y was to be executed as an example and
the loss caused by his death was to be apportioned among the owners of the
several.[11] More commonly the mitigation lay not in the laws themselves
but in the general disposition to leave to the discipline of the masters
such slave misdeeds as were not regarded as particularly heinous nor
menacing to the public security.

[Footnote 9: A.C. Goodell, Jr., _The Trial and Execution for Petit Treason
of Mark and Phillis_ (Cambridge, 1883), reprinted from the Massachusetts
Historical Society _Proceedings_, XX, 132-157.]

[Footnote 10: A.L. Cross, "Benefit of Clergy," in the _American Historical
Review_, XXII, 544-565.]

[Footnote 11: _Abridgement of the Laws in Force in Her Majesty's
Plantations_ (London, 1704), pp. 104-108.]

Burnings at the stake, breakings on the wheel and other ferocious methods
of execution which were occasionally inflicted by the colonial courts were
almost universally discontinued soon after the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The general trend of moderation discernible at that time, however,
was hampered then and thereafter by the series of untoward events beginning
with the San Domingo upheaval and ending with John Brown's raid. In
particular the rise of the Garrisonian agitation and the quickly ensuing
Nat Turner's revolt occasioned together a wave of reactionary legislation
the whole South over, prohibiting the literary instruction of negroes,
stiffening the patrol system, restricting manumissions, and diminishing the
already limited liberties of free negroes. The temper of administration,
however, was not appreciably affected, for this clearly appears to have
grown milder as the decades passed.

The police ordinances of the several cities and other local jurisdictions
were in keeping with the state laws which they supplemented and in some
degree duplicated. At New Orleans an ordinance adopted in 1817 and little
changed thereafter forbade slaves to live off their masters' premises
without written permission, to make any clamorous noise, to show disrespect
to any white persons, to walk with canes on the streets unless on account
of infirmity, or to congregate except at church, at funerals, and at such
dances and other amusements as were permitted for them on Sundays alone and
in public places. Each offender was to be tried by the mayor or a justice
of the peace after due notice to his master, and upon conviction was to be
punished within a limit of twe