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CHAPTER VII

PLANTATION LIFE

(1830-1860)

NE reason for the outbreak of the abolition movement was increasing knowledge of the conditions of slavery. Improvements in transit, closer commercial relations between north and south, and a spirit of investigation into social conditions made possible an era of travel and observation in the south by foreigners and northerners. The abolitionists at home clipped items from the southern newspapers and listened to the narratives of the fugitive slave. To describe the plantation system, especially its cruel and repulsive side, was their stock in trade; while in the defences of slavery and the replies to the abolitionists the gentler side of slave-holding was held up to view.2

The visitor who expected to find a distinct type of slave countenance and person was disappointed. Some had large infusions of white blood and possessed European features; and some pure negroes

'See list of travellers in chap. xxii., below.

On the general conditions of slavery, Hart, Contemporaries, III., §§ 109-173

had oval faces, slender and supple figures, graceful hands, and small feet.1 Nevertheless, the majority of the negroes were coarse and unattractive in appearance. Olmsted notes a group of road-making women as "clumsy, awkward, gross, elephantine in all their movements; pouting, grinning, and leering at us; sly, sensual, and shameless in all their expressions and demeanor."" Among the negroes, as among other races, there was no fixed standard of capacity or character. Some masters were never weary of telling of the faithfulness and attachment of their slaves; of their care for the children of the family; of their incorruptibility. One champion of slavery enumerates the virtues of slaves: "Fidelity-often proof against all temptation-even death itself—an eminently cheerful and social temper . . . submission to constituted authority." " But the general tone towards the negro was one of distrust and aversion. Many masters believed that "the negroes were so addicted to lying and stealing that they were not to be trusted out of sight or hearing." At best they were thought big children, pleased with trifles, and easily forgetful of penalties and pairs.

3

The slaves were rough and brutal among themselves. Friendly observers complained of “the in- |

1 Kemble, Georgian Plantation, 42, 85.

Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 387; cf. Martineau, Society in America, I., 212-234.

3 Harper, in Pro-Slavery Argument, 46.

4

• Reported by Buckingham, Slave States, II., 87.

VOL. XVI.-7

solent tyranny of their demeanor toward each other; ... they are diabolically cruel to animals too, and they seem to me as a rule hardly to know the difference between truth and falsehood." Their indolence was the despair of every slave-owner, or was overcome by the strictest discipline. In many small households with few slaves and no patriarchal tradition there was constant friction and flogging; their shiftlessness, waste of their master's property, neglect of his animals, were almost proverbial; and the looseness of the marriage-tie and immorality of even the best of the negroes were subjects of sorrow to those who felt the responsibility for them.2

Many of the negroes showed intellectual qualities, especially household slaves; and thousands of slaves learned to read and write. The art was frowned upon, for "what has the slave of any country to do with heroic virtues, liberal knowledge, or elegant accomplishments?" Nevertheless, the number of slaves who could read and write was probably not far from one-tenth of the whole. They were taught by kind-hearted mistresses and children of the family, who liked to give a pleasure and who disregarded the statutes against the practice; once taught, they communicated the art to one another, and secret

'Kemble, Georgian Plantation, 263.

'Harper, in Pro-Slavery Argument, 38-41.

Ibid., 36, 46.

Grace E. Burroughs, unpublished manuscript on Educated Slaves.

schools for the children of slaves were not unknown.1

Some of the letters written by escaped slaves showed education and superior power of expression. Yet in this period appeared no such slave prodigies as Phyllis Wheatley, the slave poet, whose verses were kindly received by Washington; or Benjamin Banneker, the astronomer, who was a guest at the table of President Jefferson. The literary negroes were nearly all escaped slaves, whose reminiscences bear the trace of a white man's correcting pen. The one literary opportunity for the slave on the soil was the telling of folk-stories, which show a vivid power of description, an imagination which personifies the ideas of the story-teller, and a rich and unctuous humor which delights by its sudden turns of situation. The only art in which the negroes excelled was music. They have an intuitive quickness in picking up simple musical instruments, and developed, if they did not invent, the banjo; but their songs were their chief intellectual efforts; the words, simple, repetitive, sometimes senseless, were made the vehicle for a plaintive music.2

A proportion of the slaves now difficult to ascer

1 Bremer, Homes of the New World, II., 499; Burke, Reminiscences, 85; Douglass, Narrative, 32-44; Kemble, Georgian Plantation, 230, 257; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 79.

Harris, Nights with Uncle Remus, 143-206; Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 551, 607; Bremer, Homes of the New World, II., 174; Kemble, Georgian Plantation, 127, 218; Douglass, Narrative, 13-15.

tain was employed in other than household or field tasks. A few were fishermen, employed as cooks or hands on coasting craft;' a larger number served as roustabouts on the river steamers, where their picturesque appearance, songs, jollity, and hard work in handling freight and fuel attracted the attention of all travellers. Slaves were freely used in the turpentine industry, which required very little skill, and in the lumbering regions, as wood-choppers and to prepare lumber. Mining employed almost no slaves, the labor of free whites or free negroes was considered more profitable.3

2

In addition to these rough tasks, a fraction of the slaves and free negroes, certainly not one-twentieth of the able-bodied men, were employed in skilled trades, especially building. Nearly all large plantations had a little force of blacksmiths, carpenters, bricklayers, and the like, and such skilled hands were frequently hired out by their masters. Most of the plantation buildings in the south were constructed by slave labor, and many of the town and city buildings. Some slave mechanics could not only build, but draw plans, make contracts, and complete a house, even hiring out their own time and employing men on their own responsibility. This small pro

1 Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 351-355.

2 Ibid., 551-564; Stuart, North America, II., 153; Buckingham, Slave States, I., 264.

3

Lyell, Second Visit, I., 216.

Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 104.

'Letter of G. W. Steedman, of St. Louis, to the author; cf.

Lyell, Second Visit, I., 267.