he reader.
He was, it is true, an overseer, and possessed, to a large extent,
the peculiar characteristics of his class; yet, to call him merely an
overseer, would not give the reader a fair notion of the man. I speak
of overseers as a class. They are such. They are as distinct from the
slaveholding gentry of the south, as are the fishwomen of Paris, and
the coal-heavers of London, distinct from other members of society. They
constitute a separate fraternity at the south, not less marked than is
the fraternity of Park Lane bullies in New York. They have been arranged
and classified{94} by that great law of attraction, which determines the
spheres and affinities of men; which ordains, that men, whose malign
and brutal propensities predominate over their moral and intellectual
endowments, shall, naturally, fall into those employments which
promise the largest gratification to those predominating instincts
or propensities. The office of overseer takes this raw material of
vulgarity and brutality, and stamps it as a distinct class of southern
society. But, in this class, as in all other classes, there are
characters of marked individuality, even while they bear a general
resemblance to the mass. Mr. Gore was one of those, to whom a general
characterization would do no manner of justice. He was an overseer; but
he was something more. With the malign and tyrannical qualities of
an overseer, he combined something of the lawful master. He had the
artfulness and the mean ambition of his class; but he was wholly free
from the disgusting swagger and noisy bravado of his fraternity. There
was an easy air of independence about him; a calm self-possession, and a
sternness of glance, which might well daunt hearts less timid than those
of poor slaves, accustomed from childhood and through life to cower
before a driver's lash. The home plantation of Col. Lloyd afforded an
ample field for the exercise of the qualifications for overseership,
which he possessed in such an eminent degree.

Mr. Gore was one of those overseers, who could torture the slightest
word or look into impudence; he had the nerve, not only to resent,
but to punish, promptly and severely. He never allowed himself to be
answered back, by a slave. In this, he was as lordly and as imperious as
Col. Edward Lloyd, himself; acting always up to the maxim, practically
maintained by slaveholders, that it is better that a dozen slaves suffer
under the lash, without fault, than t