Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
the sickly among them revive, and become robust and healthy.
One would think it a surprising fact, if working slaves night and
day, and giving them cane-juice to drink, really produces such
salutary results, that the practice should not be continued the
whole year round; though, perhaps, in this case, the negroes
would become so fat as to be unable to labour. Possibly, it is
because this healthful process is not longer continued that the
agricultural societies of Louisiana are obliged to set down an
annual loss of slaves on sugar plantations to the amount of two
and a half per cent. This ought to be looked into by philan-
thropists. Perhaps working them all night for six months, in-
stead of three, might remedy the evil.
But this periodical pressure is not confined to the making of
sugar. There is also a press in the cotton season, as any one
can observe by reading the Southern newspapers. At a certain
season of the year, the whole interest of the community is
engaged in gathering in the cotton crop. Concerning this Mr.
Weld says (Slavery as It is, p. 34):--
In the cotton and sugar region there is a fearful amount of desperate gambling,
in which, though money is the ostensible stake and forfeit, human life is the real
one. The length to which this rivalry is carried at the South and South-west,
the multitude of planters who engage in it, and the recklessness of human life
exhibited in driving the murderous game to its issue, cannot well be imagined by
one who has not lived in the midst of it. Desire of gain is only one of the mo-
tives that stimulates them; the éclat of having made the largest crop with a given
number of hands is also a powerful stimulant; the Southern newspapers, at the
crop season, chronicle carefully the “cotton brag,” and the “crack cotton-
picking,” and unparalleled driving, &c. Even the editors of professedly religious
papers cheer on the mélée, and sing the triumphs of the victor. Among these we
recollect the celebrated Rev. J. N. Maffit, recently editor of a religious paper at
Natchez, Mississippi, in which he took care to assign a prominent place and
capitals to “THE COTTON BRAG.”
As a specimen, of recent date, of this kind of affair, we sub-
join the following from the Fairfield Herald, Winsboro', S. C.,
November 4, 1852:--
We find in many of our southern and western exchanges notices of the amount
of cotton picked by hands, and the quantity by each hand; and, as we have
received a similar account, which we have not seen excelled, so far as regards
the quantity picked by one hand, we with pleasure furnish the statement, with the
remark that it is from a citizen of this district, overseeing for Major H. W. Parr.
Broad River, October 12, 1852.
“Messrs. Editors,--By way of contributing something to your variety (pro-
vided it meets your approbation), I send you the return of a day's picking of cotton,
not by picked hands, but the fag-end of a set of hands on one plantation, the able-
bodied hands having been drawn out for other purposes. Now for the result of
a day's picking, from sun-up until sun-down, by twenty-two hands--women, boys,
and two men:--4,880 lbs. of clean-picked cotton from the stalk.
“The highest, 350 lbs., by several; the lowest, 115 lbs. One of the number
has picked in the last seven and a-half days (Sunday excepted), eleven hours each
day, 1,900 lbs. clean cotton. When any of my agricultural friends beat this, in
the same time, and during sunshine, I will try again.
“James Steward.”
It seems that this agriculturist professes to have accomplished
all these extraordinary results with what he very elegantly terms
the “fag-end” of a set of hands; and, the more to exalt his
glory in the matter, he distinctly informs the public that there
were no “able-bodied” hands employed; that this whole
triumphant result was worked out of women and children, and
two disabled men; in other words, he boasts that out of women
and children, and the feeble and sickly, he has extracted 4,880
pounds of clean-picked cotton in a day; and that one of these
same hands has been made to pick 1,900 pounds of clean cotton
in a week! and adds, complacently, that, when any of his agri-
cultural friends beat this, in the same time, and during sunshine,
he “will try again.”
Will any of our readers now consider the forcing up of the
hands on Legree's plantation an exaggeration? Yet see how
complacently this account is quoted by the editor, as a most
praiseworthy and laudable thing!
“Behold the hire of the labourers who have
reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back
by fraud, crieth! and the cries of them which have
reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth.”
That the representations of the style of dwelling-house,
modes of housekeeping, and, in short, the features of life
generally, as described on Legree's plantation, are not wild and
fabulous drafts on the imagination, or exaggerated pictures of
exceptional cases, there is the most abundant testimony before
the world, and has been for a long number of years. Let the
reader weigh the following testimony with regard to the
dwellings of the negroes, which has been for some years before
the world, in the work of Mr. Weld. It shows the state of
things in this respect, at least up to the year 1838.
Mr. Stephen E. Maltby, Inspector of Provisions, Skaneateles, New York, who
has lived in Alabama.--“The huts where the slaves slept generally contained but
one apartment, and that without floor.”
Mr. George A. Avery, elder of the 4th Presbyterian Church, Rochester, New
York, who lived four years in Virginia.--“Amongst all the negro cabins which
I saw in Virginia, I cannot call to mind one in which there was any other floor
than the earth; anything that a Northern labourer, or mechanic, white or
coloured, would call a bed, nor a solitary partition to separate the sexes.”
William Ladd, Esq., Minot, Maine, President of the American Peace Society,
formerly a slaveholder in Florida.--“The dwellings of the slaves were palmetto
huts, built by themselves of stakes and poles, thatched with the palmetto-leaf.
The door, when they had any, was generally of the same materials, sometimes
boards found on the beach. They had no floors, no separate apartments; except
the Guinea negroes had sometimes a small enclosure for their `god houses.' These
huts the slaves built themselves after task and on Sundays.”
Rev. Joseph M. Sadd, Pastor of Presbyterian Church, Castile, Greene County,
New York, who lived in Missouri five years previous to 1837.--“The slaves live
generally in miserable huts, which are without floors; and have a single apartment
only, where both sexes are herded promiscuously together.”
Mr. George W. Westgate, member of the Congregational Church in Quincy,
Illinois, who has spent a number of years in slave States.--“On old plantations
the negro quarters are of frame and clapboards, seldom affording a comfortable
shelt
er from wind or rain; their size varies from eight by ten, to ten by twelve
feet, and six or eight feet high; sometimes there is a hole cut for a window, but
I never saw a sash, or glass, in any. In the new country, and in the woods, the
quarters are generally built of logs, of similar dimensions.”
Mr. Cornelius Johnson, a member of a Christian Church in Farmington, Ohio.
Mr. J. lived in Mississippi in 1837-38.--“Their houses were commonly built of
logs; sometimes they were framed, often they had no floor; some of them have
two apartments, commonly but one; each of those apartments contained a family.
Sometimes these families consisted of a man and his wife and children, while in
other instances persons of both sexes were thrown together, without any regard to
family relationship.”
The Western Medical Reformer, in an article on the Cachexia Africana, by a
Kentucky physician, thus speaks of the huts of the slaves: “They are crowded together in a small hut, and sometimes having an imperfect, and sometimes no
floor, and seldom raised from the ground, ill-ventilated, and surrounded with filth.”
Mr. William Leftwich, a native of Virginia, but has resided most of his life in
Madison County, Alabama.--“The dwellings of the slaves are log huts, from ten
to twelve feet square, often without windows, doors, or floors; they have neither
chairs, table, nor bedstead.”
Reuben L. Macy, of Hudson, New York, a member of the Religious Society of
Friends. He lived in South Carolina in 1818-19.--“The houses for the field-
slaves were about fourteen feet square, built in the coarsest manner, with one
room, without any chimney or flooring, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out.”
Mr. Lemuel Sapington, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a native of Maryland, for-
merly a slave-holder.--“The descriptions generally given of negro quarters are
correct; the quarters are without floors, and not sufficient to keep off the inclemency
of the weather; they are uncomfortable both in summer and winter.”
Rev. John Rankin, a native of Tennessee.--“When they return to their miser-
able huts at night, they find not there the means of comfortable rest; but on the
cold ground they must lie without covering, and shiver while they slumber.”
Philemon Bliss, Esq., Elyria, Ohio, who lived in Florida in 1835.--“The dwell-
ings of the slaves are usually small open log huts, with but one apartment, and
very generally without floors.”
-- The Rev. C. C. Jones, to whom we have already alluded,
when taking a survey of the condition of the negroes con-
sidered as a field for missionary effort, takes into account all
the conditions of their external life. He speaks of a part of
Georgia where as much attention had been paid to the comfort
of the negro as in any part of the United States. He gives
the following picture:--
Their general mode of living is coarse and vulgar. Many negro-houses are
small, low to the ground, blackened with smoke, often with dirt floors, and the
furniture of the plainest kind. On some estates the houses are framed, weather-
boarded, neatly whitewashed, and made sufficiently large and comfortable in
every respect. The improvement in the size, material, and finish of negro-houses
is extending. Occasionally they may be found constructed of tabby or brick.
--
Now, admitting what Mr. Jones says, to wit, that improve-
ments with regard to the accommodation of the negroes are
continually making among enlightened and Christian people,
still, if we take into account how many people there are who
are neither enlightened nor Christian, how unproductive of any
benefit to the master all these improvements are, and how
entirely, therefore, they must be the result either of native
generosity or of Christian sentiment, the reader may fairly
conclude that such improvements are the exception, rather than
the rule.
A friend of the writer, travelling in Georgia during the last
month, thus writes:--
Upon the long line of rice and cotton plantations extending along the railroad
from Savannah to this city, the negro quarters contain scarcely a single hut which
a Northern farmer would deem fit shelter for his cattle. They are all built of poles,
with the ends so slightly notched that they are almost as open as children's cob-
houses (which they very much resemble), without a single glazed window, and
with only one mud chimney to each cluster of from four to eight cabins. And
yet our fellow-travellers were quietly expatiating upon the negro's strange inability
to endure cold weather.
Let this modern picture be compared with the account given
by the Rev. Horace Moulton, who spent five years in Georgia
between 1817 and 1824, and it will be seen, in that State at
least, there is some resemblance between the more remote and
more recent practice:--
The huts of the slaves are mostly of the poorest kind. They are not as good
as those temporary shanties which are thrown up beside railroads. They are
erected with posts and crotchets, with but little or no frame-work about them.
They have no stoves or chimneys; some of them have something like a fire-place
at one end, and a board or two off at that side, or on the roof, to let off
the smoke. Others have nothing like a fire-place in them; in these the fire is
sometimes made in the middle of the hut. These buildings have but one apart-
ment in them; the places where they pass in and out serve both for doors and
windows; the sides and roofs are covered with coarse, and in many instances with
refuse, boards. In warm weather, especially in the spring, the slaves keep up a
smoke, or fire and smoke, all night, to drive away the gnats and mosquitoes, which
are very troublesome in all the low country of the South; so much so, that the
whites sleep under frames with nets over them, knit so fine that the mosquitoes
cannot fly through them.
-- The same Mr. Moulton gives the following account of the
food of the slaves, and the mode of procedure on the plantation
on which he was engaged. It may be here mentioned that
at the time he was at the South he was engaged in certain
business relations which caused him frequently to visit different
plantations, and to have under his control many of the slaves.
His opportunities for observation, therefore, were quite intimate.
There is a homely matter-of-fact distinctness in the style that
forbids the idea of its being a fancy sketch:--
It was a general custom, wherever I have been, for the master to give each of
his slaves, male and female, one peck of corn per week for their food. This, at
fifty cents per bushel, which was all that it was worth when I was there, would
amount to twelve and a half cents per week for board per head.
It cost me, upon an average, when at the South, one dollar per day for board--
the price of fourteen bushels of corn per week. This would make my board
equal in amount to the board of forty-six slaves! This is all that good or bad
masters allow their slaves, round about Savannah, on the plantations. One peck
of gourd-seed corn is to be measured out to each sla
ve once every week. One
man with whom I laboured, however, being desirous to get all the work out of his
hands he could, before I left (about fifty in number), bought for them every week,
or twice a week, a beef's head from market. With this they made a soup in a
large iron kettle, around which the hands came at meal-time, and dipping out the
soup, would mix it with their hominy, and eat it as though it were a feast. This
man permitted his slaves to eat twice a day while I was doing a job for him. He
promised me a beaver hat, and as good a suit of clothes as could be bought in the
city, if I would accomplish so much for him before I returned to the North;
giving me the entire control over his slaves. Thus you may see the temptations
overseers sometimes have, to get all the work they can out of the poor slaves.
The above is an exception to the general rule of feeding. For, in all other places
where I worked and visited, the slaves had nothing from the masters but the corn, or its equivalent in potatoes or rice; and to this they were not permitted to come
but once a day. The custom was to blow the horn early in the morning, as a
signal for the hands to rise and go to work. When commenced, they continue
work until about eleven o'clock A.M., when, at the signal, all hands left off, and
went into their huts, made their fires, made their corn-meal into hominy or cake,
ate it, and went to work again at the signal of the horn, and worked until night,
or until their tasks were done. Some cooked their breakfast in the field while at
work. Each slave must grind his own corn in a hand-mill after he has done his
work at night. There is generally one hand-mill on every plantation for the use
of the slaves.
Some of the planters have no corn; others often get out. The substitute for it
is the equivalent of one peck of corn, either in rice or sweet potatoes, neither of
which is as good for the slaves as corn. They complain more of being faint when
fed on rice or potatoes than when fed on corn. I was with one man a few weeks
who gave me his hands to do a job of work, and, to save time, one cooked for all
the rest. The following course was taken:--Two crotched sticks were driven
down at one end of the yard, and a small pole being laid on the crotches, they