Chapter III · THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS—CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA, ETC. (continued 2)

“Paid it to him in advance?”

“Yes, he wouldn’t come ’less I’d pay him right then. Well, he worked one month, and maybe eight days—no, I don’t think it was more than six days over a month, and then he went away, and I hain’t seen a sight on him since. I expect I shall lose my money—reckon he don’t ever intend to come back; he knows I’m right in harvest, and want him now, if ever I do.”

“What did he go away for?”

“Why, he said he was sick, but if he was, he got well mighty easy after he stopped working.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Oh, yes, he’s going round here.”

“What is he doing?”

“Well, he’s just goin’ round.”

“Is he at work for any one else?”

“Reckon not—no, he’s just goin’ round from one place to another.”

At supper and breakfast surprise was expressed that I declined coffee, and more still that I drank water instead of milk. The woman observed, “’twas cheap boarding me.” The man said he must get home a couple more cows; they ought to drink milk more, coffee was so high now, and he believed milk would be just as healthy. The woman asked the price of coffee in New York; I could not tell her, but said I believed it was uncommonly high; the crops had been short. She asked how coffee grew. I told her as well as I was able, but concluded by saying I had never seen it growing. “Don’t you raise coffee in New York?” she asked; “I thought that was where it came from.”

The butter was excellent. I said so, and asked if they never made any for sale. The woman said she could make “as good butter as any ever was made in the yarth, but she couldn’t get anything for it; there warn’t many of the merchants would buy it, and those that did, would only take it at eight cents a pound for goods.” The man said the only thing he could ever sell for ready money was cattle. Drovers bought them for the New York market, and lately they were very high—four cents a pound. He had driven cattle all the way to Charleston himself, to sell them, and only got four cents a pound there. He had sold corn here for twelve and a half cents a bushel.

Although the man could not read, he had honoured letters by calling one of his children “Washington Irving;” another was known as Matterson (Madison?). He had never tried manuring land for crops, but said, “I do believe it is a good plan, and if I live I mean to try it sometime.”

July 16th.—I stopped last night at the pleasantest house I have yet seen in the highlands; a framed house, painted white, with a log kitchen attached. The owner was a man of superior standing. I judged from the public documents and law books on his table, that he had either been in the Legislature of the State, or that he was a justice of the peace. There were also a good many other books and newspapers, chiefly of a religious character. He used, however, some singularly uncouth phrases common here. He had a store, and carried on farming and stock raising. After a conversation about his agriculture, I remarked that there were but few slaves in this part of the country. He wished that there were fewer. They were not profitable property here, I presumed. They were not, he said, except to raise for sale; but there were a good many people here who would not have them if they were profitable, and yet who were abundantly able to buy them. They were horrid things, he thought; he would not take one to keep it if it should be given to him. ’Twould be a great deal better for the country, he believed, if there was not a slave in it. He supposed it would not be right to take them away from those who had acquired property in them, without any remuneration, but he wished they could all be sent out of the country—sent to Liberia. That was what ought to be done with them. I said it was evident that where there were no slaves, other things being equal, there was greater prosperity than where slavery supplied the labour. He didn’t care so much for that, he said; there was a greater objection to slavery than that, in his mind. He was afraid that there was many a man who had gone to the bad world, who wouldn’t have gone there if he hadn’t had any slaves. He had been down in the nigger counties a good deal, and he had seen how it worked on the white people. It made the rich people, who owned the niggers, passionate and proud, and ugly, and it made the poor people mean. “People that own niggers are always mad with them about something; half their time is spent in swearing and yelling at them.”

“I see you have ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ here,” said I; “have you read it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what do you think of it?”

“Think of it? I think well of it.”

“Do most of the people here in the mountains think as you do about slavery?”

“Well, there’s some thinks one way and some another, but there’s hardly any one here that don’t think slavery’s a curse to our country, or who wouldn’t be glad to get rid of it.”

I asked what the people about here thought of the Nebraska Bill. He couldn’t say what the majority thought. Would people moving from here to Nebraska now, be likely to vote for the admission of slavery there? He thought not; “most people would much rather live in a Free State.” He told me that he knew personally several persons who had gone to California, and taken slaves with them, who had not been able to bring them back. There were one or two cases where the negroes had been induced to return, and these instances had been made much of in the papers, as evidence that the slaves were contented.

“That’s a great lie,” he said; “they are not content, and nine-tenths of ’em would do ’most anything to be free. It’s only now and then that slaves, who are treated unusual kind, and made a great deal of, will choose to remain in slavery if freedom is put in their way.” He knew one man (giving his name) who tried to bring two slaves back from California, and had got started with them, when some white people suspecting it, went on board the ship and told him it was against the law to hold negroes as slaves in California, and his negroes shouldn’t go back with him unless they were willing to. Then they went to the slaves and told them they need not return if they preferred to stay, and the slaves said they had wanted very much to go back to North Carolina, yet they would rather remain in California, if they could be free, and so they took them ashore. He had heard the slave owner himself relating this, and cursing the men who interfered. He had told him that they did no more than Christians were obliged to do.

I overtook upon the road, to-day, three young men of the poorest class. Speaking of the price of land and the profit of farming, one of them said, believing me to be a southerner—

“We are all poor folks here; don’t hardly make enough to keep us in liquor. Anybody can raise as much corn and hogs on the mountains as he’ll want to live on, but there ain’t no rich people here. Nobody’s got any black ones—only three or four; no one’s got fifty or a hundred, like as they have down in the East.” “It would be better,” interrupted another, somewhat fiercely, “there warn’t any at all; that’s my mind about it; they’re no business here; they ought to be in their own country and take care of themselves, that’s what I believe, and I don’t care who hears it.” But let the reader not be deceived by these expressions; they indicate simply the weakness and cowardice of the class represented by these men. It is not slavery they detest; it is simply the negro competition, and the monopoly of the opportunities to make money by negro owners, which they feel and but dimly comprehend.

If you meet a man without stopping, the salutation here always is, “How d’ye do, sir?” never “Good morning;” and on parting it is, “I wish you well, sir,” more frequently than “Good-bye.” You are always commanded to appear at the table, as elsewhere throughout the South, in a rough, peremptory tone, as if your host feared you would try to excuse yourself.

“Come in to supper.” “Take a seat.” “Some of the fry?” “Help yourself to anything you see that you can eat.”

They ask your name, but do not often call you by it, but hail you “Stranger,” or “Friend.”

Texas is always spoken of in the plural—“the Texies.” “Bean’t the Texies powerful sickly?”

“Ill” is used for “vicious.” “Is your horse ill?” “Not that I am aware of. Does he appear so?” “No; but some horses will bite a stranger if he goes to handling on ’em.”

“Is your horse ill?” “No, I believe not.” “I see he kind o’ drapt his ears when I came up, ’zif he was playful.”

Everybody I’ve met in the last three counties—after ascertaining what parts I came from, and which parts I’m going to, where I got my horse, what he cost, and of what breed he is, what breed the dog is, and whether she’s followed me all the way from the Texies, if her feet ain’t worn out, and if I don’t think I’ll have to tote her if I go much further, and if I don’t want to give her away, how I like the Texies, etc.—has asked me whether I didn’t see a man by the name of Baker in the Texies, who was sheriff of —— county, and didn’t behave exactly the gentleman, or another fellow by the name of ——, who ran away from the same county, and cut to the Texies. I’ve been asked if they had done fighting yet in the Texies, referring to the war with Mexico, which was ended ten years ago. Indeed the ignorance with regard to everything transpiring in the world outside, and the absurd ideas and reports I hear, are quite incredible. It cannot be supposed that having been at home in New York, there should be any one there whom I do not personally know, or that, having passed through Texas, I should be unable to speak from personal knowledge of the welfare of every one in that State.

North-eastern Tennessee,——.—Night before last I spent at the residence of a man who had six slaves; last night, at the home of a farmer without slaves. Both houses were of the best class common in this region; two-story framed buildings, large, and with many beds, to accommodate drovers and waggoners, who, at some seasons, fill the houses which are known to be prepared with stabling, corn, and beds for them. The slaveholder was much the wealthier of the two, and his house originally was the finer, but he lived in much less comfort than the other. His house was in great need of repair, and was much disordered; it was dirty, and the bed given me to sleep in was disgusting. He and his wife made the signs of pious people, but were very morose or sadly silent, when not scolding and re-ordering their servants. Their son, a boy of twelve, was alternately crying and bullying his mother all the evening till bed-time, because his father had refused to give him something that he wanted. He slept in the same room with me, but did not come to bed until after I had once been asleep, and then he brought another boy to sleep with him. He left the candle burning on the floor, and when, in five minutes after he had got into bed, a girl came after it, he cursed her with a shocking volubility of filthy blackguardism, demanding why she had not come sooner. She replied gently and entreatingly, “I didn’t think you’d have more ’n got into bed yet, master John.” The boys were talking and whispering obscenity till I fell asleep again. The white women of the house were very negligent and sluttish in their attire; the food at the table badly cooked, and badly served by negroes.

The house of the farmer without slaves, though not in good repair, was much neater, and everything within was well-ordered and unusually comfortable. The women and girls were clean and neatly dressed; every one was cheerful and kind. There was no servant. The table was abundantly supplied with the most wholesome food—I might almost say the first wholesome food—I have had set before me since I was at the hotel at Natchez; loaf bread for the first time; chickens, stewed instead of fried; potatoes without fat; two sorts of simple preserved fruit, and whortleberry and blackberry tarts. (The first time I have had any of these articles at a private house since I was in Western Texas.) All the work, both within and without the house, was carried on regularly and easily, and it was well done, because done by parties interested in the result, not by servants interested only to escape reproof or punishment.

Doubtless two extreme cases were thus brought together, but similar, if less striking, contrasts are found the general rule, according to my experience. It is a common saying with the drovers and waggoners of this country, that if you wish to be well taken care of, you must not stop at houses where they have slaves.

The man of the last described house was intelligent and an ardent Methodist. The room in which I slept was papered with the “Christian Advocate and Journal,” the Methodist paper of New York.[11] At the slaveholder’s house, my bed-room was partially papered with “Lottery Schemes.”

The free labouring farmer remarked, that, although there were few slaves in this part of the country, he had often said to his wife that he would rather be living where there were none. He thought slavery wrong in itself, and deplorable in its effects upon the white people. Of all the Methodists whom he knew in North-eastern Tennessee and South-western Virginia, he believed that fully three fourths would be glad to join the Methodist Church North, if it were “convenient.” They generally thought slavery wrong, and believed it the duty of the church to favour measures to bring it to an end. He was not an Abolitionist, he said; he didn’t think slaves could be set free at once, but they ought to be sent back to their own country, and while they were here they ought to be educated. He had perceived that great injustice was done by the people both of the North and South, towards each other. At the South, people were very apt to believe that the Northerners were wanting not only to deprive them of their property, but also to incite the slaves to barbarity and murder. At the North, people thought that the negroes were all very inhumanely treated. That was not the case, at least hereabouts, it wasn’t. If I would go with him to a camp meeting here, or to one of the common Sunday meetings, I would see that the negroes were generally better dressed than the whites. He believed that they were always well fed, and they were not punished severely. They did not work hard, not nearly as hard as many of the white folks; they were fat and cheerful. I said that I had perceived this, and it was so generally, to a great degree, throughout the country; yet I was sure that on the large plantations it was necessary to treat the slaves with great severity. He “expected” it was so, for he had heard people say, who had been on the great rice and cotton plantations in South Carolina, that the negroes were treated very hard, and he knew there was a man down here on the railroad, a contractor, who had some sixty hands which he had hired in Old Virginny (“that’s what we call Eastern Virginia here”), and everybody who saw them at work, said he drove them till they could hardly stand, and did not give them half what they ought to have to eat. He was opposed to the Nebraska Bill, he said, and to any further extension of slavery, on any pretext; the North would not do its Christian duty if it allowed slavery to be extended; he wished that it could be abolished in Tennessee. He thought that many of the people who went hence to Kansas would vote to exclude slavery, but he wasn’t sure that they would do it generally, because they would consider themselves Southerners, and would not like to go against other Southerners. A large part of the emigration from this part of the country went to Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa; those States being preferred to Missouri, because they were Free States. There were fewer slaves hereabouts now, than there were when he was a boy. The people all thought slavery wrong, except, he supposed, some slaveholders who, because they had property in slaves, would try to make out to themselves that it was right. He knew one rich man who had owned a great many slaves. He thought slavery was wrong, and he had a family of boys growing up, and he knew they wouldn’t be good for anything as long as he brought them up with slaves; so he had told his slaves that if they wanted to be free, he would free them, send them to Liberia, and give them a hundred dollars to start with, and they had all accepted the offer. He himself never owned a slave, and never would own one for his own benefit, if it were given to him, “first, because it was wrong; and secondly, because he didn’t think they ever did a man much good.”

I noticed that the neighbours of this man on each side owned slaves; and that their houses and establishments were much poorer than his.