of owners and overseers to keep peace and prevent quarrelling and disputes among them; and summary punishment should follow any violation of this rule.  Slaves are also a people that enjoy religious privileges.  Many of them place much value upon it; and to every reasonable extent that advantage should be allowed them.  They are never injured by preaching, but thousands become wiser and better people and more trustworthy servants by their attendance at church.  Religious services should be provided and encouraged on every plantation.  A zealous and vehement style, both in doctrine and manner, is best adapted to their temperament.  They are good believers in mysteries and miracles, ready converts, and adhere with much pertinacity to their opinions when formed."[10] It is clear that Collins had observed plantation negroes long and well.

[Footnote 10:  Robert Collins, “Essay on the Management of Slaves,” reprinted in DeBow’s Review, XVII, 421-426, and partly reprinted in F.L.  Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 692-697.]

Advice very similar to the foregoing examples was also printed in the form of manuals at the front of blank books for the keeping of plantation records;[11] and various planters described their own methods in operation as based on the same principles.  One of these living at Chunnennuggee, Alabama, signing himself “N.B.P.,” wrote in 1852 an account of the problems he had met and the solutions he had applied.  Owning some 150 slaves, he had lived away from his plantation until about a decade prior to this writing; but in spite of careful selection he could never get an overseer combining the qualities necessary in a good manager.  “They were generally on extremes; those celebrated for making large crops were often too severe, and did everything by coercion.  Hence turmoil and strife ensued.  The negroes were ill treated and ran away.  On the other hand, when he employed a good-natured man there was a want of proper discipline; the negroes became unmanageable and, as a natural result, the farm was brought into debt,” The owner then entered residence himself and applied methods which resulted in contentment, health and prolific increase among the slaves, and in consistently good crops.  The men were supplied with wives at home so far as was practicable; each family had a dry and airy house to itself, with a poultry house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly were three and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, together with a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nursery were fed from the master’s kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables and bread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women were given time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all hands had to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; and a clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday.  The chief distinction