system in place to control the slaves. The slaveowners used this system to maintain their labor supply and their way of life. The system was both subtle and crude and involved every device that social orders use to keep power and wealth in their own hands. The system was both physical and psychological. Slaves were taught discipline and were also impressed over and over with the idea of their own inferiority and to "know their place." They were taught to see blackness as a sign of subordination, to be awed by the power of the master, to merge their interests with those of the master, and to ignore their own individual needs. Among the means for effecting this were the discipline of hard labor, the breakup of the slave family, the lulling effects of religion, the creation of disunity among the slaves by separating them into field slaves and the more privileged house slaves, and the power of the law and threats of death. Much effort went into not only preventing escape
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