Sugar plantation

“ The aspect of the sugar plantation is remarkably fine, and an occasional glimpse of the surrounding hills, bathed in the sunlight, imparts a sublimity that at once arrests the attention, the crags rising in close proximity, and appearing much more precipitous and inaccessible than they are in reality. ”

“ When there is a sudden rise in the prices of sugar, a certain amount of labor in a given time is of more consequence to the owner of a plantation, than the price of several slaves; he can well afford to waste a few lives. This is no idle hypothesis—such calculations are gravely and openly made by planters. Hence, it is the slave's prayer that sugars may be cheap. When the negro is old, or feeble from incurable disease, is it his master's interest to feed him well, and clothe him comfortably? ”

“ There is yet, however, another aspect of the question, which is, that it is sometimes clearly not the interest of the owner to prolong the life of his slaves; as in the case of inferior or superannuated labourers, or the very notorious instance in which some of the owners of sugar plantations stated that they found it better worth their while to work off (i.e. kill with labour) a certain proportion, of their force, and replace them by new hands every seven years, than work them less severely and maintain them in diminished efficiency for an indefinite length of time. ”

“ In days of slavery it required an immense capital to establish a sugar plantation, as well as a large annual expenditure to carry on the affairs of the estate when established. Perhaps a sugar estate had a gang of two hundred slaves upon it, yet out of this large number possibly there might not be more than sixty or seventy efficient negroes, the surplus being composed of helpless old men and women, children and infants, and emaciated and cureless invalids. ”

“ The sugar plantation is no grove, or garden, or orchard. It is not the home of the pride and affections of the planter's family. It is not a coveted, indeed, hardly a desirable residence. Such families as would like to remain on these plantations are driven off for want of neighboring society. Thus the estates, largely abandoned by the families of the planters, suffer the evils of absenteeism, while the owners live in the suburbs of Havana and Matanzas, and in the Fifth Avenue of New York. The slave system loses its patriarchal character. ”

“ When one nigger's dead, I buy another; and I find it comes cheaper and easier every way."
Added to this, the peculiar mode of labor on the sugar plantation is such that the master, at a certain season of the year, must over-work his slaves, unless he is willing to incur great pecuniary loss. In that very gracefully written apology for slavery, Professor Ingraham's "Travels in the South-west," the following description of sugar-making is given. ”

“ All of the characteristic work in the sugar plantation routine called mainly for able-bodied laborers. Children were less used than in tobacco and cotton production, and the men and women, like the mules, tended to be of sturdier physique. ”

“ A sugar-plantation is doubtless one of the most difficult species of property to manage in a proper manner. The numerous persons employed upon it, their divers avocations, and the continual change of occupation, give to the owner or his manager constant motives for exertion, innumerable opportunities of displaying his activity. A plantation ought to possess within itself all the tradesmen which are required for the proper furtherance of its concerns ”

“ In the twenty years prior to the beginning of the Worthy Park record more than one-third of all the sugar plantations in Jamaica had gone through bankruptcy. It was generally agreed that, within the limits of efficient operation, the larger an estate was, the better its prospect for net earnings. But though Worthy Park had more than twice the number of slaves that the average plantation employed, it was barely paying its way. ”

“ A sugar plantation of Pernambuco or Paraiba does not require the enormous capital which is necessary in purchasing and establishing an estate of the same description in the Columbian islands; but a certain degree of capital is requisite, otherwise continual distress will be the consequence of entering into such a concern. The instances of persons having purchased sugar plantations without any advance of money are however by no means rare, and even the slaves, or at least the major part of them, have sometimes been obtained on long credit at exorbitant prices. ”

“ Such an average scale and such a prevalence of absenteeism never prevailed in any other Anglo-American plantation community, largely because none of the other staples required so much manufacturing as sugar did in preparing the crops for market. As Bryan Edwards wrote in 1793: "the business of sugar planting is a sort of adventure in which the man that engages must engage deeply.... ”

“ Marc, still the people do not evince any disposition to cultivate the land. Scarcely a sugar plantation is to be seen until you approach Gonaives [280] or its vicinity, and those established in that quarter are not worthy of the designation; they are mere patches visible on an extended surface, and from the elevations around them have only the appearance of detached spots cultivated as gardens. There is nothing like an extensive scene of cultivation, nor can such be found throughout the whole of the republic. ”

“ The estimate of a million head to meet the immediate demands may seem to be large, but when we come to consider that one sugar plantation of 3000 acres requires from 250 to 400 yoke of working cattle, not to mention cows and beef cattle,—and that there are thousands of sugar and tobacco plantations, besides other thousands of farms of various kinds,—and ox-carts for general transportation all over the Island, it will be seen that a million head will be scarcely enough. ”

“ With this number I cultivated my sugar plantation until the Emancipation Act of August 1st, 1838, when they all became free. I now hire a portion of those slaves, the best and cheapest of course, as you hire men in the United States. ”

“ Cannon, which he will have cleared, grubbed and planted in orange and lemon trees this year.
In ante bellum times, the present Patten plantation was known first as the Gamble, and afterward as the Cofield and Davis plantation, and was the largest and most thoroughly equipped sugar plantation in the State of Florida. The owners worked 200 hands, and had 1,400 acres of sugar-cane in one field. Their sugar-mill and refinery contained all the modern appliances, and, at the commencement of the war, was worth half a million dollars. ”

“ This was the first sugar plantation in the United States cultivated by free labor by its old owner; and the free-labor experiment—if, as the planters insist, it is to be regarded as an experiment—has been tried on 275it for a longer consecutive period than on any other. Its results may, therefore, be profitably studied, as a fair index to the probable value of the system.
No man would be more apt to be a severer judge of the experiment than the one who had lost the slaves whom he now hired. ”

“ As to the boasted civilisation, a sugar plantation has not been found a very advanced school for the American or West Indian negro, and as a matter of fact, the islander who has fulfilled his term and comes home, bringing tobacco, clothes, and fire-arms, only becomes a more dangerous and licentious savage than he was in his simplicity. ”

“ Climate, soil, and the rate of wages all favor such an idea. The Sandwich Islands, which have been so largely resorted to for the establishment of sugar plantations, cannot show one half the advantages which lie unimproved on the new lines of the Mexican railways. If a capitalist were considering the purpose of establishing a large sugar plantation, the fact of cheap and easy transportation to market being here close at hand should alone settle the question as between the islands referred to and this locality. ”

“ The investment of capital in the cultivation of cotton is extremely profitable, and a plantation judiciously managed seldom fails of producing an income, in a few years, amounting to the original outlay. Each slave is estimated to produce from 250 to 300 dollars per annum; but of course from this are to be deducted the wear and tear of the slave, and the casualties incident to human life. On sugar plantations the profit is much more on each individual ”

“ Lambert’s sugar plantation contains 2000 acres of land, but of course only a part of this is planted each year. He has 600 laborers, who are engaged for seven months in the year in the field, and during the other five in getting in the crop and boiling it. ”

“ It was Ramon who was calling.
"Say, Maria, what shall we do to-day while father and mother are gone to church? Let's go over to the plantation. You know we've been invited ever so many times, and it is such fun watching the men at work."
"All right," said Maria, "but there's no hurry. We will wait till after the folks have gone before we start."
Just beyond the home of the Diaz children [38] was an immense sugar plantation. It covered at least a square mile of land. The rich planter who owned it employed more than a hundred black men. ”

“ Willis says, “Nobody can starve here: the cane-fields are all open; and if hungry, one has only to cut a stick and suck.” We discovered this morning still another sugar plantation, but distrusting the availability of our Spanish, only rode past the sugar-house without asking for guirappa. ”

“ With the increase of prosperity, and by the aid of managers brought from Barbados, sugar plantations gradually came to prevail all round the coast and in favorable mountain valleys, while smaller establishments here and there throve more moderately in the production of cotton, pimento, ginger, provisions and live stock. For many years the legislature, prodded by occasional slave revolts, tried to stimulate the increase of whites by requiring the planters to keep a fixed proportion of indentured servants ”

“ Their medical attendant visits them regularly, and each plantation has a practitioner, who is engaged by the term for his services. If the growth of sugar-cane, cotton, and corn, be the great end of man’s mission on earth, and if all masters were like Governor Roman, slavery might be defended as a natural and innocuous institution. Sugar and cotton are, assuredly, two great agencies in this latter world. ”

“ That is a bad man. Negroes would rather be sold to a sugar plantation in Louisiana any time than be sold to him. He soon works them down; in two years, fine, healthy fellows become lame, infirm, and sickly under him; he never gives them a holiday, and seldom a Sunday, and half-starves them at that. ”

“ Thirteen tracts of land or plantations, cultivated or otherwise, including thereon the sugar-plantation [and] three small islands lying at the mouth of said bayou; also one hundred and seventeen slaves, employed on said sugar-plantation, said slaves being of different ages and sexes, in good health, sick, infirm, crippled, and such as they are or may be, and no warranty being given to the purchaser against the redhibitory vices and maladies prescribed by law, said warranty being on the contrary absolutely and totally refused; also a cotton-gin adjoining said sugar-plantation ”

“ The sugar plantations were also a source of wealth. As the poor natives could not stand the hard toil in the mines and plantations, and their numbers in consequence began rapidly to dwindle, the cruel slave trade was set afoot. Negroes were purchased on the coast of West Africa and taken across the sea to work for the Spaniards. ”

“ It seldom happens that mulattoes are in possession of plantations; but when a white man dies, who happens to possess twenty negroes, he will divide them among his brown family, leaving (we may say) five to each of his four children. These are too few to be employed in plantation work; they are, therefore, ordered to maintain their owner by some means or other, and which means are frequently not the most honest, the most frequent being the travelling about as higglers, and exchanging the trumpery contents of their packs and boxes with plantation negroes for stolen rum and sugar. ”

“ In those days few persons in the world opposed slavery. Even kings and queens made money out of the traffic. But for tobacco slavery would not have taken such a hold on America. When it was found that the negro made the cheapest laborer for cultivating the plantation many more were imported.
They were also employed in the New England and Middle States, largely as household servants, the soil not being favorable to the production of rice, indigo, cotton and sugar, which were the staples of Southern agriculture. Moreover, the African is not physically adapted to the northern climate. ”

“ Meantime the war continued in the plain of Cape François with unmitigated fierceness, and human blood still flowed in torrents amid the cruelty practiced on both sides. It was estimated that within the space of two months, more than two thousand whites had fallen victims to the insurrection — that one hundred and eighty sugar plantations, and nearly nine hundred plantations of coffee, cotton and indigo had been laid waste, and their mills and houses consumed to ashes. The negroes, in the wantonness of their fury, left nothing undestroyed that was not in itself indestructible. ”