went from
Boston to Georgia prepared to weep with the slaves who wept, found himself
laughing with the laughing ones instead.[6]

[Footnote 5: Olmsted, _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 179.]

[Footnote 6: Nehemiah Adams. _A Southside View of Slavery, or Three Months
in the South in 1854_ (Boston, 1854), chap. 2.]

The theory of rigid coercion and complete exploitation was as strange to
the bulk of the planters as the doctrine and practice of moderation was to
those who viewed the regime from afar and with the mind's eye. A planter
in explaining his mildness might well have said it was due to his being
neither a knave nor a fool He refrained from the use of fetters not so much
because they would have hampered the slaves in their work as because the
general use of them never crossed his mind. And since chains and bolts were
out of the question, the whole system of control must be moderate; slaves
must be impelled as little as possible by fear, and as much as might be by
loyalty, pride and the prospect of reward.

Here and there a planter applied this policy in an exceptional degree. A
certain Z. Kingsley followed it with marked success even when his whole
force was of fresh Africans. In a pamphlet of the late eighteen-twenties
he told of his method as follows: "About twenty-five years ago I settled
a plantation on St. John's River in Florida with about fifty new negroes,
many of whom I brought from the Coast myself. They were mostly fine young
men and women, and nearly in equal numbers. I never interfered in their
connubial concerns nor domestic affairs, but let them regulate these after
their own manner. I taught them nothing but what was useful, and what I
thought would add to their physical and moral happiness. I encouraged as
much as possible dancing, merriment and dress, for which Saturday afternoon
and night and Sunday morning were dedicated. [Part of their leisure] was
usually employed in hoeing their corn and getting a supply of fish for the
week. Both men and women were very industrious. Many of them made twenty
bushels of corn to sell, and they vied with each other in dress and
dancing.... They were perfectly honest and obedient, and appeared perfectly
happy, having no fear but that of offending me; and I hardly ever had
to apply other correction than shaming them. If I exceeded this, the
punishment was quite light, for they hardly ever failed in doing their work
well. My object was to excite their ambition and at