and well disposed; but like all negroes they are up to anything if not watched and attended to.  I expect the kindest treatment of them from you, for this has always been a principal thing with me.  I never suffer them to work off the place, or exchange work with any plantation....It has always been my plan to give out allowance to my negroes on Sunday in preference to any other day, because this has much influence in keeping them at home that day, whereas if they received allowance on Saturday for instance some of them would be off with it that same evening to the shops to trade, and perhaps would not get back until Monday morning.  I allow no strange negro to take a wife on my place, and none of mine to keep a boat."[33]

[Footnote 33:  MS. copy in Manigault letter book.]

A few years after this, Manigault bought an adjoining plantation, “East Hermitage,” and consolidated it with Gowrie, thereby increasing his rice fields to 500 acres and his slaves to about 90 of all ages.  His draught animals appear to have comprised merely five or six mules.  A new overseer, employed in 1853 at wages of $500 together with corn and rice for his table and the services of a cook and a waiting boy, was bound by a contract stipulating the duties described in the letter to Cooper above quoted, along with a few additional items.  He was, for example, to procure a book of medical instructions and a supply of the few requisite “plantation medicines” to be issued to the nurses with directions as needed.  In case of serious injury to a slave, however, the sufferer was to be laid upon a door and sent by the plantation boat to Dr. Bullock’s hospital in Savannah.  Except when the work was very pressing the slaves were to be sent home for the rest of the day upon the occurrence of heavy rains in the afternoon, for Manigault had found by experience “that always after a complete wetting, particularly in cold rainy weather in winter or spring, one or more of them are made sick and lie up, and at times serious illness ensues."[34]

[Footnote 34:  Plantation and Frontier, I, 122-126.]

In 1852 and again in 1854 storms and freshets heavily injured Manigault’s crops, and cholera decimated his slaves.  In 1855 the fields were in bad condition because of volunteer rice, and the overseer was dying of consumption.  The slaves, however, were in excellent health, and the crop, while small, brought high prices because of the Crimean war.  In 1856 a new overseer named Venters handled the flooding inexpertly and made but half a crop, yielding $12,660 in gross proceeds.  For the next year Venters was retained, on the maxim “never change an overseer if you can help it,” and nineteen slaves were bought for $11,850 to fill the gaps made by the cholera.  Furthermore a tract of pine forest was bought to afford summer quarters for the negro children, who did not thrive on the malarial plantation, and to provide a place of isolation for cholera cases.  In 1857