My first Sunday on this plantation was but a prelude to all that followed; and I shall here give an account of it.
At the time I rose this morning, it wanted only about fifteen or twenty minutes to sunrise; and a large number of men, as well as some women, had already quitted the quarter, and gone about the business of the day. That is, they had gone to work for wages for themselves—in this manner: our overseer had, about two miles off, a field of nearly twenty acres, planted in cotton, on his own account. He was the owner of this land; but he had no slaves, he was obliged to hire people to work for him, or let it lie in waste… About twenty of our people went to work for him today, for which he gave them fifty cents each. Several of the others, perhaps forty in all, went out through the neighborhood, to work for other planters.
On every plantation…the people are allowed to make patches, as they are called—that is, gardens, in some remote and unprofitable part of the estate, generally in the woods, in which they plant corn, potatoes, pumpkins, melons &c. for themselves… The vegetables that grow in these patches, were always consumed in the families of the owners ((emphasis added); and the money that was earned by hiring out, was spent in various ways; sometimes for clothes, sometimes for better food…sometimes for rum….I have often hired myself to work on Sunday, … The practice of working on Sunday, is so universal; amongst the slaves on the cotton plantations, that the immorality of the matter is never spoken of… The overseer paying us punctually for all the cotton we brought in, on Sunday evening… One of the men cleared to himself, including Sunday work, two dollars a week, for several weeks; and his savings, on the entire crop…were thirty-one dollars… The slave is a kind of a freeman on Sunday all over the southern country; and it is in truth, by exercise of his liberty on this day, that he is enabled to provide for his family, with many of the necessities of life that his master refuses to supply him with (Ball 1837:166, 187, 272).
