ summah eberybody’s out o’ wood in town; dey allays is; dey nebber luks ahead mo’ ’an twel’ dinnah time. Nobody hain’t no time to haul wood den. Eberybody’s in de cotton. But ebery night, ahtah we done done de day’s wuk in de fiel’, den my wagons every one takes loads o’ wood to town. De bigbugs pays good price den, ’cause dey ain’t no wood fuh to be hed. So dah, den [becoming animated], hi, boss, I sells de wood, see! An’ I pays all de spences fuh cuttin’ it, an’ in de nex’ place I buys de lan’ what de wood come off, an’ I hab suffin lef’ in de bank.” The guttural chuckle with which he ended I am powerless to represent. The principal citizens of the town said this story was true.
This man reared cattle, sheep, and hogs, and had better blooded animals than any other planter near him, white or black. He was saving all the manure that his farms yielded, and drawing more from the town—“de profit’s on de back load.” His fences were good, and, what is rare in the South, the fence-rows were kept clean, and free from weeds, briars and bushes.