[Footnote 42:  Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 153-155.]

As to routine control, urban proprietors were less complete masters even of slaves in their own employ than were those in the country.  For example, Morgan Brown of Clarksville, Tennessee, had occasion to publish the following notice:  “Whereas my negroes have been much in the habit of working at night for such persons as will employ them, to the great injury of their health and morals, I therefore forbid all persons employing them without my special permission in writing.  I also forbid trading with them, buying from or selling to them, without my written permit stating the article they may buy or sell.  The law will be strictly enforced against transgressors, without respect to persons[43].”

[Footnote 43:  Town Gazette and Farmers’ Register (Clarksville, Tenn.), Aug. 9, 1819, reprinted in Plantation and Frontier, II, 45, 46.]

When broils occurred in which slaves were involved, the masters were likely to find themselves champions rather than judges.  This may be illustrated by two cases tried before the town commissioners of Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1831.  In the first of these Edward Gary was ordered to bring before the board his slave Nathan to answer a charge of assault upon Richard Mayhorn, a member of the town patrol, and show why punishment should not be inflicted.  On the day set Cary appeared without the negro and made a counter charge supported by testimony that Mayhorn had exceeded his authority under the patrol ordinance.  The prosecution of the slave was thereupon dropped, and the patrolman was dismissed from the town’s employ.  The second case was upon a patrol charge against a negro named Hubbard, whose master or whose master’s attorney was one Wiggins, reciting an assault upon Billy Woodliff, a slave apparently of Seaborn Jones.  Billy being sworn related that Hubbard had come to the door of his blacksmith shop and “abused and bruised him with a rock.”  Other evidence revealed that Hubbard’s grievance lay in Billy’s having taken his wife from him.  “The testimony having been concluded, Mr. Wiggins addressed the board in a speech containing some lengthy, strengthy and depthy argument:  whereupon the board ordered that the negro man Hubbard receive from the marshall ten lashes, moderately laid on, and be discharged."[44] Even in the maintenance of household discipline masters were fain to apply chastisement vicariously by having the town marshal whip their offending servants for a small fee.

[Footnote 44:  MS. archives in the town hall at Milledgeville, Ga., selected items from which are printed in the American Historical Association Report for 1903, I, 468, 469.]