[76]. In Charleston harbor, the spring previous, Admiral Dahlgren showed our party the plantation book of a heavy coast planter. He was a devout man, paying tithes and giving God thanks for the good things of this life. At the end of a successful year’s operations he humbly returned thanks to a bountiful Providence, (as it was duly written down by himself,) for having been blessed to the extent of a net profit of thirty thousand dollars. Thereupon, in token of his gratitude, he ordered a distribution of money to every slave he had—six and a fourth cents cash to each and everyone!
He had forbidden the slaves wandering about to other plantations; but they wanted to sell their garden vegetables, and so he established a domestic market. Everything was to be sold at the house, at the fixed rates which he established. Eggs were to be bought at one cent per dozen. Chickens were six and one-fourth cents per dozen, except in the case of a favorite old man, who was to be paid double price for all he had to sell.
[77]. Another church, which I found on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, was located above the stable—the staircase leading up to it on the outside, from the barn-yard.
[78]. This they call “mourning for their sins, as the angels mourn.” The sounds were certainly the reverse of angelic. There are no words in the “mourning;” it is simply a nasal, aggressive, persistent boo-hoo, in chorus, by half the women present. Not a tear is to be seen, and the girls often rise from their knees, and in half an hour are begging the overseer for a drink of whisky.
[79]. When a dead person is interred, they call it simply the “buryin’.” After thirty or forty deaths, they have a big meeting and a funeral for the whole of them; thus distributing funeral honors, as the overseer said the preacher did his salvation, “by hullsale.” At this time the water was nearly over their burying ground, which was outside the levee.
CHAPTER L.
Further Illustrations of Plantation Negro Character.
I witnessed the monthly payments on several large plantations. On one the negroes had never been paid before; their masters having retained control of them till the end of the war. They had been hired about the middle of January, and had worked till the beginning of March, without asking for money. The lessee rode into the quarters and up to the overseer’s house, one day at noon, and it was soon whispered among the negroes that they were to be paid that night. Numbers of them, however, had complicated store accounts, and it took the lessee longer to interpret his overseer’s imperfect book-keeping than had been expected. The night passed without a word being said to the negroes about payment; they never mentioned it, and next morning were promptly in the fields before sunrise.
The following evening, however, they kept watching about the overseer’s house; one and another making some little errand that would excuse him for loitering a few moments by the steps or on the long gallery, and presently all understood that “we’s to be paid greenbacks, shore enuff.”
Finally a table was placed in the door of one of the rooms. The pay-roll, store-book, and some piles of greenbacks and fractional currency were spread out upon it, a couple of candles, fastened to the table by smearing it with melted tallow and dipping the ends in it before it congealed, furnished all the light. A hundred eager eyes watched the proceedings from the doors of the quarters. At last the bell was tapped by one of the drivers. In a moment or two the gallery was covered by the “whole stock of the plantation,” (as the overseer expressed it,) men, women and children.
They stood at respectful distance in a circle around the table, and with wide-eyed curiosity awaited developments. The lessee read from the pay-roll the contract, and asked them if they understood it; all said they did. Then he explained that, as they had only worked a couple of weeks in January, he hadn’t thought it worth while to go to the trouble of a payment for so short a time. Accordingly they were now to be paid for this part of January and for the whole of February. But they were only to be paid half what they had earned. The rest was to be reserved till the end of the year as a security for their faithful fulfillment of their contract. “That’s the security on one side. Perhaps, as most of you haven’t known me very long, you’d like to know what security you have, on your side that, at the end of the year I’ll keep my part of the contract and pay you this money?” They said nothing, but looked as if they would like to know. “Well you’re going to raise a big crop of cotton, aren’t you?” “Yes, sah” with emphasis. “Well, the bigger the crop the bigger your security. Every bale of that cotton is yours, till you are paid for your work out of it, and the Freedman’s Bureau will see that it pays you.”