'About seventy-five. There were some hundred and fifty on the plantation, altogether, big and little.
'What did the women do?'
'Women?' said Tom, with a slight note of interrogation. 'We didn't know any thing about women: they were all hands. When I was driving stock to New-York, I treated oxen and cows all alike; and on our plantation all the able-bodied hands worked together in the field, and no difference was made between them. There were old, decrepit wenches, unable to work, who took care of the children during the day. When the mothers came from the field at night they suckled their picaninies—for nearly all the women have babies. They breed like rabbits,' added Tom, 'in postscript.'
'But what did you know about raising cotton?' I asked.
'Nothing, of course,' he replied, 'you must remember that I was second overseer. The head overseer took the chief management of affairs. But when I had been there about three months, Blake died—that was my chief's name—then the whole charge of the plantation then devolved on me. Talbot was North, spending the summer. I wrote to him at Saratoga, informing of the death of Blake, and requesting him to get another head-overseer. But I got no reply, and I supposed he never received the letter. When he came back in the fall, I found that he had, though; but he said he supposed things would go on well enough. And so they did. The supplies were all on hand, and there was nothing to do but to work the place, raise the crop, and gather it.'
'But, after the death of Blake, and in the absence of Talbot, your want of knowledge of the business must have worked you great inconvenience,' I remarked.
'Not at all,' he replied; 'I knew next to nothing about it, it is true; but the niggars did. [Tom would call them niggars.] They understood the business well enough, the most of them. Talbot knew nothing about it himself, and he seemed to care less. These planters put every thing on the overseers. They make them responsible for the crop; and the overseers—they make the hands responsible.'
'Well, tell me something, now, of the operations of each day on the plantation. How early did you get the hands at work in the morning?'
'In summer I called the hands at about four o'clock. They had half an hour to get their feed and reach the field. I divided them into gangs of from fifteen to thirty each, and appointed some one of the most intelligent to oversee each gang. I then set them their tasks for the day; and calling out Dick, or Jeff, or whatever his name might be that I had appointed, I told him, in presence and hearing of his gang, that I made him responsible for the work being done, and being well done; that if the hands did not obey him, he should lick them, and make them do their work. In this way I never had any difficulty in getting the work done which I had set for them.
'When I had got them all at work, I rode from one part of the field to another to see how they were getting along; and when the sun began to get too hot, toward nine o'clock, I would go back to my quarters at the house, get my breakfast, and then lounge about awhile, and finally lie down and sleep through the heat of the day. After four or five o'clock in the afternoon, I had my horse brought up by my servant—I had my own servant, I told you; I had my boots blacked twice a day; had to keep up the dignity of the institution, you know—I had my horse brought up, and rode round to the different gangs.'