dation, which was the central
problem of the life, was on the whole happily solved.

[Footnote 18: William H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston,
1863), p. 285.]

The separate integration of the slaves was no more than rudimentary. They
were always within the social mind and conscience of the whites, as the
whites in turn were within the mind and conscience of the blacks. The
adjustments and readjustments were mutually made, for although the masters
had by far the major power of control, the slaves themselves were by no
means devoid of influence. A sagacious employer has well said, after long
experience, "a negro understands a white man better than the white man
understands the negro."[19] This knowledge gave a power all its own. The
general regime was in fact shaped by mutual requirements, concessions
and understandings, producing reciprocal codes of conventional morality.
Masters of the standard type promoted Christianity and the customs of
marriage and parental care, and they instructed as much by example as
by precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences, and
permitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought the slaves could be
trusted not to abuse; they refrained from selling slaves except under
the stress of circumstances; they avoided cruel, vindictive and captious
punishments, and endeavored to inspire effort through affection rather
than through fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderate
industrial results. In short their despotism, so far as it might properly
be so called was benevolent in intent and on the whole beneficial in
effect.

[Footnote 19: Captain L.V. Cooley, _Address Before the Tulane Society of
Economics_ [New Orleans, 1911], p. 8.]

Some planters there were who inflicted severe punishments for disobedience
and particularly for the offense of running away; and the community
condoned and even sanctioned a certain degree of this. Otherwise no planter
would have printed such descriptions of scars and brands as were fairly
common in the newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the recapture
of absconders.[20] When severity went to an excess that was reckoned as
positive cruelty, however, the law might be invoked if white witnesses
could be had; or the white neighbors or the slaves themselves might apply
extra-legal retribution. The former were fain to be content with inflicting
social ostracism or with expelling the offender from the district;[21