in 1729 that he had “met with a negro, a very old man, who has performed many wonderful cures of diseases.  For the sake of his freedom he has revealed the medicine, a concoction of roots and barks....  There is no room to doubt of its being a certain remedy here, and of singular use among the negroes—­it is well worth the price (L60) of the negro’s freedom, since it is now known how to cure slaves without mercury."[10] And in colonial South Carolina a slave named Caesar was particularly famed for his cure for poison, which was a decoction of plantain, hoar-hound and golden rod roots compounded with rum and lye, together with an application of tobacco leaves soaked in rum in case of rattlesnake bite.  In 1750 the legislature ordered his prescription published for the benefit of the public, and the Charleston journal which printed it found its copies exhausted by the demand.[11] An example of more common episodes appears in a letter from William Dawson, a Potomac planter, to Robert Carter of Nomoni Hall, asking that “Brother Tom,” Carter’s coachman, be sent to see a sick child in his quarter.  Dawson continued:  “The black people at this place hath more faith in him as a doctor than any white doctor; and as I wrote you in a former letter I cannot expect you to lose your man’s time, etc., for nothing, but am quite willing to pay for same."[12]

[Footnote 10:  J.H.  Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia (Baltimore, 1913), p. 53, note.]

[Footnote 11:  South Carolina Gazette, Feb. 25, 1751.]

[Footnote 12:  MS. in the Carter papers, Virginia Historical Society.]

Each plantation had a double head in the master and the mistress.  The latter, mother of a romping brood of her own and over-mother of the pickaninny throng, was the chatelaine of the whole establishment.  Working with a never flagging constancy, she carried the indoor keys, directed the household routine and the various domestic industries, served as head nurse for the sick, and taught morals and religion by precept and example.  Her hours were long, her diversions few, her voice quiet, her influence firm.[13] Her presence made the plantation a home; her absence would have made it a factory.  The master’s concern was mainly with the able-bodied in the routine of the crops.  He laid the plans, guessed the weather, ordered the work, and saw to its performance.  He was out early and in late, directing, teaching, encouraging, and on occasion punishing.  Yet he found time for going to town and for visits here and there, time for politics, and time for sports.  If his duty as he saw it was sometimes grim, and his disappointments keen, hearty diversions were at hand to restore his equanimity.  His horn hung near and his hounds made quick response on Reynard’s trail, and his neighbors were ready to accept his invitations and give theirs lavishly in return, whether to their houses or to their fields.  When their absences from home were long, as they might well be in the