Hammond described the functions as follows:  “The overseer will never be expected to work in the field, but he must always be with the hands when not otherwise engaged in the employer’s business....  The overseer must never be absent a single night, nor an entire day, without permission previously obtained.  Whenever absent at church or elsewhere he must be on the plantation by sundown without fail.  He must attend every night and morning at the stables and see that the mules are watered, cleaned and fed, and the doors locked.  He must keep the stable keys at night, and all the keys, in a safe place, and never allow anyone to unlock a barn, smoke-house or other depository of plantation stores but himself.  He must endeavor, also, to be with the plough hands always at noon.”  He must also see that the negroes are out promptly in the morning, and in their houses after curfew, and must show no favoritism among the negroes.  He must carry on all experiments as directed by the employer, and use all new implements and methods which the employer may determine upon; and he must keep a full plantation diary and make monthly inventories.  Finally, “The negroes must be made to obey and to work, which may be done, by an overseer who attends regularly to his business, with very little whipping.  Much whipping indicates a bad tempered or inattentive manager, and will not be allowed.”  His overseer might quit employment on a month’s notice, and might be discharged without notice.  Acklen’s dicta were to the same general effect.

As to the relative importance of the several functions of an overseer, all these planters were in substantial agreement.  As Fowler put it:  “After taking proper care of the negroes, stock, etc., the next most important duty of the overseer is to make, if practicable, a sufficient quantity of corn, hay, fodder, meat, potatoes and other vegetables for the consumption of the plantation, and then as much cotton as can be made by requiring good and reasonable labor of operatives and teams.”  Likewise Henry Laurens, himself a prosperous planter of the earlier time as well as a statesman, wrote to an overseer of whose heavy tasking he had learned:  “Submit to make less rice and keep my negroes at home in some degree of happiness in preference to large crops acquired by rigour and barbarity to those poor creatures.”  And to a new incumbent:  “I have now to recommend to you the care of my negroes in general, but particularly the sick ones.  Desire Mrs. White not to be sparing of red wine for those who have the flux or bad loosenesses; let them be well attended night and day, and if one wench is not sufficient add another to nurse them.  With the well ones use gentle means mixed with easy authority first—­if that does not succeed, make choice of the most stubborn one or two and chastise them severely but properly and with mercy, that they may be convinced that the end of correction is to be amendment,” Again, alluding to one of his slaves who had been gathering the pennies of his fellows:  “Amos has a great inclination to turn rum merchant.  If his confederate comes to that plantation, I charge you to discipline him with thirty-nine sound lashes and turn him out of the gate and see that he goes quite off."[7]