also boasted of many prominent scholars, such as Francis Lieber,
who was a professor at the University of South Carolina; Mr. Le Conte
and Joseph Senat, who were great geologists and who were also
professors at the University of South Carolina; Messrs. Ruffner,
Wiley, Yansey, and Manly, prominent Southern educators; and many
notable statesmen who went forth from the Southern universities. Does
it not seem natural, then, that the Southern planters, who were so
charming and so progressive, should dominate the political and social
life of the South?

No picture of the planter, however, is "able to be free from the warm,
underlying color, the object upon which his progress rested
advantageously"--slavery. The attractive life of the planter was made
possible by the fact that he had hundreds of slaves to perform the
manual labor. The power of the master over the slave was very similar
to that of a master over an indentured apprentice in Europe. Both the
apprentice and the slave were bound for a term of years, the slave
being bound for life. In both cases the master regulated and
controlled the person and had absolute enjoyment of his labor. The
prominent difference in their power was that the master of a slave
could sell him to another, and had the right to sell his child born
during slavery, while the master of an indentured apprentice could not
so treat him. In both cases the master was an absolute despot.[9]

Since the master, although making the rules of the plantation, was
frequently absent, and since the enforcement of the rules and the
severity of the labor depended upon the overseer, it is helpful to
know the general character of this important power in order to
understand the labor of the slaves. He was usually ignorant,
high-tempered, and brutal. Patrick Henry has described him as a most
"abject, degraded, and unprincipled man." Such men usually worked the
Negroes to the limit, having a Negro driver go with each gang of
slaves in order to secure the utmost labor. In the light of these
facts, it is easy to understand how the slaves might be mistreated, in
spite of the benevolent intentions of the master. Yet the overseers
were not wholly blamable for their cruelty, inasmuch as they were
assured of work only as long as they pleased the master, who judged
them by the good behavior of the slaves, the general condition of the
plantation, and the size and quality of the crop. Calhoun has
truthfully said that by display