finding their hardships in the swamp intolerable returned home together and proposed to go to work again if granted amnesty.  When the foreman promised a multitude of lashes instead, they killed him with their clubs.  The eight then proceeded to the parish jail at Vidalia, told what they had done, and surrendered themselves.  The coroner went to the plantation and found the foreman dead according to specifications.[36] The further history of the eight is unknown.

[Footnote 36:  Daily Delta (New Orleans), April 17, 1849.]

Most of the runaways went singly, but some of them went often.  Such chronic offenders were likely to be given exemplary punishment when recaptured.  In the earlier decades branding and shackling were fairly frequent.  Some of the punishments were unquestionably barbarous, the more so when inflicted upon talented and sensitive mulattoes and quadroons who might be quite as fit for freedom as their masters.  In the later period the more common resorts were to whipping, and particularly to sale.  The menace of this last was shrewdly used by making a bogey man of the trader and a reputed hell on earth of any district whither he was supposed to carry his merchandise.  “They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away” was a slave refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for they recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turn blackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiable purpose of keeping their own slaves content.

Virtually all the plantations whose records are available suffered more or less from truancy, and the abundance of newspaper advertisements for fugitives reinforces the impression that the need of deterrence was vital.  Whippings, instead of proving a cure, might bring revenge in the form of sabotage, arson or murder.  Adequacy in food, clothing and shelter might prove of no avail, for contentment must be mental as well as physical.  The preventives mainly relied upon were holidays, gifts and festivities to create lightness of heart; overtime and overtask payments to promote zeal and satisfaction; kindliness and care to call forth loyalty in return; and the special device of crop patches to give every hand a stake in the plantation.  This last raised a minor problem of its own, for if slaves were allowed to raise and sell the plantation staples, pilfering might be stimulated more than industry and punishments become more necessary than before.  In the cotton belt a solution was found at last in nankeen cotton.[37] This variety had been widely grown for domestic use as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was left largely in neglect until when in the thirties it was hit upon for negro crops.  While the prices it brought were about the same as those of the standard upland staple, its distinctive brown color prevented the admixture of