lue was to be sold and one half of the proceeds given to
the informer, the other half to the county.[11] Another law forbade
the slave to go about armed unless he was the huntsman of the
plantation. Small penalties were provided.[12] Still another made it
unlawful for slaves to sell "any article whatever without permission
from owner or overseer." The penalty for breaking this law was a
maximum of "39 lashes on his, her, or their bare backs."[13] Many
other matters were rigidly prescribed in the early statutes, chiefly
concerning the slave's right to go or not to go from place to place,
and to conduct himself under certain circumstances. Among slaves
perjury was punished by mutilation and whipping. The brutality of the
former was all the more disgusting because defended by law.[14] The
slaying of a black or mulatto slave, however, was actually deemed
murder and made punishable with death. It has not yet been
ascertained, as far as the writer knows, whether any white citizen of
Tennessee was ever indicted under the provision of this law. We do
have a case of a famous old slave-holder in a community not far from
Nashville being tied to his gate post and severely whipped by his
neighbors, because of his brutal murder of one of his slaves.[15]

In the early laws the "hiring of one's own time," for a slave, was
expressly forbidden. This practice was that of the master's allowing a
slave to purchase his time for a certain amount of money, usually paid
per annum. The law forbidding it was later rather generally evaded,
although we cannot be sure of the evasion during the years 1796-1834.
But during the later decades of the period under discussion,
especially from 1840-60, there is absolute agreement among the
testimonies of ex-slaves that evasion was the rule and not the
exception. Various forms of this law were later enacted, but the
penalties were usually light, and it may have been this fact together
with the case of evasion that caused the disregard of it to become
general. An ex-slave of Wilson County explains that the usual method
of evasion was the declaration of the employer of the slave that he
had hired the slave from the slave's master. Sometimes the owner would
pretend to keep the wages of the slave, but really was holding them at
the slave's disposal. In this way numbers of slaves bought themselves.

There were other laws affecting masters in regard to their treatment
of their slaves and privileges of the latter.