thing, and the habit they have
of balancing great weights on their heads, erect and good.

At the upper end of the row of houses, and nearest to our overseer's
residence, is the hut of the head driver. Let me explain, by the way, his
office. The negroes, as I before told you, are divided into troops or
gangs, as they are called; at the head of each gang is a driver, who
stands over them, whip in hand, while they perform their daily task, who
renders an account of each individual slave and his work every evening to
the overseer, and receives from him directions for their next day's tasks.
Each driver is allowed to inflict a dozen lashes upon any refractory slave
in the field, and at the time of the offence; they may not, however,
extend the chastisement, and if it is found ineffectual, their remedy lies
in reporting the unmanageable individual either to the head driver or the
overseer; the former of whom has power to inflict three dozen lashes at
his own discretion, and the latter as many as he himself sees fit, within
the number of fifty; which limit, however, I must tell you, is an
arbitrary one on this plantation, appointed by the founder of the estate,
Major ----, Mr. ----'s grandfather, many of whose regulations, indeed I
believe most of them, are still observed in the government of the
plantation. Limits of this sort, however, to the power of either driver,
head driver, or overseer, may or may not exist elsewhere; they are, to a
certain degree, a check upon the power of these individuals; but in the
absence of the master, the overseer may confine himself within the limit
or not, as he chooses--and as for the master himself, where is his limit?
He may, if he likes, flog a slave to death, for the laws which pretend
that he may not are a mere pretence--inasmuch as the testimony of a black
is never taken against a white; and upon this plantation of ours, and a
thousand more, the overseer is the _only_ white man, so whence should come
the testimony to any crime of his? With regard to the oft-repeated
statement, that it is not the owner's interest to destroy his human
property, it answers nothing--the instances in which men, to gratify the
immediate impulse of passion, sacrifice not only their eternal, but their
evident, palpable, positive worldly interest, are infinite. Nothing is
commoner than for a man under the transient influence of anger to
disregard his worldly advantage; and the black slave, whose preservation
is