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[O]f the people who went away three men, returned to the plantation of Dr. McGill and carried away their wives—the six were taken together making their way to the enemy. The men were tried yesterday by the provost martials court—they were sentenced to be hung—to day one oclock was fixed for the execution that no executive clemency might intervene … there was a crowd—the blacks were encouraged to be present—the effect will not soon be forgotten.123

On the nearby Allston rice plantation, Stephen (the valet) had defected with his wife and children, and the effect on the other slaves, according to the overseer, had been noticeable: “I Can see since Stephn left a goodeal of obstanetry in Some of the Peopl. Mostly mongst the Woman a goodeal of Quarling and disputeing & teling lies.” That was all the more reason for Adele Petigru Allston, who had become the mistress of the plantation upon the death of her husband, to act firmly in this matter. Unable to apprehend Stephen, she resolved to make an example of his wife’s mother, not so much out of spite as the conviction that parents and relations should be held responsible for the actions of their families. “You know all the circumstances of Stephen’s desertion,” she wrote the local magistrate.

You know that his wife is Mary’s daughter and she is the third of her children who have gone off.… It is too many instances in her family for me to suppose she is ignorant of their plans and designs. She has been always a highly favoured servant, and all her family have been placed in positions of confidence and trust. I think this last case should be visited in some degree on her.

At the same time, Adele Allston informed Jesse Belflowers, the overseer, of her decision to remove Mary and James (Stephen’s father) to “some place of confinement” in the interior of the state and hold them there “as hostages for the conduct of their children.” If by making an example of these individuals, she had thought to instill proper subordination in the remaining slaves, subsequent events on the Allston plantations, particularly with the coming of the Yankees, would prove less than reassuring.124

What compounded the problem of control was the difficulty of anticipating defections; every slave owner would have to make his own determination and act accordingly. Anxious about retaining his house servant and cook, a Georgia planter put heavy iron shackles on her feet while she worked and locked her in the cornhouse at night. In the Mississippi River region, a Union officer who returned from a raid with two hundred slaves reported having found twenty-five of them chained in a cane brake. On the plantation in Virginia where Susie Burns labored, any slave contemplating an escape during the war years needed to elude the vigilant eye and drunken wrath of the master. “Used to set in his big chair on de porch wid a jug of whiskey by his side drinkin’ an’ watchin’ de quarters to see that didn’t none of his slaves start slippin’ away.” More commonly, a slave owner made an example of runaways who were apprehended and returned to the plantation. If not immediately sold, they were liable to be whipped, chained at night, put to work on Confederate fortifications, or removed for safekeeping to non-threatened areas. After thwarting an attempted escape, the son of a South Carolina planter sold two of the leaders in Charleston and punished the others “by whips and hand-cuffing,” making certain that they were chained and watched at night. But some planters, acting as though their tenure as slave owners might be short-lived, were so unnerved by defections that they vented all of their frustrations on those they could apprehend. “W’en de Union soldiers wur near us,” a freedwoman named Affy recalled, “some o’ de young han’s run off to git to de Union folks, an’ massa ketch dem an’ hang dem to a tree, an’ shoot dem; he t’ink no more’n to shoot de culled people right down.… But t’ank God, I got away, an