for favoritism in the management of state-owned slaves were
beyond calculation. Considerations such as these therefore
explain the watchful jealousy of the planters toward the
Government whenever it proposed to acquire property in slaves.

It is essential not to attribute this social-political dread of
government ownership of slaves merely to the clutch of a wealthy
class on its property. Too many observers, strangely enough, see
the latter motive to the exclusion of the former. Davis himself
was not, it would seem, free from this confusion. He insisted
that neither slaves nor land were taxed by the Confederacy, and
between the lines he seems to attribute to the planter class the
familiar selfishness of massed capital. He forgot that the tax in
kind was combined with an income tax. In theory, at least, the
slave and the land--even non-farming land--were taxed. However,
the dread of a slave-owning Government prevented any effective
plan for supplying the army with labor except through the
temporary impressment of slaves who were eventually to be
returned to their owners. The policy of emancipation had to wait.

Bound up in the labor question was the question of the control of
slaves during the war. In the old days when there were plenty of
white men in the countryside, the roads were carefully patrolled
at night, and no slave ventured to go at large unless fully
prepared to prove his identity. But with the coming of war the
comparative smallness of the fighting population made it likely
from the first that the countryside everywhere would be stripped
of its white guardians. In that event, who would be left to
control the slaves? Early in the war a slave police was provided
for by exempting from military duty overseers in the ratio