Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, November 25, 1997

Black people cultivated the early sugar plantations

by Jim Bradshaw

Some of the early colonists in Louisiana had Indian slaves who usually did not make good servants. By the time sugar plantations were being worked, the slaves were black people.

Under the French government, and until the time of emancipation of the slaves, regulations for their treatment was made by the authorities. The laws, which were fairly well enforced, regulated the rations, the clothing, the living quarters, and the labor of slaves.

There were a number of free persons of color in the area. A census of the Attakapas district in 1813 showed that there were 210 gens de couleur libres, 1,266 slaves, and 2,270 white people.

The use of African slaves as laborers in the sugar region of Louisiana was widespread. Sugar production required a great deal of manual labor, and slaves were used in almost every aspect of the industry.

According to "White Gold," a history of the sugar industry by Glenn Conrad and Ray Lucas, "It was fairly easy to calculate the number of slaves needed for the amount of land under cultivation. It was generally recognized that a slave, in the prime of life, could till, cultivate, and harvest approximately five acres of sugar cane.

"Owning slaves was a huge financial investment for plantation owners," Conrad and Lucas report. "In the late 1820s, a field hand in the prime of life cost about $600. By the 1850s, this price had escalated to between $1,200 and $1,500. A slave with skills, such as blacksmithing or carpentry, by the 1850s could cost between $2,000 and $3,000. Because of the increasing price of slaves, many slaveholders rented slaves to planters as the need arose. Some planters even experimented with free white labor, but these attempts failed because planters found that they could not control the work habits of white laborers to the extent that they controlled the lives of black slave laborers.

"The routine of slaves on sugar plantations was well regulated and changed little from year to year. Slave owners treated their slaves well enough to keep them working at a desired level," according to the Conrad-Lucas study. "Slaves were housed, fed, and clothed in a humane fashion, for a slaveholder knew that a sick or hungry slave could not last long in Louisiana's sweltering summer heat or in the damp, cold of a Gulf Coast winter. Sick slaves were often treated by the plantation owner's family or by local doctors."

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