mixture of the
planter's own white variety without certain detection when it reached
the gin. The scale which the slave crops attained on some plantations is
indicated by the proceeds of $1,969.65 in 1859 from the nankeen of the
negroes on the estate of Allen McWalker in Taylor County, Georgia.[38] Such
returns might be distributed in cash; but planters generally preferred for
the sake of sobriety that money should not be freely handled by the slaves.
Earnings as well as gifts were therefore likely to be issued in the form of
tickets for merchandise. David Ross, for example, addressed the following
to the firm of Allen and Ellis at Fredericksburg in the Christmas season of
1802: "Gentlemen: Please to let the bearer George have ten dollars value in
anything he chooses"; and the merchants entered a memorandum that George
chose two handkerchiefs, two hats, three and a half yards of linen, a pair
of hose, and six shillings in cash.[39]

[Footnote 37: John Drayton, _View of South Carolina_ (Charleston, 1802), p.
128.]

[Footnote 38: Macon, Ga., _Telegraph_, Feb. 3, 1859, quoted in _DeBow's
Review_, XXIX, 362, note.]

[Footnote 39: MS. among the Allen and Ellis papers in the Library of
Congress.]

In general the most obvious way of preventing trouble was to avoid the
occasion for it. If tasks were complained of as too heavy, the simplest
recourse was to reduce the schedule. If jobs were slackly done,
acquiescence was easier than correction. The easy-going and plausible
disposition of the blacks conspired with the heat of the climate to soften
the resolution of the whites and make them patient. Severe and unyielding
requirements would keep everyone on edge; concession when accompanied with
geniality and not indulged so far as to cause demoralization would make
plantation life not only tolerable but charming.

In the actual regime severity was clearly the exception, and kindliness the
rule. The Englishman Welby, for example, wrote in 1820: "After travelling
through three slave states I am obliged to go back to theory to raise any
abhorrence of it. Not once during the journey did I witness an instance of
cruel treatment nor could I discover anything to excite commiseration in
'the faces or gait of the people of colour. They walk, talk and appear at
least as independent as their masters; in animal spirits they have greatly
the advantage."[40] Basil Hall wrote in 1828: "I have no wish, God knows!
to defend slavery in the abst