# Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave/Chapter 8

Contents
CHAPTER VIII.
At the time of which I now speak, the rice was ripe, and ready to be gathered. On Monday morning, after our feast, the overseer took the whole of us to the rice field, to enter upon the harvest of this crop. The field lay in a piece of low ground, near the river, and in such a position that it could be flooded by the water of the stream, in wet seasons. The rice is planted in drills, or rows, and grows more like oats than any of the other grain known in the north.
The water is sometimes let in to the rice fields, and drawn off again, several times, according to the state of the weather, Watering and weeding the rice is considered one of the most unhealthy occupations on a southern plantation, as the people are obliged to live for several weeks in the mud and water, subject to all the unwholesome vapors that arise from stagnant pools, under the rays of a summer sun, as well as the chilly autumnal dews of night. At the time we came to cut this rice, the field was quite dry; and after we ​had reaped and bound it, we hauled it upon wagons, to a piece of hard ground, where we made a threshing floor, and threshed it. In some places, they tread out the rice, with mules or horses, as they tread wheat in Maryland; but this renders the grain dusty, and is injurious to its sale.
After getting in the rice, we were occupied for some time in clearing and ditching swampy land, preparatory to a more extended culture of rice the next year; and about the first of August, twenty or thirty of the people, principally women and children, were employed for two weeks in making cider, of apples which grew in an orchard of nearly two hundred trees, that stood on a part of the estate. After the cider was made, a barrel of it was one day brought to the field, and distributed amongst us; but this gratuity was not repeated, The cider that was made by the people was converted into brandy, at a still in the corner of the orchard.
I often obtained cider to drink, at the still, which was sheltered from the weather by a shed, of boards and slabs. We were not permitted to go into the orchard at pleasure; but as long as the apples continued, we were allowed the privilege of sending five or six persons every evening, for the purpose of bringing apples to the quarter, for our common use; and by ​taking large baskets, and filling them well, we generally contrived to get as many as we could consume.
When the peaches ripened, they were guarded with more rigor — peach brandy being an article which is nowhere more highly prized than in South Carolina. There were on the plantation more than a thousand peach trees, growing on poor sandy fields, which were no longer worth the expense of cultivation. The best peaches grow upon the poorest sand-hills.
We were allowed to take three bushels of peaches every day, for the use of the quarter; but we could, and did eat at least three times that quantity, for we stole at night that which was not given us by day. I confess that I took part in these thefts, and I do not feel that I committed any wrong, against either God or man, by my participation in the common danger that we ran, for we well knew the consequences that would have followed detection,
After the feast at laying by the corn and cotton, we had no meat for several weeks; and it is my opinion that our master lost money by the economy he practised at this season of the year.
I now entered upon a new scene of life. My true value had not yet been ascertained by my present owner; and whether I was to hold the rank of a first or second rate hand, could only be determined by an experience of my ability to pick cotton.
​I had ascertained that at the hoe, the spade, the sickle, or the flail, I was a full match for the best hands on the plantation; but soon discovered when we came to cotton picking I was not equal to a boy of fifteen. I worked hard the first day, but when evening came, and our cotton was weighed, I had only thirty-eight pounds, and was vexed to see that two young men, about my own age, had, one fifty-eight, and the other fifty-nine pounds. This was our first day's work, and the overseer had not yet settled the amount of a day's picking. It was necessary for him to ascertain, by the experience of a few days, how much the best hands could pick in a day, before he established the standard of the season. I hung down my head, and felt very much ashamed of myself when I found that my cotton was so far behind that of many, even of the women, who had heretofore regarded me as the strongest and most powerful man of the whole gang.
I had exerted myself to-day to the utmost of my power; and as the picking of cotton seemed to be so very simple a business, I felt apprehensive that I should never be able to improve myself, so far as to become even a second rate hand. In this posture of affairs, I looked forward to something still more painful than the loss of character which I must sustain, both with my fellows and my master; for I knew that the lash of the overseer would soon become familiar with my ​back, if I did not perform as much work as any of the other young men.
I expected indeed that it would go hard with me even now, and stood by with feelings of despondence end terror, whilst the other people were getting their cotton weighed. When it was all weighed, the overseer came to me where I stood, and told me to show him my hands. When I had done this, and he had looked at them, he observed — "You have a pair of good hands — you will make a good picker." This faint praise of the overseer revived my spirits greatly, and I went home with a lighter heart than I had expected to possess, before the termination of cotton-picking.
When I came to get my cotton weighed, on the evening of the second day, I was rejoiced to find that I had forty-six pounds, although I had not worked harder than I did the first day. On the third evening I had fifty-two pounds; and before the end of the week, there were only three hands in the field — two men and a young woman — who could pick more cotton in a day than I could.
On the Monday morning of the second week, when we went to the field, the overseer told us that he fixed the day's work at fifty pounds; and that all those who picked more than that, would be paid a cent a pound for the overplus. Twenty-five pounds was assigned as ​the daily task of the old people, as well as a number of boys and girls, whilst some of the women, who had children, were required to pick forty pounds, and several children had ten pounds each as their task.
Picking of cotton may almost be reckoned among the arts. A man who has arrived at the age of twenty-five before he sees a cotton field, will never, in the language of the overseer, become a crack picker.
By great industry and vigilance, I was able, at the end of a month, to return every evening a few pounds over the daily rate, for which I received my pay; but the business of picking cotton was a fatiguing labor to me, and one to which I never became reconciled, for the reason that in every other kind of work I was called a first rate hand, whilst in cotton picking I was hardly regarded as a prime hand.