the isolation of the groups, could hardly prevail in similar degree where the slaves of many masters intermingled.  Even for the care of the sick there was doubtless fairly frequent recourse to such establishments as the “Surgical Infirmary for Negroes” at Augusta which advertised its facilities in 1854,[3] though the more common practice, of course, was for slave patients in town as well as country to be nursed at home.  A characteristic note in this connection was written by a young Georgia townswoman:  “No one is going to church today but myself, as we have a little negro very sick and Mama deems it necessary to remain at home to attend to him."[4]

[Footnote 3:  Southern Business Directory (Charleston, 1854), I, 289, advertisement.  The building was described as having accommodations for fifty or sixty patients.  The charge for board, lodging and nursing was $10 per month, and for surgical operations and medical attendance “the usual rates of city practice.”]

[Footnote 4:  Mary E. Harden to Mrs. Howell Cobb, Athens, Ga., Nov. 13, 1853.  MS. in possession of Mrs. A.S.  Erwin, Athens, Ga.]

The town regime was not so conducive to lifelong adjustments of masters and slaves except as regards domestic service; for whereas a planter could always expand his operations in response to an increase of his field hands and could usually provide employment at home for any artizan he might produce, a lawyer, a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire out or sell any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic establishment.  On the other hand a building contractor with an expanding business could not await the raising of children but must buy or hire masons and carpenters where he could find them.

Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs.  Thus William Elfe, a Charleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial period, had title to four sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and he managed to keep some of their wives and children in his possession also by having a farm on the further side of the harbor for their residence and employment.[5] William Rouse, a Charleston leather worker who closed his business in 1825 when the supply of tan bark ran short, had for sale four tanners, a currier and seven shoemakers, with, however, no women or children;[6] and the seven slaves of William Brockelbank, a plastering contractor of the same city, sold after his death in 1850, comprised but one woman and no children.[7] Likewise when the rope walk of Smith, Dorsey and Co. at New Orleans was offered for sale in 1820, fourteen slave operatives were included without mention of their families.[8]

[Footnote 5:  MS. account book of William Elfe, in the Charleston Library.]

[Footnote 6:  Charleston City Gazette, Jan. 5, 1826, advertisement.]

[Footnote 7:  Charleston Mercury, quoted in the Augusta Chronicle, Dec. 5, 1850.  This news item owed its publication to the “handsome prices” realized.  A plasterer 28 years old brought $2,135; another, 30, $1,805; a third, 24, $1775; a fourth, 24, $1,100; and a fifth, 20, $730.]