“Manigault’s Portrayal of American Slavery”
Manigault writes, “We, here at the South, in most instances, resided with our families half the year on Our Plantations, Surrounded by Our Negroes, attending personally to their comforts. We saw that they ever received good, wholesome food, & the Sick & aged attended to. And as Our own Children (to a certain extent) were playmates with theirs, on the Plantation.”
However, records chronicling the conditions are Gowrie are contradictory to Manigault’s views. The slaves suffer a great deal because their owners not offer them the protection they require such as healthcare. Manigault romanticizes slavery to undermine Emancipation. He is conscious that Emancipation would deal a blow on his empire that is solely reliant on slave labor. Manigault's actions confirm that he does not care about the slaves and their families' welfare. All he is interested in is their labor and their children who they produce to increase their number of slaves.
“Conspicuous consumption”
Dusinberre confirms, “Wealth enabled Manigault to indulge not only in the costly hotel life but in many of the other pleasures of conspicuous consumption. When, in 1841, he had commissioned his cousin Anthony Barclay to buy a pair of carriage horses in New York City and to ship them to Charleston, his instructions were “‘Damn the Expense.’” Manigault's conspicuous consumption encourages him to endorse slavery. He delights in a lavish lifestyle because he owns slaves who would labor to make him money. He spends carelessly because he does not labor in the rice fields; money comes to him easily.
Epidemics
Dusinberre explains, “Manigault’s taste for Gowrie’s profits, and his wish to establish his sons in the business, led him to double the plantation size the next year and to enlarge it even further in1854. A series of devastating epidemics-measles, dysentery, and “cholera”-swept the plantation in 1848, 1850, 1852, 1853, and 1854; and added to chronic killers like malaria and pleurisy, carried off an astonishing number of slaves.”
Manigault expands the size of his plantations to generate more profits. Clearly, Manigault's utility for money does not diminish, even in the face of epidemics. He acquires more slaves to compensate for the ones lost to the epidemics for he has sufficient money to procure them.
“Rice Planting”
Dusinberre explains, “It involved a large capital investment and demanded willingness to assume substantial financial risks. When things went well-if there was no hurricane like the one in September 1854 which swept two-thirds of Gowrie’s crop into the sea, no freshet like the one in September 1852 which badly damaged that year’s harvest, no Asiatic cholera epidemic-the profits could be wonderfully gratifying to the slave master.”
Rice planting is a risky and complex venture whose returns are dependent on uncontrollable, external factors. Accordingly, managers are required to exercise sound judgments that would rescue the crop should unanticipated emergencies occur. Unskilled and inexperienced managers would not run the framing successfully. The ability to mitigate the rice framing risks determines the amount of profits generated each season.
