s slaves." In Kingsley's opinion the system "answered extremely well,
and offers to us a strong case in favor of exciting ambition by cultivating
utility, local attachment and moral improvement among the slaves."[8]

[Footnote 8: [Z. Kingsley] _Treatise_, p. 22.]

The most thoroughgoing application on record of self-government by slaves
is probably that of the brothers Joseph and Jefferson Davis on their
plantations, Hurricane and Brierfield, in Warren County, Mississippi. There
the slaves were not only encouraged to earn money for themselves in every
way they might, but the discipline of the plantations was vested in courts
composed wholly of slaves, proceeding formally and imposing penalties to be
inflicted by slave constables except when the master intervened with his
power of pardon. The regime was maintained for a number of years in full
effect until in 1862 when the district was invaded by Federal troops.[9]

[Footnote 9: W.L. Fleming, "Jefferson Davis, the Negroes and the Negro
Problem," in the _Sewanee Review_ (October, 1908).]

These several instances were of course exceptional, and they merely tend to
counterbalance the examples of systematic severity at the other extreme.
In general, though compulsion was always available in last resort, the
relation of planter and slave was largely shaped by a sense of propriety,
proportion and cooperation.

As to food, clothing and shelter, a few concrete items will reinforce the
indications in the preceding chapters that crude comfort was the rule.
Bartram the naturalist observed in 1776 that a Georgia slaveholder with
whom he stopped sold no dairy products from his forty cows in milk. The
proprietor explained this by saying: "I have a considerable family of black
people who though they are slaves must be fed and cared for Those I have
were either chosen for their good qualities or born in the family; and I
find from long experience and observation that the better they are fed,
clothed and treated, the more service and profit we may expect to derive
from their labour. In short, I find my stock produces no more milk, or any
article of food or nourishment, than what is expended to the best advantage
amongst my family and slaves." At another place Bartram noted the arrival
at a plantation of horse loads of wild pigeons taken by torchlight from
their roosts in a neighboring swamp.[10]

[Footnote 10: William Bartram, _Travels_ (London, 1792), pp. 307-310, 467,
468.]

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