]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid_., I, 312, 313.]
To diminish the inducement for overdriving, the method of paying the
overseers by crop shares, which commonly prevailed in the colonial period,
was generally replaced in the nineteenth century by that of fixed salaries.
As a surer preventive of embezzlement, a trusty slave was in some cases
given the store-house keys in preference to the overseer; and sometimes
even when the master was an absentee an overseer was wholly dispensed with
and a slave foreman was given full charge. This practice would have been
still more common had not the laws discouraged it.[19] Some planters
refused to leave their slaves in the full charge of deputies of any kind,
even for short periods. For example, Francis Corbin in 1819 explained
to James Madison that he must postpone an intended visit because of the
absence of his son. "Until he arrives," Corbin wrote, "I dare not, in
common prudence, leave my affairs to the sole management of overseers, who
in these days are little respected by our intelligent negroes, many of whom
are far superior in mind, morals and manners to those who are placed in
authority over them."[20]
[Footnote 19: Olmsted, _Seaboard States_, p.
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