The negro hunted the 'possum and 'coon by night and the hare--the rabbit, as everybody called it--on Sundays, half-holidays, and Christmas, either with his young master or without him, and always with the dogs; which he thus learned to control. A negro woman cooked the corn-bread and pot-liquor, with which they were fed by her or some other slave. They were always waiting near when the slaves ate by day in the fields or at all hours of night in their cabins, and many a bit was thrown to them. Usually there was the greatest friendship between the dogs on the plantation, those intended for chasing runaways included, and the negroes. It was great entertainment for a negro, at the command of his master, to give the young negro dogs a race, as it was called. These races were frequent, and they were the entire training of the dogs for their business. A hunting dog when lost will track his master. And many a runaway was caught by dogs which he was in the habit of feeding and hunting with. The average negro of those days, prowling so much at night as he did, necessarily became a most expert dog-tamer. How often I have been diverted with this sight! A strange negro, coming on some errand, intrepidly opens the front gate and enters the yard of a dwelling. A savage dog dashes forward. Just as the dog couches near for his spring, the negro, by a very quick movement, takes off his hat and extends it to the dog. The latter turns his eyes away from the negro, looks at the old, soiled wool hat, smells it, and then retires, nonplussed.
As a general rule a negro was safe from the bite of dogs. Running away was not frequent. The almost insuperable difficulty of final escape from the dogs prevented it. And it was in practice a most mild means of prevention. I suppose that I knew and heard of the catching of some twenty odd slaves in the contiguous parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene counties, which constituted the locality with which I was familiar, and in not a single case was one injured by the bloodhounds. The dogs that are now turned loose after our convicts are of far more savage temper than were the negro dogs of the old south; and consequently the human game, when come up with, is more prompt to go up a tree than was the old slave.