eared
previously. They cannot, like the native proprietor, sit waiting half an
hour for the second course, or see everything done in the worst possible
manner, their rooms dirty, their property wasted, their plans frustrated,
their infants slighted,--themselves deluded by artifices--they cannot, like
the native proprietor, endure all this unruffled."[29] It is clear from
every sort of evidence, if evidence were needed, that life among negro
slaves and the successful management of them promoted, and wellnigh
necessitated, a blending of foresight and firmness with kindliness and
patience. The lack of the former qualities was likely to bring financial
ruin; the lack of the latter would make life not worth living; the
possession of all meant a toleration of slackness in every concern not
vital to routine. A plantation was a bed of roses only if the thorns were
turned aside. Charles Eliot Norton, who like Olmsted, Hall, Miss Martineau
and most other travelers, was hostile to slavery, wrote after a journey to
Charleston in 1855: "The change to a Northerner in coming South is always
a great one when he steps over the boundary of the free states; and the
farther you go towards the South the more absolutely do shiftlessness and
careless indifference take the place of energy and active precaution and
skilful management.... The outside first aspect of slavery has nothing
horrible and repulsive about it. The slaves do not go about looking
unhappy, and are with difficulty, I fancy, persuaded to feel so. Whips and
chains, oaths and brutality, are as common, for all that one sees, in the
free as the slave states. We have come thus far, and might have gone ten
times as far, I dare say, without seeing the first sign of negro misery
or white tyranny."[30] If, indeed, the neatness of aspect be the test of
success, most plantations were failures; if the test of failure be the lack
of harmony and good will, it appears from the available evidence that most
plantations were successful.

[Footnote 29: Harriet Martineau, _Society in America_ (London, 1837), II
315, 316.]

[Footnote 30: Charles Eliot Norton, _Letters_ (Boston, 1913), I, 121.]

The concerns and the character of a high-grade planter may be gathered from
the correspondence of John B. Lamar, who with headquarters in the town of
Macon administered half a dozen plantations belonging to himself and his
kinsmen scattered through central and southwestern Georgia and northern
Florida.[3