45, 46, 47, 48, and 49; and Hammond, _Cotton Industry_, chaps.i.and ii.] With the rise of this system, and the attendant increased importation of slaves, came the end of the helpful contact of servants with their masters.

Slavery was thereby changed from a patriarchal to an economic institution.

Thereafter most owners of extensive estates abandoned the idea that the mental improvement of slaves made them better servants.
Doomed then to be half-fed, poorly clad, and driven to death in this cotton kingdom, what need had the slaves for education?
Some planters hit upon the seemingly more profitable scheme of working newly imported slaves to death during seven years and buying another supply rather than attempt to humanize them.[1] Deprived thus of helpful advice and instruction, the slaves became the object of pity not only to abolitionists of the North but also to some southerners.

Not a few of these reformers, therefore, favored the extermination of the institution.

Others advocated the expansion of slavery not to extend the influence of the South, but to disperse the slaves with a view to bringing about a closer contact between them and their masters.[2] This policy was duly emphasized during the debate on the admission of the State of Missouri.
[Footnote 1: Rhodes, _History of the United States_, vol.i., p.