t
special directions when a case of incorrigibility was reported: "You had
best think carefully respecting him, and always keep in mind the important
old plantation maxim, viz: 'never to threaten a negro,' or he will do as
you and I would when at school--he will run. But with such a one, ... if
you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and
give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for
three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again.... Mind then and tell
him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels
with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on
himself, for he now sees how easy it is to fix 'a bad disposed nigger.'
Then give my compliments to him and tell him that you wrote me of his
conduct, and say if he don't change for the better I'll sell him to a slave
trader who will send him to New Orleans, where I have already sent several
of the gang for misconduct, or their running away for no cause." In one
case Manigault lost a slave by suicide in the river when a driver brought
him up for punishment but allowed him to run before it was administered.[5]

[Footnote 5: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 32, 94.]

As to rewards, Hammond was the only one of these writers to prescribe them
definitely. His head driver was to receive five dollars, the plow driver
three dollars, and the ditch driver and stock minder one dollar each every
Christmas day, and the nurse a dollar and the midwife two dollars for every
actual increase of two on the place. Further, "for every infant thirteen
months old and in sound health, that has been properly attended to, the
mother shall receive a muslin or calico frock."

"The head driver," Hammond wrote, "is the most important negro on the
plantation, and is not required to work like other hands. He is to
be treated with more respect than any other negro by both master and
overseer....He is to be required to maintain proper discipline at all
times; to see that no negro idles or does bad work in the field, and to
punish it with discretion on the spot....He is a confidential servant, and
may be a guard against any excesses or omissions of the overseer." Weston,
forbidding his drivers to inflict punishments except at the overseer's
order and in his presence, described their functions as the maintenance of
quiet in the quarter and of discipline at large, the starting of the slaves
to the fields each