] the
latter sometimes went so far as to set fire to the oppressor's house or to
accomplish his death by poison, cudgel, knife or bullet.[22]

[Footnote 20: Examples are reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II,
79-91.]

[Footnote 21: An instance is given in H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the
Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., [1914]), p. 75.]

[Footnote 22: For instances _see Plantation and Frontier_, II, 117-121.]

In the typical group there was occasion for terrorism on neither side. The
master was ruled by a sense of dignity, duty and moderation, and the
slaves by a moral code of their own. This embraced a somewhat obsequious
obedience, the avoidance of open indolence and vice, the attainment of
moderate skill in industry, and the cultivation of the master's good
will and affection. It winked at petty theft, loitering and other little
laxities, while it stressed good manners and a fine faithfulness in major
concerns. While the majority were notoriously easy-going, very many made
their master's interests thoroughly their own; and many of the masters had
perfect confidence in the loyalty of the bulk of their servitors. When on
the eve of secession Edmund Ruffin foretold[23] the fidelity which the
slaves actually showed when the war ensued, he merely voiced the faith of
the planter class.

[Footnote 23: _Debowfs Review_, XXX, 118-120 (January, 1861).]

In general the relations on both sides were felt to be based on pleasurable
responsibility. The masters occasionally expressed this in their letters.
William Allason, for example, who after a long career as a merchant at
Falmouth, Virginia, had retired to plantation life, declined his niece's
proposal in 1787 that he return to Scotland to spend his declining years.
In enumerating his reasons he concluded: "And there is another thing which
in your country you can have no trial of: that is, of selling faithful
slaves, which perhaps we have raised from their earliest breath. Even this,
however, some can do, as with horses, etc., but I must own that it is not
in my disposition."[24]

[Footnote 24: Letter dated Jan. 22, 1787, in the Allason MS. mercantile
books, Virginia State Library.]

Others were yet more expressive when they came to write their wills.
Thus[25] Howell Cobb of Houston County, Georgia, when framing his testament
in 1817 which made his body-servant "to be what he is really deserving, a
free man," and gave an annuity along with virtual freedom to