minister for my places must preach on Sundays during daylight, or quit.  The negroes must not be suffered to continue their night meetings beyond ten o’clock.”  Telfair in his rules merely permitted religious meetings on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.  Hammond encouraged his negroes to go to church on Sundays, but permitted no exercises on the plantation beyond singing and praying.  He, and many others, encouraged his negroes to bring him their complaints against drivers and overseers, and even against their own ecclesiastical authorities in the matter of interference with recreations.

Fighting among the negroes was a common bane of planters.  Telfair prescribed:  “If there is any fighting on the plantation, whip all engaged in it, for no matter what the cause may have been, all are in the wrong.”  Weston wrote:  “Fighting, particularly amongst women, and obscene or abusive language, is to be always rigorously punished.”

“Punishment must never be cruel or abusive,” wrote Acklen, closely followed by Fowler, “for it is absolutely mean and unmanly to whip a negro from mere passion and malice, and any man who can do so is utterly unfit to have control of negroes; and if ever any of my negroes are cruelly or inhumanly treated, bruised, maimed or otherwise injured, the overseer will be promptly discharged and his salary withheld.”  Weston recommended the lapse of a day between the discovery of an offense and the punishment, and he restricted the overseer’s power in general to fifteen lashes.  He continued:  “Confinement (not in the stocks) is to be preferred to whipping; but the stoppage of Saturday’s allowance, and doing whole task on Saturday, will suffice to prevent ordinary offenses.  Special care must be taken to prevent any indecency in punishing women.  No driver or other negro is to be allowed to punish any person in any way except by order of the overseer and in his presence.”  And again:  “Every person should be made perfectly to understand what they are punished for, and should be made to perceive that they are not punished in anger or through caprice.  All abusive language or violence of demeanor should be avoided; they reduce the man who uses them to a level with the negro, and are hardly ever forgotten by those to whom they are addressed.”  Hammond directed that the overseer “must never threaten a negro, but punish offences immediately on knowing them; otherwise he will soon have runaways.”  As a schedule he wrote:  “The following is the order in which offences must be estimated and punished:  1st, running away; 2d, getting drunk or having spirits; 3d, stealing hogs; 4th, stealing; 5th, leaving plantation without permission; 6th, absence from house after horn-blow at night; 7th, unclean house or person; 8th, neglect of tools; 9th, neglect of work.  The highest punishment must not exceed a hundred lashes in one day, and to that extent only in extreme cases.  The whip lash must be one inch in width, or a strap of one thickness of leather 1-1/2