If we could visit one of these old Virginia plantations as it used to be, where wheat and tobacco were grown, we should see first a family mansion, often situated on a hilltop amid a grove of oaks. The mansion is a two-story house, perhaps made of wood, and painted white. With its vine-clad porch in front, and its wide hallway inside, it has a very comfortable look.
Not far away is a group of small log cabins. This cluster of simple dwellings, known as “the quarters,” is the home of the slaves, who do the work in the house and fields.
On the large plantations of the far south, there were sometimes several slave settlements on one plantation, each being a little village, with the cabins set in rows on each side of a wide street. Each cabin housed two families; belonging to each was a small garden.
The log cabins contained large fireplaces, and it was not unusual for the master’s children to gather about them when the weather was cold enough for fires, to hear the negroes tell quaint tales and sing weird songs. The old colored “mammies” were very fond of “Massa’s chillun” and liked to pet them and tell them stories.
Sometimes the cooking for the master’s family was done in the kitchen of the “big house,” but more often in a cabin outside, from which a negro waitress carried the food to the dining-room. The slaves had regular allowances of food, most of which they preferred to cook in their own cabins. Their common food was corn bread and ham or bacon.
Some of the slaves were employed as servants in the master’s house, but the greater part of them worked in the fields. They went out to work very early in the morning. It often happened that their breakfast and dinner were carried to them in the fields, and during the short rest which they had while eating their meals they would often sing together.
A Colonial Planter.
The slaves had their holidays, one of them being at the time of hog-killing, which was an annual festival. In some parts of the south, in November or December, corn-husking bees were held, just as the white people held them on the frontier. When the corn was harvested, it was piled up in mounds fifty or sixty feet high. Then the slaves from neighboring plantations were invited to come and help husk the corn. One negro would leap up on the mound and lead the chorus, all joining lustily in the singing.
