XXVITHE OLD PLANTATION LIFE
It is almost a half century since the old plantation days. Only those who number threescore years and ten have a personal remembrance of the cares, duties and pleasures of the old plantation life. Only those who bore the cares, discharged the duties and prepared the way for the pleasures really understand the life that died and was buried fifty years ago. People who know so much about that fanatic John Brown and the fantastic “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” are asking what one fought and bled for (did he bleed?) and what the other was written for. Some of those inquiring souls are over fifty years old, and what is more, their fathers were slave owners. The few of us tottering around who can tell of the old plantation life are threescore years and ten, and if we do not hasten to tell the story it may never be told. It is well to leave a record of a life that has passed beyond resurrection, a glorified record it may appear, for as we stand beside the bier of a loved and lifelongfriend, we recall only his virtues. So as I look back on the old plantation life only the comforts and pleasures troop before me. It had its duties, but they were not onerous; its cares, but they were not burdensome, nor were its pleasures excessive. What we planned and accomplished for our slaves afforded us more satisfaction than any man of the present day can feel for his grand stables of hunters and roadsters and racers, that absorb his time and means....
Booker Washington, in that very interesting volume, “Up from Slavery,” tells of his early life when his mother (he never knew his father, and thinks he was a white man) was the slave of a well-to-do Virginia farmer, and the slave quarters had dirt floors. That may have been in the clay hills of Virginia, but I never saw a cabin, unless it was a pig pen, with a dirt floor. I am no apologist for slavery; the whites suffered more from its demoralizing influence than the blacks, but we were born to it, grew up with it, lived with it, and it was our daily life. We did well by it; no people could have done better. It is past now. When I tell of my own home it is to tell of the plantation homes of everybody I knew. We did not differ or vary to any extent in our modes of life and management.
Arlington Plantation on the Mississippi.
Arlington Plantation on the Mississippi.
Arlington Plantation on the Mississippi.
Slaves were comfortably housed. Their cabinswere elevated above the ground, two rooms in each building, a chimney between, a porch in front and windows on two sides. The slaves were well fed and well clothed in osnaburgs and linseys cut and made in the sewing room of the “big house.” Though the hook worm theory was not at that time exploited they were well shod. There were drones; I guess there were hook worms too, but we did not know it. The old and infirm had light tasks. Men pottered around the woodpile, or tended the cows on their promenades over the levee, and the women sewed a little and quarreled, as idly disposed old folks will, among themselves (we who visit almshouses now know how that is) or fussed with the frolicking children. I never saw in those days a negro with spectacles, or one who seemed to need them.
There was an infirmary for the sick, and a day nursery for the babies, under the charge of a granny, a well-ventilated room with a spacious fireplace, where pots and kettles were always on hand, mush and herb teas always on tap; there the babies were deposited in cribs all day while the mothers were at work in the fields. No woman went to work until her child was a month old. A large diary folio record was kept by the overseer of all the incidents of the plantation; when a woman was confined, when she was sent again to the field, who was ill in thehospital, if doctor was summoned, what part of the canefield was being cultivated day by day, when sugar-making began, when finished, what the yield of the various “cuts,” how many hogsheads and barrels of molasses shipped and by what boats; all these items and ever so many more were recorded. A doctor was employed at $600 per annum. He came only in extreme cases. Headaches and stomach aches, earaches, toothaches and backaches, all these minor ills came under the care of the overseer and “Gunn’s Domestic Medicine,” a formidable volume of instruction. The lady, the “mistis” of the big house, made frequent visits to the quarter lot, saw that things were kept tidy and ministered to the sick.
We did not have “made-over” dishes, cold meats nor stale bread on our tables; little darkies were sent by the half sick and aged for “left overs.” Children were not bottlefed or spoonfed; they consumed pot liquor and mush and molasses as soon as they were weaned. Corn, cowpeas and turnips were cultivated for the slaves, and when there was an overplus of garden vegetables it was sent to the quarter kitchen. Their meat was pickled pork—it was called “clear sides”—shipped from Kentucky or Missouri. All their cooking was done by two cooks in a big kitchen, but every cabin had a fireplace,with a pot or skillet, of course, for we all know how the darky dotes on little messes of her own doing. All the doors had locks, and the women went to the field with the key hung around their necks.
Each spring at house-cleaning, cabins were whitewashed inside and out; also the stables and other plantation buildings, the fences and trees as high up as a long pole or brush could reach. From Saturday noon till Monday was holiday, when the enterprising men chopped wood, for which they were paid, and the drones sunned themselves on the porch steps, and the women washed their clothes. I knew of only one planter who made his negroes work on Sundays. He was an Englishman who married into a plantation. The indignant neighbors called the attention of the grand jury in that case, with success, too. During sugar-making everybody worked day and night, but the season was short, terminating in December.
I cannot recall more than three deaths in ten years. I have no record to refer to (I guess that plantation folio afforded some information to the Union army). There was a burial ground for the slaves. One of them, the engineer, by the way, and a mighty good negro, too, acted as preacher. He married and buried and in all ways ministeredto the spiritual needs of his flock. I recall teaching Lewis to sing “Canaan.” He wanted to learn a hymn, and had a lusty bass voice, while I did not have any at all. Lewis was not the only accomplished negro. We did not have white labor. There were slave carpenters, coopers, masons and sugar makers; women who cut and made all clothing, shirts, coats, pantaloons, dresses.
By law no child under ten years of age could be sold from its mother. I suppose that law is obsolete now! It happened a negro child born in the penitentiary of a convict mother, named Alroy, had to remain ten years in confinement; he was taught reading and writing, probably all the Rs, by the convicts, while he imbibed in such surroundings a good many less desirable accomplishments. Hon. Mr. Alroy represented his native parish in the Louisiana Legislature of reconstruction times. He was better fitted probably than some of his dusky colleagues, for he could read the laws; some of them could not. That is also of the dead past, thank God, and has no bearing on the old plantation life, except as an illustration of the law regarding slaves.
The “big house” had no fastenings on the front and back doors. In the absence of my husband one time I was awakened, in the dead hour of night, bya touch on my shoulder. “It’s me, mistis; de levee’s broke.” A crevasse! Without taking time to put on an extra gown, I was an hour giving orders and dispatching men to the planters, even twenty miles off, for assistance.
For a week thereafter, day and night, I fairly lived on horseback at the levee, superintending the repair work in place of my absent husband and our inefficient overseer. Each planter affected by the crevasse came, or sent an overseer with a force of slaves, who worked in hour shifts, to their waists in the water, driving piles and heaping sand bags. As the shifts changed the men were given a dram and hot soup or coffee, and sent to a huge bonfire nearby to dry themselves.
Another time I landed from a boat at the witching hour between midnight and dawn. The boat’s bell and whistle sounded to attract some light sleeper. By the time I was fairly ashore a glimmering light of a lantern was seen. I was escorted to the house by the coachman, but if any other negro had responded I should have felt quite as safe.
Mammy Charlotte was supreme in the domestic department. The little cupbearers from the quarters reported to her for the “dreenings” of the coffee pot or the left-over soup. The visitor by thelibrary fire called to her for a glass of wine or a “finger” of whisky. I called Charlotte to ask what we were going to have for dinner. She was the busy one, and every plantation had just such a mammy. Charlotte and I belonged to the same church. When there was a vacant seat in the carriage Sunday morning she was called to occupy it.
One of our neighbors, that a New Englander would call a “near” man, owned a few acres adjoining ours, but too remote from his plantation to be advantageously cultivated. He would not fence his property nor work his road, nor keep his levee in repair (it was just there we had the crevasse); however, it afforded good pasturage for Uncle Billy’s cow, and for us, a supply of mushrooms. Billy’s nets and lines supplied us with shrimp and fish, small catfish that William cookedà la pompano, not a poor imitation of that delectable Gulf dainty. I heard Charlotte berating Billy for not bringing in some more of those fine shrimp, when he knew, too, there was company in the house. Imagine my consternation at Billy’s reply, “Dey done gorn; dat ole drowned mule is floated away.”
Col. Hicky was our nearest neighbor, on Hope estate. When the dear old man was eighty and I was twenty-five we were great chums. He never passed in his buggy if I was visible on the lawnor porch without stopping for a chat. There was frequent interchange of neighborly courtesies. He had fine large pecans, and we didn’t; we had celery and he didn’t, so there was much flitting back and forth of baskets. If we were having an unusual occasion, like the dinner my husband gave in honor of Messrs. Slidell and Benjamin, when they were elected to the United States Senate, a big basket came from Hope estate. Didn’t the dear old gentleman send a capon turkey which was too big for any dish we had, and didn’t we have to borrow the Hicky dish?
Col. Hicky had a birthday dinner, when he was eighty-two, and a grand dinner it was, to be sure. Sam Moore—I never knew just who he was, or why he was so essential at every function—sat at the host’s right. The Colonel was too deaf to hear all thebon mots, and Sam interpreted for him, and read in a loud voice all the toasts, some of which were very original and bright. Anyone remembering Col. Winthrop, or better still, Judge Avery, can understand there was no lack of wit and sparkle in any toast they might make.