Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery by Dale W. Tomich Rafael De Bivar Marquese Reinaldo Funes Monzote and Carlos Venegas Fornias

Author:Dale W. Tomich, Rafael De Bivar Marquese, Reinaldo Funes Monzote and Carlos Venegas Fornias
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2021-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.05. Cotton gin house, Killarney plantation, Concordia Parish, Louisiana. Lemuel Parker Conner Family Papers, Mss 1403, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge.

Figure 4.06. Gin house and cotton press. 1899. Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, 5.

A variety of presses of local manufacture were in use. The screw press pictured in Waud’s Scenes on a Cotton Plantation and in figure 4.06 could be found on small and medium-sized plantations. Made of wood, the large screw mechanism was turned by a mule or horse. Its great disadvantage was that cotton lint had to be carried from the gin to the press. It took much more time and effort to bale the cotton, and work could be done only in fair weather.26 More popular on the larger plantations of the Natchez District was a horizontal press with two heavy wooden screws. Both gins and presses were installed in the same building and could be driven from a common power source, whether draft animals or steam engines. The horizontal configuration of the screws allowed the press to fit easily under the floor of the gin stand.27 Cotton was initially packed in long cylindrical bags that weighed about 300 pounds. This method was abandoned in the Natchez District when local mechanic and gin wright David Greenleaf invented a practical cotton press. The use of compressed bales facilitated transportation of the massive quantities of cotton that were produced and protected them from dirt, water, and fire. Whichever type of press was used, the cotton box was lined with Kentucky hemp bagging to cover the upper and lower side of the bale. The cotton lint was then packed into the box and compressed into a solid mass. Ropes were passed around the bales to secure the covering and tied, and the openings in the hemp bagging were sewn together with twine. The screw was released, and the cotton swelled within the ropes. The bales were weighed, numbered, and marked with the name of the planter and his plantation. They were then hauled by wagon or cart to the nearest shipment point and consigned to the planter’s agent or a commission agent. The weight of the bales was not uniform. Bales pressed in Mississippi weighed between 400 and 500 pounds, in contrast to those in the south Atlantic states, which generally weighed between 300 and 325 pounds. Shipping charges were calculated by number of bales rather than by weight. The larger bales resulted in lower transportation costs.28

Development of the Natchez cotton frontier’s extensive and fertile lands depended on securing an adequate supply of labor. This demand for labor was satisfied by the interstate slave trade. Between 1820 and 1859, over 300,000 slaves from Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas endured the “second middle passage” that carried them to Mississippi and Louisiana.29 The flux of slaves transported to Natchez for sale followed closely upon the fortune of the cotton economy. It rose with the rapid expansion of cotton cultivation during the 1830s, subsided during the depression decade of the 1840s, and rose again with boom of the 1850s.

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