At Southdown liberation – of a sort – came early

The national celebration of Juneteenth commemorates the informing of slaves in Galveston by federal soldiers that they were free, on June 19, 1865.

But at Southdown Plantation in Houma, slave owner and sugar planter Henry J. Minor was coping with slaves already presuming themselves free some time before that.

The Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves free in 1863, a bold political move by President Abraham Lincoln. But Lincoln’s proclamation specifically exempted Terrebonne and other Louisiana sugar parishes because they were already occupied by federal forces and deemed no longer in rebellion against the United States.

Nonetheless, Minor’s papers show, slaves at his plantations of Southdown and Hollywood took to walking off their jobs, procuring pigs and other livestock for themselves, and otherwise acting as free men and women.

Minor’s musings are included in an upcoming book on Southdown being prepared by Rachel Cherry, director of the Terrebonne Historical and Cultural Society, which operates the museum on the Southdown site.

Outright rebellion did not occur at Southdown, although other plantations nearby were coping with rebellion by slaves.

Minor’s diary, Cherry writes, indicates “many a sleepless night in the early months of 1863.”

Minor had reason for worry.

An overseer named Chapman had told Confederate sympathizers that Minor was a Union man, causing them to punish four of his slaves and hang one.

It was well known in Houma that Minor – primarily for reasons of commerce – had opposed secession.

It was also Chapman, according to Minor, who told the slaves at Southdown and at Hollywood that they were free.

But Minors problems with slaves acting – and thinking – as if free had already begun.

By 1861 slaves were killing hogs for their own use.

“After the fall of New Orleans in April 1862, there was a noticeable increase in the number of frequency of runaways,” wrote Cherry, noting that according to the diaries all but six or seven had returned by year’s end at Southdown and another Minor holding, Waterloo.

In Jan. 1863 Minor, having been away, wrote of the state of the plantation when he returned.

“Find the Negroes are completely demoralized – They are practically free – Going, coming & working when they please & as they please,” Minor wrote. “They destroy everything on the plantation. In one night they killed 30 hogs. They have stolen a number of my best Sd. (Southdown) sheep & sold them in Houma at $1 each. They will not shut a gate or put up a fence; they ride the mules off at night & at all times. The most of them think, or pretend to think, that the plantation & everything on it belongs to them – In this they have been lead a stray by white men.”

The behavior was not limited to Southdown or the Minor properties. Later that month a committee of planters presented a petition on the subject to Gen. N.P. Banks.

The planters, Minor wrote, found an unsympathetic ear.

“He (Banks) said he did not want to know our experience in regard to the character of Negros or their management. That we were full of theories, prejudices, & opinions based on the old system,” Minor wrote. “We must look to the new state of things, to the future and not to the past – In other words our future steps were not to be guided by the lights of past experience – We did not get a positive answer to a single question.”

By a general order issued in 1863, the planters were required to begin paying farm workers, although they were still not legally emancipated. The order was signed by Banks.

The provost marshal of Terrebonne did visit Southdown and lectured the slaves. But little was accomplished.

Slaves refused to work when ordered to.

One, identified by Minor as Isaac Simpson, “went off some distance (and) got out his knife & began to sharpen it on a piece of brick.”

“Everything must be done to encourage & make them work before resorting to corporeal punishment,” Minor wrote to an overseer in May, 1863. “If they will not work without it, it must be resorted to & inflicted in a proper manner – To do this you must not punish when you, or the Negro to be punished, is in a passion.”

At Waterloo the slaves were so rebellious in early August that two soldiers were called to make them work. The potato stocks there were decimated.

At Southdown all the hogs and most of the sheep were killed.

Slaves began hauling moss and cordwood to Houma to sell for themselves.

Despite wages, the slaves still lived highly regulated lives. The handwriting was already on the wall regarding the fate of the “Peculiar Institution” at Southdown and throughout the sugar parishes.

But the record shows that early on, Terrebonne Parish slaves were waking up with their minds set on freedom. And they appeared adamant about keeping their eyes on the prize.