policy than was generally carried out, for it must be
considered that the law was made to fit the worst cases, where such
action was justifiable. Often the attitude of the master appeared
harsher than it was really meant to be. It may have been merely a
display of authority on his part when he reprimanded a servant who
had really committed only a minor indiscretion.[387]

There were naturally other scenes in which the treatment of slaves
would not appear in such a favorable light. The chronically bad
master, however, was at all times and under all circumstances under
the ban of a just public sentiment. Should, by chance, a slave under
such a one secure vengeance on his heartless overlord, the general
feeling of the community was on the side of the slave. Strange to say,
it was very often true that persons who had known little concerning
slavery until they came to Kentucky, as soon as they had accumulated a
sufficient surplus, became the owners of slaves and proved to be the
hardest taskmasters.[388] Much light is thrown on this situation by
Shaler. "There is a common opinion," said he, "that the slaves of the
Southern households were subjected in various ways to brutal
treatment. Such, in my experience, was not the case. Though the custom
of using the whip on white children was common enough, I never saw a
negro deliberately punished in that way until 1862, when, in military
service, I stayed at night at the house of a friend. This old man,
long a widower, had recently married a woman from the state of Maine,
who had been the governess of his children. In the early morning I
heard a tumult in the back yard, and on looking out saw a negro man,
his arms tied up to a limb of a tree, while the vigorous matron was
administering on his back with a cowhide whip. At breakfast I learned
that the man had well deserved the flogging, but it struck me as
curious that in the only instance of the kind that I had known the
punishment was from the hands of a Northern woman."[389] Shaler lived
in Campbell County in the extreme northern section of the State, where
there were only a few slaves and the treatment was milder perhaps than
in any other part of Kentucky.

The general attitude is best shown by the two laws passed in 1816 and
1830. It had always been considered that the slave, being the property
of his owner, it remained for him and for him alone to serve as the
disciplinarian of the Negro. The increasing abuse of this right by