he work of the fields;
and a plantation took on the appearance of a busy colony in a new
country. Sixty to a hundred negroes were regarded as the best labor unit
for profitable agriculture. Of these there would be a few house servants
trained in all the intricacies of patriarchal hospitality and courtesy.
The carriage driver and keeper of the stables, sometimes clad in the
extra dignity of a special livery and a tall silk hat, a tyrant to all
the little negroes, but an obsequious flatterer to those who were
welcome at the master's house, was perhaps the most envied man of the
estate. To see this matchless son of Africa mounted on the high seat of
an old-fashioned English carriage, as he drove his prancing horses to
the front door of the "great house" and asked if all were ready for
church, was to get a glimpse of the old South itself. The boasted
freedom of "poor white trash" or of "impudent free issue negroes" had no
attractions to him who enjoyed these high prerogatives.

The master who was responsible for the multitudinous life of the
plantation, arbiter of the fortunes, sometimes, of a thousand men, was
usually conscious of his power and, when "times were good," kind to his
dependents. He liked to see his negroes fat and happy, for a "likely
slave" was as good as money in the bank. Accustomed to the exercise of
authority, he was apt to be a member of the county court, the actual
governing agency of the old South, and as such he was always "squire."
From the county court he went to the state legislature, where he and his
fellow planters made the laws of these sovereign States of the old
regime. From local magistrate to chief executive the Southern community
was governed by the owners of slaves, and the great men whom they chose
to speak for the South in Congress or to advise the President and his
Cabinet or to sit upon the benches of the federal courts were invariably
masters of plantations, trained from early youth to the exercise of
authority and accustomed to receive the homage of their neighbors. It
was a mighty social and economic organization which had grown up in and
spread over the richer lands of South and West, as far as the borders of
Mexico and the valleys of the Ohio and Missouri. The wheat and tobacco
growers, the rice and sugar planters were allied to the more powerful
cotton lords, and, though there were party differences, all spoke the
same voice in the national life. Of the five or six millions of so