Mastery was an objective that male and female slave owners and their delegates aimed to acquire through techniques ranging from kindness to brutality. Their goal was to compel enslaved people to submit to their will and work efficiently and profitably. The system was malleable because it had to be; one strategy might be effective with one enslaved person yet ineffective with another. Even the specific circumstances under which an owner compelled an enslaved person to work—such as trying to force recently sold, relocated, and traumatized enslaved people to labor after being separated from their
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