“It seemed that he had once been summoned to amputate the leg of a negro, injured by some accident at the cotton-gin. He found another physician in charge, who was expected to assist him. I asked the fellow to control the circulation while I prepared for the operation, which was to be performed not far from the ankle. D——n the blockhead, sir; what do you suppose he did? Why, sir, he applied the tourniquet to the femoral artery almost at the top of the thigh! But what could I do? I did venture to ask him if he felt quite sure that would stop the bleeding below the knee, and he bristled up as if I had insulted him. To have said any more would have been to have had a duel on hands with the son of one of our first families, and to have been ruined in the community whether I fought him or not. So I had to go ahead and perform the operation. The very first motion of the knife deluged me with blood! The poor negro bled to death, of course; and I called it killing by courtesy. I’ve done with that sort of thing. I’ll perform that operation out there, for it is sadly needed; but you must keep that ‘consulting physician’ away. I have nothing to do with consulting physicians about whom I know nothing!”
I subsequently witnessed the operation. Three or four negro women were in the room. The stolidity with which they watched the carving and bleeding of their sister’s person seemed amazing. Only once did they manifest the slightest emotion—when the saw began to grate on the bone. Yet they were kind enough to the poor sufferer; though I could not resist the impression that her life or death was a matter of comparative indifference to them. “Niggers never care for one another much,” said the overseer. Could he be right? They often manifest abundance of emotion—is it so abundant as to be without depth?
The husband, however, professed great joy. “I’s tuck care o’ ’Manda dis long. She done cost me more ’n tree hundred dollars, but I’s spend tree hundred more, if dey’s needed. Nebber you cry ’Manda. I’ll watch you long’s you live, and after you’s dead. I’s watch you long’s a bone’s leff.” He gave an account of the origin of the disease:
“One night, she done been hollerin’ all de night long. In de morning she git me look at her foot. Juss as I look, she gib a big scream, and out of de little sore on him bottom dere popped de last rattle from de end ob a rattlesnake tail. Den I know what de matter. Didn’t I, Mr. Smith?” appealing to the overseer. “Didn’t I go straight to you an’ tell you some o’ dem bad niggers been a conjurin’ wid de debbil on my wife? Den I ax you for some whisky dat no man nebber mix no water wid. You gib me some. Den I tuck dat rattlesnake button out o’ my wife’s foot down to de ribber, an’ I conjure on him. Fust I say words ober him. Den I sprinkle whisky, dat dere’s nebber been no water in, ober him. Den I sprinkle some whisky in de ribber. Den I frow him in after de whisky. Den I sprinkle more whisky atop of him. An’ den I tuck good drink o’ whisky, dat dere’s nebber been no water in, myself.”
But the other negroes conjuring with “de debbil” were too much for poor Charles, whisky and all; and his wife’s foot had grown steadily worse. When I first saw her, she was propped up in a chair, screaming every minute or two as if she were in mortal agony, and employing the alternate moments in gnawing at a huge stick of peppermint candy which her husband had brought her. After the operation was performed, she seemed highly pleased, and there was every reason to hope that she would recover.
“She not my wife berry long,” explained the driver, with an appearance of actual pride in the announcement. “She done been my sweetheart, long afore she been my wife. I had two or tree chil’en by her while she my sweetheart. When my old wife die, de moder of dese gals you see here, I tought dere was no use foolin’ ’bout so much, so I sends to de corral where ’Manda was, an’ I done hab her ebber since.”
In all this he was but a type of the whole class of plantation negroes in Louisiana. I have seen hundreds of such cases. I do not think it too strong an expression (judging from the evidences on every hand, and from the concurrent testimony of all parties, Northerners, Southerners, whites and blacks) to say that, among the old plantation slaves of Louisiana and Mississippi, virtue was absolutely unknown. Neither men nor women had any comprehension of it; nor could I learn that the highest standing in their churches made the slightest difference. Yet who shall deny the Christianizing influences of slavery? Have not doctors of divinity attested it; and do we not know them, that their testimony is true?
In the last days of March I was riding with a Northern lessee of a fine plantation on the Mississippi, over his back land. Sixteen double plows and a gang of fifty hoes were rapidly diminishing the distance between the land “bedded up, ready for cotton-planting,” and the swamp at which their labors were to terminate. The field resounded with the ringing snatches of song from the merry women in the hoe-gang, and with the cries of the plowmen: “Git up, Mule!” “You, Bully, I say, whar you gwine to!” “Mule, didn’t I tell ye, las’ week, I’d thrash you if you sarve me dat trick agin!” “Now, Mule, don’ you fool wid me any more!” “Git up, Morgan, you heifer you!”
The fiery-red clouds which marked the sun’s place, had sunk till they were casting their shadows through the swaying moss on the cypress in the swamp, and the overseer was just riding over from the hoe-gang to tell the plowmen to turn out for the night. A stout, broad-faced woman, big enough and strong enough to knock down almost any man on the plantation, came stalking up to the proprietor, as he lounged in the saddle, with his right leg thrown over his horse’s neck, watching the last labors of the day: