University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XV
PLANTATION LABOR

WHILE produced only in America, the plantation slave
was a product of old-world forces. His nature was an
African's profoundly modified but hardly transformed
by the requirements of European civilization. The wrench from
Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting his
ancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperament
than upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee,
Ebo or Angola, he became instead the American negro.
The Caucasian was also changed by the contact in a far from
negligible degree; but the negro's conversion was much the more
thorough, partly because the process in his case was coercive,
partly because his genius was imitative.

The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit
reservation as to limits, that a negro was what a white man
made him. The molding, however, was accomplished more by
groups than by individuals. The purposes and policies of the
masters were fairly uniform, and in consequence the negroes,
though with many variants, became largely standardized into
the predominant plantation type. The traits which prevailed
were an eagerness for society, music and merriment, a fondness
for display whether of person, dress, vocabulary or emotion,
a not flagrant sensuality, a receptiveness toward any religion
whose exercises were exhilarating, a proneness to superstition, a
courteous acceptance of subordination, an avidity for praise, a
readiness for loyalty of a feudal sort, and last but not least,
a healthy human repugnance toward overwork. "It don't do no
good to hurry," was a negro saying, "'caze you're liable to run
by mo'n you overtake." Likewise painstaking was reckoned painful;
and tomorrow was always waiting for today's work, while

today was ready for tomorrow's share of play. On the other
hand it was a satisfaction to work sturdily * for a hard boss, and
so be able to say in an interchange of amenities: "Go long,
half-priced nigger! You wouldn't fotch fifty dollars, an' I'm
wuth a thousand!"[1]

Contrasts were abundant. John B. Lamar, on the one hand,
wrote: "My man Ned the carpenter is idle or nearly so at
the plantation. He is fixing gates and, like the idle groom in
Pickwick, trying to fool himself into the belief that he is
doing something. . . . He is an eye servant. If I was
with him I could have the work done soon and cheap; but I
am afraid to trust him off where there is no one he fears."[2] On
the other hand, M. W. Philips inscribed a page of his plantation
diary as follows:[3]

Sunday
July 10, 1853
Peyton is no more
Aged 42
Though he was a bad man in many respects
yet he was a most excellent field
hand, always at his
post.
On this place for 21 years.
Except the measles and its sequence, the
injury rec'd by the mule last Nov'r and its sequence,
he has not lost 15 days' work, I verily believe, in the
remaining 19 years. I wish we could hope for his
eternal state.

Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the oldfashioned
prime negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi
steamboat and watch the roustabouts at work—those chaffing and
chattering, singing and swinging, lusty and willing freight handlers,
whom a river captain plying out of New Orleans has
called the noblest black men that God ever made.[4] Ready at

every touching of the shore day and night, resting and sleeping
only between landings, they carry their loads almost at running
speed, and when returning for fresh burdens they "coonjine"
by flinging their feet in semi-circles at every step, or cutting
other capers in rhythm to show their fellows and the gallery
that the strain of the cotton bales, the grain sacks, the oil barrels
and the timbers merely loosen their muscles and lighten their
spirits.

Such an exhibit would have been the despair of the average
ante-bellum planter, for instead of choosing among hundreds of
applicants and rejecting or discharging those who fell short of
a high standard, he had to make shift with such laborers as
the slave traders chanced to bring or as his women chanced
to rear. His common problem was to get such income and
comfort as he might from a parcel of the general run; and the
creation of roustabout energy among them would require such
vigor and such iron resolution on his own part as was forthcoming
in extremely few cases.

Theoretically the master might be expected perhaps to expend
the minimum possible to keep his slaves in strength, to discard
the weaklings and the aged, to drive his gang early and late, to
scourge the laggards hourly, to secure the whole with fetters
by day and with bolts by night, and to keep them in perpetual
terror of his wrath. But Olmsted, who seems to have gone
South with the thought of finding some such theory in application,
wrote: "I saw much more of what I had not anticipated
and less of what I had in the slave states than, with a somewhat
extended travelling experience, in any other country I
ever visited";[5] and Nehemiah Adams, who went from Boston to
Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himself
laughing with the laughing ones instead.[6]

The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was
as strange to the bulk of the planters as the doctrine and
practice of moderation was to those who viewed the régime
from afar and with the mind's eye. A planter in explaining his

mildness might well have said it was due to his being neither a
knave nor a fool. He refrained from the use of fetters not
so much because they would have hampered the slaves in their
work as because the general use of them never crossed his
mind. And since chains and bolts were out of the question,
the whole system of control must be moderate; slaves must
be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might
be by loyalty, pride and the prospect of reward.

Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional
degree. A certain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked
success even when his whole force was of fresh Africans. In a
pamphlet of the late eighteen-twenties he told of his method as
follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settled a plantation
on St. John's River in Florida with about fifty new negroes,
many of whom I brought from the Coast myself. They were
mostly fine young men and women, and nearly in equal numbers.
I never interfered in their connubial concerns nor domestic
affairs, but let them regulate these after their own
manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and
what I thought would add to their physical and moral happiness.
I encouraged as much as possible dancing, merriment
and dress, for which Saturday afternoon and night and Sunday
morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] was usually
employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for
the week. Both men and women were very industrious. Many
of them made twenty bushels of corn to sell, and they vied with
each other in dress and dancing. . . . They were perfectly
honest and obedient, and appeared perfectly happy, having no
fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had to apply
other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, the
punishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing
their work well. My object was to excite their ambition and
attachment by kindness, not to depress their spirits by fear
and punishment. . . . Perfect confidence, friendship and
good understanding reigned between us." During the War of
1812 most of these negroes were killed or carried off in a Seminole
raid. When peace returned and Kingsley attempted to restore

his Eden with a mixture of African and American negroes, a
serpent entered in the guise of a negro preacher who taught
the sinfulness of dancing, fishing on Sunday and eating the
catfish which had no scales. In consequence the slaves "became
poor, ragged, hungry and disconsolate. To steal from me was
only to do justice—to take what belonged to them, because I
kept them in unjust bondage." They came to believe "that all
pastime or pleasure in this iniquitous world was sinful; that this
was only a place of sorrow and repentance, and the sooner they
were out of it the better; that they would then go to a good
country where they would experience no want of anything, and
have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful
and would pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary
to pray and ask forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and
contribute what they could to the church, etc. . . . Finally
myself and the overseer became completely divested of all authority
over the negroes. . . . Severity had no effect; it
only made it worse."[7]

This experience left Kingsley undaunted in his belief that
liberalism and profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the
plantation régime. To support this contention further he cited
an experiment by a South Carolinian who established four of
five plantations in a group on Broad River, with a slave foreman
on each and a single overseer with very limited functions
over the whole. The cotton crop was the master's, while the
hogs, corn and other produce belonged to the slaves for their
sustenance and the sale of any surplus. The output proved
large, "and the owner had no further trouble nor expense than
furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying the overseer's wages,
so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that he could realize
his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without paying
the customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on
the operation of his slaves." In Kingsley's opinion the system
"answered extremely well, and offers to us a strong case in

favor of exciting ambition by cultivating utility, local attachment
and moral improvement among the slaves."[8]

The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government
by slaves is probably that of the brothers Joseph and
Jefferson Davis on their plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in
Warren County, Mississippi. There the slaves were not only
encouraged to earn money for themselves in every way they
might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts
composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing
penalties to be inflicted by slave constables except when the
master intervened with his power of pardon. The régime was
maintained for a number of years in full effect until in 1862
when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9]

These several instances were of course exceptional, and they
merely tend to counterbalance the examples of systematic severity
at the other extreme. In general, though compulsion was
always available in last resort, the relation of planter and slave
was largely shaped by a sense of propriety, proportion and cooperation.

As to food, clothing and shelter, a few concrete items will
reinforce the indications in the preceding chapters that crude
comfort was the rule. Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776
that a Georgia slaveholder with whom he stopped sold no dairy
products from his forty cows in milk. The proprietor explained
this by saying: "I have a considerable family of black
people who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for.
Those I have were either chosen for their good qualities or
born in the family; and I find from long experience and observation
that the better they are fed, clothed and treated, the more
service and profit we may expect to derive from their labour.
In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or any article
of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best
advantage amongst my family and slaves." At another place
Bartram noted the arrival at a plantation of horse loads of

wild pigeons taken by torchlight from their roosts in a neighboring
swamp.[10]

On Charles Cotesworth Pinckney's two plantations on the
South Carolina coast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a
detail of four slaves was shifted from the field work each week
for a useful holiday in angling for the huge drumfish which
abounded in those waters; and their catches augmented the
fare of the white and black families alike.[11] Game and fish, however,
were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combined
the virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness.
On Fowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands
numbered a little less than half a hundred, the pork harvest
throughout the eighteen-fifties, except for a single year of hog
cholera, yielded from eleven to twenty-three hundred pounds;
and when the yield was less than the normal, northwestern
bacon or barreled pork made up the deficit.[12]

In the matter of clothing, James Habersham sent an order
to London in 1764 on behalf of himself and two neighbors for
120 men's jackets and breeches and 80 women's gowns to be
made in assorted sizes from strong and heavy cloth. The purpose
was to clothe their slaves "a little better than common" and
to save the trouble of making the garments at home.[13] In January,
1835, the overseer of one of the Telfair plantations reported
that the woolen weaving had nearly supplied the full
needs of the place at the rate of six or six and a half yards
for each adult and proportionately for the children.[14] In 1847,
in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrote from Paris
to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroes
and see how many jackets and trousers you want for the men at
Gowrie, . . . and then write to Messrs. Matthiessen and Co.
of Charleston to send them to you, together with the same
quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and a large woolen Scotch
cap for each man and youth on the place. . . . Send back

anything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs.
Habersham and Son the twilled wool and cotton, called by some
'Hazzard's cloth,' for all the women and children, and get two
or three dozen handkerchiefs so as to give each woman and girl
one. . . . The shoes you will procure as usual from Mr.
Habersham by sending down the measures in time."[15] Finally,
the register of A. L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont
contains record of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a
steady schedule. Every spring each man drew two cotton shirts
and two pair of homespun woolen trousers, each woman a frock
and chemises, and each child clothing or cloth in proportion; and
every fall the men drew shirts, trousers and coats, the women
shifts, petticoats, frocks and sacks, the children again on a similar
scale, and the several families blankets as needed.[16]

As for housing, the vestiges of the old slave quarters, some
of which have stood abandoned for half a century, denote in
many cases a sounder construction and greater comfort than
most of the negroes in freedom have since been able to command.

With physical comforts provided, the birth-rate would take
care of itself. The pickaninnies were winsome, and their parents,
free of expense and anxiety for their sustenance, could
hardly have more of them than they wanted. A Virginian told
Olmsted, "he never heard of babies coming so fast as they did
on his plantation; it was perfectly surprising";[17] and in Georgia,
Howell Cobb's negroes increased "like rabbits."[18] In Mississippi
M. W. Philips' woman Amy had borne eleven children when
at the age of thirty she was married by her master to a new
husband, and had eight more thereafter, including a set of triplets.[19]
But the culminating instance is the following as reported
by a newspaper at Lynchburg, Virginia: "VERY REMARKABLE.
There is now living in the vicinity of Campbell a negro
woman belonging to a gentleman by the name of Todd; this

woman is in her forty-second year and has had forty-one children
and at this time is pregnant with her forty-second child,
and possibly with her forty-third, as she has frequently
had doublets."[20] Had childbearing been regulated in the interest
of the masters, Todd's woman would have had less than forty-one
and Amy less than her nineteen, for such excesses impaired
the vitality of the children. Most of Amy's, for example, died
a few hours or days after birth.

A normal record is that of Fowler's plantation, the "Prairie."
Virtually all of the adult slaves were paired as husbands and
wives except Caroline who in twenty years bore ten children.
Her husband was presumably the slave of some other master.
Tom and Milly had nine children in eighteen years; Harry and
Jainy had seven in twenty-two years; Fanny had five in seventeen
years with Ben as the father of all but the first born; Louisa
likewise had five in nineteen years with Bob as the father of
all but the first; and Hector and Mary had five in seven years.
On the other hand, two old couples and one in their thirties had
had no children, while eight young pairs had from one to four
each.[21] A lighter schedule was recorded on a Louisiana plantation
called Bayou Cotonier, belonging to E. Tanneret, a Creole.
The slaves listed in 1859 as being fifteen years old and upwards
comprised thirty-six males and thirty-seven females. The "livre
des naissances" showed fifty-six births between 1833 and 1859,
distributed among twenty-three women, two of whom were still
in their teens when the record ended. Rhodé bore six children between
her seventeenth and thirty-fourth years; Henriette bore six
between twenty-one and forty; Esther six between twenty-one
and thirty-six; Fanny, four between twenty-five and thirty-two;
Annette, four between thirty-three and forty; and the rest bore
from one to three children each, including Celestine who had her
first baby when fifteen and her second two years after. None of
the matings or paternities appear in the record, though the christenings
and the slave godparents are registered.[22]

The death rate was a subject of more active solicitude. This
may be illustrated from the journal for 1859–1860 of the Magnolia
plantation, forty miles below New Orleans. Along with its
record of rations to 138 hands, and of the occasional births,
deaths, runaways and recaptures, and of the purchase of a man
slave for $2300, it contains the following summary under date
of October 4, 1860: "We have had during the past eighteen
months over 150 cases of measles and numerous cases of whooping
cough, and then the diphtheria, all of which we have gone
through with but little loss save in the whooping cough when we
lost some twelve children." This entry was in the spirit of rejoicing
at escape from disasters. But on December 18 there were
two items of another tone. One of these was entered by an
overseer named Kellett: "[I] shot the negro boy Frank for
attempting to cut at me and three boys with his cane knife with
intent to kill." The other, in a different handwriting, recorded
tersely: "J. A. Randall commenst buisnass this mornung. J.
Kellett discharged this morning." The owner could not afford
to keep an overseer who killed negroes even though it might be
in self defence.[23]

Of epidemics, yellow fever was of minor concern as regards
the slaves, for negroes were largely immune to it; but cholera
sometimes threatened to exterminate the slaves and bankrupt
their masters. After a visitation of this in and about New Orleans
in 1832, John McDonogh wrote to a friend: "All that you
have seen of yellow fever was nothing in comparison. It is
supposed that five or six thousand souls, black and white, were
carried off in fourteen days."[24] The pecuniary loss in Louisiana
from slave deaths in that epidemic was estimated at
four million dollars.[25] Two years afterward it raged
in the Savannah neighborhood. On Mr. Wightman's plantation,
ten miles above the city, there were in the first week of September
fifty-three cases and eighteen deaths. The overseer then

checked the spread by isolating the afflicted ones in the church,
the barn and the mill. The neighboring planters awaited only
the first appearance of the disease on their places to abandon
their crops and hurry their slaves to lodges in the wilderness.[26]
Plagues of smallpox were sometimes of similar dimensions.

Even without pestilence, deaths might bring a planter's ruin.
A series of them drove M. W. Philips to exclaim in his plantation
journal: "Oh! my losses almost make me crazy. God alone
can help." In short, planters must guard their slaves' health and
life as among the most vital of their own interests; for while
crops were merely income, slaves were capital. The tendency
appears to have been common, indeed, to employ free immigrant
labor when available for such work as would involve strain and
exposure. The documents bearing on this theme are scattering
but convincing. Thus E. J. Forstall when writing in 1845 of the
extension of the sugar fields, said thousands of Irishmen were
seen in every direction digging plantation ditches;[27] T. B. Thorpe
when describing plantation life on the Mississippi in 1853 said
the Irish proved the best ditchers;[28] and a Georgia planter when
describing his drainage of a swamp in 1855 said that Irish were
hired for the work in order that the slaves might continue at
their usual routine.[29] Olmsted noted on the Virginia seaboard
that "Mr. W. . . . had an Irish gang draining for him by contract."
Olmsted asked, "why he should employ Irishmen in preference
to doing the work with his own hands. 'It's dangerous
work,' the planter replied, 'and a negro's life is too valuable to be
risked at it. If a negro dies, it is a considerable loss you
know.'"[30] On a Louisiana plantation W. H. Russell wrote in
1860: "The labor of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste
lands and hewing down the forests is generally done by Irish
laborers who travel about the country under contractors or are
engaged by resident gangsmen for the task. Mr. Seal lamented
the high prices of this work; but then, as he said, 'It was much

better to have Irish do it, who cost nothing to the planter if
they died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment.'"
Russell added on his own score: "There is a
wonderful mine of truth in this observation. Heaven knows how
many poor Hibernians have been consumed and buried in these
Louisianian swamps, leaving their earnings to the dramshop
keeper and the contractor, and the results of their toil to the
planter." On another plantation the same traveller was shown
the débris left by the last Irish gang and was regaled by an
account of the methods by which their contractor made them
work.[31] Robert Russell made a similar observation on a plantation
near New Orleans, and was told that even at high wages
Irish laborers were advisable for the work because they would do
twice as much ditching as would an equal number of negroes in
the same time.[32] Furthermore, A. de Puy Van Buren, noted as a
common sight in the Yazoo district, "especially in the ditching
season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,' straggling along the road";
and remarked also that the Irish were the chief element among
the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.[33] Likewise
Olmsted noted on the Alabama River that in lading his
boat with cotton from a towering bluff, a slave squad was appointed
for the work at the top of the chute, while Irish deck
hands were kept below to capture the wildly bounding bales and
stow them. As to the reason for this division of labor and
concentration of risk, the traveller had his own surmise confirmed
when the captain answered his question by saying, "The
niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are
knocked overboard, or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!"[34]
To these chance observations it may be added that
many newspaper items and canal and railroad company reports
from the 'thirties to the 'fifties record that the construction gangs
were largely of Irish and Germans. The pay attracted those
whose labor was their life; the risk repelled those whose labor
was their capital. There can be no doubt that the planters cherished
the lives of their slaves.

Truancy was a problem in somewhat the same class with disease,
disability and death, since for industrial purposes a slave
absent was no better than a slave sick, and a permanent escape
was the equivalent of a death on the plantation. The character
of the absconding was various. Some slaves merely took vacations
without leave, some fled in postponement of threatened
punishments, and most of the rest made resolute efforts to
escape from bondage altogether.

Occasionally, however, a squad would strike in a body as a
protest against severities. An episode of this sort was recounted
in a letter of a Georgia overseer to his absent employer: "Sir:
I write you a few lines in order to let you know that six of
your hands has left the plantation—every man but Jack. They
displeased me with their worke and I give some of them a few
lashes, Tom with the rest. On Wednesday morning they were
missing. I think they are lying out until they can see you or
your uncle Jack, as he is expected daily. They may be gone
off, or they may be lying round in this neighbourhood, but I
don't know. I blame Tom for the whole. I don't think the rest
would of left the plantation if Tom had not of persuaded them
of for some design. I give Tom but a few licks, but if I ever
get him in my power I will have satisfaction. There was a
part of them had no cause for leaving, only they thought if they
would all go it would injure me moore. They are as independent
a set for running of as I have ever seen, and I think the cause
is they have been treated too well. They want more whipping
and no protecter; but if our country is so that negroes can quit
their homes and run of when they please without being taken
they will have the advantage of us. If they should come in I
will write to you immediately and let you know."[35]

Such a case is analogous to that of wage-earning laborers

on strike for better conditions of work. The slaves could not
negotiate directly at such a time, but while they lay in the woods
they might make overtures to the overseer through slaves on a
neighboring plantation as to terms upon which they would
return to work, or they might await their master's posthaste
arrival and appeal to him for a redress of grievances. Humble
as their demeanor might be, their power of renewing the pressure
by repeating their flight could not be ignored. A happy
ending for all concerned might be reached by mutual concessions
and pledges. That the conclusion might be tragic is illustrated
in a Louisiana instance where the plantation was in charge
of a negro foreman. Eight slaves after lying out for some
weeks because of his cruelty and finding their hardships in the
swamp intolerable returned home together and proposed to go
to work again if granted amnesty. When the foreman promised
a multitude of lashes instead, they killed him with their
clubs. The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia,
told what they had done, and surrendered themselves. The
coroner went to the plantation and found the foreman dead
according to specifications.[36] The further history of the eight
is unknown.

Most of the runaways went singly, but some of them went
often. Such chronic offenders were likely to be given exemplary
punishment when recaptured. In the earlier decades branding
and shackling were fairly frequent. Some of the punishments
were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflicted upon
talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be
quite as fit for freedom as their masters. In the later period
the more common resorts were to whipping, and particularly to
sale. The menace of this last was shrewdly used by making a
bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell on earth of any
district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise. "They
are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave
refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and
the slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians,
for they recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they

were in turn blackening the reputations of the more westerly
states in the amiable purpose of keeping their own slaves content.

Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered
more or less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper
advertisements for fugitives reinforces the impression that
the need of deterrence was vital. Whippings, instead of proving
a cure, might bring revenge in the form of sabotage, arson or
murder. Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter might prove
of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical.
The preventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and
festivities to create lightness of heart; overtime and overtask
payments to promote zeal and satisfaction; kindliness and care
to call forth loyalty in return; and the special device of crop
patches to give every hand a stake in the plantation. This last
raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaves were allowed
to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might be stimulated
more than industry and punishments become more necessary
than before. In the cotton belt a solution was found at
last in nankeen cotton.[37] This variety had been widely grown for
domestic use as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century,
but it was left largely in neglect until when in the thirties it was
hit upon for negro crops. While the prices it brought were
about the same as those of the standard upland staple, its distinctive
brown color prevented the admixture of the planter's
own white variety without certain detection when it reached the
gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations
is indicated by the proceeds of $1,969.65 in 1859 from the
nankeen of the negroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in
Taylor County, Georgia.[38] Such returns might be distributed
in cash; but planters generally preferred for the sake of sobriety
that money should not be freely handled by the slaves. Earnings
as well as gifts were therefore likely to be issued in the form
of tickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed

the following to the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg
in the Christmas season of 1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let
the bearer George have ten dollars value in anything he chooses";
and the merchants entered a memorandum that George chose
two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a
pair of hose, and six shillings in cash.[39]

In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to
avoid the occasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too
heavy, the simplest recourse was to reduce the schedule. If
jobs were slackly done, acquiescence was easier than correction.
The easy-going and plausible disposition of the blacks conspired
with the heat of the climate to soften the resolution of the whites
and make them patient. Severe and unyielding requirements
would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied
with geniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization
would make plantation life not only tolerable but charming.

In the actual régime severity was clearly the exception, and
kindliness the rule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote
in 1820: "After travelling through three slave states I am
obliged to go back to theory to raise any abhorrence of it. Not
once during the journey did I witness an instance of cruel treatment,
nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in
the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and
appear at least as independent as their masters; in animal spirits
they have greatly the advantage."[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828:
"I have no wish, God knows! to defend slavery in the abstract;
. . . but . . . nothing during my recent journey gave me
more satisfaction than the conclusion to which I was gradually
brought that the planters of the Southern states of America,
generally speaking, have a sincere desire to manage their estates
with the least possible severity. I do not say that undue severity
is nowhere exercised; but the discipline, taken upon the average,
as far as I could learn, is not more strict than is necessary
for the maintenance of a proper degree of authority, without
which the whole framework of society in that quarter would be

blown to atoms."[41] And Olmsted wrote: "The only whipping
of slaves that I have seen in Virginia has been of these wild,
lazy children as they are being broke in to work."[42]

As to the rate and character of the work, Hall said that
in contrast with the hustle prevailing on the Northern farms,
"in Carolina all mankind appeared comparatively idle."[43] Olmsted,
when citing a Virginian's remark that his negroes never
worked enough to tire themselves, said on his own account:
"This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at
work—they seem to go through the motions of labor without
putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve
for their own use at night, perhaps."[44] And Solon Robinson
reported tersely from a rice plantation that the negroes plied their
hoes "at so slow a rate, the motion would have given a quick-working
Yankee convulsions."[45]

There was clearly no general prevalence of severity and strain
in the régime. There was, furthermore, little of that curse of
impersonality and indifference which too commonly prevails in
the factories of the present-day world where power-driven machinery
sets the pace, where the employers have no relations
with the employed outside of work hours, where the proprietors
indeed are scattered to the four winds, where the directors confine
their attention to finance, and where the one duty of the
superintendent is to procure a maximum output at a minimum
cost. No, the planters were commonly in residence, their slaves
were their chief property to be conserved, and the slaves themselves
would not permit indifference even if the masters were so
disposed. The generality of the negroes insisted upon possessing
and being possessed in a cordial but respectful intimacy. While
by no means every plantation was an Arcadia there were many
on which the industrial and racial relations deserved almost as
glowing accounts as that which the Englishman William Faux
wrote in 1819 of the "goodly plantation" of the venerable Mr.

Mickle in the uplands of South Carolina.[46] "This gentleman,"
said he, "appears to me to be a rare example of pure and
undefiled religion, kind and gentle in manners. . . . Seeing
a swarm, or rather herd, of young negroes creeping and dancing
about the door and yard of his mansion, all appearing healthy,
happy and frolicsome and withal fat and decently clothed, both
young and old, I felt induced to praise the economy under which
they lived. 'Aye,' said he, 'I have many black people, but I
have never bought nor sold any in my life. All that you see
came to me with my estate by virtue of my father's will. They
are all, old and young, true and faithful to my interests. They
need no taskmaster, no overseer. They will do all and more
than I expect them to do, and I can trust them with untold gold.
All the adults are well instructed, and all are members of Christian
churches in the neighbourhood; and their conduct is becoming
their professions. I respect them as my children, and they
look on me as their friend and father. Were they to be taken
from me it would be the most unhappy event of their lives.'
This conversation induced me to view more attentively the faces
of the adult slaves; and I was astonished at the free, easy, sober,
intelligent and thoughtful impression which such an economy as
Mr. Mickle's had indelibly made on their countenances."