Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/278

 278 Southern Historical Society Papers.

WIVES OF PLANTERS.

The busiest women the world has ever seen were the wives and daughters of the Southern planters during the days of slavery. They were busy from morning until night, and sometimes far into the night.

They were practically at the head of the commissary and sanitary departments of the plantation. It was a part of their duty to see that the negroes were properly fed, clothed, and shod. They did not, it is true, go into the market and purchase the supplies ; that was a matter that could be attended to even by a dull-witted man ; but after the supplies were bought it was the woman's intelligent management that caused them to be properly distributed.

I have never yet heard of a Southern woman who surrendered the keys of her smoke-house and store-room to an overseer. Tbe dis- tribution of the supplies, however, was a comparatively small item.

Take, for example, the clothing provided for, say one hundred negroes, male and female, large and small. The cloth was bought in bolts, though occasionally a considerable portion was woven on the plantation on the old-fashioned hand-looms. Whether bought or woven the cloth had to be cut out and made into garments. Who was to superintend and see to all this if not the woman ? Who was at the head of the domestic establishment ? There were seamstresses to make up the clothes, but all the details and preparations had to be looked after by the mistress, and it oftentimes fell to her lot to go down on her knees on the floor and cut out garments for hours at a time.

SANITARY EXPERTS.

And then there was the health of the negroes a very important item where a twenty-year-old field hand was worth $1,500 in gold. Who was to look after the sick when, as frequently happened, the physician was miles away ? Who indeed, it not the mistress ? It was natural, therefore and not only natural, but absolutely neces- sary that a part of the storeroom should be an apothecary's shop- on a small scale, and that the Southern woman should know what to prescribe in all the simpler forms of disease.

It is to be borne in mind that when the negroes came in from their work the plantation became a domestic establishment, and its demands were such that it was necessary for a woman to be at the head of it. On the energy, the industry and the apt management of the mistress- the success of the plantation depended to a great extent. It was not