nd cotton much perseverance but little strain was involved.
The sugar harvest alone called for heavy exertion and for night work in the
mill. But common report in that regard emphasized the sturdy sleekness as
well as the joviality of the negroes in the grinding season;[63] and even
if exhaustion had been characteristic instead, the brevity of the period
would have prevented any serious debilitating effect before the coming of
the more leisurely schedule after harvest. In fact many neighboring Creole
and Acadian farmers, fishermen and the like were customarily enlisted
on wages as plantation recruits in the months of stress.[64] The sugar
district furthermore was the one plantation area within easy reach of a
considerable city whence a seasonal supply of extra hands might be had to
save the regular forces from injury. The fact that a planter, as reported
by Sir Charles Lyell, failed to get a hundred recruits one year in the
midst of the grinding season[65] does not weaken this consideration. It may
well have been that his neighbors had forestalled him in the wage-labor
market, or that the remaining Germans and Irish in the city refused to take
the places of their fellows who were on strike. It is well established that
sugar planters had systematic recourse to immigrant labor for ditching and
other severe work.[66] It is incredible that they ignored the same recourse
if at any time the requirements of their crop threatened injury to their
property in slaves. The recommendation of the old Roman, Varro, that
freemen be employed in harvesting to save the slaves[67] would apply with
no more effect, in case of need, to the pressing of oil and wine than to
the grinding of sugar-cane. Two months' wages to a Creole, a "'Cajun" or
an Irishman would be cheap as the price of a slave's continued vigor,
even when slave prices were low. On the whole, however, the stress of the
grinding was not usually as great as has been fancied. Some of the regular
hands in fact were occasionally spared from the harvest at its height and
set to plow and plant for the next year's crop.[68]

[Footnote 63: E. g., Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 668.]

[Footnote 64: _DeBow's Review_, XI, 606.]

[Footnote 65: _See_ above, p. 337.]

[Footnote 66: See above, pp. 301, 302.]

[Footnote 67: Varro, _De Re Rustica_, I, XVII, 2.]

[Footnote 68: _E. g_., items for November, 1849, in the plantation diary of
Dr. John P.R. Stone, of Iberville Parish, Louisi