they were out of it the better; that they would then go to a good country where they would experience no want of anything, and have no work nor cruel taskmaster, for that God was merciful and would pardon any sin they committed; only it was necessary to pray and ask forgiveness, and have prayer meetings and contribute what they could to the church, etc....  Finally myself and the overseer became completely divested of all authority over the negroes....  Severity had no effect; it only made it worse."[7]

[Footnote 7:  [Z.  Kingsley] A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society as It exists ... under the Name of Slavery.  By an inhabitant of Florida.  Fourth edition (1834), pp. 21, 22. (Copy in the Library of Congress.)]

This experience left Kingsley undaunted in his belief that liberalism and profit-sharing were the soundest basis for the plantation regime.  To support this contention further he cited an experiment by a South Carolinian who established four or five plantations in a group on Broad River, with a slave foreman on each and a single overseer with very limited functions over the whole.  The cotton crop was the master’s, while the hogs, corn and other produce belonged to the slaves for their sustenance and the sale of any surplus.  The output proved large, “and the owner had no further trouble nor expense than furnishing the ordinary clothing and paying the overseer’s wages, so that he could fairly be called free, seeing that he could realize his annual income wherever he chose to reside, without paying the customary homage to servitude of personal attendance on the operation of his slaves.”  In Kingsley’s opinion the system “answered extremely well, and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivating utility, local attachment and moral improvement among the slaves."[8]

[Footnote 8:  [Z.  Kingsley] Treatise, p. 22.]

The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government by slaves is probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on their plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi.  There the slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in every way they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to be inflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with his power of pardon.  The regime was maintained for a number of years in full effect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9]

[Footnote 9:  W.L.  Fleming, “Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro Problem,” in the Sewanee Review (October, 1908).]

These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend to counterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme.  In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, the relation of planter and slave was largely shaped by a sense of propriety, proportion and cooperation.