During that time, the South went from a region of four states and one rather small territory to a region of six states Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee and three rather large territories Mississippi, Louisiana, and Orleans.
The free population of the South also nearly doubled over that period—from around 1. It is important to note here that the enslaved population of the South did not increase at any rapid rate over the next two decades, until the cotton boom took hold in the mids. Indeed, following the constitutional ban on the international slave trade in , the number of slaves in the South increased by just , in twenty years.
But then cotton came, and grew, and changed everything. Once the fever of the initial land rush subsided, land values became more static, and credit less free-flowing.
In many cases, cotton growers, especially planters with large lots and enslaved workforces, put up slaves as collateral for funds dedicated to buying more land. If that land, for one reason or another, be it weevils, a late freeze, or a simple lack of nutrients, did not produce a viable crop within a year, the planter would lose not only the new land, but also the slaves he or she put up as a guarantee of payment.
So much went into the production of cotton, the expansion of land, and maintenance of enslaved workforces that by the s, nearly every ounce of credit offered by Southern, and even Northern, banks dealt directly with some aspect of the cotton market. Millions of dollars changed hands. Slaves, the literal and figurative backbones of the Southern cotton economy, served as the highest and most important expense for any successful cotton grower. Prices for slaves varied drastically, depending on skin color, sex, age, and location, both of purchase and birth.
By the s, and into the s, prices had nearly doubled—a result of both standard inflation and the increasing importance of enslaved laborers in the cotton market. The key is that cotton and slaves helped define each other, at least in the cotton South.
By the s, slavery and cotton had become so intertwined, that the very idea of change—be it crop diversity, anti-slavery ideologies, economic diversification, or the increasingly staggering cost of purchasing and maintaining slaves—became anathema to the Southern economic and cultural identity.
Cotton had become the foundation of the Southern economy. Indeed, it was the only major product, besides perhaps sugar cane in Louisiana, that the South could effectively market internationally.
The Cotton Revolution was a time of capitalism, panic, stress, and competition. Planters expanded their lands, purchased slaves, extended lines of credit, and went into massive amounts of debt because they were constantly working against the next guy, the newcomer, the social mover, the speculator, the trader.
A single bad crop could cost even the wealthiest planter his or her entire life, along with those of his or her slaves and their families.
By the s, cotton fields stretched from the Atlantic seaboard to Texas , and heavy migration led to statehood for Arkansas in and for Texas and Florida in The cotton kingdom was also a slave empire, as the cotton boom rested on the backs of African-American slaves.
As cottona griculture expanded westward, whites shipped more than 1,, slaves from the Atlantic coast across the continent in the "Second Middle Passage" mass deportation. The earliest arrivals faced the hardest work, literally cutting plantations from forests. The slave population grew enormously, rising from , in to 2 million in and to 4 million in By , the South contained more slaves than all the other slave societies in the Americas combined.
The slave population grew through natural reproduction instead of through the Atlantic slave trade unlike Cuba and Brazil , as the importation of slaves had been outlawed in ; by midcentury, most US slaves were native-born southerners. Much of the story of slavery and cotton lies in the rural areas where cotton actually grew.
Enslaved laborers worked in the fields, and planters and farmers held reign over their plantations and farms. But the s, s, and s saw an extraordinary spike in urban growth across the South. For nearly a half century after the Revolution, the South existed as a series of plantations, county seats, and small towns, some connected by roads, others connected only by rivers, streams, and lakes.
Cities certainly existed, but they served more as local ports than as regional, or national, commercial hubs. For example, New Orleans, then the capital of Louisiana, which entered the union in , was home to just over 27, people in ; and even with such a seemingly small population, it was the second-largest city in the South—Baltimore had more than 62, people in As late as the s, southern life was predicated on a rural lifestyle—farming, laboring, acquiring land and enslaved laborers, and producing whatever that land and those enslaved laborers could produce.
The market, often located in the nearest town or city, rarely stretched beyond state lines. Even in places like New Orleans, Charleston, and Norfolk, Virginia, which had active ports as early as the s, shipments rarely, with some notable exceptions, left American waters or traveled farther than the closest port down the coast. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, American involvement in international trade was largely confined to ports in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and sometimes Baltimore—which loosely falls under the demographic category of the South.
Imports dwarfed exports. In , U. Cotton changed much of this, at least with respect to the South. Before cotton, the South had few major ports, almost none of which actively maintained international trade routes or even domestic supply routes.
Internal travel and supply was difficult, especially on the waters of the Mississippi River, the main artery of the North American continent, and the eventual gold mine of the South. The river promised a revolution in trade, transportation, and commerce only if the technology existed to handle its impossible bends and fight against its southbound current.
By the s and into the s, small ships could successfully navigate their way to New Orleans from as far north as Memphis and even St. Louis, if they so dared. But the problem was getting back. Most often, traders and sailors scuttled their boats on landing in New Orleans, selling the wood for a quick profit or a journey home on a wagon or caravan.
In January , a ton ship called the New Orleans arrived at its namesake city from the distant internal port of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This was the first steamboat to navigate the internal waterways of the North American continent from one end to the other and remain capable of returning home. The technology was far from perfect—the New Orleans sank two years later after hitting a submerged sandbar covered in driftwood—but its successful trial promised a bright, new future for river-based travel.
And that future was, indeed, bright. Just five years after the New Orleans arrived in its city, 17 steamboats ran regular upriver lines. By the mids, more than steamboats did the same. In , the port of New Orleans received and unloaded 3, steamboats, all focused entirely on internal trade. Only now, in the s and s, could those fields, plantations, and farms simply load their products onto a boat and wait for the profit, credit, or supplies to return from downriver.
Gordon, pictured here, endured terrible brutality from his enslaver before escaping to Union Army lines in He would become a soldier and help fight to end the violent system that produced the horrendous scars on his back.
Matthew Brady, Gordon , The explosion of steam power changed the face of the South, and indeed the nation as a whole. Everything that could be steam-powered was steam-powered, sometimes with mixed results. Cotton gins, wagons, grinders, looms, and baths, among countless others, all fell under the net of this new technology.
Quite the opposite; they had become the means by which commerce flowed, the roads of a modernizing society and region. And most importantly, the ability to use internal waterways connected the rural interior to increasingly urban ports, the sources of raw materials—cotton, tobacco, wheat, and so on—to an eager global market.
Coastal ports like New Orleans, Charleston, Norfolk, and even Richmond became targets of steamboats and coastal carriers. Merchants, traders, skilled laborers, and foreign speculators and agents flooded the towns.
In fact, the South experienced a greater rate of urbanization between and than the seemingly more industrial, urban-based North. Urbanization of the South simply looked different from that seen in the North and in Europe. Where most northern and some European cities most notably London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Paris developed along the lines of industry, creating public spaces to boost the morale of wage laborers in factories, on the docks, and in storehouses, southern cities developed within the cyclical logic of sustaining the trade in cotton that justified and paid for the maintenance of an enslaved labor force.
The growth of southern cities, then, allowed slavery to flourish and brought the South into a more modern world. Between and , quite a few southern towns experienced dramatic population growth, which paralleled the increase in cotton production and international trade to and from the South. The 27, people New Orleans claimed in expanded to more than , by In fact, in New Orleans, the population nearly quadrupled from to as the Cotton Revolution hit full stride.
Louis experienced the largest increase of any city in the nation, expanding from a frontier town of 10, to a booming Mississippi River metropolis of , The city and the field, the urban center and the rural space, were inextricably linked in the decades before the Civil War. And that relationship connected the region to a global market and community. As southern cities grew, they became more cosmopolitan, attracting types of people either unsuited for or uninterested in rural life.
These people—merchants, skilled laborers, traders, sellers of all kinds and colors—brought rural goods to a market desperate for raw materials. Everyone, it seemed, had a place in the cotton trade. Agents, many of them transients from the North, and in some cases Europe, represented the interests of planters and cotton farmers in the cities, making connections with traders who in turn made deals with manufactories in the Northeast, Liverpool, and Paris.
Among the more important aspects of southern urbanization was the development of a middle class in the urban centers, something that never fully developed in the more rural areas. In a very general sense, the rural South fell under a two-class system in which a landowning elite controlled the politics and most of the capital, and a working poor survived on subsistence farming or basic, unskilled labor funded by the elite.
The development of large urban centers founded on trade, and flush with transient populations of sailors, merchants, and travelers, gave rise to a large, highly developed middle class in the South. Predicated on the idea of separation from those above and below them, middle-class men and women in the South thrived in the active, feverish rush of port city life. Skilled craftsmen, merchants, traders, speculators, and store owners made up the southern middle class. Fashion trends that no longer served their original purpose—such as a broad-brimmed hat to protect one from the sun, knee-high boots for horse riding, and linen shirts and trousers to fight the heat of an unrelenting sun—lost popularity at an astonishing rate.
These societies worked to aid the less fortunate in society, the orphans, the impoverished, the destitute. But in many cases these benevolent societies simply served as a way to keep other people out of middle-class circles, sustaining both wealth and social prestige within an insular, well-regulated community.
The city bred exclusivity. That was part of the rush, part of fever of the time. And they welcomed the world with open checkbooks and open arms.
To understand the global and economic functions of the South, we also must understand the people who made the whole thing work. The South, more than perhaps any other region in the United States, had a great diversity of cultures and situations.
The South still relied on the existence of slavery; and as a result, it was home to nearly 4 million enslaved people by , amounting to more than 45 percent of the entire Southern population. They created kinship and family networks, systems of often illicit trade, linguistic codes, religious congregations, and even benevolent and social aid organizations—all within the grip of slavery, a system dedicated to extraction rather than development, work and production rather than community and emotion.
The concept of family, more than anything else, played a crucial role in the daily lives of enslaved people. Family and kinship networks, and the benefits they carried, represented an institution through which enslaved people could piece together a sense of community, a sense of feeling and dedication, separate from the forced system of production that defined their daily lives.
The creation of family units, distant relations, and communal traditions allowed enslaved people to maintain religious beliefs, ancient ancestral traditions, and even names passed down from generation to generation in a way that challenged enslavement. Ideas passed between relatives on different plantations, names given to children in honor of the deceased, and basic forms of love and devotion created a sense of individuality, an identity that assuaged the loneliness and desperation of enslaved life.
Family defined how each plantation, each community, functioned, grew, and labored. Nothing under slavery lasted long, at least not in the same form. Enslaved families and networks were no exceptions to this rule. African-born enslaved people during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries engaged in marriages—sometimes polygamous—with those of the same ethnic groups whenever possible.
This, most importantly, allowed for the maintenance of cultural traditions, such as language, religion, name practices, and even the rare practice of bodily scaring. In some parts of the South, such as Louisiana and coastal South Carolina, ethnic homogeneity thrived, and as a result, traditions and networks survived relatively unchanged for decades. As the number of enslaved people arriving in the United States increased, and generations of American-born enslaved laborers overtook the original African-born populations, the practice of marriage, especially among members of the same ethnic group, or even simply the same plantation, became vital to the continuation of aging traditions.
Marriage served as the single most important aspect of cultural and identity formation, as it connected enslaved people to their own pasts, and gave some sense of protection for the future. Free people of color were present throughout the American South, particularly in urban areas like Charleston and New Orleans.
Some were relatively well off, like this femme de couleur libre who posed with her mixed-race child in front of her New Orleans home, maintaining a middling position between free white people and enslaved Black people.
Free woman of color with quadroon daughter; late 18th century collage painting, New Orleans. Many marriages between enslaved people endured for many years. But the threat of disruption, often through sale, always loomed. As the internal slave trade increased following the constitutional ban on slave importation in and the rise of cotton in the s and s, enslaved families, especially those established prior to arriving in the United States, came under increased threat.
But this was not the only threat. Planters, and enslavers of all shapes and sizes, recognized that marriage was, in the most basic and tragic sense, a privilege granted and defined by them for their enslaved laborers. The Judge was ready to converse about the country through which we were j assing. There were few large plantations, but many small planters or rather formers, for cotton, though the principal source of cash in come, was much less exclusively an object of attention than in the more southern parts of the State.
A krger space was occupied by the maize and grain crops. There were not a few small fields of wheat. In the afternoon, when only the Colonel and myself were with him, the Judge talked about slavery in a candid and liberal spirit. At present prices, he said, nobody could afford to own slaves, unless he could engage them almost exclusively in cotton-growing. It was undoubtedly a great injury to a region like this, which was not altogether well adapted to cotton, to be in the midst of a slaveholding country, for it prevented efficient free labour.
A good deal of cotton was nevertheless grown hereabouts by white labour--by poor men who planted an acre or two, and worked it themselves, getting the planters to gin and press it for them. It was not at all uncommon for men to begin in this way and soon purchase negroes on credit, and eventually become rich men.
Most of the plantations in this vicinity, indeed, belonged to men who had come into the country with nothing within twenty years. TLo increase of bis negro property by births, if he took good care of it, must, in a few years, make him independent.
The worst thing, and the most difficult to remedy, was the deplor able ignorance which prevailed. Latterly, however, people were taking more pride in the education of their children.
Some excellent schools had been established, the teachers generally from the North, and a great many children were sent to board in the villages--county-seats--to attend them. There was more difficulty in making boys attend school, until, at least, they were too old to get much good from it. The " Colonel " was a rough, merry, good-hearted, simple-. It must be confessed that there is no charge which the enemies of the theatre bring against the stage, that was not duly illustrated, and that with a broadness which the taste of a metropolitan audience would scarcely permit.
The Colonel, notwithstand ing, was of a most obliging disposition, and having ascertained in what direction' I was going, enumerated at least a dozen families on the road, within some hundred miles, whom he invited me to visit, assuring me that I should find pretty girls in all of them, and a warm welcome, if I mentioned Ids name.
Gl of one gentleman. He confessed, however, that he had lost fifteen by another, " but he saw how he did it. He did not want to accuse him publicly, but he saw it and he meant to write to him and tell him of it. He did not want to insult the gentleman, only he did" not want to hare him tfrinV that he was so green as not to know how he did it.
The coachman said the charge would be a dollar, which the young man thought excessive. The coachman denied that it was so, said that it was what he had often been paid; he should not take less. The young man finally agreed to wait for the decision of the proprietor of the line. There was a woman in the room; I noticed no loud words or angry tones, and had not supposed that there was the slight est excitement.
I observed, however, that there was a pro found silence for a minute afterwards, which was interrupted by a jocose remark of the coachman about the delay of our dinner. Soon after we re-entered the coach, the Colonel referred to the trunk owner in a contemptuous manner.
The Judge replied in a similar tone. With great surprise, I ventured to ask for what reason. We passed a number of cotton waggons which had stopped in the road ; the cattle had been turned out and had strayed off into the woods, and the driTers lay under the tilts asleep on straw. The Colonel said this sight reminded him of his old campmeeting days. I used to go first for fun, and, oh Lord! But after a while I got a conviction--needn't laugh, gentlemen.
I tell you it was sober business for me. Ill never make fun of that. Don't laughat what I say, now; I don't want fcn made of that; I give you my word I experienced religion, and I used to go to the meetings with as much sincerity and soberness as anybody could. That was the time I learned to eing--learned to pray too, I did; could pray right smart I did rtn'nV I was a con verted man, but of course I ain't, and I 'spose 'twamt the right sort, and I don't reckon I shall have another chance.
A gentleman has a right to make the most of this life, when he can't calculate on anything better than roasting in the next. Aint that so, Judge? I reckon so. You mustn't think hard of me, if I do talk wicked some. Can't help it. The Colonel told me that I should be able to get a good supper at a house where the coach was to stop about midnight --" good honest fried bacon,jand hot Christian corn-bread-- nothing like it, to fill a man up and make him feel righteous.
Charles, for all the fuss they make ahout it. Before dark all my companions left me, and in their place I had but one, a young gentleman with whom I soon became very intimately acquainted. He was seventeen years old, se he said; he looked older; and the son of a planter hi the " Yazoo bottoms.
There was a school near home at which he had studied read ing and writing and ciphering, but he thought a gentleman ought to have some knowledge of geography. At ten o'clock the nest morning the stage-coach having progressed at the rate of exactly two miles and a half an hour, for the previous sixteen hours, during which time we had been fasting, the supper-house, which we should have reached before midnight, was still ten miles ahead, the driver sulky and refusing to stop until we reached it.
We had been pounded till we ached in every muscle. I had had no sleep since I left Memphis. We were passing over a hill country which sometimes appeared to be quite"thickly inhabited, yet mainly still covered with a pine forest, through which the wind moaned lugubriously. Fiftten yenrs ago it was an Indian wilderness, anil now it lias reached and passed in its population, other portions of the Stato of ten times its age, and this population, too, one of the finest in all the West Great attention has been given to schools a-.
University of Mississippi; so amply endowed by the State, and now jnst going into operation under the auspices of some of the ablest profi-. There is no overgrown wealth aiuoii il. They were talking and laughing cheerfully. The next morning when I turned out I found Tazoo look ing with the eye of a connoisseur at the seven prime fieldhands, who at half-past seven were just starting off with hoes and axes for their day's work As I approached him, he exclaimed with enthusiasm " Aren't them a right keen lookin' lot of niggers?
I never hev no difficulty with 'em. Hen't licked a nigger in five year, 'cept mayte sprouting some of the young ones sometimes. Fact, my niggers never want no lookin' arter; they jus tek ker o' themselves. Fact, they do tek a greater interest in the crops than I do myself. There's another thing--I 'spose 'twill surprise you--there ent one of my niggers hut what can read; read good, too--better 'n I can, at any rate.
I blieve there was one on 'em that I bought, that could read, and he taught all the rest. But niggers is mighrv apt at larnin', a heap more 'n white folks is. It didn't seem to me any white man could hare done that; does it to you, now? I tell yon my niggers have got more money 'n I hev. They won't let on to that, but I expect they do it. I inquired about the law to prevent negroes reading, and asked if it allowed books to be sold to negroes.
He had never heard of any such law-- didn't believe there was any. The Yazoo man said there was such a law in his country. Negroes never had anything to read there. I asked our host if his negroes were religious, as their choice of works would have indicated.
Don't s'pose you'll believe it, but I tell you it's a fact; I haint heerd a swear on this place for a twelvemonth. They keep the Lord's day, too, right tight, in gineral. There's so many of 'em together, they don't want to go visiting off the place.
They ain't content to be just ritch'd with water; they most be ducked in all over. There was two niggers jined the Methodists up here last summer, and they made the minister put 'em into the branch; they wouldn't jine less he'd duck 'em. Do you dance in your country? Yoq, stand lace to face with your partner on a plank and keep a dancin'. Put the plank up on two barrel heads, so it'll kind o' spring.
At some of our parties--that's among common kind o' people, you know --it's great fun. SO others new kinds of Peach Trees. Gaurra Wntra. Peter large and fine raic.
Iruit of very gmitx beaoty. It grows to the height of 6 feet. It I- fumi-Jred with flowers from bottom to top. Im mediately the vegetation ukes fire and bums like alcohol about an hour and a half. The flowera fucceeding one to the other gives the butisfactiun of having flowers during 7 or S month?. Wa call the public attention to this plant as a great rarioalry. Havre--Printed by F. HCF, me de Paria, Breakiast'll be ready right smart. That was " a new kink " to our jolly host, and troubled him as much as a new " ism " would an old fogy.
Not wholesome? He had always reckoned it warn't very wholesome not to drink before breakfast. He did not expect I had seen a great many healthier men than he was, had I? If a man just kept himself well strung up, without eyer stretching himself right tight, he didn't reckon damps or heat would ever do him much harm.
He had never had a sick day since he came to thig place, and he reckoned that this was owin' considerable to die good rye whisky he took. It was a healthy trac' of land, though, he believed, a mighty healthy trac'; everything seemed to thrive here.
I reckoned he would larn quick, if he was a mind to. So he come in, and a week arterwards he fitted the plank and laid this floor, and now you just look at it; I don't believe any man could do it better. That was two year ago, and now he's as good a carpenter as you ever see. I think niggers is somehow nat'rally ingenious; more so 'n white folks.
They is wonderful apt to any kind of slight. Not having yet studied geography, as he observed, he could not answer. Our host inquired where I was gomg, that way. I sdd I should go on to Carolina. How much a pound will you sell her at? He said that he purchased negroes, as he was able, from time to time.
He had been obliged to spend but little money, being able to live and provide most of the food and clothing for his family and his people, by the production of his farm. He made a little cotton, which he had to send some distance to be ginned and baled, and then waggoned it seventy miles to a market; also raised some wheat, which he turned into flour at a neighbour ing mill, and sent to the same market.
This transfer engaged much of the winter labour of his man-slaves. I said that I supposed the Memphis and Charleston railroad, as it progressed east, would shorten the distance to which it would be necessary to draw his cotton, and so be of much ser vice to him. He did not know that. He did not know as he should ever use it. He expected they would charge pretty high for cam-ing cotton, and his niggers hadn't any thing else to do.
It did not really cost him anything now to send it to Memphis, because he had to board the niggers and the cattle anyhow, and they did not want much more on the road than they did at home. He made a large crop of corn, which, however, was mainly consumed by his own force, and he killed annually about one hundred and fifty hogs, the bacon of which was all consumed in his own family and by his people, or sold to passing travel lers.
In the fall, a great many drovers and slave-dealers passed over the road with their stock, and they frequently camped against this house, so as to buy corn and bacon of him.
This they cooked themselves. There were sometimes two hundred negroes brought along together, going South. He didn't always have bacon to spare for them, though he killed one hundred and fifty swine. They were generally bad characters, and had been sold for fan t by their owners. Sumo of the slave-tValcr. Niggers were great eaters, and wanted more meat than white folks; anil be always gave his as much as they wanted, and more too.
The negro coot always got dinner for them, and took what she liked for it; his wife didn't know much about it. She got as mnch as she liked, and he guessed she didn't spare it. When the field-hands were anywhere within a reasonable distance, they always came up to the house to get their dinner.
If they were going to work a great way off, they wonld carry their dinner with them. They did as they liked about it. When they hadn't taken their dinner, the cook called them at twelve o'clock with a conch. They ate in the kitchen, and he had the same dinner that they did, right out of the same frying-pan; it was all the same, only they ete in the kitchen, and he ate in the room we were in, with the door open between them.
I brought tip the subject of the cost of labour, North, and Sonth. He had no apprehension that there would ever he any want of labourers at the South, and could not understand that the ruling price indicated the state of the demand for them. He thought negroes would increase more rapidly than the need for their labour.
He laughed, and said, " They don't very often wait to be married. But then very often they only just come and ask our consent, and then go ahead, without any more ceremony.
They just call themselves married. But most niggers likes a ceremony, you know, and they generally make out to hev one somehow.
They don't very often get married for good, though, without trying each other, as they gay, for two or three weeks, to see how they are going to like each other. It was six miles. He goes to visit his wife, and passes hy the post-office every Sunday. Our paper hain't come" though, now, for three weeks.
The mafl don't come very re gular. One of them, who had a wife twenty miles away, left at twelve o'clock Satur day, and got hack at twelve o'clock Monday. He told us his wife was so far off, 't was too much trouble to go there, and he believed he'd give her up. We was glad of it. He was a darned rascally nigger--allers getting into scrapes. One time we sent him to mill, and he went round into town and sold some of the meal.
The storekeeper wouldn't pay him for't, 'cause he hadn't got an order. The next time we were in town, the storekeeper just showed us the bag of meal; said he reck oned 't was stole; so when we got home we just tied him up to the tree and licked him. I'd rather have a rascally nigger than any other--they's so smart allers.
He is about the best nigger we've got. I have been told that a third more would be given for a man if he were religious. Our host thought there was no difference in the market value of sinners and saints. Now that yer nigger I was tellin' you on, he's worth more'n any other nigger we've got?
He's a yaller nigger. He would rather have them. He did not. They all did just as they plfsvvd, and arranged the work among themselves. They never needed driving. My niggers never want no lookin' arter. They tek more interest in the crop than I do myself, every one of 'em. A very different thing; and strongly suggesting what a very different thing this negro servitude might be made in general, were the ruling disposi tion of the South more just and sensible.
About half-past eleven, a stage coach, which had come earlier in the morning from the East, and had gone on as far as the brook, returned, having had our luggage transferred to it from the one we had left on the other side. In the transfer a portion of mine wa? Up to this time our host had not paid the smallest attention to any work his men were doing, or even looked to see if they liad fed the cattle, but had lounged about, sitting npon a fence, chewing tobacco, and talkiug with us, evidently very glad to have somebody to con verse with.
He went in once again, after a drink; showed us the bacon he had in his smoke-house, and told a good many stories of his experience in life, about a white man's " dying hard " in the neighbourhood, and of a tree falling on a team with which one of his negroes was ploughing cotton, " which was lucky "--that is, that it did not kill the negro--and a good deal about "hunting" when he was younger and lighter.
Still absurdly influenced by an old idea which I had brought to the South with me, I waited, after the coach came in sight, for Yazoo to put the question, which he presently did, boldly enough. Central Mississippi, May 31s. Fortunately I came to the pleasantest house and household I had seen for some time. The proprietor was a native of Maryland, and had travelled in the North; a devout Metho dist, and somewhat educated.
He first came South, as I un derstood, for the benefit of his health, his lungs being weak. His first dwelling, a rude log cabin, was still standing, and was occupied by some of his slaves. The new house, a cottage, consisting of four rooms and a hall, stood in a small grove of oaks; the iamily were quiet, kind, and sensible. When I arrived, the oldest boy was at work, holding a plough in the cotton-field, but he left it and came at once, with confident and afiable courtesy, to entertain me.
My host had been in Texas, and after exploring it quite thoroughly, concluded that he much preferred to remain where he was. He found no part of that country where good land, timber, and a healthy climate were combined: in the West he did not like the vicinage of the Germans and Mexicans; more over, he didn't " foncy " a prairie county.
Here, in favourable years, he got a bale of cotton to the acre. Kot BO much now as formerly. Still, he said, the soil would be good enough for T"'TM here, for many years to come. I went five times to the stable without being able to find 8 servant there. I went out just before breakfast next morning, and found the horse with only ten dry cobs in the manger. I searched for the boy; could not find him, but was told that my horse had been fed. I said, "I wish to hare him fed more--as much as he will eat.
When I went out after breakfast the boy was leading out the horse. I asked if he had given him corn this morning. I doubted, indeed, from their appearance, if the boy had fed him at all the night before. I fed him with leaves myself, but could not get into the corn crib.
The proprietor was, I do not doubt, perfectly honest, but the negro had1 probably stolen the corn for lus own hogs and fowls. The next day I rode more than thirty miles, having secured a good feed of corn for the horse at midday.
At nightfall I was much fatigued, but had as yet failed to get lodging. It began to rain, and grew dark, and I kept the road with diffi culty. About nine o'clock I came to a large, comfortable house. An old lady sat in the verandah, of whom I asked if I could be accommodated for the night: " Beckon so," she replied : then after a few moments' reflection, without rising from her chair she shouted, " Gal!
At length she returned: " Tom ain't there, missis. Here he called for some younger slave to come and take him down to " the pen," while he took off the saddle. All this time it was raining, hut any rapidity of movement was ont of the question. Pete continued shouting. Dese niggers is so treacherous, can't leave nothin' roun' but deyll hook snthing off of it.
I moved and he dropped them, and slnnk out to he next room, where he went loudly to making a tire. I managed to see the horse well fad uie? I saw none, in fact--only a few Irishmen and Frenchmen, who called themselves Americans. Those were the only foreigners I saw, except negroes. Niggers are property, ain't th5y? Niggers are pro perty, sir, the same as horses and cattle, and nobody's any more right to help a nigger that's run away than he has to steal a horse.
I said that it was necessary to have special treaty stipulations about such matters. The Mexicans lost their peons--bonnden servants ; they ran away to our side, but the United States Government never took any measures to restore them, nor did the Mexicans ask it.
They are white people, sir, just as white as the Mexicans themselves, and just as much right to be free. I twice proposed to take him to the stable, but he said, " No: the niggers would come up soon and attend to him.
I saw no books and no decorations. The interior wood-work was tLnpainted. At supper there were three negro girls in attendance--two children of twelve or fourteen years of age, and an older one, but in a few moments they all disappeared. The mistress called aloud several times, and at length the oldest came, bringing in hot biscuit. Pre sently, however, she was discovered. Come here! Slap, slap, slap. Now, why don't you stay in here?
Slap, slap, slap, on the side of the head. I know! Stop, slap, slap. Now see if you can stay here. The other girl didn't come at all, and was forgotten. As soon as supper was over my hostess exclaimed, " Now, you Bet, stop crying there, and do yon go right straight home ; mind you run every step of the way, and if you stop one minute in the kitchen you'd better look out.
The Indians, I learned, lived some miles away, and were hired to hoe cotton. I inquired their wages. They worked well for a few days at a time; were better at picking than at hoeing. TVhile at table a yonjjg man, very dirty and sweaty, with a ragged shirt and no coat on. He was surly and rnde in his actions, and did not speak a word; he left the table before I had finished, and lighting a pipe, laid himself at fall length on the floor of the room to smoke.
This was the overseer. Immediately after supper the master told me that he was in the habit of going to bed early, and he would show me where I was to sleep. He did so, and left me without a candle. It was dark, and I did not know the way to the stables, so I soon went to bed. On a feather bed I did not enjoy much rest, and when I at last awoke and dressed, breakfast was just ready. I said I would go first to look after my horse, and did so, the planter following me.
I found him standing in a miserable stall, in a sorry state ; he had not been cleaned, and there were no cobs or other indica tions of his having been fed at all since he had been there. I said to my host-- " He has not been fed, sir! I s'pose the overseer forgot him.
As before, when he had finished his meal, without waiting for others to leave the table, he lighted a pipe and lay down to rest on the floor. I went to the stable and found my horse had been supplied with seven poor ears of corn only..
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