Like most slave owners, Bennet Barrow subjected his slaves to a harsh life on his plantation. A crucial piece of evidence that proves this fact is his own diary, where he basically detailed the way he treated his slaves. For example, the “Record of Punishment” excerpt lists multiple instances where he whipped them whenever they disobeyed him or failed to meet his goals, and the “Rules for Highland Plantation” excerpt contains regulations that restrict both their freedom and their ability to take care of themselves. These specific excerpts reveal Barrow’s two main motives for treating his slaves so poorly: to demonstrate his superiority over them and to increase the plantation’s productivity. His slave rules indicate both motives, mainly because they both strongly correlate with each other. To elaborate, it is possible that Barrow established his superiority and control over his slaves in order to get them to work harder and produce more cotton. After all, he had whipped …show more content…
One of Barrow’s declared rules include his assertion that “No Negro shall leave the place at any time without [his] permission” (Rules for Highland Plantation), and an important detail to note is that at a later point in his diary, he states that if a slave “offers a good reason, I never refuse. But otherwise, I never grant him a Pass” (Rules for Highland Plantation). Barrow also tends to severely punish the slaves who disobey or rebel against him. He had whipped a slave named Ginney Jerry for refusing to work and attempting to run away (Record of Punishment), and he had whipped two more slaves for breaking “into [his] storeroom and help[ing] themselves very liberally to everything” (Record of Punishment). When considering both his punishment tendencies and his rules of conduct, it becomes clear that Barrow is using paternalism to establish discipline, which would allow the plantation’s productivity to