USA > North Carolina > Chowan County > Economic and social history of Chowan County, North Carolina, 1880-1915 > Part 17
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And it is my Opinion ... that it will for some time conduce more to your Lordshipe Profit to permit men to take up what tracts of land they please at an easie rate, then to stint them to small proportions at a great rent, Provided it be according to the custome of Virginia. .. .; their being no man that will have any great desire to pay Rent (though but a farthing an acre) for more land than he hopes to gain by. Rich men (which Albemarle stands in much need of) may perhaps take up great Tracts ; but then they will endeavor to secure Tenants to help towards the payment of their Rent. ... 1
Land in America with no one living on it was worth noth- ing to the Proprietors, and their only object in limiting the size of the grant to any one person was to secure as many bona-fide settlers as possible, and to have them live thick enough to be of some mutual protection to one another. They were willing to make almost any concession that would pro- mote the population of their domains, as they themselves declared. But they could see no advantage either to them- selves or to the settlers for a person to own several times as much as he was able to utilize.2
The instructions of the Proprietors on two or more oc- casions would seem to set 640 acres as the usual maximum
1 Col. Records, op. cit., vol. i, p. 100.
2 Ibid., pp. 53-4, 186, 845-6.
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grant, and yet it is quite clear that there was always a pro- vision for larger grants to be made direct from the Pro- prietors themselves,1 indicating that they were ever ready to convey as much land to any one person as he was able to turn to advantage.
In 1669, among other instructions to the governor and council of Albemarle, the proprietors gave the following :
You are to take notice that we doe grant unto all Free persons that doe come to plant in Carolina before the 25th of Decem- ber 1672 And are above the age of sixteene yeares, sixty acres of Land And to the said Free persons for every able man servant with a good fyerlock 10 lbs. of powder and twenty pounds of Bullets sixty acres For every other sort of servant fifty acres.2
This rather looks as if they were willing to supply the greatest plenty of land to all honest settlers. Furthermore, the order to grant but 640 acres to one person seems to have been interpreted in Albemarle as meaning that no person should be granted more than 640 acres in one place.3
On purely selfish grounds the Proprietors, presuming they had ordinary intelligence, would naturally have done everything they reasonably could do to attract the more " substantial " settlers, and as a matter of fact this class of settlers did come, as is attested by contemporary historians.4 It is also a fact that large grants were made.5 At the first U. S. census enumeration (1790) the colored population of Chowan county outnumbered the white, and with one excep- tion has done so in every enumeration since.6 In view of the fact that the colored people were mostly slaves, and the
1 Col. Records, op. cit., pp. 186, 556, 706. 2 Ibid., vol. i, p. 182.
3 Ibid., vol. i, p. 186 and vol. ii, p. 457. 4 Cf. supra, p. 24.
5 Colonial Records, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 845-6. 6 Cf. table 4, p. 264.
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further fact that only the comparatively well-to-do people owned slaves, the large number of blacks in Chowan is a further evidence that " substantial " settlers did come in.
Even in 1880 from eight to ten acres were about as much ground as one person could work. Certainly in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the means and methods of farm- ing were still poorer and the crops, except cotton, much the same as they were in 1880, one person could cultivate no greater number of acres. On this basis a 640-acre tract would need thirty or forty able-bodied laborers to cultivate it, even though only half of it was worked. At least half as many more would be needed for domestic manufactures and gen- eral household duties. Thus the usual grant was quite suffi- cient for the agricultural operations of fifty or sixty able- bodied men and women. Not many settlers came to America in colonial days who were able to put in the field so large a force. Furthermore, the hogs, cattle and sheep-which were among the main sources of food, clothing, and other articles of consumption-had free range of all unfenced land; and little or none was fenced except what was under cultivation. There was no limit to the number of live stock one might let loose on the free range. Another source of income was the forest products. There is scarcely any doubt that the settlers gathered as much of these as they chose to from any and all land yet ungranted. A third source of income was the sound and rivers, which in the spring of the year were teeming with fish. These three great sources of sup- plies, which were free to all who would exploit them, to- gether with a 640-acre tract, would support a good-sized family.
Considering all the foregoing facts, it is rather difficult to see how the land policy of the lords proprietors was very prejudicial to Chowan.
Lack of Harbors .- The second of the two most fre-
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quently alleged causes for the slow progress prior to recent years, was the lack of good harbors, or more strictly speak- ing, the lack of access to the harbors permitting direct trade with the outside world. Says Bassett:
In the second place [the first was the above-discussed policy of the Proprietors] the earliest settlements in the state were in that part [at first Chowan and Perquimans and later the tide- water section in general] where uncertain harbors prevented a direct trade with England. The settlers were thus left to an unprofitable commerce with older communities in America. ... 1
Much testimony similar to the above might be piled up, but to do so would be unnecessary, since the question of transportation has already been discussed. It should ever be remembered, however, that the lack of transportation fa- cilities was a very real and vital handicap, and a handicap which, tho at various times it has been greatly decreased, is still far from being a negligible quantity.
Civil War .- In recent times the one thing most fre- quently cited by Carolinians as causing their state's slow development during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, is the effect of the Civil War. Many of the leading men of Chowan hold very strongly to the same opinion as regards the progress of their own particular county. Omit- ting the question in so far as the state as a whole is con- cerned, let us examine the question bearing directly on Chowan.
What are the facts in the case? In the first place no reg- ular land engagement ever took place in or near the border of the county. Second, while there were a few horses taken, some provisions and clothing, which were destined for
1 Constitutional Beginnings, op. cit., p. IIO.
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the Confederate forces, captured along the water-courses, and some burning (confined largely to one estate) and gen- eral pillaging done (mostly by the " Buffaloes ") 1-there
1 In the early part of the Civil War there was a detachment of Con- federate soldiers encamped at Gatesville, the county seat of Gates, an adjoining county of Chowan. In this detachment was one Jack Fair- less, a native of Gates. He was said to have committed theft, and for the alleged crime was taken by his comrades in arms to the side of a swamp where he was soundly thrashed and one side of his head was shaved. (One of the soldiers who helped to administer the punishment lived in Chowan till his death several years ago. He was known to me personally.) Soon after this episode, Fairless deserted and proceeded to collect, principally from Chowan, Gates and Perquimans, a band of followers, who very probably never numbered more than a hundred. These fellows made headquarters at Winfield, a large estate on the Chowan river. They called themselves "Union " men, and eventually secured federal uniforms, but when the Union authorities called upon them "to take the field," most of them "took to the woods " instead. Few, if any, ever did any fighting, their activities being chiefly that of robbing their former neighbors, wantonly destroying their property, and pestering them in general. As regards pensions, they have been treated as Union soldiers.
In the federal reports these marauders are styled "home guards," but down in the section of their origin they have never been known by any other name than that of " Buffaloes." This term of rank oppro- brium is applied only to the "home guards," and has never been used to designate the natives in general of the North Carolina coast, as Funk and Wagnalls' New Standard Dictionary implies.
The esteem in which the "Buffaloes " were held by the federal naval officers who knew them, is indicated in the official reports of these offi- cers, preserved to us in the Official Records of the Union and Confeder- ate Navies (Washington, D. C., 1899). -
Lieutenant-Commander C. W. Flusser, U. S. S. Commodore Perry, Plymouth, N. C., Sept., 19, 1862, writes to Commander H. K. Daven- port, Newbern, N. C., as follows: "My dear Davenport: I sent to Edenton yesterday to arrest some thirty men who had formed them- selves into a company to attack our home guard thieves at Winfield." (Official Records, series I, vol. viii, p. 78.) The justification for this characterization is suggested in the following letter :
U. S. S. SHAWSHEEN,
Off Plymouth, N. C., September 28, 1862.
Sir: In obedience to your order, I submit to you the following report
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was no great amount of ruthless destruction of property and no wholesale foraging. Third, no large body of soldiers of either the Northern or the Southern armies ever quartered in, or even marched thru, Chowan. Fourth, no large number of the population was killed during the war. This statement is born out by the fact that from 1860 to 1870 the native white population increased 3.4 per cent, which was I.7 per cent greater than the average decennial increase for the four decades previous. Fifth, prior to the Civil War most of the best land of the county was held in large tracts by a very small minority of the people, who cultivated it with slaves. Land and negroes constituted the major por - tion of their wealth, and since farm-land with no one to work it is of little immediate value, the war, by freeing the slaves, wiped out much of the wealth of the slave-holding class.
in regard to proceedings of a company of home guards stationed at Winfield, Chowan County, N. C. On my arrival there on the 18th of September I found out of sixty-three recruits only twenty present; the others had gone to their homes or elsewhere, as they chose. The captain was in a state of intoxication, threatening to shoot some of his remaining men, and conducting himself in a most disgraceful manner by taking one man's horses and making other people pay him the money to pay for them, and this, too, from people who were well disposed to- wards our Government. He had some eight or ten horses when I went there, gotten in this way. He has no control over his men, and [by] the manner in which he conducts himself he is doing much injury to the Cause of the U. S. Government. Some of the men that have gone have taken their arms or guns with them; the ammunition has all been smuggled out and sold to citizens for liquor; what remaining arms there were I took on board for safe-keeping. On the 21st, Captain Fairless went off and left his men, as he said, to go to New Berne by way of Suffolk. His men say they will serve under him no longer. They are now left in charge of a man they call lieutenant, with no clothing, no rations; are dependent on the county for subsistence.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
THOS. J. WOODWARD,
Acting Volunteer Lieutenant, Commanding. Lieutenant-Commander Chas. W. Flusser,
Senior Naval Officer Present.
(Official Records, series I, vol. viii, p. 95).
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In the course of time many of the larger estates, it being found unprofitable to work them with hired labor, were cut up into small tracts and sold off to the poorer classes. Thus, one result of the war has been to give a larger num- ber of the county's population an opportunity to own a " place in the sun."
So, while one of the immediate effects of the war upon the better-to-do classes (a very small proportion of the pop- ulation) was an immense shrinkage of their wealth, the masses, even of the whites-to say nothing of the blacks, who obtained their freedom-lost little or nothing. On the other hand, taking the county as a whole, there was a great gain in that there was set up a condition destined (I) to break up many of the larger land holdings and thus permit more of the poorer classes to acquire pieces of land upon which they might earn a living; (2) to change the attitude of a majority towards labor. These two processes-the subdividing of the larger tracts of land and the changing of the attitude towards labor, especially the latter - are in a large measure, responsible for both the recent great increase in per capita wealth and its far more general diffusion.
From the foregoing facts it would seem that instead of being a drawback, the Civil War, tho operating indirectly, nevertheless has been the most potent factor in stimulating progress.
Slavery .- The one all-preponderant factor which held back Chowan, as well as the South in general, was the insti- tution of slavery, and its aftermath. While slaves were not as abundant here as in some other sections of the country, the notion that work with one's hands was not hon- orable-a notion which has always been a concomitant of slavery 1 everywhere-was quite prevalent. Says Helper, a Southerner, writing in 1857:
1 As one of the contributing causes of the break-up of the Roman Empire, Robinson gives, "the existence of slavery, which served to
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In the South, unfortunately, no kind of labor is either free or respectable. Every white man who is under the necessity of earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, or by manual labor, in any capacity, no matter how unassuming in deportment or exemplary in morals, is treated as if he was a loathsome beast and shunned with the utmost disdain.1
If this false attitude towards labor always disappeared when its progenitor, slavery, disappeared, one of the most serious and blighting results of slavery would be non-ex- istent. But as a rule the long-standing mental conceptions of a whole people do not about-face overnight. The people of Chowan present no exception to this rule. This " op- position to white labor," as one prominent business man in the county put it to me, is still very much alive, and con- tinues to retard economic progress, and since all other progress is limited by economic progress, continues to re- tard progress in general.
In one of a series of unsigned articles appearing in The Newberne Weekly Journal in 1888, under the caption, " Why We Do Not Flourish," the writer sums up his views as follows :
The prime cause of our trouble is extravagance. Extrava- gance is waste. Our extravagance is very plainly a waste of time. The disposition to waste time-to be lazy - some attribute to the climate. A very much more important factor is the disposition to live as one's neighbors who can buy and pay for us a dozen times over.2
discredit honest labor, and demoralized the free workmen." J. H. Robinson, History of Western Europe (Boston, 1903), p. 13.
1 Hinton R. Helper, Impending Crisis of the South (New York, 1860), p. 41.
2 The Newberne Weekly Journal (Newberne, N. C.), vol. xi, no. 4, April 26, 1888. The files of this paper were consulted in the State Library, Raleigh, N. C. The writer is here speaking of the whole eastern section of North Carolina, and what he says applies especially to Chowan.
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Furthermore, this spirit of " opposition to white labor " carried over to the slave population, so there was " opposition to black labor." What was the result? As soon as the slaves were freed, and thus given the right to put their senti- ments into practice, instead of half the population trying to lead a life of leisure, the whole population began striving for that end.
The colored, as well as the whites of the lower economic classes, take their cue from the whites of the upper crust, and so it was only natural that they should be overtaken by this pauperizing attitude toward work. The way the blacks pattern after the whites was pretty well summed up by an old colored man in the upper end of the county five or six years ago, about the time the first automobiles came in. Talking to a white friend of his one day he expressed him- self about as follows :
White man got him a cart ; nigger got him a cart. White man got him a buggy ; nigger got him a buggy. Then white man he goes an' gits him a top-buggy. Well, nigger gits him a top- buggy, too. White man's boun' he's goin' ter git ahead o' mister nigger, an' so he goes an' he gits him a 'mobile. Mis- ter nigger got ter take a back seat now-caint git him no 'mobile. But jest as soon as white man begins to sell his secon' han' 'mobiles mister nigger 'll have him one sho. You betcher life he will!
The prophecy of this keen observer is already being fulfilled.
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Not only is slavery responsible for much of the present-day aversion to useful physical exertion, but most of the slip- shod, wasteful, inefficient methods of agriculture described in chapters iii-v must also be debited to its account. The attitude which slavery engendered not only prevented
1 For other illustrations of this copying cf. supra, pp. 153, 154.
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improvements from originating here, but also caused the adoption of those which originated elsewhere to be delayed for years after it (slavery) had passed away.
Time System. - A third retrogressive factor, and one which is still active,1 was the habit of buying " on time " (on credit). Most people who could buy on time did so. In preparing the first annual report, the state commissioner of labor wrote to farmers in every county and upon the replies received, based his report. In this document he com- ments as follows :
The mortgage and lien bond system gets more attention [in the replies received in answer to the Commissioner's questions] than any other topic, and very properly, because the facts gathered and presented show that more evils have come to the farmers of the State on account of the mortgage and lien bond system than from any other, and indeed from every other source. It has proved a worse curse to North Carolina than drouths, floods, cyclones, storms, rust, caterpillars, and every other evil that attends the farmer. Wherever they have de- pended upon this system to furnish them their supplies, the farmers are in debt, and wherever it has been the custom of the farmers to raise their own supplies there the people are free from debt and the community thrifty. The cotton belt of North Carolina from the reports made is worse off financially than any other part of the state. This may be attributed to raising a money crop. It is an easy matter to sell cotton when it is gathered. Cotton is as easily handled almost as money, and therefore the merchant wants cotton for his supplies. He does not want hay, clover, grain, potatoes, &c., they are too much trouble to handle, and when a farmer proposes to raise these articles it is impossible to get supplies from a mer- chant. The merchant insists upon a cotton crop, because of
1 Of the several merchants interviewed in 1915, not one estimated his time business at less than 50 per cent of his total transactions and some placed the estimate as high as 90 per cent of the total.
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the facility with which he can handle it. The same may to a large extent be said of a landlord-rent is usually demanded in lint cotton. All the tendencies in the cotton belt, therefore, are for the cultivation of money crops, and the results are perfectly apparent-the farmers of the cotton belt are more heavily mortgaged than any other section of the State, and they are worse off generally. The table and remarks in this chapter prove that fact. Take the figures and remarks from twenty of the most western counties, beginning with Cherokee, where the least mortgaging for supplies is carried on, and it will be found that the farmers are better off and there is a more cheerful spirit than in the cotton belt where the money crop is relied on.
In the eastern counties, the average [rate of interest paid when buying on time ] is at least 40 per cent. ... A farmer who pays it is carrying on a useless game, in which he must sooner or later lose all he has. ... It is useless to talk about diversi- fied crops to a man who pays 40 per cent for supplies. There is no system of diversified crops that will enable him to pay such a price it makes no difference what kind of a crop may be raised. .... The facts and the figures in this chapter alike prove that the bane of the North Carolina farmer is the lien bond and mortgage system, and their sequence a failure to raise home supplies.1
Commissioner Jones uses rather strong language in his comments upon the time-system, and without doubt it was and continues a great drawback to the people. The time- system, however, was only a secondary or derived factor, due largely to the opposition-to-labor attitude, which in turn was sired and fostered by slavery, as brought out above. Indeed, the very extracts here quoted are evidence tending to prove that slavery had much to do with the time-system.
1-Commissioner W. N. Jones. First Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of North Carolina (Raleigh, 1887), pp. 76-7.
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The western counties where the commissioner found the least mortgaging for supplies and the most cheerfulness, were the very ones in which slaves were the fewest. In Cherokee, where, according to the report of 1887, there was the least amount of mortgaging going on, the slave popu- lation in 1860 was less than six per cent of the total. Tak- ing the territory now included in the eleven westernmost counties (in 1860 this territory was embraced in seven counties), the slave population was less than eleven per cent of the total. How was it in the eastern counties where the supply-system was at its worst? In Chowan, in 1860, more than fifty-four per cent of the population were slaves, and in the eastern counties generally, with two or three excep- tions, slaves constituted from thirty to sixty per cent of the entire population.1
One-crop System. - The one-crop system - especially stressed by Jones and others-also received its initial im- petus directly from slavery. Cotton is a crop which re- quires no very special care, and its cultivation in accordance with the methods of slavery days, and even of the eighties, lent itself to standardization more readily than did that of most other crops. A man was required to weed so many rows, or pick so many pounds. When after the war the freedman began farming for himself, he knew more about raising cotton than anything else, so quite naturally favored cotton, as did the landlords and merchants.
Summary .- The primary factors, then, to which the long sleep of this section was due, were, first and foremost, the false attitude toward labor engendered by slavery; and, secondly, the lack of transportation facilities. Besides the two secondary or derived factors-time-system and one-crop
1 The percentages given here for the slave population are calculated from data found in the Eighth U. S. Census Report (1860), vol. on Population, pp. 358-9.
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system (already noted), both children of slavery-there were among others of slavery's progeny, the general ignor- ance of the masses-ignorance of what to do and how to do it, the lack of forage crops,, the lack of nitrogen crops for enriching the soil, the great dearth of milk cows, and dog- culture instead of sheep-culture-all tremendous draw- backs.
CAUSES OF THE AWAKENING
To what is the awakening now going on due? There are numerous factors which have contributed and which still continue to operate. A certain thing produces an effect, which in turn becomes a cause producing other effects, and so on ad infinitum. The two great factors, however, which are more or less responsible for most of the others are the changing attitude towards labor, a metamorphosis permitted by the abolition of slavery, and highly accelerated by the second great factor-the improvement in communication and transportation facilities, or as Dr. Richard Dillard tersely expressed it to me, " the whistle of the locomotive."
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