February 27, 1863, The Charleston Mercury
In almost every newspaper one takes up now he finds an article, in a conspicuous place, headed ‘Plant Corn,’ addressed to the planters and farmers; and in several States, South Carolina included, laws have been passed, restricting planters to three acres cotton per hand this year. To both of these propositions I give my hearty consent, and conform my practice. Last year I reduced my cotton acres four-fifths, and this year I have pitched my crop at one-third less than the last. The law should have forbidden planting more than half an acre for each hand, which would have insured an ample supply for the Confederate States and domestic uses. As it is, the planter, by putting all his manure on his best three acres, and giving them garden culture, may make, in this State, a full average crop; and many will do it to the utter neglect of corn and other grain. The law fell far short of the mark.
But in what? (I beg pardon if I offend any.) I think the preposterous attempt of legislators to regulate prices by laws, which has been tried in all ages and times, from Moses down, and which has never met with any real success in a single instance, the planters and farmers not only have poor encouragement to make breadstuffs and provisions, but are deterred from it, and nearly deprived of any power to do it.
There seems to be no end to the performance and the endurance expected of them.
Firstly. The impressment law takes from them an important proportion of their hands to do for the army what in all other countries the armies do for themselves – entrench and fortify.
Secondly. The repeal of the Exemption Law seems to be about to take from them their managers, leaving them only men over forty-five years, who are hard to find willing to take their places; too old at best for active operations; mostly broken down old men, new to the negros, and liable to be called out, also, at any moment. I think that the law exempting one white man for every twenty negros was putting it too low. It should have said for forty or fifty, which would have prevented most of its abuses. Forty or fifty negros constitute one of the controlling plantations of a neighborhood, and its discipline is very important to all. But many, left to themselves under a negro driver, or an imbecile white man, wholly new to them, will scarcely make a support for themselves, much less contribute to support of armies and town people. I speak after thirty years’ experience of personal management of three to six times that many negros. They would steal all their master’s hogs and other stock, even if you left the smoke house open to them; they would do the same favor to all neighbors, rich and poor, within five or six miles. They would not work; and if circumstances favored, they would be the first to rise in insurrection; attacking, of course, the nearest neighbors, rich or poor – the poor in preference, for the negro hates buckra, and cowers before a gentleman.
Thirdly. By Mr. Yeadon’s late law, a planter or farmer cannot put any price on anything he produces except forage, which he evidently forgot. No matter what he may ask, a malicious or factious neighbor, or any one else – a quartermaster, for instance, who may have failed to make anything out of him by last year’s purchases – may indict him; compel him to go to court and employ a lawyer; submit to the verdict of a jury, and if acquitted, still stigmatized himself and family; and put to at least fifty dollars expense in every case. Shall they plant corn or anything to sell?
Fourthly. All the produce of the planters and farmers is subjected to impressment. Any popinjay of a sub-lieutenant, who knows scarcely anything beyond saloon gossip and statistics, goes on his farm, values his produce, estimates how much it will take to support him for the year, which I never could do accurately, that I did not early learn to leave a large margin, and takes the rest at what price he chose to place on it. Your paper daily demands of the planters and farmers to plant corn, to raise provisions, with this satisfaction in view.
Lastly. Notwithstanding all this, the planters and farmers are denounced in all the newspapers as extortioners, because they ask more than formerly for their produce. Well, to show how this stands, I will take a case or two as a sample of the whole. Formerly, with corn at its lowest price, in this State (say fifty cents a bushel), a farmer would go to his market town, and for ten bushels get a keg of nails – a necessity. Now at that price for his corn, he must give two hundred bushels for a keg of nails. At the current price of one dollar and a half for corn, he must for a keg of nails (and very poor nails) give sixty-six bushels. An ordinary wagon load at the advanced price denounced as extortionate, will not purchase one keg of nails, when formerly it would have purchased five kegs at fifty cents per bushel. Formerly, on the fifty cents schedule, for three bushels of corn one might purchase for his wife or sweetheart twelve yards of the best calico for a dress. Now, at a dollar and a half for corn, he cannot get that dress for less than twenty-four bushels. And so on. Yet no planter or farmer can go into a town without being insulted as an extortioner. He is ordered to produce provisions and breadstuffs, and at the same time he has his labor impressed, his produce seized, and a trap set by making that vague, unsubstantial and undefinable thing called ‘EXTORTION,’ an indictable offence; and the only sure way for him is to have nothing to sell, but wood from his clearings, which he would otherwise burn; or mud from his ditches, that he would have to move, or compost manure, that would not bear transportation far, or broken rails left after regenerating his fencing, or refuse plank, the debris of long contemplated improvement. If he has other surplus productions any one can compel him to sell them, and at the buyer’s price, under penalty of at least a trial at court, as a criminal, and dependent on the whims of a jury whether fine or imprisonment shall not be his reward. Are the cultivators of the soil mere serfs here, also, as they are in all other countries, and almost without rights?
If we have a famine this year or the next, I shall attribute it entirely to the manner in which the agricultural slaveholders have been legislated for. As for myself, I shall follow out my programme. I shall plant one acre of cotton to the hand, and produce all the breadstuffs and forage that I can, and take the consequences. I advise all my brethren of the plough to do the same. I have writ what I have writ only to show the condition in which planters and farmers have been placed, and to let those in authority know that though our patriotism is inexhaustible and our endurance great, there is a limit to our resources.
CLODHOPPER.