University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XVI
PLANTATION LIFE

WHEN Hakluyt wrote in 1584 his Discourse of Western
Planting, his theme was the project of American colonization;
and when a settlement was planted at Jamestown,
at Boston or at Providence as the case might be, it was
called, regardless of the type, a plantation. This usage of the
word in the sense of a colony ended only upon the rise of a new
institution to which the original name was applied. The colonies
at large came then to be known as provinces or dominions, while
the sub-colonies, the privately owned village estates which prevailed
in the South, were alone called plantations. In the Creole
colonies, however, these were known as habitations—dwelling
places. This etymology of the name suggests the nature of the
thing—an isolated place where people in somewhat peculiar
groups settled and worked and had their being. The standard
community comprised a white household in the midst of several or
many negro families. The one was master, the many were slaves;
the one was head, the many were members; the one was teacher,
the many were pupils.

The scheme of the buildings reflected the character of the group.
The "big house," as the darkies loved to call it, might be of any
type from a double log cabin to a colonnaded mansion of many
handsome rooms, and its setting might range from a bit of
primeval forest to an elaborate formal garden. Most commonly
the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretense
to distinction without nor to luxury within. The two fairly
constant features were the hall running the full depth of the
house, and the verandah spanning the front. The former by
day and the latter at evening served in all temperate seasons as
the receiving place for guests and the gathering place for the

household at all its leisure times. The house was likely to have
a quiet dignity of its own; but most of such beauty as the homestead
possessed was contributed by the canopy of live-oaks if on
the rice or sugar coasts, or of oaks, hickories or cedars, if in
the uplands. Flanking the main house in many cases were an
office and a lodge, containing between them the administrative
headquarters, the schoolroom, and the apartments for any bachelor
overflow whether tutor, sons or guests. Behind the house
and at a distance of a rod or two for the sake of isolating its
noise and odors, was the kitchen. Near this, unless a spring
were available, stood the well with its two buckets dangling from
the pulley; and near this in turn the dairy and the group of
pots and tubs which constituted the open air laundry. Bounding
the back yard there were the smoke-house where bacon and
hams were cured, the sweet potato pit, the ice pit except in the
southernmost latitudes where no ice of local origin was to be had,
the carriage house, the poultry house, the pigeon cote, and the
lodgings of the domestic servants. On plantations of small or
medium scale the cabins of the field hands generally stood at the
border of the master's own premises; but on great estates,
particularly in the lowlands, they were likely to be somewhat
removed, with the overseer's house, the smithy, and the stables,
corn cribs and wagon sheds nearby. At other convenient spots
were the buildings for working up the crops—the tobacco house,
the threshing and pounding mills, the gin and press, or the sugar
house as the respective staples required. The climate conduced
so strongly to out of door life that as a rule each roof covered
but a single unit of residence, industry or storage.

The fields as well as the buildings commonly radiated from
the planter's house. Close at hand were the garden, the orchards
and the horse lot; and behind them the sweet potato field,
the watermelon patch and the forage plots of millet, sorghum
and the like. Thence there stretched the fields of the main crops
in a more or less solid expanse according to the local conditions.
Where ditches or embankments were necessary, as for sugar and
rice fields, the high cost of reclamation promoted compactness;
elsewhere the prevailing cheapness of land promoted dispersion.

Throughout the uplands, accordingly, the area in crops was likely
to be broken by wood lots and long-term fallows. The scale of
tillage might range from a few score acres to a thousand of two;
the expanse of unused land need have no limit but those of the
proprietor's purse and his speculative proclivity.

The scale of the orchards was in some degree a measure of
the domesticity prevailing. On the rice coast the unfavorable
character of the soil and the absenteeism of the planter's families
in summer conspired to keep the fruit trees few. In the sugar
district oranges and figs were fairly plentiful. But as to both
quantity and variety in fruits the Piedmont was unequaled.
Figs, plums, apples, pears and quinces were abundant, but the
peaches excelled all the rest. The many varieties of these were in
two main groups, those of clear stones and soft, luscious flesh
for eating raw, and those of clinging stones and firm flesh for
drying, preserving, and making pies. From June to September
every creature, hogs included, commonly had as many peaches as
he cared to eat; and in addition great quantities might be carried
to the stills. The abandoned fields, furthermore, contributed
dewberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild plums in
summer, and persimmons in autumn, when the forest also
yielded its muscadines, fox grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts
and chinquapins, and along the Gulf coast pecans.

The resources for edible game were likewise abundant, with
squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears
in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodcock and
snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the
streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be
taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and
the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In most localities
it required little time for a household, slave or free, to
lay forest, field or stream under tribute.

The planter's own dietary, while mostly home grown, was elaborate.
Beef and mutton were infrequent because the pastures
were poor; Irish potatoes were used only when new, for they did
not keep well in the Southern climate; and wheaten loaves were
seldom seen because hot breads were universally preferred. The

standard meats were chicken in its many guises, ham and bacon.
Wheat flour furnished relays of biscuit and waffles, while corn
yielded lye hominy, grits, muffins, batter cakes, spoon bread, hoe
cake and pone. The gardens provided in season lettuce, cucumbers,
radishes and beets, mustard greens and turnip greens, string
beans, snap beans and butter beans, asparagus and artichokes,
Irish potatoes, squashes, onions, carrots, turnips, okra, cabbages
and collards. The fields added green corn for boiling, roasting,
stewing and frying, cowpeas and black-eyed peas, pumpkins and
sweet potatoes, which last were roasted, fried or candied for
variation. The people of the rice coast, furthermore, had a special
fondness for their own pearly staple; and in the sugar district
sirop de batterie was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves
and jellies were in variety and quantity limited only by
the almost boundless resources and industry of the housewife
and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breads and relishes
would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpected
guests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal
than would be taken away at the end, never to return. If ever
tables had a habit of groaning it was those of the planters. Frugality,
indeed, was reckoned a vice to be shunned, and somewhat
justly so since the vegetables and eggs were perishable, the bread
and meat of little cost, and the surplus from the table found sure
disposal in the kitchen or the quarters. Lucky was the man
whose wife was the "big house" cook, for the cook carried a basket,
and the basket was full when she was homeward bound.

The fare of the field hands was, of course, far more simple.
Hoecake and bacon were its basis and often its whole content.
But in summer fruit and vegetables were frequent; there was occasional
game and fish at all seasons; and the first heavy frost of
winter brought the festival of hog-killing time. While the
shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all other parts of the
porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare ribs
and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings
greased every mouth on the plantation; and the cracklingbread,
made of corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from
the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. Christmas

and the summer lay-by brought recreation, but the hog-kiling
brought fat satisfaction.[1]

The warmth of the climate produced some distinctive customs.
One was the high seasoning of food to stimulate the appetite;
another was the afternoon siesta of summer; a third the wellnigh
constant leaving of doors ajar even in winter when the roaring
logs in the chimney merely took the chill from the draughts.
Indeed a door was not often closed on the plantation except those
of the negro cabins, whose inmates were hostile to night air, and
those of the storerooms. As a rule, it was only in the locks of
the latter that keys were ever turned by day or night.

The lives of the whites and the blacks were partly segregate,
partly intertwined. If any special link were needed, the children
supplied it. The whites ones, hardly knowing their mothers
from their mammies or their uncles by blood from their "uncles"
by courtesy, had the freedom of the kitchen and the cabins,
and the black ones were their playmates m the shaded sandy
yard the livelong day. Together they were regaled with folklore
in the quarters, with Bible and fairy stories in the "big
house," with pastry in the kitchen, with grapes at the scuppernong
arbor, with melons at the spring house and with peaches in the
orchard. The half-grown boys were likewise almost as undiscriminating
among themselves as the dogs with which they chased
rabbits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, when the fork
in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something
to envy in the freedom of their fellows' feet from the
cramping weight of shoes and the freedom of their minds from
the restraints of school. With the approach of maturity came
routine and responsibility for the whites, routine alone for the
generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each race grew
into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, some of

the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of
both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a
somewhat distinctive plantation type.

In amusements and in religion the activities of the whites and
blacks were both mingled and separate. Fox hunts when occurring
by day were as a rule diversions only for the planters
and their sons and guests, but when they occurred by moonlight
the chase was joined by the negroes on foot with halloos which
rivalled the music of the hounds. By night also the blacks, with
the whites occasionally joining in, sought the canny 'possum and
the embattled 'coon; in spare times by day they hied their curs
after the fleeing Brer Rabbit, or built and baited seductive traps
for turkeys and quail; and fishing was available both by day and
by night. At the horse races of the whites the jockeys and many
of the spectators were negroes; while from the cock fights and
even the "crap" games of the blacks, white men and boys were not
always absent.

Festivities were somewhat more separate than sports, though
by no means wholly so. In the gayeties of Christmas the members
of each race were spectators of the dances and diversions of the
other. Likewise marriage merriment in the great house would
have its echo in the quarters; and sometimes marriages among
the staves were grouped so as to give occasion for a general
frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general invitation
over the countryside in central Georgia to a sextuple wedding
among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the
whole, the fiddle, the banjo and the bones were not seldom in
requisition.

It was a matter of discomfort that in the evangelical churches
dancing and religion were held to be incompatible. At one time
on Thomas Dabney's plantation in Mississippi, for instance, the
whole negro force fell captive in a Baptist "revival" and forswore
the double shuffle. "I done buss' my fiddle an' my banjo,
and done fling 'em away," the most music-loving fellow on the
place said to the preacher when asked for his religious experiences.[3]

Such a condition might be tolerable so long as it was
voluntary; but the planters were likely to take precautions
against its becoming coercive, James H. Hammond, for instance,
penciled a memorandum in his plantation manual: "Church
members are privileged to dance on all holyday occasions; and
the class-leader or deacon who may report them shall be reprimanded
or punished at the discretion of the master."[4] The
logic with which sin and sanctity were often reconciled is illustrated
in Irwin Russell's remarkably faithful "Christmas in the
Quarters." "Brudder Brown" has advanced upon the crowded
floor to "beg a blessin' on dis dance:"

The churches which had the greatest influence upon the negroes
were those which relied least upon ritual and most upon exhilaration.
The Baptist and Methodist were foremost, and the latter
had the special advantage of the chain of camp meetings which
extended throughout the inland regions. At each chosen spot
the planters and farmers of the countryside would jointly erect
a great shed or "stand" in the midst of a grove, and would severally
build wooden shelters or "tents" in a great square surrounding
it. When the crops were laid by in August, the households
would remove thither, their wagons piled high with bedding,
chairs and utensils to keep "open house" with heavy-laden
tables for all who might come to the meeting. With less elaborate
equipment the negroes also would camp in the neighborhood
and attend the same service as the whites, sitting generally
in a section of the stand set apart for them. The camp meeting,
in short, was the chief social and religious event of the year
for all the Methodist whites and blacks within reach of the
ground and for such non-Methodists as cared to attend. For
some of the whites this occasion was highly festive, for others,
intensely religious; but for any negro it might easily be both at
once. Preachers in relays delivered sermons at brief intervals
from sunrise until after nightfall; and most of the sermons were
followed by exhortations for sinners to advance to the mourners'
benches to receive the more intimate and individual suasion of
the clergy and their corps of assisting brethren and sisters. The
condition was highly hypnotic, and the professions of conversion
were often quite as ecstatic as the most fervid ministrant could
wish. The negroes were particularly welcome to the preachers,
for they were likely to give the promptest response to the pulpit's
challenge and set the frenzy going. A Georgia preacher,
for instance, in reporting from one of these camps in 1807, wrote:
"The first day of the meeting, we had a gentle and comfortable

moving of the spirit of the Lord among us; and at night it was
much more powerful than before, and the meeting was kept up
all night without intermission. However, before day the white
people retired, and the meeting was continued by the black people."
It is easy to see who led the way to the mourners' bench.
"Next day," the preacher continued, "at ten o'clock the meeting
was remarkably lively, and many souls were deeply wrought
upon; and at the close of the sermon there was a general cry for
mercy, and before night there were a good many persons who
professed to get converted. That night the meeting continued
all night, both by the white and black people, and many souls
were converted before day." The next day the stir was still
more general. Finally, "Friday was the greatest day of all We
had the Lord's Supper at night, . . . and such a solemn time I
have seldom seen on the like occasion. Three of the preachers
fell helpless within the altar, and one lay a considerable time before
he came to himself. From that the work of convictions and
conversions spread, and a large number were converted during
the night, and there was no intermission until the break of day.
At that time many stout hearted sinners were conquered. On
Saturday we had preaching at the rising of the sun; and then
with many tears we took leave of each other."[6]

The tone of the Baptist "protracted meetings" was much like
that of the Methodist camps. In either case the rampant emotionalism,
effective enough among the whites, was with the negroes
a perfect contagion. With some of these the conversion
brought lasting change; with others it provided a garment of
piety to be donned with "Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes" and
doffed as irksome on week days. With yet more it merely added
to the joys of life. The thrill of exaltation would be followed by
pleasurable "sin," to give place to fresh conversion when the
furor season recurred. The rivalry of the Baptist and Methodist
churches, each striving by similar methods to excel the other,
tempted many to become oscillating proselytes, yielding to the
allurements first of the one and then of the other, and on each

occasion holding the center of the stage as a brand snatched from
the burning, a lost sheep restored to the fold, a cause and participant
of rapture.

In these manifestations the negroes merely followed and enlarged
upon the example of some of the whites. The similarity
of practices, however, did not promote a permanent mingling of
the two races in the same congregations, for either would feel
some restraint upon its rhapsody imposed by the presence of the
other. To relieve this there developed in greater or less degree
a separation of the races for purposes of worship, white ministers
preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantation missions,
and home talent among the negroes filling the intervals.
While some of the black exhorters were viewed with suspicion
by the whites, others were highly esteemed and unusually privileged.
One of these at Lexington, Kentucky, for example, was
given the following pass duly signed by his master: "Tom is
my slave, and has permission to go to Louisville for two or three
weeks and return here after he has made his visit. Tom is a
preacher of the reformed Baptist church, and has always been a
faithful servant."[7] As a rule the greater the proportion of negroes
in a district or a church connection, the greater the segregation
in worship. If the whites were many and the negroes
few, the latter would be given the gallery or some other group
of pews; but if the whites were few and the negroes many, the
two elements would probably worship in separate buildings.
Even in such case, however, it was very common for a parcel of
black domestics to flock with their masters rather than with their
fellows.

The general régime in the fairly typical state of South Carolina
was described in 1845 in a set of reports procured preliminary
to a convention on the state of religion among the negroes
and the means of its betterment. Some of these accounts were
from the clergy of several denominations, others from the laity;
some treated of general conditions in the several districts, others

in detail of systems on the writers' own plantations. In the latter
group, N. W. Middleton, an Episcopalian of St. Andrew's
parish, wrote that he and his wife and sons were the only religious
teachers of his slaves, aside from the rector of the parish.
He read the service and taught the catechism to all every Sunday
afternoon, and taught such as came voluntarily to be instructed
after family prayers on Wednesday nights. His wife and sons
taught the children "constantly during the week," chiefly in the
catechism. On the other hand R. F. W. Allston, a fellow Episcopalian
of Prince George, Winyaw, had on his plantation a
place of worship open to all denominations. A Methodist missionary
preached there on alternate Sundays, and the Baptists
were less regularly cared for. Both of these sects, furthermore,
had prayer meetings, according to the rules of the plantation, on
two nights of each week. Thus while Middleton endeavored to
school his slaves in his own faith, Allston encouraged them to
seek salvation by such creed as they might choose.

An Episcopal clergyman in the same parish with Allston wrote
that he held fortnightly services among the negroes on ten plantations,
and enlisted some of the literate slaves as lay readers.
His restriction of these to the text of the prayer book, however,
seems to have shorn them of power. The bulk of the slaves
flocked to the more spontaneous exercises elsewhere; and the
clergyman could find ground for satisfaction only in saying that
frequently as many as two hundred slaves attended services at
one of the parish churches in the district.

The Episcopal failure was the "evangelical" opportunity. Of
the thirteen thousand slaves in Allston's parish some 3200 were
Methodists and 1500 Baptists, as compared with 300 Episcopalians.
In St. Peter's parish a Methodist reported that in a total
of 6600 slaves, 1335 adhered to his faith, about half of whom
were in mixed congregations of whites and blacks under the care
of two circuit-riders, and the rest were in charge of two missionaries
who ministered to negroes alone. Every large plantation,
furthermore, had one or more "so-called negro preachers,
but more properly exhorters." In St. Helena parish the Baptists
led with 2132 communicants; the Methodists followed with

314 to whom a missionary holding services on twenty plantations
devoted the whole of his time; and the Episcopalians as
usual brought up the rear with fifty-two negro members of the
church at Beaufort and a solitary additional one in the chapel on
St. Helena island.

Of the progress and effects of religion in the lowlands Allston
and Middleton thought well. The latter said, "In every respect
I feel encouraged to go on." The former wrote: "Of my own
negroes and those in my immediate neighborhood I may speak
with confidence. They are attentive to religious instruction and
greatly improved in intelligence and morals, in domestic relations,
etc. Those who have grown up under religious training
are more intelligent and generally, though not always, more improved
than those who have received religious instruction as
adults. Indeed the degree of intelligence which as a class they
are acquiring is worthy of deep consideration." Thomas Fuller,
the reporter from the Beaufort neighborhood, however, was as
much apprehensive as hopeful. While the negroes had greatly
improved in manners and appearance as a result of coming to
worship in town every Sunday, said he, the freedom which they
were allowed for the purpose was often misused in ways which
led to demoralization. He strongly advised the planters to keep
the slaves at home and provide instruction there.

From the upland cotton belt a Presbyterian minister in the
Chester district wrote: "You are all aware, gentlemen, that the
relation and intercourse between the whites and the blacks in the
up-country are very different from what they are in the low-country.
With us they are neither so numerous nor kept so entirely
separate, but constitute a part of our households, and are
daily either with their masters or some member of the white
family. From this circumstance they feel themselves more
identified with their owners than they can with you. I minister
steadily to two different congregations. More than one hundred
blacks attend. . . . The gallery, or a quarter of the house, is appropriated
to them in all our churches, and they enjoy the
preached gospel in common with the whites." Finally, from the
Greenville district, on the upper edge of the Piedmont, where the

Methodists and Baptists were completely dominant among whites
and blacks alike, it was reported: "About one fourth of the
members in the churches are negroes. In the years 1832, '3 and
'4 great numbers of negroes joined the churches during a period
of revival. Many, I am sorry to say, have since been excommunicated.
As the general zeal in religion declined, they backslid."
There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer
continued, who were thought to do some good; but the general
improvement in negro character, he thought, was mainly due to
the religious and moral training given by their masters, and still
more largely by their mistresses. From all quarters the expression
was common that the promotion of religion among the
slaves was not only the duty of masters but was to their interest
as well in that it elevated the morals of the workmen and improved
the quality of the service they rendered.[8]

In general, the less the cleavage of creed between master and
man, the better for both, since every factor conducing to solidarity
of sentiment was of advantage in promoting harmony and
progress. When the planter went to sit under his rector while
the slave stayed at home to hear an exhorter, just so much was
lost in the sense of fellowship. It was particularly unfortunate
that on the rice coast the bulk of the blacks had no co-religionists
except among the non-slaveholding whites with whom they
had more conflict than community of economic and sentimental
interest. On the whole, however, in spite of the contrary suggestion
of irresponsible religious preachments and manifestations,
the generality of the negroes everywhere realized, like the
whites, that virtue was to be acquired by consistent self-control

in the performance of duty rather than by the alternation of
spasmodic reforms and relapses.

Occasionally some hard-headed negro would resist the hypnotic
suggestion, of his preacher, and even repudiate glorification
on his death-bed. A Louisiana physician recounts the final episode
in the career of "Old Uncle Caleb," who had long been
a-dying. "Before his departure, Jeff, the negro preacher of the
place, gathered his sable flock of saints and sinners around the
bed. He read a chapter and prayed, after which they sang a
hymn. . . . Uncle Caleb lay motionless with closed eyes, and
gave no sign. Jeff approached and took his hand. 'Uncle
Caleb,' said he earnestly, 'de doctor says you are dying; and all
de bredderin has come in for to see you de last time. And now,
Uncle Caleb, dey wants to hear from your own mouf de precious
words, dat you feels prepared to meet your God, and is ready and
willin' to go.' Old Caleb opened his eyes suddenly, and in a
very peevish, irritable tone, rebuffed the pious functionary in the
following unexpected manner: 'Jeff, don't talk your nonsense
to me! You jest knows dat I an't ready to go, nor willin' neder;
and dat I an't prepared to meet nobody.' Jeff expatiated largely
not only on the mercy of God, but on the glories of the heavenly
kingdom, as a land flowing with milk and honey, etc. 'Dis ole
cabin suits me mon'sus well!' was the only reply he could elicit
from the old reprobate. And so he died."[9]

The slaves not only had their own functionaries in mystic matters,
including a remnant of witchcraft, but in various temporal
concerns also. Foremen, chosen by masters with the necessary
sanction of the slaves, had industrial and police authority; nurses
were minor despots in sick rooms and plantation hospitals; many
an Uncle Remus was an oracle in folklore; and many an Aunt
Dinah was arbitress of style in turbans and of elegancies in general.
Even in the practice of medicine a negro here and there
gained a sage's reputation. The governor of Virginia reported
in 1729 that he had "met with a negro, a very old man, who has
performed many wonderful cures of diseases. For the sake of

his freedom he has revealed the medicine, a concoction of roots
and barks. . . . There is no room to doubt of its being a certain
remedy here, and of singular use among the negroes—it is well
worth the price (£60) of the negro's freedom, since it is now
known how to cure slaves without mercury."[10] And in colonial
South Carolina a slave named Caesar was particularly famed for
his cure for poison, which was a decoction of plantain, hoarhound
and golden rod roots compounded with rum and lye, together
with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in
case of rattlesnake bite. In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription
published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston
journal which printed it found its copies exhausted by the
demand.[11] An example of more common episodes appears in a
letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, to Robert Carter
of Nomoni Hall, asking that "Brother Tom," Carter's coachman,
be sent to see a sick child in his quarter. Dawson continued:
"The black people at this place hath more faith in him as
a doctor than any white doctor; and as I wrote you in a former
letter I cannot expect you to lose your man's time, etc., for nothing,
but am quite willing to pay for same."[12]

Each plantation had a double head in the master and the mistress.
The latter, mother of a romping brood of her own and
over-mother of the pickaninny throng, was the chatelaine of the
whole establishment. Working with a never flagging constancy,
she carried the indoor keys, directed the household routine and
the various domestic industries, served as head nurse for the sick,
and taught morals and religion by precept and example. Her
hours were long, her diversions few, her voice quiet, her influence
firm.[13] Her presence made the plantation a home; her absence
would have made it a factory. The master's concern was
mainly with the able-bodied m the routine of the crops. He laid
the plans, guessed the weather, ordered the work, and saw to its
performance. He was out early and in late, directing, teaching,

encouraging, and on occasion punishing. Yet he found time for
going to town and for visits here and there, time for politics, and
time for sports. If his duty as he saw it was sometimes grim,
and his disappointments keen, hearty diversions were at hand to
restore his equanimity. His horn hung near and his hounds
made quick response on Reynard's trail, and his neighbors were
ready to accept his invitations and give theirs lavishly in return,
whether to their houses or to their fields. When their absences
from home were long, as they might well be in the public service,
they were not unlikely upon return to meet such a reception
as Henry Laurens described: "I found nobody there but
three of our old domestics—Stepney, Exeter and big Hagar.
These drew tears from me by their humble and affectionate
salutes. My knees were clasped, my hands kissed, my very feet
embraced, and nothing less than a very—I can't say fair, but full
—buss of my lips would satisfy the old man weeping and sobbing
in my face. . . . They . . . held my hands, hung upon me;
I could scarce get from them. 'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never
thought to see you again; now I am happy; Ah, I never thought
to see you again.'"[14]

Among the clearest views of plantation life extant are those
of two Northern tutors who wrote of their Southern sojourns.
One was Philip Fithian who went from Princeton in 1773 to
teach the children of Colonel Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall in
the "Northern Neck" of Virginia, probably the most aristocratic
community of the whole South: the other was A. de Puy
Van Buren who left Battle Creek in the eighteen-fifties to seek
health and employment in Mississippi and found them both, and
happiness too, amid the freshly settled folk on the banks of the
Yazoo River. Each of these made jottings now and then of the
work and play of the negroes, but both of them were mainly impressed
by the social régime in which they found themselves
among the whites. Fithian marveled at the evidences of wealth
and the stratification of society, but he reckoned that a well
recommended Princeton graduate, with no questions asked as to
his family, fortune or business, would be rated socially as on an

equal footing with the owner of a £10,000 estate, though this
might be discounted one-half if he were unfashionably ignorant
of dancing, boxing, fencing, fiddling and cards.[15] He was attracted
by the buoyancy, the good breeding and the cordiality of
those whom he met, and particularly by the sound qualities of
Colonel and Mrs. Carter with whom he dwelt; but as a budding
Presbyterian preacher he was a little shocked at first by the easygoing
conduct of the Episcopalian planters on Sundays. The
time at church, he wrote, falls into three divisions: first, that before
service, which is filled by the giving and receiving of business
letters, the reading of advertisements and the discussion of crop
prices and the lineage and qualities of favorite horses; second,
"in the church at service, prayrs read over in haste, a sermon
seldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made
up of sound morality or deep, studied metaphysicks;[16] third,
"after service is over, three quarters of an hour spent in strolling
round the church among the crowd, in which time you will be invited
by several different gentlemen home with them to dinner."

Van Buren found the towns in the Yazoo Valley so small as
barely to be entitled to places on the map; he found the planters'
houses to be commonly mere log structures, as the farmers'
houses about his own home in Michigan had been twenty years
before; and he found the roads so bad that the mule teams could
hardly draw their wagons nor the spans of horses their chariots
except in dry weather. But when on his horseback errands in
search of a position he learned to halloo from the roadway and
was regularly met at each gate with an extended hand and a
friendly "How do you do, sir? Won't you alight, come in, take
a seat and sit awhile?"; when he was invariably made a member
of any circle gathered on the porch and refreshed with cool
water from the cocoanut dipper or with any other beverages in
circulation; when he was asked as a matter of course to share
any meal in prospect and to spend the night or day, he discovered
charms even in the crudities of the pegs for hanging saddles on
the porch and the crevices between the logs of the wall for the

keeping of pipes and tobacco, books and newspapers. Finally,
when the planter whose house he had made headquarters for two
months declined to accept a penny in payment, Van Buren's heart
overflowed. The boys whom he then began to teach he found
particularly apt in historical studies, and their parents with whom
he dwelt were thorough gentlefolk.

Toward the end of his narrative, Van Buren expressed the
thought that Mississippi, the newly settled home of people from
all the older Southern states, exemplified the manners of all. He
was therefore prompted to generalize and interpret: "A Southern
gentleman is composed of the same material that a Northern
gentleman is, only it is tempered by a Southern clime and mode
of life. And if in this temperament there is a little more urbanity
and chivalry, a little more politeness and devotion to the
ladies, a little more suaviter in modo, why it is theirs—be fair
and acknowledge it, and let them have it. He is from the mode
of life he lives, especially at home, more or less a cavalier; he invariably
goes a-horseback. His boot is always spurred, and his
hand ensigned with the riding-whip. Aside from this he is known
by his bearing—his frankness and firmness." Furthermore he
is a man of eminent leisureliness, which Van Buren accounts for
as follows: "Nature is unloosed of her stays there; she is not
crowded for time; the word haste is not in her vocabulary. In
none of the seasons is she stinted to so short a space to perform
her work as at the North. She has leisure enough to bud and
blossom—to produce and mature fruit, and do all her work.
While on the other hand in the North right the reverse is true.
Portions are taken off the fall and spring to lengthen out the
winter, making his reign nearly half the year. This crowds the
work of the whole year, you might say, into about half of it.
This . . . makes the essential difference between a Northerner
and a Southerner. They are children of their respective climes;
and this is why Southrons are so indifferent about time; they
have three months more of it in a year than we have."[17]

A key to Van Buren's enthusiasm is given by a passage in the

diary of the great English reporter, William H. Russell: "The
more one sees of a planter's life the greater is the conviction that
its charms come from a particular turn of mind, which is separated
by a wide interval from modern ideas in Europe. The
planter is a denomadized Arab;—he has fixed himself with horses
and slaves in a fertile spot, where he guards his women with Oriental
care, exercises patriarchal sway, and is at once fierce, tender
and hospitable. The inner life of his household is exceedingly
charming, because one is astonished to find the graces and
accomplishments of womanhood displayed in a scene which has
a certain sort of savage rudeness about it after all, and where
all kinds of incongruous accidents are visible in the service of the
table, in the furniture of the house, in its decorations, menials,
and surrounding scenery."[18] The Southerners themselves took
its incongruities much as a matter of course. The régime was
to their minds so clearly the best attainable under the circumstances
that its roughnesses chafed little. The plantations were
homes to which, as they were fond of singing, their hearts turned
ever; and the negroes, exasperating as they often were to visiting
strangers, were an element in the home itself. The problem of
accommodation, which was the central problem of the life, was
on the whole happily solved.

The separate integration of the slaves was no more than rudimentary.
They were always within the social mind and conscience
of the whites, as the whites in turn were within the mind
and conscience of the blacks. The adjustments and readjustments
were mutually made, for although the masters had by far
the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by no
means devoid of influence. A sagacious employer has well said,
after long experience, "a negro understands a white man better
than the white man understands the negro."[19] This knowledge
gave a power all its own. The general régime was in fact shaped
by mutual requirements, concessions and understandings, producing
reciprocal codes of conventional morality. Masters of

the standard type promoted Christianity and the customs of marriage
and parental care, and they instructed as much by example
as by precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences,
and permitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought
the slaves could be trusted not to abuse; they refrained from
selling slaves except under the stress of circumstances; they
avoided cruel, vindictive and captious punishments, and endeavored
to inspire effort through affection rather than through
fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderate industrial
results. In short their despotism, so far as it might
properly be so called, was benevolent in intent and on the whole
beneficial in effect.

Some planters there were who inflicted severe punishments for
disobedience and particularly for the offense of running away;
and the community condoned and even sanctioned a certain degree
of this. Otherwise no planter would have printed such descriptions
of scars and brands as were fairly common in the
newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the recapture of
absconders.[20] When severity went to an excess that was reckoned
as positive cruelty, however, the law might be invoked if
white witnesses could be had; or the white neighbors or the
slaves themselves might apply extra-legal retribution. The former
were fain to be content with inflicting social ostracism or
with expelling the offender from the district;[21] the latter sometimes
went so far as to set fire to the oppressor's house or to accomplish
his death by poison, cudgel, knife or bullet.[22]

In the typical group there was occasion for terrorism on neither
side. The master was ruled by a sense of dignity, duty and
moderation, and the slaves by a moral code of their own. This
embraced a somewhat obsequious obedience, the avoidance of
open indolence and vice, the attainment of moderate skill in industry,
and the cultivation of the master's good will and affection.
It winked at petty theft, loitering and other little laxities,

while it stressed good manners and a fine faithfulness in major
concerns. While the majority were notoriously easy-going, very
many made their master's interests thoroughly their own; and
many of the masters had perfect confidence in the loyalty of the
bulk of their servitors. When on the eve of secession Edmund
Ruffin foretold[23] the fidelity which the slaves actually showed
when the war ensued, he merely voiced the faith of the planter
class.

In general the relations on both sides were felt to be based on
pleasurable responsibility. The masters occasionally expressed
this in their letters. William Allason, for example, who after a
long career as a merchant at Falmouth, Virginia, had retired to
plantation life, declined his niece's proposal in 1787 that he return
to Scotland to spend his declining years. In enumerating
his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing which
in your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithful
slaves, which perhaps we have raised from their earliest
breath. Even this, however, some can do, as with horses, etc.,
but I must own that it is not in my disposition."[24]

Others were yet more expressive when they came to write
their wills. Thus[25] Howell Cobb of Houston County, Georgia,
when framing his testament in 1817 which made his body-servant
"to be what he is really deserving, a free man," and gave an
annuity along with virtual freedom to another slave, of an advanced
age, said that the liberation of the rest of his slaves was
prevented by a belief that the care of generous and humane masters
would be much better for them than a state of freedom.
Accordingly he bequeathed these to his wife who he knew from
her goodness of temper would treat them with unflagging kindness.
But should the widow remarry, thereby putting her property
under the control of a stranger, the slaves and the plantation
were at once to revert to the testator's brother who was
recommended to bequeath them in turn to his son Howell if he

were deemed worthy of the trust. "It is my most ardent desire
that in whatsoever hands fortune may place said negroes," the
will enjoined, "that all the justice and indulgence may be shown
them that is consistent with a state of slavery. I flatter myself
with the hope that none of my relations or connections will be so
ungrateful to my memory as to treat or use them otherwise."
Surely upon the death of such a master the slaves might, with
even more than usual unction, raise their melodious refrain: