The months of February and March, with a portion of April, I spent mainly on Louisiana and Mississippi plantations, seeking to gain some insight into the workings of the free-labor system on these large estates, and especially to study the various developments of the plantation negro character. It has been popularly supposed that the negroes in the cotton-growing regions of the South-west were, from their isolation in the swamps and their rarer contact with the whites, the most ignorant, degraded, and unfit for freedom of their race. They had escaped the careful observation given to the character of the emancipated slaves along the coast; and, as it seemed, offered therefore a comparatively fresh and inviting field for study.
Whether these plantation negroes would do less or more work now than in a state of slavery, I found to be an unsettled point. Every old slaveholder, I might almost say everybody in the old slaveholding communities, vehemently argued that “niggers wouldn’t do more’n half as much, now that the lash was no longer behind them.” On the other hand, Northern experimenters told different stories. Some were disgusted with the slowness and stupidity of the negroes; others said all they needed was prompt pay. Give them that, and they would work better than the average of uneducated white laborers.
On three plantations, where I had the opportunity of watching their performance critically at various periods during a couple of months, I was convinced that when they were employed in gangs, under the supervision of an overseer who had the judgment to handle them to advantage, they did as well as any laborers. They seemed, by nature, gregarious. Put one at some task by himself, and there was every probability that he would go to sleep or go fishing. Even in gangs, not half of them could be depended on for steady work, except under the eye of the overseer or driver; but, with his direction, they labored cheerfully and steadily. Doubtless they worked more hours per day while in slavery; but, they were perfectly willing now to work as many hours as any employer ought to ask.
On many plantations they rose half an hour before daybreak, when the horn first sounded. A few minutes before sunrise, the horn sounded again, and they all started for the fields. By sunrise the whole force, nearly one hundred and seventy hands, were at work. At noon they stopped for an hour and a half—then worked till sunset. On others, the first bell rang at four o’clock; at daybreak the second rang, and every hand started for the fields—the wages of the tardy ones being docked. They carried their corn-bread, boiled pork, and greens in little tin buckets, and about eight o’clock all stopped for breakfast. In half an hour the drivers called them to work again, which continued till twelve. Then came an hour and a half’s rest, then work again till sundown.
I never saw hands more cheerful or contented than some managed on this last plan were. They had a new plantation, cut out of the swamp, to cultivate. It had eight hundred acres of arable land, nearly the whole of it incumbered with fallen logs. The cypress trees had been “deadened” in 1859 and 1860; during the years of the war, they had fallen, until the place was perfectly covered with them; and the task of rolling the logs and preparing for the plow, was almost as great as that of the original clearing. They had begun this work about the middle of January, with only forty-two hands, little and big. The working force was gradually increased, till in April they had sixty-five. By the first of April they had six hundred and seventy-five acres bedded up and ready for planting. The old estimate was, that each first-class hand should cultivate ten acres. Here were hands, not first class, but men, women, and children, who had under unusually unfavorable circumstances, cleared off and prepared for planting, an average of nearly thirteen acres to the hand. And the overseer, an old Southern one, said he had no doubt at all about being able to cultivate all the cotton he could get planted.
I observed, however, that when he thought they were not getting on fast enough, he always found it necessary to offer some reward in addition to their regular wages, to revive their drooping energies. One day he would promise the plowmen all a drink of whisky, provided they finished a certain “cut” by evening. Then a plug or two of tobacco would be given to the hand who did the best work through the entire day. If they got all the land cleared off in time for planting, they were to quit for a day, go off to the lake across the swamp in a body and have a big fish-fry. Still, the main motive, under the stimulus of which pretty steady work was secured, was always that “at fust ob next month, Mass’r —— (the proprietor) will be ’long wid greenbacks enuff to shingle a house for us.”
The house servants seem singularly worthless. The praises of this class of Southern slaves have always been loudly sung by their owners, but the good cooks and rare housekeepers have certainly disappeared. On one plantation which I visited, there resided at the “big house” only the overseer and, for perhaps half of each week, the young proprietor. To keep house for these two men, required the united energies of four able-bodied negresses. One cooked; another assisted her; the third waited on the table and swept the rooms; and the fourth milked the cows—two or three in number—and made the butter! With all this muster of servants, the two much waited-on white men lived no better than the average of Northern day-laborers.