Venters made a somewhat better crop, but as Manigault learned and wrote at the end of the year, “elated by a strong and very false religious feeling, he began to injure the plantation a vast deal, placing himself on a par with the negroes by even joining in with them at their prayer meetings, breaking down long established discipline which in every case is so difficult to preserve, favoring and siding in any difficulty with the people against the drivers, besides causing numerous grievances.”  The successor of the eccentric Venters in his turn proved grossly neglectful; and it was not until the spring of 1859 that a reliable overseer was found in William Capers, at a salary of $1000.  Even then the year’s experience was such that at its end Manigault recorded the sage conclusion:  “The truth is, on a plantation, to attend to things properly it requires both master and overseer.”

The affairs of another estate in the Savannah neighborhood, “Sabine Fields,” belonging to the Alexander Telfair estate, may be gleaned from its income and expense accounts.  The purchases of shoes indicate a working force of about thirty hands.  The purchases of woolen clothing and waterproof hats tell of adequate provision against inclement weather; but the scale of the doctor’s bills suggest either epidemics or serious occasional illnesses.  The crops from 1845 to 1854 ranged between seventeen and eighty barrels of rice; and for the three remaining years of the record they included both rice and sea-island cotton.  The gross receipts were highest at $1,695 in 1847 and lowest at $362 in 1851; the net varied from a surplus of $995 in 1848 to a deficit of $2,035 in the two years 1853 and 1854 for which the accounting was consolidated.  Under E.S.  Mell, who was overseer until 1854 at a salary of $350 or less, there were profits until 1849, losses thereafter.  The following items of expense in this latter period, along with high doctor’s bills, may explain the reverse:  for taking a negro from the guard-house, $5; for court costs in the case of a boy prosecuted for larceny, $9.26; jail fees of Cesar, $2.69; for the apprehension of a runaway, $5; paid Jones for trying to capture a negro, $5.  In February, 1854, Mell was paid off, and a voucher made record of a newspaper advertisement for another overseer.  What happened to the new incumbent is told by the expense entries of March 9, 1855:  “Paid ... amount Jones’ bill for capturing negroes, $25.  Expenses of Overseer Page’s burial as follows, Ferguson’s bill, $25; Coroner’s, $14; Dr. Kollock’s, $5; total $69.”  A further item in 1856 of twenty-five dollars paid for the arrest of Bing and Tony may mean that two of the slaves who shared in the killing of the overseer succeeded for a year in eluding capture, or it may mean that disorders continued under Page’s successor.[35]

[Footnote 35:  Account book of Sabine Fields plantation, among the Telfair MSS. in the custody of the Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Ga.]