Historic Louisiana

CHAPTER IV
MAKING A LIVING: AGRICULTURE
Louisiana’s economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries depended almost exclusively on
the renewable resource called agriculture. Her great export crops of cotton, sugar and rice made
parts of Louisiana prosperous. This prosperity drew people to the state, slaves by coercion and
whites seeking wealth. By 1860, Louisiana had the largest percentage of the United States
population in its history—2.25 percent. In contrast, by 2000 Louisiana’s percentage of the United
States population was 1.56 percent, a drop in influence of thirty percent. Of Louisiana’s population
in 1860, the overwhelming majority worked in agriculture. Of her 700,000 souls, only 8,800
worked in manufacturing. The value of all the farms was $204 million, compared to only $7
million invested in manufacturing. More than 300,000 slaves worked in agriculture along with
50,000 whites. Living and working the land was the life and business for most Louisianians.
Even today, though the number of farm laborers is under forty thousand, Louisiana’s renewable
resources—her agriculture, seafood, commerce, and tourism—are a significant part of her
economy. Of Louisiana’s renewable resources, timber is the most productive, sugarcane is second
in value at $306 million a year, rice third at $275 million, and cotton fourth at $241 million. The
seafood industry was worth $231 million in 1995. Louisiana supplies twenty-five percent of the
nation’s seafood harvest. Soybeans are the fifth ranked crop at $123 million. Just as soybeans and
cotton alternate in north Louisiana, in south Louisiana rice and sugar have alternated. Though
timber and rice have long been important crops in Louisiana, their national significance only dates
to the late nineteenth century, when northern capital transformed the crop from merely local to
national production.
SUGAR
Sugar has been the crop grown longest in Louisiana and for many years was its largest employer.
Though sugar planting had its roots in the Creole transition, American planters such as John
Randolph and Wade Hampton dominated it by the 1830s. Not surprisingly, they did not copy the
Creole plan but operated their plantations as systems of total control. One of the great sugar
plantations of Louisiana was at the Houmas, just downriver from the new town of Donaldsonville.
The Houmas Indians occupied the site from 1704 until 1776, when their chiefs put the land on
the market. Consisting of a square league, it had ninety arpents front on the Mississippi and a
depth of three miles. In 1811, South Carolina cotton planter Wade Hampton purchased part of
Houmas to grow sugar. Recognizing its immense potential, Hampton immediately ordered his son
to bring over eighty slaves from his South Carolina estates. At the conclusion of the War of 1812,
Hampton ordered new sugar equipment to be shipped to Houmas from New York. The equipment
included eight new copper kettles valued at $2,910, each weighing from 300 to 800 pounds.
To sell his sugar, Hampton developed efficient modes of transportation and finance. He arranged
with his northern correspondents to have sea-going ships come up the Mississippi River to receive
the sugar directly from his docks at White Hall, Point Houmas, and Houmas. When the German
trader J. G. Flugel passed the Houmas in 1817, he recorded in his journal that he had seen a threemasted
ship loading at Hampton’s place. “Passed General Hampton’s plantation (sugar), where a
three-master lies which sight is pleasing to me.” In the late fall of 1828 the brig Artic picked up 41
hogsheads from White Hall and the Brig Dodge Healy loaded 273 hogsheads at Point Houmas.
Hampton maintained agents in many cities—Liverpool (Wm Forde & Co.), Baltimore (Harrison &
Sterett), and New York (Goodhue & Co.). The agent accepted the hogsheads of sugar, divided them
into reasonable size lots, and auctioned them off. In one sale, for example, five of his hogsheads from
✧
This map of Baton Rouge from around 1861
shows three railroads bringing cotton to the
Mississippi River. The St. Francisville-
Woodville Railroad extends north from
Bayou Sarah. The Port Hudson-Clinton
Railroad extends to East Feliciana. The
Baton Rouge-Grosse Tete Railroad also
brought sugar to market from the
fields along Bayou Grosse Tete and
Bayou Maringuin.
CHAPTER IV
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