To this view of the matter there is an apparent objection. It would seem that if race prejudice existed during the time of slavery, it should have manifested itself in the form of summary treatment of the negroes more frequently than it did. In general, however, there was no occasion for its manifestation. So long as the blacks were valuable as slaves and accepted their inferior position without protest, no one wanted to get rid of them or put them to death. The fact that slaves were property, and in that capacity were amenable to the laws, made recourse to unlawful procedure against them both unwise and unnecessary. It was only in cases of insurrection among the slaves, or when some especially brutal and barbarous crime was committed by a negro, that summary measures were adopted prior to the Civil War. At such times negroes were killed without mercy, sometimes they were tortured and their bodies mutilated while still alive, and occasionally they were burned to death. But these were extraordinary occasions; ordinarily the law was allowed to take its course.[238] A careful study of the relations which existed between the two races from 1619 to 1860 will reveal the presence of more or less racial antipathy. The institution of slavery, however, acted as a check to the manifestation of this antagonistic feeling as regards the manner of procedure for the punishment of negroes accused of serious offenses. “Slavery was, in its way, a thoroughgoing school; the negro race was educated in the cotton-fields and cabins of the South. In the Old South there was very little negro crime and no negro idleness. The negro worked under direction; he was taught how to work; he cheerfully accepted his work, and he was the soul of fidelity, as the history of the war proved.”[239] Restraints were placed around him; he received protection and guardianship; and, above all, he received an industrial training which gave him some degree of control over his own impulses and actions. He was looked upon and governed as a child, and he was punished as a child when he committed a breach of the peace or some serious offense against person or property. The legal procedure for the punishment of negroes, based upon the property right in slaves, was in perfect accord with the order of society that had been established during two hundred years or more of slavery.