Plantation owner

“ There is a very powerful cause which makes the prosperity and well-being (as far as life is concerned) of most masters a subject of solicitude with their slaves. The only stability of their condition, such as it is, hangs upon it. If the owner of a plantation dies, his estates may fall into the market, and his slaves be sold at public auction the next day; and whether this promises a better, or threatens a worse condition, the slaves cannot know, and no human being cares. ”

“ Q. Do you think a plantation is more productive where, under a general supervision by the planter or the owner, it is let out in small sections to the negroes to cultivate, or is it better to cultivate the plantation as a whole? ”

“ Only the owners of plantations sell their productions for ready money, with which they purchase, in the upland towns, European goods, particularly printed and plain cottons, coarse woollen stuffs, knives, hatchets, fishing-tackle, &c.; with these goods they pay their [Pg 277] laborers, charging them for every article five or even six times its value. As there is throughout these forest regions a great want of men, the plantation owners endeavor to get the few Indians who settle voluntarily on their property, fixed to it for ever. ”

“ The roads, long neglected, are in disorder and, having in many places become impassable, new tracks have been made through the woods and fields without much respect to boundaries." Many a great plantation had been confiscated by the federal authorities while the owner was in Confederate service. Many more lay in waste. In the wake of the armies the homes of rich and poor alike, if spared the torch, had been despoiled of the stock and seeds necessary to renew agriculture. ”

“ The owner of a large plantation of slaves should charge himself with the expense of a minister of the gospel for his slaves. Smaller plantations should unite to employ the services of a minister. The owners of still smaller plantations in thinly settled communities of whites, should see that the usual supply of ministerial service for the neighborhood is sufficient to meet the demands of their slaves. ”

“ On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of about twelve hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. Here again, although I went down with the owner of the estate, to ‘the quarter,’ as that part of it in which the slaves live is called, I was not invited to enter into any of their huts. All I saw of them, was, that they were very crazy, wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked children basked in the sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground. ”

“ The sugar-mills, stables of mules, boilers, coolers, etcetera, were all examined, and the party returned to the plantation house.
“Well, captain, now you have witnessed what is termed slavery, what is your opinion? Are your philanthropists justified in their invectives against us?”
“First assure me that all other plantations are as well regulated as your own,” replied Mr Berecroft.
“If not, they soon will be: it is the interest of all the planters that they should; and by that, like all the rest of the world, they will be guided.” ”

“ There being few towns in the cotton country, the shops, or stores, are frequently kept at some cross road, or other public place, in or adjacent to a rich district of plantations. To these shops the slaves resort, sometimes with, and at other times without, the consent [Pg 130] of the overseer, for the purpose of laying out the little money they get. Notwithstanding all the vigilance that is exercised by the planters, the slaves, who are no less vigilant than their masters, often leave the plantation after the overseer has retired to his bed, and go to the store. ”

“ Any white man who meets a slave of the plantation without a pass, has a right to take him up, and flog him at his discretion. All these causes combined, operate powerfully to keep the slave at home. But, in addition to these principles of restraint, it is a rule on every plantation, that no overseer ever departs from, to flog every slave, male or female, that leaves the estate for a single hour, by night or by day—Sunday not excepted—without a written pass. ”

“ On a great cotton plantation, such as this of my master's, the field hands, who live in the quarter, are removed so far from the domestic circle of their master's family, by their servile condition and the nature of their employment, that they know but little more of the transactions within the walls of the great house, than if they lived ten miles off. Many a slave has been born, lived to old age, and died on a plantation, without ever having been within the walls of his master's domicil. ”

“ Near this was another plantation, abandoned by its Rebel owners, and occupied by lessees from the United States. The absence of responsible proprietors could be everywhere read in the dilapidated buildings and the general air of neglect. Still there was a fair crop of cane and cotton, and the negroes seemed to be working tolerably well for their Northern employers. ”

“ The surviving partner continued, after his partner's death, to retain possession of the plantation, together with the slaves upon it, and to operate the property in good faith. When the war came a year or two later, the plantation was in the theater of conflict, and at the close of the war the slaves had become free. ”

“ The overseers' children go off somewhere to school; and they, therefore, bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad, to embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the place. Not even the mechanics—through whom there is an occasional out-burst of honest and telling indignation, at cruelty and wrong on other plantations—are white men, on this plantation. Its whole public is made up of, and divided into, three classes—slaveholders, slaves and overseers. Its blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and coopers, are slaves. ”

“ Thus the whole management of the plantation is left to the overseer, who as an encouragement to make the most of the crops, has a certain portion as his wages, but not having any interest in the negroes, any further than their labour, he drives and whips them about, and works them beyond their strength, and sometimes till they expire; he feels no loss in their death, he knows the plantation must be supplied, and his humanity is estimated by his interest, which rises always above freezing point. ”

“ On the plantations, I often found a disposition to evade the inquiry whether they wished to be free or slaves; and though a preference for freedom was ex pressed, it was rarely in the passionate phrases which would come from an Italian peasant. The secluded and monotonous life of a plantation, with strict discipline and ignorance enforced by law and custom, is not favorable to the development of the richer sentiments, though even there they find at least a stunted growth, irrepressible as they are. The inquiry was often answered in this way: "The white man do what he pleases with us ”

“ The business of twenty or thirty farms was transacted at this, called, by way of eminence, "great house farm." These farms all belonged to Col. Lloyd, as did, also, the slaves upon them. Each farm was under the management of an overseer. As I have said of the overseer of the home plantation, so I may say of the overseers on the smaller ones; they stand between the slave and all civil constitutions—their word is law, and is implicitly obeyed. ”

“ He will no longer obey orders; he will not stoop to details; he scorns all improvements, and will not adopt any other plan of planting than simply to work lands, negroes, and mules to the top of their bent, which necessarily proves fatal to every employer who will allow it.
“It seems scarcely credible, that any man owning a plantation will so abandon it and his people on it entirely to a hireling, no matter what his confidence in him is. ”

“ Our plantation was situated in the heart of the black belt of the south, and on the plantations all around us were thousands of slaves, all engaged in garnering the dollars that kept up the so-called aristocracy of the south, and many of the proud old families owe their standing and wealth to the toil and sweat of the black man's brow, where if they had to pay the regular rate of wages to hire laborers to cultivate their large estates, their wealth would not have amounted to a third of what it was. ”

“ As long as he is under the guidance and care of the proprietor of the plantation he prospers, the planter, as we express it in that country, "loaning him our aid"; we make it very expressive to the negro, we loan him our aid, that is, he must follow our advice, and he has learned to do that, and by doing that he accumulates ”

“ The law which allotted to every settler fifty acres of land for each member of his family insured all that could pay for their transportation a plantation far larger than they could hope to secure at home. ”

“ Even many Southerners have very hazy ideas about the subdivisions of plantation laborers; and do not distinguish between the renters and croppers, who are tenant farmers in their way, and the wage hands who are less ambitious and not so steady. There is complaint on many plantations that negro families do not finish their contracts, though the main outcry is against the day laborer ”

“ He found that the segregation of large numbers of slaves upon a single plantation was not favorable either to the most rapid multiplication or economy of sustenance. He had carefully determined the fact that plantations of moderate extent, upon the high, well-watered uplands of the Piedmont belt, were the most advantageous locations that could be found for the rearing of slaves. Such plantations, largely worked by female slaves, could be made to return a small profit on the entire investment, without at all taking into account the increase of the human stock. ”

“ The agent claimed the right to sell the crop each year and divide the earnings equally among the several families.
By order of the Court the plantation was sold in 1855, and the proceeds divided equally among them, after which the families soon scattered, some going to Iowa, and others to Illinois. I have not heard from any of them since. The general opinion was that their guardian, P. T. Abel, got the cream of that estate, because when he arranged the sale of the plantation to Captain Withers, he retained five hundred dollars of the three thousand for his own professional service. ”

“ As a general rule, the larger the body of negroes on a plantation or estate, the more completely are they treated as mere property, and in accordance with a policy calculated to insure the largest pecuniary returns. Hence, in part, the greater proportionate profit of such plantations, and the tendency which everywhere prevails in the planting districts to the absorption of small, and the augmentation of large estates. ”

“ C——'s plantation, to be absent till 9 o'clock."
In such fluctuating property as slaves, it often happens that husband, wife, and children may all belong to different owners; and as negroes belonging to different plantations intermarry, such a provision, which is a state law, is necessary to preserve discipline, and embrace within the eye or knowledge of the master, every movement of his slave. ”

“ The self-interest of the planter in the efficiency of his labor does not necessarily lead him to see the highest interests either of the negro race or of the South, under the present industrial system, which makes a plantation a workshop rather than a farm. The ownership of rich cotton lands only means wealth if you can find negro laborers and keep them at work. ”

“ They made the plantation the center of economic life and left more or less religious autonomy. They provided punishment by physical torture, death or sale, but they always left some minimum of incentive by which the slave could have the beginnings of private possession. ”

“ On some estates, the overseers are required to prohibit the people from going to meeting off the plantation, at any time, under the severest penalties. White preachers cannot come upon the plantations, to preach to the people, without first obtaining permission of the master, and afterwards procuring the sanction of the overseer. No slave dare leave the plantation to which he belongs, a single mile, without a written pass from the overseer, or master ”

“ It is true, speedy profit is not to be neglected, as far as may stand [4] with the good of the plantation, but no further. It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people, and wicked condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant; and not only so, but it spoileth the plantation; for they will ever live like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy, and do mischief, and spend victuals, and be quickly weary, and then certify over to their country to the discredit of the plantation. ”

“ And if they take any thing from the plantation they belong to, tho' under such pressing want, their owners will correct them severely, for taking a little of what they have so hardly laboured for, whilst they themselves riot in the greatest luxury and excess. ”

“ With respect to the artificers, such as house-carpenters, coopers, and masons, and the drivers and head-slaves, who form the remaining part of the plantation slaves, they are described as having in general a more certain allowance of provisions, and as being better off.
Situation of the In-and-out-door Slaves. Having now described the state of the plantation, it will be proper to say a few words on that of the In-and- Out-door slaves. The In-door slaves, or domestics, are allowed by all the evidences to be better clothed, and less worked than the others, and invariably to look better. ”