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Page 1
In the following article I propose to give some account of a typical
tobacco-plantation in Virginia and the life of its negro laborers as I
have observed it from day to day and season to season. Although it is
restricted to narrow local bounds and runs in the line of exacting
routine, that life is yet varied and eventful in its way. The negro
stands so much apart to himself, in spite of all transforming
influences, that everything relating to him seems unique and almost
foreign. Even now, when emancipation has done so much to improve his
condition, his social and economic status still presents peculiar and
anomalous aspects; and in no part of the South is this more notably the
case than in the southern counties of Virginia, which, before the late
war, were the principal seat of slavery in the State, and where to-day
the blacks far outnumber the whites. This section has always been an
important tobacco-region; and this is the explanation of its teeming
negro population, for tobacco requires as much and as continuous work as
cotton. There were many hundreds of slaves on the large plantations, and
their descendants have bred with great rapidity and show little
inclination to emigrate from the neighborhoods where they were born.
Some few, by hoarding their wages, have been able to buy land; but for
the most part the soil is still held by its former owners, who
superintend the cultivation of it themselves or rent it out at low rates
to tenants. The negroes are still the chief laborers in the fields and
artisans in the workshops; and, excepting that they are no longer
chattels that can be sold at will, their lives move in the same grooves
as under the old order of things. Their occupations and amusements are
the same. As yet there has been no increase in the physical comforts of
their situation, and but little change in their general character; but
this is the first period of transformation, when it is difficult to
detect and to follow the modifications that are really taking place.
Every large tobacco-plantation is an important community in itself, and
the social and economic condition of the negro can be observed there as
freely and studied with as much thoroughness as if a wide area of
country were considered for a similar purpose. In the diversity of its
soils and crops and in the variety of its population and modes of life
it bears almost the same relation to the county in which it lies that
the county bears to its section. Indeed, no community could be more
complete in itself, or less dependent upon the outside world. In an
emergency, the inhabitants of one of these large plantations could
supply themselves by their own skill and ingenuity with everything that
they now obtain from abroad; and if cut off from all other associations,
the society which they themselves form would satisfy their desire for
companionship; for not only would its members be numerous and
representative of every shade of character and disposition, but they
would also be bound together by ties of blood and marriage as well as of
interest and mutual affection. Similar tasks and relaxations create in
them a similarity of tastes. The social position of all is identical,
for there are no classes among them, the only line of social division
being drawn upon differences of age; and they are paid the same wages
and possess the same small amount of property. They are attached to the
soil by like local associations, which vary as much as the plantation
varies in surface here and there. Each plantation of any great extent is
like that part of the country, both in its general aspect and its
leading features, just as the employments and amusements of its
population, if numerous, are found reflected in the social life of the
whole of the same section.
The particular plantation to which I shall so often allude in this
article as the scene of the observations here recorded, like most of the
tobacco-plantations in Virginia, covers a broad expanse of land,
including in one body many thousand acres, remarkable for many
differences of soil and for a varied configuration. It is partly made up
of steep hills that roll upon each other in close succession, partly it
is high and level upland that sweeps back to the wooded horizon from the
open low-grounds contiguous to the river that winds along its southern
border. At least one-half of it is in forest, in which oak, cedar,
poplar, and hickory grow in abundance and reach a great height and size.
The soil of the lowlands is very fertile, for it is enriched every few
years by an inundation that leaves behind a heavy deposit; that of the
uplands, on the other hand, is comparatively poor, but it is fertilized
annually with the droppings of the stables and pens. Patches of new
grounds are opened every year in the woods, the timber being cleared
away for the purpose of planting tobacco in the mould of the decayed
leaves, while many old fields are abandoned to pine and broom-straw or
turned into pastures for cattle.
The principal crops are tobacco, wheat, corn, and hay, but the first is
by far the most important, both from its quantity and its value.
Everything else is really subordinate to it. The soils of the uplands
and lowlands are adapted to very different varieties of this staple.
That which grows in the rich loam of the bottoms is known as "shipping
tobacco," because it is chiefly consumed abroad, as it bears
transportation in the rough state without injury to its quality.
"Working tobacco" is the name which is given to the variety that
flourishes on the hills; and this is used in the manufacture of brands
of chewing- and smoking-tobacco to meet the domestic as well as the
foreign demand. There is a third variety which grows in small quantities
on the plantation,--namely, "yellow tobacco," so called from the golden
color of the plant as it approaches ripeness; and this tint is not only
retained, but also heightened, when it has been cured, at which time it
is as light in weight as so much snuff. This variety is principally used
as a wrapper for bundles of the inferior kinds, and is prepared for the
market by a very tedious and expensive process; but the trouble thus
entailed and the money spent have their compensation in the very high
prices which it always brings in the market.
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