On the whole, the planters were disposed to berate the overseers as a class for dishonesty, inattention and self indulgence.  The demand for new and better ones was constant.  For example, the editor of the American Agriculturist, whose office was at New York, announced in 1846:  “We are almost daily beset with applications for properly educated managers for farms and plantations—­we mean for such persons as are up to the improvements of the age, and have the capacity to carry them into effect."[22] Youths occasionally offered themselves as apprentices.  One of them, in Louisiana, published the following notice in 1822:  “A young man wishing to acquire knowledge of cotton planting would engage for twelve months as overseer and keep the accounts of a plantation....  Unquestionable reference as to character will be given."[23] And a South Carolinian in 1829 proposed that the practice be systematized by the appointment of local committees to bring intelligent lads into touch with planters willing to take them as indentured apprentices.[24] The lack of system persisted, however, both in agricultural education and in the procuring of managers.  In the opinion of Basil Hall and various others the overseers were commonly better than the reputation of their class,[25] but this is not to say that they were conspicuous either for expertness or assiduity.  On the whole they had about as much human nature, with its merits and failings, as the planters or the slaves or anybody else.

[Footnote 22:  American Agriculturist, V, 24.]

[Footnote 23:  Louisiana Herald (Alexandria, La.), Jan. 12, 1822, advertisement.]

[Footnote 24:  Southern Agriculturist, II, 271.]

[Footnote 25:  Basil Hall, Travels in North America, III, 193.]

It is notable that George Washington was one of the least tolerant employers and masters who put themselves upon record.[26] This was doubtless due to his own punctiliousness and thorough devotion to system as well as to his often baffled wish to diversify his crops and upbuild his fields.  When in 1793 he engaged William Pearce as a new steward for the group of plantations comprising the Mount Vernon estate, he enjoined strict supervision of his overseers “to keep them from running about and to oblige them to remain constantly with their people, and moreover to see at what time they turn out in the morning—­for,” said he, “I have strong suspicions that this with some of them is at a late hour, the consequences of which to the negroes is not difficult to foretell.”  “To treat them civilly,” Washington continued, “is no more than what all men are entitled to; but my advice to you is, keep them at a proper distance, for they will grow upon familiarity in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not.  Pass by no faults or neglects, particularly at first, for overlooking one only serves to generate another, and it is more than probable that some of them, one in