RESPUESTAS A LAS INTERROGANTES DE INVESTIGACIÓN

Introduction

The nature of agricultural labor in various southern localities had important consequences for enslaved people‘s time and flexibility in reconciling their status as forced laborers with their roles as family members. Few scholars would disagree that work defined time in the rural slave societies of the nineteenth-century South and was thus the most important organizational factor in the experiences of enslaved people. At the daily and seasonal levels, methods of cash crop cultivation and prescribed work patterns in the fields determined the extent of enslaved people‘s public and private contacts with family members. The nature of work dictated when slaves arose in the morning, when they retired in the evening, and how much time they had to dedicate to child rearing, domestic duties or family-based internal production. Labor demands also significantly influenced slaves‘ flexibility in determining how their time — both for the master and for themselves — was actually spent. They determined slaves‘ flexibility with respect to childcare, for example, as well as the extent to which enslaved men and women were afforded the opportunity to work together during the day and assist family members in performing their duties for the master. Finally, labor demands greatly influenced the means which enslaved people had to develop family-based internal economies in their free time.

This chapter will explore and explain the daily and seasonal work of enslaved field hands in each of the three chosen regions of the nineteenth-century non-cotton South. It should be noted that sexual divisions of labor, as well as the specific tasks performed by children, will be examined in chapter three. The aim of this chapter is rather to provide a broad understanding of slaves‘ field work, as well as a firm basis from which to further examine the boundaries and opportunities created by work for slave families — men, women, and children — in the next two chapters.

Jacks-of-all-trades: Fairfax County, Virginia

Frank Bell, who spent his youth in bondage on a wheat plantation near Vienna, belonged to the last generation of the Bell family forced to toil in the fields of northern Virginia as slaves. Bell was twenty-six years old when the Civil War broke out, but, as he later told interviewers, his ―pappy and my grandpappy wukked for ole Marser‘s people all dey lives.‖ His grandfather — ―Starling Bell was his name‖ — had worked as a field hand back when the plantation still produced tobacco. ―Ole Grampa died when he was 118 years old — before de war. Guess I was a boy of ‘bout ten then.‖ Bell‘s grandfather had witnessed first-hand the fateful transition from tobacco to mixed grains in Fairfax County at the turn of the nineteenth century; however, while cultivation methods changed significantly, he most likely found more continuity in general work patterns than one might expect. Although they cultivated different cash crops than their eighteenth-century forebears, the work patterns employed by enslaved people on the wheat and corn farms of antebellum Fairfax County were directly inherited from — and sharply influenced by — the old tobacco culture. Indeed, as tobacco was still cultivated on an ad hoc basis by a handful of planters during the first half of the nineteenth century, some slaves actually found themselves engaged in the cultivation of mixed grains and tobacco. Both placed substantial demands on slave laborers.1

For eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century field hands employed in the cultivation of tobacco the planting cycle began in January, when new land and old beds were cleared or burned and the soil was prepared for early planting.2 Between the end of February and beginning of March, slaves began to carefully sow tobacco seeds in specially prepared beds of mulch — an extremely fragile stage, as a late frost could kill the young seedlings, requiring field hands to cover seedlings with leaves in order to protect them from the cold. By the beginning of April transplanting could begin, and the work of enslaved people became steadily more demanding.

New fields were cleared and prepared with thousands of small hills to receive the transplanted tobacco plants. Wielding the hoe, most able-bodied slaves were expected to make at least 350 hills in a day. During the summer months, field hands were kept busy with weeding, transplanting, and replanting. They also rid the fragile tobacco leaves of ravishing caterpillars — a seemingly endless chore. By the end of August, the hoes were laid by and the first tobacco plants were ready for harvesting. Not all tobacco plants ripened at the same time, however, and the harvest was often dragged out from August through September and into early October. Once harvested, slaves hung the cut tobacco from the rafters in the tobacco house, allowing the leaves to fully dry before stripping them from the stalks and individually rolling and packing them into hogsheads. This work was tedious and required long hours, patience, careful handling and close supervision, as the tobacco plants remained delicate and fragile, even after the harvest. Packing the leaves too tight, or not drying them sufficiently, could ruin the value of the crop. Moreover, the leaves still had to be protected from the weather as well as pests such as caterpillars, worms and insects. While the harvest was usually finished by October, jobs such as drying, stripping and packing kept field hands busy through December, after which the cycle repeated itself.

Tobacco was, according to one eighteenth-century planter, ―a plant of perpetual trouble and difficulty.‖ Its fragile and unpredictable nature, tedious cultivation, and variable quality required a maximum amount of attention and supervision by both planters and slaves. Consequently, tobacco planters in Fairfax County and elsewhere in the Chesapeake organized the work of their enslaved field hands by the gang — or time-work — system. In other words, enslaved people were made to work for a set amount of time: from first daylight in the morning until sundown in the evening, usually in small, interdependent squads where their progress could be closely monitored by the planter or overseer, not unlike the work of most enslaved people in the Americas. George Washington required his field hands to ―be at their work as soon as it is light, [and] work till it is dark.‖ During the winter months, men and women in bondage often even worked by candlelight into the evening hours, curing, stripping and packing tobacco. Compelled to maximize the amount of attention and supervision given to the cultivation of their fickle cash crop, slaveholders ordered their slaves to labor all day, whatever the job at hand.3

The transition from tobacco to wheat, corn and other small grains at the turn of the nineteenth century placed very different demands on enslaved laborers, however. New methods of cultivation had to be learned and a new work rhythm was implemented, and the tobacco calendar which defined time in the world of northern Virginia slave families was altered significantly as a variety of winter and summer crops were introduced with different seasonal

cycles, keeping field hands busy throughout most of the year with continually alternating responsibilities.

The antebellum farm journal of David Wilson Scott, a Fairfax County grain producer who owned nineteen slaves in 1820, offers insight into the local cultivation of grains. The agricultural calendar for Scott‘s work force began not in January, as it did on tobacco plantations, but rather in the late summer and early autumn, the season when the farm‘s winter crops — wheat and rye — were planted. In the year 1819, enslaved people on Scott‘s farm began early. On 31 August they took to the fields to prepare the land for wheat planting by plowing and hoeing for just over a month. On 2 October they began to sow, plow, and harrow in wheat on different lots throughout the estate, a labor-intensive duty which kept them busy until the 25th. The custom was to sow ―broadcast‖, which one local farmer described as follows: ―We would take a bag . . . and tie the string to one corner so that we could hang it about the neck with the mouth in front and about a bushel of wheat in it. We would catch up handfuls and sow them broadcast having first marked out the field into ‗lands‘ of proper width . . . We then dragged a heavy harrow over it.‖ The last week of October was spent sowing rye.4

That done, the slaves immediately shifted their attention to the corn fields. Elijah Fletcher wrote in a letter dated 31 October 1810 that the field hands at Hollin Hall ―have not [yet] harvested their Indian corn although it looks fully ripe.‖ This was not for want of motivation. On David Wilson Scott‘s plantation the corn that had been planted in the spring was harvested as soon as possible after the wheat and rye had been sowed. Throughout November and into the first week of December, the days of Scott‘s field hands were consumed by harvesting and storing corn. The harvest was accomplished by ―topping‖: the stalks were cut off just above the ears, and after the corn was ripe and fully dried the ears were pulled from the stalks and brought to the barn, where they were husked. The field hands also fertilized the recently planted wheat fields by sowing in plaster at this time. (Scott was a progressive planter — many of his neighbors did not adequately fertilize their fields in the 1820s.)5

The winter months ushered in a relatively slow period in the agricultural calendar, filled in by a myriad of odd jobs. One of the most pressing duties which enslaved people performed in the winter was processing their most important cash crop into a marketable commodity: they tread out the wheat they had harvested earlier in the year, usually in the barn on a ―treading floor‖ measuring forty feet square. A ring of sheaves four feet wide was laid around the floor — the first row flat on the floor, the next row with the heads upon the butts of the first. Next two horses were set to walking around on the wheat, which a couple of hands continually turned over with pitch forks. When the grain was all out of the straw (which was fed to the livestock), it was run through

a wheat fan to separate the wheat from the chaff. Treading wheat was far from attractive work. John Jay Janney, a farmer from neighboring Loudoun County, claimed that ―treading out wheat always made me feel as if I had a cold, headache, back-ache and slight fever, the result of the dust.‖ Some farmers in the late antebellum period owned threshing machines. Christopher Nichols, once enslaved in northern Virginia, remembered having to ―stand before the drum of the wheat machine, and tend the machine all day‖ during the winter. Other winter tasks included threshing rye with a flail; grinding corn and wheat, or taking it to the local mill to be ground; chopping wood; repairing fences; building stalls for the livestock; slaughtering hogs; and, in the case of Scott‘s slaves, smoking and preparing almost two thousand pounds of pork.6

By the beginning of February, Scott‘s field hands began to plant again, this time in the farm‘s provision grounds and orchards. Potatoes, peas, lettuce and cabbage were planted, as well as a number of fruit trees, mostly peach and apple. At the same time, other field hands were employed plowing and preparing the soil for the planting of the summer crops, corn and oats. During the first half of April, some slaves were employed in the fields planting oats, while others were sent back to the provision grounds to plant carrots, parsnips, beets and pumpkins. From 15 April on, almost all hands were employed planting corn. According to Janney, ―the old rule was to plant corn as soon as the hickory leaves got to be as big as a squirrel‘s ears, and planting and cultivation kept us busy until mowing time.‖ Corn planting was a labor-intensive occupation which required slaves to make thousands of small hills with their hoes to receive the corn seeds, similar to the preparations for tobacco transplanting in the eighteenth century. On Saturday, 24 April 1819, Scott proudly recorded in his diary that his hands had ―planted about 19,000 Corn hills which was all the ground on the W[est] side of the road.‖ Corn planting lasted until 7 May, after which enslaved laborers were employed plowing and hoeing the corn fields for weeks on end — the only break from this routine came on 7 June, when a number of hands were employed shearing Scott‘s twenty-nine sheep and three lambs. One enslaved man, Jim, was put to work hilling up potatoes in the provision grounds on different dates in June.

The first winter crops were ready to be harvested by the end of June, ushering in the most labor-intensive season in the agricultural calendar. The relatively small amount of rye was harvested first, but harvesting the vast amount of wheat consumed slaves‘ time and was the most important task of the year. The grain was systematically scythed and cradled by field hands working in quick succession; then it was bound into sheaves. The binder ―would take a bunch of wheat in his left hand, near the heads, with the right hand divide it in two parts, and by a dextrous turn, twist the two together so that when applied to the sheaf, it would hold fast. When the two butt ends were drawn together and twisted, and the end tucked under the band, the sheaf would

stand a good deal of handling without damage.‖ Finally, shocks of a dozen sheaves each were brought to stackyard, and the stalks left in the fields were cut for hay to be used as fodder for the livestock. While the wheat and rye harvest lasted only until the middle or end of July, tasks such as binding, stacking, and cutting hay kept field hands busy throughout the summer. Bushrod Washington wrote his son as late as 27 July 1829: ―Harvest is over, that is the grain is cut, but not [yet] secured . . .‖ In the meantime, the oats were also harvested at the end of July or beginning of August, and a new crop of wheat was prepared for and planted in August and September. By that time the annual cycle had begun anew. 7

As Fairfax County planters adopted a system of diversified agriculture at the turn of the nineteenth century, they in fact turned their traditional plantations into mixed farms, and their slaves adapted and learned a number of new skills. They learned how to sow and harvest a variety of new crops, as well as tend to livestock such as horses and oxen, which were used to plow the wheat and corn fields. They also learned to use a number of different tools, such as scythes, sickles, plows, carts and — for the processing stage — wheat fans and threshing machines. In the case of David Wilson Scott‘s field hands, they even had to learn how to shear sheep. Enslaved people in Fairfax County became jacks-of-all-trades, specialized in a number of farm occupations, and they were often described as such from an early age. Local newspapers advertised the sale or hire of field hands who could perform any number of different chores. One typical advertisement read: ―To Hire . . . a steady young NEGRO MAN, who has been accustomed to almost any kind of work.‖ On Walney plantation, one slave claimed to be responsible for no less than forty-two different jobs, ―from mending roads and fences, to planting corn and shearing sheep.‖8

Moreover, as slaveholding size and the number of field hands employed in grain cultivation shrank during the course of the antebellum period, a higher percentage of women on Fairfax County farms found themselves working as domestic servants, which was not necessarily an attractive alternative to farm labor. Domestic servants were at the beck and call of their masters both day and night and were made to perform an endless list of physically demanding chores. One slave from Fairfax was advertised in the nineteenth century as a ―valuable female house servant who is accustomed to every kind of employment about a house, to washing and ironing, milking, &c.‖ The domestic servants at Wilton Hill, a plantation owned and run by John J. Frobel and his family, certainly had their share of frustrations. The diary entries of John‘s daughter Anne mention that one servant named Milly had to cook for irritating hosts who often ―inquired of [her] if dinner could not be an hour earlier than normal.‖ She was also in charge of ―milking the cows‖ at dawn, and repeatedly sent on foot to carry messages and favors to other farms throughout the neighborhood. On top of that she had to clean and perform several other

duties. Rose, another servant at Wilton Hill, became so fed up with one of her mistress‘s northern guests who constantly bothered her for ―cold water, and warm water and hot water, and towel after towel, and soap — every sort of thing until Rose‘s patience is entirely exhausted‖, that she finally blew up at the woman, yelling ―Well Mrs. Yank, you may wait on yourself now for I won‘t put my foot in that room again while you are on the place.‖ Whether in the house or in the fields, slaves in Fairfax County performed a wide variety of (often unattractive) duties.9

Despite differences in the actual work performed by antebellum field hands and their eighteenth-century forebears, evidence indicates that planters and farmers in Fairfax County maintained a semblance of traditional work patterns from the old tobacco culture, even as they shifted production from tobacco to grains. Time-work, or a diminished form of gang labor, remained the preferred system for most field work, just as it had been under the tobacco regime. Field hands worked six days a week from sunup to sundown, sometimes alongside or under the direct supervision of their masters, either in small and interdependent squads or singly. The decline in slaveholding size resulted in markedly smaller squads in the nineteenth century,