Part 24 (2/2)
The scheme of the buildings reflected the character of the group. The ”big house,” as the darkies loved to call it, might be of any type from a double log cabin to a colonnaded mansion of many handsome rooms, and its setting might range from a bit of primeval forest to an elaborate formal garden.
Most commonly the house was commodious in a rambling way, with no pretense to distinction without nor to luxury within. The two fairly constant features were the hall running the full depth of the house, and the verandah spanning the front. The former by day and the latter at evening served in all temperate seasons as the receiving place for guests and the gathering place for the household at all its leisure times. The house was likely to have a quiet dignity of its own; but most of such beauty as the homestead possessed was contributed by the canopy of live-oaks if on the rice or sugar coasts, or of oaks, hickories or cedars, if in the uplands.
Flanking the main house in many cases were an office and a lodge, containing between them the administrative headquarters, the schoolroom, and the apartments for any bachelor overflow whether tutor, sons or guests. Behind the house and at a distance of a rod or two for the sake of isolating its noise and odors, was the kitchen. Near this, unless a spring were available, stood the well with its two buckets dangling from the pulley; and near this in turn the dairy and the group of pots and tubs which const.i.tuted the open air laundry. Bounding the back yard there were the smoke-house where bacon and hams were cured, the sweet potato pit, the ice pit except in the southernmost lat.i.tudes where no ice of local origin was to be had, the carriage house, the poultry house, the pigeon cote, and the lodgings of the domestic servants. On plantations of small or medium scale the cabins of the field hands generally stood at the border of the master's own premises; but on great estates, particularly in the lowlands, they were likely to be somewhat removed, with the overseer's house, the smithy, and the stables, corn cribs and wagon sheds nearby. At other convenient spots were the buildings for working up the crops--the tobacco house, the thres.h.i.+ng and pounding mills, the gin and press, or the sugar house as the respective staples required. The climate conduced so strongly to out of door life that as a rule each roof covered but a single unit of residence, industry or storage.
The fields as well as the buildings commonly radiated from the planter's house. Close at hand were the garden, the orchards and the horse lot; and behind them the sweet potato field, the watermelon patch and the forage plots of millet, sorghum and the like. Thence there stretched the fields of the main crops in a more or less solid expanse according to the local conditions. Where ditches or embankments were necessary, as for sugar and rice fields, the high cost of reclamation promoted compactness; elsewhere the prevailing cheapness of land promoted dispersion. Throughout the uplands, accordingly, the area in crops was likely to be broken by wood lots and long-term fallows. The scale of tillage might range from a few score acres to a thousand or two; the expanse of unused land need have no limit but those of the proprietor's purse and his speculative proclivity.
The scale of the orchards was in some degree a measure of the domesticity prevailing. On the rice coast the unfavorable character of the soil and the absenteeism of the planter's families in summer conspired to keep the fruit trees few. In the sugar district oranges and figs were fairly plentiful.
But as to both quant.i.ty and variety in fruits the Piedmont was unequaled.
Figs, plums, apples, pears and quinces were abundant, but the peaches excelled all the rest. The many varieties of these were in two main groups, those of clear stones and soft, luscious flesh for eating raw, and those of clinging stones and firm flesh for drying, preserving, and making pies.
From June to September every creature, hogs included, commonly had as many peaches as he cared to eat; and in addition great quant.i.ties might be carried to the stills. The abandoned fields, furthermore, contributed dewberries, blackberries, wild strawberries and wild plums in summer, and persimmons in autumn, when the forest also yielded its muscadines, fox grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts and chinquapins, and along the Gulf coast pecans.
The resources for edible game were likewise abundant, with squirrels, opossums and wild turkeys, and even deer and bears in the woods, rabbits, doves and quail in the fields, woodc.o.c.k and snipe in the swamps and marshes, and ducks and geese on the streams. Still further, the creeks and rivers yielded fish to be taken with hook, net or trap, as well as terrapin and turtles, and the coastal waters added shrimp, crabs and oysters. In most localities it required little time for a household, slave or free, to lay forest, field or stream under tribute.
The planter's own dietary, while mostly home grown, was elaborate. Beef and mutton were infrequent because the pastures were poor; Irish potatoes were used only when new, for they did not keep well in the Southern climate; and wheaten loaves were seldom seen because hot breads were universally preferred. The standard meats were chicken in its many guises, ham and bacon. Wheat flour furnished relays of biscuit and waffles, while corn yielded lye hominy, grits, m.u.f.fins, batter cakes, spoon bread, hoe cake and pone. The gardens provided in season lettuce, cuc.u.mbers, radishes and beets, mustard greens and turnip greens, string beans, snap beans and b.u.t.ter beans, asparagus and artichokes, Irish potatoes, squashes, onions, carrots, turnips, okra, cabbages and collards. The fields added green corn for boiling, roasting, stewing and frying, cowpeas and black-eyed peas, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, which last were roasted, fried or candied for variation. The people of the rice coast, furthermore, had a special fondness for their own pearly staple; and in the sugar district _strop de batterie_ was deservedly popular. The pickles, preserves and jellies were in variety and quant.i.ty limited only by the almost boundless resources and industry of the housewife and her kitchen corps. Several meats and breads and relishes would crowd the table simultaneously, and, unless unexpected guests swelled the company, less would be eaten during the meal than would be taken away at the end, never to return. If ever tables had a habit of groaning it was those of the planters. Frugality, indeed, was reckoned a vice to be shunned, and somewhat justly so since the vegetables and eggs were perishable, the bread and meat of little cost, and the surplus from the table found sure disposal in the kitchen or the quarters. Lucky was the man whose wife was the ”big house” cook, for the cook carried a basket, and the basket was full when she was homeward bound.
The fare of the field hands was, of course, far more simple. Hoecake and bacon were its basis and often its whole content. But in summer fruit and vegetables were frequent; there was occasional game and fish at all seasons; and the first heavy frost of winter brought the festival of hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by brought recreation, but the hog-killing brought fat satisfaction.[1]
[Footnote 1: This account of plantation homesteads and dietary is drawn mainly from the writer's own observations in post-bellum times in which, despite the s.h.i.+fting of industrial arrangements and the decrease of wealth, these phases have remained apparent. Confirmation may be had in Philip Fithian _Journal_ (Princeton, 1900); A. de Puy Van Buren, _Jottings of a Year's Sojourn in the South_ (Battle Creek, Mich., 1859); Susan D. Smedes, _Memorials of a Southern Planter_ (Baltimore, 1887); Mary B. Chestnutt, _A Diary from Dixie_ (New York, 1905); and many other memoirs and traveller's accounts.]
The warmth of the climate produced some distinctive customs. One was the high seasoning of food to stimulate the appet.i.te; another was the afternoon siesta of summer; a third the wellnigh constant leaving of doors ajar even in winter when the roaring logs in the chimney merely took the chill from the draughts. Indeed a door was not often closed on the plantation except those of the negro cabins, whose inmates were hostile to night air, and those of the storerooms. As a rule, it was only in the locks of the latter that keys were ever turned by day or night.
The lives of the whites and the blacks were partly segregate, partly intertwined. If any special link were needed, the children supplied it.
The whites ones, hardly knowing their mothers from their mammies or their uncles by blood from their ”uncles” by courtesy, had the freedom of the kitchen and the cabins, and the black ones were their playmates in the shaded sandy yard the livelong day. Together they were regaled with folklore in the quarters, with Bible and fairy stories in the ”big house,”
with pastry in the kitchen, with grapes at the scuppernong arbor, with melons at the spring house and with peaches in the orchard. The half-grown boys were likewise almost as undiscriminating among themselves as the dogs with which they chased rabbits by day and 'possums by night. Indeed, when the fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something to envy in the freedom of their fellows' feet from the cramping weight of shoes and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With the approach of maturity came routine and responsibility for the whites, routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense, some of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of both races and s.e.xes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a somewhat distinctive plantation type.
In amus.e.m.e.nts and in religion the activities of the whites and blacks were both mingled and separate. Fox hunts when occurring by day were as a rule diversions only for the planters and their sons and guests, but when they occurred by moonlight the chase was joined by the negroes on foot with halloos which rivalled the music of the hounds. By night also the blacks, with the whites occasionally joining in, sought the canny 'possum and the embattled 'c.o.o.n; in spare times by day they hied their curs after the fleeing Brer Rabbit, or built and baited seductive traps for turkeys and quail; and fis.h.i.+ng was available both by day and by night. At the horse races of the whites the jockeys and many of the spectators were negroes; while from the c.o.c.k fights and even the ”c.r.a.p” games of the blacks, white men and boys were not always absent.
Festivities were somewhat more separate than sports, though by no means wholly so. In the gayeties of Christmas the members of each race were spectators of the dances and diversions of the other. Likewise marriage merriment in the great house would have its echo in the quarters; and sometimes marriages among the slaves were grouped so as to give occasion for a general frolic. Thus Daniel R. Tucker in 1858 sent a general invitation over the countryside in central Georgia to a s.e.xtuple wedding among his slaves, with dinner and dancing to follow.[2] On the whole, the fiddle, the banjo and the bones were not seldom in requisition.
[Footnote 2: _Federal Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), April 20, 1858.]
It was a matter of discomfort that in the evangelical churches dancing and religion were held to be incompatible. At one time on Thomas Dabney's plantation in Mississippi, for instance, the whole negro force fell captive in a Baptist ”revival” and forswore the double shuffle. ”I done buss' my fiddle an' my banjo, and done fling 'em away,” the most music-loving fellow on the place said to the preacher when asked for his religious experiences.[3] Such a condition might be tolerable so long as it was voluntary; but the planters were likely to take precautions against its becoming coercive. James H. Hammond, for instance, penciled a memorandum in his plantation manual: ”Church members are privileged to dance on all holyday occasions; and the cla.s.s-leader or deacon who may report them shall be reprimanded or punished at the discretion of the master.”[4] The logic with which sin and sanct.i.ty were often reconciled is ill.u.s.trated in Irwin Russell's remarkably faithful ”Christmas in the Quarters.” ”Brudder Brown”
has advanced upon the crowded floor to ”beg a blessin' on dis dance:”
[Footnote 3: S.D. Smedes. _Memorials of a Southern Planter_, pp. 161, 162.]
[Footnote 4: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.]
O Mashr! let dis gath'rin' fin' a blessin' in yo' sight!
Don't jedge us hard fur what we does--you knows it's Chrismus night; An' all de balunce ob de yeah we does as right's we kin.
Ef dancin's wrong, O Mashr! let de time excuse de sin!
We labors in de vineya'd, wukin' hard and wukin' true; Now, sh.o.r.ely you won't notus, ef we eats a grape or two, An' takes a leetle holiday,--a leetle restin' spell,-- Bekase, nex' week we'll start in fresh, an' labor twicet as well.
Remember, Mashr,--min' dis, now,--de sinfulness ob sin Is 'pendin' 'pon de sperrit what we goes an' does it in; An' in a righchis frame ob min' we's gwine to dance an' sing, A-feelin' like King David, when he cut de pigeon-wing.
<script>