their custody, that then such owner shall lose his property to the said slave, to him or them that will sue for the same, by information, at any time within six months, in the court of common pleas in this Province.  And every person who shall so recover a slave by information, for the reasons aforesaid, shall, within twenty days after such recovery, inflict such punishment upon such slave as his former owner or head of a family ought to have done, and for neglect of which he lost his property to the said slave, or for neglect thereof shall forfeit fifty pounds; and in case any negro slave so recovered by information, and gelt, shall die, in such case, the slave so dying shall not be paid for out of the public treasury.  And in case any negro or slave shall run away the fifth time, and shall so continue by the space of thirty days at one time, such slave shall be tried before two justices of the peace and three freeholders, as before directed by this Act in case of murder, and being by them declared guilty of the offence, it shall be lawful for them to order the cord of one of the slave’s legs to be cut off above the heel, or else to pronounce sentence of death upon the slave, at the discretion of the said justices; and any judgment given after the first offence, shall be sufficient conviction to bring the offenders within the penalty for the second offence; and after the second, within the penalty of the third; and so for the inflicting the rest of the punishments."[490]

If any slave attempted to run away from his or her master, and go out of the Province, he or she could be tried before two justices and three freeholders, and sentenced to suffer a most cruel death.  If it could be proved that any Negro, free or slave, had endeavored to persuade or entice any other Negro to run off out of the Province, upon conviction he was punished with forty lashes, and branded on the forehead with a red hot iron, “that the mark thereof may remain.”  If a white man met a slave, and demanded of him to show his ticket, and the slave refused, the law empowered the white man “to beat, maim, or assault; and if such Negro or slave” could not “be taken, to kill him,” if he would not “shew his ticket.”

The cruel and barbarous code of the slave-power in South Carolina produced, in course of time, a re-action in the opposite direction.  The large latitude that the law gave to white people in their dealings with the hapless slaves made them careless and extravagant in the use of their authority.  It educated them into a brood of tyrants.  They did not care any more for the life of a Negro slave than for the crawling worm in their path.  Many white men who owned no slaves poured forth their wrathful invectives and cruel blows upon the heads of innocent Negroes with the slightest pretext.  They pushed, jostled, crowded, and kicked the Negro on every occasion.  The young whites early took their lessons in abusing God’s poor and helpless children; while an overseer was