Southern planter : devoted to agriculture, horticulture, and the ...

412 THE SOUTHERN PLANTER,
and deal with a conservative hand, in all
matters affecting the rights and bodily
comfort of the slave.
Third, he should be industrious. Without
this, the interests of his employer
would be jeopardized, while the happiness
of the negroes themselves would in no
wise be enhanced. The consequences of
his sloth would be felt in the receipts of
the plantation, while the negroes would
grow vicious and turbulent for want of
proper restraints. Decay would soon write
his name upon all the perishable objects
around him, while disorder, confusion and
misery each would struggle in a war of
extermination, for an impious ascendency.
A lazy overseer is a great evil to his employer,
but a positive curse to the negroes.
Fourth, he should be a man of decision.
This would always find him ready for
emergencies, while it would enable him to,
guide with a steady hand the reguli
rounds of business. Without it, a loss of
tirpe, a wrong application of labor and
train of general ills would follow. His positions
once taken, and his choice made,
his whole available force would move with
the quick-step of an army. The piteous
but deceitful whinings of the lying could
not unnerve him, nor the insolent threats
and menaces of the rebellious alarm him.
With this, he could appropriate his labor
to advantage, and keep a regular system
of plantation economy. As weather and
seasons changed, so he could dispose of
his time and labor, and turn it to the great-
est account. To see a man trying to kill
grass with a hoe when his land is in order
for the plow, or take ten men to do a job
which five can accomplish is evidence of
culpable indecision and want of method.
Besides all this he often has rights to adjudicate
among negroes, and without a firm
discriminating mind, his decisions would
conflict with the plainest demands of justice
and common sense.
Fifth, he should be a man of strict truth.
Truth is not only a high moral embelifihment.
but it is actually useful in all the relations
of life. It prevents mistakes and
wrangling on the plantation by keeping up
a fair understanding, and making each one
bear his own responsibility. An overseer to
be swearing that he has corn as high as his
head, and as clean as a parlor floor, w^hen
it is not a foot high, and every square inch
covered with a crop of verdant green which
he did'nt plant, or to throw responsibility
from his shoulders when censured by his
employer, by swearing he told a negro to
do thus and so, for which, to prove his
sincerity, he will whip the negro, makes
but a despicable show of character.
Sixth, he should be a moral man. The
idea that a man must swear, because
he has negroes to manage, is a poor apology
for the indulgence of a miserable, vulgar
habit. An overseer can have a well
defined and prompt discipline without the
use of profanity, and by keeping his temper
and controlling himself with becoming
dignity, can acquire a much easier command
over negroes, than by fretting himself
into a passion, which he must throw
off by raging profanity. If he once gets
into such a habit, negroes will watch for it
like a sort of moral thermometer, and wait
for his temper to get to cursing point, before
they feel inclined to heed him much.
Then the example to them is pernicious.
Every overseer should be an exemplar of
decency at least to the negroes under his
charge. It is rather an unfavorable argument
for the institution of slavery, to say,
that a man cannot manage negroes without
swearing, and one that we know to be
false.
Seventh and lastly, an overseer should
be intelligent. The duties of a plantation
require a clear practical mind, which
should be cultivated by reading. Every
overseer should take two or three papers,
a majority of which should be agricultural.
These he should read carefully, because
they enlighten him on the subjects in
which he is interested. Beyond that he
might read, with profit, a few elementary
works on agricultural chemistry. Time
spent in this way will not only make him
wiser, but it will give him character, and
that will command situations at any time
and place, at the highest rates. In this
feature, overseers are more deficient than
any others. The most of them we know
to be poor men, who have had no advantage
of education, and think that because
they had not early opportunities, there is
no use in trying for improvement at a later
period of life. But this is all a mistake.
The history of our country abounds
in instances of men, who' have made
themselves eminently great, by application
to books, after the period and responsibilities
of manhood had begun : and