The work here did not seem to be progressing so well as at the plantation last visited. The negroes were dissatisfied—why they seemed scarcely able to explain. The new proprietor had not yet acquired their confidence; he had perhaps been unfortunate in not properly yielding on one or two points to their prejudices, and his overseer, with whom he had quarreled, was doing his best to foment the discontent. This overseer, it seemed, had been assigned a room in the house with the family. To the great disgust of a daughter of the proprietor, he brought a negro women with him. She couldn’t “stand such goings on under her roof;” and, in the absence of her father, she promptly notified the overseer “to turn out that nigger or leave.” The overseer preferred the latter alternative, moved out to the quarters with the woman, and speedily had the negroes in such a dissatisfied state that the proprietor discharged him, drove off a number of the negroes, and went to Georgia for more. Near Eufala he found a number who had formerly belonged to the plantation. The most of them were getting nothing but rations and lodging for their labor; six or eight dollars per month were the highest wages any received, and all were eager to go back to Louisiana, provided they were sure they wouldn’t be taken to Cuba and sold. He had partially convinced them on this point, and he hoped soon to have fifty or sixty fresh laborers, who would enable him to snap his fingers at the discharged overseer and the dissatisfied laborers.
The owner of this plantation, on his discharge from the army two years before, had come down to this country not worth a hundred dollars. He opened a wood-yard, got some fortunate wood contracts with the government, accumulated a little money, and the next year leased some plantations. His money was soon exhausted; but, by the aid of dextrous manipulations of his credit and unlimited bragging about the value of his crop, he worried through. His profits were about forty thousand dollars, out of which he owed ten thousand dollars lease, and, perhaps, as much more in small sums for supplies. His creditors, growing impatient, sued him. This suited him exactly; the law’s delays were all in his favor; and meantime he took the money and bought this plantation; mortgaged it at once and so borrowed enough to carry him through the year. Thus he was in two years the owner of a property which, before the war, had been valued at two hundred thousand dollars; and with one good crop would be entirely out of debt.
Next day I went to another plantation, not more than a mile or two distant, to witness the Saturday issue of rations. It was a small plantation, of six or eight hundred acres cleared land; but the owner had, as yet, only twenty-five negroes, and did not expect to raise more than three or four hundred bales. He had no overseer, went among the hands himself, supervised their operations, and in his absence trusted mainly to the two or three negroes to whom the rest had been accustomed to look up as leaders.
The little, one-story double cabin stood fronting the double row of quarters. The street was thoroughly cleaned, the quarters all looked neat, (for negro quarters,) and the negroes themselves seemed in the finest spirits. A group of them stood gathered about the door of one of the cabins, which was used as a store-room, with a motley collection of tin buckets, bread-bowls, troughs, old candle-boxes, little bags, and the like, in which to receive “de ’lowance.” One of the negroes chopped up the rounds of mess pork, and weighed out four pounds to each, carefully shaving off, with a knife, till the scales were exactly balanced. The meal was measured by the proprietor himself, who had a pleasant word or a joke for every applicant as she approached. Then a negro took a tin cup, and baring his brawny arm to the elbow, dipped down into the molasses barrel, bringing up cup, hand, and wrist clammy with the black, viscous fluid, which was soon daubed over clothes, barrels, and faces promiscuously.
Room was presently made for a wrinkled, white-wooled old auntie, blear-eyed, trembling, and thin-voiced. “Please, massa, can’t you gib me little piece ob meat?” and she laughed a low, oily gobble of a laugh, as though she thought her presuming to ask for it rather funny. “Why, auntie, I thought you were so old you didn’t eat any now?” “Bress ye, sah, I eats lots, an’ wen de cotton come, sah, I picks some for ye. Aint strong ’nuff to pick much, sah, but I picks little for ye, close to de house.”
“Massa” handed her a piece of meat, and filled her outstretched apron with flour; and the old woman stepped back into the crowd, her face fairly aglow. A moment afterward, one of the girls said, as she took her flour, “I wants meal dis time; had flour las’.” “You g’long!” exclaimed the old woman with unwonted animation, “if you can’t take what white folks gibs you, go widout.”
“Heah, Lucy, you don’t want none.” Thus said the sable meat-chopper to one of the women, young, and, according to negro ideas, pretty. “Jus’ trus’ me wid your’n, den. You’ll be shore I wouldn’ steal it, ef I don’ wan’ none.” “Lo’d! might jus’ ’s well frow it ’way ’t once. Take you’ meat and g’long wid you!” But the beauty stood her ground, pork in one hand, and pail of meal balanced on her head, distributing her dangerous glances around, in a manner manifestly disconcerting to more than one of her admirers.
Nothing could exceed the general good humor. “They’re always so,” said the owner. “If I had fifty more such hands I’d make a fortune this year; but they really seem to have disappeared from the country.” Still he hoped to pick up a few more as the season advanced.