approximately of one white to twenty slaves. But the marvelous
faithfulness of the slaves, who nowhere attempted to revolt, made
these precautions unnecessary. Later laws exempted one overseer
on every plantation of fifteen slaves, not so much to perform
patrol duty as to increase the productivity of plantation labor.

This "Fifteen Slave" Law was one of many instances that were
caught up by the men of small property as evidence that the
Government favored the rich. A much less defensible law, and one
which was bitterly attacked for the same reason, was the
unfortunate measure permitting the hiring of substitutes by men
drafted into the army. Eventually, the clamor against this law
caused its repeal, but before that time it had worked untold harm
as apparent evidence of "a rich man's war and a poor man's
fight." Extravagant stories of the avoidance of military duty by
the ruling class, though in the main they were mere fairy tales,
changed the whole atmosphere of Southern life. The old glad
confidence uniting the planter class with the bulk of the people
had been impaired. Misapprehension appeared on both sides. Too
much has been said lately, however, in justification of the
poorer classes who were thus wakened suddenly to a distrust of
the aristocracy; and too little has been said of the proud recoil
of the aristocracy in the face of a sudden, credulous perversion
of its motives--a perversion inspired by the pinching of the
shoe, and yet a shoe that pinched one class as hard as it did
another. It is as unfair to charge the planter with selfishness
in opposing the appropriation of slaves as it is to make the same
charge against the small farmers for resisting tithes. In face of
the record, the planter comes off somewhat the better of the two;
but it must be remembered that he had the better education, the