Report on the Condition of the South Part 17

_Fifteenth_.--The unauthorized purchase of clothing or other property by laborers, or others domesticated on plantations, should be severely punished, and so should the sale by laborers or others domesticated on plantations of plantation products without a written permission be punished by fine, imprisonment, and obstinate cases by corporal punishment. The sale or furnis.h.i.+ng of intoxicating liquor of any kind to laborers or others domesticated on plantations should be severely punished.

_Sixteenth_.--The possession of arms or other dangerous weapons without authority should be punished by fine or imprisonment and the arms forfeited.

_Seventeenth_.--No one, white or colored, with or without pa.s.ses, should have authority to go into a quarter without permission of the proprietor of said quarter. Should any insist upon going in, or be found in a quarter without permission of the proprietor, he should be arrested at once by the proprietor.

_Eighteenth_.--Fighting and quarrelling should be prohibited under severe penalties, especially husbands whipping their wives.

_Nineteenth_.--Laborers and all other persons domesticated on plantations or elsewhere should be required to be respectful in tone, manner, and language to their employers, and proprietors of the plantations or places on which they reside, or be fined and imprisoned.

_Twentieth_.--The whole study, aim, and object of the negro laborer now is how to avoid work and yet have a claim for wages, rations, clothes, &c.

No. 31.

OAK FOREST, NEAR TIGERVILLE STATION,

_N.O. and O. Railroad, December_ 1, 1864.

Dear Sir: The earnest desire you have manifested to make the negro laborer under the new order of things successful, makes me the more disposed to offer every a.s.sistance in my power to that end. I have no prejudices to overcome; I would do the blacks all the good in my power consistently with their welfare and the welfare of the country; I owe them no ill will, but I am well satisfied that it will demand the highest skill and the largest experience combined to make the new system work successfully, when hitherto all others, including our own two years' experience, have signally failed. No namby-pamby measures will do. We may have more psalm singing, more night preaching, greater excesses in the outward manifestation of religion, but depend upon it there will be less true morality, less order, less truthfulness, less honest industry. It is not the experiment of a few only, or of a day, but of an _inst.i.tution_, if anything, for millions; the mixing in industrial a.s.sociation of separate races. .h.i.therto distinct; of systems fundamentally changed and not of mere individuals, and the man who does not rise to the height of the great argument fails before he starts. It is not to listen to babblers, to _professional_ philanthropists, to quacks and demagogues: it demands a manly, masculine, vigorous exercise of executive power, adapted to the circ.u.mstances of the case. n.o.body is absolutely free, white or black. I have been a slave all my life; you have been the same. We were subject to discipline from childhood, and the negro as well, and must continue to be subject to wholesome restraints all of us.

It is well to consider that the measures of the government have rendered labor scarce. It would be safe to say there is not _half a supply_; that every sort of inducement will be held out to get labor away from present situations; that the inclination of all who are uninc.u.mbered is, to get to the city and its neighborhood. Every planter has some already there, living most unprofitably. I have half a dozen, some under the agreement of the present year. Concentration is the order of the day, and none but those who can command the largest sum of money will be able to carry on plantations with any hope of success. I take leave to add some suggestions, believing you will receive them with the same friendly spirit in which they are offered. I am still surrounded by my own servants, and would like to see the system so ordered that they would still find it to their advantage to remain in their present comfortable homes.

Wages, rules, and regulations should be fixed and uniform: nothing left to discretion.

A penalty should be inflicted on every employer who deviates from the established rates, _maximum_ rates.

No field crops should be raised by hired laborers. The evils attending this are numerous and insurmountable.

Wages should be extremely moderate on account of the unsteadiness of labor and exceeding uncertainty of crops of all sorts, but especially of cane and cotton.

Cooking for hands should be confined absolutely to one kitchen, and a charge made for all wood taken to their houses; a certain supply should be allowed, and no additional quant.i.ty permitted at any price: otherwise no plantation can long stand the enormous, wasteful consumption of fuel.

All necessary expenditures for the blacks, old as well as young, should be borne by themselves. White laborers are all liable to such charges, and why not wasteful and improvident blacks? They should be early taught the value of what they consume as well as the other costs of living.

About keeping stock the rule should be absolute.

No travelling about, day or night, without a written sanction from the proper person. The violation of this order by a commanding officer has brought the small-pox on my place and already eight grown hands have died with it, and there are not less than twenty invalids besides: this is one of the evils.

Medicine and professional attendance a charge to the patient, as well as all educational arrangements.

Every ploughman or woman, and teamster, to be obliged to feed and curry his or her team once at least every day.

Payments beyond proper and prescribed supplies to be small, the smaller the better, and still better if withheld till the crop is made and saved; but settlements by tickets should be made weekly. (A share in the crop is the best for both parties.) I do not perceive the utility of "home colonies;" they belong to the cla.s.s of _theories_ more than anything else.

Families should be kept together and at the "homes" to which they have been accustomed, if possible, and _made_ to support themselves, all who are able to do so. At present there are many who will not do this because they are made a charge on the master or employer. Vagrants should be punished; _work is a necessity_. But I only put down a few particulars to _impress_ upon your mind as they occur to me.

I know the difficult task you have undertaken. You have a giant to manage, and you will have to exercise a giant's strength. You have no less than to revise the teachings of all past history. You have to accomplish what has never been accomplished before. Neither in the east nor in the west has the African been found to work voluntarily; but the experiment is to be tried anew in this country, and I shall lend my a.s.sistance, whatever it is, to help on in the road to success, if that be possible. I have tried it two years under the military without success, or the prospect of it.

If, however, I can in any way a.s.sist you to gain the meed of success, both my own interest and my kind feelings towards you combine to prompt me to renewed efforts in the cause.

I remain, very respectfully and truly, yours,

T. GIBSON.

Hon. B.F. FLANDERS.

P.S.--The great desideratum in obtaining labor from free blacks is its _enforcement_. How is this to be done? Formerly the known authority possessed by the master over the slave, prevented in a great degree the exercise of it. The knowledge now, on the part of the blacks, that the military authority has forbidden any authority over them, increases the very necessity of the power which is forbidden. This is palpable to any one who sees with an experienced eye for a day. There can necessarily be no order, day or night, no fidelity, no morality, no industry. _It is so_, speculate and theorize as we may. I wish it were different; it is a great pity to witness these deplorable effects.

Disease is scattered broadcast; my own stock has been for some time consumed, except a few milch cows. The sugar from the sugar-houses has been sold in quant.i.ties in every direction. The cotton of one plantation has been sold to the extent of half the crop to a white man, and only by the merest accident discovered in time to be detected. My neighbor's hogs have been taken from the pen, killed and brought home for consumption; his cattle the same. These things are within my knowledge by the merest accident, but there is absolutely no remedy, because their testimony is as good, if not better than mine, and this they know perfectly well. In a case of sugar-selling, I had the oath of a disinterested white man to the fact, and the black and white man identified by the witness. When this witness was through with his testimony, the negro man, the interested party, _the accused himself_, was called up by the provost marshal, and of course he swore himself innocent, and so he was _cleared_. In the case of the cotton not a negro can be brought to confess, notwithstanding the confession of the white man and the surrender of the cotton. How, then, can good order, good morals and honest industry be maintained when immunity from punishment is patent to their understandings?

I know no remedy adequate to the circ.u.mstances but an always present power to enforce law and order, and this now requires the constant presence of the bayonet. Which is the best, a regular military government, or the quiet, humane exercise of just so much authority as the case demands, by the master, who has every motive, human and divine, to exercise humanity and protect his slave from injustice and injury?

The past, or rather the present year, we had nothing but blank orders, and these are of no avail whatever without enforcement; and this brings us back to the starting-point again, and the bayonet again, and so it is to the end of the chapter. Moral suasion will not do for whites who have had freedom as an inheritance, and education within their reach. How then can it be expected that he who has been predestined by the Almighty to be a servant of servants all the days of his life, shall be capable of at once rising to motives of human conduct higher than those possessed by the white man?

All that my reason teaches and the experience I have had, and the history I have read, bring me to the same conclusion: you must utterly fail unless you add the stimulus of _corporal punishment_ to the admonitions of the law; but as this would be somewhat inconsistent with the freedom which our solons have decreed, I must only confess my inability to prescribe the orthodox remedies according to the received dogmas from the inspired sources of knowledge at the north above all the lessons I have learned heretofore, and entirely above everything I expect to learn hereafter.

No. 32.

FREEDMEN'S BUREAU,

_Shreveport, La., August_ 1, 1865.

Sir: At the date of my last monthly report, (July 2d,) the free-labor system in western Louisiana was an experiment. No contracts between the planters and freedmen had then been entered into, and the difficulties to be met with and overcome by the contracting parties were new to each. The herculean task of removing the objections which the freedmen offered to signing a "contract," and of eradicating the prejudice existing among the planters against countenancing the employment upon their plantations as free men of those whom they had so long and firmly held in bondage, devolved upon the agents of the bureau.

The objection presented by the freedmen consisted chiefly in the fact that they had _no confidence whatever_ in the word of their "old masters." Said they, in substance, "We cannot trust the power that has never accorded us any privileges. Our former oppressors show by their actions that they would sooner r.e.t.a.r.d than advance our prosperity." While in nine cases out of ten the freedmen eagerly and readily acceded to fair terms for their labor when the matter was explained by a government agent, exactly in the same ratio did they refuse to listen to any proposition made by the planter alone.

Their readiness to comprehend their situation and to enter into an agreement to work when enlightened by an agent of the bureau, or, in exceptional cases, when the planters sought in a kind and philanthropic spirit to explain to them their relations to society and the government, is conclusive proof that the disposition to be idle formed no part of the reason for their refusing to contract with their former masters.

With these facts in view, it will be readily perceived that the only feasible mode of success was to send agents into the country to visit every plantation. This was undertaken; but with no funds to procure the services of a.s.sistants, and with the difficulty of obtaining the right cla.s.s of men for these positions from the army, the progress made has not been as rapid or the work as effectual as it would have been under more favorable circ.u.mstances. Partial returns have been received, as follows:

From Bienville parish 248 contracts.

" Bossier parish 14 "

" Caddo parish 172 "

" DeSoto parish 246 "

" Marion county, Texas 206 "

--- Total received 886 "

Returns are yet to be received from the parishes of Claiborne, Natchitoches, Winn and Sabine, and from Harrison county, Texas. These will all be given in by the 15th inst., and I shall then be able to determine the exact number employed upon each plantation and laboring under the new system. Regarding the average number employed upon each plantation in the parish of Caddo as a basis for an estimate, the returned rolls will foot up a list of 7,088 names, and the whole number of freedmen contracted with during the month of July in the district under my supervision will not probably exceed 20,000, or fall short of 15,000.

During the month a sufficient length of time has elapsed to render judgment to a certain extent upon the workings of the new system. That it has not satisfied a majority of the planters is a conclusion which, from their disposition at first, was evident would be arrived at. That the freedmen have accepted the arrangements devised by the government for their protection so readily and have worked so faithfully, is a matter for congratulation.

The planters at first expected that, though the power to "control" the persons of the laborers had been torn from them by the stern requirements of war, the agents of the bureau would, through the military, confine the negro to their plantations and compel him to labor for them. In this way it was thought that the same _regime_ as pursued in times of slavery could be kept up, and it was this idea which prompted a planter, noted for his frankness, to remark "that the people of the south desired the government to continue this supervision for a term of years." Finding that their ideas of the policy of the government were erroneous, and that they could not exercise this "controlling power" either directly or indirectly, and that the freedman was to be placed, as nearly as the circ.u.mstances surrounding his situation would permit, upon the same grounds as the white laborer, it is but a logical sequence that the planters should be disappointed and dissatisfied with the work performed by the freedmen.

In this place it may be well to notice that the country is yet in a very unsettled condition. After a four years' war which has sapped it of all its resources, and after a life-long servitude for a hard taskmaster, the negro is liberated from bondage, and he finds the people of the country in no condition to offer him the most advantageous terms for his services.

This, with the natural desire experienced by all mankind for a period of repose after that of incessant and forced labor, is one of the causes which have contributed to render the freedmen negligent and inconstant at their work.