e. In this way labor becomes
easy and pleasant. No man can enforce a system of discipline unless he
himself conforms strictly to rules...No man should attempt to manage
negroes who is not perfectly firm and fearless and [in] entire control of
his temper."

[Footnote 2: They were also printed in _DeBow's Review_, XXII, 617-620,
XXIII, 376-381 (Dec., 1856, and April, 1857).]

[Footnote 3: _See above_, p. 239.]

James H. Hammond's "plantation manual" which is the fullest of such
documents available, began with the subject of the crop, only to
subordinate it at once to the care of the slaves and outfit: "A good crop
means one that is good taking into consideration everything, negroes, land,
mules, stock, fences, ditches, farming utensils, etc., etc., all of which
must be kept up and improved in value. The effort must therefore not be
merely to make so many cotton bales or such an amount of other produce, but
as much as can be made without interrupting the steady increase in value
of the rest of the property.... There should be an increase in number and
improvement in condition of negroes."[4]

[Footnote 4: MS. bound volume, "Plantation Manual," among the Hammond
papers in the Library of Congress.]

For the care of the sick, of course, all these planters were solicitous.
Acklen, Manigault and Weston provided that mild cases be prescribed for by
the overseer in the master's absence, but that for any serious illness a
doctor be summoned. One of Telfair's women was a semi-professional midwife
and general practitioner, permitted by her master to serve blacks and
whites in the neighborhood. For home needs Telfair wrote of her: "Elsey is
the doctoress of the plantation. In case of extraordinary illness, when
she thinks she can do no more for the sick, you will employ a physician."
Hammond, however, was such a devotee of homeopathy that in the lack of an
available physician of that school he was his own practitioner. He wrote in
his manual: "No negro will be allowed to remain at his own house when sick,
but must be confined to the hospital. Every reasonable complaint must be
promptly attended to; and with any marked or general symptom of sickness,
however trivial, a negro may lie up a day or so at least.... Each case
has to be examined carefully by the master or overseer to ascertain the
disease. The remedies next are to be chosen with the utmost discrimination;
... the directions for treatment, diet, etc., most implicitly foll