Plantation Rules
Center for American History
University of Texas at Austin

This document lists ten "general rules" and nineteen "particular rules" regarding appropriate treatment of slaves at all seasons of the year and in all kinds of circumstances.

A field hand cost about $800, an investment that a careful master tended to diligently. This extensive list of Plantation Rules spells out care for the slaves in great detail. Not that kindness was the motive--$800, as one mistress observed, was "a great deal of money to lay out on a thing that might lie down the next day and die."