Mark Valentine Diary 1859-1863
Oasis Plantation, Carroll Parish, LA
Bob Williamson
Asheville, North Carolina

INTRODUCTION

MADISON COORDINATOR”S NOTE: Many thanks to Bob Williamson of Asheville, NC for transcribing his great grandfather’s Civil War era diary and allowing it to be presented on the Madison Parish LAGenWeb website. Mark Valentine was the owner of Oasis Plantation in southern East Carroll Parish very close to Brokenburn Plantation. Anyone who has read the best-seller Brokenburn, which includes most of Madison Parish, will be interested in this diary….RPS

Note to reader:   The diary that follows was returned to Louisiana in 1968 and is now in the archives at Tulane in New Orleans where the family had it digitally photographed. The following inscription was written into the diary by an unknown person or descendant of the Union soldier who took the diary from the plantation in 1863. It reads as follows: "This diary was confiscated by a Union soldier and given to Joe Homes to read. Please return to Joe Homes. Marshalltown, Iowa. November 22, 1904. Property of Ella P Roberts 1920, sent to Louisiana, the original territory, 1968.

This link was contributed by Dick Sevier, a writer and longtime former resident of this area, who accurately describes plantation life in the Northeast Louisiana Delta in the Antebellum and Civil War eras. Mississippi and Louisiana were the two largest cotton producing states before the War.  Northeast Louisiana was resplendent with plantation homes owned by many prominent and wealthy people from all walks of life: it included Jeff Davis, Judah Benjamin (Confederate cabinet secretary), Amanda Stone (Kate Stone’s mother and authoress of Brokenburn), Honoré Morancy, John Bowie, and many others.  Mr. Valentine’s handwriting in the diary was neat and orderly, albeit in some places it was very difficult to read, so I’ve paraphrased most of the diary and omitted many superfluous entries about the weather or the condition of the crops on the place.  His command of English language was excellent, but some sentences, because it was a diary, are incomplete or fragmented. The comments and observations are my own in this forward to the diary.

Mark Valentine and his brothers, Richard and Whiting, migrated south from New York State to Warren County, MS in the 1820’s.  Another brother, John, moved to New Orleans about the same time. By 1828 Mark was living in Vicksburg where he is already a landowner. Vast areas in Louisiana and Mississippi were opened to cotton speculators, like the Valentines, who poured into the Mississippi Delta at the time buying off cheap land which was being sold at auction. Mark had an early education as a civil engineer and while surveying across the river from Vicksburg discovers a fine tract of land in the densely forested bottom lands near the river in what was to become Carroll Parish. About the same time a visitor to the area, a Reverend Jones, on his way to Lake Providence wrote about the area in Northeast Louisiana: the banks “were covered with dense canebrakes and primeval forest, and often for fifteen or twenty miles there was unbroken wilderness. . .water marks on the trees from previous floods could be seen for more than forty miles west of the river, and that often they were far above their heads as they rode by on horseback. [1] In 1849, twenty years later and ten years after Carroll County is settled, Mark purchases a 2000 acre tract in the densely forested wilderness area which was soon to be his home. He had been living with his wife, Martha (nee Gibson), son Mark and daughter Sophia, in Vicksburg where Martha had friends and family. After her death he acquires an additional 980 acres in 1854 for $20 an acre and moves to the area to become a planter.

Many of the larger plantation owners in Northeast Louisiana had migrated to here from the North or Old South (Virginia), and like the Valentine brothers, more than a few were from the New England states. A Louisiana historian wrote that “Northeast Louisiana consisted of four parishes which have been referred to as “the Cotton Kingdom”… Carroll had a larger white population than its counterparts. Most of the heads of families in 1860 were born in the older areas of the South and in Massachusetts. Absentee ownership was less than that in neighboring parishes…Since the majority of the Carroll planters lived on their land, there was an active social life, and most homes tended to be better built and more luxurious than in the other three parishes.”[2] 

Several large plantations or commercial operations, some over 10,000 acres, existed in the parishes,  Northeast Louisiana in particular.  These were referred to as “overseer operated.”  Oasis, Mark’s home, like the majority of the plantations in the cotton belt NE Louisiana, on the other hand, were owned and managed by the planters themselves. These were called “estate plantations:  “Like the commercial plantation, it was (estate plantation) profit oriented and money-making was an essential ingredient, but with a resident planter who valued the agrarian way of life and who cherished ideals of patronism and community leadership, a different type of organization emerged. The estate planter took pride in a well-ordered operation where the family, the slave force, and the stock were well cared for. He shared the farmer's pride in independence, thus self-sufficiency was a laudable goal. Not all were wealthy, in fact, many lived modestly, but some eventually achieved an enviable life style with estate houses, gardens, house servants, and other amenities commonly associated with wealthy agrarian living.” [3] In July 1860 an assessor made Mark’s two thousand or more acres “at $400,000 but he Mark of the opinion that he was worth more. ‘My land is as high as many others whose land is not as good or valuable as mine…’” It was his opinion that the Assessor should”have carried it a great deal over that figure.”[4]

In his book, Cotton And Race In The Making of America, the author, Gene Date, a native Mississippian and graduate of Yale, wrote that ”in the South wealth was tied up in slaves and land and there was little capital for other purposes. “Money poured in from the American North and Europe to purchase land and slaves.” [5] (He wrote further that the South paid the majority of the tariffs in this country because of its reliance on manufactured goods from the North) He stressed how important slavery was for the cotton economy and how in the North politicians and public alike passed exclusion laws designed to keep blacks in the South.  “The relationship of economics and race in America was driven by profit.  Blacks were brought to America as slaves to make money for their owners. When there was no money to be made (in the North or old Virginia perhaps), they were sold south as laborers in staple agriculture -- the only real alternative. [6] While slave prices varied with the price of cotton, the average price in 1850 for a prime slave field hand in New Orleans was $1200 and in 1860 it was $1800. As for the slaves that were owned by Mark, there is no record of the dollar value of the 187 slaves he owned in 1850 but it must have been considerable.

Cotton was the largest export product in the US and it was textiles that were probably the single most important contributor to Britain’s economic power and was the genesis of the British Industrial Revolution. In 1860 alone forty percent of Britain’s imports were cotton. In the spring of 1862, for example, nearly 500,000 bales of cotton were shipped to England by blockade runners and twice that amount overland. Northern banks especially in New York, which at the time was the hub of America’s commerce, financed cotton production by supplying credit to southern cotton growers. During the war years, 1861 to 1865, cotton was ‘currency’ and was used to finance the war effort in the South. With little manufacturing capabilities in the South profits from the sale of cotton to Britain allowed the Confederacy to import arms and munitions in staggering numbers overseas. For example, the Confederate government purchased over 150,000 British Enfield rifles for their armies as well as numerous other armaments.

As for Oasis Plantation, the original boundaries of the property are now part of the farmland owned and operated by the Duke family for many years.  Near present day Sondheimer, LA, the Valentine place was situated between Grassy Lake and Broad Lake in the southwest quadrant of Carroll Parish Township. (Township 18N, Range 12E, Sections 11, 14-15]   Surrounded by canebrake and cypress, the home (Mark called it his ‘cabin’) would have faced a bayou, probably Grassy Lake. Outbuildings such as the gin, barns, sawmill, slave quarters, sheds, etc were also close by Grassy Lake. The property was completely fenced. In 1862 he built a smaller home using slave craftsmen. Oasis is not shown on any of the crude hand-drawn maps of that era. To orient the reader, a man on horseback at that time would have ridden east from Oasis passing nearby ‘Brokenburn’ Plantation, traveling between vast rows of cotton fields to reach Goodrich Landing on the Mississippi which today is approximately three miles as the crow flies. Depending on the weather and conditions of the roads, a rider might reach the river after few hours, longer for mule teams which often faced tough road conditions. 

The Delta was basically a giant floodplain and flooding, especially heavy rains in the spring, was a constant problem.  As a result, a lot of cultivable farmland stayed under water. Alluvial farmlands, snaky bayous, muddy rivers and a number of oxbow lakes dotted the countryside, surrounded by cypress trees and canebrakes. During the terrible floods in the 1860’s, bayous flooded, bridges burst, and levees collapsed.  Common to the area, the ditches were used to drain standing water out of a field and divert it to nearby bayous or lakes, and they required constant maintenance to prevent them from collapsing.  In addition to enlarging the ditches, like the ‘Valentine Ditch’, field hands were kept busy clearing trees to add more land for cultivation.  During the war the Yankees deliberately broke the levees to flood the area and destroy the surrounding farmland.  

A widower in 1859, Mark was 58 years old when he began his diary. He and his son Mark, 23 years old in 1859, were very close. Amanda Stone, owner of Brokenburn, invites father and son to dinner one evening in January 1862.  Kate writes: “We never heard of Mr. Valentine, Sr. paying a social visit before. He is odd, just as we fancied…but an excellent talker. He and his son are strikingly alike in looks, manner and turn of mind, though they generally take opposite sides on every proposition. Mark Jr. says they are forced to do so to have something to talk about the long winter evenings.” [7]

The Elder Mark Valentine (probably 1860’s)

The elder Mark was thought of by some as a lonely, eccentric, outspoken, and cynical old man. His southern neighbors would’ve had many strong opinions of him since he was a Yankee. Some comments about Mark were plainly nothing but idle gossip. For example, Kate Stone writing about him and his son:  “The conclusion”, she writes,  “…seemed to be that (the son) Mark Valentine should leave his father to his fate, a lonely and unloved old age, for fear of being influenced by his father’s views of life and religion. Kate adds, “…we do not know him and so do not let us judge him unseen. And do let his boy stay with him.” In an earlier comment, infused with ardent patriotism for the “Cause,” she records her personal impressions of him: “…he treats the whole subject of the war in his usual sarcastic, cynical manner. To him, the whole affair is a grand humbug, the enthusiasm and patriotism of the South something to be mocked and sneered at. He cannot appreciate the earnestness and grandness of this great national upheaval, the throes of a Nations birth. I could shake him.” [8,9]

Plantation owners and smaller farmers then and now were subject to the vagaries that confronted all cotton farms: fluctuating cotton prices, unpredictable weather, flooding, labor shortages and insects. Labor shortages were endemic due to sickness during the planting season and in the fall when the cotton was picked. Doctors and medicine were scarce and treatments were primitive.  It is apparent from his diary that both he and his son were kept busy actively managing the place unlike some large commercial operators who turned over the operations to overseers.  Trained as a civil engineer a keen eye for detail to make sure everything was done correctly around the place. .  Little time was wasted on anything other (except for politics) than making sure his cotton crop was successful, but it was not without his troubles. The flooding in 1862 together with the war, and poor cotton crops conspired to make life more difficult. It was in this year that he thought he might sell out.

Cotton merchants (factors) or brokers in New Orleans and New York extended credit to the planter for everything from food to farm equipment. Mark like other planters sold his cotton through the factor, so the factor was furnishing credit to the planter for supplies until after the cotton was harvested and sold in the fall. “Cotton was the basis of credit and credit was the basis of the cotton business.” [10], wrote Gene Datel.  Wright & Allen was his cotton factor in New Orleans, and he often took a steamboat trips to the city several times a year to see his brother and to conduct business and pay bills.

Politics was in his blood and while there is scant information in the diary about his early political life we know that he often spoke out about political issues. In 1845 he ran for Congress on the Democratic ticket in opposition to Jefferson Davis.  In 1861, after his move to Carroll Parish, he became interested in regional politics, lobbying vigorously to become a delegate to the Louisiana Secessionist Convention in Baton Rouge, and winning the nomination as a delegate from both Carroll and Franklin parishes. Months later he attended the state convention in New Orleans. Mark, like many of the wealthier landowners was a ‘Unionist’, and as such opposed to secession. After South Carolina seceded in December 1860, secession was a fait accompli. The war was not popular with many in the planter class who had close personal and business ties to bankers, shippers, cotton factors and cotton mills up North.

Opposed by many in the planter class, the cotton embargo during the early part of the war changed the nature of the cotton business. In 1861, “Louisiana Governor Moore signed a proclamation making it illegal to bring cotton into New Orleans, and both Mississippi and Louisiana helped planters by agreeing to buy their cotton.” [11] For the Secessionists, however, an embargo wasn’t enough. Some advocated the burning of cotton, a policy he was strongly opposed too. Nonetheless, 2.5 million bales were burned until the end of the war.  On a steamboat trip to New Orleans in 1862 he comments that ‘up and down the river you could see the cotton being burned to keep out of hands of the Yankees’. Prior to the war cotton was ten or .12 cents a pound, but once the war began and cotton became scarce prices skyrocketed. In l863-64 cotton sold for $1.89 a pound. Supply and demand impacted cotton and slavery alike. The pent up demand for cotton drove prices higher, and, as mentioned, when cotton prices were higher the cost of owning a slave went up.

Reading his diary you can sense how Mark was deeply involved in the day-to- day operations of the Place particularly during the growing season and the fall harvest. As an engineer he was particularly well-suited to overseeing the repairs and maintenance of equipment such as the gin stands, sawmill, lathes and other mechanical equipment.  The gin stands, for example, were critical to the success of the place. Without well water and parts to run the pumps for the gin there were annoying delays and work stoppages.  Wells had to be dug and the need for replacement parts and maintenance on the machines was ongoing but he could often improvise. A white man named Vernon which he mentions quite often was probably his overseer.

When not minding the place, he was visiting with friends and neighbors, an endless succession of people, even strangers, who were coming and going to Oasis. There was his son-in-law Captain Harper (Harper died in the war from an accidental overdose of opiates), a lawyer who had married his daughter, Sophia, and who handled many of Mr. Valentine’s legal affairs. Harper was a regimental captain in the 3^rd La. Cavalry, a militia unit, and the same regiment the younger Mark was attached too. The younger Mark and he were good friends too. Harper’s home was on Joe’s Bayou.  Other friends of Mark’s included Mr. Carson, a physician and neighbor, who owned several plantations in the area; Mr. Catlin and Mr. Hardison, both neighbors and frequent guests to his place. Mr. Hardison, like Mark, lost everything after he was run off his plantation by the Yankees in 1863. Then there were business associates, lawyers, politicians, local functionaries and strangers. Even mule or horse traders were regular visitors. He and his son also visited the Stone’s at their home which was practically next door, east of Grassy Lake. The elder Mark also had had in-laws in Vicksburg, a brother in New Orleans, and a half-brother, Philo, a surgeon in the Confederate army. His brother Richard, a planter, had moved to Port Gibson, MS. Southern hospitality was a custom that was common to all plantation owners in the area. Invariably both friends and passer-by were invited for dinner at the home and stayed the night.

Foodstuffs and other items were shipped upriver from New Orleans, Natchez or Vicksburg to the landings, and wagons pulled by mule teams would haul the supplies, furniture, parts, parcels and mail back to Oasis. In bad weather and flooding, which was often, road conditions could be particularly challenging for the teams. As mentioned, he relied on the cotton merchant in New Orleans to provide credit and arrange shipments of victuals for the slaves, commonly referred to in that parlance of the day as ‘meat, meal, molasses’. These were packed in huge barrels or hogsheads.

He was in the habit of making daily diary entries about the weather and the “condition of the Place”, the latter a reflection of how he felt about the health of his cotton or corn crop.  In a good year the cotton stands could be 5’ tall.  As for the weather, he experienced terrible droughts in some seasons and devastating flooding in other.

He writes often about the slaves, mentions some individuals by name, and frets about their families, their diet and general health, and records births and deaths on the place. Social distinctions were commonplace among the slaves.  Those who had acquired valuable skills as craftsmen, bricklayers, and mechanics were distinct from field hands. Even some may have been overseers among planters, a practice not uncommon with plantation owners. Vernon who was his overseer would accompany Mr. Valentine on his trips to New Orleans and run personal errands. Food, clothing and shelter were furnished free to the slaves and it was up to an overseer or owner to make sure adequate food stores were on hand at all times. To supplement their diets slaves would also have their own vegetable gardens which would include turnips, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and corn.  Occasionally, he put his slaves to work as ‘hired hands’ to work on the levees, fulfilling an obligation to the Levee Board. He also would lease them out to other planters and pay them real wages. In the context of the times, Mark seems to be fair minded and cared about their well-being. Like most, he had a vested interest in keeping them healthy. Amazingly he even seemed to know many by their first names, a few even intimately. Sickness on the place among the slaves was always a problem. Eighteen sixty-two would have been especially difficult year for his hands because of an outbreak of Scarlet Fever which also took the lives of several of the slave children.

The Younger Mark after the War

He cared very deeply for his son, Mark, often visiting him when he was encamped with his regiment near Milliken’s Bend, where Mark was a 2^nd Lt in the 3^rd La Cavalry.  Kate says of his son, a good friend of her brothers “Mark Valentine (Jr.) has shaken off most of his shy, constrained manner and is getting to feel a little at ease.  He leads such an isolated life, just he and his father, and this is about the only place he has ever visited until within the last few months he has made a few calls on his neighbors. He is a schoolmate of My Brother and is really one of the most intelligent, brightest minds we know..His father is an old gentleman who goes nowhere, who idolizes his son and is anxious for him to make friends…” [12]The younger Mark also spent a good deal of time at the Stone’s.  In late 1862 she writes disapprovingly of him. “He needs a little judicious snubbing. He holds a lady’s favors too lightly. …I used to think he would make an ideal lover…but I know him better. He would run me crazy and ruin my temper in a week. He is very argumentative and I feel like contradicting him always. We not thank alike on any subject. [13] Later, Mark and Kate become good friends. 

Milliken’s Bend, a large plantation and landing, was occupied by Grant’s Union army in 1863 and the plantation home there was used as General Grant’s headquarters.  Grant, as is commonly know, was trying to get his army across to Vicksburg, eventually crossing the river below Port Gibson in June of that year, fording the river near Bruinsburg. In 1862 and 1863 Yankee soldiers prowled the countryside, destroying property and stealing slaves from the plantation homes. Homes and property were confiscated and the Yankees used the slaves that were lured away from the plantations to pick cotton, which they would then sell up North at inflated prices. Graft and corruption were common.

It was a chance meeting at Oasis in January 1863 that the younger Mark stumbled upon a Yankee patrol that had picked a fight with a confederate picket. He was captured and later that same year paroled at City Point, VA, rejoining his unit to participate in some of the skirmishes in that area until the end of the war.

The elder Mark ends up fleeing Yankee soldiers who were scavenging the countryside and who end up stealing his slaves and his property. (Several of the slaves volunteered to join the Yankees and later fought with the federals at the Battle of Milliken’s Bend. Discouraged, many returned to the plantations). The diary leaves off in late July 1863 after his abrupt departure. So where did he go after fleeing the Yankees, escaping alone, it is said, by paddling a skiff or pirogue?  Like his neighbors, he might have put a boat in at Bayou Macon and paddled his way down to Delhi, Louisiana, and from there gone overland back to Vicksburg where he would have friends and relatives. After the war he and his son return to Oasis but were not successful in restarting the place. Mark deeded much of the property to his son some years after the war, but in a few years he too would have given up. By that time the weevils were a bigger problem, land prices had fallen, inflation was rampant and credit was hard to come by. Several of the planters had lost everything.  Many were destitute. Young Mark went on to study law at Tulane University and eventually makes his way to Lake Village in Arkansas, just over the state line in Chicot County, where he was a successful lawyer and judge. The elder Mark dies in 1873 at the age of 72 and is probably buried in Chicot County Arkansas.

In May 1864 Kate receives a long letter from the senior Mark inquiring about her family. “A long letter received from Mr. Valentine…He writes so affectionately that I know he has a strong attachment for all of us. They slandered him who said he had no heart. He is a man of warm feeling.”  [14]They (parishes in Northeast Louisiana) “experienced at least two floods, one in 1868 and another two years later. These floods could be devastating.”  [15] In the papers dealing with the foreclosure it states that no cultivation had been done on the property since before the war and was sold in 1880 for $750, 75¢ an acre.  Giving up any hope of bringing the property back, by 1870 the younger Mark is living in Lake Village, Chicot County, Arkansas practicing law.  Mark, Sr. joined his son in Lake Village not long after, dying there 10 September 1873.

Bob Williamson
Asheville, NC   
September 23, 2020

1859 Diary (PAGES 10-20)

Thursday, May 18, 1859 “For the last 10 or 12 years my diary has been kept in pencil in small books. (Before)… that it was kept up to 1845 by Mrs. Valentine in bound books and by myself in the same books for some years after that. All the small books and the bound ones are stored in my Secretary. They record some incident of almost every day for the last 23 or (twenty) four years. Today I open and commence this volume and for yesterday.

Wednesday May 18^th I record that Dr. Lilly is with us having called to visit Mr. Harper (Mr. Valentine’s brother-in-law) and stayed all night. Mr. Stone (neighbor, see Brokenburn ) came over and they took a ride but killed nothing. The day very hot. We are scraping cotton unpredictly back of the barn and when the land is overflowed it has come up in fine stuff as sick as to make the scraping tricky.”**

Friday May 13, 1859.   “It is very warm. Mr. Catlin and Dr. Lilly left yesterday evening … “the weather is very warm. I do not think the corn looks well. It appears to want rain.  Jacob is still sick the only one on the list. The hands got above the ditch scraping (cotton) just before night.”

Saturday, May.  “We get all done up to the fence and back to the back ridge.” “Rode over to Hardison’s to see about his company to Floyd…from there to Fontaine’s as he was sick. The day is hot and dry and no appearance of rain. Prince (his horse) is very sick today with a bout of colic.

Sunday, May 15, 1859. Floyd. “This morning we start to Floyd and I am up on the jenny with Mr. Harper to attend to lawyers. (Although) Prince better today but not well enough to ride in so I ride the little black horse. After a most tedious ride the mud very bad through Tensas swamp. I arrived at Floyd in company with judge Frasier…We stayed all night at Mr. Oliver’s the sheriff who put me and the judge in the spare bed room. Could not sleep and so got up and put all my clothes on and laid up on the lounge in the galley all night but never slept.”

Monday, May 16  “The carriage in which Harper had taken the judge’s seat did not get in until night this morning. Harper is very sick and had been sick all night at Mr. Prentiss where they about nine o’clock and got no supper. No business for the jury in Court today. We went home with Charles D-(?) e and stayed all night.  The weather is still hot and dry.”

Tuesday, May 17 He writes this morning about being in court, but was rejected as a juryman in a slander case and served on another jury where a man had loaned a horse to another man to go to Monroe.  The horse died from the fatigue of the journey. A verdict was rendered to the owner for $200 for the loss of the animal.

Wednesday, May 18. Floyd. “I was on another jury today” but obviously very bored with the proceedings, “and dragged off the day as best I could. I talked with various jurors about nominating me at the convention for the state senate for this and Franklin (Parish) which they all seemed anxious to do. Staid (sic) with Judge Montgomery this night.”

Friday, Thursday, May 19^th Floyd. Again he’s bored with jury service, “I take no interest as what goes on in court”, he adds, “and there are few jury trials” today. 

May 20^th. Floyd. His last day to be on a jury, this case involves a doctor in a civil proceeding. “We gave him his account without interest.  ..The grand jury was discharged yesterday morning after finding 13 indictments” He adds there have been three or four persons killed in this parish (Madison) since last court date. The jury for this case has been discharged and I could have but stay for Harper’s as his case comes up tomorrow.

Saturday, May 21, 1859. Harper loses his case of attachment (maybe Attainment) today and appeals it to the Supreme Court. “My case of injunction in the suit of Anderson he… until the attachment is remanded as I am garnished . We go out to Delta- and stay all night and I settle my bills which are $13 and get one dollar for my service as juror.”

Sunday, May 22 “This morning I start for home and take Harper who has to remain to finish up his turnips. I find the road much shorter and better home than coming out. I get to Judge Morgan’s back place at 1 o’clock, stay and get dinner and then get home before night. They have had remarkable fine weather on the place but are suffering much for rain. Mark has bought…100 bushels of very fine corn this year and shuck for a dollar a bushel and got more than half hauled home. It will take two or three days to get down to the road scraping cotton”

Monday, May 23 “The teams have gone to the river to haul out the corn.  Billy is scraping cotton in the barn out of the rain water swamp…the corn has grown and looks pretty well but is slim, it needs rain to thicken it up.”

Tuesday, May 24.  “Some of the neighbors are at the S Lake fishing. Mark rode my horse and I am at the house all day reading and sleeping. The ground is foul and hard and the cotton looks badly.”

Wednesday, May 25. “The drought still continues but it is not as hot as last week. The corn looks pretty well but needs rain badly. The teams have gone after the last of Mark’s purchase of corn –seems to hold out good season???  “(I) bought of James Byrne of Texas”, a mule trader, “eight mares and two mules for six hundred dollars. “

Thursday, May 26 This morning we were surprised to hear that Peggy’s infant was dead. “A child over a year old, probably over laid by her careless and stupid mother.  The drought continues with no prospect of rain. We got access to the road today just before 12 o’clock. The cotton on the ridges continues to grow a little better on account of rain. Vernon went to the Bend today with the buggy to get two bales of lard bought sometime since I wrote to the cotton merchant in New Orleans, “for a barrel of sugar and appraised him of the bill I saw yesterday for the mares and mules. I do not feel way today…pain and gripping in the bowels.”

Friday, May 27 1859 “It is quite cool today-the wind in the north but no appearance of rain. The corn and the cotton do not seem to be suffering so much for rain as it did some several days ago. Billy is scraping cotton.”

May 30 The teams went to the river today and hauled eight bales cotton each and bought it home. Mark one out with T –

Tuesday, May 31 There’s a fish fry at Scafry Lake today.

Wednesday June 1, 1859 Today is his 58^th birthday. In his memory he recollects: (I’ve had) “no birthday without larger cotton (crop) than today”. Mr. Valentine sends Vernon up to Goodrich’s Landing** to pick up some materials.

June 3^rd to the 5^th The scarcity of rain and drought conditions makes it harder to plow. In some cases, he writes, it’s a rain shower and dry ground that make plowing even more difficult.

Saturday, June 4 The teams take sixteen bales of cotton up to Goodrich landing and for the first time he mentions an infestation of grasshoppers on the place and how the “cotton is much injured” on the upper end of the place. A spell of cooler weather is settling in. Later this weekend the weather is cooler. He also mentions for the first time that Mark and Mr. Harper visit the Stone’s. He also makes a comment about the River, saying that the water level at the landing has changed and that the water level is ‘below its highest so far this year.’

On Tuesday, June 5 he settles up with Mr. Harper for service in the Belcher case. He also gives him notes for four thousand dollars and two thousand… a contingent fee upon his settling up the Anderson suit and takes the transfer of his suit against some bank. There are few details in this paragraph other than his dealings with Harper.

Monday, June 6. The weather is warmer and the drought resists changing. He talks about how the grasshoppers are destroying the cotton. “Grasshopers are still in the fields…and it seems if we are to have no rain until they destroy it all.  Mules are still taking the colic…we “drenched them with chloroform to relieve the Colic,” but he is unsure if the remedy actually helps or “the mules are (just) not too sick enough to die”.  On Tuesday, Mr. Catlin comes over to visit in the morning and “to know my opinion as a candidate on…the African slave trade…I consider it an impracticable question...but if approved it would benefit the slave buying states. Billy at work in the Rain Water swamp…the plows are on the upper back ridge.”

Wednesday June 8^th. Charlotte, a slave, delivered twins last night, a boy and a girl. Mr. V. endorses Mr. Catlin’s candidacy (for Judge or other federal office).

Thursday June 9^th. Today there was a shower “on the upper end of the place (North?) “it extended but lightly as far as the house.  We are plowing today in the cotton in the upper cut of rain water swamp…there are (still) a great many grasshoppers.”

On Friday June 10th, he comments that they are plowing on Grassy Lake Ridge. “Billy in the levee cut on Rainwater swamp…it is redundant to rain and the corn is suffering. We have no sick mules.”

Sunday June 12^th, he receives a letter from the cotton merchant in New Orleans asking that he come to the city to make a registration with the bank “which I think I can do by Mark. .gaging my property for stock in the Citizen’s Bank and get $40,000 to meet my debts next winter.” Another mule dies from the colic even after administering chloroform to try to save him.

Monday June 13^th. Mark is going “to Floyd to get certificates from the recorder ‘preparatory to my going to New Orleans. The young stuff is coming up thick in the cotton on the upper end of the place when we have rain.” He sends out more bales of cotton up to Goodrich’s making it 41 in all.  Corn will not survive if no rain, “none for 6 weeks.”

Tuesday, June 14 Still no rain the mules continue to be sick with the colic.

Wednesday June 15^th. The weather is so dry you can almost hear him groan about the poor condition of the ground for the plows. They finished plowing up on the upper end at Rainwater swamp and he is hoping for even a little rain to soften the ground. “Since l841 I have not seen such a drought …the last of the cotton is (only) a little over a foot high’. Six or more ‘hands’ are sick (but he adds). Cotton is doing pretty well ‘considering the dryness of the season. Many of the Negroes are in sick.”

Friday June 17^th. Despite the drought the he says “the cotton continues to grade pretty well. We found the first bloom this year on the 13^th. Mark does not get to see the recorder in Floyd. Saturday he sends Vernon to the ‘Bend’ (Milliken’s Bend) in preparation for heading to New Orleans on Sunday to try to ‘negotiate with the bank for funds to meet my liabilities next winter.’ 

Sunday he gets a letter from his sister Sophia and Mark ‘one from Virginia.’  It rains very hard.  Arrives in Vicksburg on Monday and remains until the evening, the landing is ‘the hottest place I know of.’ Gets on the boat at Goodrich’s after dinner bound for New Orleans.

(**Goodrich's Landing was a cotton plantation owned by Henry Goodrich of East Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Situated on the west bank of the Mississippi River, the landing served as a shipping point for area cotton planters. When Union forces invaded the region in early 1862, they seized the plantation and established it as a base of operations in their advance against Vicksburg. As hundreds of escaped slaves flocked to the Union camp, neighboring plantation owners abandoned their properties and evacuated to the west, into Confederate held territory. The U.S. Government subsequently confiscated these properties and leased them to Northern entrepreneurs, who employed former slaves to grow cotton. By the summer of 1863, Union forces under the command of General U.S. Grant, had surrounded and besieged the city of Vicksburg. Confederate troops in Louisiana and Arkansas believed that by raiding Goodrich's Landing, they could disrupt Grant's supply-chain and relieve their compatriots at Vicksburg.)

Tuesday, June 21st. “We are stopping at almost every plantation on our way down to New Orleans. The river overflow is most noticeable on the Mississippi side of the river…but from Natchez down to the Red River is not “extensive”.

He Meets His Cotton Factor to Negotiate Terms and Puts His Property As Collateral

On Wednesday 22^nd he breakfasts at the landing in New Orleans and afterwards he goes to his brother’s home, his wife being absent visiting her mother in Mississippi. He visits his cotton merchant and Citizen’s Bank and finds out that he has to remain until his title arrives from home.

Thursday June 23^rd he writes a letter to Mark about a brick making machine and sends letter to Mark by the packet. The money market has tightened from “apprehension of commercial disturbance from the war in Europe.”

Sunday June 25^th. He attends a Methodist Church ‘preaching’ today. On Monday it is still raining like always in New Orleans.

Tuesday June 28^th. He is “detained from going to town” by heavy rain showers and comments about the difference in the weather conditions here as opposed to Carroll (parish).

Wednesday June 29th. On The next morning he gets a letter from Mark with the title copies from the recorder’s office and goes to Citizen’s Bank where ‘I wish to put in my property for stock.’ He finds out from the teller he needs to ‘get a receipt from all Martha’s (nee Gibson) children’ to make everything right. He prepares to return home after ‘having obtained the attorney’s instructions here to proceed.’

Thursday the 30^th he ‘passes a tedious day in waiting until 5-oclock when the packet gets off and I ….again leave for home.’  On leaving the city he comments about the sugarcane, remarking that it looks fine along the coast but a ‘great deal of damage is suffered on the city side of the river as it passes the Bonnet Cary (Carre) Causeway.

Friday July 1^st. In Natchez on Friday he comments that the river is ‘four of more feet within its banks but rising a little from the water is mostly off the places but they look very desolate.’

Saturday, July 2^nd Omega. Leaves Vicksburg for ‘our landing (Goodrich’s) and arrives home. Comments on the conditions or prospects of the cotton crop at some of the plantations, some of the cotton is from six inches to 1’ in height while other areas the cotton is 2-3’ high. He says that the cotton crop at Oasis despite the drought is in “fine order..but very small for the season. The weeds come up thick with the cotton and we had scraped it very close and was followed by a drought that prevented it from growing..that we scraped it out first got to growing a little as it did not suffer in the weeds…but some is large and most of it very small. “…the best is about three feet high…most between two and 3’ high” blah blah blah.

Sunday July 3. “I rode over to Hardison’s this evening…his family are suffering…with the Whooping Cough and besides the death of two little Negroes he buried his youngest child. He loses another mule to Colic.

Monday July 4^th. There is a barbecue in the area and Mr. Valentine enjoys himself commenting that things were harmonious. “There was not a person drunk upon the ground and all passed off harmoniously.”

Tuesday July 5^th. He rides over the place today and comments on the condition of the crops, especially the cotton: “although small is growing finely and looks well…the corn much better in the middle of the field than along next to Grassy Lake. Guests for the week include Harper, Dr. Lily, Catlin. Weather cools down and crops are looking better so he’s feeling more sanguine so he gives the Negroes a holiday for several days starting on Wednesday.

Thursday July 7^th. “I get the men this morning to cut down the trees standing in the fence up this ridge  and three or four of them instead of falling in the swamp (Grassy Lake)…(instead fell) out in the field.” Mr. Fountain comes over with a Recipe (sic) for Whooping Cough for children.

On Friday July 8^th a Mr. Nolan, a candidate for district attorney, comes by for a visit and stayed for the night. The Negroes go over to work for Mr. Fountain and are paid $1.25 per day for the work.  The weather is still dry.

Saturday July 9^th Mr. Valentine sends Vernon to the Bend to put a notice in the local paper announcing his candidacy for the senate. The announcement is given to the editor of the papers in Floyd, Lake Providence, and Franklin Parish. The drought continues but the corn crop appears healthy.

Sunday July 10^th. This morning he sends out fifty sacks on corn but the wagons carrying the corn broke down and about half of the sacks come back to the house.

Work on the Valentine Ditch

Monday July 11^th. He writes that they’re busy at work cleaning out, sinking, and enlarging the big ditch (Valentine Ditch) “up this ridge”.  Mr. Bledsoe comes by to examine his sawmill and make out a “bill of timbers to build…at Dr. Blackman’s place   [Dr. Blackman owned a 1000 acre plus All Right Plantation in Township 21, Ward 3,Carroll Parish. His home was located Northeast of Oasis and Brokenburn]

Tuesday July 12th. They continue to work on the Ditch making it larger…”making it so deep to get all the drainage to the middle of the field.” 

Wednesday July 13^, Mark returns from Goodrich Landing after taking a packet to Vicksburg with Mr. Harper. Mr. Harper takes five bales of pressed cotton to Goodrich and meets a Mr. Booth at Warren (County) to help settle Mr. Valentine’s affairs. He then is to leave on a trip up the river to Tennessee for several months. 

Thursday July 14^th. Oasis, He writes today about cutting another ditch or slue (sic) “in the front bayou and (its) the last considerable slue to ditch out…”  Nick is cutting weeds off of the levee at the upper end of the place.

Saturday July 16^th. “We have finished the ditch in the front bayou…thrown out the dirt that caved into the ditch making the levee across the upper end of the place…”  He has one of his slaves take a Lieutenant Newman to the Bend (Milliken’s Bend). He has Mike Morgan, the Irishman, examine an old ditch connecting at Broad Lake to enlarge it drain water for his fields.

Sunday July 17^th. He writes that a Mr. Lattatt is going to run the sawmill. He also talks about making a mould for bricks and comments about the soil.

Tuesday July 19^th. He and Mark rode over to Mr. Curries’ brick yard to find out how to make a box to grind mud as needed for bricks. “…We then examine the chance of opening the old ditch to Broad Lake to get a supply of water which is our only chance.”

Wednesday July 20^th.  He sends Vernon to the Bend to pick up a letter from Harper but nothing had arrived, so the next day he sends him to Goodrich Landing where he finds a letter from Harper. The weather is very warm. “It was four weeks yesterday since we have had rain…still the cotton growing finely.”

Thursday July 21^st. Mr. Lattatt tried to start the sawmill and they had to replace a head block and do some other repairs. They eventually saw 110 cords of wood.

Friday, July 22, He writes this day that there is considerable sickness among the (slave) children on the place.

Sunday July 24^th.    He says the cotton despite the drought looking fine and has finally bolled. The weather is cooler today.

Monday July 25^th. Billy has “cut out a fence row through the swamp back in the cabins so far back in the swamp as to prevent the (fence) rails from being burned at the cabins…a couple of hands are digging a well down at the bayou where we went to mould brick.”

Tuesday July 26^th. “The newspapers bring news of peace being made in Europe. Open Cotton.!!”

Wednesday, July 27^th . Commenting on the weather as usual, he said that despite the drought conditions the cotton continues to grow. He writes later in the week that he’s getting hands to cut and clear the cotton so that they can start putting fodder which is drying up before the corn is ripe enough to pull. The hands are also digging a well where they plan to make brick, and the mule teams are hauling rails to make fences in the swamp behind the cabins. “I put the fence more than a hundred yards back in the swamp as the Negroes burn the rails! (for firewood)

Friday, July 29 th. He comments again that despite the drought – he’s not even sure he wants it to rain again for awhile because the cotton appears to still be growing fine even though it’s dry. Not as much sickness on the place today. He gives the Negroes a holiday.

Cotton Five Feet Tall

Monday August 1^st. He writes today this first Monday in August that the tallest cotton is over five feet tall and on the Ridge it is between four and 5’ tall…the Rainwater Swamp is the best and here the cotton is four to 5’ tall. “The great mass of the cotton is from three to 4’ high”, he writes, while most of the bolls are under 2’ high.” He is expecting a fine crop this season but much smaller than usual this time of the year. They plan to finish cutting out vines and weeds today.

Tuesday, Aug 2. It is raining hard enough to keep the hands from working to get the cotton out. In the next few days his comments are mostly about the weather…Surprise!!. It starts raining, he calls it ‘showering’, and he says this is the first wet weather in six weeks. They continue pulling fodder in the cornfield the next few days and the rain has stopped much to his disappointment. He writes again to his cotton merchant to send him a seed carrier for his gin. Wednesday, the 3^rd, they are at work putting up a fence around the field on Grassy Lake. The lake is so dry that hogs and cattle walk across the lake and get into the field.  Other hands are working on repairing wagon wheels. On Thursday he is happy to see ‘showering’, “the first we have had for six weeks.”

Friday Aug 5^th. The team goes up to the Bend to meet the packet boat and unload a new wagon for the place. Continue to pull fodder from the cornfield. Despite the hot weather the corn crop is much better than he expected. He writes in his inimitable fashion, “the heat is a good deal Mitigated (sic)and I hardly thank we shall have any rain today.”

Sunday, Aug 7. The teams return from the Bend with a new wagon and ten barrels of meat and five barrels of molasses for the place. Again, he comments about the sickness on the place, some of which I think he attributes to the hard work in the sweltering heat. Maybe it’s a seasonal thing with the hands. (At that time because of the rain and flooding in some places pneumonia was common and so too was malaria) He expects the corn crop to be much better than he anticipated.. The next day he says he doesn’t feel well himself. He also writes the hands are about half way thru pulling fodder and that it is most ‘disagreeable’ work.

Tuesday, Aug 9. The neighbors are going to meet to discuss “throwing-up a road between the (Grassy lake) and the river bank”, he writes, so that they can get to the river landings in high water. He received a letter from Citizen’s Bank “that the stock for the place is ready”

Wed, Aug 10 th. Mr. Valentine is running a line between (that is, he is taking a measurement for property purposes) his farm and Mr.Cawley (?) and Mr. Cox. Later in the month Mr. Crawley gets Mr. V. to agree to building a road on high ground so it will be easier to get to the during times when the water is high. Also, today the assessor, Mr. Moore, comes to assess his property which amounted to $117,800. He writes again about the teams are hauling the rails to make a fence along Grassy Lake.  Weather is very hot and “the health of the place is improved.” The cotton is opening and the corn is much better, he writes.

Friday, Aug 12^th. A great many of the hands on the place are sick. Finish pulling fodder today and he writes that the weather is very hot but that the cotton is improving because of or despite the heat. Most of the hands are sick from working in the corn pulling the fodder, which he knows is arduous work. He also mentions that the cotton is ‘opening’ firmly now and that they will be ready for the picking. The next day, a Saturday, a Mr. Trimble and Mr. Elliot come by, the latter being a candidate for clerkship. They complete their work on the fodder and he gives the Negroes a holiday. He goes on to say in this paragraph that Jacob, a slave, was whipped because he had become insubordinate…his attitude was insufferable. In 26 years this was the first time he had him whipped. Jacob is laid up from his whipping for the next few days.

Sunday Aug 14th. A heavier rain today. Hardison comes by with friends to discuss Mr. Valentine’s bid for the Senate seat. “…I find the rain was very abundant yesterday. I hardly know whether it will do this cotton (any) good or harm. It will evidently make it grow and I fear make it shed.”

Wednesday Aug 17. “We have put up our fence from the lower gate to above the road and making fence rails (cut from) cypress trees. The health of the place, he muses, is better than last month. Since the rain the cotton is growing rapidly. 

Friday, August 19^th.  He finished enclosing the fence on Grassy Lake, and later in the morning goes up to the Landing on his way to a political meeting at the mouth of Joe’s Bayou on Saturday and stays the night at Mashone’s (?)  A gentleman who is a candidate for district attorney goes with him.

Mark Addresses A Political Meeting At Joe’s Bayou

Saturday, August 20^th, Joe’s Bayou, LA. He addresses the political meeting on the subject of the levees after which he comments that he felt that his subject “met with general approbation. All the other candidates for office attended the meeting including a Mr. Lott (Could this be Trent Lott’s, former US Senator from Louisiana, great-great grandfather.?).  He meets another candidate for the senate seat representing the parish of Franklin; he said that he was a very weak man.

Sunday, Aug  21^st. Joe’s Bayou. A Mr. Besman called this morning and took breakfast; he said that he is on his way home from the Bay- (?), also plans to take two of his daughters to England to put them in a school. Mark showed him the way through the swamp to Mrs. Denan’s place. The next day, Monday, he writes about problems with the boll worms: they, he says, “are making serious habit in the cotton.”  This is the first time he has mentioned of the boll worm. They aren’t picking the cotton until after the fodder is hauled in. The women (slaves) started to work on the winter clothing after they received the material (Lindsey cloth). They also received a seed carrier and pulleys for the gin stands, his old “contrivance of 1836.” It is just now coming into general use. The next day, the 22^nd, he says that one of the Negro family’s child has lockjaw and will probably not live. Now the nights are cooler he thinks that those that were sick have more recurrence of fever.

Monday, Aug 22. Today, most of the men and the teams are at work at the gin and working to corduroy roads between here and Little Tensas (Bayou) Nick is cutting the burrs out of the ditches in the cornfield. 

Wednesday, Aug 24.. Sends Vernon to Bend with a letter to New Orleans regarding bonding for the gin. Gets a return letter from the assessor concerning his property.

Saturday, Aug 27^th. He writes today, “….we had an ‘alarm of fire’ at the Hawkins house but put it out without damage.” Later in on in the diary he writes about the bollworm: only in “some places the boll worm is destroying the cotton”.  (It was later in the l9th century that the bollweevil really took hold in the deep South.) He says they are the worst at the Alligator hole.

Tuesday, August 30. Today he writes how they started picking cotton today with sixty pickers who get 9,218 pounds from behind the cabins. He writes about all that is going on at the Place: two men at work on the sawmill; George and Jacob are blocking up and fixing the gin; four men making baskets, and four men and teams hauling corn and pulling fodder from the field. Two days later he has more men working on the gin and finishing the well “with hopes to get…(our) supply of water”.

Friday,Sept 2. Picked another 10,000 #’s of cotton at the upper end of the Ridge on Thursday.

Saturday, Sept 3. “Forty-nine years ago (today) my mother died (1810), and I am spared again to record the Event. That he reminisces on the anniversary of his mother’s death.was a beautiful day and so is this.” …”and how many such have passed whilst she has slept quietly in her grave. Not many more of those anniversaries can I record before I will be called to join her. Is there a world where I shall again meet her after so long a seperation.”

Sunday, Sept 4. Today he receives several items off loaded from the packet boat at the river including rope, bagging, gin bands and other items.

Wednesday, Sept 7. A Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Galloway call on him today, and he avers that they are very much in earnest about the election. The next day, Thursday, Hardison, his neighbor, and Mr. Currie called on him about the election. As before, he says they are very much in earnest about the election. He doesn’t make clear what about the election they are’ in earnest’ about:  are they pledging their support for him in the Louisiana senate seat, or are they running for office?

Thursday, Sept 8. Bayou Macon. He leaves in the evening to B. Macon to attend a political meeting at Monticello. He spends Friday night with Mike Morgan, a friend, to attend the political meeting at Monticello the next day where one of the most pressing questions under discussion is about the levees.

Sunday, Sept 11.  The cotton is opening up quite nicely he writes and the picking is good. He has several men call on him today regarding the election.

Monday, Sept 12.  Picking cotton today and working on the gin to get it started, but, he says, ‘it seems like a useless job.” Many people on the place are too sick. The cotton is appearing fast. They’ve also gathered up about 60 bushels of corn.

Tuesday, Sept 13.  “If only we had good health”, he thinks, “we could do a good business picking cotton but a fourth of our picking force is sick.”  The gin is still not running. Another five of his hands are out sick today.

Wednesday, Sept 14^th. They are picking the African cotton and keeping it separate, but he does not thank it is any better than the other cotton variety. They are getting about 700 weight to the acre. More of the hands sick, barely one-third of the pickers are working. The next day he writes that they get 26,000 off of the African cotton with 40-acres. A man calls today to ‘pitch’ a picking machine. “It worked finely”, he says, but he did not purchase it. Still at work on the gin...four or five more are sick. They finish repairing the gin and start it up .

Saturday, Sept 17. There is so much unpicked cotton but not enough hands well enough to work: there are only fifty-two pickers in the field and he regrets they have so few. He talks about his brother, stating…”my brother Whiting’s birthday…he would be fifty-six years of age.”

1859 MR. VALENTINE HAS A GREAT YEAR – PICKS OVER 100,000 POUNDS IN ONE WEEK - STEAM POWERED  COTTON GIN

Sunday, Sept 18. A Dr. Rapp called last night to see him. He is a candidate for the senate from Franklin Parish and his competition. His only remark about the doctor was that he rides in a buggy pulled by two mules and driven by a servant, nothing about his political beliefs.  Vernon shot a deer and he and a friend hitched up a couple of mules to bring it out. They get lost in the swamp most of night, finding their way home the next day. Later, one of the mules was found butchered and hung up to a tree.  On Monday, he writes that they pick 13,000 pounds of cotton with seventy seven pickers, but still having problems getting the gin running.

Wednesday, Sept 21. Though the cotton is healthy Mr. Valentine says at least a fifth of his workers are sick and unable to pick cotton.  Later, he bemoans the fact that an even higher number, one third, of his hands are sick. Mark went to meet the appraisers appointed by Citizen’s Bank for stock in the bank.  Mr. V lightens the seed carriers and is able to start the gins running. It stops running again in the evening, restarting the next day and they’re able to gin out 20 bales. On Friday they pick 15,000 pounds. On Saturday, gins out sixty bales.  

Tuesday, Sept 27, Appraisers set the value of his property at a little over $320,000, which is about the same figure that Valentine Van Zee mentions. The next day Mark rides over to Floyd to get all the papers necessary for the transaction with the Bank. They pick 13,000 pounds today.

Wednesday, Sept 28. Hitched two teams to mules today and hauled 10 bales in each wagon to the river.

Friday, Sept 30. This is a tough day for Mr. Valentine: Mark returns from Floyd in the evening having been unsuccessful as a Mr. Short (from the bank) had put on the record of the mortgage… judgments “in favor of Anderson” so he (Mark) could not get a clear certificate; his worries with the gin continue, the machine started but then a disaster. Part of the screen on the Press gives out and the water is giving out; he goes to make an affidavit “to the questions of the Bank”, and when he returns later he finds a cotton wagon overturned in the ditch and the cotton spilled out, and then to make matters worse, he finds a letter waiting on him from a representative of a landing that he uses to ship cotton, that he could not ship cotton from him unless “I should give him 12 ½ cents a bail” Ever resourceful  though, he goes on to say that all “these troubles are light compared to breaking the press.”

Note: cotton prices prior to the Civil War were .10 to .12 cents a pound. After 1862 and the Confederate Embargo on cotton, prices rose to $1.89 a pound.

October 1859

Monday, October 3. Mark left today for New Orleans going by way of Richmond to get a Mr. Worsham(?) to the Bend to secure his appointment.  A Mr. Ferguson from a firm comes in the evening in a two horse buggy; his son gets sick with fever and stays the night at Mr. Valentines, leaving the next morning with Mark to Richmond where Mark is able to get papers “fixed.”

Wed, October 5.  Mr. Ferguson returns to Oasis today. His son has been sick all day. Mark gets his papers fixed and heads off to Vicksburg on business with the bank and then to New Orleans.

Friday, October 7. Again, he regrets that all his hands are not available to pick cotton because he has such a good crop. “If all hands (were) well I should beat anything I ever did before.” Mark is in New Orleans.

Saturday, October 8. Hands pick over 10,000 pounds today and 88,000 for the week.

Wednesday, October 12 A candidate for the state legislature, Mr. Imboden, and Mr. Catlin, his neighbor, come by to see him. The gin is running fine, many things fixed. The ‘teams’ return this morning with several barrels of meat and two barrels of molasses, just n time to help hands with the cotton.

He Withdraws His Name For the Senate

Thursday, October 13. He withdraws his candidacy for the senate today without any explanation being put forth in his diary. The next day a candidate for the clerk’s office calls on Mr. Valentine.

Sunday, October 16.He writes that last week was the best work week he has had in his life. They pick 105,266 pounds of cotton…picked over 21,000 pds yesterday, “which must be a record”; they bailed out 116 bales, put 100 on the bank of the river and ginned  over sixty bales the last three days of the work week. Vernon stays with the cotton on the river to wait on the packet but it did not arrive until the next day.  

Monday October 17^th. Mark returns from his trip to New Orleans to do some business with Citizen’s Bank. They pick another 20,000 pounds of cotton; the weather is ideal, ”the best picking day we have had this year.”

Tuesday October 18^th.  The wind shifts to the North and the weather turns colder. Wednesday they have a frost but it does not kill the cotton. They pick 15000 pounds today.

Thursday October 20^th. The team hauls more cotton to the Bend this week for loading on the packets. For the week he has shipped 60 bales. The gin is not running for lack of water.

Friday October 21^st. The gin is running today and they are able to bale-out cotton. Mark goes over to Mr. Bailey’s to call on some ladies Mrs. H- in particular. “It calls up curious and such avidly recollections…thirty five years ago her mother and Marks (nee Gibson) were particularly good friends both long since in their graves…but while the world wages on and they meet sweethearts wondering what feelings…those long past being.”  Several visitors call today, friends as well as a candidate for clerk’s office.

Saturday October 22^nd. The well gives out twice today so they can’t run the gin without water and only haul out 80 bales to the river instead of the a hundred he was hoping.

Sunday, October 23. He mentions that his well (water) gives out again and that they only were able to gin eight bales before the water stopped flowing. He goes on to talk about gin stands and saws that are old and giving out, and write further that the lack of water prevents him from shipping a hundred bales today instead of only 80. (I have found an article about how steam-powered cotton gins came into use during the mid 19^th century and there is a link below to the article) On Monday, he writes that last week they picked another record – 103,000 pounds ; weather he thinks will be this good for four weeks to come. “The Place is now getting tolerable…will get on finely in picking cotton…very large crops appear to be making in the neighborhood.” (His diary entries make it often difficult to read and understand what he’s writing b/c sentences run together without punctuation, no beginning or ending sometimes.)

Photos of cotton gins in use at Frogmore Plantation near Ferriday, Louisiana in mid 19^th century

https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g40150-d506128-i87131705-Frogmore_Plantation-Ferriday_Louisiana.html

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g40150-d506128-Reviews-Frogmore_Plantation-Ferriday_Louisiana.html

Monday, October 24.  He writes that they still have attacks of chills and fever (I suppose he and the hands are infected with malaria). He sends Vernon over to the Bend to pick up supplies and he brings back a receipt of the sales of “100 bales of cotton at 11 ¾ cents (a pd) averaging 460 pounds and making a little over $4900.”

Tuesday, October 25. “Young Stone come over this morning and he and Mark go over to the Bailey’s to see the ladies.” The water gives out again after only 13 bales ginned. On Thursday, the water gave out again and he mentions that he has a great deal of trouble without water to run the engine and the bearings under the press are also giving him problems so “we are pretty effectually stopped.”  It’s colder and a frost appears in the mornings.

Friday, October 28. He sends Jacob to Vicksburg in the buggy to get a seat and valve to put into the cold water press because the water is so low that the press empties every time we stop pumping. He frets about a hard frost this morning and he writes that there will be a freeze tonight.  On another subject, he says the hands are picking where the boll worms “used up the cotton and got but little out of some 25-acres,” This morning he writes that “there was a killing frost putting an end to the year 1859.” Then again he writes in the next sentence “I do not think it has (killed it all)…much of it was very mature and it did not freeze the bolls much.”

Tuesday, Nov 1.. Had the hardest frost of the season this morning with ice layer 1/8^th of an inch thick. He writes that so far for the season they have picked 680,000 pounds of cotton and “if the season continues good I think we shall get 400,000 more.”

Thursday, Nov 3. The hands are now picking cotton on the Ridge above the house (North alongside the swamp) and get almost 15000 pounds, or between five and 600 an acre. He worries that the frost will cut off the cotton (production) almost fifty bales for the season. This evening the well water gave out again.

Friday, they worked hard to sink the box two feet further into the ground and hit a large stream, “enough,” he hopes, “to run the (gin) engine all the time.”

Saturday the water rises to five feet so he is elated. “Life is certainly a war fair (sic), he writes, and this has been one of its battles…which we have been victorius.” Those that suffer with the fever have a recurrence almost every week he points out.

Sunday, Nov 6. He said his cotton receipts are about 11 1/8 to 11 ½ cents a pound. (I read that prices skyrocketed then to as much as 1.89 a pound by 1863 because of the embargo. I hope Mr Valentine did not put all his money into Confederate specie and bought gold.) 

Monday, Nov 7. Today is election day. He does not attend, certain of the fact that the electors he had chosen were to be elected. Instead, he reads the account of the abolition effort at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia (John Brown’s Raid). He writes that the cotton picking should continue for two more weeks and after that it will be done.

Wednesday, Nov 10. He writes that his (cotton) bagging is running short which will interrupt the baling. He reads in the “papers that the house I built and resided in with my family in New Orleans is burned up. Now both the residences in which I resided near twenty years with my family and around which cluster many interesting remembrances are wiped away from earth and only exist in memory.” Friday, Nov 12 and Sat Nov 13. They have to stop baling because they’re out of bagging…”a giant oversight and neglect by me”, he adds. He says they are done picking. “The fires that have been burning east of Grassy Lake I find today had crossed the swamp to within one hundred yards of the fence” and Vernon and some of the hands are sent over there to try to stop the fire. He writes further that they have picked 99,000 pounds of cotton this week and are” nearly across the gate on Grassy Lake ridge. The next day, Sunday, he finds that due to the extremely cold weather the engine pump at the gin froze and burst a valve seat and he worries that it will stop the engine. He writes this is the coldest weather he’s ever seen in this climate.

Monday, Nov 14. “There was a terrible freeze last night but it is clear and pleasant…The fire in the swamp (east of Grassy Lake, lake is located near Parish Rd 1132 west Roosevelt at upper end of his property) is not out and will be going again as soon as it is a little dryer.”  He writes they are trying to mend the pump on the gin but is discouraged. He adds that if it can’t be repaired he will have to use one of the neighbor’s gins. He sends Vernon out to get a replacement valve seat for the pump and writes Mark who is in New Orleans asking him to find a replacement. .

Water Pump Is Broken, Work On the Gin Stops

Tuesday Nov. 15^th. He spends the day trying to working on the ‘broken and mended’ valve seat for the pump but he decides to keep running the pump all the time to get sufficient water to grind. The fire has moved across Grassy Lake to the fence and they are still working to put it out.

Wednesday, Nov 16. “With the east side of the plantation on fire the pump broke (and) the gin stopped (again) and piled full of cotton…and another complete failure to mend the pump…things are getting bad enough.” Finally, the next day, the valve seat is repaired and they are grinding again. A heavy rain puts out the fires at Grassy but the next couple of days there is a burnt oily smoky residue from the fire.

Saturday, Nov. 20. He sells forty bales of cotton at 11 ¼ cents pound. They receive some supplies but no bagging for the bales was shipped. On Monday, the mule teams take several bales to the river and off loads onto the packet boat.

Thursday, Nov 24. Mark comes back from his trip to New Orleans at 10 o’clock last evening. Mr. Catlin comes over and later in the morning two men with mules, asking $150 apiece, come by and he has them stay for dinner. He starts pressing cotton again the next day and presses more than he has ever done, averaging 600 bales.

Saturday, Nov. 26. It starts to rain today and rains “tremendously” this evening and into the next day. The teams, “overloaded with bales start early for the river”, but he’s worried they’ll have a hard time getting there. In all, he sends 600 hundred bales today and they gin another hundred bales.

Wednesday, Nov 29. Mark goes off to Omega today and Nolan’s Landing to meet the packet boat. A new neighbor, Mr. Jeffrey’s, his wife and son, who have moved in the section across from M. Valentine, have come by for some meal and other food for his family. He lets them take turnips from the turnip patch.

Friday, Dec 2. Mr Harper is back from Tennessee. More rain is expected today. The next day another mule trader comes by asking $180 apiece for 42 mules; he declines the offer. He reads in the papers that John Brown the “irascible fanatical abolitionist is busy in….Virginia.”  More rain this evening. The next day, Saturday, they awake and the trees are white and sleet on the ground. Saturday, the teams get back from the river, the men almost perishing from the wet and cold weather.

Saturday, Dec 3. The diary entries the next few days are about the miserable weather. Wednesday it starts to sleet again but melts off later in the day. He says the men are making rails, cutting cord wood, building a shed, and hauling. Vernon goes to the Bend and returns with a letter from his sister, Sophia with a daguerreotype of the baby. She is in Tennessee with her husband at Fort Pillow.

Saturday, Dec. 10. Friday they finish putting fencing up by Grassy Lake, which is on the upper end of the property. He is making plans to go to New Orleans on Sunday.

Sunday, Dec. 11, to New Orleans. He goes out to Goodrich Landing to meet the packet tomorrow.. He still has the Place on his mind and talks about finishing the ginning and gathering up corn to finish off the year. The next day he boards the packet, Belfast, for NO. The boat remains in Vicksburg for most of the day to load cotton.

Monday, Dec. 12. About noon today they get off the boat and board the train for this leg of the journey to NO.           The weather turns colder. The passengers “are agreeable” and he has a “social (ly) pleasant time.” On Wednesday, he arrives in NO. He goes buys a hat and then goes to the St. Charles to meet a Mr. Hinds who says he can assist him (with what??) but after talking to him finds out he can be of no help. Later that night he goes over to his brother’s, John, who has a new baby and he finds the rest of the family well and glad to see him.

Arrives in New Orleans Again, Meets to Negotiate With His  Cotton Factor , Sees His Brother

Thursday Dec.15. New Orleans. He goes into town today to the firm of Abbot and Givens, (probably  a cotton merchant who would handle transactions for him) to see “how I can negotiate and find their terms to be a nine percent discount and a half percent brokerage with city…on mortgage note” but they insist on him giving them his business. The next day he visits another broker, Gillis & Ferguson, and talks to Ferguson who agrees to all he proposes. The next day, however, he goes over to close on the deal but they decline his business thinking the amount of (credit?) $50,000 is too large for them to secure.

Saturday, Dec. 17, New Orleans.  Disappointed, he finds another broker who he discovers is also very anxious to take his business but, as before, “he gets the same answer” and they too decline to do business with him. Again, he says that he is disappointed “and almost (to the point) indignant at some parties.”

Sunday, Dec 18, New Orleans. He spends all day at his brother’s (John) house and later goes over to see a Mr. Barton and “his family and finds Francis (his niece), my brother Richard’s daughter”…and her “little boy in good health”.  She had spent the” summer in New York state…(and)  I learn all about my father, his family and friends who I had not seen for many years.” The following day he visits two more brokers with no results. The next day he calls on his current broker who has been selling cotton at 11 ½ cents but thinks he can get 12 cents for the next 80 bales.

Wednesday, Dec 21, New Orleans. Meets with Frellson and Wright, his current broker, and decides to wait until the New Year to arrange his business matters. The next day, Wednesday, he goes to Holmes to buy some blankets and gets cheated but has the money to make the purchases anyway.

Thursday, Dec. 22, New Orleans.  He boards the boat this morning and arrives in arrives at Natchez on Friday at 9PM, the boat having to stop frequently to off-load passengers. 

Saturday, Xmas Eve, Omega. Arrives at the landing at Omega at 2AM Sunday morning where he meets Vernon and three of his team who are picking up meat, sugar and flour to take back to Oasis with him. Arrives home at 4 AM.

Sunday, Christmas. Back home he finds everything gone well since leaving. He finds the cotton “all gathered and ginned” for the season and “all but three or four bales pressed out and 72 bales hauled to the river so the business of the year pretty well done…”  Mr. Harper and he enjoy a whiskey with eggnog and spend “a dull day.”

Monday, Dec. 26,. A mule trader offers to sell 20 mules to him at $157.00 apiece and he declines. He sends another 24 bales to the river with the teamsters and they get there before the boat arrives; the cotton is loaded on the packet.

Tuesday, Dec. 27. The mule trader returns today and Mr. Valentine gives him a bill bearing eight percent interest for $3000 for the 20 mules. Two of the mules are to be “furnished”  when he arrives (returns) with “another …and the bill then to be….. He writes that they are averaging over 800 bales a year. ”The largest I ever made.”

Saturday, Dec. 31. Mark rode out to Goodrich’s to give him a sight draft for his levee tax of $2360.00, seventy-two of which are paid in script for labor on the levees during the high water. He ends the year in reflecting that “it has been a successful year…I have made over 800 bales…and come…to have a plenty and perhaps some for sale. There have been but three deaths (his hands). Old Franks and two infants and eight births, all but one of which are living.”

1860 Diary (PAGES 21-40)

Monday Jan . 2. The new year’s entries includes sentences about fourteen hogs which were slaughtered for bacon, and another paragraph about the hands cutting down old trees for fencing to be placed out to the swamp near the “tobacco ditch”. Some of the women he has pulling stalks. They also start up sawmill again and it appears to him to be running fine. The next day, Tuesday, a Mr. Jeffrey’s who has been out hunting for five mules and an old mare belonging to Mr. Valentine’s returns. He has given them up for lost or stolen.

Friday, Jan 6^th, Mr. Hartison, his neighbor, hauls away a load of planks, or lumber, today noting that he needs four or five thousand (planks  or board feet but not sure).

Saturday, Jan 7. Finish the fencing around the lower end of the plantation to the gate. They get the sawmill running again after it was stopped, and he is sanguine that they can with luck “make all the lumber we want.”  They also are working on a cattle shed. Some of the hands are sick today.

Sunday, Jan 8. He writes in his diary that this is the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, and in Louisiana it is a holiday.

Monday, Jan 9. The weather is foggy today and Mark and Mr. Harper went up and ran the line from M. Trimble and his place and “found it (to) leave the field so as to make the strip outside the fence which on the west end is sixty feet and hundred and twenty feet at Grassy Lake. I had intended to set the fence on the line but the strip is so large to clear up and there needs to be a ditch on the line that I have declined moving the fence for the present.”

Thursday, Jan 12. He writes today that it the rain is incessant on the place. “Much sickness on the place from colds.”

Sunday, Jan. 15,. As he packs his valise readying for another trip to New Orleans, he has several visitors come by including an acquaintance he’s not seen for many years. Also, Mr. Jeffrey’s calls on him and gives him money for the selling of his cotton.

He Arrives In New Orleans Visits Cotton Factor

Monday, Jan 16, enroute to New Orleans.  Mr. Valentine goes with Mr. Harper to board the Vicksburg, a packet boat and his preferred means of transportation. Mr. Harper goes with him to settle a business matter. The next day, he debarks for passage on the train, or rail road, as he calls it, to New Orleans.

Wednesday, Jan 18. New Orleans. Arriving before noon, Mr. V debarks for the “upper part of the city” and the St. Charles. After checking in, he goes to the St. Charles theatre. He has a “dull time.” The next day, he visits an old friend, Ann Higgins, who is a widow and getting older. He has known Ann as a girl and “all through the trials of life…our meeting was affecting the both of us.”

Saturday, Jan 21. New Orleans. He is concerned about 134 bales of cotton he has at Mr. Fullson, his factor. He feels that the cotton should be sold before he attempts to settle with the broker, but he fears it will not happen. On Sunday he dines with his brother, John.

Monday, Jan 23. New Orleans. He receives a letter from Harper, telling him that his settlement with Booth means nothing for Mr. Valentine and he decides to go home. He transfers his cotton business to another New Orleans firm, Wright & Allen,  who take up his debt (roughly $50,000 from December diary entry)… by endorsing my mortgage at 12 and 24 months his old broker, Fullson, for his $32000 debt and accept my other debts.

Tuesday, Jan 24. New Orleans. “Today I take up my debts and commence to make my bills for supplies for another year …”

Wed, Jan 25. New Orleans. He gets all the paper fixed and makes ten notes of $5000 each, six of which Fullson takes at 12 and 24 months for his debt at 8% interest with Wright & Allen’s endorsement. He assigns all his affairs to Wright & Allen. He finds his total indebtedness to be $12000 (maybe $62000, hard to read the first number).

Thursday, Jan 26. After dinner with his brother the next day he leaves on the Vicksburg  for home.

Sunday, Jan 29. Oasis. Arriving at Noland’s Landing after midnight he gets home early this morning. He comments that the place is in better shape than when he left last week. All his baggage arrives except for his medicines which he fears missing.

Monday, Jan 30. Any entries are about the weather changing, colder and wetter.

Thursday, Feb 2. Weather stays cold and they have a heavy freeze. The work continues as they are cutting cotton stalks and ditching. The health of the place, he says, is much improved since his return. He records that they had a tremendous rain and storm the next day; it continues to rain for next few days.

Monday, Feb 6. Mr. Harper he writes is headed for New Orleans to “attend to lawsuits in the Supreme Court.  The rain appears to be over for the time being.

Saturday, Feb 11. Mr. Watson, the deputy sheriff, calls on Mr. Valentine with his tax bill in the amount of $607.18. He gives the sheriff a draft for the amount and he pays another $10.00 to sheriff for entering his name in the senatorial race. They have finished raking and (pulling) cotton stalks from the field and burning them.

Tuesday, Feb 14.  “To day died my negro woman Rose with chronic inflammation of the neck of the womb. She was a fine, likely valuable woman and leaves a family of six children.”  He adds in this entry that they are ‘rolling logs on the road’, Rose is buried the next day and all the hands attend the funeral. He has nothing to add.

Wednesday, Feb 15. Hands are doing chores around the place as usual, mainly burning stalks, rolling logs, etc. He attends to several business matters. He pays bills for Goodrich’s account and for the purchase of 20 mules in the amount of $3300.00. The next day, Thursday, he talks about working on the ditches beginning with the first of the ditches “back of  the (slave) quarters”. There was a heavy storm the day before and a number of trees have fallen so they are clearing them out.

Sunday, Feb 19^th. He is planning on plowing tomorrow and talks about how beautiful and clear the weather is today. He has a sunny disposition today.

Monday, Feb 20^th. Today with the plowing they start to break in the young mules of which there are 20. One of the mules, tethered to a tree, reared up and “pitched his head” against the tree killing himself instantly. The rest they got to work without any more accidents and cleared between twenty to 30 acres of land. Mark goes into town to fetch several newspapers.

Tuesday, Feb 21^st.  A very heavy rain inundates the Place…”continuous and heavy rain storms…(worst) in year’s past. The fields are flooded.” Rain continues well into midnight. At sundown, the all the middle of the place was under water and” the ditches were running out (and) the banks were full” and several feet deep.

Wednesday, Feb 22. He is pleased to find that the next day the water covering the fields has gone and the ditches are in better shape.”This is the first opportunity I have had to see what the ditches would do since they were finished, “ he writes and he is a little surprised by how rapid the water drains off the fields “makes them a complete success.” He also adds that he has had all thirty or 40 of the Negro’s dogs killed, they “were the most worthless curs in the world and I have forbidden them from ever again having dogs. The next day and for several days they begin plowing in the fields. The weather is fine, as he says, and the fields are in good shape.

Monday, Feb 27^th. It is a good day to plough and they are trying to break in their mules but, he adds, they are determined not to work. The next day weather changes again and the rain stopping all work. It is difficult for the hands to get into the wet fields and attempt plowing.

March 1860

Friday, March 2^nd. It has been a year today since he started his plowing the year before. He hauls to the mill the first log to make timber for a house for himself. The next day, Saturday, he writes that his five mules and a mare that had been lost from the place for nearly three months were found. They had been in the swamp, only to be driven up by the raising of the water from all the rain. The slaves, he says, are plowing around Grassy Lake and below the road.

Monday, March 5^th. His diary entry today is about the health of the place, something he writes about quite often. He writes: “I think the place is most healthy when the cypress breaks on both sides are full or covered with water.” On Tuesday, a visitor, Mr. Fountain comes to visit and Mr. V sells him 400 bushels of corn at $1.00/bushel.

Thursday, March 8. The day starts out very pleasant but after 4PM, he noted that a very dark cloud and strong wind blew “gathering in the North came down…with terrible force prostrating a hundred old trees in the field…wind continued heavily until after night fall.” The next day with the weather much improved, he concentrates on having his hands grind up horse feed and corn, and works on getting his Mustang mares broken in.

Monday, March 12^th. He receives neighbors today, one of whom, a Mrs. Currie (?) is getting a subscription (donation) of $1500.00 to build a church. She wants him to saw the lumber for the church He subscribes $100.00 toward the church and agrees to saw the lumber, of which 21,000 feet in all is needed. On Wednesday the 15^th, he receives several periodicals from Ann Booth, a sister of Mr. Valentines and his brother, Philo Valentine, who lives in Vicksburg and a surgeon. Mark receives a letter from Mr. Harper about two cases he argued in court. They start plowing on the He back ridge and finish the next day.

Friday, March 17^th. He takes time today to get off several letters about business matters. They are still getting the timber off the field as a result of the storm. One of the mares dies, another is very sick and he thinks both will die from the heat and from work. He seems to take it all in stride.

Sunday, March 19^th. A slave is bitten by a large black spider and they put some kind of medicine on the bite wound and ‘camphorative’ spirits to drink which relieved her. She was bitten on the wrist and the pain went up her arm to her shoulder and down her spine into her hips…and down her legs.

Tuesday, March 20^th. The team returns from “Omega yesterday and brought home a dozen skillets and beds, thirteen pots and a barrel of plaster of paris and one-hundred…….. I am going to try these efficacy on…corn and cotton…also bought eight kegs of nails and spikes. The next day, Wednesday, he writes that they’re trying to finish planting corn but the plowing is very hard,,,he is putting plaster of Paris on corn to try its effect.

Thursday, March 22^nd. He writes that he has planted four or 5 acres or more of Chinese sugar corn. 

Tuesday, March 27^th. Mr. Valentine writes about his neighbor, Mr. Fountain, whom purchased several bushels of corn from him but is in arrears. Today, he appears with a draft for $500, a portion of it he owes to the Negroes. He also mentions his old horse which has been sick and is very feeble. On Thursday, both Mr. Fountain and Mr. Catlin call and remain for dinner; Mr. Catlin, however, stays until sundown. He writes that they are running twenty-three plows “and get on tolerably well” with the planting. He is plowing on Grassy Lake to the cypress slue (slough) . They are hauling cotton seed into the field for planting and cutting logs at the sawmill. He mentions that he wants to plant all of the lower field with African seed (cotton).

Saturday, April 1^st. Most of his diaries entries last couple of days are about his sick mule and today they find him outside of the plantation. He says that the Negroes are planting their gardens today. “For years,” he writes “I have given them gardens which they neglect to plant.” Tbis year he is furnishing them with seed “with the admonition that” they will plant and cultivate them. The “Negroes cannot work for themselves…without compulsion and authority.”    

Monday, April 2^nd. This morning with ten plows and ten horses they commenced planting cotton at the graveyard. In the morning he goes over to Goodrich Landing to place his vote for Mr. Catlin for the Board of Police but he is defeated in the ticket by Mr. Hardison. Last Saturday he writes that a tornado went across his property about 300 yards. “It passed just this side of Goodrich’s store blowing down his…house, gin, and...cabins passing on (it) blew the church down.” It then crossed the river  toward Vicksburg.

Wednesday, April 4^th. His diaries entries today are more about planting cotton in various places: below the road, for one, and at the “ridge” near Grassy Lake. They finish the planting at Grassy Lake on Friday evening.

Friday, April 6^th. In the evening he attends a wedding at Mr. Curries for his son, who marries a Misses Seloes (?), who is the sister of his step-mother. He is late to the wedding, help up by a man who he pays off with sight drafts. Later that day Mr. Harper and his son appear and they go over to the Stone’s to attend a party in the evening at the Hardison’s in honor of the bride and groom, which neither of them attend because of their religion.

Saturday, April 7^th. He writes that today would be his brother Albert’s birthday; he would be fifty-three years old today. He died 23 years ago. One of his best mules died last night.

Tuesday & Wednesday  April 10^th and 11th Today he uses thirteen men to build a bridge and road across the mouth of the bayou between Oasis and Mr. Trimble “as I have long wanted a convenient (way) up…(to the) Ridge.”  Once again he talks about the dry ground and the drought conditions on the Place. The drought has continued for over 6 weeks. The prospect of rain is poor. Although the planting is finished, he has a bushel of Silk Cotton seeds he purchased in New Orleans that he wants to plant.  “Billy is deepening the ditch in the Main Slue and cleaning out small ditches”,

Wednesday, April 11^th. Today he sells almost one hundred bushels of corn to neighbors for a dollar per bushel, and they finish on the road up to Mr. Trimble’s property. The next day he sends ten hands to work on the road out toward the (Mississippi) River. Mr. Hardison is the overseer.

Friday, April 13^th. Again, neighbors come by and buy nearly 100 bushels of corn from Mr. Valentine. They finished building the road except for putting slabs on the bridge.

APRIL 1860

He writes about a strange weather phenomenon: “There is an extraodinarily strong circle around the sun” and he hears that a storm can follow that phenomenon.

Monday, April 16^th,  Mr. Harper is on his way to Vicksburg to get additional testimony in his case and will be absent and will be away for several days. The next day he writes that the drought is the longest it has lasted in twenty years. They get all the ditching done above the road. The drought continues into the eighth week. They also do some work on the tobacco ditch.

Thursday, April 19^th. The hands are at work stacking up the sawed lumber and then went to cutting cordwood. Nick, a hand, is working on the small ditches.

Sunday, April 22^nd. Finish cleaning out the ditches and cut 41 cords of wood for the Place. Some showers are seen on the lower end of the Place but not the house. He is starting to work on the corn crop and may have to replant some of the corn where needed because of the drought. “Some of the corn looks very well and some badly…” The cotton on the other hand comes up very well. Rain at the lower end, drought at the upper end. The Charleston Convention nominates a candidate for the Presidency today.*

Wednesday, April 25^th. Mark and Mr. Catlin go to Goodrich Landing and return to Oasis with two gin stands. Mr. Valentine writes about the weather: The weather is much colder; there is another circle around the sun today and it looks like rain. He writes about the crops: today the teams are plowing the corn.

Thursday, April 26^th. The weather: “neither corn nor cotton improve the weather…it is so cold”.  He repairs the shaft on the grinder which had stopped the machine and he had to repair the shaft; they commence grinding corn. … “planted sugar cane outside the levee.” 

Saturday, April 28^th. For the last two days the plows have been at work in the sugar cane fields…but something has destroyed the ‘stand’ and it has to be replanted. “The hoes will be done by noon…and I will give (the hands) holidays.

Sunday, April 29^th. He writes that Mr. Stone, who is visiting Mr. Valentine, together with Mr. Harper and Mark plan to go fishing at the lower end of Bear Lake the next day. They return on Monday evening without any news of the fishing. Meanwhile, the weather changes for the good: “…we had a better rain than we have had for the last eight weeks, enough I think to bring up (the) cotton.” As for the crops, he writes that “we commence to turn a couple of furrows in the middle in the lower field to keep them from getting foul until the cotton shall be large enough to scrape…and the prospect is a very fine stand of cotton.”

Tuesday, May 1^st. Mr. Catlin and Dr. Lily, a close neighbor, come by and stay for dinner. The sawmill is running and they cut 1½ thick planks as a cladding for his home. The weather is clear and warm and they are also cutting out vines in the cotton in Rainwater Swamp. On Wednesday, they are scraping cotton in that area. “It is a little warmer and the prospect is a very fine stand of cotton. We are plowing as of yesterday and cutting out the vines.”

Thursday, May 3^rd. “We commence scraping cotton at the lower end of the lower field today but do not bring it to a stand altho in many places it is not long (?) enough to do so. The land is clear and…works firmly…the stand is good.”

Friday, May 4^th. This morning he eats breakfast at the Catlin’s and some of them go fishing in Tensas Bayou about three miles west of Dunlap Ridge and caught a pretty good supply of fish for our dinners which were cooked upon the ground” He discovers that Betty, a slave, comes over and tells him that a 17-year old girl who was subject to fits had fallen dead in the field.

Saturday, May 5^th. “…no appearance of rain. I am now going to write a petition to the police court to have the road changed from running through Hardison’s field to the parish line, and through Mr. F’s place with his consent and approbation.”

Monday, May 7^th They finish scraping the cotton on the ridge above G. Lake and he makes a comment that the cotton is a good size to scrape. Two days before, a Saturday, he writes about the wedding of Isaiah and Nelly and Alpheus went to the Bend to pick up letters including a bill for the sixty barrels of meta.

Wednesday, May 10^th.All hands are working scrapping cotton on the place. A few however are putting up a fence from “my corner to Mr. Fontaines. Vernon goes up to the Bend to pick up five bushels of peas. He said they finish scraping up to Grassy Lake gate…and get into Rain Water swamp to scrape. For the next few days he can talk about little except scrapping cotton.

Sunday  Monday, May 14^{th & 15th}. “It is still dry but a south wind and flying clouds indicate rain.” Mr V exchanged shucked corn for seventy bushels of sack corn. They commence work on with ten plows to put in furrows and get the weeds out of the cotton; it looks like rain. The next two days are extremely hot…”the cotton coming up dies as fast as it comes out of the ground…and the corn is suffering very much.” Eight new cases of sickness are reported on the place including some women in the family way. They are plowing again the next day with ten plows which “which hardly run around thirty acres of cotton…”  He takes up a stray horse and Vernon rode him to Omega the owner. He writes a letter to Wright & Allen, his cotton merchant, for four barrels of molasses.

Thursday, May 17^th. He writes that the hillers and scrappers are doing fine. He replies to interrogatories presented to him by a Mr. Anderson in his suit with Mr. Harper and the C&RR Bank.

Friday, May 18^th.  The days hot but he writes nights are “disproportionally cool”. The next day, Saturday, he has Vernon hook up ‘Bil’, the mule, and the stray horse on the buggy for the ride out to the Bend. While at the Bend, he has to swear to the interrogatories. The river, he notices, is about 30’ in its banks. The next day, while at Mr. Hardison’s, he discovers an old payment of $1315 from 10^th of Decmeber l941 on the debt of Martin and Hamlin. Mr. H- will go to Floyd to give testimony.

Sunday, May 20^th. They are running forty-one plows today hilling in the cotton and breaking out the middles and some of the hands going through the corn to cut out the weeds thinning the last planting. ”It is so dry I’m afraid plowing would cut the roots of the corn and injure it …”  “The rain has brought up so much little stuff in the cotton that if it is not killed and plowed (under) it will all be in weeds.”

Thursday & Friday, May 24^{th and} 25^th. Some of the hands are complaining of pain in the backs along with diarreha with some of them stopping work. He calls it “derangement of the bowels” like dysentery. One of the mules, Sam, is sick so he puts the stray horse to work instead. “We water the mules at breakfast…and have to go to the bayou above the gate to find water and it is a great hindrance…”  He uses a medicine or ‘remedy’ he purchases in New Orleans and it seems to help relieve it. 

Sunday, May 28^th. They work on the well and he writes that he added brine and a bag tar to purify the water. The next day, Monday, he mentions that a Mike McGuire has agreed to ‘dead in’ six or 800 acres of land for $1.25 an acre on Dunlap Ridge.

Wednesday, May 30^th. Rain today or “a succession of showers”, as he refers to it. “The best since February. …much to wet to kill cotton.”

Thursday, May 31^st. “The land works beautifully and the hillers do it up on this ridge finely.” In the evening, feeling unwell but still decides to ride over to Mr. Catlins. He runs a fever and takes a large dose of Calomel** which helped relieve him.

Calomel was a purgative.

June 1860, Mark Is 59

Friday, June 1^st. “This day I am fifty nine years of age. A birthday is with one always (and) always one of serious reflection. It makes our running years and forcibly reminds us how soon we must c- …to record them.  I feel better today. I feel better today after my ‘physickery’ and I believe it is nearly…four years since I have taken any medicine…I can hardly hope for exemption for the next four should I live.” The hillers are down running around the cotton. “I do not think at this date…I (have) had so fine a prospect…” The next day, Saturday, he writes that Mr. Harper has returned from Floyd and that he lost his lawsuits in that court, but it seems like he is appealing to (Louisiana) Supreme Court.

Saturday, June 2^nd.  “We finished (plowing) on this ridge this morning and the plows have gone over to Grassy Lake ridge.

Sunday, June 3^rd. “Just at night we…on this ridge and over on Dunlap Ridge and down below B – Lake and round home.” On Monday, the hands are working on the “upper cut of Rainwater Swamp…I am in hopes to get over with the places tomorrow and put more force to the hoes.”

Tuesday, June 5^th.  “I settled with Mr. Harper today…paid up the balance of one thousand dollars for his services in the Belcher case and gave him my note for four thousand dollars due for March sixty one as a certain (?) fee and my note for two thousand dollars contingent upon his winning the Anderson suit and took his t- fee of his suit against the C&RR Bank collectable inter (?)…he to attend to all the suits until decided in the supreme court…”

Wednesday, June 6^th. “Call on Blevins this morning…Vernon goes out with the buggy to Omega to take Mr. Harper’s trunk “…he will not say that he will ever visit us again. He seems to be…a sad commentary on his letter begging that I will continue to him my good feeling which I have done…and given him more for professional services than he has made in all his life before.”

Thursday, June 7^th.“…We finished Rainwater swamp early this morning and the hillers get on finely…they are all done below the Bayou at noon…the largest half of that field the cotton looks splendidly. I see in this field a good deal of the stand dying out…in some places so much so to impair the stand materially.”

Friday, June 8^th. “The hands are on this side (of) the main slue with the hoes. The plows will not finish the levee field today. Saturday he writes that the plows finish in the lower field yesterday although he did not expect them too. They are hilling in the upper cut of Rainwater S. A Mr. Richardson comes by for twenty five barrels of corn. One of the mules is sick with the colic and later in the day he writes that the mule has died which makes four that have died this year. He writes to New Orleans to order sugar, coffee, and whiskey.

Sunday, June 10^th. Mr. V receives a letter from Wright & Allen enclosing a letter for his son to use in New York for $500 credit. He also writes that the prospects of the cotton crops this year are everywhere…to depress the price already.

Monday, June 11^th. Mr. Valentine rode with his son to the gate and on his return to the house meets a Mr. Westill and Blackburn, the latter on old school mate of Marks who lives in NO and is now a commis…merchant traveling around the country; they staid (sic) the night with the Valentines. Mr. Catlin meets them and ask them to dine with him the next day.

Wednesday, June 13^th. They are now running thirty-two plows and started today to breakout the muddles in the lower field. Four gentlemen meet with Mr. Valentine including Catlin at his home. The passage he writes is not clear, but it seems they are discussing a road at the southeast corner of his place through Fontaine’s place and along the parish line (Madison+Carroll Parish lines ) west to little Tensaw. They examine the ground and determine that something makes it impracticable for the road and that “it should remain as present.”      

Friday & Saturday, June 15^, 16^th. His son is packing a trunk for his trip up north “in search of safety and pleasure” and plans to be gone all summer long returning sometime in the Fall. He takes a letter of credit for $500 and $200 in cash and departs on Saturday, leaving from Omega. They finish plowing on the lower part of the place and he writes that they have 40 plows on the upper cut of Rainwater S. Vernon returns from the Bend with a letter from his brother, Philo, who is teaching school in Port Gibson, MS.

Wednesday, June 20^th. A Mr. Caldwell claims the lost (stray) horse after two months and pays Mr. Valentine for the animal’s upkeep. It is very hot today and Billy gets on with the plowing above the big ditch (Valentine Ditch?). He says Billy does a better job with the plows than some of the other hands. He spends most of the day writing letters to Mark, Philo, and Wright & Allen in New Orleans  and others. Cotton crop, he says, is “growing finely.” There are a number of sick hands on the place.

He Receives A Letter From A Cousin, Ann Booth at Vicksburg

Thursday, June 21. Today is going to visit the Henderson family home but before leaving he is visited by Mr. Catlin and Mr. Neuman, his neighbors, who want to purchase several bushels of corn. Later that morning he heads to Goodrich Landing, noting that the condition of the cotton crops along the way, rating most of it fine, too good to poor. He records the temperature is 98 today. He ends up back at the Henderson’s property, east of Oasis. On Saturday, after spending Friday evening with him at his place, Mr. Henderson visits Mr. Valentine at Oasis, and they go up to Omega. He finds his overseer, or hand, Jacob who returning from Vicksburg has a letter from his “office”.  The letter is from Ann Booth, a relative, who lets him know that the part for the mill is fixed, a bill for $27.00 is attached.

Monday, June 25^th. The plows are working up on Grassy Lake ridge near his house. Many of the hands are sick on the place. On Tuesday, he sends the team up to Goodrich’s to pick up a several gin stands, coal and other supplies. Rains for three hours but not nearly enough that is needed.

Tuesday, June 26^th. The plows are working “just the other side of the Middle ditch where we plowed last week. He rides up to Trimbles place to discuss the gin stands he purchased from Goodrich.

Thursday, June 28^th. Mr. Curie and Galloway calls on him today with a letter to sell him a ‘Texas Jack’ (ass or mule I suppose) for $75.00 which he declines. The fields are wet after several rains. They are hard at work on the ridge, back of the (slave) cabins, he says “this ridge”, meaning, I suppose that the cabins are back of the plantation home nearer Grassy Lake. He regrets wishing for rain because they apparently have had some heavy showers and can’t get to plowing.

Friday, June 29^th. He says his corn crop is doing fine, and the “young stuff in the cotton is coming up thick.” He is plowing over the land he plowed last week.

He Takes Stock Of His Cotton Crop Midyear

Sunday, July 1^st. he is making a record to examine the condition of the cotton crops at this point. The tallest crop is about four and a half feet, but most is between two and 4.5’ tall. The cotton is “growing fast enough but not too fast”…” the whole it is by large the best crop I have ever had at this season of the year…and almost perfect if it were not for the stand (that) died out badly through the middle of this field after it was scrapped out by which I estimated a loss of fifty acres….but still the loss is considerable. The corn is much improved by the rain…and I think will be as good as ever made. The sugar cane is late and little but will make a great deal of feed…the health of the place is much improved in the last four days.”

Wednesday, July 4^th. He puts the mules hitched to the buggy and goes out to Milliken’s Bend to celebrate July the Fourth. ”I found a thousand well dressed people on the ground but did not there until after Wiley (?). A military company came up from Vicksburg. The grounds in Dr. Jackson’s year were beautiful and everything went off finely. The day most….There was a ball after night to which I did not stay.”

Friday, July 6^th. Weather is very hot today, he says hotter than he has ever seen before in the middle of the day. The hands still working in the lower field but won’t finish so he decides to give them a holiday on Saturday. The corn is firm but needs more rain. The health of the place is good for the season.

Saturday, July 7^th. Mr. Hardison and Stone come by to discuss work on the road and Mr. Trimble calls too to discuss the gin stand. The next day, Sunday, he rode over to the Irishman’s camp and rides behind the place next to the swamp. “The weather is most intensely hot I have ever experienced and the (air) continues dry. He gets a letter from Mark dated the 27 of June. The finish plowing at the lower end of the place and commence plowing at the upper end of Grassy Lake.

Tuesday, July 10^th. The Assistant Marshal came over yesterday and stayed the night. “He obtains a great many statistichs (sic) and amongst (them)…the amount of property and wealth of each individual without taking account any debts…he made my wealth near four hundred thousand dollars…and had I estimated my land as high as many others whose land is not as good or valuable as mine he would have carried it a great deal over that figure. The weather is terribly hot. We are plowing on Grassy Lake ridge.”  The Negroes he says are constantly quitting work overcome with the heat.

Wednesday, July 11^th. He receives a letter from Mark writing from Niagra Falls, New York. Before he left for New York he runs into Mr. Harper and his wife in Louisville. On Thursday, he finds out his mules, John, the first mule he had foaled, had died of the colic; he was twenty years old and he said he had never been sick. He uses his compass to show a neighbor the west side of Mr. Fontaine’s property line. It is still terribly hot and the Negroes he adds are giving out so they quit working until after 4PM.

His Brother Philo Valentine Visits

Monday, July 15 to July 19^th. Brother Philo, who Mark has not seen since 1836, shows up at Omega; he last saw him when he was four. (Philo served in the Confederate army from 1861 to 1863, initially as a Assistant Surgeon, serving at various posts throughout the war: Jackson, TN, Murfreesboro, TN, Bowling Green, KY and Rome Ga. He surrendered to the Federal authorities in 1865. He was court-martialed earlier in the war but because of testimony about his high moral character and the fact that he was upset about failing a surgeon’s exam he was exonerate. From the character description…”dark skin, grey eyes, he must have closely resembled his brother) They spend the next few days together riding around the plantation. Vernon goes to the Bend to pick up his brothers baggage and returns with a letter from Wright and Allen in NO. Philo is taking Calagagers (?) medicine for a recurring

Saturday, July 21st – . “Philo and myself have talked all about my old affairs and troubles with my brothers bringing up the most disagreeable remembrances of those who are dead and gone and my suffering deeply upon my feeling a sense that all my association with my own family can only be unpleasant…and the best years and images of my life have been raised under the influence of those who have tried to make……………”

Ran his sawmill on the farm and fed sugarcane to the mules that are very fond of it. The cotton looks much improved with the rainfall. …the cotton “is throwing off a snowy form …still bolls enough to make a large crop if they mature without accident. The rain has improved the cotton much.” He said the cotton is starting to open fast. Rain has stopped. He reports on the death of David Gibson, Mrs. Randall Gibson and Jack Harris (Mark’s first wife is a Martha Gibson, mother of Mark, Jr ).

Sunday, July 22^nd He sends his brother by buggy to Omega to catch the train for his passage back home to Cairo and his home in Illinois. He receives a letter from Mark who is visiting Mr. Valentine’s, sister, Sophia. The letter is dated the 12^th of July. He then goes on to New York City.

Monday, July 23^rd. He learns that Mr. Trimble has sold his place, land and hands to Mr. Smith who is overseeing for Judge Morgan for $25,550 and “$1556 payable first of January..next six thousand first of February and balance in 1, 2, 3 and 4 years (plus) interest on two notes and that Trimble had left. I am extremely glad that Trimble has left the neighborhood.” He has ten of his men working up on the road (Monticello Rd?). On Tuesday, Jacob, Ned and the teams go up to Blackman’s to get parts for the mill.

Thursday, July 26^th. They’re pulling fodder on the place last couple of days buy when a heavy rain started thy stopped work. They finished making a brick yard. Women are working pulling weeds.

Fiday, July 27. In addition to making brick they continue cutting and feeding sugarcane to the mules which they are very fond of.  Cotton he avers is much improved by the rainfall, it appeared to be suffering and shedding its forms and the bolls would have been small had the drought continued.

Saturday, July 28. “Much the heaviest shower (this morning) since last February. They’ve been working in the fields pulling fodder for the last four days attempting to gather fodder but have not yet “saved one blade and what is on the stalks is burning up and spoiling as fast as fast as it can.”Problem with the brick molds is hindering getting any thing done for the day. “Bad weather and bad management” bothers him.

Sunday, July 29^th. His comments about the weather are that the weather is “unsettling” and, as far the hands, he says that there is no sickness on the place today, unusual for this time of the year. The cotton is in good form and the bolls are showing off, he writes. The cotton is much improved by the rain.

Monday, July 30^th. The cotton is “shedding forms “as freely as I’ve ever saw it since the rain. He receives a letter from his son who is in New York. Purchases he has made of barrels of Lindsey cloth, oil, and other items are delivered today. He writes the cotton is opening rapidly.

Thursday, August 2^nd. Again, they are gathering more fodder and making brick in the brickyeard. There are fewer than a half as many men working at making bricks and running the sawmill today because of sickness, a change since last week. He learns from his neighbor of the deaths of David Gibson, Mrs. Randall Gibson and Jack Harris. The Gibson’s must have been related to his late wife. They start using an on-site molding factory to make brick, and the next day the hands are hanging brick for the house despite the intensely hot weather.

Sunday, August 5^th. He learns that Mark has headed for Saratoga, NY. On Monday, they continue to mould brick for the house but work is slow for want of hands.

Thursday, August 9^th. He takes two hands to help him run a line with the chain from his home to Mr. Cawley and Mr. Cox (can’t figure the direction the line is going except for the mention of the swamp). “It was through thick canebrake for the first mile except for the last forty rods which was through the swamp.” Later in the month Mr. Cawley gets Mr. V. to agree to build a road on high ground so it will be easier to get to when the water is high. A Mr. Moore came over to Omega to assess the value of his property which amounted to $117,800. He doesn’t say how many acres were appraised. He comments on the “health of the place” and the how the cotton has improved.

Saturday, August 11^th. On a buggy ride to Goodrich’s Landing today, he inspects his neighbor’s crops and “found our cotton to be much larger and finer than any of our neighbors” and almost all are picking the cotton at this point. He’s spent many more weeks gathering fodder than his neighbors but that they are getting along fine. He devotes 10-acres of his property to a turnip patch.

Wednesday, August 15^th. Receives letters from Wright & Allen (cotton broker in NO), Mark and others, and a package Vernon gets at Omega from a Mr. Bailey containing twenty pounds of turnip seeds at dollar a package. They are working on the road through Mr. Hardison’s field which is north of Valentine property, adjacent to Catlin’s land.

Thursday, August 16^th. For the next several days, he writes in his diary about fever and how terrible he feels. He has been taking Calomel, a powdery purgative and a derivative of mercury.

Wednesday, August 22^nd. They start today to picking cotton but the weather turns bad so they stop. He begins taking quinine for his fever. He has been so sick that he worries that if he doesn’t get better he won’t ever be able to see his son or write to him. The next day, Thursday, he thinks the quinine pills are helping him. Because of the rain it is still too wet for picking cotton so he has the hands hauling off the old cotton seed, cutting cordwood, and other things.  Rain showers for the next few days keeps the hands from picking cotton so he has them doing other chores.  Some of the hands sent with the team to pick up rope and a sewing machine. A few of the men are “lying up with the fever.”

SEPTEMBER 1860

Saturday, September 1^st. The rain keeps the men from working only in fits and starts to picking the cotton. Some sickness and fever persists with the hands. “…we get over eighty hands into the field but they come in almost as fast as they go out. The rain has made the picking very hard.”

Sunday, September 2^nd. He writes to his sister Louisa inquiring about Philo and to know if he returned home safely. “His health was delicate when he left and the poor fellow may have sickened and died on the way.”

September 3^rd – Mr. Valentine reminisces on the anniversary of his mother’s death.  “Forty nine years ago today (1810) my mother died and I am spared again to record the event – that was a beautiful day and so is this and how many years have passed whilst she has slept peacefully in her grave – not many more of these anniversaries can I record before I must be called to join her. Is there a world where I shall again meet her after so long a separation.”

Thursday, September 6th. Mr. Valentine’s hands (he has 80 pickers in the fields today) ginned and baled-out thirteen bales averaging four hundred and forty to 460 pounds. In the lower field near the Bayou he claims that they picked a thousand pounds per acre. The new “gin stands” are working fine.

“Early gin plants were fairly simple facilities, as the clean, dry, hand-picked cotton of the day required little conditioning or cleaning prior to the ginning process. However, as harvesting methods (hand snapping, mechanical picking, and mechanical stripping) produced more moisture and trash in the incoming seed cotton, additional machinery was required upstream (drying and precleaning) and downstream (lint cleaning) of the gin stand(s) to maximize the value of the final lint sample in the marketplace. Thus, the typical gin plant of today is vastly more complicated that the gin plants of fifty years ago. Adding to this complexity is the fact that ginning machinery capacities continue be pushed to new levels.”

Monday, September 10^th. Today he says they have picked and bailed out 17,000 pounds of cotton. So far he has bailed out nearly 100 bales. “I find it takes fourteen-hundred and eight pounds to make a 400 bale of seed cotton. He adds that they are hauling in a great deal of fodder “notwithstanding my apprehension that it would be ruined by the heavy rains.”

Thursday, September 13^th. He receives a letter from Mark postmarked August 30^th from White Sulphur Springs, Virginia. He was leaving the next day to go to Lexington, KY.

Monday, September 17^th. He reminisces about his brother, Whiting, who died in 1856 at the age of fifty three. “…more than four years in his grave. His widow married (remarried) and his name almost forgotten.” Today he finishes hauling in fodder and hitches the teams up to start hauling the bales to the river the next day. Gus, Sandy and Charles Henry are sick and kept help with the fodder. On Tuesday, he start ginning the pressing the cotton and the teams were sent to the river      

Wednesday, September 19th^. Though the cotton is healthy Mr. Valentine says at least a fifth of his hands are sick and unable to pick. He laments that this has been a “day of disasters”, first a valve goes out on the well and the water needed to run the machinery, including the gin, stops. The next day they have to haul the mud out of it. He finds that two mules and an ox almost died when they got stuck in mud near Beard’s Lake; they were able to pull them out and they survived but he had to pen them up to keep them from eating to the grass on the lake.

Friday, September 21^st. They are having problem getting the engine running for lack of well water.  They dig a hole through the mud at the bottom of the well.

Saturday, September 22^nd. They bail out one hundred bales this week. They are experiencing unprecedented wave of cold weather. Sickness among the hands continues this week.

Monday, September 24^th. He is subpoenaed on the Grand Jury and he starts to ride out to the ‘Floyd, the parish seat, early this morning. He arrives late and he finds out they have already called his name so he returns home. He awakes Tuesday morning grumbling about his health. “…my old horse is so stiff this morning he can hardly walk but after slaping (?) I feel as well as usual.”

Wednesday, September 26^th. Dr. Lilly, Catlin, Mr. Fountain and a Mr. Johnson from New Orleans come over this morning. The hands are making a seed room under the gin and they finish working on the well. “The pickers get up to the fence on Grassy Lake last night having been ten days in (working on) that ridge which I have estimated at one hundred acres…we have picked off it 120,000 pounds. It has turned out so well….” The next day a Mr. Gibson comes by and they ride over to Dunlap Ridge. He is interested in purchasing property in the area and goes to the Stone home to get Mr. Stone to go to Manning to look at a place for sale.

Tuesday, October 2^nd.   On Monday they pick 17000 pounds but have been unable to get back in the fields today because of heavy rains. He has nearly 400 bales yet to pick and he’s afraid the rain will do a lot of damage to the cotton if they don’t get it picked soon. A gale force wind and heavy rain falls this evening keeping him from getting back into the fields.

Thursday October 4^th. Fields are so wet he doesn’t get to picking any cotton today. By Friday the storm is over and it clears off beautifully and they finish off ginning the rest of the cotton that is dry enough to gin. He gets several letters from his broker in New Orleans and his brother Philo.

Saturday October 6^th. Rains start again today stopping all the picking. Mike who is working at deadening on Dunlop Ridge comes over and stays for dinner. He and his workers are all out of whiskey and suffering. Mr. Catlin is urging him to go to Goodrich’s and make a speech to a club to which they have made Mr. Valentine president.

Monday October 8^th. Mark returns home before breakfast today riding a new horse he purchased in Tennessee for $185.00 together with two new saddles he bought in Memphis for $35.00.  The weather is fine so the picking starts again but he says that the picking falls off two or three thousand pounds a day because of the condition of the cotton. 

Thursday, October 11^th. He writes letters to Wright & Allen in N.O. and brother Philo, also to Leonard Scott, publisher of the reviews. There are still many more getting sick.

Monday, October 15^th. Mr. Catlin is raising money for a great barbecue event and Mr. Valentine and his son both give money. Mark and Vernon take the compass with them today to mark a line for the a new ditch which will be dug to straighten the bayou that drains Beard Lake. “It is about one half mile across and near three miles round.  They are also considering draining the Broad Lake and cleaning out the bayou near it and in its place dig a “ditch making a cutoff of (for) three miles …the bayou only one half mile.”

Friday, October 19^th. Adding to all his worries is a “killing frost” but not so heavy to kill off the cotton. Mike comes by to tell him he will be finishing his deadening this week. Mark goes with Mr. Stone to a political barbecue at Swan Lake.

Saturday, October 20^th. Early this morning an old friend, Ebb Divine, he has not seen for thirty years came and stayed 120 bales of cotton at .11 cents/pound. He finds that a bale averages 414 pounds.

Monday October 29^th. He defers paying a levee tax of $3820. He also settles with the Irishman, Mike, and pays him $900 for completion of his work.

Thursday November 1^st.  He is putting finishing touches on a new cabin and is cutting boards or planks to make a galley in the front together with matting. It has rained on and off the last few days and they have not been able to get into the fields but he doesn’t appear to distressed.  

Friday Nov 2^nd. The weather clears and there is a frost. A surveyor was at Mr. Hardison’s house and was “proceeding to lay off the sixteenth section from the section post of the middle of the township on the east boundary…”  Mark, Catlin, and Fountain are at dinner that evening when Mr. Harper appears; he has been in court in Richmond all day. Mr. Harper leaves for Floyd on Saturday with his wife, Wanda, and their baby girl. Having the baby at his house is apparently a pleasure for him.

Saturday Nov 3^rd. They finish hauling cotton in from the fields and baled out 82 bales for the week. He and Mark go in search of the surveyors who are to be in the pasture.

Abraham Lincoln is Elected President November 6^th 1860

Tuesday Nov 6^th. “This is the day appointed in the United States for election of (the) president from fourth of March next for four years. This election has uncommon interest from the ___ free states (that is, those are not ‘slave states’) are running as (their) candidate Abraham Lincoln of Illinois on principles hostile to slavery in the southern states and with great prospect of success which it is apprehended will divide the nation. At the same time the southern people are not united upon a candidate…one party (is) supporting John L. Breckenridge (Democrat) of Kentucky pledged to full support of southern principles and the other (party) supporting John Bell (Constitutional Union Party) of Tennessee pledged to nothing.  Breckenridge seems to be much the most popular candidate and at our box which is the strongest in the parish…Breckenridge in proportion to its vote we give 86 votes in all 39 for Breckenridge which is a larger proportion than ever. Mark and I attended and voted.”

Note:  Gene Dattel the author of Cotton and Race In the Making Of America says that Lincoln even with his anti-slavery support he lost New York City which was heavily dependent on cotton and the slave trade. Upstate New York gave the state and the presidential election to Lincoln. “The most important issues to voters across New York and the North were slavery, slave expansion and union, not black equality.”

Friday Nov 9^th. He and Mark move into the new ‘cabin.’  His brother Philo arrived and says he saw Mark in Vicksburg today. He says that the new cabin is much smaller than the old cabin he has occupied since 1853; he plans to add more bedrooms. The next day he gives his brother a draft for two hundred dollars and takes his note bearing six percent per annum and payable November 10, 1870. He also lends him fifteen dollars to help with his passage to New Orleans for his lectures. Mark and Catlin have not returned from Vicksburg where they are awaiting election news although “it is certain that Lincoln the black Republican is elected.”

Monday Nov 12^th. He is asked to give thirty hands for levee duty which he agrees to. Mark goes to Vicksburg the next day to visit his aunt, Ann Higgins.

Thursday Nov 15^th. He hears Breckenridge wins in Louisiana by a majority of twenty eight hundred votes and means he wins a bet of $150. He writes his cousin Ann Booth enclosing a draft for $623 for the one-quarter interest he has in owning two slaves. The two of them have been quarreling about this issue he writes for nine years. Mark goes over to Vicksburg where he told his father that he has purchased $3750 in levee script paying 8% interest.

Saturday Nov 17^th. He avers this has been best week for picking cotton…”we shall pick over 100,000 pounds (about 240 bales). If we could have three more such weeks we should nearly finish picking.” On Sunday he says they picked a total of 102,000 pds “being the best weeks work of the season.:

Monday Nov 19^th. Gin out 175,000 pds. of cotton. Vernon and another hand are putting a new kitchen and work room on the new cabin.

Thursday Nov 22^nd. Rains all day and into the night. Hard rains and wet fields prevent them from finishing picking.

Sunday Nov 25^th. He settles his levee tax with the collector who stays the rest of the evening and night. He spends the rest of the day indoors because of the bad weather. Monday, he has York complete the brick work on the chimney in the kitchen in the new cabin. The weather is more rain for the next few days.

Thursday Nov 29^th. They get a heavy frost this morning and the weather finally clears and turns pleasant but the fields too wet to pick cotton.

Saturday, December 1^st. Mike Morgan arrived on Friday and stayed all night, leaving the next morning. Winter has come again he writes. It is clear and very cold. York still working on the kitchen chimney. 

Tuesday, December 4^th. He gets Mark to ride out to Goodrich to get the $150 he won from Mr. Thompson “on Breckenridge (Democrat for President) beating Bell in this state.” Mark fails to get the money and he goes over to Omega to pick up purchases he made from Vicksburg and New Orleans. The next day Mark takes the team and rides over to the Stone’s to pick up 1500 bricks he needs to finish work on his chimney. On Thursday, Mr. Valentine goes over to Mr. Catlin’s for dinner where he meets some men who agree to support him as a candidate for the state convention. He mentions in passing that they have picked over 10,000 pounds of cotton on Thursday. Vernon takes the team over to the Bend on Saturday.

Monday, December 10^th. To New Orleans. He rides over to Omega and boards the steamboat for Vicksburg. There a good many passengers on board for the trip to NO, but a light load of cotton. On Tuesday, on his way day the Mississippi River he says the conversation aboard the boat is “principally about our political troubles and the succession of the state from the Union.”

Wednesday, December 12^th. Arriving in NO after breakfast with Mr. Catlin aboard, he goes into the city to check in at the St. Charles Hotel and visit his brother John. The next day, he intended to meet a Mr. Barton, and then went to a circus performance in the city.

Friday, December 14^th. New Orleans Visits with Wright & Allen, his brokers, to look over his account “which shows badly and took passage on the Mary Keene at five o’clock for home.”  At the St. Charles, he has met “our senator who has promised to support me for the state convention called by the legislature to consider the condition of the state and take it out of the Union by secession.”   He sees brother’s John and Philo before leaving for home.

Saturday, December 15^th. Arriving home at dinner time, he meets Mr. Stone.     He tells him that he has paid Mr. Catlin $10.00 to advertise his name in the newspaper as a candidate for the convention and asks him to make appointments for me to speak at Lake Providence and Goodrich.

Monday, December 17^th. He stays in bed all day suffering from a cold and chills. The next day, Messrs. Harper and Hardison arrive to tell him they saw his name in the paper. They spend the next couple of days with him and they talk politics.

Thursday, December 20. He’s feeling better as he prepares to go the address the people at Goodrich Landing. He speaks with a hoarse voice and after the speech he treats his neighbors with champagne and leaves with Catlin and stays all night at the Richard’s place. The next day he meets Mike Morgan and together they go to Lake Providence where he addresses the people. He goes out again on Sunday to make speeches and with Mike Morgan rides over to Monticello for the night. On Monday, he addresses the people on “the great issues of the day”, which I suppose is the issues of secession and the state of the Union.

Saturday, December 29^th. Delhi. He rode twenty miles over to Delhi from Monticello today where he stays the night and talks politics with people at the hotel.

Monday, Dec. 31st. To Winnsborough. This morning he rides thirty miles with Dr. Rapp in a buggy to attend a meeting at Winnsboro. He meets the political leaders there at Winnsboro and they tell him all is right and that he can return to Carroll Parish because he is assured of the vote. 

1861 Diary (PAGES 39-54)

Tuesday, January 1. Delhi, La.  He goes to Delhi today to speak again but discovers the meeting is over.

Wednesday Jan 2^nd. Having been absent for almost two weeks he arrives home in the evening. He had to put his horse on the rail car and take the train back. On Friday, Mark goes up to Lake Providence to get tickets printed and to stay if necessary until after the election next Monday.

Saturday Jan 4^th. “I am spending my time in reading the papers and trying to recover what I have lost whilst electioneering.”

Monday January 7^th. “This is the election day for members of the convention and I go out to Goodrich’s where the polls for this ward are held. Fifty one votes are given there of which I get 28 and my appointment.  I am much disappointed in this as I expected an almost universal support from my neighbors altho I have always differed with most of them in politicks (sic) but the old party lines were drawn…still I am the first candidate who ever carried a majority against the ruling party – Hardison voted against me. Still I have a majority there and at Lake Providence of 121.

Wednesday January 9^th. A great many of the Negroes are coming in sick constantly complaining of bad colds, ‘pain in the heart’, headaches and back problems. “I hope we shall not have pneumonia.”

Friday Jan 11^th.”Mr. Catlin called just a night with the returns…in the parish…my majority to be three hundred and forty seven…a report from Franklin Parish (west of E. Carroll) that there I had but little opposition.”  On Sunday, the hands take their corn over to Mr. Stone’s and collect about $300 in total for the corn.

Mark Attends First Session of Louisiana Secession Convention

Monday Jan 14^th. He leaves with Vernon this morning to head to New Orleans and the convention but it is raining so hard he delays his trip until Tuesday. He claims that the rain is the hardest most severe he’s seen for this area in last 12 months.

Tuesday Jan 15^th. He makes it to Little Tensas Bayou and found it out of its banks and over a hundred yards wide and the bridge over the bayou afloat. “It was unstoppable to cross” the bayou so he goes back home. He perceives, he says, “that the rain has been much heavier than the great September rain of 1854 as Little Tensas was at least two feet higher….I don’t think I have ever seen so much water fall in the same length of time”  The next day, he rides with Mr. Catlin around the place to see the flooding in the fields and ditches. The weather today has turned out very beautiful.

Saturday Jan 19^th. He begins to prepare ordinances to submit at the convention.

Monday Jan 21st.  Baton Rouge, He boards a steamboat early this morning bound for Baton Rouge and he changes boats at Vicksburg where he meets Gabe Manning who is a commissioner for the state of South Carolina and a representative to the convention. He arrives Tuesday night and stays on the Wharf boat at the pier.

Tuesday Jan 22^nd. Baton Rouge. He gets off the boat to look for a hotel and ends up settling for the Wharf Boat again. On Wednesday the convention is open to guests and he goes to the Representative Hall to discuss the secession of Louisiana from the federal union, as he calls it.  They organize the meeting and select a gentleman, Mr. Moutan, to preside over the convention and Mr. Wheat as Secretary. https://www.crt.state.la.us/louisiana-state-museum/online-exhibits/the-cabildo/the-civil-war/

Thursday Jan 24th. Today they appoint an Ordinance Committee chairman and a fifteen member committee is appointed. The members   submitted several resolutions and later at night hold a caucus consisting of the ‘seceding’ members  “who are styled ‘Cooperationists’ (generally Cooperationists believed that the remaining slave states should secede at once with the cooperation of the other southern states) to consider their actions and who number thirty five or 40 out of 130 members to determine their actions” (Cooperationists) …they have until Saturday to debate the subject “without any actions on our side and at that hour we proceed to  the vote.”

Friday Jan 25^th. Baton Rouge They deliberate all day and into the night “in accordance with our determination given to our opponents and we listen…to arguments and suggestions without reply and only vote down their propositions.”

Saturday Jan 26^th Baton Rouge. “Our opponents have exhausted themselves…(they) ask to hold a caucus which is granted when the vote is taken and only 17 vote against immediate secession from the Union and all but ten sign the ordinance of secession…we then adjourn to meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday the 29^th. So our state is no longer a member of the Confederacy known as the United State of America…and embark at once for the city and leave Baton Rouge when I have been…(made to feel uncomfortable) all the while and Vernon who accompanies me (even) more so.”

Sunday Jan 27^th. New Orleans. This find his steamboat is lying at the wharf early this morning in New Orleans and he goes off to his brother’s house. “As this is to me a holiday I spend it at my leisure.”

Monday Jan 28^th New Orleans.  He goes in to town to day and meets some of his members of his group “who are delighted to get away from the privations suffered at Baton Rouge.”

Tuesday Jan 29^th New Orleans. At twelve today the convention members convene at the Lycenium at the Municipal Hall on Lafayette Street. The various committees are preparing to make their reports. “Up to the twelfth of February our convention remained in session in New Orleans and their doings are best told in the Journal Of the Convetion. We elected today six delegates to the national convention which is to meet in Montgomery Alabama on the 4^th of February and they are John Perkins, J.Daclaret, Marshall,” Kennon, etc…. I suffered a good deal with a bad cold.”

Thursday Jan 31^st. “I can only state that I attended the sitting of the convention every day until the adjournment.”

For the next 11 days Mr. Valentine remains in Montgomery to attend the convention proceedings.

Tuesday February 12^th. New Orleans. He adds that for the next 11-12 days at the convention “the history would be the same thing varying only so far as the business…varied (day to day)…and adjourned to meet again…in this city the fourth of March and it is a great relief for me to be free.” Mr. Harper meets him in NO to “attend to my important case the supreme court.

Thursday Feb 14^th. New Orleans.  After seeing Wright & Allen, his cotton merchant/factor, he and Vernon prepare to leave today for home. He mentions that a steamer, the Chairman, has burned up with 380 bales of cotton and the deaths of five passengers. He meets Tobias Gibson a couple of days before leaving and comments that it was very friendly. They had met eight years before. (Tobias was the brother of Martha Elizabeth Gibson, who married Roswell Valentine in 1817, later in 1833 marrying Mark. Tobias was one of the founders of Methodism in the state of Mississippi.)

Outbreak of Scarlet Fever on the Place killing several Negro  children

Sunday Feb 17^th. Omega.  Today he and Vernon go for rides on their respective horses and Mr. Valentine finds the road is in bad condition. His horse gets stuck in the mud and throws him off over his head but he’s not hurt. He finds on his arrival that many of the people on the place are sick and the weather has been rainy.

Monday Feb 18^th. A mule trader comes by his place today and he purchased thirteen mules plus a little mule that the trader threw in on the deal. He pays the trader $1750 for the mules; he thinks these are the best mules ever. He mentions that Dr. Lily comes by to attend to one of his hands.

Thursday Feb 21st. The main work on the place for the next few days has been to pull stocks and burn them. They are also working on the mill to cut timber. The next day, Friday, the weather is still very nice and they continue to pull the stalks. He mentions to his neighbor, Mr. Smith, that his part of rain water swamp is dry because he has ditches while Mr. Smith’s flooded.  One of his hands, Old Kitty, who has been sick for several days he is hoping will recover, and he attributes her getting better because of Tartar Emitic, a poisonous substance used to induce vomiting. The next day, another mule trader comes by and stays the night with him.

Thursday Feb 28^th. He is heading to New Orleans again for the convention. A good many of the people on the place are sick.

While Mr. Valentine in New Orleans at Convention his son manages the place and keeps the diary for his father

Friday March 1^st. A child of one of his hands died of Scarlet Fever. Mr. Hardison asks Mark to run a line for him. For the next few days they are rolling logs up to the road I suppose to use as a road bed.

Monday March 4^th. They start plowing again today, running twenty teams on the place. There is more sickness on the place too. On Friday, another child, Moses, is taken ill and dies of the fever.

Friday March 8^th. Mark is convinced that there is Scarlet Fever on the place so he sends for Dr. Lilly who is staying at the Catlin’s. The doctor confirms Mark’s suspicion. Mark said he knows that are four very sick children and as many as thirty possibly ill. The next day more are coming in sick and Mark sends George to Goodrich’s to get some Belladonna, which the doctor advises is used as a preventative for the illness.

Monday March 11^th. Ploughs still working but the ground works badly he says. Nick is burning corn stalks but his workforce is so diminished that Mark fears the work will overtake him.

Tuesday March 13^th. No new cases of the fever are discovered for the last few days. Mark says he feels badly with chills and maybe fever. He writes his father and advises him to come home because of the sickness.    

Friday March 15^th. Children are getting sick and he asks for Dr. Lilly to come over again, as he worries that the Belladonna is not working as intended. On Friday they are running twenty four teams with plows.

Sunday March 17^th. Dr. Lilly comes again today to check on his hands that are sick with the fever. After Mark had seen a child on Saturday evening she had abruptly died the next day. He said that there were about 50 children sick on the place. The next day, more new cases are reported and Dr. Lilly comes again. Also showing up was an agent for gin stands.

Tuesday March 19^th. Mark was awakened early and told that a little girl the age of three had died of the fever and that a 13-year old was also very sick and dying.     As for the place, they are planting sugar cane today, also planting corn in the evening with 24 plows. The land does not work as well as he expects. A candidate for a judge in Madison, Tensas and Concordia parishes, Mr. Defanee, comes by and Mark says “he is very sanguine of his election.” On Thursday three more children take sick and dying and Dr. Lilly stays with Mark to tend to the Negroes.

Sunday March 24^th. Mark wakes up early with a sore throat and is afraid he has the fever. On Monday his fever worsens but he gets dressed anyway. Tuesday, his condition worsens and he gets Dr. Lilly and Mr. Stone to come over and help him. Dr. Lilly cauterizes Mark’s throat with Nitrate of Silver (shit) every few hours and he takes a dose of Cream of Tartar. Another child has died on the place.

Thursday March 28^th. Feeling improved he talks to doctor again that evening and entertain guests. Doctor applies a hot application to his throat. The next day his appetite returns. Some of his neighbors tried to get him to go hunting. On Saturday he feels good enough to get out of bed and dress and do some work. Mr. Valentine returns from his trip that evening. He writes in his diary the following excerpts about his trip:

I have been gone “from the last day of February until 30 March…in New Orleans attending the convention which adjourned on the 26^th inst sine die…after taking the state out of the Union and annexing it to a southern confederacy. All of our doings will be formal (-ized) in the Journals of The Convention and cannot be recorded here. Returned…found Mark up…from his attack of Scarlet Fever…and that there had been several deaths…during my absence making eight in all. There are hardly hands to run half the place. We are not done planting corn…sixty are sick…and I have never seen such a distressed place or business in a more hopeless condition. On my way up whilst on the boat I discovered a way to make a new tie for the (cotton) bales superior to everything (else) …and found a way to secure a patent.”

Monday April 1^st. A fifteen year old black girl and favorite (“She was the most valuable girl on the place.”) dies at one o’clock today and several more are reported to be sick. He has thirteen double plows running and planting corn.

Wednesday April 3^rd. Several more people are sick, including a little boy, on the place as they commence working above the road at Grassy Lake. The next day, he writes that the sick people are feeling better. When he was in New Orleans, he had purchased some new furniture for his cabin and they are unpacking that today and arranging it around the place.

Thursday April 5^th. He also had purchased a looking glass for $36.00. The last time he owned one was in 1834 when he was married and mentioned that he paid more than double the price. On Friday, he said that the child is dangerously sick.

Saturday April 6^th. He tries out his new invention – the tie, on a cotton bale  and says it is a perfect success. On Monday, he sent Vernon over to Goodrich’s to get some whiskey for the sick folks but they had none. The next day, it starts raining again.

Monday April 9^th. The sick are recovering slowly. The rain is starting again and it is very bad. Water is standing in the field and they can’t get out to work. He says it is a disaster.

The Attack on Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens

Tuesday April 16^th. He and Mark go over to have dinner with Mr. Catlin and meet a Mr. Galloway who is the editor of the Memphis Avalanche where they hear for the first time of the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston and the surrender to the confederate forces. He learns that the buildings inside the fort were burned and damaged by shell fire. On Wednesday he learns that Fort Pickens [also in Charleston Harbor] is being bombarded and of “a proclamation by President Lincoln calling for seventy-five thousand men to subdue the confederate states.”

Saturday April 20^th.  They continue to plant cotton with ten plows and 15 horses. “Last night I received the Picayune (New Orleans paper) from which I see the bank case has gone against me…a loss of $25.00.”  In the same entry from his diary, he refers to a property dispute he has had with Smith. “Mark returned from Floyd with the papers to enjoin Mr. Smith from cutting my levee.” He shows his several neighbors including Catlin, Dr. Carson, Bledsoe, Galloway and others the property in question and he says they “acceded that I had stopped no drainage (from his property) and so my levee must be let alone.”   He finds out from the newspapers that Virginia has seceded from the Union.

Monday April 21^st. For the next few days they continue planting and breaking out the middles(?).  It threatens rain.

Saturday April 27^th. Today he writes:  “Went out to Goodrich’s to meet the neighbors (neighborhood) to form a military company…made out badly. I procured five bales of cotton to assist in furnishing the company (referring to Company E of 3^rd La Cavalary) of Marks to go the war.”  It rains very heavily today. On Sunday he hears from Mr. Stone that the Scarlet Fever has broken out on his place.

Monday April 29^th. They again commence planting on the place despite the rain and breaking out the middles. “It rained incessantly and some of the time very hard.” The ground is very wet and plants badly.

Tuesday April 30^th. It’s too wet to plant or plow in the fields. All they can do is fix the hoes to get ready for work. They still have over a hundred and fifty acres of cotton to plant and 300 acres remaining in the lower field to break out the middles, and the corn is needing work and yet they can do nothing. You can sense his frustration.

Wednesday May 1^st. More of the same…to wet to plant or plow. If it doesn’t rain he thinks the ground will be in “good order for planting.” Instead, on Thursday it rains hard until past noon. In the evening they get out in fields planting in the mud and water. “…the worst work I ever saw but we must get the seed in the ground.”

Friday May 3^rd. The weather holds and so they continue to plant…”can only do half work but not as bad as yesterday.”  Mr. Catlin goes up to Swan Lake to try to raise a military company.

Saturday May 4^th. Rain starts again early and continues until after noon. “It seems almost unstoppable to get the cotton planted.”

Sunday May 6^th. No new sick cases but still 30 or more on the sick list. “All gradually getting better…some are having the skin come off their feet and hands who were taken (sick) near two months ago What is miserable is that those who appeared to have the disease lightest are the longest getting well.”

Monday May 7^th. Weather went from warm until wind turned around to the North and it gets cooler. “We are planting today in the mud as disagreeable and miserable work as we could will…we have about six hundred acres of cotton coming up and from sixty to eighty not planted…perhaps 100.”  We “have twenty two on the sick list today..but many of these their feet are peeling” and they cannot get in the field. On Tuesday he said they finish planting but water still remaining in the field “laying between the rows on much of the ground…late as it is I believe it is better as the season is that rain water swamp should not have been planted sooner.” The weather is clear and beautiful.

Wednesday May 8^th. Mr. Harper came over and Hardison drops by and told them of the …”secession from the old union of the states of Tennessee and North Carolina.

Thursday May 9^th. They repair the bridge over Little Tensas River by putting up a slab or support under the bridge to replace the broken one. He comments that it was an arduous task to get the 55’ long timber and have to haul it across a slough and put it down under the bridge. “The boys have made a good job of it.”

Friday May 10^th. Mr. Harper leaves this morning early to return home to his wife who has a young son. “Harper is full of the war spirit…”        

Saturday May 11^th.  They start the plows in the corn to clean the corn up. “The balance of the hands will get the corn thinned and the weeds cut out ready for the plows..” The land, he muses, plows tolerably well and the weather is warm and dry. “The river I hear is falling and the anxiety about the high water is giving way to hopes that among all the evils we shall escape that this year.” He feels that the corn has improved. The “blistering had a very fine effect on Ophelius…and relieving them of Scarlet fever… Ophelius had an affection (infection) in his head which gave him a palpitation of the heart…and a paralasis (sic) on one side.”

Monday May 13^th.  It rained so hard last night and this morning he finds more water standing between the rows in the cotton. They can’t get the plows in the field so they work on backing out the middles with a single plows. The other hands are planting Bermuda grass around the home. The next couple of days they continue to break out the middles in the cotton and plant peas. Weather is cooler and drier.

Friday May 17^th.  He has lost a mule today and “a poor one at that”, and the first of the year. The weather continues to be beautiful and cooler.

Saturday May 18^th.  He has finished plowing the corn and has scrapped about 50 or 60 acres of cotton so far. Another mule, Dick, died from the colic last night. On Monday he is turning out all the teams to scrapping in the fields. The ground is still wet and even though he has turned out all hands to scrape progress is slow.

Wednesday May 22^nd.  Weather is very cool for the season.  “Cotton hardly grows at all.”  On Thursday he hears about a man who was scalded to death on a steamboat near Columbia. Several passengers were killed. The river is high again “and much anxiety is felt about an overflow.”

Friday May 24^th. The weather is remarkably cool for the season, he adds in his diary, and very dry. They finish scraping the corn ground and work on the cotton ground continues apace and “much better.”         

Saturday May 25^th. He goes up to attend the funeral for Mr. Evans, the man who was scalded . While there he witnessed a fire break out in a house that had started in a smoke house and spread to the kitchen. It consumed the whole house in less than an hour. When he arrived the servants were removing some of the furniture and the roof was collapsing.

Sunday May 26^th. The cotton looks worse to him than he has ever seen this time of the year. He reports another case of fever among the hands; altogether about six or seven still sick. The next day, Monday, he says the cotton “looks miserably and plows badly.”

Tuesday May 28^th. The weather is turning much colder, “fires every morning and evening,” and most of the mornings there is a frost. There are eleven of the hands are down with the fever. The next day, the weather still cooler and dry and he grouses that the ground is getting harder and much slower to scrape cotton than he expects. He hears from Mr. Catlin that the river is still rising and higher than he’s ever known.

Friday May 31. They finished scraping in the lower field today. “on some part of the stand (it) is badly d- out the land is baked and what cotton there is looks badly.”     

Saturday June 1^st. Today he is sixty years old “and if I was not so fleshy I would still be vigorous (but) my health is good.” He has twelve out of work today and five or six with the fever.

Sunday June 2^nd. Mr. Floyd visits with Mark today and he is saving money to fit out a militia unit calling them the Cotton Carroll Guards who will volunteer for the war effort. Mr. Valentine gives him a draft for two hundred dollars. He also finds out that there is a large break in the levee on the Mississippi River side at Camack’s which lowered the water out of the river about 4 inches at Goodrich Landing. The cotton is ‘suffering for rain’, growing only a little. “The news is that New Orleans is blockaded at the mouth of the River.”

Monday June 3^rd. Twelve hands still out of the fields today and they continue to scrape cotton “very slowly.”

Wednesday June 5^th. Mr. Harper shows up with his overseer to see about hauling corn. On Thursday they get some heavy rain. On Friday, they get a tremendous rain storm and he comments that it’s one of the hardest he’s ever seen “and it is so wet we have to stop the plows. The wind blows down the corn…yesterday from the southwest and today one equally as hard from the north.”  He is afraid there is serious damage.

Saturday June 8^th. It’s another day of very heavy rain showers. “We are now overflowed with rain…it always rain when I work at rain water swamp.” On Monday he has twenty plows running up at Grassy Lake.

Tuesday June 11^th. It stops raining and he feels the weather has settled. On Thursday he has eighteen plows running, several hilling and the balance breaking out the middles. “Our corn is fine and without misfortune I shall make an abundance.”

Saturday June 15^th.  They get through scraping cotton today. “A poorer prospect for a cotton crop I never had in my life or at least not in late years.”

Sunday June 16^th. There is a north wind today but he feels that today is one of the hottest days he’s ever felt. “If not for the wind it would be insufferable.” The north wind has changed the weather today and it is quite cool. Twenty plows running today. Overseers come by to pick up corn which he sells at $1.00 a bushel. Monday it’s cool and clouds are gathering in north “which always portends rain which he does not want. One of the women complains of a sore throat and he fears another case of fever.

Wednesday June 19^th. He finds the first cotton blooms today. The mornings are cool and the afternoons are warm. No sign of rain. On Thursday Mrs. Stone sends wagons over to haul two hundred bushels of corn.

Monday June 24^th. The weather is warm and it begins to look like rain. Rain keeps up the rest of week. On Thursday, it begins to rain terribly, as he puts it, and to wet to run the plows. “It seems improbable to me that I will make a crop of cotton this year…it is little and stunted. On Saturday, the rain appears to be over with and they commence plowing in the wet fields as best they can. Mark goes out to Goodrich Landing to attend an election of company officers. Sixteen hands are sick.

Sunday June 30. The, shows up to talk to Mr. Valentine about throwing up a road across Horseshoe Swamp to Dunlap Ridge. He estimates the cost of five hundred dollars.

He Reports On A Sorry Account Of The Place

Monday July 1^st. “I have but a sorry account to give” he writes as the opening statement to his annual record of the crop. “The best may be but two and a half feet…and the balance from six inches to one foot” He goes on to say that “not more than one hundred acres have not the middles yet broken out since scraping and this fore….it has rained so much that the plows have all stopped and this evening all hands at work with hoes changing the dr- in the lower field which is all broken out. .. there is some fifty acres where the cotton is growing…which is encouraging. The corn is very fine and I shall make a larger crop than ever before.”

Wednesday July 3^rd. “Francis is dangerously sick from the remains of Scarlet Fever.  She has been having spasms from (an) infection of the brain.  I had her bled (and) blistered and given Calamel.” There is no planting today because the land is to wet. “The land in Grassy Lake which I have the middles to break out is the wettest.” A lot of the acres are muddy but he hopes it will dry fast. “I have lost two mules in the last few days…and four (already) this year. One by sticking a handle in his belly.” The next day, he reports that Francis is better but not out of danger yet. Thirteen are sick.

Friday July 5^th. “We rode over to examine the prospect for making a road across Horseshoe Swamp above here and find it not to be (a hard a) job as I anticipated. ...”the water seldom gets over the road and only about two hundred yards where it is difficult.

Saturday July 6^th. “The hoes finished in the lower field all below the road..before night yesterday. The plows got done breaking out middles above the road before dinner…so we have at last got over the crop once with the plows. The hoes are above the road and the plows below. Sunday, there is considerable sickness on the place(and) Mark has been complaining…and says he feels like he is having the fever. “Francis is getting well.”

Monday July 8^th.  A man from Mr. Catlin’s comes over to pick up Mark’s copy of Hardee’s Tactics [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Hardee], a military manual used by both armies during the Civil War. Mr. Harper and the recorder come over tonight and tomorrow are going up to appraise the property on Winn’s estate and want Mark to be one of the appraisers. On Tuesday, after Mark has left one of Mrs. Stone’s sons comes over to get Mark to help him run a line from their property to where they are digging a ditch.

Wednesday July 10^th. Albert Richardson calls on him and says he is a candidate for sheriff and Mr. Smith, his neighbor, is a witness to the appointment.

Thursday July 11^th. Mark goes over to Mrs. Stone’s to find the line from their home to Blackman’s for the ditch. Mark could find no corners so he returns home. The next day, Friday, Mrs. Stone gets another load of corn from Mark making one hundred and twenty bushels for the season. Mark stays at the Stone’s with Kate’s brother.  She writes in her diary on the 12^th “…Got home to find Mr. Valentine leaving. He had spent the day with the boys…but he stays until eleven. (his) caustic, cynical remarks and his shrewd, amusing comments on men and things are a relief after a day spent in listening to platitudes.” He sent over some copies of Blackwood’s Magazine the next day.

Saturday July 13^th. The ‘hillers’ working over the lower field and will start above the road later. On Sunday, Mr. Catlin brings over a paper today with accounts of some fighting.

Tuesday July 16^th. He writes a long letter to President Davis “respecting the national finances” which he believes he will not read because it’s so long.

Thursday July 18^th. Scattered showers for the past couple of days but this evening it rains hard, so bad he opines that they have to stop plowing. On Friday, no rain but the ground is to wet to do any plowing so all they can do is some hoeing in the muddy ground. He says thirty are out sick today.

Saturday July 20.  Yesterday and today it rains, sometimes hard.  “The prospect for cotton is very gloomy enough besides it we shall never get ours clean.”

Sunday July 21^st. It’s rained so hard they don’t do any plowing. “There’s so much water we can’t even clear the weeds out of the ‘drill’ (?) with the hoes so in the evening we set Bermuda grass on the buckets and cut…..things look discouraging enough.”

Tuesday July 23^rd. A wind from the North and it gets cooler and clears up. Twenty seven are out with some kind of sickness.

Wednesday July24th. Vernon goes to Omega to get papers with telegraphic accounts of two battles in Virginia. (First Manassas for one) “in which our armies are victorious.” On Thursday, they finish plowing up at Grassy Lake Ridge. …”the cotton is small and ground very wet…ditches are full and all choked up…prospects for cotton are poor.”

Saturday July 27^th. It has turned “warm and again looks like rain. This is certainly the most unforgivable season for me I have ever experienced…More sickness than ever before.”

Sunday July 28^th. He is hoping for one week of good weather “I have this year worked harder than ever before in the weeds and have a poor crop. (And) with a constant sick list enough to discourage any one.”

Monday July 29^th. He writes that they are running forty (40) plows today and the hoe hands chopping in the cotton below the road.

He Applies For A Patent On An Iron Tie

Tuesday July 30. He wrote to a doctor who lives in West of Virginia (West Virginia?) “offering to sell him this plantation at fifty dollars per acre…one fourth down…and balance in one, two and three years with eight percent interest. Also, wrote to the Commissioner Of Patents respecting my iron…” Today seven children are on the sick list.

Thursday August 1^st. He the ‘record of the crop’, as he calls it. “the best of the cotton is barely over four feet…a great deal but little over two or more…than a hundred acres of land not more than a foot high, yellow and very poor. The good cotton seems tolerably well and appears to be making tolerably well.”  He continues to say that we finish plowing above the road, at the grave yard, and hoeing at the tobacco ditch. The next day, Friday, he details his specifications to the patent office for approval of his patent on the iron tie.

Saturday August 3^rd. Mark he writes is “taken the fever (Malaria) and today his fever abates after taking quinine. Heavy rain showers occurs since Friday and up until this evening.

Monday August 5^th. Mrs. Stone send her son (Brother) over today to “have me assist in having clothing purchased and made for the soldiers which I agree to do.”

Tuesday Aug 6^th. He rides to the gate with a friend after dinner and on his return his good friend and neighbor Mr. Catlin has just returned from a trip to Memphis “and is gathering together all the guns he can get and send up there for the army. I let him have (my) two Jacob’s guns [ Another child – Amanda, dies of the fever.  There are now over thirty on the sick list today. They have but few hands [http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2006/08/19/the-jacobs-rifle/]  and my old double barreled gun.”

Friday Aug 9^th. to help pull fodder. The next day the heavy rains all but stop the hands from getting into the field and he says that it has hurt his fodder.

Monday Aug 12^th. Takes the packet boat for New Orleans today and as he looks over the land along the river he muses that the fields have not had as much rain as they have in Carroll parish. The next day still enroute to NO he notes that the sugar crop is some of the finest he’s seen but that they are apprehensive of too much rain. All the talk is about the war and the recent confederate victory at First Manassas. In a recent purchase he has agreed (?) to give one bale of cotton for a barrel of molasses.

Wednesday August 14^th. New Orleans. Arriving in New Orleans he meets his brother John to go to his house and see his family who he says is “very healthy but raining all the time.” The next day he goes out to find out how to get a drawing made to corroborate his patent, the baling tie.  He finds his architect, Mr. Reynolds, who designed his New Orleans home in 1846 is available to make a drawing for $10 dollars.

Friday Aug 16^th. New Orleans. The next day he crosses the river to see where the big guns are being manufactured and returns the next day, Saturday, only to find they are building across the river to break up the (Union) blockade. (As well as building log jams on the river to keep Union gunboats away from city, the South also kept gunships patrolling the area)

Sunday Aug 18^th. NO. He goes to hear a famous Presbyterian minister, Dr. Palmer, and a strong advocate of secession preach a patriotic sermon. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_M._Palmer]  “In his Thanksgiving sermon just days after the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president, Palmer defended slavery and endorsed secession, saying that it was the South's "providential trust" to preserve the institution of slavery.^[1] This was only days before South Carolina became the first of the eleven states to secede from the Union. When federal troops invaded New Orleans and imposed military rule under General Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, Palmer sent his wife and children to her father's plantation in South Carolina. He spent the remainder of the war preaching primarily to Confederate soldiers.”

Monday Aug 19^th. NO. He has a gentleman make the barrels for his sample (cotton) bale which he submits to the patent office. I “give him the privilege to sell and use my invitation if it is worth anything until he has made a ___?...and dollars without my charging him anything.”

Thursday Aug 22nd. NO. Orders several barrels of molasses from his cotton factor and discusses his patent. The next day, he and his brother John who may be estranged from his wife, Fanny, board the boat headed for Vicksburg. His wife also boards with the family. On Friday, after unloading, his wife she heads to Canton to be with her mother.  John goes with Mark to Omega (landing) where he is met by Vernon with his horse and a mule for John. When he returns home, he finds that Mark has been running the sawmill all week and making boards for the fences. They are unable to do any gardening or cut fodder because the soil is so wet.

Monday Aug 26^th. Oasis. He and his brother rode today across a field from the house to get to the sawmill and get covered with mud. “The cotton is doing better than other peoples as theirs is early than mine and much of it open…they are suffering much.”  It still is raining all the time. On Tuesday, he writes that the rain is pouring steady and hard every day and that he has never seen such a rainy season. “It has rained for three weeks and today the rain is terrible.”

Thursday Aug 29^th. It has been raining several days now and all they can do is run the sawmill. The water is getting so high in the ‘swamp’ that they cannot get any logs. Water continues to rise in the swamp the next day and there is no work.

Saturday Aug 31^st. The water is still rising in the swamp but the weather is clearing. Men and women are doing odd chores.

Sunday Sept 1^st. He writes that hardly any of the cotton is open yet and still green but the cotton ‘is a fine size.’ The health of the place is somewhat better and there is no one sick at this time.

Monday Sept 2^nd. His brother leaves today to return to New Orleans and he is getting to be an old man. The next day he recalls that this is the anniversary of his mother’s death fifty four years ago. The cotton appears to be opening but the prospect of a crop is poor.

Friday Sept 6^th. Mr. Currie and his son, Abram, come over and he gives Mark and Mr. Valentine an account of the Battle of Springfield (Missouri) in which he was engaged “and which our army obtained a complete victory.” It is raining terribly hard today.

Saturday Sept 7^th. For the next few days not much news but frequent rain showers. Mr. Harper comes over to say that his baby is sick. He was accompanied by Mr. Albert Richardson and Mr. Catlin. On Monday Catlin returns and Dr. Lily comes by. On Tuesday, a Mr. Travis, a candidate for recorder calls on him and Wednesday the 11^th Mr. Harper returns home after having staying a few days at Oasis.

Thursday Sept 12^th. Over one-half of his fodder was lost “in the shock from rain and we shall hardly half fill our house.

Friday Sept 13^th. It appears that the bad weather is over for awhile. His good hand, Billy, took the fever today. He has three guests tonight for dinner.

Saturday Sept 14^th. “This is the anniversary of (my) mother’s death ten years (ago), she had lain quietly at rest while we have struggled with the cares and sorrows of life…and our difficulties and troubles are greater than ever. Our country is at war and our only anxiety is how we can last.” The teams are sent to the river with ten bales of cotton and on the way to New Orleans. He wants to get some meat and molasses from his cotton merchant in New Orleans too. At last count meat was $33.00 a barrel. He reports still a lot of sickness on the place, particularly the children.

Monday Sept 16^th. Mark helps out a soldier who is returning to duty in Missouri in General McCullloch’s army. On Tuesday he gets all his Negro hands to work gathering in the corn which looks very well. The next day they get in twenty one wagonloads of corn. Harper’s daughter, Sarah Jane, had a daughter last night.

Saturday Sept 21. They gather over 100 wagonloads of corn from the place.

Tuesday Sept 24. He is disappointed that there were no newspapers at Omega today but he gets letters from his brother and from the Virginian who wants to come over here to see the plantation. Her husband has joined the army in Missouri with McCulloch.

Wednesday Sept 25^th. “The Army Worm which made its appearance in the cotton some days ago is now ravaging some part of it rapidly…the cotton picking in some places pretty good.”

Thursday Sept 26^th. He subscribed five bales of cotton to an artillery company. They finish gathering corn for the season…one hundred and seventy four wagonloads…26 loads below our highest estimate. Still more than we ever gathered before by a considerable (margin)…” They close up the corn crib in the evening.

Friday Sept 27^th.  They get fifty five hands to picking cotton today. The weather is cool for the season. “The picking is poor but we (still) get 7000 pounds.” He finishes writing out the specifications for his iron tie invention for the patent office.    

Sunday Sept 29^th. The weather is cool and clear for the next two days and he writes that a good many of the hands are coming in with chills and fever. “The frost (today) does not kill many of the worms and they are ravaging the cotton.”

Tuesday October 1^st.  “…cotton is opening tolerably well…and (picked) over ten thousand pounds with sixty pickers…I received a bill from New Orleans for four barrels of meat pork (?) at forty dollars a barrel…and ten kegs of nails at $10.50 per keg.”  Mr. Catlin calls with a gentleman, a blacksmith, who is running for the legislature…the “hardiest specimen I have ever seen.”

Thursday October 3^rd. It warms up the next few days and they are running the gin. Picking cotton at “about 200 hundred (pounds?) weight to the acre….got over 11,000 pounds yesterday.”

Monday October 7^th. A heavy rain prevents them from picking today so they do chores. They finished ginning last year’s cotton. For the next several days the weather holds and they are picking and doing chores.

Sunday October 13^th. Mark returns today “but we have no news of the war which seems to be dragging along without incident.” On Monday several of his neighbors come and have dinner with him. Also, a Mr. Imboden, a candidate for the legislature came by “…he was engaged in the hanging of Allen I therefore cannot vote for him.”

Thursday October 17^th.  “We closed the fence around the barn containing about fifty acres…and commenced a tool house.”

Saturday October 19^th. The wind swings around to the North again and it rains heavy all day through the evening.

Sunday October 20^th. Mark hears from the Stone’s that William has returned from Virginia…he is an officer in the (Confederate) army.” On Monday, Mark goes over to see young Stone who has just returned from Manassas and recovering from Typhoid Fever.

Thursday October 24^th. Rain has kept the pickers from getting into the field. Friday they get a light frost.

Monday October 28^th. Mark goes to Omega and brings back several articles including nails. On Monday, he writes that it’s his sister Sophia’s  birthday. “I have written to her for many years on this annivesary (of her birthday) but the war prevents all correspondence.”

Tuesday October 29^th. One of hands, Jacob, goes up to Vicksburg to purchase grates to put on the gin stand which were broken by “getting dogged by ground up cotton.” They pick only 9000 pounds.

Thursday October 31^st. After repairing the sawmill and getting it to run again they start to press cotton bales. The rain continues from yesterday and it’s dreary and cold.

Saturday November 2^nd. He sends three teams to the river to pick up fifty barrels of molasses. He is putting iron ties on the bales and fastening with a rivet…it is a slow process but by that means I save the rope”…wrote to his cotton factor in New Orleans to send him India bagging for his cotton bales for which I can…two hundred bales.

Monday Nov 4^th. He votes in the state election today (he doesn’t say who he votes for) Two of his hands are sick today including Billy, his lead men..no one to weigh the cotton. 

Wednesday Nov 6^th. National election today and he votes for the President, Vice President and members of Congress. On Thursday he tries to start the gin but one of the couplers on the shaft was broken. Mr. Fontane comes by and they talk about a slue on his property line.

Friday Nov 8^th. Mr. Craig called to ask about using one forth of his male hands between the ages of eighteen and 40 to work on the levee, to continue until the levee was done. Saturday he writes about building a house for his hands at the levee to stay in while working there. Sunday, the 10^th, he open a barrel of molasses he got from the Stone’s and it is full of cockroaches.

Monday Nov 11^th. He sends three teams with wagons hitched to the mules to pick up fifty barrels of molasses he had ordered through his cotton merchant. Mr. Catlin, his neighbor, called in the evening to tell them that a “large army landing at the Port Royal entrance to in the corner of South Carolina and Georgia and a battle [https://www.historynet.com/battle-of-port-royal.htm] having been fought in which we were defeated…also that a battle had been fought opposite Coumbus [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-belmont-missouri] in Missouri in which we were victorius.”

Wednesday Nov. 13^th. Today he hears of the death of Ashburn Ragan, Kate Stone’s brother. This morning three teams of horses haul men and lumber out to the levee to commence work on the house. He stays overnight at Bailey’s Place on the river and meets a Presbyterian minister who is headed back to Jackson, MS. On Thursday he finishes the house and returns home.

Sunday Nov 17^th. A Mr. Patrick comes by to exchange molasses for cotton. He recently resigned from the army and was a lieutenant. He stays with the Valentines for the next few days.

Wednesday Nov 20th. The teams went to the river today to haul the rest of the molasses back to Oasis. Mr. Patrick and Mark visit neighbors. On Thursday the weather has cleared and they start the gin up and work on picking in the field.

Saturday Nov 23. He sends out wagons with thirty-two bales of cotton as payment to Mr. Patrick for 102 barrels of molasses.

Wednesday Nov 27. Mr. Harper leaves today to go back to his plantation on Joe’s Bayou. The weather is clear and cool, and they are running the sawmill this week cutting timber. Thursday the weather is warm and they are picking cotton again today like most days the past couple of weeks. They have finished building a tool house on the place. He chides himself writing that “I have been terribly negligent and careless about such things and lost more every year by neglect than the cost of a tool house.” On Saturday, he writes that they are averaging about 5000 pounds of cotton a day.       

Sunday December 1^st.  Cloudy and warmer today for winter…”it is hoped that it will not rain….now have tolerable help on the place better than for a year past…hope we don’t have another year” (like this one).

Monday Dec 2^nd. “A more dark cloudy cold gloomy day than this I do not have to often record.” The next day, however, could not be more different: “this is a bright and shining day as yesterday was dark and gloomy.” He kills an ox for meat but said that it was “not very fine.” On Wednesday, they continue to pick cotton.

Thursday Dec 5^th. Mr. Hardison and Curry come by. They are sawing lumber “for a quarter (?) on Dunlap Ridge which we will name ‘Lost Hope’. Mr. Harper calls on him too and the next day go up to Omega.

Monday Dec 9^th. He sends twelve more hands to work on the levee today. He has sent a ‘double force’ to do the work, twenty-three in all and he doesn’t want to send them back after Christmas. The next day, they finish up the dairy house.

Thursday Dec. 12^th. “…this is the coldest morning we’ve had this year but we go to picking cotton.” The next day they get a ‘killing’ frost, the first of the year. The next few days is all about the weather.

Monday Dec 16^th. He sends more hands to the levee to “do up my part of the work”. On Wednesday, the 18^th, a Mr. Bledsoe is building a carriage house at the corner of the yard measuring twenty five feet long and twenty wide. Mark goes out to the levee where his hands are working to try and sell the lumber from the house they built on the levee to house his hands.

Thursday Dec. 19^th. “Today we finished picking cotton…gathered five hundred and fourteen thousand…(pounds)”

Friday Dec 20^th. The weather is as “fine as ever again today…I am putting things to Wright & Allen putting away ever thing related to picking cotton preparatory to commencing again for another crop in hopes of better luck in the coming year.”

Saturday Dec 21^st. Mark sends Vernon to the levee to get the hands and other things from the levee as “I am three weeks in advance of my work” (that he agreed to)

Monday Dec 23. “I am putting up the cotton bales and pulling up the stalks”…which pull very easy. On Tuesday the 24^th they finish work on the carriage house and store all the bales and covered them up…and get the business of the year pretty well closed.” There was a hard frost Sunday night but cleared up today. No newspapers today and no news for two weeks “except a daily paper or two…there are reports of a battle in Virginia.”                 

Wednesday Christmas Dec. 25^th. “Mrs. Stone sent us an invitation for us…to dine with her and we were glad to avail ourselves of the opportunity to pass a day so dull and dreary at home. Col Ragan was there Miss Stone’s father. We had a very fine dinner and passed a plasant evening.”

“Mamma invited the Valentines, father and son, to dinner, thinking it would be pleasant for Other Pa to meet the older man, and rather to our surprise they came and stayed until sundown. We never heard of Mr. Valentine, Sr., paying a social visit before. He is odd, just as we fancied he would be, but an excellent talker. He and his son are strikingly alike in looks, manners and turn of mind, though they generally take opposite sides on every proposition. Mark, Jr., says they are forced to do so to have something to talk about the long winter evenings.”^[i]

Thursday Dec. 26^th. “It’s warm and cloudy this morning with a prospect of rain which adds to the dullest of dullest of times…the holidays…Christmas may be something to the servants but it’s always a dull time to be a master.”

Saturday Dec. 28^th. It is clear and cold today and he spends the day reading the newspapers. Monday, December 30^th, he writes “we begin the work for the year today. Our first work is to repair the road across the slue…an ugly job. The sawmill is again running. There is but little sickness on the place. 

Tuesday Dec. 31^st. “We have a white frost this morning…followed by a pleasant day and so winds up the year 1861…. (its) One of the most disastrous for the country and myself that I have ever been through. The country is involved in the most savage war with the dissolved states with no present prospect of its termination and the season so wet that we have made a short half crop of cotton which with the Scarlet Fever has made that the hardest to be made of any crop I have ever raised and now without sufferings for a great part of it and no market for any it all remains on hand subject to loss by waste and destruction by fire without meat to feed the Negroes…everything is as bad as it will ever be.”        

1862 Diary (PAGES 54-65)

Wednesday Jan 1^st. “The men are making the road across the slue…one of the most arduous and disagreeable jobs we have ever done…the other hands are pulling stalks. We are running the sawmill to make lumber to build a quarter on Dunlap Ridge so I can sell this place after all my hard work to make it pay my debts. Jo is making a picket fence in front of the yard. “…we can mind the year so far as making the crop is concerned under more favorable prospects than last year.”

Saturday Jan 4^th. It starts to rain and the fine weather they were enjoying appears to be over. On Monday, the weather clears up.

Wednesday Jan 8^th.  He is having some meat cooked in the kitchen to give the hands for all their hard work. “I am fixing up the stock barn for the Negro clothing…the women complain loudly for meat…many are too sick to work.”

Thursday Jan 9^th. The Confederate tax assessor called on him today to assess the property; he says it will be about $600 dollars, quite a lot of money at that time. On Friday, he sends a slave, Jacob, in to Vicksburg to pick a part (cock) to repair machinery. Nineteen of his hands are reported sick.

Tuesday Jan 14^th.  The ground is covered in sleet so he has his hands stop all work except for cutting wood. The next day, they finish enclosing and detaching the lot behind the Negro cabins for a garden and put a fence around it.

Sunday Jan 19^th. Mr. Cooly wants to buy meal from him and he agrees to sell him a hundred bushels at $1.00 a bushel.

Wednesday Jan 22^nd. “A Mr. Jameson called with a request for our half of the Negro men between the ages of 18 and 45 to go for fifteen days to work on Fort Pillow (in Tennessee)…seventy five miles above Memphis…some at once.” 

Thursday Jan 23^rd. He has agreed to put more of his hands to work on the levee at the river and Mark and Vernon haul provisions out to them. He also makes plans to send hands to Fort Pillow.

Friday Jan 24^th. They are cutting a ditch at the upper end of Grassy Lake (Valentine Ditch).

Sunday January 26^th. The younger Mark goes up to the visit the Holme’s (Brokenburn) and Mark senior is busy replacing a pump valve seat on the sawmill.

Tuesday Jan 28^th.    He has one of his slaves to go get some molasses at the Landing.  Jacob is running the sawmill. He writes his brother John today who lives in New Orleans. The Hardiman’s come by with their little girl and Mrs. Amanda Stone comes by for a visit.  On Wednesday, he expects friends but they did not make it.

Tuesday Feb 4^th. “It is now six days since we have seen the sun…ceased raining (today) and turns cool.” Mr. Harper with several of his hands try to get across the Tensas River. The next day it clear off and cools. Mr. Cooly calls to buy some more meal from Mark.                 

Friday Feb 6^th .  Mr. Catlin who had been at Fort Pillow came back and returns with a letter from Mark…he had $40.00 stolen from him. ..he was to leave in a week to return home. The rain continues unabated and the weather is warming. Fort Pillow was located on the River near Henning, TN, about 40-miles north of Memphis.**  They return home three days later. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Pillow] [Tenn State Park] Located on the western edge of Tennessee, approximately 40 miles north of Memphis, Fort Pillow State Historic Park is rich in historic and archaeological significance. Steep bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River made this area a strategic location during the Civil War. The fort was originally built by Confederate troops in 1861 and named after General Gideon J. Pillow of Maury County. It was abandoned in 1862 due to the Union Navy’s advancement along the Mississippi River. The area became a state park in 1971. The 1,642 acre Fort Pillow is known for its well-preserved breastworks and reconstructed inner fort.

Thursday February 13        “This morning before any of us were up Mark and the hands arrived from Fort Pillow.. all well with Mr. Harper and Lt. Hardeman going out to Omega”  Mr. Hardeman apparently has joined the Confederates.  Field hands are still raking cotton stalks.

Saturday Feb 15. Reports that rain storms are really bad. Later in the week he cut a ditch about 45 rods, or, 16.5 feet.

FALL OF FORT DONELSON AND FORT HENRY IN TENNESSE, LOSS OF NASHVILLE

Friday Feb 21 Today a Mr. Galloway and Mr. Jeffries called to tell Mr. V “the terrible intelligence that our army is defeated” at Fort Donelson (February 11^th) in Tennessee and opening up the way for the Union to take Nashville. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle of Fort_Henry#Background]. The week before the Battle of Fort Henry on the Mississippi River was fought in which Grant and a Union flotilla were successful.  He frets that the Union is destroying our army. “I am in hopes that we have not lost as many men as reported.” [wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort Donelson] 

Thursday Feb 27 Mark and Mr. Harper returned today from Floyd where they have been since Saturday..  “Mark is engaged in getting subscription of corn for the use of the families whilst the men are gone to the West.”   Mr. V subscribed to five hundred bushels of corn for the families of Confederate volunteers, Mr. Harper 300 bushels and Mr. Callie 200 bushes to be delivered to Floyd. The following Saturday, he writes in his diary that are running eighteen double plows and picking up corn stalks. The next day they are in the field trying to burn the corn stalks but the soil is to damp.

Sunday, March 2^nd The following day Mark returns from Floyd on “his expedition of getting corn…for the families of volunteers”.  His father writes that he has promised to deliver fifty seven hundred bushels of corn in notes to be delivered to Floyd, beginning the first week in August with one thousand bushels.   Several of the planters promised to subscribe.

Monday, March 3^rd Mr. Hardison, is a captain in the same militia unit as Harper and Mark. They are running plows and pulling stalks the next few days. On Friday he writes “they are running twenty double plows and two horn rakes.” They are also burning corn stalks.

Sat, March 8^th Mr. Harper returned to Floyd to attend an election of officers of a volunteer company.” (Company “E” part of 3^rd LA Cavalry regiment) He continues, “ Mark has gone out today to Goodrich Landing to attend a militia muster of which Hardison is captain and Mark is one of the lieutenants.

Sunday, March 9^th This morning they hitched four mules to the buggy to take the Harper family to Tensas, and across the swamp in a boat (or skiff) where they got in the buggy and were safely taken to Tensas (Bayou) where they were met by niggers (his writing) and four mules. They safely crossed Tensas Bayou in a skiff. 

Tuesday March 12^th. The next few days he writes about the heavy rains and how difficult it is to get into the field to cut the cotton stalks in the field. …the rain “completely deluging the land and putting an end to the plowing, ” as well as any business outdoor.

Saturday March 15^th Mark attends a militia muster again at Goodrich Landing. Mr. V usually refers to weather conditions on a daily basis especially in view of the fact that they are burning off stalks and plowing to prepare the soil for planting season later in the spring.

Monday March 17^th.  His comments about the gnats (mosquitoes too maybe), how very bad and he has had to grease the mules with lard…it’s the best he can do for them.

Tuesday Mar 18^th More rain again makes it difficult for them to finish plowing and start putting in the corn. The gnats are terrible. Next day Mark went to the meeting house to meet the company officers and gets training on how to drill the troops.  Mark went out again the next couple of days to the Landing and returned home quite disgusted with the “performance.”

Thursday Mar 20^th. Mark goes to a meeting house where he is to meet the officers in his company and learn how to drill his men.

Monday March 24^th. They commenced planting corn today with thirty seven plows opening up the old ridges with single plows and dropping in the corn using single and double plows to till the soil and using three plows to break out the soil.

Thurs March 27^th. Mr. V says that he is trying to give up tobacco and that he is working on the third day and trying to quit. They continue to plant corn and break up the ditches through the end of the month.

March 28^th/29^th.  A friend drops by too ask for seed corn which he agrees to sell five bushels for a $1.00/bushel. Mark on his way to attend militia muster again, notices that river had fallen another 6”.                                  

Note: most of his diary entries after the first of April are to do with the weather – dry and hope for rain – with some entries about Mark going out to Goodrich Landing to muster with militia.

April 2^nd they finish planting the corn. He comments the first of their corn they planted is starting to come up. For the first of several paragraphs, he comments about how difficult it is to “break out” the middles in the cotton.

Sunday April 6^th He comments about buying several molasses barrels from his cotton merchant which he has subsequently…he gives out more barrels than necessary to neighbors . He talks about progress of cotton planting using four harrows (to break-up out the soil for planting?), rain needed. Now, after a couple of days more rain is delaying the planting because the ground is to wet.

Tuesday April 8^th First mention of any major battles appears in diary today when he refers to Shiloh, or Pittsburgh Landing, but does not mention by name. “I got news today of a great battle on the Tennessee River in which our army was victorious,” he says.  [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shiloh].

TERRIBLE FLOODING & YANKKES ATTEMPT TO TAKE VICKSBURG BY RIVER

Friday April 11^th Rain falls in buckets for four or 5 hours today, completely deluging the fields. He comments that he never saw more rain fall at one time.

Tuesday April 16^th & 17^th They are planting cotton since the fields are dryer. Wednesday they lose their most valuable mule, Bil (sic) who took sick and died within two hours. Next day, another mule dies. He mentions a man who in a fit of temper hit a mule over the head and killed it. Mr. Harper came by to organize the militia to guard the levee. Later, the next day, the Mark and Mr. Harper go out to Omega.  He records lots of rain on and off, the fields are wet and too hard to get out and do any planting or ditching.

April 23^rd Weather finally turned pleasant after days of rain, commenced planting cotton while the weather held. Mr Catlin and Mr. Nelson come by. Mr. Nelson is from the other side of the river and wants to get land to raise corn. Vernon kills a deer and they stayed for dinner. Again, the next day, rain prevents them from finishing the cotton planting. Friday April 25^th Raining hard again today so they cannot do any planting.

Saturday April 26^th Mr. V sends out two teams of mules today with ten 10 bales of cotton to the penitentiary in Baton Rouge. He intends to get a 1000-yards of Carrels (?) in exchange for two pounds of cotton. (He finds out next week that the penitentiary declined his offer to exchange the cotton for C-.) He has heard from a friend that there were 13 federal gunboats at the levee in Vicksburg and the country is “all in confusion.”  This of course was Grant’s flotilla’s commanded by Admiral David Farragut’s  attempt to invest Vicksburg from the river using federal gunboats.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant's_Canal  The canal construction started at nearby Delta, LA, 27 miles southeast of Sondheimer, LA.  Oasis. Construction began in June of 1862. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~lamadiso/articles/canals.htm

Monday April 28^th.  He visited with Mr. Hardison today and they discussed the sighting of federal gunboats at Vicksburg, but he thinks that it seems that they have not yet surrendered the city. The Confederates at Vicksburg – with General Pemberton in charge – have been given four days to respond to the summons and to let the women and children go to a safe place. Afterwards, the gunboats will “commence to bombard with hot shot and cannon balls.”  It seems, he continues, that the federals cannot get their transports and army past the forts and into the city… “only the gunboats have succeeded in passing the forts” but all they can do, he says, is to bombard [the fort] but can’t land troops to hold the city.

Secessionists Ask the Planters to Burn Their Cotton and Flooding

Wednesday April 30^th.  Mark and his father went to Goodrich again today to attend a meeting and to discuss affairs especially the burning of the cotton.  Came back through Hardison’s and stayed for dinner.

Friday May 2^nd. Mark goes out to where the hands are at work on the levee. The teams returned today with eight barrels of molasses and a barrel of sugar for Mr. Harper.

 Saturday May 3^rd. Catlin came by today to discuss how they should keep account of the cotton they buried so that the government would know to pay for if buried.

Monday May 5^th. Attends a meeting a ‘publick’ meeting at Goodrich’s, finds that plantation owners are preparing to burn their cotton to keep out of the hands of the enemy. He discovers that many along the river below Vicksburg have already burned their crops. A boat passed up river with confederate soldiers with notices for planters to have their cotton out of their gins “to haul it out of the reach of the enemy” and out of reach of the rabble. He does not burn his cotton.

Wednesday May 7^th.   He rides over to visit Fontaine this morning after hearing that he had joined  the army but he has decided to wait.  On the way to Floyd he was alarmed at the water level in the swamp, Grassy Lake. “Situation is dire. He says the “water is rising on the swamp alarmingly” and he regrets that he can do nothing about it. “…I concede that it can come over ditches …a break means that…those at the upper end of the parish running right back to the Macon Bayou and one eight miles this side of Vicksburg at Young’s Point” would be flooded. “Certainly this country in great distress…The Federal gunboats are still coming up the river and the Military (confederacy) is burning all the cotton; the river is threatening to inundate the country around them. “Everybody, he says, “is all overflowed.”

Saturday 5/10/62.  The water has continued to rise in Bayou Macon (at the lower end of their property) almost four inches in the last 4 hours.

Sunday 5/11. The water in the….is rising so fast that I stopped all work at twelve o’clock to go work on the levees.  “The water has risen up to seven inches this morning.” His son returned the night at one o’clock and he said water on Bayou Macon has risen several inches “and is higher than ever before.”  They continue working on the levees on the bayou at the lower end of the place

The water continues to rise for the next three to four days. Water rises an average of 2-3” daily for next several days. He has his hands working on the levees to reinforce them against rising water.

Friday/Saturday May 16^th & 17^th Mark goes over to Mr. Stones the Provost Marshall to see if they could defer the burning of the cotton on Oasis. However, he returned home the next day b/c Mr. Stone was not home. Water rises another 6 inches in last 24 hours.

 NOTE: Location of Stone house in Carroll Parish. Property of Amanda Stone, Valentine property not shown on Plantation Map. Should be located west of Stone home on Bayou Macon. https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4013e.la000252/?r=-0.229,-0.091,1.506,0.657,0.

May 19^th The hands tried to plow today but they found the water was rising and the big ditch near the house was broken and there was flooding in the fields. Raining at the rate of 2” inches or more in last 24 hours. It looks like they were able to repair the ditch and stop the flooding.

May 21^st they can hear the sound of the heavy guns at Vicksburg in the distance and assume a big battle going on. Hands continue to shore up the levees, rain continues sometimes as much as 2-3 inclhes.

May 22^nd They finished repairing the levee on the river at the upper end of the ridge and there is good news that the water is falling and has only risen 1 inch in the last 24 hours.  . He compares the rain and the flooding to the flood of 1858: river is about 18 inches of up “to being the highest mark since 1858.Mr. He’s heard no new news about Vicksburg.

May 23^rd Water is coming into the big ditch (drainage ditch) and flooding the fields in the low places.  He says that the flooding has inundated nearly 300 acres of land and a hundred acres of corn. Water has also risen near the house. The following day the weather cools and the rain appears to be over.

May 25^th Mark plows up the cotton on the ridge and plants corn. He intends to “put all in corn”. Furthermore, he plans to have just enough cotton to produce 50-bales for seed. “It is hardly profitable, “ he avers, that “we can be burning cotton today and three months hence picking and ginning (cotton) for market.  The gunboats seem to defer attacking Vicksburg waiting forever for current.

Kate Stone’s Observations About Mr. Valentine; Accusations Of Treason

May 26, 1862: [Brokenburn Diary of Kate Stone} “All went to church yesterday.  Found the two Mr. Valentines awaiting us, Sunday is their visiting day.  Old Mr. Valentine is very despondent, fore-telling the most abject poverty and starvation for the whole county. He came over to try and induce Mamma to have all the cotton plowed up in order to plant corn and to beg her not to let Brother Walter go to Vicksburg. He says, ‘Mark shall not go.’ He has made himself very unpopular by his bitter opposition to the cotton burning and by not allowing his son to join the army. There is no doubt he should go at once. Some actually think Mr. Valentine is in favor of our enemies and advocate hanging him by mob law. A most unjust report and utterly without foundation. I suppose his being of Northern birth increases the prejudice. The old gentleman we do not know well, but we know the young one well and all like him immensely.”^[ii]

May 28^th Reports that Mr. Harper comes by in a dugout…he was glad that Harper had been able to save himself “so as to sustain but little loss by the overflow.”     Water in the (field) falls very slowly but he worries that it looks possibly for more rain to come; he worries that it would cause “great damage.” They continue to plant corn.

May 31^st The federals are bombarding Vicksburg again with “three hundred shot and shell”, he recounts from newspapers, “killing no one and doing no great damage. We fired few shot in return.”  Water fell another 2”.  Mr. Harper leaves the dugout at the Valentine home.

Sunday June 1^st  “This is my birthday and today and I am sixty-one years of age”, he begins his diary on this morning, and “can see birthday of my life has my prospects looking more gloomy..my cotton crop on hand of more than five-hundred bales has just been all burned…and for fear of the enemy doing themselves all the mischief they can.”

Mr. Harper left this morning with three barrels of molasses and a barrel of sugar in a “leaky dugout..and a  day’s work before him. 

 June 4^th Mrs. Stone’s son comes to Valentine home to talk about an outbreak in New Orleans and that the federal commander was killed.

June 7^{th&  8th}  He goes over to the Stone’s where he learns that the federals have taken Memphis and Fort Pillow on the Tennessee River and that General Beauregard has fallen back to Holly Springs. He also learns that the Confederates had a “successful  fight at Richmond” (probably the end of the Peninsula Campaign by McClelland to take Richmond) and that General Jackson has  crossed into Maryland (Maryland Campaign including the surrender of Harper’s Ferry before Battle of Antietam in September of that year) and making Yankees worry about Washington.

June 9^th  10^th He attends a meeting at Goodrich Landing but nothing was done about making any defense of the Parish; he urges that they form a regiment in the parish to assist the citizens to repel raids and raiding parties.  The next day he remarks how cool the weather is…and “how this is the most remarkable cool weather at this season.

June 12^th Mark and Vernon go to Omega to see if they can get some table salt but he notes in his diary that there “they could none but some little hopes of table salt….75 cents apiece..” This notation trails off and is too difficult to read.

June 14^th The weather while for the last several days had been cool suddenly warms up and he is concerned for his corn suffering because of the lack of rain..

June 15^th 1862 “It is very hot today and no appearance of rain”…”the health of the place does not improve. The stench from the swamp and falling water has been very bad.”  The water has retreated and they let the milk cows out in the fields. Later next day he rides over to Mr. Hardison’s to inquire about news and discovers that federal gunboats were spotted in the river near Vicksburg. Their corn crops are suffering due to the lack of rain.

June 18^th. Still no prospect of rain. He said the people are getting sick and that he does not feel well himself. He said the place continues to look sick. A small shower and cooler weather the next day does not offer much respite.

June 21^st Last night, a Friday, they had guests and enjoyed a dinner of fresh fish their guest caught while fishing at Broad’s Lake. The weather inexplicably turns cool and they build a fire in the evening. On Sunday he mentions that the Negroes have caught many fish on Broad Lake near Oasis.

June 23 News is that Federal gunboats are spotted across the river at Goodrich (Landing). A Union officer and some men visited the shore.  The following day he gets a visit from a Mr. McCook who pays him the balance due of $50.00 for 100 bushels of corn. They are “working out the young corn”, the drought continues and it is still very hot. In addition to the hot weather he reports that there is a great deal of sickness but does not go into any detail. .

Monday June 30^th He says some days ago they heard more cannonading of Vicksburg [by the gunboats] a few days ago but nothing the yesterday or today. Finish working on the corn up on the ridge. He wants to scrape cotton for the next few days to clean up the land but also because there is nothing else for the hands to do. The weather is very hot.

Tuesday July 1^st.   He hears that the federals are “pressing the Negro men into their forces to cut off the Bend at Vicksburg.

Friday July 4^th.  Very heavy cannonading at Vicksburg in the morning and then more cannonading the next couple of days leading to the conclusion from the locals with little scant news that Vicksburg has not yet been taken. https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/vicksburg-summer-1862/

July 8^th Many of the “hoe´ hands are clearing the peas and potatoes…many are reported to be sick Two days later while visiting at M. Smith’s he hears of a great victory at Richmond over the federals. Next day, a Friday, he rode over to Mr. Catlin who has been sick and hears more good news about the victory at Richmond. The next day, the 9^th, he mentions that Mr. Hardison is enrolling conscripts. More news about success of battle near Richmond.

Wednesday July 9^th. Mr. Hardison is enrolling conscripts in the army. Mr. Valentine reports more news about the battle near Richmond (Seven Days Campaign). His friend Catlin who owns a nearby plantation with 650 acres was sick but is now recovering. The drought continues.

Tuesday July 15^th. “This is the seventh week of the drought…and from the present (conditions) it may continue seven weeks longer. A heavy cannonading has been kept up all day at Vicksburg.” On Wednesday the cannonading continues. 

Thursday July 17^th. The drought continues with intermittent rain showers which are insufficient to support his potato vines that were recently planted.

July 18^th. He hears today that a number of federal vessels were sunk but little detail. Note:  This was the Confederate ram, “Arkansas.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Arkansas]

Tuesday July 21st. They are working out in fields on their (little) cotton crop. No more news about Richmond campaign except that the Yankees are “reluctant to acknowledge.”

Friday July 24^th. He learns from a Mr.Richie that he has news that his son and two other men have died of sickness in the camps. 

Saturday July 26^, 1862. Hears today of two or three more victories over the federals (by the ram ‘Arkansas’)..and learns that several federal ships have left Vicksburg.

Sunday July 27^th. “The federal fleet…and army have raised the siege of Vicksburg and left.

Friday August 1^st. Mark rides over to Floyd today “to rec… in his excuse against being conscripted. We set out potatoes today which I hardly expect to live because of rain.”

The Confederate Ram Arkansas is scuttled

Monday Aug 4^th. He sends Vernon over to Mr. Harper’s on Joe’s Bayou to pick up some salt and tallow. “In the evening Mark took the fever and was very sick until”…late at night. On Tuesday his fever starts to drop off .

Monday August 11^th. Mr. Harper and Mark get together today to go joint their unit.”The drought still continues and we have had bad news from Baton Rouge…Our army met with a repulse and the gunboat ‘Arkansas’ broke its shaft and had to be blown up.” On Wednesday Mr. Moseley and Mr. Newmon came over to see Mr. Valentine and joined Mr. Harper’s militia unit.  

Thursday August 14^th. “We have started to dig a new well on the bend of the ridge next (to) the swamp as the sand rises in it so that we can get no water. If we could do so the water would be good.”

Tuesday August 19^th. “The federal fleet is again at Milliken’s Bend and the (Yankee) cavalry are said to be ravaging the country.” The next day he rides up to “Catlin’s and spent the day unpleasantly…the fact is Catlin is not a gentlemen…the federal raid has diminished much…the community is in such a panic that nothing reliable can be heard.”  The sickness on the place diminishes, he says, as the weather gets drier.

Aug 19, 1862:  [from Brokenburn] “Mr.  Valentine was over yesterday.  He has joined his brother-in-law’s company, Capt. Harper’s, and is very cheerful and agreeable.  He has the pleasant consciousness of duty done and can hold up his head with other men.  Mr. Catlin has also joined that company.  The fear of conscription has forced them in.  Still, better late than never.  I know Mr. Valentine would have gone long ago but for his father’s persuasions.^[iii]

Saturday August 22^nd. Gunboats are spotted going upriver from Milliken’s Bend, and the Yankees are stealing Negroes (from local plantations). Mark and Mr. Harper gather up some of his neighborhood men on their way to Lake Providence. Mr. Valentine rides over to Mr. Hardison’s for dinner “shortly after the troops came along-near a hundred men (militia) had dinner after which they all took up their line of march for Lake Providence…there were five or 600 in all.” Several days later Harper’s company is ordered to Tallulah. The next day he mentions that an acquaintance brought over some quinine for his daughter Sophie who was sick. (The Yankees had tried several approaches to Vicksburg, all up to this point were unsuccessful:  the first was a canal to Desoto which was across from Vicksburg which once it reached the Mississippi the canal banks collapsed; another unsuccessful attempt with the Yankee gun boats down Tallahatchie River to the Yazoo River at Greenwood and Fort Pemberton failed;  and, of course, Grant’s Canal which once stared at Lake Providence the planned course was to go to Macon Bayou, the Red River, and other rivers before ending at the Mississippi below Vicksburg. It too failed. )

Monday August 25^th. There was heavy cannonading near at dark “…about 20 guns.” The next evening at dinner with the Stone’s he finds out the cannonading “arose from some persons having found some pistols and guns at the gunboats where they commenced heaving shells in various directions thinking there was a force somewhere…” 

Thursday August 28^th. Mr. Harper comes by at breakfast and purchases a horse from Billy for three hundred dollars together with a sorrel mare from Mr. Valentine for $200.

Friday August 29^th. He hears today that his friend Mike Morgan has died and the death of a Matt Johnson the next day. “The distress from the war is very great.”

Monday September 1^st. “This morning Mark went…to Tallulah where Harper with his men are encamped and returned after night with reports favorable as regards events of the war.” He goes over to Mr. Hanna’s to discuss making some puncheons for his bridge…he is also getting ready to pick cotton.

Wednesday September 3^rd. “This is the fifty second anniversary of my mother’s death and I am still left to record it. Great have been those changes in fifty-two years when our country was just rising into national (prominence)…now the union is divided and the most terrible war the world…was raging between the North and South and a feeling of such hatred now existing between the parties as was never before…My father is still living is now over eighty three years of age and residing in the state of New York but I have heard nothing from him for more than a year and know not whether he is living or dead and I do not expect to hear from him until the war is over and God only knows when that will be.”

Thursday September 4^th.  Mark returned to his company in Richmond in Madison Parish. He sends a buggy over with them to sleep in at night…he hears about another “horrendous battle in Virginia at Manassas lasting two days in which we again defeated the federals.”

Tuesday September 9^th. “Rode out this morning to the camp where Mark is in about one mile of the river…found him well and quite comfortable…Soon after a picket came down telling us that gunboats were coming down the river so the men loaded their guns…saddled their horses and went out but it turned out to be five gunboats coming from (with) transports all under flag of truce and the transport covered with our men who had been prisoners of war being released to Vicksburg for exchange of prisoners.”

Thursday September 11^th. He returns to the camp where he reads yesterday’s paper “giving ‘news of continued success…and a report that we have taken Cincinnati.” He returned home after dinner and the next day he is at home where he has four hands placing “logs on a causeway on the new road across the swamp (Grassy Lake) to save throwing so much dust.”

Saturday September 13^th. He finds out that the accounts of Cincinnati are not true and comments that one of tthey are concerned about the salt works.

Sunday September 14^th.  “The other seven gunboats that came with the prisoners returned up (river) today under a flag of truce.” He returns home that evening to find that Mrs. Stone had sent him “a fine piece of beef.”

Wednesday September 17^th. He rides out today “in search of news” and finds that “the news is favorable for our side…We are advancing with large armies on Cincinnati and Baltimore” (fake news) and “Another large lot of prisoners have arrived (in Vicksburg)…this time there were nine transports and two gunboats and in all” with both trips up and down the river “they have returned some eight or ten thousand men..”  On Thursday he has a ‘Thanksgiving’ dinner with the Stone’s. He rises over the camp again on Saturday and Sunday to see his son and Harper.

Tuesday September 23^rd.  Visits today with Mr. Catlin and hears about the salt works. The salt is selling for $3.00 a bushel.

Wednesday September 24^th. It is still raining today and it is difficult to pick cotton. He goes to Hardison’s and then over to the salt works. He sees Mark again today and finds that he has been selected as a third lieutenant. The next day he goes back to the salt works with the team and carries thirty bushels of corn with him. Vernon goes with him to drive the mules. He only gets as far as Tensas Bayou and had to stay the night with Mr. Defrances. The next morning,  Friday, he meets the team at Bayou Mason where Mr. Nutt* has “run the wagon back into the Bayou” so they are delayed the rest of the day. On Saturday before they can continue another wagon breaks down and is sent to the shop for repairs. [*Haller Nutt was a planter who owned 400 acres in Madison Parish.  He had also built a Longwood Plantation in Natchez, MS]

Sunday September 28^th. They get to Monroe today and crossed the Washita (Ouachita River) and go another seven miles. “Washitaw is certainly the most beautiful country I ever saw.”

Tuesday September 30^th. He and the other wagons arrive at the salt works “with our mules galled jaded and tired.”

Wednesday October 1^st. “Tried to get my contract for salt at two dollars per bushel filled but they would not fill it and I have to give four dollars per bushel.” On Saturday he buys twenty bushels of salt at $5.00/bushel. Sunday he buys more salt and bought five or six bushels of black kettle scrappings for the Negroes at one dollar a bushel. 

Sunday October 5^th. He starts home today. “One of the drivers of Mr. Nutt’s wagon broke before we get five miles..but the driver claimed he could get home.”  Mark and leave and stays the night with a friend and join the team again the next day for the trip home.

Monday October 6^th. He purchases ten sides of leather (?) and twelve of upper leather that cost two hundred and fifty dollars and tries to meet up with his team. On Tuesday they forded the Washita and camped a mile outside of Monroe.

Wednesday October 8^th. One of Mr. Nutt’s mules breaks away from the teams and they can’t find him. Mark gets his gun which he had left for repairs in town. They cover twenty five miles today. He arrives home the next day late in the evening. They unload the forty bushels of salt and put it under cover before the rains start. Mr. Nutt found his mule “so all is safe.” …It is “cold cloudy and gloomy” Saturday evening.

Sunday October 12^th. “This morning before day Old Melinda died from of Cholera Morbius…she was prostate when I came home and soon fell into collapse from which she could not be around…I rode out to the camp.” On Monday, he discovers that a hundred dollars that he had left in his ‘secretary’ had been stolen.

Wednesday October 15^th. He was expecting a visit from some of Mr. Harper’s family but they did not come so he is afraid they are sick. Mrs. Harper with Mark’s granddaughter in tow arrive in the afternoon and a Capt. Dunn come later in the evening and stay for dinner.

Friday October 17^th. He rode up to the army camp to find that Mark and several soldiers had escorted a “train of wagons” from Carthage to the depot at Tallulah “loaded with arms and ammunition for the army at Little Rock.  On Saturday they use the leather he purchased on his trip to the salt works to make shoes for the soldiers at the camp.

Monday October 20^th.  Mr. Harper rides over to Monroe “he is in great trouble by Wiley’s (his commanding officer?) endangerment to break up the company or to set aside his election.” On Wednesday he finds out that Harper has to go to Alexandria to see General Taylor.

Tuesday October 21^st.  He hears that the Yankees have evacuated Corinth, Memphis, Bolivar and Nashville in consequence of their defeat in Kentucky by General Bragg. “Only hope it may be true.” On Thursday he learns that the Yankees evacuated Nashville and Corinth but not Memphis and that Bragg’s win in Kentucky was not decisive.

Monday October 27^th. They have the second heavy frost of the season which killed some of the vegetables on the place.

Monday November 3^rd. The weather has turned much colder after a brief warm spell. Mr. Harper arrives back home the next day. He doesn’t write anything about Harper’s predicament so apparently no resolution.

Friday November 7^th. He reports that it is uncommonly cold for the season but clear and dry. Mr. Smith (whose farm is north of his) hands were burning ‘deadening’ and it got close to Mr. Valentine’s fence on his property, and burned 75 bales of cotton on Dunlap Ridge. The next day he sends some of his hands up to fence near the fire line “to hold up the fence.” He records that the hands are reporting more cases of chills and fever which would “account for the change in the weather approaching.”

Thursday November 13^th.  One of hands has a child that is dangerously sick and today he finds out that the little girl has died. Mr. Harper had to go to Monroe to buy clothes for his men in the militia unit.

Monday November 17^th.  He finds out about a neighbor who may want to sell his stock of three hundred hogs and he is asking .25 cents a pound…a forty pound shoat, he says, would cost him $10.00.  At the camp later this day he finds that last night Mr. Harper was alerted to a report that the ten thousand Yankees soldiers are coming down the river from Napolean in transports and gunboats to attack Vicksburg.    

Wednesday November 19^th. He rode over to Bayou Macon today and bargains for fifty pounds of beef at eight cents a pound!!

Saturday November 22^nd. The beef cattle he purchases came today and Mr. Harper and family visit him. He kills a steer and prepares some of the beef for his soldiers at the camp.         

Tuesday Nov 25^th. He writes that George came over from the camp last night with the news that the Yankees with the army and the fleet (gunboats) are down upon us. On Wednesday he night he leaves to go to Vicksburg on his way to Jackson arriving at the ferry at 7PM. Mark replies  “so it seems we are to be used up,” meaning, I suppose they are going to be attacked. He adds, “I went on to Jackson and got my (Confederate) bonds for the cotton (he had apparently sold some of his cotton to the state instead of burning it)”.  He received .12 cents a pound for the seventy nine bales and stays in Jackson to “see what negotiations I can make if I can sell them.”

Thursday Nov 27^th. He writes that he’s unable to sell the bonds he received for the cotton. On his return home on the 28^th he runs into Mark about a half mile from his house and found out from him  that the gunboats are up at Milliken’s Bend on the river.  “Harper’s men had killed one or Yankees and kept them from landing “and driven them back.”  There were “four boats in all consisting of two gunboats or rams and two stern wheel steam boats fitted up for war.”.. full of Yankee officers and men “going and returning from the army.”

Saturday Nov 29. Mark is with his men are down at Milliken’s Bend watching the gunboats which have gone down toward Vicksburg. (Milliken’s Bend was where Union General McClerlland was based. He was one of many political generals in the Union army assigned to the West and not a favorite of Grants.)

Sunday Nov 30^th. A Mr. Robinson who sold him the cattle comes over to the house with Mr. Harper. Mr. Valentine pays him a thousand dollars and the balance in bonds at a 5% discount. Mr. Robinson leaves for Bayou Macon on his return home to Texas.

Monday Nov 31^st. He writes that he has finished picking his cotton. It is raining and continues to rain for the next several days. .

Thursday Dec. 4^th. Thursday he receives a letter from Mark delivered by one of his soldiers stating that he had been petitioned by every member of his company to resign his Lieutenancy (commission) because some of them were offended by some remark his father had made. On Saturday Mark returns home and informs his father that he proposed his answer to his request from his regiment for him to resign. He wrote out his resignation and sent it over to Harper and to have his version of the petition. 

Saturday Dec 13. He describes a ride over to Dunlap Ridge –“ Hardison is one of the soldiers in Harper’s company came over to us with an order from General Blanchard for him (Mark) to return to duty and reprimanding the company for pillorying him to resign. Some Mark has come out ahead and that has instilled him to try to get the office…”

Wednesday Dec 17^th.  He hears about the battle at Fredericksburg, VA, “in which we defeated the federals.” On Thursday he rides out to see how “the hands were coming on making the road across the swamp. We should get it finished by Christmas.” Friday he spots another ten to 15 gunboats above Vicksburg but they don’t attempt to land.

Second Attempt of Vicksburg Campaign

In December 1862, Grant made a new plan to take Vicksburg.  Grant would march down from Tennessee with an army and attack the city from the east.  He hoped to lure most of the small army defending the city (now commanded by John C. Pemberton) and attack it.

Meanwhile William T. Sherman would take another force and attack the lightly-defended city from the North. As Grant marched southward, his army’s supply line was cut by Confederate cavalry under Nathan Bedford Forrest and Earl Van Dorn (now commanding a cavalry unit).  This forced Grant to return to Tennessee. As Grant and his army were marching back to TN, they noticed that the countryside was rich with food and other supplies.  He could have lived off the land. Meanwhile, Sherman’s force was attacked and defeated at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou (just outside Vicksburg) on Dec. 29 Grant abandoned his efforts.  During the winter and early spring of 1863, he ordered that several canals be cut.  He also considered using the Yazoo River. None of these efforts worked. Many Northerners called on Lincoln to replace Grant.  Lincoln refused, saying “I can’t spare this man. He fights!”

Saturday Dec 20^th. He has dinner at Mr. Callie’s and hears that news about Fredericksburg is still favorable.

Thursday Dec 25^th. “I started over to take dinner at Mrs. Stone’s and meet Louis…from the camp coming for the buggy as the federals have come down with a fleet of sixty four vessels…all but a few of them transports filled with soldiers to attack Vicksburg and the (militia) company is ordered to fall back to Zulue (?) on the railroad (line).”  He hears that a large federal force is on their way to destroy the rail line. Friday “a world of flying news” and guns were heard last night in the direction of the railroad .

Saturday Dec 27^th. Mr. Moseley and Mr. Newman called and he learns that the federal troops had gone as far as Delhi (southwest of him) and burned the railroad bridge and destroyed all bridges along the rail lines over Joe’s Bayou, Tensas Bayou and other places.

Sunday Dec. 28^th. Mr. Hardison tells him that the federal have all left. They have taken several hundred head of cattle and burned the gin house and quarter on Brokenburn place, burned Morancy’s plantation and the house he “used to live in at the Bend and all the buildings on the place. I also hear that we have taken Hollly Springs and have taken a great many prisoners and that the federal army is falling back.”

Monday Dec 29^th.  “We commence work for the year this morning…taking the deposit out of the big ditch…the women cutting down and burning corn stalks…finish pulling cotton stalks.”

Wednesday Dec 31^st. “A most beautiful day…this day closes the year with War all around and we have defeated attempts of the enemy to land at Vicksburg…whilst our enemies are destroyed in council and in the field.” Mark comes home in the evening and his company is expected to go to Monroe…“so closes the disastrous year of 1862.”

1863 Diary (PAGES 74-82)

Thursday January 1. Eleven soldiers were here to breakfast but did not arrive until after twelve.  I then went with them to their camp on Bear Lake and staid (sp) with them all night.

Friday Jan 2^nd. “I remained at the camp until after dinner when Lt Nally returned from Vicksburg bringing the news and the papers by which we learned that so far all attacks have been successfully repulsed and all is confidence in Vicksburg.”

Sunday Jan 4^th.  Rode over to Mrs. Stone’s and was “there to discuss a large fleet of the Federal boats (that) went up the river this evening. It is not known whether they are blockcading Vicksburg or gone above to Yazoo City.”

Thursday Jan 8^th Mr. V talks about the rain and comments that if it would rain this hard on the in Yazoo City and “drown out the Yankees he should be glad.”

Friday Jan 9^th.  He rides over to M. Hardison’s in the evening to get the news of the Yankees. “The prevailing impression is that the federal gunboats have left Vicksburg and gone up river” but a few boats were left to blockade the river. He adds that he believes that the federal army could not get their boats up the Yazoo River.

Wednesday January 14^th.  “This is a miserable rainy day and sometimes it has rained very hard. Mrs. Stone sent me word that Abraham Lincoln was killed. “I only fear it is not true. I received a letter from Mark…he is at Delhi with about seven hundred troops…”  These troops may have been part of an attempt by the militia troops to attack the Yankees at Lake Providence.

Thursday January 15^th. The ditch they are working on has caved in due to the heavy rains and water is standing in the fields…plus it’s colder and starting to show snow. The next day there is two inches on the ground. “…it is dreary and bleak enough we kill our hogs since in number…they lack 45 pounds of averaging 200 pounds…Two of the men from the camp at Delhi called…they were part of a squad sent out to the river to learn about the enemy who have all left and gone up the river…”

Monday Jan 19^th. “We fix our road behind the gin so we can haul wood for it…for it seems that to keep …and keep alive is about all we can do..”

Wednesday Jan 21^st. The news of Lincoln’s death was not true. “A fleet of federal boats is again in the river but I have not learned how many.”

Thursday Jan 22^nd. “I again here guns in the direction of Vicksburg but they appear too far north…and are perhaps “up the Yazoo where we have heavy batteries (probably the federal gunboats attempting to reach Vicksburg by way of the Yazoo River, the confluence of the Yalabusha and Tallahatchie Rivers near Greenwood.  The Yankees weren’t successful in reaching the heights at Vicksburg because of the battery at Fort Pemberton near Greenwood)

Friday January 23^rd. “This morning Billy comes up and tells me that seven of the Negroes have left taking two mules and have gone to the Yankees.”  He writes all of their names in his diary and then adds”…This I think has been the result of my permitting the Negroes to indulge in religious meetings…religious ‘exstacies’ (sic) are lights of the church, and as good boys some of them as there were on the place, and Milton (one of the runaways the very best…Not that religion depraves the character…for with my Negroes it creates religious fellowship and fraternity ….the good with the bad and it is by such fraternity that that so many can act in concert. Men can be religious individually but when ‘rascality’” has to be done…fellowship has to be entered into. If Jim Hawkins (a runaway) had not become religious he could not have persuaded Milton to have joined him in stealing mules and running away.” I hear there is a large federal fleet…and gunboats…  more gone on down to Vicksburg and (more) cannonading has been heard…up the Yazoo north of Vicksburg.  I think the object is to open the Yazoo and form a juncture with Grant’s army at Grenada or somewhere up there.”

Sunday January 25^th. A Mr. McWilliams (he may be a tracker) has spotted the mules on the levee that were stolen by the runaways.  He sent two men after them but he feared that they had been gone so long that they went to the Yankees. The mules were brought back. Hardison with his men has had a skirmish with a squad of Yankee soldiers and killed one of their men.  

Tuesday Jan 27^th. Five more of the slaves have runaway including one of the hands who found his mules on Sunday. They took with them the same mules that had been stolen before including several more. He sends several more men to the river to see if they can find the mules, figuring the runaways had already gone over to the Yankees.

MARK’S CAPTURE

Wednesday Jan 28^th. He writes today that Mr. Stone came by. Some of the mules were rounded up but once caught six of the runaways “jumped on them and took off toward the Yankees. Several of the men including Billy, Charles, Isaiah and Vernon went, and Billy and Isaiah who went the farthest followed on beyond Wildcat Lake where they met a squad of four Yankees”  soldiers who had captured Ophelius and another other negroes with them.”  Billy and Isaiah were taken prisoner. The story continues verbatim: “…turned on to the turnip patch ridge where the government has some cotton piled up (near) Broad Lake …(Yanks) up and took notice of that cotton …about 2000 bales…robbed Cooley of his money and then returning crossed Horseshoe Swamp.  Just above the new road came to the house where Mark has just arrived and took him prisoner.^[iv]”  They also took Vernon and Billy and some of the mares and left. They got as far as Tensas Bridge where a picket of three Confederates shot at them but they went on.  “Mark was with them (and)…likely to be hit as anyone but whether any were hit I don’t know.  Some of the Negroes who made their escape were taken by our pickets…three I think, and they are taken to Lake Providence.  He and Stone ride out to Wildcat Lake where they meet fifteen of their men pursuing the Yankees, but they were thrown off the trail by getting on that of the Negroes who were escaping and turned towards Omega.

Thursday Jan 30th.  The next day he writes returns to Mrs. Stone’s and Mr. Hardison’s where he stays the night and returns home on Friday morning.“…nothing is doing and a more deplorable place could not well be found.” That evening Ophelius and Silas came back home having left the Yankees, and gave him a note from Mark “who tells me he is pleasantly situated and well treated.” On Saturday he sends both of them back to the Yankee camp with a letter for Mark. They return that evening.

Saturday February lst.   He writes about Harper’s unit engagement in a fight with the Yankees near Richmond and adds that several of his negroes joined or were captured by the Yankees; they than went with a detachment of federals up to Memphis.

2/3/63  Alfred, one of the slaves, tells Mr. Valentine that two regiments of Yankee infantry showed up at Omega on their way to Richmond by coming straight through the town and on into Little Tensas Bayou. Later he sends Vernon (overseer) to Mr. Fontaines. Vernon returns with a (confusing) but he says  alarming account where Mr. Fontaine with Vernon goes over to Mr. Hardison’s.  There they learn that some of their men (slaves?) had been to Dr. Taylors and could not get back. He also learns that Mark was sent to Memphis by boat.

Thursday February 4^th.  A Mr. Sharpe comes to tell him that Mark is doing well. Mr. Valentine makes arrangements to furnish Mark with ‘means.’ The next day Sharpe is arrested. On Saturday Mr. Valentine tries to find out what has happened with him. He was made a prisoner. The same day he asks a Mr. Davidson if he and his family would like to come live with him.

Tuesday Feb 10^th. He rode over to Hardison’s this morning…”and learned that the federals had been at Dr. Taylor’s and other places and stripped them of everything…rode to Fontaine’s…no one but the old blind mare at home...the federals have attack Charleston and repulsed with great loss..losing 8000 prisoners. Next day he hears that it was a naval victory “and not much of a land fight.”

Saturday February 14^th. Mr. Davidson who is living with Mark went over to Mr. Richardson’s “to enquire after Mark at Lake Providence (as a prisoner of the Yankees) and found out all young Richardson had told me about hearing he was there was a lie.”

Friday Feb 20^th. “This morning Dr. Devine called to see Mrs. Stone’s sick Negro and tells many dreadful doings of the federals.  He writes into his diary that he has his days mixed up and spends most of the paragraph writing in his corrections. The next day, one of the young Negro runaways comes back and is sick. The others were still with the Yankees but wanted to come back but they too were sick.

Sunday Feb 22^nd.  He is told by one of the runaways “that the Yankees are at work on the canal…have a dredge boat in it and by his account will get through it.” [https://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Stories/Article/1011266/the-engineers-at-vicksburg-part-12-duckport-canal-and-the-march-on-vicksburg/]

Monday Feb 23^rd.  Three of Mr. Hardison’s men “stole three horses and a mule and ran away to the Yankees last night…We have news that two of the Yankee gunboats that passed Vicksburg went into Red River” and were captured by Confederate gunboats in the river. He passes the evening with Mrs. Stone for dinner.

Wednesday Feb 25^th. A Negro man from one of the other plantations tells Mr. Valentine that the Yankees got forty eight runaway slaves from the neighborhood.

Thursday Feb 26^th. “It rained all last night…and has rained all day today. I presume that the oscillation of the air by the hourly firing at Vicksburg causes such continued rain.

Saturday Feb 28^th. “It reluctantly cleared up today. He gets a copy of the Vicksburg Weekly Whig and several other old papers.

Wednesday March 4th. He gets some bad news today that the Yankees are ransacking homes and taking everything “including the last Negro,” including Mr. Morgan and Catlin’s home. His overseer, Billy, says that most of the hands will not work.

Monday March 9^th. He hears heavy gunfire from the direction of Vicksburg. The hands are not in the fields. On Tuesday, he says there is a heavy rainfall “as usual after heavy cannonading.  He has recorded a lot of heavy rain the last few days.

Friday March 13^th. One of runaway slaves, Jim Hawkins, returned last night from the Yankees nearly dead.  Mr. Davidson leaves and he and his children go over to the Stones. “The water is rising in the swamp.”

Yankees Rob Mr. Valentine’s Home

Saturday March 14^th. He rode over to Hardison’s house today           and from there he spotted seven Yankee soldiers following one of his hands going to his place. He observes that they eat dinner at his table..They search the house “and robbed the house…taking clothes and the spy glass and  rummaging everywhere and search for valuables and many of which they found nothing.”

Sunday March 15^th. The hands working on the ditches: “Its raining this morning and we have the two ditches about to slope (?) and get them done in the rain. The water in the swamp rose 22” in 24 hours. On Monday he says that the water is not rising so fast “but the bayou is broken down at the back yard and they have stopped it with difficulty.”

Sunday March 15^th. From Brokenburn, Kate Stone “. . . Yesterday afternoon Mr. Valentine was here, and we were all conversing quietly enough when the frantic barking of the dogs called us to the front gallery just in time to see a party of Yankees and three Negroes passing on the gin ridge.  They turned and took a deliberate survey of the place and then went on.  They were loaded with chickens, eggs and such plunder and were guided by one of Mr. Valentine’s Negroes, who had run off some time ago, and had two more to carry the stuff they had stolen.”  Two days later, “The Yankees, who went to Mr. Valentine’s the last time he was here, broke open his trunks and took all his clothes and valuable papers.  How forlorn he must be there all alone on Oasis.”

Grant’s Canal at Lake Providence Worsens Flooding

Tuesday March 17^th. He has dinner with Mr. Currie this evening and they ride over to Hardison’s where he has just returned from Monroe. Hardison thought fighting still going on at Charleston, SC. The next day several more runaways returned home from the Yankee’s at Lake Providence. (This was the result of the work on Grant’s Canal from Lake Providence, and because the Mississippi was 15’ higher than the Lake the water rushing into the canal or ditch from the Lake into to Bayou Macon would most likely have caused terrible flooding. ) https://www.nps.gov/vick/-learn/historyculture/lake-providence-canal-february-march-1863.htm]

Thursday March 19^th. The water is still rising in the swamp and we are “throwing up a ridge of dirt to keep it from coming over in front of us…but a few inches is all we can get.”

Friday March 20^th. The water rose in the swamp over 1” and he writes that it is a great rise when you take into account the width of the swamp…nearly 62 miles…we are throwing up a ridge of dirt behind the cabins…to above the levee.”  The next day he records that the water is still rising 1½ “every 24-hours.”  (This would be the result of the Canal at Lake Providence which caused flooding. He has several visitors today including Mr. Richardson who says that the Yankees cut the river into Lake Providence. ..if so, it will throw more water upon us.”  He talks about taking the ferry over to Vicksburg.

He also said the “Yankees are picking cotton up at Mr. Johnson’s place.”  The water continues to rise Saturday and Sunday and continues into Monday very hard. “The Big Ditch has broken away and there is no hope.”

Tuesday March 24^th. Mr. Cooly comes to dinner at Mr. Valentines. All of his Negroes were taken at his place. “He seems dreadful under the loss of all his Negroes…he and his son are there cooking for his wife and daughter at Mr. Peter’s.

Wednesday March 25^th. The water has finally stopped rising today…” and if the big ditch has been stopped we would not have been overflowed…as it is we shall have water all over us.

Thursday March 26^th. “The water is nearly as high in the yard as in the swamp…all places in the yard are entirely over…nothing can exceed the demoralization of the place…the Negroes do just as they please…not even get the sweet potatoes out of the” water.

Friday March 27^th. “Yankees yesterday broke Hardison’s (place) entirely up…taking all his Negroes and destroying everything…the family only escapes with the clothes on their backs…and are making their way across Bayou Macon.”

Saturday March 28^th. “I received a note from Miss Kate Stone written last night…they leave in the morning and try to get across Bayou Macon. I hope they may succeed.”

Sunday March 29^th. A terrible rain storm last night and it turned quite cold today. His hand, Silas, has returned from the Yankee camp at Milliken’s Bend and says “they told him that Mark had had his leg broken by being thrown from his horse in Memphis. This is dreadful.” Mark has sent a letter by a Mr. Sharp to find out about Mark’s condition.

Thursday April 2nd. He tries to get the word out to see if he can get more on Mark. He finds a late Memphis paper and reads about fighting going on at Murfreesborough (in Tennessee) …”the federals claim the advantage.”

Friday April 3^rd. His friend Davidson is making a large dugout “…Negroes paddling about in their boats enjoying themselves…”

Saturday April 4^th. Dr. Devine came down and had dinner with Mark. Mr. Davidson was also there. Mr. Richardson and young Clair and got dinner.  Mr. Richie and Mr. Coolie called at dinner time and brought news that the federals had attacked Vicksburg by landing in skiffs and small boats of which it is said they have brought down two steamboats above Haine’s Bluff and…defeated with great loss…the Confederates were taken some fire…and (federals) displaying a number of gunboats…we do not know if all this is true.”

Sunday April 5^th. “…being by myself and everything in ruin. I see by the federal papers that the prisoners in Alton (Illinois) are exchanges so if Mark is alive and well he will soon be home.”  He finds out from Dr. Devine that the report that Mark is thrown from a horse is not true.

Monday April 6^th. “Mr. Davidson came down and finished his boat today…a large and fine one…to move Mr. Spann across Bayou Macon

Tuesday April 7^th. “The Negroes are paddling about in their boats enjoying their freedom highly…(Negroes) all avoid me and are as false and treacherous as can be…I do not interfere with them in any way…They are destroying everything on the place.”

Saturday April 11^th. “The water has fallen two inches and seems to be falling faster than heretofore. The Negroes agree to help mind the boiler.”

Monday April 13^th. “Vernon took me in a boat up to Mrs. Spann’s…I learn the Yankees are conscripting the Negroes to form two regiments at (Lake) Providence. The Negroes do not believe it…I have six still absent with the Yankees.”

Tuesday April 14^th. “It rained hard last night and has raised the water nearly up to the highest mark but appears this morning to be clearing off….”

THE END               

 

Sources:

Cotton & Race In the Making of America, Datel, Gene. 2009

“Plantations In Antebellum Southern Agriculture”, Hillard, Sam, LSU, 2017

“Early Plantation Life in Madison Parish”, Sevier, Dick. Roots Web

Brokenburn, The Diary Of Kate Stone Anderson, John, Louisiana State Press 1955

 

[1] Jones, Rev. John G, A Complete History of Methodism, Vol. 11 pg 101

[2] Giley, B.H., Editor, “ North Louisiana”, 1984, Ruston, LA pg. 49, 60-61

[3] Hillard, Sam, “Plantations in Antebellum Southern Agriculture”, LSU Press, 2017.

[4] “Early Plantation Life in Madison Parish,” Sevier, Dick, Roots Web.

[5] Datel, Gene, Cotton & Race in the Making Of America, Ivan R. Dee, publisher, 2009.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Anderson, John Q, editor Brokenburn, The Journal of Kate Stone 1861-1868, LSU Press, 1955.

[8,9] Ibid

[10] Ibid, Datel.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid, Anderson.

[13,14,15] Ibid.