Terrebonne County Louisiana Archives News.....Fifty Years Ago No. 38 February 6, 1897
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Savanna King savanna18king@gmail.com August 11, 2023, 1:44 am

The Thibodaux Sentinel February 6, 1897
Fifty years ago African Slavery was prevalent in all the Southern States, and 
just commencing to become a bane of contention in the United States. At the 
Presidential election that was held in 1845 resulting in the success of James K. 
Polk, Democrat, of Tennessee for President over Henry Clay, Whig, of Kentucky, 
James G. Birney of New York received about 10,000 votes in that state and a few 
votes in other States. He was a candidate of the Liberty Party, advocating the 
abolition of slavery in the United States. This was the beginning of the great 
party known subsequently as Free Soldiers, Black Republicans, Abolitionists, 
&c., finally all merging into the Republican Party that elected Abraham Lincoln 
as President in 1860.

To me, at that date, slavery was an interesting study producing in my mind many 
serious reflections. At that period, it was generally considered that sugar and 
cotton could not be successfully cultivated without the aid of slaves, and I 
soon felt inclined to adopt the same belief myself. 

Had I had other opinions I should have kept them closely enveloped in the 
innermost recesses of my own mind, as anyone advocating abolitionism on Bayou 
Lafourche would have found his situation a very unpleasant one.

As a general usage slaves had to work steadily and often had to undergo toil and 
exposure that, to me, seemed hard and oppressive. But when they had good 
masters, they were given plenty to eat of substantial food, clothed properly, 
and in case of sickness well cared for and protected. If I remember correctly 
they were generally allowed six pounds of pork, one peck of cornmeal, and one 
quart of molasses as a weekly ration, whilst some planters raised cabbage, 
turnips, lettuce, &c. for them in addition.

The planters generally had a good building known as a hospital, in the charge of 
one or more old women, into which every slave was ordered, when too unwell to 
work. A physician employed by the year was required to visit the hospital every 
day, and oftener, if necessary, to attend to the sick, and prescribe the proper 
medicines, which the nurses had to administer punctually.

Some planters had the food cooked for their slaves, especially during the 
sugarmaking season, and sent to them in the fields where they were at work. But 
this was the exception to the usual method, which was simply to issue rations, 
and let them cook them at night after their days work was completed, and carry 
them to the fields in buckets, as they went to their daily toil. 

The work of the slave was harder and heavier than is that of the laborer in the 
field today.

They had to chop and haul the fuel necessary to make the sugar when the time 
arrived, which is superseded by the use of stonecoal except to a limited extent. 
The plowman had to plow amid stumps and roots in land newly cleared every year, 
and the ditches were all dug and cleaned by the ordinary hands, except the main 
canals, that were cut under contract by Irishmen. 

Instead of digging the stubble cane and scraping the plant with mules and 
suitable agricultural tools as it is now done, that work was accomplished by the 
use of the hoe in the hands of the slaves. In short, today ten men will do about 
as much work as 20 men did fifty years ago, and do it both better and with less 
fatigue. There has yet been no improvements made in the cutting of the cane for 
the mill, but the work of handling it after cutting is diminished fifty percent 
on all large plantations.

There were no half holidays on Saturdays. In fact some masters required their 
slaves to labor on Sunday until noon.

In sugar rolling there were no Sundays for rest. Work continued right along from 
the hour the first sugarcane was cut until the last one had been boiled into 
sugar. The hands all were required to take a watch at night. The forces were 
barely large enough in many cases to furnish two watches, and but few outsiders 
were employed for field work, as there were not many laborers to be had in those 
days among the white people. 

Owing to this scarcity of labor, the mills did not run, except on large 
plantations, for more than four or five days per week. The cane could not be cut 
and hauled to the mills fast enough to demand constant grinding. All hands would 
be sent to the fields, to cut and haul a large lot of cane that would be piled 
up at night around the carriers, before the mill would be started, which would 
then be kept going until the sheds were empty when the same process would be 
repeated.

The cane juice was cooked in batteries of four or five iron kettles, with an 
occasional one of six kettles on a very large place.

In 1846 steam engines were coming generally into use to turn the rollers and 
grind the cane, but there were still many of the old style mills turned by horse 
power. These mills had upright rollers, and one man picked up the cane stalks 
and placed them between the rollers. What would some of our large planters think 
if they had to place each cane into the mills by hands today! Yet it was 
contended that when steam engines were brought into play to crush the cane that 
the quantity of sugar realized per acre was diminished, and the experience of 
the older citizens seemed to establish that assertion as a fact. The probable 
reason was that cane passing through the small mills, two or three at a time, 
were more thoroughly crushed than they were in the mills propelled by steam. It 
is a well established fact, at this time, that planters in those days did not 
get more than 60 or 70 percent of the cane juice into their kettles, the balance 
being sent out in the Bagasse. 

It required more hands in the sugarhouses, when but five or ten hogsheads of 
sugar were made per day than it requires today to make five times as much and of 
much better quality. All this increased labor for the slaves, and gave a vast 
amount of work for them that is now done altogether by machinery.

About fifty years ago, the famous novel entitled “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was written 
and published by Harriet Beecher Stowe, that did more to hasten the inevitable 
and irrepressible conflict that burst forth in 1861 costing this Union more 
money than it would have taken to purchase every slave in the country, at double 
his value, and to transport them to the land of their ancestors in Africa, 
without counting the destruction of life and property, the mourning and 
desolation it occasioned, than did all other causes combined. The author depicts 
the character of an overseer named Legrone in black and terrible colors, as a 
demon possessed of all the characteristics of his Satanic majesty. Of course, 
she did not represent him as an average specimen of Southern slave drivers, but 
only as a type of many who followed his occupation. Bad as he was represented I 
have in my memory the names of three men whose records do not far fall below 
that of Legrone for cruelty and abuse to the slaves under their command. She 
also relates the account of a sale of a small child away from its mother. 
Whether such an assertion was true in Kentucky I do not know, but in Louisiana, 
no child under 12 years of age could be sold separate from its mother.


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