thought to have a soul, and the law sought to deprive him of all human
attributes. Holiday amusement consisted largely of the dances that the
Negroes had brought with them, these being accompanied by the beating of
drums and the blowing of horns; and funeral ceremonies featured African
mummeries. For those who were criminal offenders simple execution was
not always considered severe enough; the right hand might first be
amputated, the criminal then hanged and his head cut off, and his body
quartered and the parts suspended in public places. Sometimes the
hanging was in chains, and several instances of burning are on record.
A master was regularly reimbursed by the government for a slave legally
executed, and in 1714 there was a complaint in South Carolina that
the treasury had become almost exhausted by such reimbursements. In
Massachusetts hanging was the worst legal penalty, but the obsolete
common-law punishment was revived in 1755 to burn alive a slave-woman
who had killed her master in Cambridge.[3]

[Footnote 1: Blake: _History of Slavery and the Slave-Trade_, 378.]

[Footnote 2: Ballagh: _Slavery in Virginia_, 12.]

[Footnote 3: Edward Eggleston: "Social Conditions in the Colonies," in
_Century Magazine_, October, 1884, p. 863.]

The relations between the free Negro and the slave might well have given
cause for concern. Above what was after all only an artificial barrier
spoke the call of race and frequently of kindred. Sometimes at a later
date jealousy arose when a master employed a free Negro to work with
his slaves, the one receiving pay and the others laboring without
compensation. In general, however, the two groups worked like brothers,
each giving the other the benefit of any temporary advantage that it