Plantation Life and its Aftermath
No better example of the transition from agricultural to industrial society can be found than in Louisiana.
Although political developments are of great importance, it can be argued that they are usually, adaptations and reflections of the economic system, which is of dominant influence.
Sometime near the middle of the Nineteenth century, the industrial revolution commenced its onslaught on the prevalent agricultural economic system, and forever changed the nature of the world and its peoples, since there can be no reversion to a replaced economic system.
In South Louisiana, where I was born, the hub of the economic system was the plantation. It was beginning to disappear in my youth, but there were enough remnants to give one a real feel for how it existed.
One of the plantations my grandfather had owned was Margaret Plantation. As a boy I roamed it often. My grandfather, Simon LeBlanc, whose both first and family names were pronounced in the French manner, was one of the largest rice and sugar cane planters along the Mississippi River.
In 1923, when the price of sugar collapsed, my father gave up planting and became a successful building and road contractor. He was able to have joined with him persons experienced in those fields. He, together with his brothers and sister had inherited Margaret Plantation, on which they now grazed cattle. I remember, as a boy, being chased by a rather ferocious bull, and turning suddenly across a bridge to avoid him.
There was still a “quarters” on the plantation. The “quarters” were about eight cabins set aside, where the “colored folks”, as they were called, lived. They were reasonable accommodations providing shelter and some comfort to the inhabitants. They always had a fireplace, providing the necessary warmth in winter.
Mosquito netting was used on summer nights, but the white owners, though they lived in larger structures, did not have air conditioning or too many amenities. For example, fresh water was pumped by hand from a well on the premises.
The most enticing thing about the plantation was the Sugar House. This was a large brick structure alongside the railroad, which was still used to grind sugar cane grown by others who had continued to cultivate it. I remember, as a young boy, wandering through it at night, in the fall. It operated around the clock. The smell of molasses, the sound of the steam engines and the bustle of employees, brought extreme pleasure.
At the front of the plantation on the River Road, was the Big House, in which my uncle lived with his growing family. It was a rather large wooden structure, built with, as all structures in the area were, of Louisiana Red Cypress, which is resistant to termites and other insects, and is impervious to the weather, not requiring painting.
Across the River Road and levee, was the Mississippi River. Between the River and the levee there was a strip of land called the “batture”. On the batture there was usually a pond, called the “borrow pit”, because dirt had been borrowed from it to build the levee. In this pit, alligators and other creatures dwelled.
The water in one of the pits was always fresh, because water was pumped from the River into it, and thence siphoned across the levee to a “flume ditch”. From the flume ditch water flowed to the rice fields, which required water within which to grow. We sometimes swam in the flume ditch, although the batture pit, where I learned to swim, was better.
Plantation life was usually tolerable for everyone including the colored folks. Because of the warmth of the Louisiana summers, when the fields were cultivated, the hands would arise early, and work until noon, then would go back to their cabins, eat a large meal, and return to the fields about three o’clock in the afternoon.
There was usually a white “overseer”, who wore a big hat and rode a horse. His function was not so much to reprimand for transgressions as to direct them, for example, to which batch of sugar cane needed to be cut next.
Plantation life usually consisted of very good relations between the white owners and the colored folks. They were viewed as an extended part of the family, and if they had a dire need they would not hesitate to communicate it to the owner, who would usually respond with the necessary assistance.
Life was sometimes arduous for all concerned. Usually, some of the colored folks, mostly women, were assigned to work in the Big House. They were paid weekly. In many cases they nurtured the children, and those that did, became intimate parts of the family.
To the rear of the Big House, in a separate building, connected by a covered walkway, was the “kitchen house”. This was built in that fashion, because there was no fire protection available, and once a flame started that was usually the end of the matter. In fact, I was still a boy, when the Big House at Margaret burned to the ground, and my uncle and his family had to find other living accommodations.
I was in Washington, D.C., staying at the Mayflower, when I picked up the morning paper and then told my wife, “There is an interesting case coming up at the Supreme Court.” So I caught a cab to the Supreme Court building. There was a line of several hundred people, mostly lawyers, waiting.
I do not know how it happened, but I was led by an usher to an improvised seat on the first row and sat three feet away from Thurgood Marshall as he argued the case.
When leaving, there was the usual rush for cabs. I was offered and rode with Austin Lewis, the New York Times reporter, and another important person, back to the Mayflower.
On my return to Baton Rouge, I suggested to Frank Craig, my friend who was then President of the local Bar, that I give a report to the Bar on an important case. He said, “That’s too controversial.”
The results of Brown v. Board of Education have been rather pathetic. Surely, the principle of equality in education is important. It is felt that most people agreed with that.
The primary lever is the economic one. Unless that is functioning with some equality, the hopes are rather dismal for a leveling of educational opportunities.
The separate and equal doctrine can not be sustained in principle. In practice, the attempted remedy of school bussing was disastrous. It would probably have been better to require not only equal, but additional funding, for the primarily black schools. Of course, in principle there should have been no exclusion of blacks. All that is being said, is that under the practical circumstances better results may have been achieved if school attendance had been based on residential location. The necessary supplementation should have been made to those schools and students below par.
Recognition that the primary problem was a fundamentally economic one would have been more constructive. Also, the importance of family background, should have been recognized and efforts made for its beneficial implementation.
Which leads to a discussion of slavery, about which I had if not an argument, at least a very vocal discussion with Countess Van Trapp when she was my dinner guest in Baton Rouge?
I owe Gorbachev, whom I met and talked with in New Orleans, a communiqué’. The analogy I draw is between the Cold War and the Civil War. Gorbachev accomplished, with respect to the Cold War, the equivalent of what Lincoln would have accomplished if he had settled the Civil War dispute peacefully. Responsibility for the adoption of the type of agricultural economic system prevalent in the South was manifold. Slavery was rather widespread throughout the world.
Great benefits were obtained by the transporting of slaves from Africa to American by the Boston shipping merchants. There were Britishers, and other foreign nationals, with their hands in the till. The system had been set in place and anteceded the formation of the United States. It was well ensconced throughout Latin America, under the governance of the Spanish.
There was no mechanical equipment for the process of cultivation as there is today. The only method of raising food to provided sustenance to the population was by plough, aided by the mule, or by cane knife wielded by strong arms. The physical labor of human beings was required.
That element was not the fault of the Southern planters. As offensive as the statement is to some, it is an absolute fact, based on physical differences, including darker skin and more efficient sweat glands that blacks can outperform whites in the Southern sun.
To provide a simple example, my grandfather and his brother, always wore big hats, which became a tradition in the family, obviously because of their experience with what the sun does to the skin of folks from Normandy.
The Civil War situation called for a joint endeavor and the assumption by the Northern citizenry of some of the costs of the economic revolution required. There should have been some provision for the giant economic loss to the Southern planters. That is was violative of sound moral values does not change the fact that the ownership of slaves was integrated into the economy, to the extent that it was intimately connected with the financing of agricultural production. The then present owners of the plantations were not responsible for setting up the system. To change the system required the conjoint efforts of the disputing factions. After all, the Civil War was the bloodiest we have seen.
The retribution exacted from the South after it was over, was not only unjustified, it was stupid, since it prolonged the rehabilitation of the South to the detriment of the nation as a whole.
Even today the white graduates from Southern high schools are less well educated than the graduates from North Eastern ones.