At last came the inevitable hour which forever clouds our pleasantest experiences of travel—the hour for parting. It was once or twice postponed, but the advancing summer admonished us to make no more delays. Mr. May insisted that we should not cease to be his guests till he had shown us his sugar plantation, and so a pleasant party was made up to accompany us.

Among them was Mr. B. F. Flanders, a gentleman who, as the candidate of the Radical Free-State men for Governor against the Banks ticket, had been generally called the leader of that party. He is a man of fine presence, with clear, handsome Grecian face. As Special Agent of the Treasury Department, he has had control of millions, yet, I think, no one ever accused him of corruption, though many have pronounced his rulings unjust, and even Secretary McCulloch once went so far as to call him “a very mischievous officer.” Like a large proportion of the prominent men in the South, he has been there so long as to be generally considered a native, although he originally came from the North. A quarter of a century ago he was a young school-teacher, attracted Southward by the larger salaries common in that region. Before the outbreak of the war he was Treasurer of the New Orleans and Opelousas Railroad. Some time after the establishment of the Confederacy, New Orleans became too hot to hold him, and, in common with Cuthbert Bullitt, who persisted in hoisting the United States flag on Jeff. Davis’s day of thanksgiving, and a number of other more or less prominent politicians, he had to make his escape to the North. Mr. Denison, a young Texas planter before the war (and during Mr. Lincoln’s administration, and a part of Mr. Johnson’s, Collector of the Port of New Orleans), was another of the party. He, too, had been compelled to abandon everything, and escape North, by a painful and tedious journey through the mountains of East Tennessee. He lost sixty or seventy slaves by the war. “Several of them were preachers, too; none of your common negro preachers, but orthodox fellows, sound in doctrine, and good members of the Baptist Church.” “Yes,” explained another, “Denison owned six Baptist preachers, two blacksmiths, and a first-rate carpenter among his gang.” The expression was almost equal to that in Sherman’s famous dispatch from Savannah, about the “mules, negroes, and horses” he had brought out with him in his march to the sea.

Early in the morning the Wayanda landed us at the noted “Dick Taylor plantation,” owned, before the war, by the son of President Taylor, and now occupied by negroes, under authority from the United States. The work here did not seem to be progressing so well as on the little farms of the Sea Islanders, and the sugar-planters of the party shook their heads ominously at the prospect. The negroes seemed to have no one to give unity and direction to their efforts. Their old master was gone, and each one now wanted to be master, not only to himself, but, also, to several of the rest. A couple of their head men even fell into a quarrel about the truthfulness of their respective statements to the Chief Justice, while still in his presence. The quarters were not clean; the fences had in some places been taken for fire-wood, and the general aspect of the place suggested neglect and decay.^[35]

Near this was another plantation, abandoned by its Rebel owners, and occupied by lessees from the United States. The absence of responsible proprietors could be everywhere read in the dilapidated buildings and the general air of neglect. Still there was a fair crop of cane and cotton, and the negroes seemed to be working tolerably well for their Northern employers.

A sharp thunder-storm preceded us a few moments in our visit to Mr. May’s plantation, and we found everything in mud. The Rebels had carried off his carriages, and there was nothing for it but to walk up the bank, and through the sticky alluvial soil, to the beautiful orange grove, in the midst of which we found the wide, rambling, many-porched, one-story house, flanked by the negro cabins and the sugar-house. The guerrillas had repeatedly ravaged the place, and whatever furniture they could not carry off, they took good care to break. Still enough had been gathered together to make half a dozen rooms quite comfortable. In the first we entered, a sofa stood in the middle of the floor, with slippers and dressing-gown lying beside it, hastily abandoned at our approach. A little stand, holding a lamp and a book about cotton culture, stood at its head, and above both was hung a voluminous musquito-bar. It was the overseer’s place of retreat when he wanted to read or write. Before we had been in the house many minutes, we began to appreciate the necessity for such fortifications.

Presently the negroes led up horses, and we started for a gallop over the plantation. It was its third year of profitable culture by free labor. The stock of cane had nearly run out during the first and second years of the war, and, from necessity, cotton had been largely planted; although no one knew better than the proprietor that sugar land was unfit for successful cotton culture.

Coming out behind the negro quarters, we struck the beaten road that ran beside the main ditch, down the middle of the plantation, to the swamp at its further side. On either hand ran off the lateral ditches, and before us stretched a thousand acres of cultivated land, without a tree or a fence, as level as a billiard-table, and almost as green. The corn, of which only enough was planted to furnish the “mules and negroes” with food, was beginning to tassel, and, since the rain, one almost fancied the low, crackling sounds proceeding from it to arise from its lusty growth. Most of it waved over the backs of our horses as we rode among it.

Separated by only a shallow ditch from the corn was the cotton, which, for lack of “plant-cane,” was being grown on a part of the land. It grew in cleanly-worked beds, that were not unlike a Northern sweet-potato ridge, and was already ten to fifteen inches high. Here and there were a few “blooms”—the first of the season. They had expanded during the night, were now of a delicate, creamy white, would next day be a dull red, and by evening would fall, leaving the germ of the boll, the tiny throne of the coming king.

Crossing other ditches, we came to the waving expanse of sugar, now nearly three feet high, and growing luxuriantly. A few negroes had come out with their plows, since the rain, and were throwing up the rich, fresh earth against the roots. No time was to be lost, for other things grew as rapidly, in the steaming moisture and under the genial heat, as the cane or cotton, and woe to the planter if, by a day or two of delay, he should be “caught in the grass.” The negroes drove their mules along rapidly, but, save when speaking to the animals, in perfect silence. There was no conversation among themselves, as they passed or walked side by side on adjacent rows. A few yards away, one would scarcely know the “plow-gang” was in the field. Cross a ditch, and you were in a solitude of boundless wealth, without a trace or sound of the men that made it, and might ride back and forth over the plantation for miles, without finding them again.

Nearly all the negroes had formerly been Mr. May’s slaves. “Did you belong to Mr. May before the war?” I said to one stalwart fellow.

“Bress ye, yes. Who’d ye s’pose I b’long to? I b’longed to Mass’r May, of co’se, and to his father afore him.”

“Wouldn’t you rather belong to him now?”

“B’long to him now! I’s free, sah.”

“Yes, but don’t you think you would rather belong to him still, and not have to take care of yourself?”

“No, sah. I’s free.”

“But now you have all the trouble of supporting yourself, buying your own clothes, making your bargains, getting your provisions, and the like. Don’t you think you would get along better if you still had Mr. May to do all this for you?”

“No, sah. We’s git along heap better dis way. We’s free.”

Wherein he was better off the man did not seem clearly to understand, but this he knew, “We’s free.” He and all the rest spoke warmly of Mr. May, and whenever he appeared among them, the lifting of ragged hats and brightening of black faces told that here, at least, the old kindliness said to have existed between master and slave had been genuine. But not one of them could be got to say that he would rather be a slave again. Nearly all the people had remained on the place. Several times the guerrillas had driven them away, but they always returned and took up their quarters in the old cabins. They knew they were perfectly free to go away if they wished; steamboats could be hailed at almost any hour, and all had money to pay their passage; elsewhere higher wages were reported. But they looked upon “May Lawn” as their home, and Mr. May as the man for whom they ought to work, and no persuasion could change their minds.

The overseer was well enough satisfied with the new order of things. You couldn’t drive a nigger quite so hard, but, on the whole, they worked very well. But the rascals were, if possible, greater thieves than ever. It would be crazy to let them plant any cotton themselves, as some of them wanted to do; and it would be better if there were any way to prohibit their culture of any grain or other product not needed for their own consumption, in their gardens. If they had a crop of ten bushels, you might be sure they would sell fifty, and you would need better locks than any on this plantation to keep them from getting the other forty out of your corn-cribs. If they raised no corn, anybody to whom they offered to sell corn would know it was stolen; but if they raised only a single bushel, there was no check on them, and they would keep selling your property whenever they got half a chance. He had even heard of their stealing corn from the troughs where the mules were eating, to sell it.

Mr. May promised a “bowl of mush and milk” for dinner. When it was announced, it was found to consist of a round of plantation delicacies, cooked by the late slaves. Beef and mutton were not to be had on the coast, and fish were not to be procured short of Lake Pontchartrain; but turkeys, ducks, and chickens were abundant, and these, with a profusion of vegetables, showed that planters might live well if they would. That in general they did not, before the war, has been the common testimony of travelers, from Fred. Law Olmsted down.

At sunset the Wayanda fired her parting salute for the Chief Justice, and shortly afterward a blank shot from her bow-gun brought too the W. R. Carter,^[36] which had been selected by General Canby for our trip up the Mississippi. There were hurried good-byes, and as the steamer pushed off again, the flaring torch gave us a last glimpse of the faces of our New Orleans friends, and revealed behind them a dusky group of the late slaves, watching the departure of Mass’r May’s guests.

This was the first sugar plantation in the United States cultivated by free labor by its old owner; and the free-labor experiment—if, as the planters insist, it is to be regarded as an experiment—has been tried on it for a longer consecutive period than on any other. Its results may, therefore, be profitably studied, as a fair index to the probable value of the system.

No man would be more apt to be a severer judge of the experiment than the one who had lost the slaves whom he now hired. I accordingly asked Mr. May to give me in writing a statement of the workings of his plantation, and of his opinions as to the possibility of cultivating sugar by free labor. This was duly forwarded, and I make some extracts from it here:

“The transcripts from my plantation books, which I send you herewith, do not, in my judgment, give a fair idea of the workings of the free-labor system. I had to contend not only with the complete disorganization of the State, socially as well as politically, but I was subjected, at various periods, to guerrilla raids. These interrupted labor on the estate for days and weeks at a time, and carried off quantities of provisions, live stock, plows, etc., all of which had to be immediately replaced at great cost. The expenses were thus largely increased, while the delays and neglect proportionately diminished the value of the crop. Then, too, it is a sugar plantation, and is not at all adapted to the culture of cotton, being too near the mouth of the river, and being likewise much more liable than ordinary cotton plantations to the ravages of the army-worm. But, during the war the stock of seed-cane ran out, and I had to put the greater part of the land in cotton. In spite of these difficulties and interruptions, and enormous outlay, the estate has never failed to return a handsome revenue. I feel certain that within the next three years I shall reduce the expenses of the free-labor system fully one-third, and, at the same time, increase the returns in an equally large proportion.

“I pay my laborers what I think, even at the North, you would call good wages for that sort of farm work. They get an average, men and women, boys and girls, of twelve dollars a month each, besides their lodging, food, and medical attendance. One-half of these wages I pay them quarterly, the remainder at the end of the year. Each laborer is paid according to his merits. Some of my hands receive as much as twenty-five dollars a month; others as little as six dollars. This causes great emulation, and consequently more work is performed; all of which results in favor of both employer and employee. I think it wise policy for the planter to give high wages, as he thus secures a better class of laborers, who work not only industriously but cheerfully.

“I am satisfied, in my own mind, that one able-bodied American negro of ordinary intelligence is worth at least two white emigrants. He understands the business, and he has the advantage of being acclimated. I am willing, therefore, to pay the negroes one-third higher wages than any white laborers accessible to us. You may think this extravagant; but during the unsettled state of affairs for the last two years, I have had to try both, and I base my opinion not on my prejudices, but on my experience.”

The statements in the last paragraph are widely at variance with the ideas current among the late slaveholders. Scarcely any believe that the negro can be depended on for labor except in a state of slavery; and the most, therefore, throughout the whole season following the surrender, looked upon the sugar and cotton culture as ruined, unless white laborers could be brought in.

The following are the exhibits of the operation of Mr. May’s plantation for the years 1863 and 1864, as taken from his books. One thousand acres only of the plantation were cultivated. One hundred and twenty hands were engaged to do it, at an average of $144 per year, with lodgings and food:

In the two years, during which all his neighbors allowed their plantations to lie idle, because they knew “free niggers never would make sugar or cotton,” Mr. May thus realized a net profit of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But for the ravages of the army-worm on his cotton in 1864, the profits for the two years would have run well up toward a quarter of a million.

Much of this success was due, of course, to the high prices produced by the war. But if the prices for the products were high, so were those for every item of the expenditures. It will be observed that the negroes were fed and lodged, but not clothed. Mr. May estimated the cost of food and lodging to be at least six dollars a month. Add this to the monthly wages, and we have two hundred and sixteen dollars as the actual annual cost of each field-hand to the planter, under the free-labor system. Before the war able-bodied negroes were commanding from fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars in the New Orleans market. Counting only ten per cent. interest on the investment, we find it nearly as cheap to hire the negroes, as it was in the old days to own them and get their labor for nothing. But, as yet, slaveholders will reply to all such calculations, “Free niggers can never be depended on to grow cotton.”