Continental Monthly Volume 1 Issue 3 by Various

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Dr. Barton, of New Orleans, in a paper read before the Academy of
Science, says:

The class of diseases most fatal at the South are mainly those of
a preventable nature. In another place I have shown that the
direct temperature of the sun is not near so great in the South
during the summer as in the North. In fact, the climate is much
more endurable, all the year round, with our refreshing breezes,
and particularly in some of the more elevated parts of it, or
within one hundred miles of the coast.

Dr. Barton had forgotten that white men can not perform field labor in
the South.

But admit that white men had better work upon uplands,--the crop is
surer, owing to the less liability to frost and overflow; and good
cultivation will give an equal crop. Intelligent Northern men have taken
up exhausted plantations upon the uplands of North Carolina, and, by the
application of moderate quantities of guano, phosphate of lime, etc.,
have carried the crop from two hundred up to eight hundred pounds of
clean cotton per acre; and for the last three years the writer has been
in the habit of selecting the North Carolina guano-grown cotton, in the
New York market, where it has been shipped via Wilmington or Norfolk, on
account of its good staple, good color, and extra strength.

There is nothing in the cultivation of cotton involving harder work than
that of corn. In the early stages of its growth it is more tender than
corn, and requires more care,--which it does not get, since we find
Southern writers deploring that the cut-worm and the louse are charged
with many sins which are caused by careless cultivation and the bruises
inflicted by the clumsy negro hoes. The soil is very light, and most of
the work might be done by the plow and cultivator. Except upon very poor
soil there is only one plant allowed to eight and even ten square feet.
By the admission of Texas planters themselves, in the accounts of their
country which they have written to induce emigration and sell their
surplus land, there is very little work to be done during the hottest
part of the summer; the cultivation taking place in the spring, and the
picking in the fall and winter. Dr. J.S. Wilson, of Columbus, Ga.,
writing upon the diseases of negroes, says there is no article of
clothing so needful to them, and so seldom supplied, as an overcoat.
Should some shrewd Yankee, starting South to go into the business of
raising cotton, lay in a large supply of flannel shirts, thick Guernsey
frocks, and woolen stockings, for his field hands, how many of his
neighbors would remind him of Lord Timothy Dexter's noted shipment to
the West Indies, and ask him why he did not take some warming-pans; and
yet, for his supply of thick, warm clothing he would have the authority
of all Southern physicians.

Examine the directions given for the cultivation of cotton, and see how
much labor could be saved, provided slaves could be induced to use good
tools; planting the seed and covering it requiring one horse or mule and
_four_ hands,--one to smooth the ground, one to open the furrow, one to
plant, and one to cover. All of these operations can be performed by one
man with a planting machine. But the negro can not be trusted with one;
for the moment you begin to teach him the reasons for using it, you
begin to teach him the benefit of using another complicated machine,
which he has not before known much about--his own head and arms, and,
worse than all, his own legs, all of which you have stolen from him; and
then he will misapply his knowledge, as an old fugitive once told me he
had done: 'I took my own legs for security, and walked off.'

I know a fugitive slave who was taught the trade of a blacksmith, and
who stole the art of writing; and a sad use he made of his
accomplishments; he forged free papers with his pen, and the sacred seal
of the State of Alabama with his tools, and then started North. In
Tennessee he got out of money, and stopped to work at his trade, was
suspected, brought before a court, his papers examined and pronounced
genuine, and he passed on to Canada or elsewhere. Surely this man did
not know how to take care of himself!

There is no great reason why the slave should exert himself very much,
and why he should not, cannot be better stated than by the Rev. Mr.
McTeyire, the son of a large planter in South Carolina. 'Men,' he says,
'who own few slaves, and who share the labors of the field or workshop
with them, are very liable to deceive themselves by a specious process
of reasoning: they say, "I carry row for row with my negroes, and I put
no more on them than I take on myself." But the master who thus reasons
is forgetful or ignorant of the great truth that the negroes' powers of
endurance are less than his, while in the case of the latter there are
wanting those incentives which animate and actually strengthen the
master. This labor is for him, the gains of this excess of industry are
to make him rich. What is the servant bettered by the additional bale of
cotton extorted from exhausted nature, only that next year he shall have
more companions in the field, and the field be enlarged?' This is
extremely well put; but Rev. Mr. McTeyire, of South Carolina, must have
been unaware of the fact that it is not possible for a white man to work
row for row on cotton!

But Southern planters are not without some ingenious machines. In a
_premium_ essay upon the cultivation of cotton, read before the Georgia
Agricultural Society, the Hon. Mr. Chambers thus describes one invented
by himself for covering the seed: 'I would cover with a board made of
some hard wood, an inch or an inch and a half thick, about eight inches
broad, beveled on the lower edge to make it sharp, slightly notched in
the middle so as to _straddle_ the row, and screwed on the foot of a
common shovel.' Very safe for negroes to use, not being complicated.

But in the protests of intelligent Southern men, when they occasionally
wake up to the terrible results of their mode of cultivation, may be
found their own condemnation.

Dr. Cloud, of Alabama, editor of the '_Cotton Plant_,' mourning the want
of pasturage in his own State, writes thus: 'Our climate is remarkably
favorable to rich and luxuriant pasturage. The red man of the forest and
the pioneer white man that came here in advance of our _scratching
plow_, tell us they found the wild oat and native grasses waving thick,
as high as a man's head, and so entwined with the wild pea-vine as to
make it difficult to ride among it, all over this country. Every cotton
planter has heard of these fine primitive pasture ranges, and many have
seen them. _If the country or the climate has been cursed in our
appearance as planters here, it has been in the wasting system, that we
introduced and continue to practice_.'

Gov. Wise, in an address upon the agriculture of Virginia, condenses the
whole case in an epigram,--' The negroes skin the land, and the white
men skin the negroes.'

The limit to the production of cotton is in the capacity of the
plantation force to pick the amount cultivated by the field hands; but
the whole available force is insufficient, and large quantities are
lost. The policy of the planters being to buy out the small landholders
in their neighborhood, they have no extra force upon which to draw.
Olmsted says: 'I much doubt if the harvest demand of the principal
cotton districts of Mississippi adds five per cent. to their field-hand
force. I observed the advantage of the free-labor system exemplified in
Western Texas, the cotton-fields in the vicinity of the German village
of New Braunfils having been picked far closer than any I had before
seen,--in fact perfectly clean. One woman was pointed out to me who had,
in the first year she had seen a cotton field, picked more cotton in a
day than any slave in the county.'

'Substitute the French system (that of small allotment or
_parcellement_) for the Mississippi system in cotton-growing, and who
can doubt that the cotton supply of the United States would be greatly
increased?'

Dr. Cloud, the most intelligent writer upon cotton cultivation I have
been able to find, is urgent in his advice to manure the land, practice
rotation of crops, and produce larger crops upon fewer acres. But the
universal practice is precisely the reverse; the process of exhaustion
is followed year after year; cotton is planted year after year; the
seed--which Northern men would cultivate for oil alone, and which
exhausts the land ten times faster than the fibre--is mostly wasted; in
the words of a Southern paper, 'The seed is left to rot about the
gin-house, producing foul odors, and a constant cause of sickness.' The
land is cropped until it is literally skinned, and then the planter
migrates to some new region, again to drive out the poor whites,
monopolize the soil, and leave it once more to grow up to 'piney woods.'

Note again the warning words of Dr. Cloud: 'With a climate and soil
peculiarly adapted to the production of cotton, our country is equally
favorable to the production of all the necessary cereals, and as
remarkably favorable to the perfect development of the animal economy,
in fine horses, good milch cows, sheep and hogs; and for fruit of every
variety, _not tropical_, it is eminently superior. Why is it, then, that
we find so many _wealthy cotton planters_, whose riches consist entirely
of their slaves and worn-out plantations?'

No crop would be more remunerative to a small farmer, with a moderate
family to assist in the picking season, than cotton.

Upon the fertile lands of Texas, which produce one to two bales of
cotton to the acre, ten acres of cotton is the usual allotment to each
hand, with also sufficient land in corn and vegetables to furnish food
for the laborer and his proportion of the idle force upon the
plantation, which are two to one, without reckoning the planter and
overseer and their families. Now, upon the absurd supposition that a
free man, with a will in his work, would do no more work than a slave,
what would be the result of his labor? 1st, food for his family; 2d, 10
acres of cotton, at 500 pounds to the acre, 5000 pounds, at 10 cents per
pound, or $500. But the result would be much greater, for, as a Southern
man has well said, 'the maximum of slave labor would be the minimum of
free labor;' and the writer can bring proof of many instances where each
field hand has produced 13, 15, and even 18 bales of cotton in a year.
With the denser population which would follow the emancipation of the
slaves and the breaking up of the plantation system, a harvest force for
the picking season would be available, and one man would as easily
cultivate 20 to 25 acres of cotton, with assistance in the picking
season, as he could thirty acres of corn, the usual allotment to each
hand upon the corn land of Texas.

The very expense of slave labor is a proof of the profit which must be
derived from it. The writer has elsewhere estimated the cost of slave
labor at $20 per month, which statement has been questioned, because no
allowance was made for the increase of the live stock. Now it is well
understood that where the women are worked in the fields in such a
manner as to make their labor pay, the increase of live stock is much
smaller, and the business of breeding is left to the first families in
Virginia and other localities where the land has been exhausted (readers
will pardon a plain statement,--it will cause them to realize the full
horror of the business). The slaves in the cotton States increased from
1850 to 1860 33-88/100 per cent., in all the other slave States 9-61/100
per cent. The surplus increase in the cotton States, above the average,
was 190,632. Where did they come from?[C] At $900 each, this surplus
represents a capital of $171,568,800. How was this sum earned, and to
whom was it paid?

Let us examine the estimate of $20 per month, and, although it is
admitted that female field hands do not bear many children, take the
average increase of the country, or 2-335/1000 per cent. per annum.

The standard of value for an A 1 field hand is $100 for each cent per
pound of the price of cotton, say ten cents per pound, $1000, and the
standard of value for all the slaves upon a plantation is one-half the
value of a field hand.

Suppose a plantation stocked with
100 slaves, men, women, and piccaninnies,
at 8500 each, $50,000
Interest at 8 per cent., a low rate
for the South, 4,000
Customary allowance for life insurance
or mortality, 1,000
Overseer's wages, 1,000
House and provisions, 500
Doctor's fees, hospital, and medicines, 500
Renewal and repairs of negro quarters, 500
Clothing and food, at $1 per week
for each slave, 5,200
______
12,700

_Credit_.

Increase to keep good the mortality, 2
Annual gain, 2-335/1000, say 3
Gain, 5, at $500 2,500
Net cost, 10,200

The usual allowance for field hands is one-third,--allow it to be forty
in a hundred, the cost of each would be $255 per annum, or $21.25 per
month.

Let each one make his own allowance for the disadvantage of having the
larger portion of the capital of a State locked up in a tool which would
do more and better work if recognized as a man and representing no
invested capital. How much productive industry would there be in New
England, if every laborer or mechanic cost his employer $800 to $1500
before he could be set to work, and if each one who undertook to labor
upon his own account, and was not so purchased, were stigmatized and
degraded and termed 'mean white trash?'

It will again be objected that the theory of the cotton planter is to
raise all the food and make all the clothing on the plantation. The
cultivation of cotton in the best manner is described by Southern
writers as a process of _gardening_. Now what would be thought of a
market gardener at the North who should keep a large extra force for the
purpose of spinning yarn on a frame of six to ten spindles, and weaving
it up on a rude hand loom? Would this not be protection to home industry
in its most absurd extreme? But this is the plantation system.

The correctness of the estimate of cost can be tested in some degree by
the rates at which able-bodied slaves are hired out. Many lists can be
found in Southern papers; the latest found by the writer is in De Bow's
_Review_ of 1860.

A list of fourteen slaves, comprising 'a blacksmith, his wife, eight
field hands, a lame negro, an old man, an old woman and a young woman,'
were hired out for the year 1860, in Claiborne Parish, La., at an
average of $289 each, the highest being $430 for the blacksmith, and
$171 for 'Juda, old woman.'

The Southern States have thus far retained almost a monopoly of the
cotton trade of the civilized world by promptly furnishing a fair supply
of cotton of the best quality, and at prices which defied competition
from the only region from which it was to be feared, viz., India. This
monopoly has been retained, notwithstanding the steadily increasing
demand and higher prices of the last few years.

Improvements in machinery have enabled manufacturers to pay full wages
to their operatives, both in this country and in England, and to pay
higher prices for their cotton than they did a few years since, without
materially enhancing the cost of their goods, the larger product of
cloth from a less number of hands and the saving of waste offsetting the
higher price of cotton; but it is not probable that the cost of labor
upon cotton goods can be hereafter materially reduced. The cost of labor
upon the heavy sheetings and drills which form the larger part of our
exports is now only one and one-half cents per yard, and the cost of
oil, starch, and all other materials except cotton, less than one-half
cent, making less than two cents for cost of manufacturing; but with
cotton at ten cents to the planter and twelve and one-half cents to the
spinner, the cost of cotton in the yard of same goods is five cents.

With cotton at the average price of the last few years, we have supplied
a very small portion of India and China with goods, in competition with
their hand-made goods of same material. With new markets opening in
Japan and China, and by the building of railroads in India, we have to
meet a constantly decreasing supply of raw material as compared with the
demand. Give us cotton at six to seven cents, at which free labor and
skill could well afford it, and the manufacturing industry of New
England would receive a development unknown before. But when we ask more
cotton of slavery, we are answered by its great prophet, De Bow; that
because we are willing to pay a high price we can not have it; for he
says, 'Although land is to be had in unlimited quantities, whenever
cotton rises to ten cents, labor becomes too dear to increase production
rapidly.'

And this is what the great system of slave labor has accomplished. The
production of its great staple, cotton, is in the hands of less than
100,000 men. In 1850 there were in all the Southern States only 170,000
men owning more than five slaves each, and they owned 2,800,000 out of
3,300,000.

These men have by their system rendered labor degrading,--they have
driven out their non-slaveholding neighbors by hundreds of thousands to
find homes and self-respect in the free air of the great West,--they
have reduced those who remain to a condition of ignorance scarcely to be
found in any other country claiming to be civilized--so low that even
the slaves look down upon the 'mean white trash,'--they have sapped the
very foundations of honor and morality, so that 'Southern chivalry' has
become the synonym for treachery, theft, and dishonor in every
form,--they have reached a depth of degradation only to be equalled by
those Northern men who would now prevent this war from utterly
destroying slavery,--they have literally skinned over a vast area of
country, leaving it for the time a desert, and with an area of
368,312,320 acres in the eight cotton States, they have now under
cultivation in cotton less than 6,000,000 (an area scarcely larger than
the little State of Massachusetts); they have less than two slave
laborers to the square mile; and their only opposition to the re-opening
of the African slave-trade is upon the ground that an increase of
laborers will but reduce the price of cotton, give the planters a great
deal more trouble and less profit, and only benefit their enemies in New
and Old England.

Have not the manufacturer, the consumer, the business man, the farmer,
the soldier, every free man, every friend of the poor whites of the
South who are not yet free men, a right and an interest in claiming that
this monopoly of 100,000 cotton planters shall cease, their estates be
confiscated for their treason, and divided among our soldiers, to repay
them for their sacrifices in the cause of their country? First of all,
however, let us claim the 100,000,000 acres, not the property of any
individual, but fought for and paid for by the United States, and then
given to that most ungrateful of all the rebel States, Texas--the great
'Cotton State.'

Upon these fertile lands, and in this most profitable branch of
agriculture, let us find the bounty for our soldiers, the reward for
their sacrifices, and our own security for the future good order of the
state.

By so doing we shall silence the outcry of the South that ours is a war
of conquest (since the right of the government to the public lands of
Texas is unquestionable), and, at the same time, furnish a powerful
incentive to the zeal of our soldiers.

I have compiled a few facts and statements in regard to the soil and
climate of Texas from Capt. Marcy's Exploration of the Red River, in
which he was accompanied by Captain, now General, McLellan, from the
_Texas Almanac_, a most violent pro-slavery publication, and from the
letters of a friend, a loyal Texan, who has been driven from his home,
and is now in the North.

In advocating the Memphis and El Paso route for the Pacific Railroad,
Captain Marcy writes as follows:--

The road alluded to, immediately after leaving Fulton, Ark., leads
to an elevated ridge dividing the waters that flow into Red River
from those of the Sulphur and Trinity, and continues upon it, with
but few deviations from the direct course for El Paso and Dona Ana
to near the Brazos River, a distance of three hundred and twenty
miles, and mostly through the northern part of Texas. This portion
of the route has its locality in a country of surpassing beauty
and fertility, and possesses all the requisites for attracting and
sustaining a dense farming population. It is diversified with
prairies and woodland, and is bountifully watered with numerous
spring brooks, which flow off upon either side of the ridge
above-mentioned. The crest of the ridge is exceedingly smooth and
level, and is altogether the best natural or artificial road I
ever traveled over for the same distance.

After leaving this ridge, the road crosses the Brazos near very
extensive fields of bituminous coal, which burns readily, with a
clear flame, and is very superior in quality.

From the Brazos, the road skirts small affluents of that stream
and the Colorado for two hundred miles. The soil upon this section
is principally a red argillaceous loam, similar to that in the Red
River bottoms, which is so highly productive.

As this route is included within the thirty-second and
thirty-fourth parallels of latitude, it would never be obstructed
with snow. The whole surface of the country is covered with a
dense coating of the most nutritious grass, which remains green
for nine months in the year, and enables cattle to subsist the
entire winter without any other forage.

The line of this road east from Fort Smith would intersect the
Mississippi in the vicinity of Memphis, Tenn., and would pass
through the country bordering the Arkansas River, which can not be
surpassed for fertility.--_Marcy's Red River Exploration_.

The route thus described lies through the following counties, and
attention is specially directed to their several products in 1858:--

Acres
County White Slave Corn Wheat Cotton Sug. Misc'l Total.

Bowie 2,077 2,321 10,392 1,421 8,240 23 3,232 23,308
Cass 6,112 4,816 28,474 5,552 20,168 36 4,368 58,508
Titus 6,025 1,891 18,987 2,272 9,872 92 6,227 36,450
Upshur 5,999 2,801 22,515 3,092 16,692 45 3,122 46,065
Wood 3,254 733 8,336 1,090 3,194 31 1,841 14,501
Van Zandt 2,548 242 6,504 837 1,213 8 596 8,160
Henderson 2,758 827 8,470 845 4,768 70 908 15,061
Navarro 2,885 1,579 10,531 2,785 4,678 127 2,609 20,730
Hill 1,858 508 5,161 3,189 181 201 761 9,493
Bosque 887 182 2,702 872 224 45 83 4,026
______ ______ _______ ______ ______ ___ ______ _______
34,403 15,800 121,072 22,564 69,330 678 22,748 236,392

Let us allow the usual proportion of field hands to the whole number of
slaves, viz., one-third, and we have a force of 5297; if whites do not
labor in the field, each field hand must cultivate 44 64/100 acres of
land. The customary allotment is ten cotton and five corn, or, where
corn and wheat are the principal products, from twenty to twenty-five
acres.

July 15, 1852. We were in motion at two o'clock in the morning,
and, taking a north-east course towards the base of the mountain
chain, passed through mezquite groves, intersected by brooks of
pure water flowing into the south branch of Cache Creek, upon one
of which we are encamped.

We find the soil good at all places near the mountains, and the
country well wooded and watered. The grass, consisting of several
varieties of the grama, is of a superior quality, and grows
luxuriantly. The climate is salubrious, _and the almost constant
cool and bracing breezes of the summer months_, with the entire
absence of anything like marshes or stagnant water, remove all
sources of noxious malaria, with its attendant evils of autumnal
fevers.--_Marcy's Exploration of the Red River_, p. 11.

Our camp is upon the creek last occupied by the Witchitas before
they left the mountains. The soil, in point of fertility,
surpasses anything we have before seen, and the vegetation in the
old corn-fields is so dense that it was with great difficulty I
could force my horse through it. It consisted of rank weeds
growing to the height of twelve feet. Soil of this character must
have produced an enormous yield of corn. The timber is
sufficiently abundant for all purposes of the agriculturist, and
of a superior quality.

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