two justices and
three freeholders, and sentenced to suffer a most cruel death. If it
could be proved that any Negro, free or slave, had endeavored to
persuade or entice any other Negro to run off out of the Province,
upon conviction he was punished with forty lashes, and branded on the
forehead with a red hot iron, "that the mark thereof may remain." If a
white man met a slave, and demanded of him to show his ticket, and the
slave refused, the law empowered the white man "to beat, maim, or
assault; and if such Negro or slave" could not "be taken, to kill
him," if he would not "shew his ticket."

The cruel and barbarous code of the slave-power in South Carolina
produced, in course of time, a re-action in the opposite direction.
The large latitude that the law gave to white people in their dealings
with the hapless slaves made them careless and extravagant in the use
of their authority. It educated them into a brood of tyrants. They did
not care any more for the life of a Negro slave than for the crawling
worm in their path. Many white men who owned no slaves poured forth
their wrathful invectives and cruel blows upon the heads of innocent
Negroes with the slightest pretext. They pushed, jostled, crowded, and
kicked the Negro on every occasion. The young whites early took their
lessons in abusing God's poor and helpless children; while an overseer
was prized more for his brutal powers--to curse, beat, and
torture--than for any ability he chanced to possess for business
management. The press and pulpit had contemplated this state of
affairs until they, too, were the willing abettors in the most cruel
system of bondage that history has recorded. But no man wants his
horse driven to death, if it is a beast. No one cares to have every
man that passes kick his dog, even if it is not the best dog in the
community. It is _his_ dog, and that makes all the difference in the
world. The men who did the most cruel things to the slaves they found
in their daily path were, as a rule, without slaves or any other kind
of property. They used their authority unsparingly. Common-sense
taught the planters that better treatment of the slaves meant better
work, and increased profits for themselves. A small value was finally
placed upon a slave's life,--fifty pounds. Fifty pounds paid into the
public treasury by a man who, "of wantonness, or only of
bloody-mindedness, or cruel intention," had killed "a negro or other
slave of his own," was en