Jefferson Davis, American

by William J. Cooper

  Although Brierfield was home to a varied assortment of people, animals, and plants, everyone and everything on the place had a single overriding mission—growing the cotton crop that made everything else possible. The enormously rich, alluvial soil could produce two bales to the acre, an impressive yield for that day. By the 1840s Davis was harvesting several hundred bales each year. During the 1850s, his output remained in that range, reaching at least 600 bales of around 400 to 450 pounds each.62

  Modern scholarly methodology offers proof that Davis operated an enormously productive enterprise. Productivity is judged chiefly by the output per hand or slave—in the case of cotton, the number of bales divided by the available workforce. In Warren County in 1860 the cotton crop averaged 3.77 bales per hand, based on the number of slaves between fifteen and fifty-nine years of age. Analyzing the 6.8 bale-per-hand yield on one plantation, a knowledgeable student of antebellum Mississippi cotton culture pronounced it “exceptionally large” for the county. Brierfield’s production far surpassed even that total, equaling or exceeding the highest county average of 8.93 bales. At the end of the decade between 500 and 600 bales were being ginned yearly on Brierfield. In 1860, Davis owned fifty-seven slaves aged between fifteen and fifty-nine, giving him an imposing average of between 8.8 and 10.5 bales per hand. In tandem, the fabulously rich soil and Davis’s slave labor enabled him to outpace most of his fellow planters.63

  To market his cotton, Davis followed the practice of Joseph and most other planters and used a factor. Factors in the slave states offered a full array of financial and commercial services for their planter clients. In the role of broker or seller’s agent, factors received and sold shipments of cotton or other major staples such as rice, cane, and tobacco where they found the best price, either in the United States or Europe, placing the proceeds in an account the planter maintained with the factor. Then, with the income on hand or forthcoming, the factor acted as banker and furnishing merchant—holding deposits, honoring drafts, loaning money, providing supplies that could vary from expensive European furniture to inexpensive slave shoes to slaves themselves. For these services, factors received a commission of around 2 percent of the income generated by the sale of the planter’s crop.64

  In his career as a cotton planter, Jefferson Davis utilized only a few factors, preferring to concentrate his business rather than spread it out. From the late 1830s to the early 1840s, he used George E. Payne, a partner in a New Orleans firm. Later in the 1840s, he dealt with William Laughlin & Company, also in New Orleans; Laughlin eventually became a nephew-in-law, marrying one of Joseph’s daughters. Throughout the 1850s Davis worked chiefly with Jacob U. Payne (no relation to George), whom he had first met in the mid-1830s at either Vicksburg or Warrenton. Payne, who became a lifelong friend, moved to New Orleans in 1840 and eventually became a partner in the firm of Payne & Harrison.65

  Surviving records detail a range of transactions between the planter and his factors, especially Jacob Payne. Davis trusted Payne completely, even permitting him to decide when, in which market, and at what price to sell Brierfield cotton. Davis was evidently satisfied, for no evidence even hints at any complaint about Payne’s decisions. Aside from selling Davis’s crop, Payne & Harrison regularly paid bills incurred by Davis and honored drafts drawn on his account. From New Orleans they shipped upriver to Brierfield everything from personal or decorative items like mirrors, a shower bath, and millinery to essential products for the plantation like flour, pork, molasses, and parts for the cotton gin. Payne also filled special orders such as Davis’s request that the factor procure a talented slave cook for the Brierfield kitchen.66

  In running Brierfield, Davis had to contend with the vagaries of the weather, as did every other farmer and planter, but as his plantation fronted the Mississippi River, he also at times had to cope with a particularly destructive force of nature: floods. Rising river waters often threatened the vulnerable lowlands of Davis Bend. No coordinated levee system existed, and no public agency exercised control or authority over levee construction or standards. Although the Davis brothers and other planters in the Bend did strive to build levees that would protect lives and property, their barriers could withstand only so much high water. In the late 1850s, the Mississippi smashed at Davis Bend levees with a force unseen for three decades, even bringing Jefferson home from Washington to face impending or actual disaster. In May 1858 the plantation suffered damage from floodwaters. Then, in the spring of 1859, the river cascaded across Brierfield, covering land not flooded in “the memory of man,” according to Davis, with a “strong current” running across the main ridge. He reported that the appearance of flora in some of the inundated areas indicated that the land had not been underwater for a century. This deluge even exceeded what contemporaries along the river called the great flood of 1828. This time the Davis brothers evacuated some 900 animals away from the Bend to higher ground, though they were able to maintain the slaves safely at Hurricane and Brierfield. This abnormally high water had been “unexpectedly injurious” to him, Davis confided to a friend.67

  Despite setbacks as in 1859, all signs point to Davis’s prospering as a cotton planter. In 1850, the federal census reported the cash value of Brierfield at $25,000; ten years later the amount had tripled to $75,000. Illustrating the usual undervaluation by local authorities, the Warren County assessor in 1850 evaluated Brierfield as worth $16,770, the same figure that had been used in 1846; by 1857 the assessed value had increased only to $20,000. In conformity with the generally low tax rates in the South, Davis’s taxes on both real and personal property remained slight through the decade. In 1853, for example, he paid Warren County $38.31 on his land and $154.74 on his personal property, including slaves, cattle, a pleasure carriage, two watches, one clock, and 400 bales of ginned cotton. In 1860 his tax bill went up, but only to $261.43. Davis’s slaves added enormously to his wealth; the 113 that he owned in 1860 were worth, conservatively, $80,000. He also invested in land away from Davis Bend. In 1857 he purchased a lot on the Mississippi Gulf Coast; and in 1857 and 1859, in partnership with Joseph and a third investor, more than 10,000 acres of swamp and overflow land in Arkansas. Also in 1857 he sold for $6,000 some land in Louisiana that he had bought earlier.68

  Clearly Jefferson Davis was a wealthy man, though precision concerning his annual income is impossible. Very late in her life Varina claimed that before the Civil War, Davis made between $35,000 and $40,000 annually at Brierfield, though she also said the sum declined toward 1860. Although it is impossible to verify those numbers, it is possible to estimate the income derived from his cotton crop. Knowing the range of his cotton production and the price of cotton in the New Orleans market permits calculating the proceeds from these cotton sales. In the 1850s the price varied from a low of 7.4 cents per pound in 1851 to a high of 12.4 cents per pound in 1856, with 11.2 cents the decennial average. Selling 500 bales of cotton weighing 450 pounds each would generate $25,200. Of course, higher prices were available in certain months during a year and at times in other markets, including European. Because Davis and Payne strove for the highest possible price and because Davis had the financial strength to wait for better prices, it is likely that Davis did somewhat better than average. Then, additional income could have come from such endeavors as selling wood to steamboats for fuel, as Joseph surely did. Thus, Varina’s numbers may be close to the mark. Whatever the exact figure, Davis was an exceptionally rich man for his time and place. In 1860 the per capita income of free people in Mississippi was only $124, $20 less than the national average and $150 less than the highest regional average, the western south-central states. In addition, Davis’s factor Jacob Payne testified that Davis generally paid as he went along, making every effort to avoid debt. Thus, little of his income had to be used for paying either principal or interest.69

  During the 1850s, Davis had to manage Brierfield without the assistance of his trusted slave overseer James Pemberton, who died sometime in 1850 while his master was
in Washington. After Pemberton’s death, Davis turned to white overseers, as the overwhelming majority of planters had always done. Planters usually changed overseers regularly and complained about them even more often. Overseeing was an extremely difficult job, for the overseer often received a twofold and contradictory charge from his employer—keep the slave force reasonably content, but also produce the largest possible crop. Between 1850, when Davis hired his first white overseer, and 1861, at least seven different men worked the Brierfield slaves. On a visit home in 1857, Davis sounded the lament of planters across the South: “The business of the place I have still and the generous, brotherly love of that class called overseer, brings candidates ‘to manage’ for me.” Davis paid his overseer from $800 to $1,000 annually, a salary level common on large cotton plantations. The high turnover occurred because he found his overseers falling short in different areas, from failure to prepare satisfactorily for an overflow from the Mississippi to what he called “mean & vicious … conduct.” One overseer behaved toward a slave or slaves in some unspecified manner that caused Davis to say the man could no longer deal with slaves because of “the loss of moral power consequent upon his conduct.”70

  Davis’s long absences from Brierfield made a normally difficult situation even more troublesome. He was in Washington most of 1850 and for three months in 1851. Then he went back as a cabinet officer between 1853 and 1857, when he returned to the Senate and where he remained until 1861. While serving in the cabinet, he hired a family friend, Dr. George McElrath of nearby Warrenton, to supervise Brierfield. McElrath’s duties involved hiring overseers, ordering supplies, and drawing drafts. Joseph, who lived just over one mile away, could act almost as the resident planter. That had certainly been the practice from Jefferson’s entrance into Congress in 1845 until his resignation from the Senate in 1851.71

  After that time his relationship with Joseph and Joseph’s with Brierfield became more complex. The difficulties obviously began in 1852 with the will and the rumor about selling Brierfield, and for a period Joseph had little to do with affairs at Brierfield. In 1853, he complained to a sister and brother-in-law about the “management” of Brierfield, but acknowledged that he “had no right to turn [the overseer] off.” Later, in 1855, Jefferson had to intervene when unpleasantness arose between Joseph and Dr. McElrath over another Brierfield overseer. Jefferson’s consistent laments about the state of his plantation upon his periodic visits from Washington certainly do not indicate any close, consistent attention by Joseph. Yet, in 1855, Jefferson went out of his way to explain in detail to Joseph his plans for an extensive building program at Brierfield. And Jefferson made sure that Joseph could have no doubt about his continued deep affection and respect: “Whilst I may sometimes estimate men differently from yourself I can have no relations to others which would interfere with those I bear to you, and whoever is your enemy must needs be mine.” Near the end of the decade the brothers seemed close to where they had been at its beginning, with the two of them investing together in Arkansas lands and Joseph advising Jefferson’s overseer.72

  Jefferson Davis operated his plantation with slave labor from the day he and James Pemberton began hacking at the tangled growth that would become the cultivated fields of Brierfield. Black slaves were utterly central to the development, maintenance, and prosperity of the place. In 1835, Pemberton was his only slave; by 1840, he owned 39. During the 1840s that number increased to 72, and in the final antebellum decade to 113.73

  Certain common traits characterized Davis’s holdings from 1840 to 1860. First, his force consisted overwhelmingly of young slaves. In 1840 over half of his slaves were under twenty-four, while but seven were thirty-six or older, with only two over fifty-five. That spread of ages did not change fundamentally down to 1860, even though the total number of slaves almost tripled. In 1850, the ages of the Brierfield slaves broke down as follows: twenty-five under fifteen; forty between twenty and thirty-nine; three between forty and forty-nine; four over fifty. In 1860, the pattern remained quite similar: fifty-one under fifteen; fifty-three between twenty and thirty-nine; two between forty and forty-nine; seven over fifty.

  The continuing imbalance toward younger slaves on Brierfield strongly indicates that only a small percentage of Davis’s bondspeople lived past forty. The modern calculation of slave life expectancy puts it at only thirty-six years in 1850. Although that seems frightfully young by contemporary standards, it was only four years less than that for a white American in 1850 and exactly the same as that for the Dutch and French populations in the decade. Still, the paucity of older slaves is striking, for even with that life expectancy a substantial percentage of people would live past fifty. No evidence suggests that Davis made a habit of selling older slaves. Besides, no lucrative market existed for slaves past forty, especially in the lower Mississippi Valley, where planters clamored for fit, vigorous men and women to toil in the cotton and sugarcane fields. Moreover, just down the road at Hurricane, Joseph’s much larger slave force also had a shortage of senior slaves. In 1850, 17 of his 239 exceeded the age of fifty; in 1860, only 13 of 355. Thus, neither Davis brother watched many slaves grow old in his service. This rarity of the elderly also helps explain why the master of Brierfield evinced such affection for the ancient slave known as Uncle Bob. He had practically no peers.74

  The sex ratio at Brierfield did change between 1840 and 1860. When Davis began buying slaves in the late 1830s, he purchased a roughly equal number of each sex. By 1850, however, the balance had shifted toward females, who outnumbered males by forty-three to twenty-nine. Yet that imbalance was concentrated in the youthful population, for among the slaves under fifteen years of age, girls dominated by four to one, twenty to five. But an almost equal division, twenty men and eighteen women, characterized the age group that would have produced the most children as well as provided the prime field hands, twenty to twenty-nine. A decade later a turnabout had occurred, with the men predominating by sixty-five to forty-eight. A sharp increase among the males brought about this change. In the critical range from twenty to thirty-nine years, males had an almost two-to-one advantage at Brierfield: thirty-four to nineteen. But a balance characterized the young; twenty-eight girls and twenty-three boys were under fifteen.

  Although surviving documents cast no light on the reasons underlying the diversity and shifting sexual ratios among the different age groups, the specifics of what changed over time do suggest possible explanations. The random nature of the birth of male and female babies could account for the sharp change that took place among the younger slaves, from heavily female in 1850 to almost evenly balanced in 1860. No records indicate the purchase in the 1840s of numerous young girls, nor does any logical reason explain why Davis would have done so. That the sexual disparity disappeared by 1860 suggests that perhaps Brierfield had a sufficiently large slave population to have produced a more normal male-female split in the under-fifteen age group. That in the late 1830s Davis bought basically equal numbers of young men and women could certainly account for the balance in the key twenty to thirty-nine age group in 1850. The disparity that became evident by 1860 probably resulted from his purchase of more male slaves in the 1850s. There is no substantive evidence that he sold slaves in any significant numbers.

  But Davis certainly kept buying slaves, though it is impossible to be precise about when he purchased them or the details of all his purchases. Surviving documents indicate that he once bought from a niece a slave that she was unable to manage. He also bought skilled slaves, including a blacksmith purchased in New Orleans for $2,700; a “valuable servant” named Caroline for Varina; and a cook named Jacques, who drowned in a bayou.75

  One special purchase involved finding an acceptable cook. When Davis asked Payne & Harrison in the summer of 1852 to send him a cook, the firm responded that his request was “the most difficult matter we have had for some time.” After advising Davis of the general scarcity of available slaves, the company said that it had alerted a slave trader in
the city to look out for a likely prospect. Payne & Harrison also thought that several candidates would have to be sent upriver for trials before Davis found just the one he wanted. But in just a week, Davis’s factor reported that a trader had offered a seemingly qualified woman. The trader wanted $850, indicating that by winter she would probably bring $1,000. And he was willing to send her up to Brierfield for a two-week trial. Payne & Harrison wrote Davis that sum would cover her transportation costs, but he would be liable for any accident or illness that might befall the slave, including her running away. Unfortunately, the documentary record goes no further.76

  In late 1857, Davis negotiated with Payne & Harrison to buy a “lot of negroes.” Questioning whether all of the slaves were worth the asking price, he found one man described as “small,” a woman as “common,” and two boys, ages eleven and twelve, “hardly to be called hands.” After discussing prices and looking carefully at the description of the slaves, Davis offered $10,000 for the group. He also informed his factor that while he would not have time personally to examine these blacks, he would have it done.77

  Although the historical record covering Jefferson Davis as a slaveowner is disappointingly thin and does not permit extended analysis, sufficient evidence survives to make clear that the welfare of his human property occupied much of his attention. Davis was motivated by a combination of self-interest and the precepts of evangelical Protestantism that took hold in most of the South during the first third of the nineteenth century. Self-interest taught that decent care of valuable property resulted in healthier and more productive laborers, while religion preached the need for Christian stewardship by one group of God’s children toward another. In a critical manifestation of that outlook, numerous slaveowners—Davis included—considered their slaves an extension of their Christian family, using terms like “my people,” which Davis employed extensively, rather than the hard word “slave.”78