to be well looked after, ... and
that none of them suffer in time of sickness for want of proper care."
P.C. Weston of South Carolina wrote in 1856: "The proprietor, in the first
place, wishes the overseer most distinctly to understand that his first
object is to be, under all circumstances, the care and well being of the
negroes. The proprietor is always ready to excuse such errors as may
proceed from want of judgment; but he never can or will excuse any cruelty,
severity or want of care towards the negroes. For the well being, however,
of the negroes it is absolutely necessary to maintain obedience, order and
discipline, to see that the tasks are punctually and carefully performed,
and to conduct the business steadily and firmly, without weakness on the
one hand or harshness on the other." Charles Manigault likewise required of
his overseer in Georgia a pledge to treat his negroes "all with kindness
and consideration in sickness and health." On J.W. Fowler's plantation in
the Yazoo-Mississippi delta from which we have seen in a preceding chapter
such excellent records of cotton picking, the preamble to the rules framed
in 1857 ran as follows: "The health, happiness, good discipline and
obedience, good, sufficient and comfortable clothing, a sufficiency
of good, wholesome and nutritious food for both man and beast being
indispensably necessary to successful planting, as well as for reasonable
dividends for the amount of capital invested, without saying anything about
the Master's duty to his dependents, to himself, and his God, I do hereby
establish the following rules and regulations for the management of my
Prairie plantation, and require an observance of the same by any and all
overseers I may at any time have in charge thereof."[1]

[Footnote 1: The Corbin, Weston, Manigault and Fowler instructions are
printed in _Plantation and Frontier_, I, 109-129.]

Joseph A.S. Acklen had his own rules printed in 1861 for the information of
applicants and the guidance of those who were employed as his overseers.[2]
His estate was one of the greatest in Louisiana, his residence one of the
most pretentious,[3] and his rules the most sharply phrased. They read in
part: "Order and system must be the aim of everyone on this estate, and the
maxim strictly pursued of a time for everything and everything done in its
time, a place for everything and everything kept in its place, a rule for
everything and everything done according to rul