inches in width, and never severely administered.  In general fifteen to twenty lashes will be a sufficient flogging.  The hands in every case must be secured by a cord.  Punishment must always be given calmly, and never when angry or excited.”  Telfair was as usual terse:  “No negro to have more than fifty lashes for any offense, no matter how great the crime.”  Manigault said nothing of punishments in his general instructions, but sent special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported:  “You had best think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the important old plantation maxim, viz:  ‘never to threaten a negro,’ or he will do as you and I would when at school—­he will run.  But with such a one, ... if you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again....  Mind then and tell him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on himself, for he now sees how easy it is to fix ‘a bad disposed nigger.’  Then give my compliments to him and tell him that you wrote me of his conduct, and say if he don’t change for the better I’ll sell him to a slave trader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent several of the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause.”  In one case Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver brought him up for punishment but allowed him to run before it was administered.[5]

[Footnote 5:  Plantation and Frontier, II, 32, 94.]

As to rewards, Hammond was the only one of these writers to prescribe them definitely.  His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driver three dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each every Christmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for every actual increase of two on the place.  Further, “for every infant thirteen months old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, the mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock.”

“The head driver,” Hammond wrote, “is the most important negro on the plantation, and is not required to work like other hands.  He is to be treated with more respect than any other negro by both master and overseer....He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all times; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to punish it with discretion on the spot....He is a confidential servant, and may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer.”  Weston, forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer’s order and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance of quiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slaves to the fields each morning, the assignment and supervision of tasks, and the inspection of “such things as the overseer only generally superintends.”  Telfair informed his overseer:  “I have no driver.  You are to task the negroes yourself, and each negro is responsible to you for his own work, and nobody’s else.”