4.

Disrupting Plantation Life

On St. Helena Island there is a folk tale of an enslaved man who never had to work. He convinced his enslaver he was disabled and then sat around strumming his guitar and singing, “I was fooling my master seventy-two years, and I’m fooling him now.” Enslaver and enslaved shared the same land, but not the same values or even the same sense of humor.

One exasperated enslaver said, “I’m nearly worried to death with them—if I had a jail, I should lock them up every night.”

Plantation owners and overseers found their working days were an unending battle of wits. Despite whips, guns, and unlimited power, they did not always win. John W. Brown complained the people he enslaved “have wearied out all the patience I had with them now for nine years.” Even nightfall did not bring relaxation and sleep. A visitor to the South reported: “I have known times here when not a single planter had a calm night’s rest. They never lie down to sleep without . . . loaded pistols at their sides.”

Frederick Douglass believed both enslaver and enslaved were victims of the system. He said, “Reason is imprisoned here and passions run wild.” Douglass’s cousin, an attractive young woman, was sexually abused by Plummer, her overseer. When she protested to her enslaver, known for his kindness, he beat her. Douglass coldly concluded: “The treatment was part of the system rather than part of the man. To have encouraged appeals of this kind would have occasioned much loss of time, and leave the overseer powerless to enforce obedience.”

The leather whip singing in the air, bringing blood from a Black back, was the usual answer to any resistance, real or imagined. Howard C. Bruce, who escaped to write a book about his adventures, said enslaved people “took no interest in their master’s work . . . and went no further than forced by the lash.”

“I find Robert a very hard hand to manage,” said Senator John Hammond. “I have flogged him until I’m tired.”

Senator Alexander Stephens jailed an enslaved man, Pierce, whose overseer reported that Pierce’s “imprisonment had only tended to harden him. . . . I don’t think he will ever conform.”

John’s enslaver had the young man “heavily ironed and put to work,” but had “given up all hope of ever being able to make him an honest and obedient boy, whippin’ does no good, and advice is nearly thrown away.”

To keep control, enslavers tried hard to divide their laborers. “They taught us to be against one another and no matter where you would go you would always find one that would tattle and have the white folks pecking on you,” recalled an enslaved woman. Planter Knott offered five dollars for those willing to betray their people, saying, “I always like to encourage negroes in betraying runaways.”

House servants and field hands, dark-skinned and light-skinned people, women and men were often treated differently by their enslavers, who hoped that favored individuals would pass on news heard in the workers’ quarters. African American communities had to learn to screen out unreliable members, and to deal with informers.

Robust Black men were selected as drivers and given whip power over field hands. If they failed to carry out orders, they were flogged. Solomon Northup, a Louisiana driver for eight years, devised a clever response. He threw “the lash within a hair’s breadth of the back of the ear or the nose, without, however, touching either of them.” When overseers appeared, Northup’s laborers helped in the drama with a “squirm and screech as if in agony.”

Patrols, or “pattyrollers” as African Americans often called them, roamed the countryside at night. They checked to be sure enslaved people were in their houses and to see if those who were out had passes from a white person. They were known for savage brutality, particularly when they encountered groups of enslaved people at secret religious or other meetings. Black people tried to avoid them, and sometimes set traps for their horses or burned their homes.

Since their labor was stolen, enslaved men and women justified, and counted as a form of resistance, stealing from enslavers. A woman found with her enslaver’s trinkets said, “Don’t say I’m wicked . . . it’s all right for us poor colored people to appropriate whatever of the white folks’ blessings the Lord puts in our way.”

The spirit of resistance showed many faces. Patrols examine passes of enslaved people out after dark.

Planter Thomas Chaplin complained of “my little rascal William, who I had minding the crows off the watermelons.” But William “had been the worst crow himself, and does the thing quite systematically. . . . Cunning, very.”

In the field, Black women and men found a variety of ways of fooling whites or disturbing production. Reporter Olmsted observed what whites called eye-service—work performed only when enslaved people were watched. Against strict orders, gates were left open and bars let down, rails removed from fences, mules injured, tools broken. Everywhere was careless workmanship, boats left to drift away, heavy items moved, dangerous embankment holes not filled but thinly patched on top. Workers failed to perform jobs and then lied.

One enslaver told Olmsted laborers in bondage “never did a fair day’s work. They could not be made to work hard; they never would lay out their strength freely, and it was impossible to make them do it.” Planters also found that almost anything used in production could be ruined. There were mysteriously bent hoes, broken plows, toothless rakes, and injured field animals. Howard Bruce told how laborers deliberately overworked field animals and plowed too shallow for planting of crops. Sabotage was so widespread that planters invented a thick “slave hoe” that could not easily be broken. Many planters feared to introduce the plow. Mules, harder to injure than horses, were often used.

Production on some plantations varied as much as 100 percent due to slowdowns and sabotage. Enslaved workers pretended to be too sick or lame to work, women pretended they were pregnant, and illness soared when work was hardest. In Mississippi, the Wheeles plantation calculated one working day each week was lost by sickness. The Bowles plantation found that of 159 days lost due to sickness, only five were on Sunday, a day of rest. One planter found that a man he considered too blind to work in the field made “eighteen good crops for himself when the [Civil] war was over.”

Strikes, slowdowns, or what plantation owners called “the danger of a general stampede to the swamp” were common. One manager told reporter Olmsted enslaved people ran away to protest overseers and harsh working conditions: “They hide in the swamp and come into the cabins at night to get food.” Some lengthy stoppages were only settled when enslavers agreed to negotiate.

A few men and women devised a special revenge on enslavers during a sale or auction. Pretending to be sick, mentally unstable, or disabled, their stumbling or incoherent manner wrecked sales, drove away buyers, or brought lower prices. One light-skinned man claimed to have escaped during negotiations for his sale. He said he talked faster than his darker-skinned enslaver and sold the white man instead. With the cash he made his way north.

Overseers, often known for their abusiveness, did not have a happy time, and some had to fight for their lives. In rural Alabama Olmsted was told: “The overseers have to always go about armed; their life wouldn’t be safe, if they didn’t. As it is, they very often get cut pretty bad.”

Cudjo Lewis was busy working in the field when he saw a group of women overpower and “soundly thrash” an overseer who had insulted one of them.

In 1853, one Alabama overseer was wounded when enslaved workers rebelled. He finally put down the uprising, but since little blood was shed and no lives were lost, he only imposed a token punishment on the rebels.

Though direct challenges to work rules could be suicidal, some enslaved people spoke up. Beverly Jones recalled Jake, who told his Virginia enslaver, “You can sell me, lash me, or kill me. I ain’t caring which, but you can’t make me work no more.” The owner thought for a moment and said, “All right, Jake. I’m retiring you, but for God’s sake don’t say anything to the other niggers.”

Escapes to the swamps and to visit relatives marked the history of American slavery.

At times, slowdowns or protests forced changes. Plantation owners might fire overseers in constant combat with their workers, especially if production fell. Some agreed to compromise with the enslaved worker, one promising his overseer would ask “nothing unreasonable” from them. A Virginia enslaver found his “overseer lacks authority among the Negroes, to make up for which he is very industrious and works with them.”

Frederick Douglass learned early that the person whipped easiest is whipped most. Sent to a “slave-breaker” named Edward Covey, who tried to beat him into submission, young Douglass finally lost his temper. A “fighting madness had come upon me,” and he found himself in a dangerous wrestling match. “I was strictly on the defensive, preventing him from injuring me, rather than trying to injure him. I flung him on the ground several times . . . I held him firmly by the throat, that his blood followed my nails.” Douglass clobbered a cousin of Covey who rushed to the rescue and warned away a hired man and an enslaved woman Covey had called. Douglass battled him for two hours until Covey gave up. Covey announced he “whipped” Douglass, but never bothered him again.

A somewhat less hazardous form of resistance, fire, began early and burned late throughout the era of slavery. Arson was a quick, powerful form of retribution, which could be used selectively and could leave enough time for those with the matches to flee. On the Pierce Butler plantation Fanny Kemble reported field hands made fires to cook their meals “and sometimes through their careless neglect, but sometimes, too, undoubtedly on purpose, the woods are set fire to.”

“Fires are continually occurring in this country,” reported a visitor to Georgia.

From colonial times, whites claimed people in bondage were busy setting fires. In 1741, two Hackensack, New Jersey, enslaved people were executed for starting fires. In 1766, a Maryland woman was executed for burning down her enslaver’s home, tobacco house, and outbuildings. In 1781, a Virginia resident wrote of “most alarming times this summer” as Black people burned homes.

Young Frederick Douglass was sent to “slave-breaker” Edward Covey. Douglass turned on Covey and beat him in a fair fight. This drawing is from 1853.

By the 1790s, Charleston citizens organized to see if brick and stone instead of wood could be used for building homes. By the next century most Virginia homes had fire escapes, and visitor Morris Birkbeck noted “many whites [have] an extraordinary fear” of fires due to the “carelessness of the negroes.”

The turmoil during the War of 1812 led to new opportunities for arsonists. The Norfolk Herald reported “four negroes in the jail . . . committed as incendiaries.” It wrote: “The danger to be apprehended to our town from an attack of the enemy is safety to what is to be apprehended from the lurking incendiary.” By 1820, the American Fire Insurance Company of Philadelphia announced it “declined making insurances in any of the slave states.” In 1831, Richmond businesses feared goods destroyed by fire “would not be paid by insurers.”

Some arsonists struck at hated pattyrollers. In 1830, a southern report said some pattyrollers had quit and other “patrols are of no service” after two “had their dwelling houses and other houses burnt down.” In 1852, Princess Anne County, Virginia, patrollers, who had just dispersed a Black meeting, suddenly had to race from one blazing pattyroller home to another.

If fire was a favorite general terror weapon, poison was the favorite lethal choice against individuals. Women, especially those who were nurses and cooks with easy access to medical supplies, were often charged in poison plots. Some were accused of bringing a knowledge of lethal formulas from Africa.

In 1740, New York City’s two thousand African Americans were accused of trying to poison the water supply for ten thousand whites. Whites who could afford it bought spring water from vendors.

In 1751, South Carolina demanded the death penalty for Blacks who poisoned whites, and “for any black who instructed another black in the knowledge of any poisonous root, plant, herb, or other poison.” Ten years later the Charleston Gazette announced: “The negroes have again begun the hellish practice of poisoning.” In 1755, Maryland convicted five enslaved people and Virginia two for conspiring to poison whites. By 1770, Georgia provided a death penalty, saying poisoning has “frequently been committed by slaves.” In 1805, when two respected whites were poisoned, a conspiracy charge was brought against nineteen Black men and one woman in three North Carolina counties.

Other women also joined men in plantation resistance. In December 1774, the Georgia Gazette reported four enslaved women and four men on a rampage “killed an overseer in the field . . . murdered his wife, and dangerously wounded a carpenter.” In 1822, owner Levin Adams described a slim, six-foot enslaved woman running to freedom: “Sarah is the biggest devil that ever lived, having poisoned a stud horse and set a stable on fire, also burnt G. R. Williams stable and stockyard with seven horses and other property to the value of $1,500. She was handcuffed and got away at Ruddles Mills on her way down the river, which is the fifth time she escaped.”

From colonial times on, many planters complained the workers they enslaved were “running amok.” This often meant that white control had broken down. In 1773, Robin on the Carter plantation in Virginia not only ran away but was also “destroying corn in the fields.” One enslaver wrote about how he had “narrowly escaped being murdered by two of his most trusty negroes,” and a paper reported William Allen of Charleston “was chopped to pieces in his barn.”

Louisiana whites felt matters were getting out of hand in 1850. One report told of an enslaved person who “broke open and robbed Mrs. Black’s house and was very insolent to her.” At the Magruder plantation enslaved workers rode into the yard on horseback, baked biscuits in the main house, took a bundle of bread, and went back home to bed.

Favorite servants in the main house showed a gritty impudence. Alcey, a talented cook on the Smedes’ Mississippi plantation, wanted a transfer to the fields. According to Susan Dabney Smedes, Alcey “systematically disobeyed orders and stole or destroyed the greater part of the provisions given to her for the table. No special notice was taken, so she resolved to show more plainly that she was tired of the kitchen. Instead of getting the chickens for dinner from the coop, as usual, she unearthed from some corner an old hen that had been sitting for weeks, and [when company was invited to dinner] served her up as a fricassee.” The next day she was allowed to march off to the field.

Robert Falls, who felt badly about always having to scrape and bow before his enslaver, swore, “If I had my life to live over, I would die fighting rather than be a slave again.” His father, he recalled, “was a fighter. He was mean as a bear. He was so bad to fight and so troublesome he was sold four times to my knowing and maybe a heap more times.” In the father and son in the Falls family can be seen two very different responses to bondage—and the fearsome price resisters paid for their courage.

Black freedom seekers battle whites in a barn.

During the Civil War, as enslaved people deserted the plantation, one South Carolina planter realized their true feelings. “We are all laboring under a delusion. I believed that these people were content, happy, and attached to their masters. But events and recollection have caused me to change these opinions. . . . If they were content, happy, and attached to their masters, why did they desert him in the moment of his need and flock to an enemy, whom they did not know; and thus left their perhaps really good masters whom they did know from infancy.”

To planter Frederick A. Eustis the realization came when he returned a year after the war to his home on the Georgia Sea Islands. He found the people he had formerly enslaved at work. “I never knew, during forty years of plantation life, so little sickness. Formerly, every man had fever of some kind, and now the veriest old cripple, who did nothing under secesh rule, will row a boat three nights in succession to Edisto [Island], or will pick up the corn about the corn house. There are twenty people whom I know who were considered worn out and too old to work under the slave system who are now working cotton as well as their two acres of provisions; and their crops look very well.”

“Shamming,” said one owner, “slaves are famous for it.” But many enslavers such as Eustis learned of their deception too late.