Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [308]
Where an overseer no longer supervised the field hands, black dissatisfaction would now most likely fall directly on the employer himself or on the black driver. Like the overseer and the task and gang systems, the driver symbolized for many blacks the excesses and close supervision of slavery; nevertheless, he enjoyed considerably more staying power than the overseer, and the freedmen tended to view his presence with fewer misgivings. The typical contract obligated laborers to obey a driver selected from their ranks, but “out of compliment to the changed times” he would now be known as a foreman or captain. That satisfied some freedmen, but only if a change in personnel accompanied the new appellation. In the Sea Islands, a group of laborers told a Union officer that “the drivers ought now to work as field hands, and some field hands be drivers in their place.” Already convinced that the old ways of managing blacks would no longer suffice, Edward B. Heyward, the South Carolina rice planter, acknowledged the importance of naming as his foreman an individual who had never before held that position. “Had he turned loose old ‘Wasp’ [the former driver] on the plantation,” Heyward’s son recalled, “I am quite sure he would have had few Negroes in his fields. But how Wasp would have enjoyed it!” On many plantations, however, the old driver still commanded the respect and loyalty of the blacks, and employers relied heavily on his leadership to continue agricultural operations with the least amount of disruption; in some places, as on the Manigault rice plantations, the landowner made a contract with a black foreman or manager, in which he entrusted the entire agricultural operation to him, including the hiring and disciplining of the hands. At the end of the year, the owner retained one half of the net profits, while the blacks divided the rest among themselves. “Little or no intercourse is thus held between Gen’l Harrison [the employer] and the Mass of the Negroes,” Manigault wrote of that unique arrangement on his old place, “and provided the Work is performed it is immaterial what Hands are employed.”53
If the constraints imposed by contracts upon the movements and behavior of black laborers assumed a near uniformity, the amount and the method of compensation tended to vary considerably, even within the same region. “I furnish everything but clothes, and give my freedmen one third of the crop they make,” an Arkansas planter declared, but “on twenty plantations around me, there are ten different styles of contracts.” The compensation offered a freedman reflected the scarcity of labor in the district, the planter’s ability to pay, agricultural prospects, how successfully the laborers pressed their demands, and how effectively planters were able to decide among themselves on maximum rates. Despite variations within regions, the wage rates and crop shares tended to be higher in the lower than in the upper South: a first-class male field hand could generally expect to make no more than $5–$10 a month in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee; $8–$12 in South Carolina and Georgia; $10–$18 in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana; and $15–$25 in Arkansas and Texas. On the same plantation, however, wage scales fluctuated according to how the employer classified his laborers; on a Mississippi plantation, for example, the employer paid first-class male laborers $15 a month, first-class women $10, and drivers $40, while the average hand netted about $10.54
The value of these wages obviously depended upon the degree to which the employer maintained his laborers—that is, whether he furnished the lodgings, food, clothing, and medical care or deducted those items from wages. On a plantation in Louisiana, for example, field hands earned $25 a month