The laborers here went to the fields at daybreak. About eight o’clock all stopped for breakfast, which they had carried with them in their little tin buckets. Half an hour later they were at work again. At twelve they went to the quarters for dinner; at half-past one they resumed work, and at sunset they could be seen filing back in long noisy rows across the plantation, shouting, singing, and arranging for the evening dance.
They were divided into three gangs: the “hoes, log-rollers, and plows.” The plantation had been neglected for the last four years; briars grew everywhere, and the ground was covered with logs. The whole scene, when the laborers were at work, was one of the utmost animation. The overseer kept the three gangs near each other, the hoes ahead, pushing hard behind them the log-rollers, and shouting constantly to the log-rollers to keep out of their way the plowmen. The air was filled with a dense smoke from the burning briars and logs. Moving about among the fires, raking together the trash, chopping the briars, now seizing a brand from a burning heap, and dextrously firing half-a-dozen new ones, then hurrying forward to catch up with the gang, singing, laughing, teasing the log-rollers to “cotch us if you kin,” were the short-skirted, black-faced damsels, twenty or twenty-five in number, who composed the trash-gang.
Trash, Log and Plow Gangs at work.—Page [496].
Before the little heaps were half burnt the log-rollers were among them. A stout, black fellow, whisky bottle in hand, gave directions. At least half the gang were women, each armed, like the men, with a formidable handspike. They were very proud of their distinction, and wanted it understood that dey wasn’t none ob you’ triflin’ hoe han’s; dey was log-rollers, dey was. Selecting the log hardest to be moved, as the center for a heap, the driver shouted, “Now, heah, hurry up dat log dere, and put it on dis side heah!” A dozen handspikes were thrust under the log, and every woman’s voice shouted, in shrill chorus, “Come up wid de log! come up wid the log!” Sometimes the spikes were thrust under, and the log was lifted bodily, the foreman shouting, “Man agin man dere! gal agin gal! all togedder wid you, if you ’spec any water out o’ dis bottle!”
Sometimes, before these heaps were fired, the plows were upon them, every plowman urging his mules almost into a trot, and the driver occasionally shouting, “Git out o’ de way, there, you lazy log-rollers, or we plow right ober ye.” The land was a loose loam, turning up like an ash-heap; and both negroes and mules seemed to thrive on the hard work.
The overseer rarely left the field. With one leg lazily thrown across the pummel of his saddle, he lounged in his seat, occasionally addressing a mild suggestion to one of the men, or saying to the driver that the other gangs were pressing him pretty close. Then, riding over to the next, he would quietly hint that the trash-gang was getting ahead of them, or that the plows would catch them soon, if they weren’t careful. All treated him with the utmost respect. I am satisfied that no Northern laborers, of the same degree of intelligence, ever worked more faithfully, more cheerfully, or with better results.
On the first of April, the overseer told me, he intended to stop plowing and plant the land then prepared. Then he should resume plowing, and keep on plowing and planting till the whole eight hundred acres were taken up. If he could finish it by the middle of May he should feel sure of a good crop. Planting ended, he should go over the land, throwing the earth away from the young and tender cotton-plant, with a moldboard plow. The hoes would follow the plows, carefully dressing up the rows, and thinning out the cotton to one stalk for about every eighteen inches. Then fresh scrapings, and plowings, and hoeings, continued, without intermission, till perhaps the middle of July. Then would follow a month of leisure, to be spent making cotton baskets, repairing fences, and preparing the gins. By the middle of August, the lower bolls would be opening, and the pickers would take the field. A couple of days later the gin would be started. From that time until Christmas there would be one constant hurry to pick and gin the crop as it bolled out. Fifty bales a week were the capacity of the gin, and the overseer expected to keep it driven to the utmost. Every Saturday, the cotton baled through the week would be hauled to the river bank and shipped to New Orleans. By the last of August, returns would be coming in from the crop, and from that time the financial battle for the proprietors was over.
A day or two later I rode several miles further down the river, to a plantation of two thousand five hundred acres, one thousand two hundred of cleared land, which had recently been purchased for fifty-six thousand dollars by a Northern man. The house was a comfortable two-story frame, with abundant porches and large windows, looking directly out through the carefully trimmed shrubbery, upon the Mississippi, which flowed scarcely twenty yards from the door-step. At the North, it would have been considered a very proper residence for a substantial farmer owning a couple of hundred acres. On the river-bank stood a curious log structure, built from the fragments of two or three old flat-boats. Here, with genuine Yankee thrift, the new proprietor had established a store to catch the negro trade. Its business was done entirely for cash, and its sales averaged over fifty dollars a day—all made at an average profit of one hundred per. cent. Calicoes, cottonades, denims, shoes, hats, brass jewelry, head handkerchiefs, candy, tobacco, sardines, cheese, and whisky were the great staples. The latter was always watered down at least one-fourth, and the “fine” was kept up by a liberal introduction of red pepper-pods.