The Half Has Never Been Told

by Edward E. Baptist

  60. Milton Ritchie, AS, 10.6 (AR), 271; Carry Allen Patton, AS, 10.6 (AR), 298; Eyre Crowe, quoted in Bancroft, Slave Trading, 116.

  61. HALL, 91162–91163, 91173–91178, 91249, 91250, 91279–91289, 91300–91304.

  62. Thomas Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004); “Dick Eggleston Diary,” vol. 72, Roach-Eggleston Papers, SHC.

  CHAPTER 4. LEFT HAND: 1805–1861

  1. Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball . . . (New York, 1837), 125–136.

  2. Peter H. Wood, “Slave Labor Camps in Early America: Overcoming Denial and Discovering the Gulag,” in Carla Gardina Pestana and Sharon V. Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (Hanover, NH, 1999), 222–238.

  3. William Grimes, Life of William Grimes, Written by Himself (New York, 1825), 26.

  4. James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT, 1990).

  5. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 106–119.

  6. Ibid., 47–48, 128–131; ASAI, 101.

  7. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 117–119; Grimes, Life, 25.

  8. Israel Campbell, An Autobiography, Bound and Free (Philadelphia, 1861), 33; Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Low Country (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999), 179–186; Peter Coclanis, “How the Low Country Was Taken to Task: Slave-Labor Organization in Coastal South Carolina and Georgia,” in Robert L. Paquette and Louis Ferleger, eds., Slavery, Secession, and Southern History (Charlottesville, VA, 2000), 59–78; Philip D. Morgan, “Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Plantations,” in Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 189–220.

  9. Latrobe Sketchbook, III, 33, Maryland Historical Society; “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record,” Jerome S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr., Digital Media Lab, University of Virginia, image at http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/SlaveTrade/collection/large/NW0048.JPG (accessed October 18, 2013); Richard S. Dunn, “A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life at Mesopotamia in Jamaica and Mount Airy in Virginia, 1799 to 1828,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., vol. 34, no. 1 (1977): 32–65, esp. 36–37; James Curry, ST, 134.

  10. William Anderson, Life and Narrative of William Anderson . . . (Chicago, 1857), 19; Thomas Spalding, Farmers’ Register, November 1834, 353–363; The Narrative of Amos Dresser . . . and Two Letters from Tallahassee, Relating to the Treatment of Slaves (New York, 1836); Steven F. Miller, “Plantation Labor Organization and Slave Life on the Cotton Frontier: The Alabama-Mississippi Black Belt, 1815–1840,” in Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas (Charlottesville, VA, 1993), 155–169. On connections with military systems, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1977), 135–169. Two works that appeared as this book went to press and have much to say about enslaved migrants and labor in the cotton fields include: Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams (Cambridge, MA, 2013); Damian Alan Pargas, “In the Fields of a ‘Strange Land’: Enslaved Newcomers and the Adjustment to Cotton Cultivation in the Antebellum South,” Slavery and Abolition 34, no. 4 (2013): 562–578.

  11. “Almost,” American Farmer, December 14, 1821, 298–299; Farmers’ Register 2, no. 6 (1834): 353–363; Jn. Stewart to D. McLaurin, June 30, 1831, Duncan McLaurin Papers, Duke.

  12. Farmers’ Register 3, no. 3 (1835): 16; N. P. Hairston to J. Hairston, December 4, 1822, P. Hairston Papers, SHC; J. Knight to Wm. Beall, January 27, 1844, John Knight Papers, Duke.

  13. Sidney, ST, 524; cf. Laura Clark, AS, 6.1 (AL), 72–73; [John] Neal to Mother, August 6, 1829, Neal Papers, SHC.

  14. Mark Smith, Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the U.S. South (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997).

  15. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 148–151; Campbell, Autobiography; Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave (New York, 1849), 115; Jacob Metzer, “Rational Management, Modern Business Practices, and Economies of Scale in Antebellum Southern Plantations,” in Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., Without Consent or Contract: Technical Papers (New York, 1992), 1:191–215. Cf. Smith, Mastered by the Clock, which argues for a post-1830 timepiece revolution. While Fogel argues, in Without Consent or Contract, that southern slaves’ work breaks were longer than northern ones (p. 79), ex-slaves’ accounts disagree: Sarah Wells, AS, 11.1 (AR), 89; Charlie Aarons, AS, 6.1 (AL), 1; Angie Garrett, AS, 6.1 (AL), 133.

  16. H. Lee to R. Brown, July 17, 1827, Henry Lee, VHS. But many enslavers only let men plow.

  17. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 150. HALL reveals the flattening of job descriptions: of slaves sold to Louisiana in 1804 to 1821, 95 percent of those described by a job title were listed as “hand” or “laborer,” not identified by Chesapeake-acknowledged skills.

  18. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 67, 160–162; Okah Tubbee, A Sketch of the Life of Okah Tubbee (Toronto, 1852); John Warren, NSV, 184; Philemon Bliss, ASAI, 104; William N. Blane, An Excursion Through the United States and Canada During the Years 1822–1823, by an English Gentleman (London, 1824), 150–151. For Chesapeake cat-o’-nine tails, see Charles Crawley, AS, 16.5 (VA), 8–9.

  19. Song notes, undated, Fol. 9, James Bailey Papers, SHC; Ball, Slavery in the United States, 160–162. Cf. Charlie Aarons, AS, 6.1 (AL), 1; NSV, 301–304, “I lived,” William Hall, NSV, 134. Cf. James Curry, ST, 128–144, qu. 134; Lunsford Lane, The Narrative of Lunsford Lane (Boston, 1842), 19.

  20. “Before,” Aaron Siddles, NSV, 272; Tubbee, Sketch, 23; Anderson, Life and Narrative, 17.

  21. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 67, 150, 161; Bibb, Narrative, 116–117, 132; Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave: The Institution of Slavery as Seen on the Plantation and in the Home of a Planter (Milwaukee, WI, 1897), 15–24, 46; Blane, Excursion, 67, 161; Anderson, Life and Narrative, 17; John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia (London, 1855), 39, 43; Willie Vester to B. H. Vester, March 19, 1837, Benjamin Vester Papers, Duke; Campbell, Autobiography, 33; A. K. Bartow to J. J. Phillips, April 23, 1849, Ivan Battle Papers, SHC. Contrast with Richard Follet, The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World (Baton Rouge, LA, 2005), which emphasizes positive incentives; Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974), 193–210; and Paul A. David and Peter Temin, “Slavery: The Progressive Institution?” in Paul A. David, Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright, Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (Oxford, 1976), 206–207n46, which claims that the “rhythm” of enslaved work generated efficiencies supposedly found in Haitian coumbite and West African collective labor.

  22. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 160.

  23. Jack Ericson Eblen, “New Estimates of the Vital Rates of the United States Black Population During the Nineteenth Century,” Demography 11 (1974): 301–319; Richard H. Steckel, “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of U.S. Slaves from Childhood to Maturity,” Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 (1986): 721–741; Richard H. Steckel, “Fluctuations in a Dreadful Childhood: Synthetic Longitudinal Height Data, Relative Prices, and Weather in the Short-Term Health of American Slaves,” NBER Working Paper no. 10993, December 2004, National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/papers/w10993. My own research shows that enslaved men born in the southwestern states that grew the least corn per capita in 1839 were, on average, shorter by half an inch than those born farther up the Mississippi Valley and in Georgia. That difference is significant.

  24. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 139–183.

  25. Abigail Slack to Eliphalet Slack, January 6, 1829, Slack Papers, SHC.

  26. W. C. Wirt to Dabney Wirt, December 10, 1835, Wirt Papers, SHC.r />
  27. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 184–187; Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (Auburn, NY, 1853), 134–143; Anderson, Life and Narrative, 19.

  28. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 217; cf. J. Ker to I. Baker, November 19, 1820, Ker Papers, SHC; J. S. Haywood to Dear Sister, May 3, 1839, Fol. 156, HAY; A. K. Barlow to J. J. Phillips, April 23, 1849, Ivan Battle Papers, SHC; James Harriss to Th. Harriss, September 14, 1845, 1843–1847 Fol., Thomas Harriss Papers, Duke; Jn. Knight to Wm. Beall, February 7, 1844, April 14, 1844, Box 2, John Knight Papers, Duke; R. B. Beverley to Robert Beverley, September 3, 1833, Beverley Papers, Mss. 1B4678a, VHS; Mary Ker to Isaac Baker, November 19, 1820, Ker Papers, SHC.

  29. P. A. Bolling to Edmund Hubard, February 24, 1837, Hubard Papers, SHC; C. Jameson to H. Clark, January 15, 1833, Henry Toole Clark Papers, Duke; Delilah H. H. to Sarah, January 31, 1834, Young Allen Papers, SHC; cf. R. Dalton to J. Dalton, July 2, 1835, Placebo Houston Papers, Duke; P. Barringer to D. Barringer, January 10, 1848, Daniel M. Barringer Papers, SHC. The disproportion between the amount of cotton a hand could grow and the amount a hand could harvest was a regular theme: J. S. Haywood to G. Haywood, May 22, 1836, Fol. 146, HAY; N. P. Hairston to J. Hairston, December 4, 1822, P. Hairston Papers, SHC; Jno. W. Paup to E. B. Hicks, October 17, 1841, E. B. Hicks Papers, Duke; L. R. Starks to R. C. Ballard, February 5, 1833, Fol. 8, RCB.

  30. John Ker to Isaac Baker, November 19, 1820, Ker Papers, SHC; James Magruder Account Book, 1796–1818, Magruder Papers, series N, RASP; R. & M. Timberlake to Mother, December 26, 1829, Neal Papers, SHC; W. R. Arick to J. S. Copes, October 22, 1846, Fol. 82, J. S. Copes Papers, Tulane; Elley Plantation Book, 1855–1856, Mississippi Department of Archives and History; Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, “Biological Innovation and Productivity Growth in the Antebellum Cotton Economy,” June 2008, NBER Working Paper no. 14142, National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/papers/w14142, 1–2, 22; Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, “‘Wait a Cotton Pickin’ Minute’: A New View of Slave Productivity,” August 2005, www.unc.edu/~prhode/Cotton_Pickin.pdf (accessed December 19, 2013).

  31. Olmstead and Rhode, in “Biological Innovation,” postulate that the answer lies in the introduction and improvement of new breeds of cotton, especially the Mexican “Petit Gulf” seeds, from the 1820s onward. “Petit Gulf” plants supposedly offered a cotton boll optimized for “pickability.” The pickability/bioengineering story substitutes seeds for machines and builds on the commitment of agricultural historians to credit science for increased yields. See, e.g., John Hebron Moore, Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi (New York, 1958), 27–36, 145–160; J. A. Turner, The Cotton Planter’s Manual: Being a Compilation of Facts from the Best Authorities on the Culture of Cotton; Its Natural History, Chemical Analysis, Trade, and Consumption; And Embracing a History of Cotton and the Cotton Gin (New York, 1857), 36; L. C. Gray and Esther K. Thompson, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington, DC, 1933), 2:703; J. L. Watkins, King Cotton: A Historical and Statistical Review (New York, 1969 [1908]), 172; American Farmer, passim; Farmer’s Register, passim. Increased yield led to increased expectations for labor: “Nothing would astonish you more than the difference in the work of a hand in cotton yielding 2000 lbs to the acre [than] where not more than 700 lbs can be had,” wrote a North Carolina native visiting his Alabama slave labor camp. Paul Cameron to D. Cameron, December 13, 1845, Fol. 974, PCC; Charles Lewellyn to PC, August 16, 1845, Fol. 962, PCC. A handful of economists and one or two historians have noted the increase in cotton productivity over time, but most of those who have focused on picking have credited the adoption of Petit Gulf seeds. See Franklee Gilbert Whartenby, “Land and Labor Productivity in United States Cotton Production, 1800–1840” (New York, 1977); Stanley Lebergott, The Americans: An Economic Record (New York, 1984); John Douglas Campbell, “The Gender Division of Labor, Slave Reproduction, and the Slave Family Economy on Southern Cotton Plantations, 1800–1864” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1988). Fogel and Engerman noted output increases, as noted above, but did not succeed in explaining them. Johnson, in River of Dark Dreams, gives more credit to Petit Gulf seeds than does this account.

  32. Gray and Thompson, History of Agriculture, 2:692–693; Kenneth C. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Berkeley, CA, 2000). Early adopter George Matthews of Louisiana reported that his “hands” were picking 160 pounds of cotton each by 1826, but other Mississippi Valley enslavers would report significantly greater amounts just ten years later with the same kind of cotton. The Prudhomme plantation in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, however, reported daily picking numbers around 100 pounds per person in the 1830s, even with new seed. But by the 1850s, new methods drove the numbers into the 200s, with some individuals averaging more than 300 pounds daily. Turner, Cotton Planter’s Manual, 99–102; George Matthews to Harriet Matthews, October 7, 1827, Folder 2/1, Matthews-Ventress-Lawrason Papers, LLMVC; Folders 267, 271, Prudhomme Papers, SHC.

  33. Pomeranz, Great Divergence, 274–278; D. A. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896 (Oxford, 1979), 199. Cf. Seymour Shapiro, Capital and the Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 1967).

  34. E.g., Levi Woodbury, “Cotton: Cultivation, Manufacture, and Foreign Trade of,” House Executive Documents, 24th Cong., 1st sess., vol. 4, no. 146 (Washington, DC, 1836). Sugar mills were the first enterprises to use the conveyor belt, the classic device of twentieth-century factories. Follett, Sugar Masters; Daniel Rood, “Plantation Technocrats: A Social History of Knowledge in the Slaveholding Atlantic World, 1830–1865” (PhD diss., University of California at Irvine, 2010).

  35. E. F. Barnes Cotton Book, RASP, Series G, 5/17. Occasionally enslavers held “races” to see who could pick the most cotton in a day: Cull Taylor, AS, 6.1 (AL), 364. Ball, in Slavery in the United States, 212, 271–272, mentions pay for overpicking or Sunday picking in two cases.

  36. Mary Younger, NSV, 258; Allan Sidney, ST, 524.

  37. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 215–216; Jn. Knight to Wm. Beall, August 12, 1844, Box 2, John Knight Papers, Duke.

  38. Campbell, Autobiography, 33–35.

  39. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 128–132; Anderson, Life and Narrative, 19–20; Henry Watson, Narrative of Henry Watson: A Fugitive Slave (Boston, 1848), 19–20; ST; Works Progress Administration interviews from the 1930s, e.g., GSMD, 199; Gus Askew, AS, 6.1 (AL), 15; Rufus Dirt, AS, 6.1 (AL), 117; Sarah Wells, AS, 11.1 (AR), 89; Sarah Ashley, S2 2.1 (TX), 87; Jesse Barnes, S2, 2.1 (TX), 175. Also J. Monett, Appendix C, J. W. Ingraham, The South-West, by a Yankee (New York, 1836), 2:285–286.

  40. Rules from Box 3, May-–December 1820 Fol., A. P. Walsh Papers, LLMVC; Miller, in “Plantation Labor Organization,” 163–165, points out that some historians have confused cotton minimums with low-country “tasks,” e.g., Moore, The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge, LA, 1988), 95–96. For ledgers, five good examples: Ballard Papers, SHC; Prudhomme Papers, SHC; U. B. Phillips and James Glunt, Florida Plantation Records from the Papers of George Noble Jones (St. Louis, 1927); F. T. Leak Papers, SHC; Edwin Davis, ed., Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836–1846, as Reflected in the Diary of Bennett H. Barrow (New York, 1943). “So many pounds,” ASAI, 96, 98; Ball, Slavery in the United States, 216–218; Campbell, Autobiography, 33–39; Sarah Wells, AS, 11.1 (AR), 89; Jn. Knight to Wm. Beall, February 10, 1844, April 14, 1844, John Knight Papers, Duke; R. B. Beverley to Robert Beverley, September 3, 1833, August 28, 1842, Sec. 17, Mss1B4678a, Beverley Papers, VHS. Cf. Kelly Houston Jones, “‘A Rough, Saucy Set of Hands to Manage’: Slave Resistance in Arkansas,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 71 (2012): 1–21.

  41. Anderson, Life and Narrative, 18–19; ASAI, 47; NSV, 140–141; Jn. Haywood to G. W. Haywood, February 5, 1842, March 17, 1839, May 22, 1836, HAY; P. Cameron to D. Cameron, December 2, 1845, Fol. 973, PCC; Betsy Clingman to I. Ja
rratt, January 8, 1835, Jarratt-Puryear Papers, Duke. Cf. GSMD, 215.

  42. These lists of pounds picked would not help scholars to identify best seed types. They were offshoots of a slate or memory system designed to carry numbers for individual slaves: Charles Thompson, Biography of a Slave (Dayton, OH, 1875), 41–42; Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 128–129; Campbell, Autobiography, 33–35.

  43. Ball, Slavery in the United States, 186–187, 212. Early daily totals are from American Farmer, December 14, 1821, 298; August 31, 1838, Magnolia Pltn. Jnl., Fol. 429, RCB. “Bresh heap” from B. Fox to Eliza Neal, September 25, 1835. For 100–130 lbs./day, see R. and M. Timberlake to Mother, December 26, 1829, Neal Papers, SHC; cf. Phanor Prudhomme Cotton Books, 1836 and 1852, Prudhomme Papers, SHC; “Dunk,” D. W. McKenzie to D. McLaurin, September 26, 1840, Fol. 1838–1840, Duncan McLaurin Papers, Duke; J. F. Thompson Diary, July 6, 1841, [51], Benson-Thompson Papers, Duke; R. B. Beverley to R. Beverley, September 3, 1833, Sec. 13, and August 28, 1842, Sec. 41, Beverley Papers, VHS; Northup, Twelve Years a Slave, 125, 135. By 1860, Paul Cameron expected two hundred pounds per hand per day in the Mississippi delta: W. T. Lamb to P. Cameron, September 16, 1860, Fol. 1210, PCC. For increased southwestern extraction of labor, L. A. Finley to Caroline Gordon, February 17, 1853, Gordon-Hackett Papers, SHC; T. J. Brownrigg to R. Brownrigg, January 29, 1836, Brownrigg Papers, SHC; A. K. Barlow to J. J. Philips, April 23, 1849, Ivan Battle Papers, SHC; J. S. Haywood to G. W. Haywood, April 4, 1835, Fol. 144, and J. S. Haywood to Sister, May 3, 1839, Fol. 156, HAY; A. P. Cameron to D. Cameron, December 13, 1845, Fol. 974; W. T. Lamb to P. Cameron, December 1, 1860, PCC.

  44. Farmers’ Register, June 1836, 114–116, and November 1934, 353–363; cf. James Pearse, Narrative of the Life of James Pearse (Rutland, VT, c. 1826), 24–37; Philip Younger, NSV, 249.