The great rush of Northerners seeking plantations was already over. Along the Mississippi, and in other favorable localities for cotton-planting, prices had gone up so largely that men who had only been tempted South by the hope of ruinously low bargains, took Northern exchange for their money and went home again. Others, who had made investments in the interior of Alabama and Mississippi, were greatly discouraged by the temper of the people and by the scarcity of laborers. Lands were being leased on the Mississippi, from Natchez to Lake Providence, at rents ranging from eight to as high as twenty-two dollars an acre. The lessees, after paying these enormous prices, had still in most cases to stock the places with everything, erect fences, contend with a two to four years’ growth of Caco and Bermuda grass, and pay fifteen dollars a month, with rations and medical attendance, for laborers. And then, after incurring the expenses, they had to take the risk of overflow, and face the prospect of a steadily declining cotton market. With a good year and good fortune, they were certain, after all these outlays, of a large profit remaining; but the contingences were so numerous and the risks so great, that an investment in Mississippi bottom cotton plantations seemed to many business men very much like an investment (heretofore very well known on the Mississippi), on the chances of turning up sevens or holding aces.
The city was full of negroes. They felt their new power, of which it was impossible that they should be ignorant while the demands for their services were so pressing; and they were very slow about making contracts except on terms entirely satisfactory to themselves. They had no doubt of their safety in the cities; but they feared to trust themselves in the old Rebel communities in the country.
For even the limited number of plantations which were being worked, the supply of labor was wholly inadequate; nor would all the idle negroes in the cities have made it up. There seemed no reason to doubt that during the war there had been an actual and very great disappearance of negroes. A few had gone North; some, the rumor had it, were being carried to Cuba; but disease and privation accounted for the most. Their new-found freedom had soon liberated them, in very many cases, from all services on earth.
[65]. Under authority of this bill they at once proceeded to elect the old Rebel Mayor of the city, whom Butler had been compelled to imprison for his outrageously rebellious conduct. The Union offices were also filled, almost without an exception, by returned Rebels. The significance of such an election could not be misunderstood, save by the willfully blind. In effect it gave the Rebels absolute control of the political machinery of the State.
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Sugar and Rice Culture in Louisiana—Profits and Obstacles.
A New Orleans friend of mine had recently purchased a fine sugar plantation, twenty-seven miles up the river from the city. He was going up to see how the season’s work was beginning, and I accepted his invitation to spend a day or too looking into the details of sugar culture.
Steaming up the lower Mississippi is about the dreariest form of traveling. Within is the same round of novel-reading, card-playing, eating ill-cooked meals, and swilling bad liquors at the bar, under penalty of offending every chance acquaintance who insists upon extending the hospitalities of the occasion. Without, you catch glimpses, occasionally, of the roofs of old Creole houses peering above the levees. These, and the stretches of reclaimed swamps on either hand, running back to the cypress brakes which invariably shut in the view, constitute the scenery.
But we left New Orleans at nearly sunset, and the night was brilliant with starlight. Word had been sent up the day before of our intended visit. As we approached the plantation, a great fire was seen on the levee, built to guide the pilot in making the landing. Grouped about it were two or three negroes and a couple of white men; the light from the burning logs casting its fantastic shadows over them. The boat’s bow struck the bank, we leaped off and a couple of negroes caught our traveling-bags. The boat rebounded by its own elasticity, the off-wheel gave a backward revolution, the captain shouted, “Good night,” to us from the hurricane-deck, and the vessel was already under headway, again up the stream, as we turned to receive the greetings of the old Creole overseer and the new proprietor’s agent.
From the landing, a wagon-road led across the levee and behind it up the river for a few yards, till we entered an old-fashioned garden, laid out in the stiff Dutch flower-bed style, and stood in front of the “mansion.” It was a fine old country house, built in the French style, with only dining-room, pantry, ice-closets and the like, back of the row of round brick-stuccoed columns below. Stair-cases ascended at the diagonal corners from the pavement to the second story gallery, which encircled the building, and from which glass doors opened into the parlors and bed-chambers. The floors, posts, and in fact nearly all parts of the wood-work were constructed of the best red cypress, and looked as if they might yet last for half-a-dozen generations. The lower story had a tesselated marble pavement; and outside the lower gallery a pavement of brick extended for a yard or two out from the house on all sides. Even with these precautions, the lower story was damp, and to live in it (or to live in the lower story of any house on the coast[[66]]) would, in the estimation of the inhabitants, be almost certain death.