Monday, July 8, 2013

North Carolina Plantation Labor Relations Before Reconstruction

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They are our kin

Kemp Battle



   Allen Battle
 
North Carolina Plantation Labor Relations Before Reconstruction

“On the Walnut Creek plantation I had Allen Battle, one of our slaves, in charge. He was a fine looking man, one-fourth white, as honest and honorable as ever lived and a very good farmer. His father was black, his mother a mulatto.  Allen when young was the playmate of the sons of his master.  When he grew older he advanced to the dignity of foreman . . . Allen [by will came to ownership by] my wife and was advanced to the dignity of overseer, about eighteen hands, as the workers were called, being placed under his charge. 

Allen died worth about $2,000, leaving me exchequer of his will. His wife Sukey never had a child. He bequeathed to her all he had but requested me to keep the money in my hands and pay over to her whatever she should ask for.  “If she gets it all in hand,” he said, “her kinfolks will eat her up.” 

She tried the plan of living with one of them and they began at once to eat her up. They persuaded her to buy a $200 horse and other things too costly for her station. After two years she took alarm and came back to my care, rented a house at Flagmarsh, and lived economically. 

When she died, she still had about $800, which was distributed among her kin, so numerous that the share of one was only about $3.50.  As a matter of law she could have called for all the fund [I held] but both she and her kin regarded the provision in the will as a legal check on extravagant expenditures.  I was really vested with moral but not legal power.”

(Memories of an Old time Tarheel, Kemp Plummer Battle, UNC Press, 1945, pp. 126-127)

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