harles Cotesworth Pinckney's two plantations on the South Carolina
coast, as appears from his diary of 1818, a detail of four slaves was
shifted from the field work each week for a useful holiday in angling
for the huge drumfish which abounded in those waters; and their catches
augmented the fare of the white and black families alike.[11] Game and
fish, however, were extras. The staple meat was bacon, which combined
the virtues of easy production, ready curing and constant savoriness. On
Fowler's "Prairie" plantation, where the field hands numbered a little less
than half a hundred, the pork harvest throughout the eighteen-fifties,
except for a single year of hog cholera, yielded from eleven to
twenty-three hundred pounds; and when the yield was less than the normal,
northwestern bacon or barreled pork made up the deficit.[12]

In the matter of clothing, James Habersham sent an order to London in 1764
on behalf of himself and two neighbors for 120 men's jackets and breeches
and 80 women's gowns to be made in assorted sizes from strong and heavy
cloth. The purpose was to clothe their slaves "a little better than common"
and to save the trouble of making the garments at home.[13] In January,
1835, the overseer of one of the Telfair plantations reported that the
woolen weaving had nearly supplied the full needs of the place at the rate
of six or six and a half yards for each adult and proportionately for the
children.[14] In 1847, in preparation for winter, Charles Manigault wrote
from Paris to his overseer: "I wish you to count noses among the negroes
and see how many jackets and trousers you want for the men at Gowrie, ...
and then write to Messrs. Matthiessen and Co. of Charleston to send them to
you, together with the same quantity of twilled red flannel shirts, and a
large woolen Scotch cap for each man and youth on the place.... Send back
anything which is not first rate. You will get from Messrs. Habersham and
Son the twilled wool and cotton, called by some 'Hazzard's cloth,' for all
the women and children, and get two or three dozen handkerchiefs so as to
give each woman and girl one.... The shoes you will procure as usual from
Mr. Habersham by sending down the measures in time."[15] Finally, the
register of A.L. Alexander's plantation in the Georgia Piedmont contains
record of the distributions from 1851 to 1864 on a steady schedule. Every
spring each man drew two cotton shirts and two pair of homespun woolen
trouse