negroes.  The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty, severity or want of care towards the negroes.  For the well being, however, of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed, and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the one hand or harshness on the other.”  Charles Manigault likewise required of his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes “all with kindness and consideration in sickness and health.”  On J.W.  Fowler’s plantation in the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed in 1857 ran as follows:  “The health, happiness, good discipline and obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about the Master’s duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1]

[Footnote 1:  The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are printed in Plantation and Frontier, I, 109-129.]

Joseph A.S.  Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2] His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased.  They read in part:  “Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for everything and everything done according to rule.  In this way labor becomes easy and pleasant.  No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of his temper.”

[Footnote 2:  They were also printed in DeBow’s Review, XXII, 617-620, XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).]

[Footnote 3:  See above, p. 239.]

James H. Hammond’s “plantation manual” which is the fullest of such documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit:  “A good crop means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land, mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which must be kept up and improved in value.  The effort must therefore not be merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value of the rest of the property....  There should be an increase in number and improvement in condition of negroes."[4]