SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE, 1790-1860 291 



Although there were many large estates in the slave-breeding 

 states and in the old cotton states South Carolina and Georgia, 

 the large cotton plantation was seen to its best advantage in the 

 alluvial lands of Mississippi and Louisiana. Here was the cotton 

 garden of the world, settled under the patronage of the state 

 banks in the '30*5, and containing perhaps the richest soil in 

 the United States. The land was all taken up in large hold- 

 ings and worked by slaves. The owner seldom lived on the 

 plantation. Absenteeism was in fact one of the great evils of 

 gnindc culture in the South. " It may be computed from the 

 census of 1850 that about one-half of the slaves of Louisiana 

 and one-third those of Mississippi belong to estates of not less 

 than fifty slaves each ; and of these, I believe nine-tenths live- 

 on plantations which their owners reside upon, if at all, but 

 transiently." The management of the estates was confided to 

 overseers. These, as we have seen, found their value rated 

 according to the crop which they made, and the plantation, the 

 slaves and other property suffered under their management of it. 

 11 Having once had the sole management of a plantation and 

 imbibed the idea that the only test of good planting is to make 

 a large crop of cotton, an overseer becomes worthless. He \\ill 

 no longer obey orders; he will not stoop to detai ^orns 



all improvements, and will not adopt any other plan of planting 

 than simply to work lands, negroes and mul p of 



their bent, which necessarily proves fatal to (.very employer who 

 will allow it." 



As the planters spent so little time upon their estates, they 



concerned themselves little \\ith the farm improvements siu h as 



buildings and fences. These were much . interior, not ,, n ly to 



on corresponding estates at the North, but also to those 



on the farms of Northern farmers of only moderate means. The 



rers were usually housed in frame houses of an ii 



(! sheds sufficed for the M until it was 



hauled to market ; there was seldom mudi 



as was to be found, including work horses and mules, was poorly 



housed and sometimes only half fed. The negroes lived in smalt 



ouses about twenty feet squai ming usually only 



