\5 SOUTHERN SLAVERY AND ITS RELATIONS TO NORTHERN INDUSTRY a. lhiottjrtt;. IBX" HENP.T BBED. Class B<4-^ Book__ .£f- ■r> r SOUTHERN SLAVERY AND ITS KELATIONS TO NORTHERN INDUSTRY: A LECTUKE DELIVEKED AT THE CATHOLIC INSTITUTE, IN CINCINNATI, January 34, 1862. BY HENRY REED. CINCINNATI. ENQUIRER STEAM PRESSES. 1862. SOUTHERN SLAVERY AND ITS RELATIONS TO NORTHERN INDUSTRY. It is common to hear it said that Slavery has existed, at one time or another, in all parts of the world. The remark is true enough; but it would be just as true and more philosophical to say that servitude, in some form or other — its character deter- mined by the character of the parties — is a thing of all ages' and of all countries. It has not only always existed, but there is every reason to believe that it will continue to exist until the time arrives — which need not be soon expected — when every human being in the world will be equal to every other, in vigor, activity, ambition and intelligence. Everywhere, and especially in those countries which we arc wont to call civilized, the relation of master and servant is to be found, with a greater or less distance in the social scale be- tween the one order and the other. The servile class, what- ever it may happen to be called — whether slaves, servants, help, workmen or operatives — always performs the labor of the community, by which it gains subsistence; while the master class receives the profit, gaining thereby comfort or luxury: and in this most material respect, all forms of servitude agree. If the laborer is able to live by his labor in a manner conform- ably to his ideas — however rude his manners and uncultivated his tastes — society is satisfied; and seldom, in its own case, takes the trouble to inquire whether he is rising or sinking in manhood or intelligence in consequence of his servitude. In fact, society seldom becomes conscientious in respect to its own conditions. It assumes them to be right, or at least the best the circumstances will permit. Believing that it un- derstands its own case better than others can understand it, so- ciety does not listen with patience to the suggestions or remon- strances of outside reformers, and always treats them as un- sound and impertinent, A community is much more prone to become conscientious in respect to the conditions of another community than to those of its own. Philanthropy is a far- seeing virtue; and prefers rather to point its telescope to objects of commiseration at a distance, than to busy itself in seeking out, with unaided vision, and correcting the abuses of its own household. The word Slavery, in a collective sense, is used to designate the relation which exists between the master and the servile classes in certain parts of the world. In those parts of the American Continent where slavery does not exist, men are so much accustomed to look at it in its collective aspect, that they mistake several of its most essential characteristics. Slavery, as much as any other form of servitude, is simply a relation between the individual master and the individual servant. Society as a body of individuals, combine together for the mu- tual protection of their interests in their slaves; but the inter- est pre-existed the combination; and the character of the serv- itude is no more changed by it, than that of the corresponding- relation in other parts of the Continent is affected by the legal rules under which the obligations of contracts are enforced. Slavery — so far as the principles upon which it exists are concerned— is as little understood in the Southern States as it is in the Northern. Indeed all the theories which are accepted in the North upon the subject, have been borrowed from the South; and they are all erroneous. Slavery is not — as it is continually called— an institution. An institution is a thing which is created by law, or by some convention or agreement having the force of law over those by whom it is established. It therefore has a beginning in time, before which it did not exist; and may be uncreated by a reversal of the process by which it was created. Slavery in respect to law, had no begin- ning in time. It began when the first slave was landed upon the shores of America. Logically, if not actually, it preceded all laws, conventions or agreements. There are laws by which slavery is regulated, and the rights of the master protected; but there is not now, and never has been, a law by which it was declared that the negro should be the property of the white man, any more than there is a law by which it is de- clared that horses or houses shall belong to their several pro- prietors. The relation arose out of the actuality in the one case, precisely as in the other. All the laws, therefore, which have been passed in respect to slavery have not changed its character a particle ; nor would that character be changed by their repeal. In this respect, it stands upon the same footing with the relations of husband and wife, of parent and child, and of employer and employed in the Northern States. Neither of them owe their existence to law; and neither of them would be abolished by a repeal of all the statutes by which their existence is recognized. Slavery is not, therefore — as lawyers and politicians and statesmen have called it, from time immemorial — a creature of local law: nor is it a creature of any other written law or agreement. It is a fact. Like all the other organic relations of society, it stands upon its actuality. Statutes did not make it and can not unmake it. It can neither be destroyed by re- peal nor by enactment. Institutions and constitutions may pass away, and yet it will not necessarily be affected by the revolu- tion. The only way to get rid o.f it is by force — through the re- volt of the slave breaking his bondage, or the intervention of an overpowering force from without. The right of slaver} r — if such a thing exists — is to be found where the rights of all the other domestic relations are posited. All the hypotheses that have been started by Southern politi- cians and philosophers with a view to establish an abstract right in one body of men to hold another in a servile condi- tion are entirely untenable. The notion that the negro, being- descended from Caixan, the son of Ham, became not only black but subject to slavery in consequence of the curse pronounced by Noah upon his father, on an extraordinary accession of moral virtue, such as often occurs after a lit of drunkenness, and that therefore he may be reduced to servitude wherever 6 found, is simply puerile, and has no shadow of testimony for its support. We have no knowledge of the origin of the Afri- can: and the story of the curse of Cainan was told, as all must be aware who are conversant with the Bible, for another purpose than to sanction negro slavery: to supply a reason — perhaps after the fact — for the destruction of the Canaanitish tribes by the Hebrews under Joshua. Nor does the fact — if it is a fact— that the negro is of an in- ferior order of the creation, afford theoretical ground upon which to establish a right to hold him in any form of subjec- tion. The question whether one given race is inferior to another is always open to dispute, in which both the parties are entitled to a hearing, while there is no umpire with author- ity to decide the controversy. The assumption of this ground by Southern writers has opened the door to a great variety of questions: as to the capacity of the negro, his susceptibility of cultivation, and his ability for self-government — questions that have been themes for a vast amount of wrangling and dispute; but which as yet exhibit no appearance of approaching a satis- factory settlement. These writers, in their anxiety to prove their theory, overlooked the important fact that, admitting that one race of men is superior to another, it does not neces- sarily follow that the former is thereby endowed with a natu- ral right to hold the latter in servitude. Society is not founded upon theories but upon facts. It takes little or no cognizance of the relative value of races ; but all its conditions are established uj)on the relative value of in- dividuals. Slavery in the Southern States owes its existence, not to the fact that the African race is inferior to the Anglo- American, but to the fact that the individuals of the African race who there reside, are inferior to the individuals of the Anglo-American race. Society takes no account of ultimate capabilities, but acts solely upon present ones. Its relations are not fixed by what this or that man or order of men may become; but by what they are. Social as well as material things have their laws of affinity and gravitation, under the operation of which the elements of which they are composed find their proper places, in accordance with their present val- ues. In a community composed of individuals differing from each other in intelligence, activity and ambition — whether they be of different races or of the same — the superior, by the unconscious natural force of their own qualities, will rise to the top; while the inferior, in consequence of their deficiencies, will remain at the bottom. The normal condition of human society is unity of race. Nature does not, of its own accord, introduce two distinct races of men upon the same soil. America is in the peculiar condi- tion — unprecedented before its discovery — of being inhabited by two orders of the human family, both exotic, widely differ- ent in constitution, character and appearance, drawn from parts of the world far distant from each other; and almost total strangers until they were introduced together upon a con- tinent that was foreign to both. Whether this introduction was right or wrong, fortunate or unfortunate, is not now the question. The thing is done, and can not be undone. Both have a right to remain ; for every human being has a title by birth to tread the earth and breathe the air of his native land. Of the two — if there is any difference — the title of the African is the best; for he came by compulsion; and may, in justice, demand that he shall be tolerated in a country to which he was brought through no agency of his own. Let us not fall into the most common of errors and charge as the evils of slavery those things which are the natural result of the intermixture of two widely different kinds of peo- ple, in nearly equal proportions upon the same soil. By far the greater share of those moral offenses that are alleged to be the offspring of slavery, owe their origin to that juxtaposition of races, which would continue were slavery abolished. And even for those which grow out of the servile relation, there may be compensating considerations. All over the world the condition of two different races, in the same country, each in- dependent of the other, is one of antagonism. Unless there is an existing and permanent interest to bind tliem together, they are always at enmity. Under that enmity, both are the suffer- ers ; but the weakest and least enterprising race is the one that will suffer most; and the tendency, as experience has abun- dantly shown, is to its ultimate extinction. The object of society is to promote the best good of its mem- bers, by preserving a general peace. The peace of society is best preserved when all of its members form a single indus- trial community. The bond of interest is the strongest, most persistent and most uniform in its operation of any with which mankind-are acquainted. The effect of the dissolution of the tie between the dominant and the servile population of the Southern States — if it were not followed by an immediate war of races, or a general emigration of the negroes to the North- ern — -would doubtless be a resolution of Southern society into distinct communities. After the abolition of slavery in New England, the negroes — those of them who did not keep up their old connection with the lamilies in which they had been do- mesticated, or become openly vagabond — retired to waste lands in out of the way places, where they built their little villages of huts, returned as nearly as the nature of the climate and cir- cumstances would permit, to the habits of their African ances- tors, regained their ancient African religions and superstitions, cultivated their little patches of corn and potatoes, but lived principally upon the proceeds of petty depredation. The corn and potato fields, the hen roosts and the sheep-folds of the neighborhood supplied the greater share of their means of sub- sistence ; and now and then one, with a share of Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, became a bold burglar, and levied contribu- tions upon the country stores of the region for many miles around. The effect of this mode of life was a rapid extinguishment of the manumitted slaves and their descendants. Their natu- ral improvidence, their carelessness of the sick, their in- attention to the young, and the severity of the climate to- gether did the work, "and slowly and by degrees," says the New England historian, Eliot, "the negroes went out and dis- appeared." That which happened in New England— with such differences as the climate required or permitted— took place in Jamaica and Trinidad, and in other British West Indian and South American possessions, after the abolition of Slavery in those countries. The negroes ceased to become producers of a sur- plus for exportation ; they settled upon wastelands and formed distinct communities ; they confined their industrial efforts to the production of the means of subsistence, and, in short, be- came completely Africanized : and so they remain. In some of the West India Islands— it is proper to say in this connection— where there were no waste lands, and where the negroes were obliged to work on the plantations or starve, the change by emancipation was in favor of the master. The production of exportable articles continued. The planter pro- cured his labor at considerably less than it cost him under the old system, and was relieved from the expense of subsisting the aged and the infants, and of furnishing medical attendance to the sick. The result, however, is a diminution of about one per cent, per annum of the negro population, instead of an in- crease of about three per cent., as was the case under Slavery. There is another fact also that deserves to be stated: The increase in commodities for export which has been observed, within a few years past, in some of the British American Colo- nies, is not attributable, as some have alleged, to a return of the negro to habits of industry, but entirely to the introduction, under the auspices of the British Government, of a new class of laborers— the coolies from China and Hindostan. The serv- ices of these people, costing less than that of the negroes under Slavery, is more profitable; while being more frugal and am- bitious, many of them are able to save monev, and aiter a few years return to their native land in a state of comparative af- fluence. t , , There are several stereotype charges against Slaverv, which mankind repeat without a very accurate idea of their sismifica- 2 ° 10 tion. Slavery is said to be a condition of involuntary servi- tude. We are prone to forget, while thinking of the wrongs of the African, that all servitude is involuntary. No man la- bors for the pleasure of laboring. He who creates, as the art- ist, the poet, or the historian, may find enjoyment in the work of creation ; but all who simply produce — the laborer, and es- pecially that unskilled laborer who constitutes so large a ma- jority of every operative population — works only because he is under some sort of necessity. The great mass of the laborers of the world, here and elsewhere, labor all their lives practi- cally for food and clothing and shelter — precisely that which the slave receives. There is one difference in favor of the slave: He has a home and support when he is old and incapable of further service — a thing in which the destitute free laborer is deficient. Slavery is said to be a great crime, because it makes one hu- man being the property of another. The more fully we under- stand the nature and universality of the proprietary relation, the less we shall be inclined to make the case of the slave an exceptional one in human society. Whatever a man has, which is of value to himself, and to which he has any especial right of possession, is his property. Thus a man has a property in his hired servant and in his indentured apprentice. The pa- rent has a property in his children and the children in the pa- rent. The husband— provided she is of any value, and in any sense exclusively under his dominion — in his wife; and the wife — with similar conditions — in her husband. The fact of the proprietorship does not determine the justice or injustice of the relation ; which depends entirely upon other circum- stances. Slavery is supposed by such as are without knowledge of its actualities, to be entirely arbitrary — consisting of despotic power upon one side, and unwilling obedience upon the other. The fact that different kinds of men, when thrown into condi- tions of actual intimacy, exert an influence upon the charac- ters each of the other, which serves, without any consciousness 11 upon their part, to bring them into a state of moral commu- nity, is overlooked. In the sense of simple power and obedi- ence, the word slavery does not describe the domestic and eco- nomical relations of the South. In fact, the mastery there is a divided mastery. This is especially true of the older com- munities, where the connection between the same servile and dominant families has continued through several generations. If the master is the dictator in one respect, the slave is the dictator in another. If, for example, the white man fixes the direction, the black man determines the rate of the movement. Everything south of the Ohio travels at the negro gait. After twenty generations of urging and driving, that gait is the same in which his ancestors traveled through the swamps and jungles of Africa. It has not, for two hundred years, accele- rated a particle. It is not the unwillingness of the slave, in- dignant at the servitude to which he is reduced — as philan- thropists profess to believe — but the native inertia of the ne- gro. It dops not come from generations of oppression, but from the small lungs, slow respiration, and consequent inac- tivity of the brain and nervous system— the seats of the mus- cular power — which belonir by nature to the African. And to this necessity the master, unable to amend the work of crea- tion, is obliged to conform. It is customary with persons whose sensibilities are more acute than their information is correct, to represent the negro of the Southern States as pining amid his servitude, and under the influence of an opinion that all men are created equal, and are alike entitled to the enjoyment of the right of free-agency, protesting continually in spirit against the bondage to which he is subjected. This is a mistake. The negro dislikes Slavery in his own person, because it interferes with his native lazi- ness. He sees no harm in holding others in a condition from which he would willingly escape himself. He admits Slavery to be right, while he runs away from the labor which it im- poses, and if opportunity offers, becomes a slave-holder with- out a thought of compunction, or of pity for those over whom 12 he exercises the rights of ownership. He is a hard master, more cruel and exacting than the white man, and less careful of the lives and comfort of those under his dominion This in- difference to liberty as a principle is pointed out by Hegel, the German philosopher — himself opposed, m sentiment, to Slav- ery—in his celebrated "Philosophy of History," as a marked characteristic of the negro race. Dr. Livingston — no friend of Slavery — in his well-known work, detailing the results of his observations and experiences during many years spent in Africa, states it as a lamentable fact that the prevailing sentiment upon that continent is hatred of the anti-slavery and friendship for the pro-slavery nations of Europe. The Englishman is every where distrusted, his progress hindered by all the artifices of negro cunning and treachery, and his person treated with contempt or indiffer- ence ; while the Spaniard and the Portuguese are received at once into friendship and are entertained with faithfulness and confidence. Had the wrongs which, in the common opinion, these nations have for so many generations inflicted upon Af- rica been considered wrongs by the people of Africa, this would not be the case. There is probably no part of the world where the popular feeling is so unanimous in favor of Slavery as in that country where, according to the common idea, the universal voice is raised in a despairing cry for relief, and every hand stretched forth in an imploring attitude to heaven for vengeance upon the oppressor. If the slaves of the South have any feelings of friendship for the Abolitionists of the North, these feelings are of recent origin. Formerly, it cannot be denied, the case was different. Whether the old sentiments, or those which are thought to ex- ist at present among them, were the result of misapprehension, is a point upon which there is room for difference of opinion. The ignorant are ever prone to supply the place of knowledge by the creations of the imagination ; and the hope of relief from labor, with, perhaps, a support in idleness through the munificence of their new friends, doubtless has had the effect 13 to render thousands of them uneasy under their present condi- tion, and lead them to regard with favor those through whose exertions they hope for a change so desirable. That, as they understand it, inducements have been presented to them which are not in fact to be realized, is unquestionable. But there are reasons which compel the belief that the reports of the uneasi- ness of the slaves in the Southern States are greatly exagge- rated. The full-blooded African is, in general, as content as the laborer of any other race, with his lot. It is those who have in their veins some of the more active blood of an Anglo- Saxon ancestor, and with it a spark of Anglo-Saxon ambition, who are inclined to be disorderly. Whether or not a race of people pine under any given con- dition, may be determined with some exactitude by an exami- nation into the effect which that condition has upon their laws of increase. Any great and unnatural oppression reduces the reproductive energy, and either operates as a check upon in- crease, or prevents it altogether. The negro seems fitted for a state of servitude, by the fact that in every known case his numbers augment more rapidly in Slavery than in freedom. In the Northern United States we owe the present compara- tively small aggregate of our colored population to the fact that the annual number of deaths is greater than that of the births. In Barbadoes and Antigua, statistics collected at the public ex- pense show a yearly reduction of one per cent, since emanci- pation, against an increase of two or three before that event. In the Southern States the average length of life is greater among the slave than among the free colored population ; and it is probable that if the truth could be ascertained, while the former enjoys a regular increase in numbers, the other would be found to suffer a regular diminution. As the stronger and more vigorous trees of the forest dwarf and eventually destroy the weaker and less thrifty vegetation, so the race of men to which we belong seems fated to root out and exterminate every other race of energy and vitality in- ferior to its own with which it comes in contact, unless there 14 is an existing bond of interest which leads the one, for its own sake, to extend its protection over the other. The native In- dian of America has nearly disappeared before a new and ranker human growth upon the same soil. There has not been in the relations between the two races in North America any reason why the Indian tribes should fade away and go out be- fore the advancing step of the white man, as they have done, and wo must look for the cause in some occult law of nature similar to that which produces corresponding effects in the vegetable kingdom. It is true we have a sort of national creed in re- spect to the disappearance of the Indian, and number his de- parture among our national sins — things which it is pleasant and magnanimous to confess; and easy also, because no one in particular is responsible for them — and talk in aboriginal hero- ics of the cursed tire-water by which he has been washed away and sent before his time to the happy hunting-ground reserved for people of his complexion. All this would be well enough, if it did not fail to account for the existence of that fatal ap- petite for strong liquor, under the influence of which the native tribes have — or, at least, are supposed to have — drunk them- selves to death: a feat which no other race of men of which we have any knowledge ever succeeded in accomplishing. The truth is, the Indian love of stimulants is one of the evidences of a pre-existing constitutional inferiority. If arduous drink- ing destroyed the native lords of the forest, it was because the native lords of the forest were in a state to be destroyed by arduous drinking; for no one acquainted with the subject will venture to deny that the same number of Germans, Irish or. Americans could, within an equal period, have consumed three times the amount of similar drinkables, without being percep- tibly affected by the achievement. Our own race for a thou- sand years, has been the hard-drinking race of the world; and yet it manifests no disposition to succumb under the effects of its multitudinous potations. Of all the European families, the Anglican seems to be the one whose vicinity is most fatal to the African, Asiatic and 15 aboriginal American; and whether the negroes of the Southern States would endure and continue to increase in numbers after the severance of the ligament of interest which now connects them with the whites, is a question which only time and a trial can determine. So far as the climate is concerned, the chances are in their favor; and it might be centuries before any mate- rial reduction would be discovered; but the end would proba- bly be the absorption of a part, and the extinction of the re- mainder. We are a cruel race of people. The barbarians of the world kill when they are enraged; we when it is for our interest. The people of California murder the Indians of that country — the most harmless of human beings — in cold blood, simply because they do not like their looks. Emancipated, the slaves of the South would be in the way; and this fact alone would be sufficient to surround them with dangers. Their safety is in their dependent condition; and in spite of all our cant about Christian charity, Christian philanthropy and Chris- tian civilization, the only guaranty of their, existence worth any thing, is in their value as the producers of a surplus for exportation for those who exercise over them the rights of ownership. The wrongs of slavery are wrongs committed by the individ- ual master upon the individual slave. They are no more nec- essary parts of the system of Southern labor than the frauds which Northern masters sometimes perpetrate upon their em- ployees are parts of the system of Northern labor. Power will, now and then, fall into bad hands, and when it does so, it is liable to be abused. The passionate Southern master beats his slave now and then unreasonably ; the passionate Northern one practices similar cruelties upon his children or perhaps his wife. In proportion to the whole number, there are probably as many men in the Northern cities who abuse their wives, as there are men upon the Southern plantations who abuse their negroes. It is a mistake to say that the possession of power necessarily makes men tyrannical; and yet it is upon this the- ory that much of the popular opinion in respect to the wrongs 16 of slavery is founded. In vulgar hands, new-found power is apt to become arbitrary; but if in all persons, or even in a majority, power were attended with this effect, the fact would furnish a conclusive reason against every species of authority; not merely that of the master over the servant, but of the hus- band over the wife, the parent over the child, the public func- tionary over the citizen. Such an idea strikes at the root of all legitimacy in government; because, if it were true, it would prove every public officer unfit precisely in proportion to the magnitude of the trust reposed in him by the people. The highest interest which the master has in his slave is on account of his services ; and the value of these, he will not be likely to diminish by any act calculated to interfere with his activity. As there are men in the North who ought not, from their bru- talitv, ever to be entrusted with a horse; so there are men in the South who, for the same reason, ought never to be en- trusted with a negro, but as Northern society seldom sees tit to interfere when a man abuses his horse, so Southern society is equally impassive when a negro is chastised beyond his de- serts. Next to the white man, perhaps the most delicately or- ganized animal in the world, and the most sensitive to pain, is the horse. With his small but active brain, he is extremely liable to misapprehension and consequent fits of stupidity. He is easily bewildered by novelties, and, when in that condition, is often punished as vicious; and he who can pass unmoved scenes that almost daily occur in our cities, where some poor frightened animal is tortured because he is unable to compre- hend the wants of a master more brutal than himself, has lit- tle call to become indignant over the occasional severities prac- ticed upon slaves a thousand miles away. There are differences between individuals of the African as there are of the European races ; but with the average negro, fear of pain is the only motive of sufficient power to incite to exertion. Without the use of this motive, the slaves of the plantations would not produce enough for their own subsist- ence, much less supply a surplus for the use of their masters. 17 That ambition for something better which gives activity to the Anglo-Saxon does not exist in the masses of the African peo- ple, either at home or in America. The use of the scourge is no American invention. It was imported with those upon whom it is employed; and of the two, the African master is by far the most unsparing and relentless. When Dr. Living- ston, after a long period of missionary labor in one of the nations where he sojourned, without success, was about to abandon his field in utter discouragement, he was confronted by the chief, who, on learning the cause of his trouble, informed him that the difficulty lay with himself: that the cause was good enough, but that the method he had employed was defec- tive. He assured him that the rod was the only thing which would lead the negro to repentance ; and advised him to resort to it immediately, as the sole means by which the light of the Gospel could be spread in his dominions. The humane mis- sionary, unable to rise to the hight of the argument, neglected to avail himself of the counsel of the colored potentate; and the consequence is that one important and numerous body of African people remain uninstructed in the great truths of Christianity. The separation of children from their parents, and husbands from their wives, is another of the wrongs of Slavery, and one upon which it is the custom to expend large stores of the rhet- oric of philanthropy. That cases of hardship now and then occur, it is impossible to deny; but it is equally certain that the cruelties of this practice have been greatly exaggerated. Mankind — even Anglo-Saxon mankind — are wont to profess considerably more of the yearnings of domestic affection than they really feel ; and many a man who has been greatly dis- turbed over the tearing asunder of the tenderest ties, which takes place in the Southern States, feels little compunction at the sorrows of his own neglected wife, or hesitates upon a slight inducement to abandon his offspring to the cold charities of the world. In the Northern States, families are constantly being sepa- o 18 rated under the force of a necessity quite as imperative as that which acts upon the negroes of the Southern. Children at early ages are thrown upon their own resources, through the vices, or the misfortunes, or the indifference of their parents ; and though they may fall into no hands interested in their pro- tection — as is the case when a negro child changes owners — society troubles itself not at all on their account. They take their chances in the world ; and, frequently, are all the better in the end, for their abandonment. There are no facts to show that the owner of slaves is neces- sarily a wanton tyrant who tramples upon the feelings of his subjects for his own gratification. It is, in most cases, we are permitted to believe, a real, or fancied necessity which impels him, now and then, to sever the relation which exists between husband and wife; and there are many well authenticated in- stances where considerable sacrifices have been made rather than allow it to be done. Where there is any real affection between the parties, the owner knows its value, as a guaranty of their good behavior, too well to be willing, without cause, to break up the relation. But inconsistent and intermittent as are our own domestic affections, we must not judge of those of the negro by them. Domestic affection is the result of care, anxiety and sacrifice. "We plant a tree," says the sentimental philosopher, "and we water because we have planted it." In Africa, the negro is re- lieved by the bounty of nature from the care of his family; and consequently, he is ready to lend his wife to his friend, or sell his children to a stranger. He counts his offspring as his riches, marries a number of wives that he may have an abun- dance of marketable progeny, and trades them off as the Ken- tucky farmer does his stock of another description. In Amer- ica, the case is not greatly changed. The providence of the master exonerates the slave husband and father from responsi- bility, and his affections are less acute in proportion. The marital and the parental bonds bring with them little feeling of obligation. Even among the colored population in the 19 Northern States — exeept where there is a large admixture of European blood — the domestic tie is scarcely more than nom- inal. The negro abandons his wife and children at the sugges- tion of the merest caprice, and wanders off careless whether he ever returns again, leaving them often in a state of almost equal indifference. When the Anglo-Saxon mother folds her children in her arms for the last time before sending them forth to seek their fortunes in the wide, cold world, her heart is torn with anguish at the thought of the multitude of mishaps with which they may be overtaken. Her son may fall among bad associates, or may lose his health and become poverty-stricken away from home, with no one to minister to his necessities; or her daugh- ter may be misled and ruined by some seducer, and turned forth an outcast from society. None of these apprehensions beset the African parent. Her son will be attended with at least equal care to that which she bestowed upon him, by one who has an interest in his future services ; and her daughter also; and if the latter should happen to become the mistress of her master, or one of his sons, so far from looking upon it as a cause of shame, it will appear to her both proper and natural. The great evil which is charged upon Slavery is the possible, or probable deterioration of the white race in the United States, by its intermixture with the negro. While our philan- thropists continually strive to convince us that the black man differs from the white in nothing but color, and that, with equal advantages, he would soon rise to the same level in in- tellectual power and social value, they also endeavor to excite our fears of the degeneracy which would result from the amal- gamation of races which his presence here threatens, in process oi time, to effect. These two ideas are frequently j)resented at the same time, without any apparent consciousness on the part of those who do so of their inconsistency. It is evident, how- ever, :hat if the negro is, by nature, equal to the white man, no seriously bad consequences will result from the intermix- 20 ture; while, on the other hand, it is certain that if he is not equal, the deterioration of the joint product will be in propor- tion to the relative numbers of the superior and inferior in- gredients. But the danger which is to come from amalgamation does not belong to Slavery, but to the presence of the negro upon this Continent. We have no assurance that it would be re- moved by emancipation. On the contrary, the evidence is the other way. The production of individuals of mixed blood goes on in the Northern States where Slavery does not, as well as in the Southern where it does exist; and probably in pro- portion to the number of negroes, quite as rapidly. Every- where, and in all its departments, nature labors to produce unity When the two races were brought together upon the same territory, their ultimate admixture became a certainty, if both shall continue to exist. It may require hundreds or thou- sands of years to complete the process ; but the result is none the less certain for the length of the period necessary to its ac- complishment. Africa has obtained a foothold in America, and from that foothold it will not be dislodged. All our efforts to remove the negro from our soil, will prove as futile as the essays of a child to stop the progress of a running stream by building a petty dam across its current. The destiny of the human race upon this Continent is fixed beyond the power of governments or individuals; and whatever it may be, we and our posterity, willing or unwilling, must abide its decrees. The industrial affairs of nations and communities, if left free to the operation of their own laws, always arrange them- selves in such a way as to secure the best good of which the whole, as a whole, is capable. In the United States, hitherto, little practical interference has been interposed to the econom- ical organization of society upon the basis of its own interests and affinities; and the result has been great mutual benefits, and an unusual degree of prosperity. In respect to its indus- trial arrangements and their effects, ours has been the model nation of the world. Here, less than in any other country of 21 which we have any knowledge, has one man been in the way of another. There has been room enough for all. If the ranks of one pursuit were full, those of another were open, In pro- portion as labor has increased, the demand has extended, and new avenues been discovered for its activity. The industry of the Northern States has always found an adequate reward ; and so has that of the Southern. Neither has, in any respect, in- terfered with the other, nor given any token of a prosj^ect of interference in the future. If there have been two systems of labor, those systems have not been antagonists: on the con- trary, they have mutually played into each other's hands. The European laborer has found a climate agreeable to himself, con- genial to his constitution and well adapted to the employment of his energies in the North ; the African has been equally well suited in the South. Both have found the place that, in re- spect to soil, and the products of which it is capable, is best fitted to their tastes and capacities ; where they enjoyed the best health, multiplied the most rapidly, and realized the largest amount of physical comfort. If Slavery was abhorent to the one, it was out of his sight; if free agency was undesir- able, under the circumstances, for the other, he was removed from contact with those who would be likely to render him un- happy under his servitude. - a » The North and the South have not been rivals in respect to their productions in any of the markets of the world, at home or abroad: on the contrary, they have been everywhere auxil- iaries. The North cannot profitably produce the cotton, the rice, nor the sugar, which are the staples of the South ; nor the South the wheat, corn, butter, cheese, horses, cattle and hogs that are the staples of the North. Each has its separate prov- ince in the world's economy; and each, in that province, claimed the proud title of standing pre-eminent. We of the North boast that with our wheat and corn-fields and our luxu- riant pastures, we can feed the world; they of the South that with their cotton plantations, all nations are dependent upon them for clothing. 22 No contrast can be stronger than that between the harmony and admirable adjustment of the social and industrial relations of the North and the South, and the antagonism which has ever existed in the political. In the social, sectional lines have been nearly obliterated under the influence of the ties of affec- tion. Scarcely a Northern family of any age is without its rep- resentatives in the South; scarcely a Southern family that is destitute of a Northern alliance. Mutual emigration and in- termarriage have been constantly at work to produce and pre- serve an unity of love, to correspond with the existing one of interest. The wealthy Scuthron, during the heats of the sum- mer, brought his family to Northern places of social resort, made himself and them, for the time being, parts of a North- ern community, and distributed the surplus of his revenues in Northern cities and villages: and although we now and then found fault with manners which differed from our own, we have been compelled to admit that, with all his family pride, and seeming arrogance of demeanor, he was not without a compen- sating share of good qualities. In the industrial relations, the North has been the customer of the South, and the South the customer of the North: each supplying to the other articles of the first necessity. The North may not be indebted to the South for so large a number of commodities ; but those which it does receive, yield to none in importance. These are cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, and that first of all the objects of civilized desire — the sum and conti- nent of all others — money. To the cultivation of cotton in the South we owe the fact that the calicoes, the ginghams, the muslins and the almost innumerable articles of which cotton is the main ingredient, which minister so materially to our comfort, are purchasable at less than one-fourth of the price to which they were afforded to our great grandfathers; and to the cultivation of sugar, an almost equal reduction in the price of that nearly indispensable luxury. The articles for which the South has been dependent upon the North are of almost infinite number and variety. The 23 Southern child of white parents is born upon a bedstead of Northern construction, in a house which, if its brick and lum- ber are of Southern origin, has all its nails, glass, upholstery and furniture of Northern manufacture. He is rocked in a Northern cradle, fed with a Northern spoon and clothed in cal- icoes, ginghams, muslins and flannels from Northern looms. Arrived at youth he goes to school to study Northern books, and, perhaps, to be taught by a Northern school-master. His boots, clothes and hats all come from Northern shops. He rides a Northern horse, upon a Northern saddle, or drives in a North- ern carriage, with Northern harness and Northern whip. He shoots with a Northern gun, and fights his duels with Northern pistols. His food is Northern flour, beef, pork, fish, butter, cheese and potatoes. His drink is whisky or wine from North- ern distilleries or vineyards. His books, stationery, pens, ink, paper, sealing-wax and wafers are all of Northern production. He reads, by the light of a Northern candle, a journal printed upon Northern paper, with Northern type and ink, washes himself with Northern soap, and scents his handkerchief with Northern perfumery. In every act and every relation, he is surrounded with things of Northern fabrication; and when he sleeps with his fathers, the hinges and trimmings of his coffin, if not the coffin itself, are of Northern workmanship; he is carried to his long home in a Northern hearse; his grave is dug with a Northern shovel; and his virtues are commemo- rated upon a piece of Northern marble in an inscription en- graved, perhaps, by a Northern artist. Nor is the relation of the North to the South less marked in the industrial than in the domestic sphere. All the utensils of Southern cultivation are of Northern make and invention. The soil is stirred and the seed covered with the aid of North- ern implements. The cotton is divested of its seed by a North- ern gin, driven by a Northern engine; it is pressed by a Northern press, bound with Northern cordage, transported in a Northern car, drawn by a Northern locomotive, and sent to its port of destination in a Northern vessel. The sugar is manu- 24 factured by Northern machinery, and the tobacco and rice pre- pared for market by similar assistance. The slaves derive their food and clothing from Northern farms and factories, and dance to the music of Northern banjoes and violins. This has been called the dependence of the South upon the North ; but is it in any other or any different sense, the de- pendence of the North upon the South? How many millions of individuals in the North derive their subsistence by the pro- duction of articles of Southern desire and necessity! How many hundreds of thousands of families are furnished with homes and the comforts of life ; how many thousands of facto- ries and shops, and distilleries, and farms, and warehouses are kept in active operation, and made to yield remunerative profits throughout the same agency! How many thousand ships and steamers find profitable employment in facilitating the various exchanges of commodities which take place between two great, wealthy and prosperous sections of the same country ! In all the economical relations of the world the producer is as much dependent upon the consumer as the consumer is upon the producer. Tho South can do as well without the proidsions and manufactures of the North, as the North can do without the cotton and groceries of the South. Place both in posi- tions perfectly isolated from the rest of the world, and the South is quite as nearly self-sustaining as the North. Its soil will readily produce all the articles of primary necessity ; it has once, in a great measure, manufactured it own clothing, and, doubtless, could, if required, do so again; while the North, if the results of an abundance of experiments teach any thing, is totally unable to produce with anything like the requisite certainty — to say nothing of the others — that great and lead- ing article which, next to food and iron, stands highest in the list of things indispensable to mankind. There are few who have the knowledge or the memory to en- able them to estimate the magnitude and importance of the economical changes that have taken place upon the North American Continent within the last forty years — one of the 25 primary causes of which has been the introduction and progress of the cotton culture in the Southern States. No political •events that the world has ever known has produced revolutions so extensive, or — according to all the received rules for esti- mating the worth of things — so valuable to the human race; and yet the process of transition has gone on so quietly and noiselessly that society has never been disturbed, and all we have been able to see has been the constantly recurring evi- dences of its beneficial effects. In the year 1820 the cotton culture may be said to have be- come fairly established in the South. All the processes for the production of the great staple had come to be well understood*, the cotton gin had been generally introduced, and the demand for American eotton had become regular in all the European markets. All that time the South produced nearly all of its own food, and the greater share of its own clothing ; and a large proportion of its labor was expended in domestic manufactures, and in the cultivation of articles of subsistence. At that time Ohio had but little over half a million of inhabitants, and produced no surplus for exportation; and the States of Indi- ana, Illinois and Michigan had, collectively, less than half the population of Ohio. The cotton manufacture of New England was in its infancy, and that of Great Britain and France, al- though the subject of pride in those countries, bore no compar- ison to the vastness to which it has now arisen. At this time the idea began to dawn in the minds of the plant- ers of the cotton States that, by relinquishing the domestic pro- duction of food and clothing, and turning their attention to the cultivation of that article for which their soil was peculiarly adapted, they could increase their profits sufficiently to enable them to purchase, with advantage, their provisions, apparel, and a multitude of articles of use or luxury in other markets. And here it was that began those intimate relations between the economical interests of the two great sections of one country, which, during a period of more than forty years, have been grow- ing stronger and closer, and more necessary to both, until they 26 have acquired such strength and tenacity that nothing but the direst convulsions — convulsions that will entail the most lasting misfortunes upon both — will ever compel a permanent separa- tion. Political revolutions change only dynasties. They are, to the people, seldom more than an idea ; often not so much. But industrial revolutions change the condition of the masses; and where they are forced violently backward, they roll over and crush generations. From this period, also, dates the commencement of that pro- gress which has withdrawn the States of Few England from the list of those which produce a surplus of articles of food for exportation to foreign countries. As the South, through the increase of its cotton cultivation, acquired the ability to pur- chase, New England, besides its rapidly enlarging- cotton manufacture, turned its attention to the production of an al- most endless variety of articles of use, ornament and luxury, which the augmented means of the planters enabled them to buy. It returned the cotton of the South to its original pro- prietors in the form of cloth ; it manufactured boots,, shoes, hats, paper, furniture, carriages, tin and wooden ware, and that almost interminable list of commodities known under the gene- ral title of Yankee notions ; and became, by the same process, a pensioner for its food upon the fertile fields of New York,. Pennsylvania and the Great West, whose proprietors received, in return, its money, the products of its fisheries and its man- ufactures. It is probable that the happiest and safest condition in which a people can be placed is that in which each community pro- duces for itself all that it requires. But however desirable such a condition may be, experience shows that it is only prac- ticable in the simpler forms of society — in short, where it is compulsory. Men come to it, not so much by increasing the number of their productions, as by reducing the number of their wants. In proportion as communities advance in refine- ment, they acquire a taste for variety, until nothing short of all that the world can produce or invent is equal to the extent and 27 number of their desires. It is this which induces them to bear and cheerfully pay the cost of commerce, which in itself begets nothing valuable, and is simply the instrument by which differ- ent parts of the world exchange the surplus of that which they grow or create for that which they do not ; but which in its effects links all the peoples of the world together in one economical community, under the operation of the laws of de- mand and supply. The happiest and safest practicable condition — other things being equal— for a nation, would seem to be that in which each of its different sections is able to produce things desirable to the others, in such number and variety as in the aggregate to make up the sum of human wants, thus rendering it independ- ent. To this desirable condition the United States are — or were — rapidly approaching, if it was not already a thing real- ized. The cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, groceries and fruits of the South came, with its own productions, as nearly as possible to making up the complement of things of use, necessity and luxury at the North; and the provisions and manufactures of the North were doing the same good office for the South. The •commerce called into being hj these exchanges, if it was ex- pensive, had this mitigating circumstance, that it was domes- tic, and its profits enured to, while it supplied remunerative employment for many thousands of our fellow-citizens. In fact, we have no knowledge of any nation of ancient or modern times, each of whose parts was so admirably contrived to be at once the servant and the customer of the others ; whose differ- ent climates, tastes and forms of labor were so well adapted to give aid to each other ; whose accidental differences were pro- ductive of so much real unity, and in whose economical sys- tems there was so little clashing and injurious competition. The white laborer of the North has not needed the cotton lands, the rice swamps, the sugar plantations or the tobacco patches of the South as fields for his activity; nor has the black laborer of the South needed the corn and wheat farms, the shops or the factories of the North as fields for his. Each has had ample 28 room and verge enough for the exercise of his utmost energies ; nor has it been often in the history of either the North or the South, within the last forty years, that the labor market has been glutted with more hands than it could employ and sup- port. In respect to the demand for the products of its agriculture,, the South has had one advantage over the North ; for while the latter has, at least now and then, had in its garners and warehouses greater quantities of wheat and corn and pork and whisky than were wanted to supply the deficiencies in other- countries, the requirements of our own and of foreign nations for the staples of the latter, and especially that of cotton, have always been in advance of its ability to supply them.. In fact,. while the cotton production of the United States has increased from eighteen millions of pounds in the year 1800 to nearly two thousand millions in 1860, it seems now as far as ever from reaching the utmost limit of the demand. But no agency has been so efficient to enlarge the foreign market for American provisions as the increase of the cotton production. The most extensive cotton manufacturing country in the world is Great Britain, next to which is France; and these are the principal customers of the North and West for all the articles which it cultivates and produces. In propor- tion as the demand for cotton has been supplied from the Southern plantations, has the demand for food for those who are engaged in its manufacture increased in magnitude and im- proved in regularity. Every ship load of cotton that goes from New Orleans or Mobile or Charleston or Savannah, represents other ship loads of wheat and corn and beef and pork, that go from New York, or New Orleans, or Chicago, or Buffalo. The increase in value which British or French labor adds to South- ern cotton, enables the laborer to live upon Northern provisions ; and thus, even in its exports to foreign lands, the South was ministering to the wealth, the power and the progress of the North, while it was doing the same thing for itself. But the cotton manufacture of the North is only moderate in 29 its extent, when compared with that of Great Britain and France. According to official reports made in 1850, the amount of capital invested in the manufacture of cotton in the United States, and mostly in those of the East and North, was, in round numbers, $74,000,000; consuming 256,500,000 pounds of the raw material, worth in that state $35,000,000; using 121,- 000 tuns of coal, employing 92,286 persons, who received per annum, for wages, the sum of $16,286,000; producing 763,679,- 000 yards of cloth, of the value of $61,879. We may estimate the importance of American cotton to other nations, and incidentally to our own, from the fact that for many years, over eighty per cent, of all the cotton manufac- tured in this country and in Europe has been the growth of the United States. From the year 1851 to 1855, according to offi- cial documents, the average annual amount of that article shipped from our ports to Great Britain and the Continent was 1,026,000,000 pounds ; of which England received 712,- 000,000, France 174,000,000, Spain 34,000,000, the Hanse Towns 26,000,000, Belgium 17,000,000, Austria 17,000,000, Sardinia and Italy 15,000,000, Russia 9,000,000 and the other States the remainder. In 1857 the export had risen to 1,048,282,475 pounds, valued at home at $131,575,859. Some idea of the value of slave labor in the Southern States to the industry of the world, may be gained by a glance at the amount of exportable products of those States, which form the subjects of commerce. With the exception of a mere fraction, the whole vast aggregate of the cotton crop is sent out of the States in which it is produced; while of the other articles, only the surplus is exported. The annual value of the cotton which the South sends to other countries, including the North, may be set down as an average of $260,000,000; of tobacco $25,000,- 000; of sugar and molasses $10,000,000; of rice $5,000,000, making in all $300,000,000. For these she receives little money in return. Her payment has been in the products of the fields, shops and manufactories of the North, and of other countries, the greater share of which have paid a profit to Northern mer- 30 chants, brokers and importers. The cotton has at once clothed all Christendom, supported its commerce and provided neces- sary employment for many millions of its laboring population. The number of the people of Great Britain engaged and di- rectly interested in the cotton manufacture is greater than the entire population of ]\ T ew England, and the number in France nearly as great. The value of the annual export of cotton fab- rics from Great Britain may be set down at $250,000,000, being two-thirds of all the woven fabrics exported from the empire. Speaking of the American production of cotton and the effect which it was producing, not only upon our own prosperity but upon the destiny of other nations, BlackivoocVs Magazine, in January, 1853, employed the following forcible language: " With its increased growth has sprung up that mercantile navy which now waves its stripes and stars over every sea, and that foreign influence, which has placed the internal peace — we may say the subsistence of millions in every manufacturing country in Europe — within the power of an oligarchy of cot- ton planters." In another paragraph is depicted the effect which disturb- ances upon this continent would produce in Great Britain: "Let any great social or physical convulsion visit the United Sta.es, and England would feel the shock from Land's End to John O' Groat's. The lives of nearly two millions of our coun- trymen are dependent upon the cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any hyperbole, to hang upon a thread. Should any dire calamity befal the land of cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly in dock; ten thousand mills stop their busy looms; two thousand thousand mouths starve for lack of food to feed them." That the forcible abolition of Slavery in the United States would bring upon England all and more of the calamities here depicted, there can be no doubt. That such an event would put a stop to the production of cotton as an article of com- merce, either foreign or domestic, is a thing which even those who urge on the work of abolition do not deny; and of which the people of Great Britain have had too much experience to enable them to entertain a doubt. That the prospect of such 31 an event should therefore awaken in their minds, and in the mind of their government, the most serious apprehensions, is not surprising. Greatly as they may desire to draw their future supplies of that staple from other countries, and thus escape the dangers which may arise from our social or phys- ical convulsions, they are aware that, for the present, Ameri- can cotton is to them an article of the first necessity; and that upon its receipt, in quantities sufficient to meet the re- quirements of their manufacturing population, depends not merely their industrial prosperity and the lives of millions of people, but the solvency of the government — perhaps its very existence — the safety of the state, and its immunity from inter- nal commotion and civil war. But great as are the calamities that would befall Great Brit- ain in consequence of the failure in the supply of American cotton, those that would overtake the North would be no less serious, while they might be even more wide-spread and per- vading. Not only would the thousands of our cotton-mills stop their busy looms, and our thousands of ships and steamers rot idly in dock, but the impulse which has tilled the whole coun- try w T ith flourishing towns and cities, and which has made practicable our tens of thousands of miles of railway — which has extended our cultivating industry over millions of acres of territory, and dotted the whole North with shops and factories and founderies for the production of articles to supply a South- ern demand, would be taken away. That vast and busy agri- cultural population which now finds employment and wealth in producing its hundreds of millions of dollars in annual value of surplus to feed the laborers of the South and the workmen in the cotton-mills of Europe, would find their market de- stroyed, their sources of revenue dried up, their occupation gone, and themselves reduced to that which, in comparison with their past condition, is poverty. The capitalist will find his capital unproductive, and himself a pensioner upon his principal; and the laborer will fail to receive those wages which have heretofore been the sources of his subsistence. 32 Nor will this wide-spread stagnation be unaccompanied by waiit and real suffering. With no demand for the products of labor, production will cease; and the reluctant workmen will stand idle and hungry in the market-places. Not merely des- titution, but that discontent which always, to a greater or less extent, accompanies it, will ensue; and those disturbances which the statesmen of other nations, with just reason, fear, in con- sequence of our distractions, will find an equally dangerous counterpart in our own society. It is doubtless true that, in the course of time, the North would adapt itself to the altered condition which abolition would necessitate, and such changes would take place in its in- dustrial system as would render its laboring population self- sustaining; but who is able to calculate how long it would be before the transition could be accomplished, or the sum of the suffering that must, in the mean time, be endured? To grad- ual revolutions, especially when they are for the better, men conform with readiness; but violent ones, particularly when they are for the worse, while they bear heavily upon all, press with crushing weight upon the class that, having no stores laid up for times of adversity, are least able to endure them. The North has not less than a thousand millions of dollars of fixed capital, invested in machinery, implements and fixtures for the production of articles of Southern demand Abolition will, at a single blow, render these instrumentalities worthless, and wipe the capital which they represent out of existence. It has, perhaps, another thousand millions invested in the pro- duction of articles of foreign demand, the ability to purchase which by foreign nations depends upon the regular supply of cotton from Southern plantations, which will, to a great ex- tent, incur the same fate. The use of this, and a still greater floating capital, has hitherto supplied several millions of Northern people with that employment which is to them food, clothing and home. It is a sad thing when such are, even tem- porarily deprived of a market for their labor, but when this privation is accompanied by the necessity, not merely to learn 33 new occupations, but to wait until, in the progress of events, new fields shall be discovered and opened, starvation or sup- port at the public expense is inevitable. Such an event will practically set the people of the North back half a century in their material progress, and undo that which, for two genera- tions, has been the principal subject of their pride; and with these additional disadvantages, that with a vast and burden- some public debt pressing with almost annihilating force upon every branch of industry, the former avenues of her trade and industry will be blockaded, with no new ones open to sup- ply their places, while she will have upon her hands a numer- ous horde of paupers, who, with their posterity, will, perhaps, for generations to come, demand to be fed and clothed from the wasted revenues of the people and the bankrupt coffers of the gOA r ernment. There are those who, with a pretence of sagacity superior to that which is permitted to ordinary mortals, affect to despise considerations like these ; but they are mostly such as, having become possessed to the full extent of their capacity with one idea, have no room to give entertainment to another. Assum- ing that Slavery is the one great evil that infests the world, they close their eyes upon all other evils, present or prospec- tive, and are willing that the world shall be overturned rather than Slavery be continued. When Robespierre — the head of the first Abolition Society of modern times — was told that the cause he was advocating in the French National Assembly, in 1771, in respect to the mulattoes of St. Domingo, would ruin the colonies: "Perish the colonies," was the reply of that dis- tinguished patriot and philanthropist, "rather than sacrifice one iota of our principles." The mantle of the President of the celebrated Society of Amis des Noirs appears to have de- scended upon his American successors. Perish the South, rather than sacrifice one iota of our principles ! And nojt only perish the South, but perish the North also! is virtually their exclamation. Let all America, white and black, be involved in a common ruin, so that the bond which binds the slave to his 5 34 master be broken. These Robespierres of the nineteenth cen- tury were, a few months ago, disunionists. They called the Constitution of the United States a compact with Hell, agitated for its overthrow, and, more than any others, are the authors of the present deplorable condition of the country. Now they are the most violent friends of the Union, and clamor loudest for its restoration. They constitute the leaders of the extreme movement party, have the control of a multitude of newspa- pers, hold possession of all the lecture-halls of the country, and are able to drive or exclude from the field all who disagree with them in opinion or dissent from the destructive measures which they propose. Is any one idle enough to suppose that these men are any better friends of the Union than they were twelve months ago? What have they ever done but to jeopardize its interests and peril its tranquillity? Does any one sincerely believe that they are more than other men, friends of the negro? Do they admit him to their houses, cherish him in their social circles, or strive, in any way, to elevate him to an equality with them- selves? Does their hatred of Slavery impel them to discour- age its continuance by dispensing with those articles of com- fort or luxury which slaves produce? It must make the Devil — if there is a Devil — wriggle his tail — if he has a tail- — with delight, to hear a gentleman who clothes himself and his family in slave-labor cottons, regales himself with slave-labor coffee, sweetened with slave-labor sugar, eats slave-labor rice, and solaces himself after dinner with a pipe of slave-labor to- bacco, mounted in pulpit or rostrum, and haranguing of the wrongs, sins, evils and cruelties of slavery. The detestable meanness of such a proceeding is only equaled by its consum- mate hypocrisy. For very shame, let these gentlemen deny themselves the use of those things which — as they contend — are the symbols of the blood and tears of men and women per- ishing in hopeless servitude, and then they will be able to show the world, at least one evidence of their sincerity. But this is not all. The true way to get rid of Slavery is to 35 supercede it by free labor. Let our philanthropists turn their attention to the culture of cotton and sugar and rice and to- bacco, and by the superior cheapness of their crops drive the symbols of blood and tears from the markets of Christendom. The South is — at least it was — all before them. They could have afforded mankind the best possible proof of their convic- tion of the truth of their principles by proving, in their own persons, the correctness of their theories. The Rev. Cheevee might have been, if not as ornamental, quite as useful to his species, by doing daily duty in a rice plantation ; the elegant figure of the Rev. Bellows would have become additionally interesting while conveying armfulls of cane to the sugar manufactory ; the chubby fingers of the Rev. Beecher would serve an excellent purpose in picking the virgin cotton from its prudish pod ; and the Garrisons, the Greeleys, and others of the same species, might, perhaps, have wrought salvation to millions of the negro race by their superior skill in hoeing, worming and stripping tobacco. At present our country seems to be lying prostrate at the feet of the destructionists ; and there is, to appearance, no one to raise a voice imploring them to hold off their hands. Re- presentations of the damage they are doing, and of the evils they are entailing upon the land and upon posterity, find no listeners. The cry is Havoc! Let us destroy ourselves, so that we may also destroy our adversaries. To predict and to dare every evil that can befall a country and a people, is ac- cepted as a mark of superior patriotism ; and windy orators upon the floor of Congress, who profess to be willing to lie down in paupers' graves, so that they can rid the land of the black curse of Slavery, are greeted with rounds of applause from the galleries. To suppose that these people will endure any better than others the burdens that the future is destined to bring, is to take upon trust that which can only be proven by experi- ment. The bravery to suffer prospective misfortunes is a very different thing from the constancy to bear real ones. It may be a pleasant thing for those to whom a pauper's grave is only 36 a figure of speech to defy its terrors ; but it need not be forgot- ten that there are thousands among us already to whom the- pauper's grave is an imminent reality. God may provide com- fortable salaries for incendiary clergymen, as the Government does for those gentlemen who continue to combine in one per- son the character of patriot and peculator. But beneath these there is a large class of people equally deserving, and a great deal more useful, in whose favor there are no such special dis- pensations. While the world is amused with the vaporings of the one, it may forget the sufferings of the other. The real loss falls upon those who deserve it least — honest farmers, care- ful merchants, industrious tradesmen, enterprising manfactur- ers and helpless laborers. L'BRARY OF CONGRESS III! 011 899 680 A I to r. ,/ if r/H ^w r/ ,/? -f*: