try house and a vegetable garden behind; the rations issued weekly were
three and a half pounds of bacon to each hand over ten years old, together
with a peck of meal, or more if required; the children in the day nursery
were fed from the master's kitchen with soup, milk, bacon, vegetables and
bread; the hands had three suits of working clothes a year; the women were
given time off for washing, and did their mending in bad weather; all hands
had to dress up and go to church on Sunday when preaching was near; and
a clean outfit of working clothes was required every Monday. The chief
distinction of this plantation, however, lay in its device for profit
sharing. To each slave was assigned a half-acre plot with the promise that
if he worked with diligence in the master's crop the whole gang would in
turn be set to work his crop. This was useful in preventing night and
Sunday work by the negroes. The proceeds of their crops, ranging from ten
to fifty dollars, were expended by the master at their direction for Sunday
clothing and other supplies.[12] On a sugar plantation visited by Olmsted
a sum of as many dollars as there were hogsheads in the year's crop was
distributed among the slaves every Christmas.[13]

[Footnote 11: Pleasant Suit, _Farmer's Accountant and Instructions for
Overseers_ (Richmond, Va., 1828); _Affleck's Cotton Plantation Record and
Account Book_, reprinted in _DeBow's Review_, XVIII, 339-345, and in Thomas
W. Knox, _Campfire and Cotton Field_ (New York, 1865), pp. 358-364. _See
also_ for varied and interesting data as to rules, experience and advice;
Thomas S. Clay (of Bryan County, Georgia), _Detail of a Plan for the Moral
Improvement of Negroes on Plantations_ (1833); and _DeBow's Review_, XII,
291, 292; XIX, 358-363; XXI, 147-149, 277-279; XXIV, 321-326; XXV, 463;
XXVI, 579, 580; XXIX, 112-115, 357-368.]

[Footnote 12: _Southern Quarterly Review_, XXI, 215, 216.]

[Footnote 13: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 660.]

Of overseers in general, the great variety in their functions, their
scales of operation and their personal qualities make sweeping assertions
hazardous. Some were at just one remove from the authority of a great
planter, as is suggested by the following advertisement: "Wanted, a manager
to superintend several rice plantations on the Santee River. As the
business is extensive, a proportionate salary will be made, and one or two
young men of his own selection employed under him.[14] A