[Footnote 7:  D.D.  Wallace, Life of Henry Laurens, pp. 133, 192.]

The published advice of planters to their fellows was quite in keeping with these instructions to overseers.  About 1809, for example, John Taylor, of Caroline, the leading Virginian advocate of soil improvement in his day, wrote of the care and control of slaves as follows:  “The addition of comfort to mere necessaries is a price paid by the master for the advantages he will derive from binding his slave to his service by a ligament stronger than chains, far beneath their value in a pecuniary point of view; and he will moreover gain a stream of agreeable reflections throughout life, which will cost him nothing.”  He recommended fireproof brick houses, warm clothing, and abundant, varied food.  Customary plenty in meat and vegetables, he said, would not only remove occasions for pilfering, but would give the master effective power to discourage it; for upon discovering the loss of any goods by theft he might put his whole force of slaves upon a limited diet for a time and thus suggest to the thief that on any future occasion his fellows would be under pressure to inform on him as a means of relieving their own privations.  “A daily allowance of cyder,” Taylor continued, “will extend the success of this system for the management of slaves, and particularly its effect of diminishing corporal punishments.  But the reader is warned that a stern authority, strict discipline and complete subordination must be combined with it to gain any success at all."[8]

[Footnote 8:  John Taylor, of Caroline County, Virginia, Arator, Being a Series of Agricultural Essays (2d ed., Georgetown, D. C, 1814), pp. 122-125.]

Another Virginian’s essay, of 1834, ran as follows:  Virginia negroes are generally better tempered than any other people; they are kindly, grateful, attached to persons and places, enduring and patient in fatigue and hardship, contented and cheerful.  Their control should be uniform and consistent, not an alternation of rigor and laxity.  Punishment for real faults should be invariable but moderate.  “The best evidence of the good management of slaves is the keeping up of good discipline with little or no punishment.”  The treatment should be impartial except for good conduct which should bring rewards.  Praise is often a better cure for laziness than stripes.  The manager should know the temper of each slave.  The proud and high spirited are easily handled:  “Your slow and sulky negro, although he may have an even temper, is the devil to manage.  The negro women are all harder to manage than the men.  The only way to get along with them is by kind words and flattery.  If you want to cure a sloven, give her something nice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she has on anything tolerably decent.”  Eschew suspicion, for it breeds dishonesty.  Promote harmony and sound methods among your neighbors.  “A good disciplinarian