Major Thornton was not a planter; — that is to say, he did not make tobacco, and he chose to call himself a farmer. His principal crop was wheat; and he was a great advocate for the clover system of cultivation, which he had adopted and pursued with much success. He owned some thirty or forty working hands; the children and superannuated, made his entire stock of slaves upwards of eighty. He kept no overseer, but managed for himself. Indeed it was a maxim with him, that an overseer was enough to ruin any man. He was naturally stirring and industrious, and agriculture was his hobby, a hobby which he rode to some purpose.
In all these things, and many others, he was the perfect contrast of all his neighbors; and for that reason, very little liked by any of them. He carefully avoided horse-racing, cock-fights, political meetings, drinking, gambling, and frolicking of every sort. His money, he used to say, cost him too much to make it, to be thrown away upon a bet; and as to frolics, he had neither time nor taste for any such nonsense. His neighbors revenged themselves for this contempt of their favorite sports, by pronouncing him a mean-spirited money-making fellow. They went further, and accused him of being a bad citizen and a dangerous neighbor. They complained most bitterly, that his excessive indulgence to his servants made all the slaves in the neighborhood, uneasy and discontented; and at one time, some of them went so far as to talk about giving him warning to move out of the county.
But major Thornton was a man of spirit. He understood his own rights; — he knew well the people among whom he lived, and what sort of reasoning would influence them most. He contrived to get hold of an offensive remark of one of the busiest of his ill-disposed neighbors, and sent him a challenge. It was accepted; and his antagonist was shot through the heart at the first fire. Henceforward, — though his neighbors liked him no better than before, — they took very good care how they talked about him, and allowed him to go on in his own way, without any interference.
Major Thornton had not been bred a planter, and this
