The South-West Volume Ii Part 12

It may not be improper to make a remark or two relative to whipping.

This is generally performed with as much care and humanity as the nature of the case will admit. A person standing at the distance of two hundred yards, being unacquainted with the mode, and hearing the loud sharp crack of the whip upon the naked skin, would almost tremble for the life of the poor sufferer. But what would be his surprise, after hearing fifty or one hundred stripes thus laid on, to go up and examine the poor fellow, and find the skin not broken, and not a drop of blood drawn from him! Yet this is the way in which the whip is generally used here upon slaves: very few planters would permit them to be whipped on the bare back with a raw-hide, or cow-skin, as it is called. Though, as in every thing else, there is a great difference in the degree of severity exercised by different masters: yet we must take the general rule, as applicable to the great cla.s.s of planters. The common overseer's whip consists of a stout flexible stalk, large at the handle, tapering rapidly to the distance of about eighteen inches, and thence continued with cord or leather; the whole is covered with a leather plat, which continues tapering into, and forms the lash--the whole together being about three feet and a half long. To the end of the lash is attached a soft, dry, buckskin cracker, about three eighths of an inch wide and ten or twelve inches long, which is the only part allowed to strike, in whipping on the bare skin. So soft is the cracker, that a person who has not the sleight of using the whip, could scarcely hurt a child with it.

When it is used by an experienced hand it makes a very loud report, and stings, or "burns" the skin smartly, but does not bruise it. One hundred lashes well laid on with it, would not injure the skin as much as ten moderate stripes with a cow-skin.

But to return from this digression:--Every day, when the weather will admit, beholds a repet.i.tion of the ceremony of picking, weighing, and drying, as before detailed. Those who have gins, as all planters should have, generally keep the stand running during the picking season, so as to gin out the cotton as fast as it is picked. If there are forty or fifty good pickers, it requires one stand to be kept running constantly to keep up with them. In such cases, during wet weather, when the hands cannot pick cotton, the ablest of them are kept baling the cotton which has been ginned since the last rain, or within the last eight or ten days. When there are not more than twenty, or twenty-five, the gin will be able to keep up, by ginning the last three days in the week, in addition to all rainy weather; and the able-bodied hands will be able to do all the pressing and baling during the wet days.

Gin, in the common acceptation, signifies the house and all the machinery required to separate the _lint_ from the seed, and to press it into large bales, weighing generally from 400 to 500 pounds. The house is a large enclosed roof, resting upon blocks or posts, which support it at about eight or nine feet from the ground. The common area covered is about forty by sixty feet, the rafters resting upon plates, and the plates upon flooring beams, or joists, upon which the floor is laid.

About the distance of one-third the length of the house, two gearing beams are laid across, for supporting the machinery. These rest upon the top of the blocks, or on posts framed into them. On the ground floor is the horse-path for drawing the main wheel and counter wheel; the last of which carries a broad band, which pa.s.ses over and turns the cylinder and brush of the gin-stand alone. The large plantations are adopting steam engines, and erect for the purpose very large and expensive buildings, in which are placed two, three, or four stands. A gin-stand is a frame, in which runs a wooden cylinder with an iron shaft running through it; this cylinder is encircled at every inch by a very thin circular saw, with sharp hooked teeth, upon which the seed cotton is thrown, running through parallel grates. The teeth of the saws catch and carry through the lint from the seed. Just behind the cylinder is a fly-wheel brush--that is, a fan, with a brush on its extreme circ.u.mference; this brush, running considerably faster than the cylinder, takes off the cotton from the teeth, and blows it back. The s.p.a.ce or room above is divided into two apartments; one for the stand and seed cotton, and the other for ginned cotton; the latter of which will contain cotton for twenty or thirty bales. A good gin-stand, with sixty or sixty-five saws, running constantly from daybreak in the morning until eight or nine o'clock at night, will gin out as much as will make three or four bales.

At the other end of the house, and immediately under the room containing ginned cotton, is the press. It consists of two large wooden screws, twelve or sixteen inches in diameter, with reversed threads cut on each end to within eighteen inches or two feet of the middle, through which there is a mortice for the lever. These screws stand perpendicularly, and about ten feet apart, and work into a large heavy beam above, and into another firmly secured below. The upper moves up or down (when the screws are turned), between four strong upright posts, framed together, two on each side, so as to come down strait and steady when pressing.

The lower sides of the press are composed of very strong batten doors; when the beam is brought sufficiently low, a spring is struck, and they fly open; when they are removed, leaving the naked bale standing on its edge under the press. A piece of bagging, cut to the proper size and shape, was put in the bottom of the press-box, before filling in the cotton, and another on top, immediately under the follower. These two pieces are brought together in such manner as to cover the cotton neatly, and there sewed with twine. The rope pa.s.sed under and over it, through the grooves left in the bed-sill and in the follower, by means of a windla.s.s, is drawn extremely tight and tied with double loop knots.

When all is finished, the screws are turned backward, the beam rises, and the bale is rolled out. Notwithstanding there are seven bands of strong rope around it, the bale will swell and stretch the rope, until its breadth is at least two or three inches more than when in the press.

To press and bale expeditiously requires at least four or five hands and one horse. When the box has been sufficiently filled, generally eight or nine feet deep, the men bring down the beam by turning the screws with hand levers as long as they can turn them; then a large lever is placed in the screw, with a strong horse attached to one end, and a few turns of the screws by the horse bring the beam down to the proper point, within thirty or thirty-four inches of the sill.

The requisite number of hands will put up and bale with a common press about ten or twelve bales a day, by pushing. After the bales are properly put up, the next thing is to mark and number them on one end.

For this purpose a plate of copper, with the initials, or such mark as is fancied, cut in it, is applied to the end of the bale and the letters and figures painted through it with black marking ink.

The next trouble is to haul them to market, or the nearest landing for boats; sometimes this is a very troublesome and difficult task, especially in wet weather, when the roads, from the immense quant.i.ty of heavy hauling, in getting the crops to market, are much cut up, and often almost impa.s.sable. The planter who is careful to take all proper advantages of season and weather, will have his cotton hauled early in the fall, as fast as it is ginned, when the roads are almost certainly good.

The quant.i.ty of cotton produced to the acre, varies with the quality of the soil and the season. The best kind of river and alluvial lands, when in a complete state of cultivation, and with a good season, will produce on an average from 1500 to 2000 lbs. of cotton in the seed per acre; while new land of the same quality will not yield more than 1200 or 1400 lbs. per acre. The highlands, where the soil is fertile, will yield under the most favourable circ.u.mstances about 1400 lbs., while those lands which have been many years in cultivation, where the soil is thin, will not yield more than from 800 to 1000 lbs. per acre; and some not more than 600 lbs. As a general rule 1300 or 1400 lbs. of seed cotton, will, when ginned out, make a bale of 400 lbs. or more. This is according to the correct weight of the daily picking in the cotton book; although after being weighed, it must lose some weight by drying.

The quant.i.ty of cotton raised and secured by good management most commonly averages about five or six bales to the hand: and the quant.i.ty, among the ma.s.s of planters, more frequently falls below, than rises above this estimate. Some, with a few choice hands, may sometimes average nine or ten bales to the hand by picking until January.

When the crop is all secured, which, as we observed before, varies from the first of December until some time in January, according to the season, hands, and extent of the crop, the hands are employed during the winter in clearing, chopping logs in the field, splitting rails, or ditching, if necessary. About the middle of February they resume preparations for "another crop."

NOTE D.--_Page 258._

A recent writer, in speculating upon the possible result of an insurrectionary movement in the south, says, in the course of his remarks,--

"Here, where the whites so far outnumber the blacks, as to render such a struggle hopeless on their part, there is little or nothing to apprehend; but in the south, where the case is reversed, the consequences will probably be what they were in St. Domingo--the extermination or expatriation of the whites, the loss of tens of hundreds of thousands of lives, and hundreds or perhaps of millions of property."

In reply, and in confutation of this opinion, Gen. Houston of Natchez, addressed a very sensible and well-written paper to the editor of the New-York Courier and Enquirer, in which he says--

"There are but two states in the Union where the slaves are equal in numbers to the whites, and in these they have a bare majority; in other states they have but a third and in others a fourth or fifth. Now is there any man who supposes that an equal number of negroes, unacquainted with arms, undisciplined, without combination, without officers, without a rifle or a musket, or a single cartridge, can in any way be formidable to an equal number of whites, well armed and equipped, well supplied with all the necessaries of war, well organized, and well officered? The notion is absurd. I will go farther; take a body of negroes, furnish them with arms, equipments, and every thing necessary for war; let them have twelve months to combine, to train, and to acquire a knowledge of the use of arms, and my life on it, they would be nothing more at the end of the time than an ignorant disorderly rabble, who could not form a line of battle, a thousand of them would not stand the charge of a single volunteer corps, they would disperse at the first volley of musketry, and a body of white men would feel debased to compete with such foes.

"There is no southern state that apprehends any injury from its slaves--that seeks protection from any power on earth--not one of them values the Union one particle as the means of guarding them on that score.

"There are no people on earth better supplied with arms, more accustomed to their daily use, and I may say more ready to use them, than the people of the south. Go into any house in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, or any other southern state, and you will generally see a good rifle and fowling-piece; and every neighbourhood has its men who can throw a deer running at full speed at the distance of one hundred yards. Do such men seek protection or apprehend danger from an inferior number of unarmed, ignorant and enslaved negroes? Most a.s.suredly not.

"Experience has shown that the militia of the United States are frequently able to combat successfully with the regular troops of Europe. And many a well-fought field has shown that the militia of the southern states are equal to any in the Union, I will not be invidious and say superior. If such is the case, what lessons do the wars and experience of Europe teach us? There it is a received maxim that ten thousand disciplined troops are superior to an army of forty thousand undisciplined peasantry, even when they are equally supplied with arms.

And to this maxim history shows but few exceptions, as in Switzerland and the Tyrolese mountains, where the peasantry are much favoured by the mountains and defiles, are inured to hardships, trained in the chase and in the use of arms.

"Have not the peasantry of Europe more acquaintance with arms, more means of acquiring them and other necessaries for war, more military information, more means of combination, and more intelligence, than the negroes of the south? Most a.s.suredly they have, and yet they are generally held in subjection by a comparatively small body of men. I merely glance at this, but could, if time and s.p.a.ce permitted, give many striking ill.u.s.trations.

"If the south are so safe, it may be asked why are they so sensitive on this subject? I will answer:--they are sensitive from motives of interest and humanity.

"He who makes my negroes dissatisfied with their situation, makes them less useful to me, and puts me under the necessity of dealing more rigorously with them.

"Throughout the whole south it is considered disgraceful not to clothe and feed negroes well, or to treat them cruelly, and there are very few who have the hardihood to brave public sentiment. And on many plantations, when they are orderly and obedient, they have many indulgences and privileges, such as to raise and sell poultry, &c.: to cultivate a small piece of ground and sell the products; and time is allowed them for such purposes. But if negroes become disorderly, discontented, and disobedient, the necessity requires that they should either be set at large at once, or their privileges curtailed, and discipline made more rigorous till they are brought into complete subjection; there is no middle course. Again--if negroes become dissatisfied, disobedient and rebellious, there is a possibility that they may do damage in a single neighbourhood, and destroy the lives of a few women and children--the consequence of which would be that then whites would be under the necessity of putting great numbers of the misguided wretches to death. Such was the case at Southampton. This we would avoid, both from motives of interest and humanity, not that we apprehend any more serious injury, and you may rest a.s.sured that if the negroes were to rebel and do any considerable injury, the havoc and destruction made amongst them would be dreadful; and it would be difficult to prevent its extending to those who were innocent.

"Those, therefore, who are instrumental in making the negro dissatisfied with his condition, make it much worse, for they constrain his owner to be more rigorous in his treatment, and they tempt him to rebellion, which must lead to death and extermination."

THE END.