Details
Title Scenes on a cotton plantation [graphic].
Publisher [New York: Harper & Brothers]
Publisher NY. New York. 1867
Date [February 1867]
Physical Description 1 print: engraving; overall 35 x 52 cm. (14 x 20.5 in)
Description According to the accompanying commentary (p. 69), these scenes show the Buena Vista plantation in Clarke County, Alabama. As the text suggests, "The four sketches in the centre [i.e., sowing, ploughing, hoeing, and picking] show the principal operations of the cotton culture; and around figure other scenes appropriate to a cotton plantation." Moving clockwise from the upper right, the outer scenes are titled: the cotton gin, the planter and his overseer, prayer meeting, Saturday evening dance, plantation graveyard, the call to labor, and the cotton press. The text describes these scenes as follows: "The cotton-gin; the picturesque cotton-press, to whose long lever the mules are harnessed to create the power which compresses the ginned staple into bales; the morning call, performed upon a cow-horn; the owner and his overseer, figure here; as well as the weekly distribution of rations; the dance which closes the week's labor, and the plantation burying-ground. Here the defunct negroes are buried, a rail-fence being raised above the graves to keep off marauding hogs, calves, etc."
Is part of Harper's weekly. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1867.
Notes Double-page illustration in Harper's Weekly, vol. XI, no. 527 (February 2, 1867), p. 72.
Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Subject Cotton plantations -- Alabama.
Plantation life -- Alabama.
African American agricultural laborers.
Slaves -- Social life and customs -- Alabama.
Slave labor -- Alabama.
Cotton machinery.
Genre Engravings -- 1860-1870.
Periodical illustrations -- 1860-1870.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Books & Other Texts | Rare | **Per H 1529.F v XI n 527 February 2 1867 p 72
Accession number 1529.D