... I have
found that it is unprofitable to undertake anything on a plantation out of
the regular routine. If I had a little place off to itself, and my business
would admit of it, I should delight in agricultural experiments." In his
reliance upon staple routine, as in every other characteristic, Lamar rings
true to the planter type.
CHAPTER XV
PLANTATION LABOR
WHILE produced only in America, the plantation slave was a product of
old-world forces. His nature was an African's profoundly modified but
hardly transformed by the requirements of European civilization. The wrench
from Africa and the subjection to the new discipline while uprooting his
ancient language and customs had little more effect upon his temperament
than upon his complexion. Ceasing to be Foulah, Coromantee, Ebo or Angola,
he became instead the American negro. The Caucasian was also changed by the
contact in a far from negligible degree; but the negro's conversion
was much the more thorough, partly because the process in his case was
coercive, partly because his genius was imitative.
The planters had a saying, always of course with an implicit reservation
as to limits, that a negro was what a white man made him.
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