Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter : With the Journal of Thomas B. Chaplin

by Theodore Rosengarten, Thomas B. Chaplin, Susan B. Walker (Editor)

Tombee was an unlucky slave owner and cotton planter on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. His real name was Thomas B. Chaplin, and we know him because of his plantation journal, kept between 1845 and 1858. The fascination of this journal is enhanced by notes that Chaplin added periodically after 1865, bringing the lives of his characters up-to-date. Not unnaturally, he compared his poverty after the Civil War with antebellum opulence, lamenting the one, deploring the other. Theodore Rosengarten has made accessible the last years of an American aristocracy. Besides containing a history of the Carolina Sea Islands during the second golden age of cotton, the book is a study of the dull horror of plantation slavery.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Civil War, Memoir, Autobiography

750 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Manray9 · Rating 4 out of 5]

A captivating account of antebellum life on a Sea Island cotton plantation. This is a thorough depiction of innocent people pressed into unremitting labor under the most onerous conditions. It's not Gone With the Wind. If you believe the Civil War wasn't about slavery, read this. Tombee House still stands today. Just drive to the southern end of St. Helena Island and look seaward. Read the book, then go visit the house.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is always astonishing (at least to me) when a man in a position of power feels sorry for himself. Witness Thomas B. Chaplin, a South Carolina slaveowner undone by the Civil War, with assists, one gleans from the diary itself and the extraordinary introduction by Theodore Rosengarten, from the instability of cotton exports and personal incompetence. Chaplin was at times a thoughtful man; he served on a jury for a slaveholder whose punishment/negligence resulted in a slave's death. Although the slaveowner was acquitted, Chaplin thought him guilty of murder. Yet notes of slave deaths are terse and followed by remarks on issues with his crops. And, once freedom came, he was astonished that the slave who he, among other things, required to administer whippings, didn't want anything to do with him.
The book is also interested for its insight into gender relations. The first Mrs. Chaplin was a teetotaler given to inserting temperance pamphlets into the diary. Once he complained bitterly that she had disposed of his expensive liquor cabinet. In her latter days, no doubt at least in part because she had borne so many children, she grew increasingly debilitated, and, although generally affectionate to his wife, one entry provides great detail regarding what we would probably call an addiction to snuff. After her death, he did not wait long before marrying her sister.
Rosengarten's other book is one of the most readable volumes I've ever read, the account of sharecropping in Mississippi by a natural raconteur Nate Shaw. "Tombee" is more scholarly; the diary itself, when not involving interpersonal matters of the kind discussed above, can be a bit of a chore, comprised of accounts of hunting trips, dinners, meetings of the Agricultural Society, errant livestock, and whether someone has stolen potatoes. But the introduction provides fascinating background about Chaplin's relationships (his mother, who seems to have had a bit of money, married a number of times), legal issues, and the geographical and historical background.

[Kirk Battle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most fascinating thing is just reading this guy talk about slavery from a completely different perspective of privilege. Chaplin is a curiously self-aware guy, he was born into wealth and owning a ton of Plantations. He's aware of his various dysfunctions and debates them in his journal. He also is barely aware of slavery and the savagery of the stuff he's talking about. Something deep within his brain has just internalized slavery. haplin is both a stereotypical white plantation owner and also kinda weird by any human standards. Eventually his life is destroyed by the Civil War but his journal gets sporadic by then apparently.

Fascinating to see Graeber's theory from History of Debt confirmed: all of these plantation guys are in debt. Heinous amounts really, to pay for ice, food, luxury goods, and all the other expenses of living in a tropical climate. Some of them grow their own food or allow slaves to grow their own food to reduce costs, but this cuts into the bottom line. The brutality that the economic system encourages is astounding. Maybe if Graeber never quite outright said it he implied it enough in History of Debt: a human being is a more efficient unit of measurement for value and wealth than something perishable like crops and something purely symbolic like money.

I only read the half of the book where the guy explains what happened, the journal itself was too tedious. Intense read.

Choice quotes: “We can say, therefore, that the plantation was a stage in the migration of people and capital from the Old World to the New. A white man of little wealth could obtain a large acreage through a “headright” – an allotment of land based on the number of people in his household, including servants and salves. In 1670, the headright for a free white man was 150 acres; this was reduced in 1672 to 100 acres, and in 1682 to 50 acres. Each Negro man brought his owner 20 acres in 1670, and each Negro woman brought 10. Not all white people who came to Carolina received land as soon as they got off the boat. Many whites came as indentured servants, bound to other white man or families for a fixed number of years – usually six – at the end of which, if they had fulfilled their obligations, they were eligible for land. Other whites came as hunters, traders, and agents for commodity dealers."

[Candace Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of the book by Rosengarten was the story of Thomas Chaplin's life, for the most part derived from his journal, but other historical documents and information as well.I found it very interesting for many reasons, among them I am very familiar with that part of the country, I like local history and I really wanted to see slavery from the perspective of a plantation owner. The second half of the book was the actual journal. It was a chore to get through it as Chaplin rarely used emotion in his writing and wrote most of the text as one would fill out a ledger book. I believe he considered his slaves no more or less then farm stock,and mentioned punishing them very rarely over the decades, he also believed another plantation owner had murdered his slave when he tied him up in bad weather and the slave died over night, in contrast he called a black child an "it" and demeaned both their intelligence and humanity on occasion. Chaplin seemed to worry most about himself and then his wives and offspring, but none of his emotion seems particularly tender or of any depth.I was surprised how harsh life was, even in the big plantation house and how very much he spent his time socializing with other male neighbors.







Several books ago I began recording words I was unfamiliar with and this book had a plethora:

pg. 166 miscegenation: the inbreeding of people of a different race
pg. 180 enervation: fatigue
pg. 182 febrile: feverish
pg. 182 miasmata: a noxious atmosphere
pg. 182 putrescent effulvia: putrid odor
pg. 183 febrifuge: medicine used to reduce fever
pg. 204 manumissions:act of a slave owner freeing his own slaves
pg. 248 gasconade: extravagant boasting
pg. 254 exigencies:an urgent need or demand
pg. 254 fratricidal: conflict within a family or organization
pg. 371 vill: a land unit like a parish
pg. 409 supercilious: behaving superior to others
pg. 463 pealer:laughing
pg. 464 tanyah: a root crop
pg. 484 mangel wurzel: type of beet
pg. 615 cavally: a saltwater fish
pg. 616 shoat:a young pig

[Bonnie Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Journal of Thomas Chaplin is a treasure trove for anyone interested in getting into the head of a slave owner. Some of his thoughts seem foreign to my mind but I am sure were common among men like him, such as when he expresses his frustration with one of his slaves because her babies kept dying. There is no concern for her, or her grief, no awareness that the conditions she is forced to live in maybe contributing to the deaths, but only regret for the loss of the future profit that child would bring.

Theodore Rosengarten organizes much of the information found in the journal in several chapters at the beginning of book under such headings as Agriculture and Social Life. Very helpful.