After a voyage up Red River, and a week spent in some of the cotton plantations of that district, I proceeded to Vicksburg, with the intention of visiting Central Mississippi and the Yazoo cotton region. Owing to long continued rains, however, and the consequent floods which had covered and frequently torn up and removed the bridges and log causeways, ] found traveling entirely interrupted on the route] had intended to pursue, and was obliged to change my purpose and go up the river to Memphis, Thence] returned to the North, along the eastern base of the Appalachian Chain in the upper parts of the States of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, having [216] the intention to make another visit to the South, in which I might examine more thoroughly than I had then been able to, the most important cotton districts and those prospectively the most important.

I shall therefore defer for the present a particular account of the culture and commerce of cotton, as it is that which has come within my personal observation, with regard to the industry of the South which is received with the greatest interest by your readers. I shall occupy my next two or three letters with notes having reference to the condition of the slaves belonging to the proprietors living in circumstances widely different, which will represent the extremes, most favorable and least so, to the well-being and improvement of the laboring class of the South that I encountered.

Other things being equal, the condition of the laborer at the South is least happy, as is that of the free agricultural laborer everywhere, when he is connected with large estates. The evil results from the monopoly of land possession, to the laborer, may be more palpable in a free community, because of the greater mercenary interest of the slave proprietor in the health and adequate physical sustenance of his laborers. The discipline and constant incitement to improvement, however, arising from self—dependence and personal responsibility—constantly calling into action, as it does, industry, patience, and economy—remain much stronger with the free dependent of the large proprietor than with the slave, and greater with the slave of the small proprietor than the large.

At the same time, the benefit arising to the inferior race, from its forced relation to and intercourse with the superior, which is the main advantage claimed for slavery, amounts to nothing on the larger plantations. Each laborer is such an inconsiderable unit in the mass of laborers, that he may even not be known by name, or personally recognizable by his master. At the same time, for the white persons to retain adequate control, and keep the order in so large a body of negroes, necessary to their own personal safety, and the profitable employment of their labor, a discipline which, if applied to the free laborer, would be resisted as barbarously cruel, is necessary. and (the righteousness of slavery as a system being granted) is justifiable. The condition of the slaves under such circumstances will be more apparent from what I shall now relate of my observations upon a very large estate on which I spent several days.

There were on this estate nearly one thousand negroes. living in four settlements, some miles apart. It was divided into four plantations, with an overseer to each, and the whole was directed by a manager. The owner had another. smaller, and more healthful estate, and seldom resided on this. The manager was a gentleman of university education, energetic and thorough in his business, but of generous and poetic temperament, and with an enjoyment of nature and the bucolic life rarely found in an American. The gang of busy negroes were, to him, as natural and requisite an element of the poetry of nature as flocks of peaceful sheep and herds of lowing kine, and he would no more appreciate the aspect in which an Abolitionist would see them than would [217] Virgil have honored the feelings of a vegetarian, who would only sigh at the sight of flocks and herds destined to feed the depraved appetite of the carnivorous savage of modern civilization.

The overseers were superior to most of their class, that I have seen; frank, honest, temperate and industrious, but their feelings towards negroes were such as would naturally result from their employment. They were all married, and lived with their families, each in a cabin or cottage, in the settlement of the negroes of which they had especial charge. Their wages were from $500 to $1,000 each. These five men, each living more than a mile distant from either of the others, were the only white men on the estate, and the only others within ten miles were a few vagabonds, who were looked upon with suspicion as likely to corrupt and demoralize the negroes.

Of course, to secure personal safety and the efficient use of the labor of such a large number of ignorant and indolent vicious negroes, rules, or rather habits and customs of discipline were necessary, that would in particular cases be liable to operate unjustly and cruelly. It will be seen, also, as the testimony, of negroes is not received as evidence in courts, that there was very little probability that any amount of even illegal cruelty would be restrained by regard to the law. A provision of the law intended to secure a certain privilege to slaves was indeed disregarded under my own observation, and such infraction of the law was confessedly customary with one of the overseers, and not interfered with by the manager, because it seemed to him to be, in a certain degree, justifiable and expedient under the circumstances.

In the main, the negroes were well taken care of and abundantly supplied with the necessaries of vigorous physical existence. A large part of them lived in commodious and well built cottages, with broad piazzas in front, so that each family of five had two rooms on the lower floor and a loft. The remainder lived in log cabins, contracted and mean in appearance, but their overseers lived in very similar cabins, and preparations were being made to replace all of these by handsome boarded cottages. Each family had a fowl-house and hog-sty (constructed by the negroes themselves) and kept an unlimited number of fowls and swine, feeding the latter during the Summer on weeds and fattening them in the Autumn on corn stolen (this was mentioned by all the overseers as a matter of course) from their master’s corn fields. I saw gangs of them eating their dinner in the field several times, and observed that they generally had plenty, and often some left, of bacon, eggs, corn-bread, and molasses. The following rations were weighed and measured under the eye of the manager by the drivers, and distributed to the head of each family, for each person weekly: 3 lbs. pork, 1 peck meal, and from January to July, 1 quart molasses; monthly, in addition, 1 lb. tobacco, and 4 pints salt. No drink is ever served but water, except after unusual exposure or to ditchers when working in water, who get a glass of whisky at night. All hands cook for themselves after work, at night, each family in its own cabin.

Each family had a garden, the vegetables in which, together with eggs, [218] fowls and bacon, they frequently sold. Most of the families bought a barrel of flour every year. The manager endeavored to encourage this practice, and that they might rather spend their money for flour than for liquor, he furnished it to them at rather less than what it cost him at wholesale, namely, at $4 a barrel. Many poor whites within a few miles would always sell liquor to the negroes and encourage them to steal to obtain the means to buy it of them. These vagabond whites were always spoken of with anger by the overseers, and they had a constant offer of much more than the intrinsic value of their land from the managers to induce them to move away. The negroes also obtain a good deal of game. They set traps for coons, rabbits and turkeys, and I once heard a negro complaining to his overseer, that he had detected one of the vagabond whites in stealing a turkey which had been caught in his pen. I several times partook of excellent game while on the plantation, that had been purchased of the negroes.

The “stock-tender,” an old negro, whose business it was to ride about in the woods to keep an eye on the stock cattle that were pastured in them, and who thus was likely to know where the deer ran, had an ingenious way of supplying himself with venison. He lashed a scythe blade or butchers’ knife to the end of a pole so that it formed a lance: this he set near a fence or fallen tree which obstructed a path in which the deer habitually ran, and the deer in leaping over the obstacle would leap directly on the knife. In this manner he had killed two deer the week before my visit.

The overseers regulated the hours of work, each for his own gang. I saw the negroes at work before sunrise and after sunset; at about 8 o’clock, they were allowed to stop to breakfast, and again about noon to dine. The lengths of these rests were at the discretion of the overseer or drivers, and I should think, were from half an hour to an hour. There was no rule. The number of hands directed by each overseer was from ISO to 250. The manager told me that he thought it would be better economy to have a white man over every fifty hands, but for the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy overseers. Three of those he had, were the best he had ever known. The majority of overseers he described, as they have always been represented to me, to be drunkards, or passionate, careless, inefficient men, totally unfitted for their duties. The best overseers ordinarily are young men, the sons of planters of moderate means—who take up the business with no intention of following it permanently.

During my visit, the hands were employed in plowing for corn and cotton, in planting corn, in grubbing newly cleared land, and in ditching. The driver of the ditching gang was an Irishman, who was furnished with a cabin, a cow and pasturage, some vegetables and $10 a month wages. The task of the ditchers was to dig thirty feet a day per man of a drain 5 feet wide at top, 4 feet at bottom, and 4 feet deep, clayey soil, with a few roots, but no picking. Coming to somewhat lighter land, the manager one day directed the task to be increased to 40 feet. The plowing, both with single and double mule team, was generally performed by women, and very well performed. I watched them with some [219] interest to see if there was any indication that their sex unfitted them for the occupation. Twenty of them were plowing together with double teams and heavy plows. They were superintended by a male negro driver, who carried a whip, and allowed no delay or hesitation at the turning, and they twitched their plows around on the head land, jerking the rein and yelling to their mules with surprising ease, energy and rapidity. No man could have excelled them with less apparent exertion.

Generally in the Southwest the negroes appeared to be worked much harder than in the eastern and northern Slave States. ] do not think they accomplish so much, but they certainly labored much harder than agricultural laborers at the North usually do. They are obliged to keep constantly and steadily moving, and the stupid, plodding, machine-like manner in which they move is painful to witness. This was most the case in the corn-planting. A gang of children dropped the corn at suitable distances, and another gang followed covering it with hoes; there would thus be a hundred or two engaged together, moving across the field in two parallel lines with a considerable degree of precision.

I frequently rode at a canter, with several other horsemen, across and between these lines, often coming suddenly upon them without in the slightest degree interrupting or changing the dogged action of the laborers, or causing one of them to lift an eye from the ground. A strong driver walked to and fro in the rear of the line, frequently cracking his whip and calling out in the surliest manner, to one and another, “Shove your hoe there!” But] never saw him strike anyone with the whip except very lightly, and as a caution to smaller children when they did not move fast enough.

Corporeal punishment was evidently frequent, however, on the estate, and often, I have no doubt, severe. There were no rules about it that I learned; the overseers and the drivers used the whip whenever they deemed there was occasion, and in such manner and in such degree as they thought fit. The discipline of the plantation is precisely the same as that of the army and navy; the negroes are privates, enlisted for their lives in the service of their masters; the lash is constantly held over them as the remedy for all wrong-doing, whether of indolence or indiscretion, while they are subject to be shot for insubordination. “If you don’t work faster,” or “If you don’t work better,” or “If you don’t mind me better—I will have you flogged,” I have heard frequently. I have heard a girl not more than seven years old say to an old negro, “If you don’t do as I bid you, quick, I will tell the overseer to have you flogged, Q and the negro then, sullenly and without an answer, obeyed her.

I said to one of the overseers—“It must be very disagreeable to have to punish them so much as you do?” “Yes, it would be to those who were not used to it-but it’s my business, and I think nothing of it. Why, Sir, I wouldn’t mind killing a negro more than] would a dog.” I asked if he had ever killed a negro? He never had quite killed one, but overseers were often obliged to; he had [220] known of several shot. There are some negroes that are determined never to let a white man whip them, and who will fight when you attempt to whip them; of course, you must kill them in that case. He, himself, was once going to whip a negro in the field, when he struck at his head with his hoe; he guarded off the blow with his whip, and drew a pistol and tried to shoot him, but the pistol missed fire, and he rushed in and knocked him down with it. At another time, a negro that he was punishing, grossly insulted and threatened him; he went to his house to get his gun; when he was coming back, the negro thought he would not fire at him and when he got within a few rods, broke for the woods. He fired at once, and put six buck shot into his hips. He always carried a bowie knife with him, but did not carry a pistol, unless he anticipated unusual insubordination. He always kept a pair of pistols loaded, however, on his mantel piece.

It was only when he first came into a place that he ever had much trouble. There were a great many overseers that were unfit for their business, and who were too easy and slack with the negroes. When he first came into a place after such a man, he had hard work for a time to break the negroes in, but it did not take long to learn them their place.

His conversation on this subject was exactly like what I have heard again and again, ad nauseam, from Northern ship—masters and officers, only he had a less brutal disposition, and more respect for the negroes than those fellows have for the seamen that temporarily subject themselves to the atrocious tyranny and insolence they boast of exercising.

The only instance of very severe corporeal punishment of a negro that I witnessed at the South occurred on this estate. I suppose, however, that equally severe punishment is common—in fact, it must be necessary, to sustain adequate discipline, on every large plantation. The manner of the overseer who inflicted the punishment, and his subsequent conversation with me about it, indicated that it was a common-place occurrence to him.

This overseer was showing me his plantation. In going from one part to the other we had twice crossed a deep gully, in the bottom of which was a thick covert of brush-wood. We were crossing it a third time, and had nearly passed through the brush, when the overseer suddenly stopped his horse, exclaiming, “What’s that? Hallo!—who are you there?” A negro girl was lying at full length on the ground at the bottom of the gully, evidently intending to hide herself from us in the bushes. “Who are you there?” “Sam’s Sail, Sir.” “What are you skulking here for?” The girl half rose, but gave no answer. “Where have you been all day?” Answer unintelligible. After a few more questions, she said her father locked her into the room she slept in, when he went out in the morning, she not having woke up. “How did it happen that he locked you in alone?” “Nobody sleep wid me, Sir, in de room.” “How did you manage to get out?” “Pushed a plank off, Sir, and crawl out.”

The overseer was now silent for a minute, looking at the girl, and then said, “That won’t do—come out here.” The girl rose at once and walked up to [221] him. She was a perfectly black girl, about 18 years old. A bunch of keys hung at her waist. These caught the overseer’s eye, and he said, “Ah! your father locked you in; but you have got the keys.” After a little hesitation the girl replied that those were the keys of some other locks, not of her own room. “That won’t do,” said the overseer: “you must take some—kneel down.” The girl knelt on the ground, he got off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across the shoulders with his rawhide riding whip. They were well laid on, as a man would flog a vicious horse or a thievish dog, or a boatswain would lay it on to a skulking sailor. There was not, however, any appearance of angry excitement in the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed, “Yes, Sir!” or “Ah, Sir!” or “Please, Sir!”—not groaning or screaming.

At length he stopped and said, “Now tell me the truth.” The girl repeated the same story. “You have not got enough yet,” he said; “pull up your clothes—lie down.” The girl, without any hesitation or delay, drew all her garments up to her waist and laid down on the ground upon her side, with her face towards the overseer, and he continued to whip her with the rawhide across her naked back and thigh, with as much strength as before. The girl cried out,“Oh, don’t; Sir, oh, please stop, master; please, Sir, please, Sir! oh, that’s enough, master; oh, Lord! oh, master! master!”

I could not wait to see the end, and after a dozen or twenty blows, I turned my horse’s head, and he burst through the bushes, bounding straight up the steep bank, seemingly as excited and impatient to be doing something as I was. I must say, however, the girl did not seem to suffer the intense pain that I should have supposed she would.

I rode on along the top of the bank until I reached the place where the road came out of the gully, and waited until the overseer joined me. He laughed, and said, “She meant to cheat me out of a day’s work—and she has done it, too.” “Did you succeed in getting another story from her?” “No; she stuck to it.” “It wasn’t true?” “No; she slipped out of the gang when they were going to work, and she’s been dodging about all day, going from one place to another as she saw me coming. She saw us crossing there a little while ago, and thought we had gone to the quarters, but we turned back so quick, we came into the gully before she knew it, and she could do nothing but lay down in the bush.” “suppose they often slip off so.” “No, Sir; never had one do so before—not like this; they often run away to the woods and are gone some time, but’ never had a dodge—off like this before.” “Was it necessary to punish her so hard?” “If’ had not, she would have done the same thing to-morrow, and half the negroes on the plantation would have followed her example, Sir. Oh, you’ve no idea how lazy these negroes are; you Northern people don’t know anything about it. They’d never do any work at all if they were not afraid of being whipped.”

We soon after met an old man, who, after being questioned, said that [222] he had seen the girl slip out of the gang as they went to work after dinner. It appeared that she had been at work during the forenoon, but at dinner time the gang moved across the gully, and she slipped out. The driver had not missed her.

The overseer said that when he first took charge of the plantation, the negroes ran away a great deal—they disliked him so much. They used to say ’twas hell to be on his place; but after a few months they got used to his ways, and liked him as well as any of the rest. He had not had any run away now in some time. When they ran away they would generally come in in course of a fortnight. When some of them had been off for some-time, he would make the rest of the force work Sundays, or restrict them in some of their privileges until they returned. The negroes on the plantation could always bring them in if they chose to. They depended on them for their food, and they had only to refuse to supply them, and they would come in.