MR OLMSTED ON TILE SLAVE STATES.* Tam book is a
compendious recast of Mr. Olmsted's invaluable volumes on the Slave States—volumes full of acute, pithy, and signi- ficant delineations which bear in every line the stamp of an honest and unexaggerating, but close and clear-sighted study of those States. To those who have read Mr. Olmsted's volumes as they appeared, there will be little that is new in this recast; but works so faithful and discerning deserve a form as convenient as their substance is weighty; and to have the three former volumes well condensed, and connected with a single and copious index, is a boon for which no genuine student of the Southern institutions will be unthankful. All we can propose to ourselves is to draw attention to the most impor- tant results fully established by Mr. Olmsted, giving, wherever it is possible, brief individual illustrations from his book, in order to bring the significance of his inferences more broadly before our readers.
First, then, in the Southern States, the value of capital and labour is determined almost exclusively by reference to a standard which is only appropriate in a very small portion of the territory, and even there only to a very small fraction of the land, capital, and labour of that portion—we mean the value of those cotton lands which are cul- tivated at the best profit. It is a familiar truth with economists that in all professions where very high prizes are to be obtained, the general rate of profit is far below the average of other professions. This principle governs the cost of labour in the Slave States. The value of all slaves is measured with relation to the value of a good field hand on a cotton plantation of far more than the average (thou„oli less than the maximum) rate of profit. This is so, even in the Border Slave States, where no cotton is grown. For even there the possibility of realizing the value of a slave-estate by selling all the strong hands "down South," is one with reference to which the proprietors uni- formly estimate their available wealth. The form in which the richer Cotton States receive their accumulating wealth is—new importations of slaves. The breeding states, on the other hand, while they esti- mate their wealth by the value which they asiglit realize if they sold all their slaves to the richer cotton-planters, practically do apply much of this costly slave labour to oeeupations like tobacco-planting, ordi- nary farm labour, and household service, which bring back no pro- portionate returns. In fact, therefore, so far as they keep the slaves at work on their own estates instead of selling them to the cotton. planters, they are losing the interest on their money-value. A slave who, if sold to the South, would command 1200 dollars, and so gain the owner, if invested in Northern commerce, 120 dollars annually, is retained at work which perhaps does not yield four or three per cent. on that value, or ffom 36 to 48 dollars annually ; so that the Northern Slave States, so far as they are cultivated at all, prac- tically fritter away their resources on the effort to retain for unre- munerative home-work a kind of labour which they estimate by its value in a foreign market. Now, when we consider that of the 500,000,000 acres of the Slave States, not more than one per cent., or 5,000,000 acres, are devoted to this remunerative cotton culture at all, and that of this one per cent. certainly not a quarter is cultivated with that energy and capital, and with that yield of profit which practically determines the cost of slaves, we may estimate with some degree of accuracy how gigantic a mischief the whole system is. The Slave States are, in fact, a gigantic lottery, in which only the very few draw prizes, yet in which, buoyed up by speculative hope, all pay much more than the proper cost of their • Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom a Traveller's Oeueroations on Cotton told Slavery in the American Stare-States. Based upon three former volumes O t Journeys and Investigations by the same Author. By Frederick Law Olmsted. Two vols. Sampson Low. individual chance of a prize. The cotton culture can only be profit- ably pursued with large gangs of labourers, experienced- overaeers, and on rich lands. Rich lands, indeed, are plenty, but capitalists rich enough to purchase large gangs of labourers, and skilful enough to provide proper superintendence, are few. Yet all pay for their slaves at a rate which is so high as to be only really profitable to these few; and in the Border States this costly labour, so far as it is employed at all, is employed on work on which it is in fact thrown away. The result is, that only those planters are really rich in Vir- gima and the Border States who have a good deal of property either in rich cotton estates " down South," or in Northern securities, and who are content to spend their incomes so acquired on their Viroitii an estates, just as an English gentleman farmer spends instead of gabus on his hobby of farming.
"This exceptional condition, then, it is obvious on the face of things, is main- tained at an enormous expense, not only of money, but of nerve, time, temper, if not of humanity, or the world's judgment of humanity. There is much inherited wealth, a cotton plantation or two in Mississippi, and a few slips of paper in a broker's office in Wall-street, that account for the comfort of this Virginia farmer, as, with something of the pride which apes humility, be likes to style himself. And after all he has no road on which he can drive his fine horses ; his physician supposes the nee of chloric ether, as an anesthetic agent, to be a novel sad interesting subject of after-dinner eloquence; he has no church within twenty miles, but one of logs, attendance on which is sure to bring on attack of nearalgia with his wife, and where only an ignorant ranter of a different faith from his own preaches at irregular intervals; there is no school which he is willing that his children should attend ; his daily papers come weekly, and he sees no book except such as he has especially ordered from Norton or Stevens. This being the exception, how is it with the community as a whole ? As a whole the community make shift to live, some part tolerably, the most part wretchedly enough, with arrangements such as one might expect to find in a country in stress of war. Nothing which can be postponed or overlooked, without im- mediate serious inconvenience, gets attended to. One soon neglects to inquire why this is not done or that ; the answer is so certain to be that there is no proper person to be got to do it without more trouble (or expense) than it is thought to be worth."
The social condition in which Mr. Olmsted found almost all the planters of the south-west, and most of those of Virginia and the Carolinas, is given with great and telling detail. Sometimes it was the result of real poverty, sometimes only of the vulgar mean- ness of the class of planters who have risen out of the condition of
agents or managers. But both in the Border States and in the Cotton States, Mr. Olmsted's traditional impressions of the refinement and hospitality of the patriarchal state received rude and repeated shocks. In almost every house where he is received at all, his reception is the same; he is accepted sullenly, as a necessary evil ; he finds no trace of literature, music, or art in the house; he is fed well, lodged uncomfortably, and, in the South-West, generally in beds fulr of vermin; he is lighted to bed by the planter himself, who acts as candle- stick to the dip-candle which he carries, without any holder, in his hand; finds his horse very indifferently attended to, and is charged
five shillings when he leaves the next morning. Here is his evidence as to the Cotton States :
"Nine times out of ten, at least, I slept in a room with others, in a bed which stank, supplied with but one sheet, if with any; I washed with utensils common to the whole household ; I found no garden, no flowers, no fruit, no tea, no cream, no sugar, no bread (for corn poue—let me assert in parenthesis, though pos- sibly, as tastes differ, a very good thing of its kind for ostriches—is not bread ; neither does even flour, salt, fat, and water, stirred together and warmed, consti- tute bread); no curtains, no lifting windows (three times out of fourabsolutely no windows), no conch—if one reclined in the family room it was on the bare floor—for there were no carpets or mats. For all that the house swarmed with vermin. There was no bay, no straw, no oats (but mouldy corn and leaves of maize), no discretion, no care, no honesty at the —; there was no stable, but a log-pen; and besides this, there was no other out-house but a smoke-house, a corn-house, and a range of nigger houses. . . . "From the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of James, I did not (that I remember) see, except perhaps in one or two towns, a thermometer, nor a book of Shakespeare, nor a pianoforte or a sheet of music ; nor the light of a carcel or other good centre-table or reading-lamp, nor an engraving or copy of any kind, of a work of art of the slightest merit."
In addition to this he is generally struck by the moral degradation which free intercourse with the slave-cabins ensures for the growing boys or girls of the planter, so much so that he finds all respectable parents are obliged to send them at an early age to the North to be educated to avoid the brutalizing and impure influences to which they are otherwise exposed.
The reasons why slave labour is so costly as to he remunerative only under the special cotton monopoly, are also illustrated in minute and graphic details. In the first place, slave-labour is not only very ignorant and shiftless, but the least danger of its becoming otherwise is met with eagerly repressive measures. Mr. Olmsted quotes several observations on the part of slave-owners to the effect that it did not do for the slaves to be equal to "taking care of themselves," and in one place he adds : "I begin to suspect that the great trouble and anxiety of Southern gentlemen is, how, without quite destroying the capabilities of the negro for any work at all, to prevent hire from learning to take care of himself." Another source of failure in slave-labour is the strong motive for idleness, and therefore for ex- aggerating or feigning illness. An amusing illustration of this is given : "Frequently the invalid slaves neglect or refuse to use the remedies pre- scribed for their recovery. They conceal pills, for instance, under their tongue, and declare that they have swallowed them, when, from their producing no effect, it will be afterwards evident that they have not. This general custom I heard ascribed to habit, acquired when they were not very ill, and were loth to be made quite well enough to have to go to work again. Amusing incidents, illustrating this difficulty, I have heard narrated, showing that the slave rather enjoys getting a severe wound that lays him up:—he has his hand crushed the fall of a piece of timber, and after the pain is alleviated, is heard to exe,laim, 'Bless der Lord—der bean blong to masser—don't reckon dis chile got 90 more corn to hoe die year, nohow.'"
But the worst cases of indolence and demoralion of this sort
me those in which the slave belongs to one man and is hired by another. Here, the power over him being divided, and his owner not suffering the lass of any indisposition or idleness on the part of the slave, the cases of such feigned illness are innumerable. It seems at first sight strange that slave labour being so costly and inefficient, there should not, in the Border States at least, be a strong disposition to employ free labour as largely as possible in order to supersede it. But one of the great vices of the system is that while it makes the poorer whites unwilling to do anything for which a slave is usually employed, it also makes the master most reluctant to em- ploy such aid. The masters answered Mr. Olmsted's inquiries on this head first by stating the reluctance of the whites to undertake such work, and then, when pressed further with the inquiry, "Why not send North and get some of our labourers r by the direct admis- sion, "Well, the truth is, I have been used to driving niggers, and I don't think I could drive white men. I should not know how to manage them." The plea is, no doubt, perfectly sound. The habit of employing slave-labour incapacitates the master for the kind of superintendence which alone would tell upon freemen—the authority without arbitrariness, the firmness without menace, the cheerful kindness without familiarity, which they have unlearnt in "driving" slaves.
We have dwelt chiefly on the fruits of the system to the while population of the Slave States, and shown that it pauperizes, as well as vulgarizes and brutalizes them. We might easily extend this demonstration to a length far beyond the limits of any newspaper article but, in conclusion, let us extract Mr. Olmsted's deliberate and reluctant conclusion as to the influence exerted on the slaves them. selves by their contact with the white race. He had, he says, always believed and argued that it was to some considerable extent a disci- pline of value: "The benefit of the African which is supposed to be incidental to American slavery, is confessedly proportionate to the degree in which be is forced into intercourse with a superior race and made subject to its example. Before I visited the South, I had believed that the advantages accruing from slavery, in this way, far outweighed the occasional cruelties, and other evils incidental to the system. I found, however, the mental and moral condition of the negroes, even in Virginia, and in those towns and districts containing the largest propor- tion of whites, much lower than I had anticipated; and as soon as I had an opportunity to examine one of the extensive plantations of the interior, although one inherited by its owner, and the home of a large and virtuous white family, I was satisfied that the advantages arising to the blacks from association with their white masters were very inconsiderable, scarcely appreciable, for the great majority of the field bands. Even the overseer had barely acquaintance enough with the slaves, individually, to call them by name; the owner could not deter- mine if he were addressing one of his own chattels, or whether it was another man's property, he said, when by chance he came upon a negro off the work. Much less did the slaves have an opportunity to cultivate their minds by inter- course with other white people. Whatever of civilization, and of the forma, customs, and shibboleths of Christianity, they were acquiring by example, and through police restraints, might, it occurred to me, after all, but poorly compen- sate the effect of the systematic withdrawal from them of all the usual influences which tend to nourish the moral nature and develop the intellectual faculties, in savages as well as in civilized free men. This doubt, as my Northern friends well know, for I had habitually assumed the opposite, in all previous discussions of the slavery question, was unexpected and painful to me."
Nor is this a mere opinion. The detailed evidence of the book sup- ports it in full, as indeed it does almost every opinion which Mr. Olmsted advances on this painful subject. We know of no book in which significant but complex social facts are so fairly, minutely, and intelligently photographed—in which there is so great intrinsic evidence of impartiality—in which all the evidence given is at once so minute and so essential, and the inferences deduced so practical, broad, and iMpressive.
Previous page
