449 He4 f-) .. . ,■ (-ia,^ E4-A3 Book . Hsed are suf- ficiently light. But the cultivation of tobacco, and still more, that of rice, sugar and cotton, is an inces- sant round of labor, from one year's end to the other. These plants are a long time in coming to perfection. The labor of securing the crop, and preparing it for market, is very great; and one year's work is hardly ended, before it is time to begin upon the next. Win- ter or Summer, there is no rest nor relaxation from constant, steady toil. On the whole, it may be stated that the physical condhion of the slaves throughout the southern states, is far inferior in every respect, to that of the unfortu- nate men, confined for the punishment of their crimes 60 DESPOTISM in our Northern prisons and penitentiaries. Their food is less savoury, less abundant, and far less vari- ous, — and a certain variety of diet seems as essential to health as it is agreeable to the taste. The work de- manded of them is far more fatiguing and severe, the time of labor is longer, the clothing with which they are supplied is far less comfortable ; and their exposure far more trying. That sort of discipline which Ave have fixed upon as the most terrible and exemplary punishment of crime, — or rather a discipline much more severe than that, — is the regular, constant, per- petual condition of a large proportion of our fellow- countrymen at the south. What has been observed with respect to food, ap- plies with equal force to physical condition in general. That which is sufficient to sustain existence, is by no means sufficient for comfort, or for pleasure. Life may be supported, and protracted under such a series of privations that it ceases to be any thing but a con- tinuity of suff*ering. That the physical condition of the slaves, is far in- ferior on an average to that of the free, may be made evident by some statistical considerations. During the forty years, preceding 1830, the average annual increase of the white population of the United States, amounted to 3,04 per cent. ; while the average annual increase of the slave population, during the same period, amounted to 2,67 per cent. Emigration from abroad contributed to swell the increase of the white population. Let us suppose, and it will be a ver}^ liberal allowance, that the annual increase of the white population by this means, amounted to ,37 per cent. Making this allowance, it would follow, that the domestic white population, and the slave popu- lation have increased in the same ratio."^ * The foreiirn slave trade was not abolished till ISOS. Up to that year, the proportional increase of the slave population by that means, was in all probability, fully equal to the increase of the free popula- tion by emigration from abroad. The great influx of foreign emigra- tion into the United States, is quite recent in its origin. IN AMERICA. 61 Now il is to be recollected that there are certain prudential checks, as they are denominated, constant- ly operating to retard the increase of the white popu- lation. The extent to which these checks operate, even in those parts of the country in which the white population increases with the greatest rapidity, will be obvious, when it is considered, that in the state of New York, as appears from the results of the State census, in 1825 and in 1835, out of all the women in the state between the ages of sixteen and forty- five, that is, of an age to bear children, two fifths are un- married. Among the slaves, these prudential checks are to- tally unknown. There is nothing to prevent them from yielding to the instincts of nature. Child-bear- ing is stimulated and encouraged by the masters, and so far as it depends upon the mere production of chil- dren, the slave population ought to increase, two fifths faster than the free. Instead of doubling once in twenty-five years, it ought to double once in fifteen years. If the increase is kept down to the former level, it is only because disease and death are busier among the slaves than among the free ; and as the slaves escape all those kinds of disorders which spring from luxury and over indulgence, this greater mortality can only be ascribed to greater severity of labor, and to destitution of the physical supports of life. It is often argued that self-interest alone is enough to make the master attentive to the lives and health of his slaves ; on the same principle that he provides corn for his horses, and fodder for his cattle. But that provident and enlightened economy which makes a present sacrifice for the sake of avoiding a future greater loss, however it may be generally recommend- ed and applauded, is but seldom practiced ; and he who is familiar with the domestic management of the southern states, must know that of all places in the world, it is least practiced there. An anecdote is related of a Virginian planter, who discharged his overseer, because sufiicient cattle had 6 62 DESPOTISM not died during the winter to furnish leather enough to supply the slaves with shoes. This story though perhaps a little exaggerated, will serve to give an idea of the domestic economy of the south ; and he who knows how many mules and horses yearly drop in the furrow, through starvation, over-work, and the abusive treatment, which the slaves, emulous of their masters, heap upon the only creatures in their power ; he who has seen the condition of southern cattle in the month of March, hundreds actually starved to death, and those which are alive, a mere anatomy of skin and bones, with hardly substance enough to cast a shadow, searching with feeble steps, and woeful countenance, for a spear or two of withered grass, wherewith to protract their miserable existence; he who has seen these things, would not much care to have his life or his sustenance dependent upon the good economy of a management so utterly thriftless and unfeeling. SECTION VII. The treatment of American slaves, considered as men. There are some people whose sympathies have been excited upon the subject of slavery, who if they can only be satisfied that the slaves have enough to eat, think it is all very well, and that nothing more is to be said, or done. If slaves were merely animals, whose only, or chief enjoyment consisted in the gratification of their bodily appetites, there would be some shov/ of sense in this conclusion. But in fact, however crushed and bruti- fiedj they are still men : men whose bosoms beat with the same passions as our own ; whose hearts swell with the same aspirations, — the same ardent desire to im- IN AMERICA. 63 prove their condition ; the same wishes for what they have not ; the same indifference towards what they have; the same restless love of social snperiority; the same greediness of acqnisition ; the same desire to know; the same impatience of all external control. The excitement which the singnlar case of Casper Hanser, prodnced a few years since, in Germany, is not yet forgotten. From the representations of that enigmatical personage, it was believed that those from whose cnstody he declared himself to have escaped, had endeavoured to destroy his intellect, or rather to prevent it from being developed, so as to detain him forever in a state of infantile imbecility. This sup- posed attempt at what they saw fit to denominate, the murder of the soul, gave rise to great discussions among the German Jurists ; and they soon raised it into a new crime, which they placed at the very head of social enormities. It is this very crime, the murder of the sotd, which is in the course of continuous and perpetual perpetra- tion throughout the southern states of the American Union; and that not upon a single individual only, but upon nearly one half the entire population. Consider the slaves as men, and the course of treat- ment which custom and the laws prescribe, is an art- ful, deliberate, and well digested scheme to break their spirit; to deprive them of courage and of man- hood; to destroy their natural desire for an equal par- ticipation in the benefits of society; to keep them ignorant, and therefore weak ; to reduce them if possi- ble to a state of idiocy ; to crowd them down to a level with the brutes. A man, especially a civilized man, possessed of a certain portion of knowledge, and well skilled in some art or science, is a much more valuable piece of prop- erty, and capable of producing for his master, a far greater revenue, than a mere, two-legged human ani- mal, with all the failings and defects, and none of the virtues of a savage. But if such a slave is more vakiable, he is far more dangerous, and far more dif- 64 DESPOTISM ficult to manage. To extort the services of such a slave, by mere severity, would always be hazardous, and often impossible. Drive him to despair, of which such a man in such circumstances, is easily suscepti- ble, and he might violently end a life from which he derived no enjoyment, and court a death which offer- ed him, at least, the pleasure of thwarting the hopes of a too greedy master. With such slaves, it has al- ways been found necessary, to enter into a sort of compromise, — a treaty of peace, in which, if the claims of the conqueror were largely provided for, some re- spect has also been paid, to the rights and the happi- ness of the conquered. The claims of the master have been commuted for a monthly or daily tribute ; and what else the slave could make or gain, has been relinquished to his own use. He has been further en- couraged by the prospect of presently purchasing his freedom ; or of obtaining it by the free gift of a mas- ter well satisfied with his services. But though such slaves are very profitable, they are also, as has been above observed, very dangerous. Put thus upon a level with their masters, in all that constitutes the moral strength of men ; keenly sensi- tive to the injustice that is done them, and to the un- fair advantage that has been taken of their weakness, — they have ever been ready to burst into rebellion, have sometimes succeeded in overpowering their mas- ters, and have often maintained a long, a bloody, and a doubtful contest. All this is perfectly well understood at the south. A slave who can read is valuable on many accounts, and will sell for more money than one who cannot. A slave who can read, write, and compute, and who by reason of these accomplishments is able to fulfil the duties of a merchant's clerk, is plainly far more valuable than a mere field hand. One who under- stands the art of printing, an armorer, an apothecary, are evidently capable of performmg more profitable operations, than he who knows only how to handle a hoe. IN AMERICA. 65 But well aware how dangerous such slaves would be, the privileged order have perferred to sacrifice profit to safety. In most of the slave holding states, it is specially enacted that no slave shall be taught to read. This inability to read, disquahfies them at once for all the higher occupations. Some few are rudely mstructed in those simple handicrafts indispensable upon every plantation ; but custom and public opinion, if not the law, imperiously forbid, that any slave should be bred up to the knowledge or practice of any of the superior arts. Some publishers of newspapers, in defect of white journeymen, introduced slaves into their offices as compositors ; but the experiment was pronounced too dangerous, and they were obliged to relinquish it. With the exception of those employed in domestic service, and in the few mechanic arts above mention- ed, the great mass of the slaves are occupied in agri- culture, which, for the most part, is prosecuted in the rudest possible way. This is a subject which will be more fully considered in a subsequent chapter. Every thing is done by main strength, and under the direc- tion "of an overseer. The slaves are confined to the constant repetition of a few simple mechanical acts ; and continually employed as they are in this constant round of stupefying labor, which is not enlivened by hardly a single glimpse of art or intellect; thus shut out from the means and opportunity of exercising their higher faculties, no wonder that the soul falls into a deep and death-like slumber. Drugged with such a stupefying cup, so artfully administered, the soul murder if not complete, is closely approximated. The man loses his manhood, and is a man no longer. Those mental and moral capabilities which are his pride and glory, fall into abeyance, and apparently he dwindles down into something little better than a mere animal. The domestic slaves, being constantly attendant upon their masters, and listeners to their daily con- versationj cannot but pick up some crumbs of knowl- 6# 66 DESPOTISM edge, and acquire a certain habit of reasoning and re- flection. In consequence of these accomplishments they are feared, suspected, and very narrowly watch- ed. In all the towns and villages of the south, the strictest regulations are established and enforced, by which among other things, the slaves are forbidden to leave their master's houses after an early hour in the evening, and in many other respects, are subjected to a constant system of the most prying and suspicious espionage. Some writers misled by a spirit of patriotism, or de- ceived by views too superficial, have represented the system of American slavery as extremely mild, and quite a different thing from slavery in any other age or country. There is a difference it is true; but that difference is not favorable to us. It is easy to show, that in certain most essential points, — those fundamen- tal points by which alone a social system ought to be judged, — American slavery is a far more deadly and disastrous thing, more fatal to all the hopes, the sen- timents, the rights of humanity, than almost any other system of servitude which has existed in any other community. Slavery as it existed among the ancient Greeks and Romans has been often referred to, as a system of the extremest severity, cruel beyond any thing to be found in modern times. ^ No doubt that system was bad enough. It would be well however, if other systems were not worse. The Roman master had the power of life and death over his slaves ; but the slaves, in this respect, stood upon a level with the freemen ; for the Roman hus- band and father had the same power over his wife and his children, and he might claim and exercise it, long after those children had passed the age of puber- ty, and even after they had attained to the highest honors and distinctions of the state. It is true that the laws do not confer an equal authority upon the Ameri- can master ; but it is equally true that the lives of his * See Channing on Slavery. IN AMERICA. 67 slaves are not the less in his power. It is easy for the master to invent a thousand pretences for taking the life of any slave, against Avhom he may have conceiv- ed a prejudice. If he does not think it prudent to use the pistol or the knife, he needs only to have recourse to a somewhat more lingering process of torture, or starvation. But the great distinction between the slavery of the ancient world and that of America is this. The Greek and Roman slaves, in the estimation of their masters and themselves, though slaves, were yet men. It was true doubtless, as Homer says, that the day a man became a slave he lost half liis manly virtues. From the nature of things it must have been so; but man- hood or a portion of it, remained, though darkened and eclipsed, still visible. To a certain extent at least, in point of knoAvledge, accomplishments, and the de- velopement of mind, the slaves stood upon a level with the free ; and if there be something terrible in the idea, — terrible because we need no preparation to comprehend it, — of a city sacked and pUmdered, and all its inhabitants, the noblest, the wealthiest, the deli- cate women, as well as the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, sold under the hammer of a mili- tary auctioneer, and thence dragged into servitude, — we must recollect that the accomplishments, the knowledge, the refinement of these unhappy captives, furnished also many means of alleviating the calamity of servitude, and presently of escaping it altogether. The Athenian captives taken in the unlucky expe- dition against Syracuse, purchased their liberty by re- citing the verses of Euripides. Slaves first cultivated the art of Latin poetry, and introduced at Rome an imitation of the Grecian drama. Such were Plautus and Terence, and almost all the elder Roman poets. All the arts which give comfort and refinement to life, and the mere practice of which confers a certain so- cial distinction, music, poetry, literature in general, painting, medicine, education, and many others, were principally, or commonly practiced by slaves, who 68 DESPOTISM thus acquired favor, fame, freedom, and finally wealth and social elevation. Horace, educated at Athens among the sons of Roman nobles, and afterwards the friend and intimate of the lords of the empire, and the delight and pride of the Roman people, was the son of a freedman. Emancipations were frequent and were favored. The slave constantly had before his eyes the hope and the prospect of liberty ; he thus had a noble object for which to live ; and although there were in general, some political disqualifications which he could not expect to shake off from himself, wealth, consideration, and all the more common ob- jects of human hopes and wishes, were still spread out before him ; and for his children — and men live as much for their children as for themselves, — he had every thing to anticipate. Undoubtedly the condition of the country slave, employed in agriculture, more nearly resembled that of slaves with us. But still there was an opening for talent and for hope. No slave was so low or fnisera- ble, that he might not aspire to freedom and to social elevation. Under this system, there existed that compromise between tho master and the slave, which has been ex- plained above. If the slave lived and labored for his master, he also lived and labored for himself He was secured by custom, which is stronger and more effectual than law, in the enjoyment of a pecul'ufjm^ or property of his own. The relation of master and slave lost to a certain degree, the character of pure despo- tism, and approached towards that of lord and vassal, patron and client ; while the frequency of emancipation introduced into the relation of servitude, sentiments totally opposite to those which naturally spring from it. There were gleams of benevolence and of grati- tude ; there was a twilight of good will. Compared to a condition of freedom, it was as the gray morning dawn, to the brilliancy of noon. Compared to the system of our own country, it is as that same morn- ing dawn to the blackness of midnight. IN AMERICA. 69 It is true that we read of savage atrocities, exercis- ed in those ancient times, by masters towards their slaves. The Spartans, we are told, were accustomed from time to time, to send out assassins who put to death the boldest and most intelligent of the Helots ; and it is undeniable that the frequent servile insurrec- tions wliich took place in the ancient states, were sup- pressed and punished by a series of the most dread- ful cruelties. But these fierce acts ought to be regarded as proofs not so much of the degradation of the slaves, as of an approach on their part, towards an equality with their masters. No repose is so perfect as the repose of absolute despotism. The unfrequent and always trifling disturbances among the slaves of America fur- nish palpable evidence how sunk they are. It is only where a certain portion of liberty is enjoyed, that more begins to be strenuously claimed, or boldly sought.^ To him that hath, shall be given ; from him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that which he hath. Such servile insurrections as take place in America, are faint flashes of folly or despair. The insurrections of slaves in ancient times, were the promptings of genius and of hope. Had the Greek and Roman masters been the same indolent, scattered, untrained, unready people as are the American planters, such were the means, the courage, the spirit of their slaves that they could not have retained their dominion for a day. In those times the free were all soldiers. War was their con- stant study and pursuit. They lived too in cities, ready to combine and act at a moment's warning. Thus they were able, by constant preparation, and su- perior means, aided as they were by the moral causes above enumerated, to maintain their authority over slaves, enjoying an intellectual equality with them- selves. Under the Roman empire, the standing army by which the emperors maintained their authority, served also to hold the slaves in subjection. Besides, the masters had a strong body of firm friends and 70 DESPOTISM allies in the numerous class of freedmen. The emanci- pations constantly going on would soon, in fact, have put an end to the condition of servitude, had not the numbers of the enslaved been kept good by fresh im- portations and purchases. When at length these im- portations ceased, slavery in towns and cities soon came to an end ; the slavery of the country was changed into villanage, and villanage ended at last, in liberty. To a certain extent, many of these observations ap- ply to slavery as it exists in Brazil and Spanish Ame- rica. However disastrous may be the social condi- tion of those countries, it is not destitute of allevia- tions. The slave is at least regarded as a man, and is always cheered by the prospect and the hope of free- dom. His efforts to obtain it by purchase, by gaining the good will of his master, or by other peaceable means, are encouraged by the laws and by public opinion ; and if he attempt to qualify himselt for the more advantageous possession of it, so laudable an ambition is approved and applauded. In America, so far as the slaves are concerned, there prevails a totally different system. It is laid down, as an indisputable maxim, that the freedom, the equal- ity, the moral and social elevation of the servile class, or any of its members, are totally inconsistent with the dignity, the interest, the existence even of the privileged order. That contempt, that antipathy, that disgust which the degraded condition of servitude na- turally inspires, is sedulously aggravated by the whole course of education, and is artfully, though impercep- tibly, transferred from condition to race; and to crown the whole, the idea is earnestly and industriously incul- cated, that these suggestions of prejudice and igno- rance, are the very innate promptings of nature. In consequence, the natural sympathies of human- ity are first smothered and then extinguished. The privileged cease to consider the servile class as belong- ing to the same scale of being with themselves. The slaves in the estimate of their masters, lose all the at- IN AMERICA. 71 tributes of humanity. The kindest, the most tender- hearted, the most philanthropic of the privileged or- der, learn to be perfectly satisfied when the animal wants of the servile class are tolerably provided for. To make any account of their mental wants, — that is, to entertain the idea that they are men, — is consid- ered an absurd, a misplaced and a fanatical tender- ness, certain, if persevered in, to uproot the founda- tions of society, and to end in results indeterminate, but terrible. For the slaves are regarded not merely as animals, but as animals of the wildest and most ferocious char- acter. They are thought to be like tigers, trained to draw the plough, whom notliing but fear, the whip, and constant watchfulness, keep at all in subjection ; who would take advantage of the slightest relaxation of the discipline that restrains them, to break away from their unwilling labors ; and who if left to themselves, would quickly recover their savage nature, and find no en- joyment except to riot in blood. Whether or not there is any thing of reason and truth in these ideas, is not now tlie question. Suflice it to say, that they are universally prevalent throughout the southern states. They are the received, the author- ized, the established creed. They are interwoven into the very frame work of society : laws, customs, chari- ties, morals, and religion, all are modified by them. Doubtless there are men of reflection and discernment, and men in whom a warm benevolence supplies the place of reflection and discernment, who perceive more or less clearly, the monstrous and extravagant absurdi- ty of these popular ideas. But for their lives they dare not whisper the suspicion of a doubt. To do so would be high treason against the authority of the privileged order, — an order as jealous, fretful and suspicious as ever was the aristocracy of Venice ; and as apt to punish too, on vague suspicion, without a trial, or a responsible accuser. It is plain that emancipation can form no part of such a system. In South Carolina, Georgia, Alaba- 72 DESPOTISM ma and Mississippi, no master can emancipate his slave, except with the express permission of the state legislature, a permission not easily to be obtained. In North Carolina and Tennessee, the emancipating mas- ter must have the approbation and consent of the County Court. In Virginia, he must remove the emancipated slave, beyond the limits of the State. In Maryland a similar law prevails. In Kentucky, Mis- souri and Louisiana, the master still retains the right of emancipation under certain restrictions. But through- out all the slave states, this exertion of power — the only act of justice which the owner of slaves, in his character of owner, is able to perform — is totally dis- couraged by public opinion. The emancipated class is studiously subjected to mortifications and disabili- ties without number. They are considered as noxious vermin whose extermination is required for the com- fort and security of the privileged order. They are hunted down by legislative enactments as bears and foxes are in other states ; and by depriving them of all the rights of citizenship, advantages of society, and opportunities for labor, the attempt is made to ren- der them if possible, even more miserable than the slaves. These efforts have been to a certain extent, successful. The condition of the emancipated class, would seem to be wretched enough to satisfy their worst enemies. Yet wretched as they are, still they are envied by the slaves. What conclusive evidence of the miseries of servitude ! Some few emancipations occasionally take place; but it is obvious that the value of the boon is exceed- ingly diminished, by the miserable condition to which the emancipated class is studiously reduced. As to passing from the unprivileged into the privileged or- der, that is a thing entirely out of the question. No slave can expect it for himself, for his children, or even for his remotest posterity. The feeling which exists upon this subject throughout the South, is a perfect fanaticism. In one or two rare instances, a good-natured master has attempted to elevate his own \S AMERICA. 73 children, born of slave mothers, to the rank of free- dom. But in every such case, the penahy of setting public opinion at defiance, has been dearly paid. Tlie transgressor has been assailed in every form of ridi- cule, and reproach; he has been pursued witfi the most inveterate malice; has been overwhelmed with torrents of obloquy ; and held up to public scorn and indignation, as a blasphemous violator of the decen- cies of life and the sacred laws of nature. Here is the point at which the slaves of the United States sink into a depth of misery, which even the imagination can hardly measure. What is life with- out hope ? All men of reflection, whether poets or philosophers, have agreed, that life even in the better aspects of it, if we did but see things as they are and as they will be, would be a dreary and a worthless thing. It is hope that cheers, supports, sustains us. It is in the anticipation of future joys, that we are happy. But what hope, what anticipations has the American slave? His hopes are all fears; his antici- pations, if he has any, are anticipations of suffering. This is a state of existence which could not be endur- ed by cultivated or reflecting minds. The slightest gleam, the faintest and most uncertain glimmer, a hope, a chance which to all beside ourselves may ap- pear but the faintest, will suffice often to lead and guide us on, through defiles dark and gloomy as the valley of the shadow of death. But when that light goes out, that glimmer ceases, that hope expires, what shall save us from the horrors of despair ? 7 7f4 DESPOTISM SECTION VIII. Wealth and luxury of the masters^ as it affects the condition of slaves. It is a fact well worthy of consideration, that with the progress of wealth and luxury among the masters, the sufferings, the misery, the degradation of the slaves has been steadily aggravated ; till at length, in the Avealthiest and most refined of our slave holding com- munities, a point has been reached, both in theory and la practice, beyond which it does not seem easy to go. The mildest form of ximerican slavery is to be found, not among the polite and well educated citizens of Richmond and Charleston, but amid the rude and wild abodes of the Creeks, the Choctaws, the Semi- noles, — tribes whom we describe and stigmatize, as savages. The indian slaves, are in many respects, almost upon a level with their masters. The wants of sav- age life are few and simple. The avarice of the mas- ter is not stimulated by the greediness of luxury. He is content with a moderate annual tribute of corn and other provisions ; and provided this be paid, the slave is left at liberty to procure it as he pleases, and to em- ploy his time and strength as he best sees fit. It thus happens that an Indian slave is sometimes richer than his master; and if he have talents and ambition, though still a slave, he may become one of the most influential persons of the tribe. The indian slaves are well aware how superior is their condition to that of the miserable sufferers, who labor for white masters, upon cotton and sugar planta- tions ; and the dread they have of that lot, as well as the influence they are able to exercise, may be clearly illustrated by the case of the Seminole war. That war, according to the statement of those best acquainted with the subject, had the following origin. It was not that the Indians themselves had such serious ob- IN A^.TKRICA. /i) jections to removal ; but as the time for the execution of the treaty approached, their country was overrun with speculators and adventurers from the states, who came partly to set up chiims, true or false, to certain Indian slaves, on the ground that they were runa- ways, or the children of runaways, who had years ago fled to the Seminoles for protection ; and partly to set on foot a slave trade with the indians, who, it was hoped might be induced at the moment of their re- moval to part with their servants for little or nothing. The indian slaves M^ere filled with terror and alarm at this prospect of falling into the hands of white mas- ters ; and it is believed lo have been by their instiga- tion and encouragement, that the Seminoles were in- duced to resist the execution of the treaty, and to commence the war. The small planter, who can neither read nor write, who has been bred up in poverty and ignorance, but who has wandered into some new settlement and has earned by his own personal labor, the means to pur- chase two or three slaves, next to the Avild indian, is the most mild and indulgent master. He works with his slaves in the field, he converses with them and consults them. If either of them exhibits any pecu- liar shrewdness or good judgment, the master per- ceives it, and avails himself of it; and such a slave often becomes his owner's chief confident and adviser. In his fits of drunkeimess, or those bursts of passion to which the rude and uneducated are peculiarly lia- ble, such a master beats and abuses his slaves. But he does the same thing to his wife and children. In general he treats them with a certain degree of ten- derness and familiarity ; and as they are always about him, by flattery, management and importunity, they are able to carry a thousand points, and to secure a thousand indulgences. But as such a planter grows rich, and increases the number of his slaves, his feelings and his conduct change with his condition. He appears in the field, not as a laborer, but on horseback, whip in hand. He 6 DESPOTISM begins to copy the airs and to imbibe the sentiments of his aristocratic, refined, and educated neighbors. He forgets the equal terms upon which he once lived with his slaves ; he feels himself transmuted into a being of a superior order, born to be idle while they were born to work. He ceases to have any sympathies for them. He learns to despise them: to hear their com- plaints and appeals with indifterence ; and to push them to labors, which when he worked b)^ their side, he did not exact. Under this new discipline, and with the frugal habits which he acquired in his youth, this planter's property rapidly increases. He becomes one of the wealthiest men of the neighborhood ; and his son and heir takes rank with the choicest aristocracy. Con- scious of his own deficiencies in education and man- ners, the father secures for that son, the best instruc- tion he can obtain. He is sent early to school, and perhaps to some northern college to finish his educa- tion. He returns well mannered, and accomplished, with the refinement of sentiment and the gentle bear- ing which education and good company impart. The father dies, and the son succeeds to the inheritance. He has no taste for agriculture ; or if he has, he can- not bear the constant annoyances of a plantation. He leaves everything in the hands of an overseer; and is almost a perpetual absentee. Every reduction in the allowances to his slaves, is so much net addition to his own revenue. He is al- ways in want of money ; and as he finds it less disa- greeable to retrench the comforts of his slaves than his ovv^n luxuries, the slaves are soon reduced to the merest subsistence. What are their suflferings or complaints to him? He is not at home to witness or to hear them. He leaves the execution of his orders to an overseer. This overseer is desirous to secure the good graces of his employer. The surest way of doing so is, to make a great crop. For this purpose the quantity of land in cultivation is increased. The tasks are extended, and the additional labor necessarr IN AMERICA. 77 to their execution, is extorted by the whip. Between this new labor and these new punishments, the slaves grow insubordinate and discontented. The boldest fi.id most enterprising take to the woods. They are jmrsued with guns and dogs ; retaken ; mangled with the lash, and loaded with fetters. These examples terrify the others. They submit in silence. Order is restored. The discipline of the plantation is spoken of, with admiration. The crop is unusually large. The owner is delighted with the result, and urgent for its continuance, and thus extortion and severity are carried to their highest pitch. At the same time that the physical comforts of the slaves are diminished, all their moral qualities are de- teriorated. Every bad passion is called into play. That state of hostility and warfare in which slavery orginates and consists, from being lulled, and half-qui- escent, becomes open and flagrant. The masters learn to hate the slaves, as fiercely as the slaves hate the masters. Presently they begin to fear them. Fear and hate upon both sides ! God have mercy upon the weaker party ! SECTION IX. Improvement in physical condition, as it affects the condition of sei^vitiide. Benevolence is one of those native impulses of the human heart, which never can be wholly eradicated ; and which may be seen mingling itself with actions that proceed from motives of a totally opposite char- acter. It is plain that the whole system of slavery is in violation of the dictates of benevolence ; yet no impar tial observer, who has resided in the southern states 7# 78 DESPOTISM of America, attempts to deny, that mingled with all its wrongs and crimes, there may be perceived, in many cases, much kind feeling on the part of the masters. Indeed it is out of this fringe of benevolence with which the dark garment of slavery is more or less scantily ornamented, that m.ost of its defenders have woven the frail texture of their tipologies. This benevolence however is of a very limited char- acter. It is confined almost entirely to physical con- dition. It conforms itself to the established sentiment of the country; it considers the slaves not in their character of human beings, of men, but merely as animals. It is asserted that within the last twenty or thirty years, as the tobacco cultivation has declined in Vir- ginia, there has been a great amelioration in the treat- ment of slaves. Many benevolent individuals have exerted themselves to bring about this state of things, by creating in the public mind a spirit of reprobation against instances of excessive cruelty. It may be ob- served in passing, that this amelioration in the treat- ment of the Virginia slaves, is a strong confirmation of the doctrines of the preceding chapter. As the masters have grov/n poor, and have been obliged to retrench their splendors and their luxury, at the same time, they have grown comparatively humane. Tlie Kentuckians boast, that of all the American masters, they are the kindest and the best; and they take to themselves no little credit, for the liberal sup- ply of food and clothing whicli they bestow upon their servants, and the moderate labor which they de- mand. This course of treatment, so much applauded by its authors, is worthy of all approbation on the score of domestic economy. It is also gratifying to the hu- mane feelings of all those persons of sensibility, to whom the constant presence of visible suffering, is the source of emotions far from agreeable. But when we consider the matter a little deeper, when we see how this merely physical kindness operates upon the Intel- IN AMERICA. 79 lect and the heart, we may well douht whether this sort of benevolence, however well intended, and how- ever on that account worthy of applause, does not in fact, greatly aggravate the miseries of servitude. So long as men are constantly pressed by merely physical wants, those Avants absorb almost their whole attention. The peculiar attributes of humanity, are scantily, or not at all, developed. They have the form and the aspect of men, but in character they are little more than mere animals ; and the gratification of their animal wants occupies their total attention. But so soon as these merely physical necessities are satisfied, the mental and moral attributes begin to un- fold themselves. The passions bud and blossom ; the feelings, the desires, the aspirations of manhood dis- play their various forms and colors. If they might bear their natural fruits, those fruits would be good and wholesome. But crushed, withered, blasted, plucked up as it were by the roots, their premature decay evolves a deadly miasm, which poisons the soul, corrodes the heart, and sets the brain on fire. Let us consider this matter more minutely. We read in ancient fables and eastern tales, of men trans- formed by the power of magic into beasts. Here is an operation of an analogous kind. Here are men who have advanced so far as to feel that they are men, Avhom lav/, custom, prejudice, and the potent force of public opinion, confine to the condition of mere beasts of labor. The more their humanity de- velopes itself, and the more conscious of it they be- come, the more irritating and oppressive this condi- tion must be. To be penned up, driven to labor, and foddered by the hand of a master, — and what conse- quence is it though the fodder be plentiful, and the labor be light 7 — to be repulsed from that condition of manhood to which they now begin ardently to as- pire ; to be expelled from the circle of social emula- tion and made mere counters in a game, of which they so long themselves to be the players ; to be de- spised, scorned, and degraded into a fellowship with 80 DESPOTISM the beasts they drive ; forbidden to indulge their na- tural and irrepressible inclinations ; prisoners though at large ; forever watched ; forever thwarted ; ag- grieved still further by the constant spectacle of privileges, enjoyments, objects and pursuits to share in which they cannot even dream, but which increase m estimated value, with the hopelessness of their at- tainment ; — what wonder, if in souls so beset with grievous temptations, there should spring up and grow, a fierce envy, a desperate hate, an impotent in- dignation preying on itself, a dark, ferocious, restless spirit of revenge, which delay irritates, concealment sharpens, and fear embitters 7 What wonder, if all the mild feelings which soften man, and make him ca- pable of happiness himself, and of conferring happiness on others, — are choaked and blasted by a rank growth of deadly passions : and that he, who under better auspices, might have been an ornament and a benefactor to society, becomes a plague to others, a torment to himself? Such are the effects v/hich must inevitably be pro- duced, upon that sensitive and irritable disposition, the usual accompaniment of genius; and the same effects, to a greater or less extent, may be expected to result in the case of every slave, whose physical wants are so far satisfied, that he becomes capable of reflec- tion, and passes from the narrov/ circle of animal desire, into the boundless amphitheatre of human wishes. Would it promote the happiness of our domestic animals, our horses and our oxen, supposing them to remain in their present external condition, to endow them with the passions and the intellect of men ? Who will maintain the affirmative of a proposition so ab- surd ? Yet the attempt to alleviate the condition of slavery, merely by improving the physical condition of the slaves, is an attempt, the absurdity of which, if it be less obvious, is precisely of the same nature. Keep your slaves pinched with hunger and worn down with fatigue, and they remain merely animals, IN AMERICA. 81 or very little more. They suffer it is true ; but they suffer as auimals. There is a certaiu fixed limit to their misery. It has its intervals of cessation. The imagination has no power over it. What it is, it is. The present is the whole ; for the past is forgotten, and the future is not anticipated. But satisfy their hunger; put them physically at ease ; give them leisure for thought,— and you create new sufferings more bitter than those you have re- moved. The man finds that yoke intolerable, of which the animal hardly perceived the existence. For two or three v/ants that you have relieved, you have created twenty others, or caused them to be felt, wants incessant, unquiet, miappeaseable ; and for these wants there is no remedy, — no remedy, while you remain a master, and they slaves ! After the sybil had cast two volumes into the fire, the third remained, as costly and as precious as all the three. In like manner, the chain of servitude loses none of its weight, by parting with a portion of its links. While one remains, that one is heavy as the whole ! Nay, heavier ; — and as it dwindles to the sight, still it peirces deeper to the soul; it frets and ulcerates the heart. At first it only bound the limbs; but now it penetrates, and with its murderous touch, tortures the vitals ! It is a common remark at the South, that the more intelligent a slave is, the more unquiet, dangerous, and troublesome he is. The remark is just. The more intelligent a slave is, the more greviously he feels the yoke of slavery. If a master then, through indulgence towards his slaves, has placed them in a situation of comparative physical comfort, so far from having a reason for stopping at that point, it becomes more imperatively his duty to go on. By doing what he has done, he has sharpened the appetite for liber- ty ; and this appetite which he has sharpened, is he not the more urgently called upon to gratify ? Let it not be said that this argument is no bet- ter than an apology for a system of hard labor and 82 DESPOTISM Starvation, nor let any man so use it. God forbid ! Those are obvious cruelties; and so clearly percepti- ble to the senses, that no man of common humanity, however thoughtless and unobservant, can fail to per- ceive them ; and no man of common sensibility can bear to inflict them. I have desired to call attention to sufferings of another kind — mental sufferings,— not so obvious, yet far more excruciating; slavery's se- cond growth, a rank and poisonous growth, more deadly than the first. I have desired to point to the slave-holder, the fear- ful dilemma by which he is hemmed in. The moment he ceases to inflict tortures at which his sensibilities revolt, the moment he yields to those prayers for mer- cy which his own heart re-echoes to him, at that very moment he becomes the author of new sufferings ten times more severe, than those he puts a stop to. He irritates while attempting to soothe ; and the oil which he drops into the wounds of servitude becomes a bit- ter and acrid poison. This is one of those cases in which all must be done, or nothing. Half measures, palliatives, do but inflame the disease. The only cure for slavery, is, freedom ! CHAPTER SECOND. POLITICAL RESULTS OF THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM. SECTION I. General Vieio of the Subject. The great objects aimed at, or which should be aimed at, in the poUtical constitution of a government, are 1st, Security^ 2nd, Freedom, 3d, Equality. Security has two principal branches, of which one relates to the person, and the other to property. A good degree of security in both these respects, is es- sential to the comfort, and to the advancement of society. Freedom is either political or civil. Political Free- dom, consists in a participation, more or less direct, in the appointment of magistrates, the enactment of laws, and other public acts. Civil Freedom depends upon the supremacy of the laws. It guarantees every citi- zen against arbitrary and capricious interference. It admits of no punishments except according to exist- ing statutes ; and it allov/s the enactment of no law founded upon any other reason than the public good. Equality divides itself into three sorts ; 1st, Political Equality, or the equal participation in political priv- ileges, and the equal chance to enjoy political power; — in other words the perfection of political freedom; 2nd, Equality of ]?roperty, or the most equal distribution, consistent with security, of the wealth already exist- ing, and the equal chance to produce or acquire new wealth ; 3d, Social Equality, or the equal chance of acquiring estmiation and regard by the exhibition of 84 PEsroTisr.i amiable and ui^eful qualities, or the performance of meritorious actions. Now so far as regards the unprivileged class of the community, it is obvious at a single glance, that the constitutions of the Southern States, fail totally, in se- curing any one of the above objects. They not only fail, but they do worse ; they make a deliberate sacri- fice of them all. This sacrifice is said to be necessary in order to se- cure the well being of the privileged class. If in fact it is so, it must needs be confessed that the alternative is very unfortunate. The Southern people, if we al- low this necessity, are in the unhappy predicament of a savage tribe of which one half, in order to sustain existence, are driven to kill and to devour the other half Before we can admit the necessity of any such horrible experiment, every other means must first have been tried, and must have failed. What should we think of a tribe of savages who lived fat and com- fortable upon the blood and flesh of their brethren, without the slightest attempt to devise any other means of subsistence ; and who repulsed with impa- tient anger and bitter reproaches, the benevolent ef- forts of those who would point out to them a more decent and innocent way? It is clear that so far as the unprivileged class are concerned, the political results of slavery are most disastrous. Slaves suffer at one and the same time, all the worst evils of tyranny and of anarchy. The laws so far as they are concerned, are all penal ; they impose a multitude of obligations, but they create no rights. The compendious definition of a slave is, a man, Vv^ho has no rights, but with respect to whom the rights of his owner are unlimited. If the law in some respects, seems to protect him, it is not in his charac- ter of a man, but m his character of a thing, a piece of property. Exactly the same protection which the law extends to a slave, it extends to a dog, a horse, or a writing desk. The master does as he pleases with either. If any other person undertakes to dam- IN AMERICA. 85 age, steal, or destroy them, he is answerable to the owner, and is punished not as a violator of personal rights, but for having disregarded the laws of prop- erty. The constant sacrifice of so many human victims, amounting in several states of the American Union to a majority of the population, — such a sweeping depri- vation of rights as the slave-holding states exhibit, if it can be justified at all, must find that justification in some vast amount of good, which that sacrifice pro- duces. This good must be principally sought for among the privileged class. If it exist at all it must be either political, — by increasing the security, free- dom and equality of the privileged class ; economical, — by increasing wealth, comfort and civilization ; or personal, — by its beneficial influences on individual character. When Mr. McDuflee pronounces slavery the best and only sure foundation of a free govern- ment, if he has any meaning at all, if this declaration be any thing more than a passionate paradox, — he must mean to imply, that the political consequences of slavery are of a kind highly beneficial to the mas- ter ; in fact so beneficial to the master as to form a counterpoise, and more than a counterpoise to all the evils it inflicts upon the slave. It becomes then an important question, what are the effects which slave- ry produces upon the political, economical, and per- sonal condition of the privileged class? And m the first place of its political results. 8 86 DESPOTISM SECTION 11. Slavery^ as it affects the seciii^ity of the privileged class. I. We will consider in the first place how the secu- rity of property is affected by the institution of sla- very. Property is better secured in proportion as a greater part of the population is made to feel a direct interest in its security. The moral force of opinion in this as in other cases, has an efficacy greater than law. Laws unsustained by public opinion can only be enforced by a great and constant exertion of physical power. 1. With regard to the slave holding states, a large part of the population, to wit, the slaves, so far from having any personal interest iu upholding the laws of property, have a direct and powerful interest the other way. The laws of property in their eyes, so far from being designed to promote the public good, and to con- fer a benefit upon all, are but a cunningly devised system by means of which the character and the name of Right is bestowed upon the rankest injustice, and the most flagrant usurpation. This attempt to mono- polize the benefits of property, this system by which a large portion of the community are not only depri- ved of those benefits but are actually themselves con- verted into articles of property, has the necessary effect to create in the very bosom of the community, a state of feeling utterly hostile to security. Slaves are universally depredators upon the property of their masters. Such depredation they regard as perfectly justifiable and even praiseworthy. It requires the most incessant vigilance to guard against it, nor will the most incessant vigilance always suffice. The security of the slave-master is the security of a house- keeper who knows that he entertains a gang of thieves upon his premises, and who is in constant apprehen- sion of being robbed. Nor is this systematic spirit of plunder confined to IN AMERICA. 87 the unprivileged class. It embraces also the large class of free traders who gain their livelihood by a traffic in stolen goods. It is these persons who offer inducement for a large part of the depredations which the slaves commit upon their masters. These depre- dations, though small in the individual instances, are enormous in the total amount. The extreme severity with which the laws of the southern states visit the offence of trading with slaves in articles suspected to be stolen, and the terrible outrages occasionally com- mitted upon this sort of offenders by planters who think the inflictions of the law to be too mild, or too uncertain, are a sufficient proof in how serious a light these depredations are regarded. 2. By the institution of slavery, the slaves them- selves become the chief article of property. Property of all kinds has a certain tendency to take wings to itself and fly away. This is peculiarly the case Avith slave property. In addition to all the other acci- dents to which slaves, in common with other species of property, are exposed, they have a propensity to im- poverish their masters by absconding. How frequent- ly this propensity comes into exercise, any body may learn by examining the columns of the southern news- papers. Of the slaves that run away, the greater part are recovered : this is true, but still the master is a loser. He loses their services during their absence, — often at the most critical moment of the crop, — besides the expense of their apprehension and conveyance home, including the reward offered, which in itself is often equal to half the money value of the slave. 3. Many slaves submit with great reluctance to the station and duties which the law assigns to them. To keep these unquiet creatures in due subordination, it becomes necessary to wound, to maim, and sometimes to kill them. This chance of loss takes away in a certain degree, from the security of this kind of pro- perty. 4. We come now to a cause of insecurity of a more serious character than any yet enumerated. Property 88 DESPOTISM in slaves is not a kind of property generally acknow- ledged. There are whole nations who deny that any such kind of property ought to exist. All the most enlightened people in the world are precisely of that opinion. Within the last fifty years, an effort has been begun, — an effort which every day gathers new force and earnestness, — for the total abolition of this kind of property. The alarm which this effort pro- duces among the holders of slaves is natural, and it is great. An alarm exists at all times among slave- holders, because there is always a certain apprehen- sion lest the slaves themselves may reclaim their liberty by force. But that alarm reaches an extreme height when it is known that there are other persons, over whom the slave-masters have no control, who sympathize with the slaves, and who profess the interi- tion of using every moral means to bring about their emancipation. Moral means is a phrase which slave- masters find it difficult to understand. Force, viole^ice, is the only means with which they are familiar; and this means which they themselves so constantly em- ploy, they naturally apprehend, will be used against them. The degree' of alarm thus produced, is suffi- ciently indicated by the ferocity with which the per- sons called abolitionists, have been assailed by the slave-holders, and by the savage barbarities exercised upon such abolitionists, or supposed abolitionists, as have fallen into their hands ; exercised generally upon mere suspicion, and with hardly any evidence that the sufferers were guilty of entertaining the opinions ascribed to them. Thus it appears that under a constitution authoriz- ing slavery, one of the chief items of property, name- ly, slave property, from its very nature, its total want of any foundation of mutual benefit, is peculiarly inse- cure ; and this insecurity spreads to every other kind of property, because the institution of slavery, by its necessary effect destroys all respect for property of any kind, in a large part of the population, and also creates a vast number of depredators. IN AMERICA. 89 TI. We come now to that branch of Security, which relates to the person. Here again the privileged class of a slave holding community are beset with alarms and dangers. These dangers and alarms are of two kinds, — dangers from the slaves, dangers from one another. 1. Dangers from the slaves. The master retains his authority only by the constant exercise of violent means. This violence is liable at any time to be re- torted upon himself. The subjugation and cowardice of those over whom he tyrannizes, affords the master a certain degree of security. But passion often sup- plies the place of courage ; and we frequently hear of terrible acts of vengeance committed upon the person or family of the master, by outraged and infuriated servants. But this danger is trifling compared with that anti- cipated, from a rising of tlie servile class. Every two or three years the report of an insurrection, real or imaginary, spreads the most frantic terror through the southern states. The antics enacted upon such occa- sions, would be in the highest degree farcical, did they not generally terminate in bloody tragedies. Men who are individually brave, and who would march to the assault of a battery without flinching, work each other into a complete paroxism of fear. A single negro seen in the woods with a gun upon his shoulder, suflices to put a whole village to flight. Half-a-dozen unintelligible words overheard and treasured up by some evesdropping overseer, or invent- ed perhaps by some miscreant, who delights himself with the public alarm, are enough to throw all the southern states into commotion, and to bring nights of agony and sleeplessness to hundreds of thousands. But this is not the worst of it. When terror makes cowards it always makes bloody-minded cowards. Blood ! blood !— nothing else can appease the gene- ral alarm. Committees of safety with the most abso- lute authority, are every where established. On these committees sit many a village Tinville, many a rustic 8# 90 DESPOTISM Dan ton. Before these tribunals the unhappy victims are dragged; accusation and condemnation keep close company. Hanging, shooting, and burning become the order of the day. The headlong ferocity of these proceedings betrays the greatness of that alarm which produces them. It has been shown in another place, that notwith- standing the extreme degree of terror to which the apprehension of slave vengeance gives rise throughout the south, the actual danger is by no means propor- tionately great. Many causes contribute to this dis- proportion, of which one leading one is, a secret con- sciousness of the cruel injustice of slavery. Tyranny is ever timid, always full of fears. 2. Danger from one another. In this case, the alarm is less, but the danger is more real. Throughout the greater part of the southern states it is considered es- sential to personal safety, to carry concealed weapons. This single fact shows that personal security is at the lowest ebb. When a man must protect himself, for what is he indebted to the laws ? These weapons are no doubt carried partly as a protection against the slaves ; but they are chiefly used, in quarrels between freemen. Of these quarrels the laws take but little notice. In such a case it is considered the mark of a mean spirit to appeal to the law. If I am assaulted or beaten, it is expected that I stab or shoot the ag- gressor. In several of the southern states it seems to make very little difference, whether I challenge him to a duel, or assault him without previous notice given, in a tavern, or the streets. Murders are constantly committed in this way. For the most part tliey go entirely unpunished, or if punished at all, it is only by a short imprisonment, or a trifling fine. They fix no imputation upon a man's character. Persons guilty of homicide are to be met with in the best society of the southern states. If it be inquired what is the con- nection between this condition of manners and the existence of slavery, the answer is, that the imperious ferocity of temper which the exercise of despotic IN AMERICA. 91' power produces or inflames, is the main cause of the existence and the toleration of an insecurity of person and a recklessness of human life, such as hardly else- where prevails in the most barharous countries. But even this is not the worst aspect of the case. The panic terror which the rumor of an insurrection produces at the south has been already mentioned. That terror levels all distinction between slaves and freemen, and so long as it lasts, no man's person is secure. During the period of the Mississippi insurrec- tion, or pretended insurrection, in the summer of 1835, the committee of safety appointed upon that occasion, by a tumultuous popular assembly, were vested with ample authority " to try, acquit, condemn, and punish white or black, who should be charged before them.'^ By virtue of this commission, the committee proceeded to try a large number of persons, principally white men, accused of having instigated, or favored the al- leged intended insurrection. Many of those tried were found guilty, and were hung upon the spot. A great many others were cruelly whipped, and were ordered to quit the state in twenty-four hours. The case of Mr. Shark(^,y will clearly exhibit the degree of personal security existing in the state of Mississippi at that time. Mr. Sharkey was a magis- trate, and in the exercise of his legal authority, he set at liberty three men, of whose entire innocence of the charges alleged against them he was well assured, although they had been seized by the pursuivants of the committee of safety. This gentleman was a plant- er, a man of property, a large slave-holder, brother to the chief justice of the state, — a person not very likely to be implicated in a slave insurrection. But his opposition to the despotic authority of the com- mittee was considered to be plenary proof of guilt, and a large party was sent to arrest him. Mr. Shar- key had no relish for being hung upon suspicion ; so he barricadoed his doors, built iires about his house, in order that the darkness of the night might not con- ceal the approach of the pursuivants, wrapped his 92 DESPOTISM infant child in the bed clothes to save it from the bul- lets, loaded his muskets, and quietly Avaited the at- tack. His left hand was dreadfully shattered by the first fire of the assailants ; but he succeeded in killing their leader, in wounding several of the rest, and in compelUng a retreat. By this time his friends and connections began to collect about him, and a party was formed in his favor. Had he been less wealthy, or less influential, he would inevitably have perished. SECTION HI. Slavery as it affects the liberty of the privileged class. One of the chief branches of civil liberty consists in the unrestricted disposal of one's property. There are restrictions which are necessary; but the more these restrictions are multiplied, the more is liberty restrained. By the institution of slavery, slaves become one of the principal kinds of property ; but in tlie free dis- posal of this kind of property, the slave-master at the South is very much restricted. The "sacred rights of property," as to which he is apt to be so eloquent, with regard to that very subject-matter with respect to which he considers them most sacred, are closely restrained by laws of his own enacting. To set a slave free, is certainly the highest act of ownership ; the only one indeed which a truly virtuous man ought to exercise ; and certainly the last one which a person of any manly spirit would be willing to surrender. But in the greater part of the southern states, the master is deprived by law of the right of emancipation. Here certainly is a most grievous in- fringement upon liberty. The right to improve one's property so as to increase IN AMERICA. 93 its productiveness and give it an additional value, is an essential part of civil liberty. But this is a right of which, as respects his slaves, the southern master is in a great degree deprived. In most of the slave states it is a highly penal offence to teach a slave to read. Now reading and writing are essential to many employments. These accomplishments, and others which by their means the slave might acquire, would greatly tend to enhance his value, by making him capable of more valuable services. But the master is not allowed to improve his property in this way. The law interferes to prevent it. Considering slaves merely as property, here are tv/o grievous infringements upon the master's liberty. But consider them as men, and the infringement upon the master's freedom of action is still more intolerable. I am deprived by law of the capacity to be benevolent and just. I am ready to confer upon a felloAV being the highest boon which man can give or receive ; — but the laws do not permit me to confer it. Perhaps the slave is my own child. No matter: he shall re- main a slave to the day of his death, unless I can obtain as a particular grace and favor, a special per- mission to set him free. Is this liberty? Is not the servitude of the father as miserable almost as that of the son 7 The authors of these laws have plainly perceived that the natural dictates of humanity are at war with the institution of slavery ; and that if left to their own operation, sooner or later, they would accomplish its overthrow. To perpetuate the slavery of the un- privileged class, they have fettered up those senti- ments of the human heart, which are the foundation of morality and of all the charities of life. For the sake of brutalizing others, they have sought to bar- barize themselves. Liberty of opinion, liberty of speech, and liberty of the press do not exist in the southern states of the American Union, any more than under any other despotism. No doubt there are some subjects which 94 DESPOTISM may be very freely discussed there ; but the same is the case under all despotisms. Any body may freely discuss at Rome or Moscow, the merits and demerits of American slavery. The only prohibited subjects are, the plans of government and systems of policy upheld by the pope or the czar. So at Charleston or Rich- mond, one is at full liberty to discuss subjects having no obvious bearing upon the political system and social condition of Virginia or South Carolina. But approach that subject, lisp the word, slavery ; dare to insinuate that the existing system of southern society is not the best possible system ; assail ever so cau- tiously the tyranny of the slave-masters ; point out ever so temperately the inevitable wretchedness of the slaves, and you will soon be taught that despotism is as jealous, as watchful, and as fierce, in America as in Europe. The discussion of this prohibited subject is not only visited by severe legal penalties, under pretence that it has a tendency to produce insurrections, — the same reason, by the way, which is given at Rome and Mos- cow, — but it is still more effectually suppressed by the terrors of L^aich law, a system of procedure, which in cases of this sort is either openly countenanced, or secretly abetted by the gravest jurists of the South. Not only is discussion prevented, but it is dangerous to receive, to read, even to have in possession, any book, pamphlet or newspaper which has been en- rolled in the Index Expurgatoriiis of the slave-holding Inquisition, or which, though not proscribed byname, appears to treat upon the evils of slavery and their remedies. The United States post-oflice at Charleston was violently assaulted by a mob, headed by the principal inhabitants of the city, and a large part of its con- tents publicly burnt, under pretence that among the newspapers and pamphlets contained in it, there were some of an insurrectionary character. At Richmond a bookseller received a box of books containing copies of a certain work compiled by a IN AMERICA. 95 Virginia clergymarij to aid the Colonization Society. It was principally made up of extracts from speeches delivered in the Virginia House of Delegates in favor of a project for the gradual abolition of slavery by shipping off the slaves to Africa, broached shortly after the Southampton insurrection. This book was denounced as incendiai^y by the Richmond Com- mittee of Safety, and by their order all the copies were delivered up, and burnt in the public square. In the District of Columbia an unlucky botanist happened to have among his papers used for the pre- servation of plants, some copies of a prohibited news- paper. He was arrested, almost torn in pieces by the mob, thrown into prison where he lay upwards of six months, and it was with great difficulty that his ac- quittal was obtained. It is a curious fact that at the very moment at which the Richmond Whig was assailing Louis Phillippe and his ministers for their restrictions upon the French press, the Jounial des Debats was defend- ing those restrictions by the example of Virginia ! It must be confessed that the French restrictions are per- fect liberty, compared v/ith the law and practice of the southern states. The Secret Tribunal of Venice, which received anon- ymous accusations, and which proceeded to judgement without notice given to the culprit, has been always denounced as an institution the most hostile to liberty that can possibly be imagined. Tribunals very simi- lar, and in many respects much more to be dreaded, exist throughout almost the whole of the slave-holding states. They pervade the country and hold all the citizens in awe. The punishments inflicted are of the most dreaded kind,— death by the gallows or a slow fire, banishment, scourging, tar and feathers. This jurisdiction is known as Lynch Imn, and the accusers, judges and executioners are generally the same per- sons. As was the case with the Secret Tribunal, it confines itself principally to state crimes, that is, to such actions as are supposed to have a tendency to 96 DESPOTISM overthrow the existing system of despotism. This system of Lynch law which sprung into existence among the barbarous settlers of the backwoods, where no law existed, and which was invented by them as a substitute for law, has of late been introduced into the oldest and most civilized of the slave states, and has been made to supercede the regular administration of justice in a variety of the most serious and im- portant cases. The terror of this tribunal is sufficient to preserve a dead silence at the South, and to pro- duce an apparent unanimity of opinion. There are no doubt numbers who still entertain the opinions of Wasliington, of Henry, and of Jefferson upon the sub- ject of slavery ; but no one dares in public or in private to utter those opinions. No one known or suspected to be an abolitionist, — and this word at the South ob- tains a very extensive signification, — ever reside or even travel in the sla.ve states withont imminent dan- ger. Such, under a system of despotism, is the lib- erty even of those called free. SECTION IV. Slavery in its infiiienre iipoii Equality. Equality it has been stated, may be considered under three points of view, Political Equality, /Social Equal- ity, and Equality of Wealth. Political and social equality are essentially depend- ent upon equality of Vv^ealth. The trnth oi this ob- servation is confirmed b}'' universal experience, l^hose who possess the property of a country, have always succeeded in obtaining the political power. Revolu- tions of property have always produced political revo- lutions. Look for example to the history of England. So IN AMERICA. 97 long as the wealth of that country consisted princi- pally in land, and that land was possessed by a few feudal and ecclesiastical barons, the whole political power of the country was in their hands. Towns having sprung into existence, inhabited by artisans and traders, whose industry created a new species of wealth, these towns presently attained a representa- tion in the national legislature. Their influpuce at first was trifling; but it has steadily increased with the increase of manufacturing and commercial wealth, till now it has become almost predominant. The history of France furnishes proof to the same point. >So long as the nobility, the clergy and the magistrature, possessed the larger portion of property, they found no difficulty in maintaining their political superiority. But the progress of events presently threw a preponderancy of wealth into the hands of the tiers etat. This had no sooner happened, than those who possessed the preponderancy of wealth, began to devise means for obtaining the preponderancy of po- litical power. Hence the French Revolution, which has resulted in putting the government into the hands of the more wealthy proprietors of the country. That government hoAvever will hardly stand unless its basis be enlarged, and a greater number of property holders be permitted to participate in it. If in the Northern States of the American Union there exists a degree of political equality of which the world offers no other example on so large a scale, the equal distribution of property throughout those states, is not less striking and remarkable. It is an observation as curious as it is important, that in countries in which industry is respectable, and where the fruits of labor are secure, property always tends towards an equal distribution. Everyman pos- sesses as a means of acquirement, his own labor ; and though there be a very considerable difference in the capacity, the industry, the good fortune of individuals, yet this difference has its limits; and diversities of ac- quisition are still more limited ; for in general the in- 9 98 DESPOTISM dustry of the rich man is relaxed ; he is more incUned to spend than to accumnlate ; while the poor man is still stimnlated by the desire of acqnisition. It appears then that in civilized communities, the natural tendency of things is towards equality. In- equality can only be maintained by artificial means : by laws which give to some individuals exclusive ad- vantages not possessed by others, such as laws of primogeniture, of entail, laws conferring hereditary rights and privileges; laws creating monopolies of any and every kind. If political equality be dependent upon equality of wealth, social equality is equally dependent upon it. Social distinctions which appear to spring from other sources, rise in fact from this, and by means of this are kept m activity. Blood and family are esteemed of great importance, and according to a vulgar notion which we hear every day repeated, are said to afford a much nobler and more respectable aristocracy, than that of mere wealth. But the founder of every noble family was first rich before he became noble. It is his wealth transmitted to his descendants to w^hich they are principally indebted for distinction. When they become poor they soon fall into contempt. This is so well understood that whenever a Marlborough or a Wellington is raised to the highest rank of the peer- age for services or supposed services rendered to his country, an estate is bestowed by parliament, to ac- company the title. Equality in general, may be resolved into equality of wealth. All depends upon that. Now it is a fact clear and indisputable, that the ex- istence of slavery in a country, is the surest and most inevitable means of producing and maintaining an inequality of wealth. This is not said with any re- ference to the unprivileged class, who are to be regard- ed in this view not as men, but merely as things. Reference is had only to the free. Slavery necessarily produces a great inequality of wealth among the free. The method of this operation is obvious. The la- IN AMKRICA. 99 bor of each individual, is as we liaveseen, the natural and origmal source of individual wealth. But when a man is enabled to possess himself of the fruits pro- duced by the labor of a large number of individuals, to ivhom he is not obl/o-cd to make any compensation beyond a bare support^ his wealth tends to increase in a vast and disproportionate ratio, over the wealth of that individual who relies solely upon his own labor. Moreover slaves are a sort of property much less valuable when held in small portions, than when pos- sessed in masses. Where four or five hundred slaves are owned together, the doctrine of chances may be applied to the numerous casualties to which this kind of property is liable. The average annual loss and gain under ordinary circumstancs will be pretty regu- lar, and may be made a subject of calculation. But the owner of only four or five slaves may at any time lose them all by a sudden disorder. They may all be taken sick at the same time, and the crop may perish for want of hands to tend it. They may all run away together. The income expected from them is thus liable to fail entirely, and the poor man is con- stantly thrown back in his attempts to accumulate, by the necessity he is under of investing his gains, or a considerable part of them, in a species of property which when possessed in small quantities, is peculiar- ly insecure.^ But there is another effect of the existence of slav- ery in a community, much more extensive and power- ful in its operation. Wherever slavery exists, la- bor comes to share the degradation and contempt of servitude, while idleness is regarded as the peculiar badge of freedom. But when idleness is general, the great mass of the community, must inevitably be poor. In every country the number of those who inherit any considerable portion of wealth, is small. Per- sonal industry is the only resource of the great bulk of the citizens. Where labor is honorable, it proves * See Chapter Til. Sec. II. for additional and important reasons of the tendency of slave-holding property to accumulate in a few hands. 100 DESPOTISM to the prudent and industrious, a resource sufficient not only far support, but for the accumulation of weaUh. When labor is not honorable, the mass of the citizens rather than degrade themselves by submitting to it, will be content with the merest subsistence. Thus it happens that in countries in which slavery has existed for a considerable length of time, the citi- zens are divided into two classes, of which the first and much the smaller, comprises a few rich proprie- tors who at the same time are large slave-holders, while the second class contains the great mass of the free people, persons of little property, or none at all. This was the state of society in all the republics of ancient Greece. Those republics were constantly di- vided into two parties or factions. The oligarchical or aristocratic party, composed of the few rich and their immediate connections and dependents, and the demo- cratic party, as it was called, composed of the bulk of poor freemen, headed and led on by some ambitious deserter from the aristocratic ranks. The history of ancient Greece consists for the most part, in the mu- tual struggle of these two parties. In general, the aristocmtic party had the ascendency ; when the op- posite faction came into power, it was only by a sort of accident commonly of very limited duration. This serves to explain a curious part of ancient his- tory, to which we have no parallel in modern times, namely, the frequent projects for an artificial distri- bution of property, and of laws for the remission of debts. It was clearly perceived by many politicians of antiquity, that a certain equality of wealth was absohitcly essential to political equality. They saw that the nominal equality of all the citizens amounted to but little, so long as all the wealth of the state was possessed by a few, and the great bulk of the citizens not only had nothing, but were even deeply in debt to the few rich. Hence the various projects for abolish- ing debts, prohibiting usury, limiting the amount of property which any individual might possess, and making new and equal distributions of existing wealth. IN AMERICA. 101 But these schemes did not touch the root of the evil. So long as slavery existed, it was a natural and inev- itable consequence that all property, however equally it might at first be divided, should presently concen- trate in the hands of a few, leaving the mass, idle and poor, — poor, because idle. The operation of the same cause is very evident in the history of the Roman Repubhc. A few patri- cians were possessed of enormous wealth, counting their slaves by tens of thousands, and owning almost entire provinces, while the great bulk of the citizens were in a state of the most deplorable poverty, depend- ing for their support upon distributions of corn from the public granaries, upon gratuities bestowed upon the commonality by the ambitious rich, and on the pay and plunder of the military service. Such are some of the instances w^hich history af- fords, of the natural effect of slavery in concentrating wealth in a few hands, and in reducing the mass of the free, to poverty and political degradation. His- tory also furnishes instances of the contrary process, by which liberty has given a spring to industry, and has thus operated to disseminate wealth, and to create an intermediate body between the rich and the poor, a body which with the increase of civilization and knowledge, is destined perhaps to embrace the great mass of mankind. About the tenth centnry of the christian era the greater part of Europe was reduced by a combination of causes, to a most barbarous con- dition. A few great lords, who were in fact little bet- ter than so many Tartar or African chiefs of the pre- sent day, possessed all the land, the only sort of pro- perty v/hich remained in existence. This land was cultivated by slaves. The mass of the free population depended for its support upon the bounty of the feudal chiefs, which bounty was repaid by the constant at- tendance and warlike services of those who received it. The sole occupation of the free, was, hunting and war. In this state of things we can discover no element 9^ 102 DESPOTISM of social improvement. What then has changed the condition of Europe to the state of comparative ad- vancement in which we now see it? A few serfs flying from the tyranny of their lords, founded here and there, a Utile settlement. They built walls to protect themselves from feudal aggression. In many cases they resorted to some ancient city, a remnant of former times, dwindled to a ruin, but which their in- dustry helped to repair, and their courage to defend. They applied themselves to the mechanic arts and to trade. Gradually they amassed wealth. In these cities slavery was not tolerated, and the serfs of the neighborhood found first protection, and presently citizenship. These cities thus founded and thus built up, are the origin of that great class of merchants, manufacturers, and industrious men, to whom Europe is indebted for its present advancement, and on whom its future hopes depend. The same tendency of servitude to produce great inequalities of condition among the free is as visible in the history of America as of Europe. The insur- rection of the slaves of St. Domingo had for its imme- diate occasion a violent quarrel between the aristoc- racy of rich planters, and the fjet'd blacks or poor whites. While tliese two factions were engaged in a bloody contest for political ascendency, the slaves seized the opportunity to reclaim their liberties. Slavery produc«^s the same effects in the southern states of the American union, which it ever has pro- duced in all the world beside. Several cases have hitherto operated to retard, or to disguise these effects, but they are becoming every day more and more visible. The poor whites of the old slave states have hitherto found a resource in emigration. All of them who had any spirit of enterprise and industry have quitted a home where labor was disgraceful, and in the wide regions treyond the mountains have attained a com- fortable livelihood, and have amassed wealth by means which however innocent or laudable, they could not IN AMERICA. 103 employ in the places where they were horn, without a certain degree of self-abasement. Bnt by a fatal oversight, a most disastrous ignorance, they omitted to exclude that great source of evil, the bitter effects of which they had experienced in their own persons ; and that same train of causes is now in full operation in Kentucky and Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas, which drove the original settlers of those states from Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. As to the southwestern states, they offer no re- sources to the poor whites. The cultivation of cotton has attracted thither, and still continues to attract^ a host of slave-masters, and whole gangs of slaves. No man can emigrate to those states who expects to live by the labor of his hands, unless he is prepared to brave that very ignominy, and to plunge anew into that very social condition which makes him uneasy, and cuts him off from all cliance of advancement at home. Political parties in the slave-holding states, within a few years past, have begun to assume an aspect en- tirely new, and one which gives fearful omen that these slave-holding republics are about to follow in the career of those ancient states, whose policy was founded, like theirs, upon a system of slavery. Tiiere is already, throughout most or all of the slave-holding states, an aristocratic party, and a party which calls itself democratic. The aristocratic party is composed of the rich planters, and of those whom their wealth enables them to ijifluence and control. The demo- cratic party, so called, is composed in a great measure oii\\Q poor wJiite folks, witli a sprinkling of ambitious aristocrats for leaders. This miscalled democratic party, — for it is in fact only a faction of the white aristocracy, — by the natural operation of the slave- holding system, is rapidly increasing in numbers, and with the increase of its numbers, the social degrada- tion and the destitution of its members will also in- crease. Measures of enlightened policy are hardly to be expected from such a party, even if it could obtain power and keep it, which indeed is hardly to be ex- 104 DESPOTISM pected. Snch is the force of habit, the power of preju- dice, the invincible stupidity of ignorance that these people seem incapable of perceiving the real cause of their own degradation. They are apparently as much attached to slavery and are as ardent in its support as is the aristocratic party, thus regarding with a bhnd and fatal reverence those very institu- tions which crush them to the dust. The influence, however, of such a party, composed of men, poor, degraded, ignorant and ferocious, and headed by some desperate Catiline of the aristocracy, may at times, prove extremely disastrous, not to the southern states alone, but to the whole union. SECTION V. Education in the Slave-holdinsr States. "iD That the state ought to provide for all its citizens the means of at least that primary education which consists in the knowledge of reading and writing, has come to be a political maxim generally acted upon in all civilized communities. Even such despotic gov- ernments as Austria and Prussia have admitted this most important article into their political code ; and primary instruction is provided by those governments for all the people at the public expense. This shows the progress which the idea of equality has lately made ; for eqnaliti/ of knowledge is a most essential part of political and social equality. The despotisms existing in the southern states of the American Union, are almost wholly regardless of this important political duty of general education. We have already seen that so far as regards the un- privileged class, the attempt to impart any instruction to them, so far from being considered a duty, is de- IN AMERICA. 105 noiinced as a crime. There are also obvious reasons Avhy no general public provision for the education of the privileged class has ever been established. The privileged class consists, as we have seen, of an oligarchy of rich planters, and a comparatively large body of persons with little or no property. The rich planters know the value of education, and their wealth enables them to secure it for their own children by the employment of private tutors, or by sending them to schools and colleges at the North. The poor whites, bred np in ignorance, have no adequate idea of the value of knowledge, or of the importance of its diffusion. The rich planters have no inclination to tax themselves for the benefit of their poor neighbors. Their wealth, education and influence, enables them to control the legislation of their respective states ; and perhaps they imagine that they shall best secure their own importance and political power, by keeping the mass of the free population in ignorance. The same stroke of policy which they play ofl' against their slaves, they play off also against their poorer fellow citizens. What has been done in a public way for the ad- vancement of education in the southern states, has consisted almost entirely in the establishment of col- leges, — institutions of but little use to the mass of the population, and which are almost exclusively fre- quented by the sons of the rich planters. For this purpose money has been liberally appropriated. It is true that in Virginia, South Carolina, and per- haps in some other of the slave-holding states, a trilling sum is annually appropriated expressly for the educa- tion of jjoor children. But the very form of this ap- propriation, which extorts from those who wish to avail themselves of it, a humiliating confession of poverty, is an insult to those for whose benefit it is intended. That aid which might be justly demanded as a right, is made to assume the character of a charity. Besides, the amount of these appropriations is so small, and their management is so miserable, that little or no benefit results. 106 DESPOTISM The facts of the case then, appear to be these. Not one of the slave-holding states possesses any thing like a regular system of common schools, or has made any provision at all worthy of notice, for disseminating the rudiments of education among its citizens. In- equality of wealth has produced, as a natural conse- quence, inequality of knowledge. This condition of things tends greatly to aggra- vate the social and political inequalities which pre- vail throughout the southern states. It is in vain that people who cannot read, boast of their political rights. There is no power more easily abused for the promotion of private ends, than the power conferred by superior knowledge. A man who cannot read, may be said to be politically blind. Those who see may miss the way, but the blind have hardly a chance to find it. Nothing is more easy than leading them into the pit, and thus making them the instruments of their own destruction. It is the extreme ignorance of those who compose what is called the democratic party at the South, which incapacitates that party from projecting and carrying through any real and useful reforms in the social polity of those states, and which converts it into the mere tool and stepping-stone of artful and ambitious men, who insinuate them- selves into its confidence, and then employ that con- fidence for the accomplishment of their merely private ends. In the nature of things, the aristocracy of rich planters, as they possess all the wealth and all the knowledge, will succeed, in the long run, in usurping the whole political power. As might be expected. South Carolina, the state in which slavery is most predominant, is also the state in which the aristocracy of rich planters domineers without control. Already the doctrine, sanctioned by the constitution of that state, that every freeman is entitled to vote at elec- tions, is violently assailed by the leaders of the aris- tocratic faction. They insist upon a property qualifi- cation. It is easy to see whither this doctrine will lead. By the concentration of wealth in few hands, IN AMERICA. 107 which is the natural result of slavery, the number of those who possess the requisite qualifications, will continue to diminish, till at last the whole political power concentrates in form, as it now does in fact, in the hands of a little oligarchy of rich slave-holders. Bat though the equality secured to all freemen by the constitutions of the slave-holding states, is little more than nominal, though the few wealthy and well informed, generally succeed in obtaining the political control, and then employ it to promote their own pri- vate ends, it is not, therefore, to be hastily concluded that the constitutional rights of the poor freemen are valueless, or that the loss of those rights with which they are threatened, is not a thing to be most seriously deprecated. Having a vote at elections, every free- man, however humble his condition, is sure of being treated with a certain degree of respect. If the mass of the people are cajoled out of their votes, they still receive for them a sort of equivalent, in kind words and fair speeches. Let them be deprived of this title to consideration, and the native insolence of power would soon display itself, and they would be trampled under foot with the same remorseless violence now exercised upon the free blacks and the slaves. SECTION VI. The militarij strength of the Slave-holding States. The military strength of states, has ever been es- teemed of the highest importance in a political point of view ; since it is upon their military strength that states are often obliged to depend for their defence against internal, as well as external foes. In this particular the slave-holding states of the South pre- sent an aspect of extreme weakness. 108 DESPOTISM When all the inhabitants of a country have arms in their hands, and are ready and zealous to meet and repulse any invader, the military strength of a coun- try may be said to be at the highest point, for experi- ence has abundantly demonstrated how easy it is to transform citizens into soldiers. But those citizens who are capable of being transformed into soldiers must be principally drafted from the laborious classes of society. The hardy cultivators of the soil, when driven to the dire necessity of beating their plough shares into swords, have ever furnished the best and most patriotic soldiers, — soldiers, who after repulsing the hostile invader, have willingly resumed again the useful labors of their former calling. Men of this class composed those armies of the revolution to whose cour- age, fortitude and patient spirit of endurance, we are indebted for our national independence. But in the slave states, these cultivators of the earth, these very men upon whom reliance ought to be prin- cipally placed in the hour of danger, would in that hour, be regarded with more dread and terror even than the invaders themselves. In case of a threaten- ed invasion, so far from aiding in the defence of the country, they would create a powerful diversion in favor of the enemy. When the French, in the first years of the revolu- tion, marched into the neighboring countries proclaim- ing "liberty and equality," they were received Avith such good will on the part of the inhabitants as en- sured a speedy triumph, notwithstanding the superior force arrayed to resist their progress. The events of those wars placed in a strong hght, the fact obvious enougli in itself, but which had not then attracted sufficient attention, that the inchnation of tlie inhab- itants of a country is much more apt to decide its fate, than the strength of armies in the field. When half the inhabitants of a country wish success to invaders, it is not easy to resist them. Considering the odious light in which slavery is now regarded by all civilized nations, it is not likely, IN AMEKICA. 109 in case the United States became involved in war with any people of Europe, that any repugnance would be felt on the part of the liostile state, in seeking aid at the hands of the slaves. A lodgement being effect- ed upon some part of the Southern coast, by an army of respectable strength, and emancipation being pro- mised to all such slaves as Would join the invaders, a force would soon be accumulated which the unassist- ed efforts of the slave-holding states would fmd it im- possible to resist. If the invaders were expelled it would only be by troops marched from the North. In such a crisis the fear of outbreaks on their own plant- ations would keep the planters at home; or if they assembled in force to resist the invaders, their absence would be likely to produce such outbreaks. Vv^hen a servile was added to a foreign war, betv/een the rage ^f the masters and the hatred of the slaves, it would assume a most savage aspect. According to Colonel Napier, in his work entitled " England and her Colonies^^^ an experiment of this sort was projected during the war of 1812, and no- thing but the fact that Great Britain at that time, had slave colonies of her own, prevented it from being car- ried into effect. The difficulty of raising troops in the slave-holding states is obvious from the fact, that Massachusetts alone furnished more soldiers to the revolutionary ar- mies, than all the slave-holding states united. The obstacles in the way of raising troops in those states, have greatly increased since that time. The military weakness of a slave-holding commu- nity was strikingly illustrated in the capture of the city of Washington by the British in 1814. Could such an army have marched such a distance, and ef- fected such destruction in any of the free states ? To that question let Concord and Lexington reply. Had the slaves of those counties through which the British army marched, been free citizens, had not Washing- ton itself been a slave market, the British troops would never have arrived within sight of the capitol. 10 110 DESPOTISM Should the slave-holding states become involved in a war, which it would be necessary for them to pro- secute from their own resources, they would be oblig- ed to depend upon a standing army levied from among the dregs of the population. Such an army would be likely to become quite as much an object of terror to those for whose defence it would be levied, as to those against whom it would be raised. It would not be easy to disband an army composed of men destitute of every other resource, but who had found in mil- itary service a means of living at the expense of others. It would be insisted, and with some show of justice too, that the country was bound to maintain and provide for those to whom it was indebted for de- fence and even existence. One other observation will place the militar" weak- ness of the slave-holding states in a clear ^joint of view. They are dependent for all manufactured arti- cles upon foreign supply. Even the very tools with which the plantations are cultivated, are furnished from abroad. Every article of equipment necessary to enable an army to take the field, must be imported, and unless their agricultural productions can be freely exported in return, they have no means whereby to purchase, or to pay. The coast of the slave-holding states is but scantily furnished with harbors ; all the trade of export and import, centres at a few points. These points may be easily blockaded by a small na- val force. The slave states have no facihties for equipping or manning a fleet. In a naval warfare, half a dozen of the fishing towns of New England might compete with the whole of them, and a strict blockade of their harbors for three or four years, would reduce the whole of the Southern States to a condi- tion of the greatest distress. In point of military strength the slave-holding states are not by any means all to be placed upon the same level. Such states as Kentucky and Tennessee where the proportion of slaves is small, are very strong in comparison with Carolina and Louisiana, where the iinprivileged class form a majority of the population. CHAPTER THIRD. ECONOMICAL RESULTS OF THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM. SECTION I. Effect of Slavery upon the Sources of Wealth. The public wealth consists in the sum total of the wealth possessed by all the individual members of the cn^.nmunity. Generally speaking a community is wealthy in proportion to the relative number of its members who are possessors of property. A few very rich men may make a great show, and create a false impression as to the wealth of a community ; but a large number of small properties added together will far outrun the sum total of a few large ones. The pay of the officers of an army is very large compared with that of the rank and file ; but the sum total of the pay of the rank and file, far exceeds in amount the sum total of the pay of the officers. That the slave states of the American Union are excessively poor compared with the free states, is con- ceded on all hands. The slaves, forming in some of the states, the majority of the population, are incapa- ble of holding property. They are not the owners even of their own labor, and of course they can con- tribute nothing to the sum total of the public wealth. The class of poor whites, including a large proportion of the free population, are possessed of a very trifling property. Almost the entire capital of the country is in the hands of a comparatively small number of slave-holders ; and of the property which they possess, a great portion consists in the minds and muscles of the unprivileged class. In free communities, every 112 DESPOTISM man is the proprietor of his own muscles and intel- lect; but as these commodities however valuable, are not the subject of bargain and sale in the market, they are not usually reckoned as property. Compare the tax valuations of the slave-holding states with that of the free states, and it will be discovered, that almost the only kind of property, in the usual acceptation of that word, which exists at the South, is, the land, and the buildings upon it. Exclude the slaves, and the amount of what is called personal property existing in those states, is exceedingly small ; and upon exam- ination it will be found to fall greatly short of the amount of debt always due to the North and to Eu- rope. In estimating the actual wealth of the slave-hold- ing states, the amount of this debt ought always to be taken into account. A great part of the banking capi- tal of those states is borrowed ; and so of the money invested in rail-roads and other public works. A large proportion of the planters have beside great pri- vate debts of their own, secured by mortgage upon their plantations and slaves, many of them being lit- tle better than tenants at will to some northern capi- talist, to whom all their property in fact belongs. As the Southern States possess advantages of soil and climate peculiar to themselves, it becomes an in- teresting inquiry, what is the cause of this compara- tive poverty 7 1. Political economists have generally agreed that labor is the sole source of wealth. Whether this doc- trine be Uterally and absolutely true, may perhaps be doubted ; it is however beyond all doubt, that labor is a very principal source of value. The great motive to labor, the great inducement to exertion, that motive, that inducement which has raised man from the primitive barbarism of the woods to such degrees of refinement and civilization as have yet been attained, has been, expectation of rervard. There is in this motive a sort of creative power, which seems to give new strength and alacrity. It even IN AMERICA. 113 possesses the capacity of making labor delightful. The only other motive powerful enough to overcome the natural indolence of man, is ihefcar of punishment ; but that is a melancholy and miserable motive which seems to add a new distastefulness to labor, and to wither up the energies of those whom it influences. Now with respect to the whole unprivileged class, that is to say the principal laboring class in the slave- holding states, their only motive to industry, is this second, this enfeebling motive, the fear of punishment. Their labor is compulsive and reluctant, and its results are proportionably small. With respect to the other laboring class at the south, to wit, the poor whites, their industry is paralyzed by a fatal prejudice which regards manual labor as the badge of a servile condition, and therefore as disgrace- ful, — a prejudice which not even the expectation of reward is strong enough to overcome. It is a preju- dice similar to this which has operated in no small degree to keep Spain in a stationary state, two centu- ries behind the civilization of the rest of Europe. But even Spain in this respect, is more fortunate than the American slave holding states. It is the mechanic arts which the Spaniards regard as derogatory, whereas agriculture is comparatively respectable. In the slave holding states of America, agricultural labor is the most derogatory of all, because the labor of the field most assimilates the condition of a freeman to that of a slave. Whenever such notions prevail, they are fatal to public prosperity. Poverty keeps pace with pride. Take the slave-holding states together, and the tree inhabitants are about twice as numerous as the slaves. Yet all the great articles of production in which the wealth of the slave-holding states consists, cotton, to- bacco, rice, sugar and flour, are produced almost ex- clusively by slave labor. What then is the occupation of the free ? One class, the larger slave-masters, contribute absolutely nothing to the public stock. They hardly bestow a thought 10^ 114 DESPOTISM even upon the management of their own estates. Their sole business is, to receive the income and to spend it. Another class of the free population ob- tain a livelihood by acting as overseers or viceroys for their richer neighbors. They are thus saved from the degradation of manual labor ; but it is a hard ser- vice by which they earn their bread. So hard, that it is very seldom performed to the satisfaction of their employers. The planters give a terrible character of the overseers as a class. According to their account, the overseers as a general rule, are ignorant, stupid, obstinate, negligent, drunken and dishonest. For their ignorance they are hardly to blame, considering what scanty means of education this class enjoys. Stupidity and obstinacy are the natural fruits of igno- rance. Negligence and drunkenness they learn from their employers ; and if overseers are dishonest it is little to be wondered at, considering the temptations and opportunities by which they are surrounded, and the total confusion of all ideas of right and wrong, justice and injustice, which the nature of their employ- ment is likely to produce. The third and largest division of the privileged class, compelled by absolute want to the disgraceful necessity of manual labor, work with an unwilling- ness as great as that of the slaves, and with still less of efficiency. The produce of their labor is very small. In general it is hardly suiiicient to support them in that rude and semi-barbarous condition to which they have been accustomed. The disastrous effects of slave-holding upon free industry, are particularly obvious in the families of the small planters, and of those farmers who possess but five or six slaves. These slaves suffice to perform the labors of the farm, and when the laud is fertile the owner of it lives in a rustic plenty. A family of sons grows up around him. He has no occasion for their assistance on the farm, and if he had, they would regard the labor as an intolerable disgrace. The boys grow up in idleness, with little or no education, be- IN AMERICA. 115 cause there is no system of public instrnction, and the father cannot afford to send them to a distance in pur- suit of schools. They arrive at man's estate without having been bred to any regular employment. Each has his horse, liis dog and his gun ; and while the father lives the sons have a home; they spend their time in hunting, or in riding about the country, or at horse- races, frohcs, barbecues, or poUtical meetings. There are thousands of young men in Kentucky and Tennes- see in this unhappy predicament. Full of spirit and ambition, active, capable, eager for some honorable employment; but condemned by the social system of which they form a part, and by the unhappy prejudi- ces against useful industry which that system engen- ders, to an idleness which presently becomes as irk- some to themselves, as it is fatal to the public pros- perity. When habit has made indolence inveterate, and when they are too old to apply themselves with zeal or success to a new course of life, the death of the father cuts off the support they have hitherto en- joyed. His propert)^ divided among a numerous fam- ily, gives but a pittance to each. That pittance is soon spent. Want stares the unhappy suflerers in the face. They lose by degrees their standing and re- spectability. The weaker spirited among them sink down to the lowest depths of poverty and vice. Those of more energy emigrate to the new states of the far west, and having escaped tlic charmed circle in which they were so long bound up, they develope a new character, and like their fathers before them, by means of their own personal industry, they bring a farm into cultivation and gradually acquire wealth. But if they have settled in a slave 'state, that v/ealth is generally invested in slaves ; and their own children are bred up in that same style of helpless indolence of Avhich they themselves were so near becoming the victims, and which their children perhaps will not so fortunate- ly escape. Thus it appears that one plain and obvious effect of the slave-holding system is, to deaden in every class 116 DESPOTISM of society that sjnrit of industry essential to the in- crease of pubHc weahh. 2. The spirit of industry is not however alone suf- ficient for the accumulation of property. Industry quickens production ; but to accumulate, it is neces- sary not only to produce but to save. Economy then, may justly be regarded as the second great source of public wealth. But to expect any thing like economy from the un- privileged class, would be extremely ridiculous. Econ- omy is like industry, it is hke every other virtue, — it never will be exercised unless there is a motive con- stantly operating to produce it. Now in the condition of servitude no such motive exists. In fact, the mo- tives are all the other way. The slave receives from his master a certain weekly allowance of food. Any attempt to lay by a part of it, would be absurd, for as soon as a store was accumulated, the master, if he discovered it, would stop the allowance till that store was consumed ; or at all events, he would immediate- ly diminish an allowance which experience had shown to be more than sufficient. It would be the same with respect to clothing. But Avhy dwell upon this topic? Is it not plain that he who is incapable of possessing property is alike destitute of motives to produce or to save 7 If slaves are improvident with respect to themselves, it is not remarkable that they are still more so, with respect to their owners. No matter what occurs; if the cotton house is oa fire ; if the fences are down, and the cattle destroy the corn ; if the horses stray away ; if the tools are lost or broken ; it there hap- pens one or all the tliousand accidents which are al- ways liable to diminish the value of their master's property, and which a little care or foresight might have prevented, — any or all of these occurrences are a matter of perfect unconcern to the slave, nor will he voluntarily lift a finger to prevent them. If indeed he has any feeling about the matter, it is rather an in- clination to destroy than to save. He experiences a IN AMERICA. 117 secret delight, in the losses and sorrows of a master whom he hates. Nor is economy likely to be practiced to any con- siderable extent by the hireling overseers to whom the management of the great plantations is intrusted. These overseers are frequently clianged, and they have little or no interest in the economical manage- ment of the property intrusted to their charge. As little can we look to the conduct of the slave- masters for any exhibition of thn virtue now under consideration. It is an old observation that what comes easy goes easy. This saying is verified by the conduct of brigands, pirates, and robbers, and all that class of men who live upon plunder. It applies with equal force and for the same reason, to slave- masters, who generally contrive to spend all they get and to run into debt all they can. We have thus seen that with respect to the slaves and their oAvners, idleness and improvidence keep close company. The same is the fact with respect to the poorer class of freemen. Though their resources be next to nothing, they still contrive to imitate in their small way, the careless extravagance of their richer neighbors. It thus appears that there is a great deficiency of the second principal source of public wealth, to wit, economy, among all classes of the population of the slave-holding states of America. 3. A third great source of public weahh consists in invention^ by which is meant, the discovery of new and more productive applications of industry. But to call this great means of increasing the productive power of a community into action, industry must be honorable. That ingenuity which busies itself in ob- servations and experiments for the discovery of means to produce the same efifect Avith less labor, seldom displays itself except in communities in which the useful arts are held hi high esteem. Even inventions made elsewhere, are for the most part brought into use with great difficulty, in those societies in which 118 DESPOTISM men of education and reflection, if such there are, despise useful industry, and in which the great busi- ness of production is intrusted to ignorant and stupid slaves, and to overseers equally ignorant and stupid. Under these circumstances every thing proceeds in the same dull ronnd, without change or attempt at im- provement. The more men know, and the more they reflect, the more convinced they are how limited is the actual extent of their progress. Ignorance is arro- gant, dogmatical, certain that it knows every thing already. The idea of improvement does not enter into all its thoughts. Hence it is that the early progress of a people from barbarism to civilization takes place by such hardly perceptible steps, and is subjected to so many hindrances and interruptions, as almost to discourage the most sanguine believers in human per- fectability, and to have given rise to the common opinion that savage nations are incapable of being civilized ; while on the other hand, the history of our own age serves to show, how civilization, once set fairly in motion, advances with an impulse continu- ally accelerated, and which not even the most serious obstacles can long retard. The southern states derive no inconsiderable advan- tage from their close and intimate connection with the free states of the north, of which the social system is so essentially different. By this means the natural effect of the institutions of the south, are to a certain extent counteracted, especially in those newly settled states into which there has been a considerable influx of northern population. IN AMERICA. 119 SECTION II. Slavery as it affects the amount of capital required for indiistrioiis undertakings. All enterprises of industry, whether agricultural, mechanical or mercantile, require a certain amount of capital for their successful prosecution. Every thing which enables these enterprises to be carried on with a less amount of capital, contributes to the increase of national wealth ; and on the other hand, every thing which causes a greater amount of capital to be re- quired, is an obstacle in the way of all ncAV under- takings. In free communities, where the laborers have their own labor at their own disposal, and where in conse- quence, they are ready to sell it, either by the day, the year, or the hour, in any quantities, that is, in which it may be needed, beside the fixed capital in- vested in lands, workshops, tools, ships, steamboats, &^., there are required two separate portions of floating capital, one to be invested in the stock to be operated upon, and the other to be employed in paying the wages of labor. But no more labor need be paid for than is actually employed. Whenever a smaller quan- tity will answer, a portion of the laborers may be dis- missed ; whenever m.ore is needed, more laborers may be employed. But in a slave-holding community, in addition to these three portions of capital, another and a very large portion is required, in order to commence any industrious enterprise whatever ; for though in such a community there is no payment of wages, yet a corresponding quantity of capital is necessary to fur- nish food, clothing, and medicines for the slaves. A fourth and additional portion of capital is also required, to be invested in the purchase of the laborers them- selves^ — a necessity which constitutes a great obstacle in the way of all industrious enterprises. 120 DESPOTISM Take the business of agriculture for example. In the new cotton-growing states, a very small sum of money will suffice to purchase a plantation of several hundred acres; but a very large sum of money is needed to purchase the laborers necessary to carry on the cultivation of it. Could laborers be hired by the month or the day, as in free communities, a moderate capital would enable the planter to command the labor he would need, whereas, mider existing circumstances, no person can start a new plantation in Alabama or Mississippi, who is not already possessed of a large capital, or able to command it in the shape of loans. We shall fall, probably, much under the mark, if we assume that a capital of five thousand dollars in- vested in hired labor, would enable as many acres to be cultivated, as a capital of fifty thousand dollars invested in slave labor. The consequence of this state of things is obvious. It gives a monopoly of the command of labor to those who are already pos- sessed of large means, either in the shape of property or of credit. Persons of small capital have no chance to compete with persons of large capital, because by this system, a large capital is rendered absolutely necessary to obtain that command of labor without which no industrious enterprise can be carried on. This single fact is sufficient to explain that tendency of the wealth of a free community to concentrate in a few hands, which has been stated in a preceding chapter. This system not only gives a monopoly of the com- mand of labor to those vv4io are already rich, but it is also a very wasteful and extravagant system. It compels tiie operator to purchase and to support a much larger number of laborers than he ordinarily has occasion for. He is obliged constantly to own and to feed the largest number ever necessary in his business, or else to submit, occasionally, to severe loss, for want of a sufliciency of labor. In the cotton planting business, for instance, a given number of slaves can cultivate a considerably larger quantity of cotton than they can gather in ; so that the planter is IN AMERICA. 121 either obliged to submit to an annual loss of a portion of the crop which he has brought to maturity, or else to cultivate less than he otherwise might, for the sake of gathering all. The cotton crop, however, as it extends the labor of cultivation and gathering in, through almost the entire year, is less surely attended with this sort of loss, than are the grain crops and farm cultivation of the more northern slave-holding states. In those states, during the winter, there is comparatively little occasion for labor on the farms. During all that time, the capi- tal invested in the ownership of slaves, is unproductive, and the slave master is saddled in addition with the expense of supporting laborers, for whose services he has no occasion. What a great discouragement to the poor, that is, to the great mass of the free population, this system pre- sents, will be evident from a few considerations. In those parts of the slave states in which slavery pre- dominates, it is impossible to hire free laborers. To work at all, even on one's own little tract of land, is considered a sufficient degradation ; but to work for another person, to put one's self under his direction, seems to approach too near to the condition of slavery, to be at all endurable. If a person, therefore, wishes to employ any other labor than his own, he must have re- course to slave labor. But the employment of the labor of other people is in general absolutely essential to the accumulation of wealth. Where a man merely hoards up the profits of his own labor, his wealth increases only as money does when placed at simple interest, and the industry and economy of a long life will accumu- late but a moderate sum. But if those profits are in- vested in the employment of the labor of other people, his wealth then increases like money at compound interest. But when to employ other labor than one's own, it is necessary to buy the laborers, a considerable sum must be first accumulated, before it can be employed at all ; and as has been shown in another place, so 11 122 DESPOTISM long as the number of slaves which a person possesses, is small, the investment is exceedingly precarious. The necessity of a great capital, and the wasteful- ness with which that capital is employed, sufficiently explain the fact, why in all those occupations in which the industry of the free states has come into competi- tion with the labor of slaves, the free states have been able to undersell their rivals. Slave labor is only profitably employed in those kinds of business, such as the cultivation of cotton, rice, and sugar, in which the climate and soil of the northern states prevent the people of those states from engaging. In the cul- tivation of grain, the raising of stock, and all the operations of farming agriculture, the profits of the slave-holding cultivators are notoriously small, and many a large slave-holder grows poor in that same pursuit, which enriches the farmer of Ohio, Pennsyl- vania and New York, who begins life with no other resource than his own capacity to labor. Hence that heavy drain of emigration, hence that fatal domestic slave trade, which aggravates the poverty of the older of the slave states, by carrying off that labor, which constitutes the principal means of economical pros- perity. This same necessity for a great capital, in order to undertake any industrious enterprise, and the same necessary wastefulness in the employment of that capi- tal, afford also one reason among many others, why it has been found unprofitable to set up manufacturing establishments at the south. It is not only necessary to build your factory, and to buy your machinery and stock, but before you can commence operations, you must expend a still larger sum in the purchase of laborers. Apart from everything else, a sufficient rea- son for the non-establishment of manufactures at the South, is to be found in the fact, that at the North, the same annual quantity of manufactured products can be turned out, with the employment of much less than half the amount of capital, which would be necessary for the same purpose at the South. IN AMERICA. 123 SECTION III. Agriculture in the Slave-holding States. If we may believe John Taylor of Carolina, the author of Arator, or Mr. Ruffin, the ingenious editor of the Virginia Farmers' Register, the best agricul- tural periodical ever published in the United States, agriculture at the South does not consist so much in cultivating land, as in killing it. The process is as follows. Aquantity of virgin soil, in those of the slave states in which any such soil is yet to be found, is cleared up every winter. The trees are cut down and burnt, or merely girdled, and left to decay and fall with the lapse of time. When tobacco is the crop, this fresh land is planted with tobacco each successive year till its fertility is exhausted. When it will no longer pro- duce tobacco, it is planted with corn or wheat, till it 'will not aftbrd a crop worth gathering. It is then turned out, that is, left unfenced and uncultivated, to grow up with thickets of sassafras or persimmon bushes, or with forests of the short-leaved pine, — a majestic tree in appearance, but the timber of which is subject to so rapid a decay, as to be of little or no value. In the cotton-growing states, corn and cotton are planted alternately, till the land is completely worn out. When its original fertility is exhausted, no fur- ther attempt is made at its cultivation. It is turned out, and the labor of the plantation is applied to new fields, which presently undergo a similar fate. Thus, every year, a certain quantity of land is given over as worthless, and new inroads are made upon the original forest. Agriculture becomes a continual pro- cess of opening new fields, and abandoning the old. This brief account of southern agriculture, will serve to explain the remarkable fact, that what we should call improved lands, that is, lands which have been 124 DESPOTISM brought into cultivation, are generally of inferior value and price to the adjoining wild lands which must be cleared up before they can be planted. Every crop taken from a field diminishes its value ; and as the number of successive crops which can be taken with- out reducing the land to a state of barrenness, is not great, the diminution in its value, is sufficiently rapid. This is one cause of the sparseness of population at the south. No planter ever thinks he has land enough. Knowing that he destroys a quantity every year, he is anxious still to enlarge his domain so as to be cer- tain of having a supply sufficient to meet the con- sumption. Almost the only wealth in the southern states consists in lands and slaves. But slaves are only valuable as cultivators of the soil ; and as the productive power of the soil diminishes, the value of slaves must decline with the decreasing amount which they are able to produce. The inevitable consequences to which this system of agriculture must finally lead, are sufficiently obvious. The soil in its whole extent, being at length exhausted, the slaves will hardly be able to produce enough for their own support. They will cease to possess any marketable value ; and the entire mass of the population will sink down into a state of misera- ble poverty, from which they can emerge only by a complete change of manners and habits, and a tho- rough revolution in the social system. Nor is this period by any means so distant as may at first appear. For though the superficial extent of the slave holding states is very great, the quantity of land which they afford of sufficient natural fertility to admit of being cultivated according to the southern method, is not great. Deduct the mountains, the mo- rasses and the vast pine barrens, and but a moderate extent of land will remain, a part of which has already been exhausted and deserted, and all of which, with the exception of some alluvial tracks, along the Avater courses, is of a description not fitted long to withstand the destructive processes of southern agriculture. IN AMERICA. 125 This progress of pauperism, presents itself under very different aspects, in different states of the union, according to the antiquity of their settlement, and the density of their population. In the newer states, in which the proportion of virgin land is still very great, to a superficial view it is altogether non-apparent. Its early operation suggests nothing but ideas of pub- he prosperity and increasing wealth. But there is a certain point where the tide turns. The spendthrift, so long as his money holds out, has the appearance and enjoys the reputation of abundant riches. It is only when his resources begin to fail, that the reality of his condition, and the true nature of his conduct become apparent. Virginia is the oldest of the slave states. All the rest are treading in her footsteps. From her unfortu- nate condition at the present moment it is easy to portend what theirs must presently become. Eastern Virginia, including all that portion of the state east of the Blue Ridge, presented to the original colonists, a most inviting country. Washed on one side by a spa- cious bay, into which poured numerous rivers, broad, deep and navigable, all the lower part of the state had received from the hand of nature such unusual facili- ties of water communication, that hardly a point could be found twenty miles distant from navigable waters ; and for the most part, every plantation had its land- ing place. These numerous rivers were stored and still continue to be stored with such an abundance of fish, fowl and oysters as might alone suffice to support a numerous population. Above the falls of the rivers was a hilly diversified country, generally rich, and if it had some barren tracts, afibrding spots of the most exuberant fertility. When Eastern Virginia first began to be settled, it afforded beyond all question, the richest and most desirable country any where to be found along the Atlantic coast of the union. The cultivation of tobacco soon became so profita- ble, that the more industrious of the colonists grew 11# 126 DESPOTISM rich by it. Most unfortunately they invested these profits in the purchase of slaves from Africa. The introduction of slave labor presently proved fatal to the industry of the free. But this circumstance was little thought of or regarded, so long as the tobacco cultivation continued to increase, and to bring in rich returns. The wealthier planters rose to the condition of nabobs. They extended their plantations, increas- ed the number of their slaves, and spent freely the large incomes which their estates produced. The apparent wealth and prosperity of the country was very great. By degrees, the entire surface in the older portions of the state, had been cleared, planted and exhausted. Tobacco requires a rich soil, and the impoverished land would no longer produce it. It became neces- sary to abandon this species of cultivation, first in the tide-water districts, and afterwards in all that portion of the state north of the James River. The culture of tobacco in Virgnia is now confined, for the most part, to a few of the southern connties, in the vicinity of the Blue Ridge, in which some virgin land is still to be found. The cultivation of grain succeeded to that of tobac- co. These crops were far less profitable; but even these, when taken in constant succession from the same soil, are scarcely less exhausting. The lands have continued to deteriorate till large tracts have been abandoned as absolutely worthless. Meantime, a constant stream of emigration has been pouring out of Virginia. It was first directed to Kentucky, and the states north-west of the Ohio. It then consisted of the poorer portions of the white population, who were the first to suffer from the general decline. This emi- gration is now directed towards the cotton growing states of the south-west. It is greater than ever, and embraces the wealthiest men and the largest slave-hold- ders, who find that slave property, which is valueless in Virginia, except as an article of exportation, can be put to profitable use in the cultivation of cotton. The IN AMERICA. 127 domestic slave-trade produces anotlier equally serious drain upon the population of Eastern Virginia. In default of crops, the planters have no other means to meet their expenses, except selling their slaves. This affords a momentary relief, but it is fatal to the per- manent prosperity of the country, which in losing its laboring men, in losing its cultivators, loses the only means whereby it can recover from its present decline. That part of Virginia which lies upon tide waters, presents an aspect of universal decay. Its population diminishes, and it sinks day by day, into a lower depth of exhaustion and poverty. The country be- tween tide waters and the Blue Ridge is fast passing into the same condition. Mount Vernon is a desert waste ; Monticello is little better ; and the same cir- cumstances which have desolated the lands of Wash- ington and Jefferson, have impoverished every plant- er in the state. Hardly any have escaped save the owners of the rich bottom lands along James River, the fertility of which it seems difficult utterly to destoy. This thriftless system of cultivation, which consists in exhausting a field and then abandoning it, prevail- ed originally in the more northern stales as well as in Virginia. So long as the quantity of new land ap- peared inexhaustible, this method of culture was a natural and profitable operation, and it was continued by habit long after its bad policy became apparent. Soon after the close of the revolutionary war the same symptoms of exhausted fertility which begun to show themselves in Virginia, made their appearance also in the more northern states. The farmers presently became fully sensible of the ruinous course they were pursuing, and the more intelligent began to turn their attention towards an improved method of cultivation. The custom of manuring, introduced by degrees, is now considered in all the older parts of the country, an essential part of husbandry, A proper rotation of crops is very generally attended to, and at present it is well understood, that lands under a proper system of cultivation ought to increase rather than decline 128 DESPOTISM in fertility. In fact, within the last twenty years so great has been the improvement in agriculture in the older portions of the northern states, that the face of the country has assumed a new aspect, and large tracts which were formerly considered as naturally barren, and worthless, have been transformed into fertile and productive farms. Improvements in culture keep pace with increase of population, and the soil, instead of being constantly deteriorated, is constantly increasing in productiveness and value. Some patriotic citizens of Virginia have from time to time made great exertions to promote in their own state, an emulation of these northern improvements. But their well-intended efforts have utterly failed. In- deed they are opposed by irresitible obstacles. In the free states the land is portioned out into small farms, tilled by the hands of the owners, whose attention is exclusively bestowed upon the business of agriculture. There is a certain portion of intellect devoted to the improvement of every hundred acres. In Virginia the land is held for the most part in portions ten or twenty times larger, and even were the owners zealous for im- provement, on farms so large that same careful over- sight and attention could not be bestowed on every part. But then the owners of the land will not give their attention to the matter. It is contrary to the whole tenor of their habits, taste and education. They have slaves, and can hire an overseer. Why should they plague themselves with the details of a business which they do not like, and do not understand? From the overseer and the slaves, as they have no interest in improvement, of course nothing is to be ex- pected. In fact it is the obvious interest of the over- seer to scourge as much out of the plantation as pos- sible, without the slightest regard to future conse- quences, especially if he is paid, as overseers often are, by a portion of the crop. But there are obstacles, to be encountered still more serious than these. Improvements cannot be made except by the expenditure of a certain portion of capi- IN AMERICA. 129 tal upon the land. Either additional slaves must be purchased, or else a certain portion of the labor now employed in producing a small crop, must be diverted from immediate production, and em])loyed in opera- tions undertaken with a view to distant returns. But this is an expenditure which the greater number of planters cannot afford. As it is, with all their slaves employed in scourging out of the land the greatest immediate produce, their expenses exceed their in- comes, and they are running into debt every year. They are in no condition to risk the loss or curtail- ment of a single crop by changing the established method of cultivation, and attempting the introduc- tion of improvements. More yet, it is positively bad economy for a Virginia planter to undertake the improvement of his estate. Labor is the only means of resuscitating the exhausted lands of Virginia. Slave labor is the only kind of la- bor which in the present condition of things can be employed for that purpose. But in the slave market, the Virginia planter, even though he has money at command — which is a case sufficiently unusual, — can- not afford to compete with the slave traders from the South west. The profits which he can possibly derive from slave labor will not warrant him in paying so high a price. Of course he does not purchase; the slaves are driven off to be employed upon cotton plant- ations, while the lands of Virginia are left unimprov- ed, and still declining in value. Even as regards the labor of slaves already in the planter's possession, it is a much more profitable operation to emigrate with .these slaves to Mississippi or Louisiana, and there to employ their labor in raising cotton, and kiUbig land, than to attempt the improvement of the worn out lands at home. That high price of slaves in the southwestern mar- ket, which the Virginians regard as a fortunate addi- tion to their diminishing resources, is likely to prove in its ultimate results, the greatest curse with which the state could be visited. If it were not for the do- 130 DESPOTISM mestic slave trade, slaves would scarcely have an ex- changeable value in Virginia; the great cheapness of labor would facilitate agricultural improvements, and the total impossibility of going on any longer in the old way, would lead to important changes in the ex- isting system. As it is, the laboring population of the country, that population upon which all its wealth and consequence depends, is daily drained away. The state is bleeding at every pore, and a fatal lethargy must be the consequence. The richest soil, the most exuberant fertility without labor is improductive and worthless. What will be the condition of a state which has sold to the slave traders, the only laborious part of her population, whose most enterprising citi- zens have deserted their homes, and whose exhaust- ed lands hold out no temptation to emigrants from abroad 7 In addition to the obstacles already pointed out in the way of agricultural improvement at the South, there is one yet to be mentioned, of a still more per- manent and decisive nature. It is a well established doctrine, that a rotation of crops, a variety and a very considerable variety in the articles cultivated, is es- sential to a highly improved state of agriculture. But such a rotation and variety is impossible in a country which is exclusively agricultural, and which must necessarily confine itself to some crops that will pay the expense of distant transportation. The number of these crops is exceedingly few, and they are all of a very exhausting character. The greater number of vegetable productions are only of use to be consumed on the spot ; and such a consumption cannot take place to any considerable extent, except there be in the neighborhood a manufacturing population to take off the extra supply. Agricultural improvements have ever kept pace with the extension of manufacturing industry. The reasons have been already given why the creation of a manufacturing population imder existing circumstances, is impossible at the south, and that subject will be further considered in the follow- ing section. IN AMERICA. 13J. The condition of agriculture in Eastern Virginia, is in a greater or less degree, its condition in Mary- land, in North Carolina, in South Carolina, and in the older parts of Georgia. In the two latter states the cultivation of cotton has been attended by conse- quences exactly similar to those produced in Virginia, by the culture of tobacco. After pouring in upon those states a momentary flood of wealth, which glit- tered and disappeared, it has left the soil in a state of exhaustion and barrenness, for which no present reme- dy appears. The south-western states, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are now the El Dorado of the slave-holders. In those states, cotton at present prices is a very pro- fitable crop. The demand for slaves is brisk. Good field hands sell for eight hundred, or a thousand dol- lars. The slaves of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina are purchased up in droves for this market, and numbers equally large are moved off to the south- west by emigrating planters. But these slaves, if they are lucratively employed in cultivating cotton, are employed at the same time, in killing land. Slavery will presently visit the south-west with the same blight of exhaustion and barrenness, which has already alighted upon Virginia and the Carolinas. In propor- tion to the rapidity with which the apparent immedi- ate prosperity of the south-western states is now ad- vancing, will be hastened the era of their decay. In the free states of the Union, the wealth of the west promotes the Avealth of the east. The more prosperous are the new states, the more prosperous are the old. At the south it is not so. The new states are aggrandized at the expense of the old ones. But this aggrandizement has nothing in it, solid or permanent. For a short time a great annual income is obtained ; but it is obtained only by the an- nual consumption of a portion of that natural fertility, in which consists the only real capital of those com- munities, and this capital being presently exhausted, their short lived prosperity vanishes like a shadow. 132 DESPOTISM SECTION IV. Manufactures and Commerce in the Slave-holding States, No merely agricultural nation ever yet attained a high degree of prosperity, or civilization. To attain that result it is necessary that manufacturing and commercial industry should combine with agriculture. All these three branches of industry are so sympathet- ically connected, that neither of them alone can be carried to any great degree of perfection. There have already been suggested several reasons why manufactures cannot prosper in the slave-holding states. It is necessary here to recapitulate them and to bring them together in a single point of view. 1. Skill in the greater part of the mechanic and manufacturing arts, is not consistent with the state of total ignorance and barbarism in which it is judged the best policy that the unprivileged class should be kept. Skilled laborers are and must be, more intel- ligent and better informed, than those of an ordinary kind. 2. Such skill is still less consistent with that social condition which deprives those subjected to it, of all motive to acquire that degree of expertness, on which the success of most mechanical operations so essen- tially depends. 3. With respect to the laboring part of the free pop- ulation, the acquisition of manufacturing skill is little to be expected from the state of ignorance, indolence and depression which are to them, the natural results of the existence of slavery in the community of which they form a part. These three reasons go to cut off the supply of that kind of labor essential to the prosecution of manufac- turing operations. But besides labor, there is needed knowledge, tact, skill and judgment in the oversight and direction of labor, and capital to set it m operation. IN AMERICA. 133 2. With regard to the oversight and direction of manufacturing operations, persons are very rarely to be found among the native population of the southern states, possessed of the necessary qualifications. The whole course of their education and habits is averse to that system of order, economy, and minute and exact attention, which such a business requires. 2. As regards capital, it has been shown in a pre- vious section, under what disadvantages all industri- ous operations labor at the south, from the compara- tively large amount of it, necessary to set them in ope- ration. In any manufacturing business for example, it is necessary to have capital enough over and above all that is required for the fixtures and stock, to purchase the laborers who are to carry it on. From the combined operation of these several causes it results, both in theory and in fact, that manufac- turing processes, on any large scale, are almost un- known at the south, and that even the commonest me- chanical arts are at a very low ebb. It is obvious at once, when the condition of the various classes of the population at the south is con- sidered, and when regard is had to the state of manu- factures, that trade must be at a low ebb.. The un- privileged class have nothing to sell except what they steal, and of course they have but httle to buy. The laboring freemen, produce but little, and of course are able to purchase but little. The class of wealthy slave-holders is very limited in number, and a large part of their income is often spent at a distance from home. The principal mercantile operations consist in the purchase and shipment of the great agricultural staples, a business which is carried on for the most part by means of English or northern capital, and at the same time by English or northern agents, and English or northern shipping. Neither manufactures nor commerce can be regard- ed as adding any thing considerable to the wealth of the slave-holding states. 12 134 DESPOTISM SECTION Y. InstabiUijj arid uncej^tainty of values in the Slave- Holding States. The necessity which the southern planters are un- der of confining themselves to the production of a few great staple crops, has been already stated and ex- plained. Slave labor in the United States, was first applied to the cultivation of tobacco. But the foreign demand for that article has been stationary ever since the revolutionary war, while the domestic demand increases only in proportion to the increase of the pop- ulation. Since the facilities of transportation between the western states and the Atlantic seaboard have been so much increased by the construction of canals and railroads, the farmers of Ohio have gone extensively into the cultivation of tobacco. They produce it by free labor, and the quantity of slave labor which can be profitably employed in this culture is more likely to increase than to diminish. The second application of slave labor in the United States, was to the cultivation of rice. That cultiva- tion however is and always has been, confined to a narrow tract of country along the sea coast of South Carolina and Georgia ; and as the demand for the article is nearly stationary, any considerable increase of the production would so diminish the price as to make it an unprofitable business. Sugar is produced only in the southern districts of Louisiana. This culture has been fostered by a protective duty, but the climate is too cold and un- steady for its successful prosecution. A few favora- ble seasons created a very false idea of the profits of this cultivation. A series of cold seasons has correct- ed these hasty impressions. The value of sugar plantations has declined, and there is but little inclin- ation or inducement to open new ones. The cultivation of cotton^ an article of which the IN AMEUIC.^. 135 consumption has so remarkably increased witliin the last forty years, has alone prevented the entire depre- ciation of southern property. There has been thus furnished a crop, to the production of which ihe labor of slaves could be profitably applied, and wliich has prevented such a competition in the other limited ap- plications of slave labor above enumerated, as would have rendered them utterly ruinous. The cotton cultivated in the United States is of two distinct kinds, known in commerce, as Sea island, and upland or short staple. The Sea island cotton, has a long silky fibre which adheres so slightly to tlie seed, as to be easily removed by means of two wooden roll- ers turning upon each other, which suffer the cotton wool to pass between them, but which exclude and separate the seed. This kind of cotton is employed only in the finest manufactures, and its consumption is very limited. It bears a much higher value than the other description but it is less productive, and requires great care and labor in its preparation for market. The sea air seems essential to it, and its cultivation is limited to an alluvial tract along the sea coast of South Carolina and Georgia. The cultivation of this kind of cotton was introduced about the conclusion of the revolutionary war; but it has always been of so limited an extent as to hold out no relief to the great body of the slave-holders. The upland or short staple cotton, has a short fibre adhering with such tenacity to the seed, as to require the saw gin, an invention of the ingenious AVhitney, for its separation. This kind of cotton succeeds as well in the interior as near the sea, and it is this kind, the consumption of which has so rapidly increased. It first began to be cultivated as a crop about the be- ginning of the present century. For the first twenty years its production was principally confined to Geor- gia and the Carol inas. Since that time it has spread into the new states of the south-west, which now pro^ duce more than two thirds of the entire crop, which in the period since the peace with Great Britain in 136 DESPOTISM 1815, has risen from two hundred thousand bales, to eighteen hundred thousand, per annum. The cultivation of cotton is the only employment of slave labor which admits of profitable extension. The price of cotton regulates the price of slaves, and in- cidentally, the value of all kiuds of property at the south. When all values are thus made dependent upon a single pursuit, they are necessarily subject to great fluctuations. When there is a great variety of employments, there is established in consee|uence, a sort of average permanency of profits. Agriculture may be flourishing, though manufactures and commerce are suffering a temporary depression ; and some branches of agriculture may be profitable, though others fail. At the south, every thing is staked upon the cast of a single die ; and as is apt to happen in all such cases, the planters are either in a state of high prosperity which leads to great speculations and the creation of great debts, or else in a state of depression, ruinous both to northern lenders, and to southern borrowers. The commercial fluctuations of the United States generally take their origin at the south. A high price of cotton creates at the south a feeling of wealth and a strong disposition to contract debts, while it pro- duces at the north, a strong disposition to give credit. Even though the price of cotton continues high, the expectation of the planters runs so far beyond the reality, that they presently become unable to fulfil their engagements; and if a decline in the price of cotton should follow, their inability becomes total, and the severe losses experienced in consequence by the merchants and manufacturers of the north, throw their business also into a temporary confusion. There is much reason to expect that these violent fluctuations in the value of southern property will presently terminate in a general and permanent de- preciation. Whether lands and slaves, ten years hence, shall have any considerable value in any of the southern states, seems to depend very much upon the fact, whether or not the consumption of cotton IN AMERICA. 137 shall keep pace with its production. If production should overrun consumption, the market will be ghit- ted, the price will fall, the business will become un- profitable, and unless some new, extensive and profita- ble application of slave labor should unexpectedly be discovered, — an event which is highly improbable — land and labor throughout the south, must undergo a great decline in value. There are weighty reasons for anticipating this result within a moderate period. Once already within the last twenty years the production of cotton has so over- run consumption as to reduce the profits of the busi- ness to the lowest ebb. The price has since rallied, but this rise of profits has produced a new rush into the business, and a vast emigration from the more northern of the slave-holding states, which must re- sult in a great increase of the production. On the other hand the consumption of cotton goods has al- ready reached a point, which makes its extension con- tinually more difficult. There is no reason to suppose that it can go on increasing for twenty years to come, as it has for twenty years past. That increase has been principally caused by cotton fabrics superceding for certain purposes, the use of linen and woollen cloths. That is a process which has a certain limit and which cannot be repeated. The consumption of cotton goods will doubtless continue to increase ; but this increase of consumption will be more upon a par than hereto- fore, with the increased consumption of other manu- factures. Whatever the increased demand for cotton may be, the slave-holding states of the Union, are liable to en- counter a severe competition in supplying it. All that portion of the American continent south of the United States is well fitted for the production of this article. Cotton of a very superior quality is produced to a large amount, in Brazil, and the new republic of Texas will presently be entering the market as a rival. Great exertions are now making in India, by British cultivators, to improve the quality of Indian cotton, 12=^ 138 DESPOTISM and not without success. The quantity of this article worked up by the British manufacturers is steadily increasing; and when we recollect how completely the British indigo planters in India, succeeded in de- stroying the cultivation of indigo in the United States, which was once a very considerable business, by pro- ducing a superior article at a less price, the competition of the Indian cotton planters, however some ignorant persons may ridicule it, is by no means to be despised. Additional competition is to be expected from Africa. The Egyptian cottons are already well known as of very superior quality; and it seems highly probable that the French will presently introduce the same sort of cultivation into their Algerine possessions. On the whole it must be confessed that the single prop of the cultivation of cotton, forms a most slender, fragile and uncertain support, on wliich to rest the prosperity of an extensive and increasing population. SECTION VI. Comparative Progress and Prosperity of the Free and of the Slave-holding States. It is a fact too obvious to be denied even by the most prejudiced observers, that the slave-holding states of the Union are far inferior to the free states, in every thing that constitutes civilization, — in wealth, in ed- ucation, in the useful and ornamental arts, in public institutions, in public spirit, in literature, in science, in density of population, in facility of intercourse, in the splendor of cities, the neatness of towns, the com- forts and conveniency of individual dwellings. Of the thirteen states which originally composed the Union, slavery still prevails in six. It is abolished in the other seven, where indeed it never existed to any IN AMERICA. 139 considerable extent. These seven states inelude an area of about one hundred and fifty thousand s([uare miles; the extent of the six slave states is upwards of two hundred thousand square miles. By the first census in 1790, the six free states contained a popula- tion of 1,908,000 souls; the population of the slave states amounted to 1,818,000. Forty years after, by the census of 1830, the population of the seven free states amounted to 5.256,000, while the population of the six slave states was only 3,571,000. The census of 1840 will show a still greater contrast; — for while the population of the seven free states has been in- creasing during the last eight or nine years, in a greater ratio than ever before, in the six slave states the drain of emigration has been so great as to have prevented any considerable increase. Density of population, and the existence of towns and cities, are essential to any great degree of social pro- gress. Brought thus into contact, mind acts upon mind ; what is discovered by one soon becomes known to all ; emulation leads to new discoveries and enterprises; competition constantly exerts its beneficial influence; the division of labor, that essential means of improve- ment, is not practicable among a scattered population ; cities are the central points from which knowledge, en- terprise, and civilization stream out upon the surround- ing country. In the six free States above referred to, we find three large cities. New York, Philadelphia, and Bos- ton, the first of which is generally regarded as the commercial metropolis of the Union. There are not less than twenty other considerable towns which are growing with rapidity, and several of which promise to rise to the first importance. Villages containing five or six thousand inhabitants, are quite numerous ; new ones are springing up every day, and others are pass- ing from the class of villages into that of towns. How different a picture is presented by the six slave States ! They contain but one city deserving the name, and that one, be it observed, is situated upon 140 DESPOTISM the verge of the free States, and owes the principal part of its importance to that very circumstance. In weahb, trade and pubUc institutions, in hterature, science and general refinement, Baltimore is far in- ferior to either of the great cities of the north. Charles- ton is a little more than a place of deposite for the pro- duce of the surrounding country, and a retreat for the neighboring planters from the unhealthiness of their plantations. It has been about stationary for this last twenty years, and the same is true of Alexandria, Nor- folk, Savannah, and other ancient towns. Jamestown, the original capital of Virginia, has ceased to exist, the ruins of an old church steeple are its only memorial. Williamsburg the second capital of Virginia, has long been in decay. Such existence as it has, it owes to the ancient college established there. Richmond, the pre- sent capital presents a more thriving appearance, — but to judge by the depopulation and impoverishment of the surrounding country, it must soon share a simi- lar fate. What are called towns in these States, would for the most part, be esteemed at the north, as little better than villages. In addition to the small number scat- tered along the sea-coast, there are a few of more re- cent growth, situated on the great rivers, generally at the head of steam-boat navigation. They are points at Avhich the produce of the country is collected for shipment, and whence imported goods are distributed through the adjoining country ; but so few and far be- tween, as scarcely at all to vary the dull monotony of a poorly peopled country which presents at the same time, all the rudeness of a new settlement, and all the marks of old age and decay. If the slave holding states formed a separate and in- sulated nation, cut off from communication and inter- course with the free states of the north, there is good reason to suppose that they would fall rapidly behind hand, in the career of civilization. As it is, they are sustained and dragged along by the energy of their northern sisters. Improvements are first started and IN AMERICA. 141 put into execution at the nortli, then slowly and faint- ly imitated at tlie sonth. The best edncatcd and most accomplished men of the southern states l.ave passed their youth at northern schools and colleges ; such seminaries for education as the southern states possess, are supphed almost entirely with northern or foreign teachers. The whole trade of the south, so far as re- lates to transactions on the large scale, is in the liands of northern merchants who carry on this important branch of business for whicli the nativ^e citizens of those states, seem to lack the requisite knowledge, sa- gacity, perseverance and application. Tlie learned professions, physic, divinity, and even the law, are more or less, recruited from the same source. The newspapers have northern editors ; even the composi- tors who set the types are imported. The same is the case with all mechanics who have any considerable skill in the art they profess. Southern rail roads are built with northern capital and by northern engineers and contractors. It is hardly possible to erect a large hotel, or block of ware-houses without the aid of north- ern artificers. The southern states are supplied with books and periodicals from northern presses ; and it seems to be only by a close and intimate union with the north, that civilization at the south is enabled to make any progress, or even to preserve itself from de- chne. It is worthy of special remark however, that those northern men who emigrate to the south imbibe by degrees, the feelings and the habits, the indolence, and the incapacity of the population by which they are surrounded. They are unable to transmit to their children any of those qualities which they carried with them from home. These children, bred up after the southern fashion, are thoroughly southern. It is con- stantly necessary that new blood should be transferred from the warm and vigorous circulation of the north, to revive and quicken the veins, palsied, and made stagnant by the poison of slavery. CHAPTER FOURTH. PERSONAL RESULTS OF THE SLAVE-HOLDING SYSTEM. SECTION I. Personal Effects of Slavery upon the members of the pinvileged class. By personal results of the slave-holding system those results are intended, which exhibit themselves in the personal character of the members of a slave- holding community. Slavery has ah'eady been explained to be in its na- ture, a protracted state of war. All its results are sufficiently conformable to such an origin. Soldiers possess a free and self-confident air, and when among friends and not irritated or opposed, they exhibit a frank, good humor, an easy, companionable, disposition, which renders their society agreeable, and causes their company to be generally courted. Their military duties often leave them an abundance of lei- sure ; for long intervals, they often have nothing to do but to seek amusement, and they give a warm and hearty welcome to all who are disposed to join and aid them in that pursuit. These same traits of manners are sufficiently con- spicuous among the privileged class of our southern aristocracies. Though a large portion of that class is destitute of education, and of any real refinement, yet almost every member of it has more or less, a certain patrician bearing, a consciousness of his own superi- ority which gives him an air of manliness and dignity, DESPOTISM IN AMERICA. 143 but which it must be confessed, degenerates too often into rudeness and braggadocio. The weahhier and better educated, passing almost the whole of their lives in a round of social pleasures, have attained to a considerable perfection in the art of pleasing ; and those who visit the southern states of the Union for the first time, are generally captivated by the politeness, the hospitality, the attentions, the good humor of the people. Manners however are far from being any certain in- dex of character, and they are often carried to a high pitch of refinement, in cases where all the virtues which they seem to indicate, are lamentably deficient. The soldier nursed in blood and robbery, however mildly and gently he conducts himself, is at best, only a tame tiger, not rashly to be trusted. His passions are violent and unmanageable, accustomed to indul- gence, and impatient of control. It is the same with the slave-master. Habituated to play the tyrant at home, unshackled regent and despotic lord upon his own plantation, where his wish, his slightest whim is law, the love of domineering, possesses all his heart. The intercourse of society has taught him the policy and the advantages of mutual concession in little things, and the trifling points of ordinary politeness he yields with the ready willingness of a well bred man. Be- yond this he is not to be trusted. Alarm his preju- dices, his self-love, his jealousy, his avarice, his ambi- tion ; cross his path in any shape whatever ; assume the character of a rival or a censor ; presume to doubt his perfect wisdom and immaculate virtue: and from a laughing, good natured companion, he is changed at once, into a fierce, furious, raving and raging enemy. He boils and almost bursts with passion ; he answers argument with invective ; instead of reasons, he re- plies to you with insults. Not content to restrain his hate within the usual limits of civilized life, he thirsts for your blood. He murders you in a duel ; assaults you in the streets with pistols and Bowie knife ; or de- liberately shoots you from the door of his house, with 144 DESPOTISM a double-barrelled gun. The fear of the law does not restrain him. In the southern states, a gentleman is never hung. The most cold-blooded and deliberate murderers, in the upper classes of society, escape with a fine or a short imprisonment. The gallows is re- served for abolitionists, negro-stealers, and -poor white folks. I. The condition of society in the southern states, even among the most refined and best educated por- tion of the people, exhibits frightful evidences of fe- rocity OF TEMPER, such as a state of everlasting war might be expected to produce. Thucidides remarks, that from the time the Athenians laid aside the cus- tom of going armed, civility and refinement began to make a steady progress among them. This is a point to which the people of the southern states have not yet attained. They generally carry arms ; but the pistols, knives and dirks, their favorite weapons, are of a kind more fit for foot-pads and assassins, than for well-intentioned citizens. Jn several of the states it has been attempted to suppress by penal enactments, this barbarous practice of carrying deadly weapons. These laws are never enforced, and it is scarcely pos- sible they should be. To carry arms in the state of things existing at the south, seems absolutely neces- sary. If his slaves resist, how else shall the master maintain his authority? Those who have been sub- dued by force, must be kept under by force ; and if the armed conquerors, in moments of anger, some- times turn their weapons against each other, that is what is liable to happen among all collections of armed men. What wonder if that inhuman and blood-thirsty spirit, which the tyrannical rule they ex- ercise, keeps more or less alive, in the bosom of all slave masters, often bursts out in full fury in their quarrels with each other ? The familiarity with which, under the influence of excited passion, they talk of murder is only to be equalled, by the savage ferocity with which, under the same influence, they often com- mit it. The atrocity of southern duels has long been IN AMERICA. 145 notorious, — but what duel can be compared with those "rencontres" of which we so often read accounts in the southern papers, — accounts which among the peo- ple of those states seem to carry with them all the in- terest of a bull-baiting or a cock-figlit, — in which two men or more, armed to the teeth, meet in the streets, at a coiirt-hmise or a tavern, shoot at each other with pistols, then draw their knives, close, and roil upon the ground, covered with dust and blood, struggling and stabbing till death, wounds, or the submission of one of the parties, put an end to the contest? These scenes, which if they take place at the north at all, ap- pear but once an age, and then only among the lowest and most depraved of the emigrant population, are of fre- quent and almost daily occurrence at the south, among those who consider themselves the most respectable people. Andrew Jackson, late president of the United States, and regarded as a most illustrious citizen, has been engaged in several such affrays. II. Improvidence is a vice of the most dangerous character. The ancients were so impressed with the multitudinous evils and miseries to which it gives occasion, that they raised 'prudence to the dignity of one of the four cardinal virtues. Improvidence is however a failing, Avhich is apt to prevail to a great extent in a slave-holding community. The care- less, headlong rapidity with which a planter spends his money, is proverbial. This childish profusion has even been raised among them to the rank of a vir- tue ; it is described as the mark of a noble minded man ; while economy is decried and stigmatized as mean and little. This sort of profusion may dazzle and delight the weak-minded and the thoughtless. It is very clear however that it seldom implies any of that benevolence or magnanimity which it has been supposed to indicate. It generaUy originates in the desire to gratify some whim of the moment, or, what is oftener the case, in the desire to be admired as a person of wealth and liber- ality. It is one way of gratifying the universal de- 13 146 DESPOTISM sire of social superiority. A planter will spend some hundreds upon an entertainment, and the next morn- ing will refuse an extra pair of shoes to a lame old negro, who has labored for him all his life. Ask one of these lavish spendthrifts to do an act, not of be- nevolence merely, but of justice, by setting a slave at hberty, and he will laugh in your face. We hear of many acts of profusion at the south, few acts of gen- erosity. It is not there, that institutions are endowed for purposes of public charity. No associations exist there, or next to none, for charitable purposes. When a subscription is to be raised for some object of public benevolence, the contribution of our southern planters is extremely scanty. They lavish thousands on their own pleasures, and the companions of those plea- sures ; they bestow little or nothing upon the suffer- ings of strangers. Indeed it would be absurd to ex- pect it. They who are not moved by the scene of poverty, degradation and distress, which their own plantations every day present, how can they be affect- ed by the comparatively little miseries of which they only hear, or which they but casually see? The quantity of money that can be got is a limited sum ; the quantity that can be spent is indefinite. Take the southern states throughout, and it is probable that seven slave-masters out of ten, live beyond their income. The labor, the fruits of which would have suf- ficed to make fifty families comfortable and happy, be- ing engrossed, with the exception of the barest subsist- ence to the laborers, by a single family, does not suffice to make that single family happy or even comforta- ble. Improvidence subjects to all the miseries of ac- tual poverty. Men in the possession of large estates are tormented all their lives by sheriffs and duns, and at their death, leave large families brought up in all the luxury of wealth, and the helplessness of habitual indolence, penniless and unprovided for, a prey to the bitterest miseries of want. IIL Idleness, says the copy book, is the mother of all the vices. If any one doubt the truth of this IN AMEKIOA. 147 ancient and homely maxim, to be convinced of it, he need only spend a year or two in the south. lie will find a great many idle people there. Almost all the owners of slaves have hardly any ocenpa- tion except to amuse tliemselves. Born and bred to this occupation they become incapable of any other. One would suppose that having so much leisure time, they might turn their attention to the study of agri- culture, an art upon wliich so wlioUy depends not their private income only, but the public v\'-ea}th of the com- munities to which they belong. But no^ — they have no taste for such pursuits, and they leave the man- agement of their plantations, entirely to their over- seers. This neglect however ought not to be wholly ascribed to their disinclination for regular and useful pursuits. If they go much upon their plantations, so many cruel sights come under their view, they are so harrassed by petitions and complaints, they find them- selves so oppressed by the cares of authority, that they hasten to relieve themselves from the burden, and to shift it to the shoulders of some case-hardened mana- ger. All despotisms are alike. What happens to an oriental sultan, happens to an occidental slave-master. The weight of empire presses too heavily upon their efteminate and feeble necks. Both alike spend in idle luxury all that can be spunged from tlie forced labor of their subjects, but both alike transfer the task of spunging to a vizier, or an overseer. Thus freed from all tlie cares of business, it might be imagined that the wealthy slave-masters of the south, would bestoAv their time and thoughts upon the pursuit of knowledge, the cultivation of literature, and the agreeable arts. We might suppose that they would push scientific investigations to their utmost limits, astonish the world v.'ith new discoveries in morals and in physics, or delight it with all the graces of poetry, the beauties and sublimities of painting, sculpture, music and architecture. In these expectations we are totally disappointed. Books are a rare commodity at the south ; literature 148 DESPOTISM is uncommon and science still more so. Libraries, whether pubhc or private, are seldom to be met with. A few classics thumbed over at school, a few novels old or new, a sprinkling of poHtical pamphlets, and some favorite newspaper, form the whole circuit of letters and learning, ordinarily trodden by the most studious of the planters. The education of the fe- males, even among the wealthiest classes, is still more superficial. In this connection, it ought to be remem- bered, that a very considerable portion of the priv- ileged class, are totally destitiUe even of the rudiments of learning. To read is an accomplishment they have never acquired. Of course, it is not to be expected that persons so unfortunately circumstanced, can find employment for their leisure in literary pursuits. Thus situated, with no resources for the occupation of their time, the privileged class are constantly beset by a weariness of soul, perhaps the most distressing disorder to which men are subject. "Thank God I am not a negro !" said a planter oiie day, as he sat beneath the shade of his porch, and watched his slaves in a neighboring field, at work beneath a burning sun. Yet it may well be doubted whether the most miser- able of those slaves was half as miserable, as their unfortunate master, who lived in a lonely part of the country, and suffered from a forced idleness and soli- tude, the most poignant distresses. It is a common remark among the planters that the slaves are happier than the masters. Many will re- ject this idea with indignation, as a mere falsehood, invented to gloss over the abominations of tyranny. No doubt the observation is generally urged with that intent. But the truth of a fact does not depend upon the use intended to be made of it, by those who assert it. The more closely a man meditates upon the state of things at the south, the more inclined he will be to admit the truth of the above remark touching the comparative happiness of the masters and the slaves. Instead however of saying that the masters and the slaves are equally happy, the idea might be more IN AMERICA. 149 clearly and distinctly expressed by saying, that both masters and slaves are equally miserable. Slavery is an invention for dividing the goods and ills of life into two separate parcels, so as to bestow all the ills upon the slaves, and all the good upon the masters. So far as regards the slaves, this attempt is successful enough. The miseries of life are concentrated upon their heads in a terrible mass. But as respects the masters the experiment fails entirely. The coveted good, like that manna which the too greedy Israel- ites sought wrongfully to appropriate, corrupts, putre- fies, changes its nature, and turns into evil. Occupa- tion too long continued is destructive to happiness, but idleness is not less so; audit may well be doubted whether the compulsive labor of the slaves, is any more copious a source of misery than the forced idleness of the masters. I say forced idleness, for in depriving themselves of the motives to labor and exertion, they force themselves to be idle. To obtain some relief from the weariness that con- stantly besets them, the planters seek to divert and occupy their thoughts by social intercourse. This is the origin of that hospitality for which the people of the south are so famous, and which is often brought forward as a virtue ample enough to cover the ac- knowledged multitude of their sins. Hospitality, it is true, bears a certain relation to benevolence ; but it is to benevolence no more than is the flounce to the gar- ment. The attempt to conceal the nakedness of the land by such a rag, is as contemptible as it is futile. In truth, the visiters who arrive at a plantation confer a real benefit upon the lord of it. They give him oc- cupation. The efforts necessary to entertain, are not less agreeable to him who makes them, than to those for whom they are made. If the visiter be a total stranger so much the better. There is the zest of nov- elty added to the excitement of occupation. If he come from a distant part of the country, better yet. He will probably be able to suggest a great many new and interesting ideas, likely to give an agreeable mo- 13^ 150 DESPOTISM tion to the stagnant soul of his host. Hospitahty has ever been a virtue abundantly practiced among all idle and indolent races. The indian tribes of America, are all celebrated for its exercise. The plundering Arabs of the desert, look upon it as a religious doty. — for conscience and inclination are always apt to pull together. But the exercise of this virtue among the people of the south, becomes the occasion of several practices of the most dangerous and deleterious kind. It is not the cause of those practices, but only the occasion for them. In itself, it is essentially good, and displays the character of the slave-holder in the most amiable light it ever assumes. Hospitality is benevolence on a small scale, and how can benevolence on any other scale be expected, from men whose total existence is a continued violation of its clearest and most urgent commands 7 1. The spirit of improviderice^ above described, as one of the evil results of the slave-holding system, when it becomes associated with the passion for hos- pitality, is reenforced by two very powerful motives, which give it new impetus; first, the desire of at- tracting visiters, by the superior luxury and expen- siveness of the entertainment offered ; and second and principally, the love of superiority, that spirit of emu- lation and rivalry, which leads each planter to outvie his neighbor in the profusion of his hospitality. It is astonishing what a number of southern planters have been ruined in their pecuniary affairs by the joint ope- ration of these means. 2. The Hospitality of the south, not only stimulates improvidence, it is the nursing mother of the vice of DRUNKENNESS, which prevails throughout the whole country to a frightful extent. Dinner parties end too often in general intoxication. What is called the Temperance Reform^ has made but trifling progress in the slave-holding states. The obstacles in its way are immense. To drink is absolutely necessary as a means of killing time. Among the lower orders of the IN AMERICA. 151 privileged class, every social meeting ends in drunk- enness. Attend an election, and by the time the polls are closed, you will find a great collection of citizens at the place of voting, all or most of them, " gloriously drunk." Stay long enough and you will see a fight. In Kentucky such occasions are apt to wind up, with what is called a free fight, that is, a general and indis- criminate knock-down, in which every body present is at liberty to participate. This is the grand finale, or concluding chorus ; but before this part of the per- formance is reached, there are duets, trios, quartets and quintets, in all possible variety. In Mississippi and Tennessee, laws have lately been enacted, pro- hibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors in small quan- tities. Some movements have also been made in Georgia and South Carolina, towards obtaining the passage of similar laws. Laws of this kind are easily enacted in those states, much more so than at the north, because in those states, the wholesale trade in liquors is almost entirely confined to a few northern merchants and traders, who have no political influ- ence, while the retail trade is in the hands of a set of poor white shopkeepers, rendered odious and infamous by their habit of secret traffic with the slaves, and belonging to that inferior class of the privileged order, which though it exceeds in numbers, is deprived for the most part, of any political authority. But how- ever easy it may be to enact such laws, it will be impossible to enforce them, so long as the very legis- lators by whose votes they are enacted, are themselves perpetually in the habit of excessive drinking. These laws will fall into the same total neglect with the statutes against wearing concealed weapons already referred to, and those against gaming, to which we shall presently refer. 3. But such is the total stagnation of intellect and sentiment at the south, that even the stimulus of in- toxicating liquors is not enough to give life and zest to social intercourse. There is need of more potent means. Necessity is the mother of invention. That means is at hand. It is gaming. 152 DfisiPOTiSM This vice, more dangerous and dreadful, impossible, even than drunkenness itself, is equally prevalent at the south. Many attempts have been made to eradi- cate it. There are penal laws against it, in all the slave holding states. Of late, we have seen the sum- mary process of Lynch Law applied to the same pur- pose. In Vicksburgh, one of the principal towns in the state of Mississippi, the most respectable people of the place, assembled in the month of July, 1835, and after pulling down several buildings used as gambling houses, proceeded to seize the persons of Jive profes- sional gamblers and to hang them on the spot, with- out judge or jury. ''These unfortunate men," says the Louisiana Adveriisei^ ''claimed to the last the privilege of American citizens, — the trial by jury, — and professed themselves willing to submit to any thing their country would legally inflict upon them ; but we are sorry to say, their petition was in vain ! The black musicians were ordered to strike up, and the v^oices of the suppliants w^ere drowned by the fife and drum. Mr. Riddell, the cashier of the Planter's Bank, ordered them to play Yankee Doodle, a tune which we believe has never been so prostituted before, and which we hope, and we trust will never be again. The unhappy sufferers frequently implored a drink of water, but were refused. 'K= # ^ ^ The wife of one of them, half distracted at the cruel treatment and murder of her husband, trembling for her own safety, in tears begged permission to inter her hus- band's body, — but in vain. She was afterwards compelled to fly, with her orphan child, in an open skifl', for her personal security. The same fate was threatened to any person who should dare to cut down the bodies before the expiration of twenty-four hours. At eleven o'clock the next day, they were cut down and thrown together into a hole, which had been dug near the gallows, without coffins or any other pre- parations, except a box into which one of them was put." Of the persons who assisted at this execution there IN AMERICA. 153 was not probably one, who was not liimsclf in the constant habit of gambhng. Yet is the horror of this vice so great in the sontliern states, and its ill effects, brought home to the public mind by corjstant expe- rience are so generally acknowledged, that the actors in this tragedy were never called" to account before any judicial tribunal, and their conduct, throughout the entire south, Avas either openly approved, or very faintly condemned. The tone of reprobation in Avhich the Louisiana Advertiser speaks, foinid but a slight and indistinct echo from the other southern prints. Yet notwithstanding all the horror, with which this vice of gambling is regarded, the indulgence in it, at least among die men, is next to universal. The two present senators from Kentucky (1840) are men of whose talents any country might be proud. But a few years since they Avere both as much celebrated for a reckless spirit of gambling, as they were then and still are, for patriotism and ability. When such men lead, followers are always plenty. Every little village of the south has its race-course, its billiard room, its faro table, and its gambling house, and of the three latter, perhaps several. This grows out of the moral necessity of things. Men, in all ages, and in every country, who have had much leisure on their hands, whicli they know not how else to employ, have ever sought relief in some sort of gambling. It is so always with savages, sailors and soldiers, and so it is with the idle population of the south. The habit once acquired, it becomes almost impossible to resist its seductions. To reform a gambler is much the same difficult task as to reform a drunkard. The planter who lias been secluded upon his estate for a week or a month, in irksome and wretclied indolence, his heart all tlie time devouring itself, orders his horse or his carriage in a fit of desperation, and sets out for the nearest village. The gaming table offers him the speediest and most certain means of excitement, the surest method of shaking off the listless misery Avhich oppresses him. To the gaming table he goes. It 154 DESPOTISM Stands always ready, — for the necessity of the case has created a peculiar class of men at the south, who are gamblers by profession. It was to this class that those men belonged who were hanged at Vicksburg. This is a profession which has sprung up naturally at the south, and as has been said necessarily, and which can boast of more talent and accomplishment among its members, than the three learned professions of law, physic and divinity united. The institution of slavery deprives a large portion of the people of their natural occupation. But as man is essentially an active animal, to supply this deficiency it is necessary to create artificial occupations. Gam- bling is the employment, which under similar circum- stances, has ever presented itself to men, as a means of killing time. In order that this employment may be indulged in, whenever the want of it is felt, it is necessary that a peculiar class should exist, as it were, the priesthood of the gaming table, always ready at all times, to gamble with all comers. These are the professional gamblers. They practice gaming not for amusement, but as a livelihood. If they left every thing to chance and strictly observed the laws of play, it would be impossible for them to live by their busi- ness, because, in the long run, they would be certain to lose as much as they won, and so could have nothing left whereupon to live. Hence they are compelled to {ilay false. They must cheat, or starve. They are not merely gamblers, but swindlers. This explains the odium attached to their occupation. Merely to gamble is no imputation upon any body's character in the southern states, or at most it is an imputation of which nobody is ashamed. To be a gambler by profession is infamous, because it is well understood, that every professional gambler is a cheat. But though the profession is infamous, still it is crowded, its members throng the steam-boats, the hotels, the cities, and the villages of the south, and among them may be found, the most gentlemanly, agreeable, insinuating, talented, well informed men of IN AMERICA. 155 the whole population, constantly on tlie watch, and always laboring to attract, to alhiro, to please, many of them attain a peculiar polish and elegance of man- ners. New recruits are always crowding in. The planter who has ruined himself by improvidence, dis- sipation or losses at the gaming table, the young dis- appointed heir, bred up in indolence and luxury by a father who dies insolvent, — these persons find scarcely any other way of gaining their daily bread, except to adopt gambling as a profession. There is no other business for which they are qualified, there is no other art, which they understand. It seems hard to hold these individuals strictly responsible for the evil they do. You cannot expect them to starve. They are the victims of a social system intolerably bad. The professional gamblers are above described such as they are, when at the head of their profession, and in the heyday of success. In general, they soon begin to go down hill. Proverbially improvident, they are abundantly supplied with money, or wholly without it. The latter presently comes to be their habitual condi- tion. Their fate closely resembles that of prostitutes in a great city. Drunkenness relieves their distresses for the moment, but by destroying their health and their intellect, soon precipitates them into lower depths of misery. They become at last a burden upon relatives and friends ; fmd in an early death a refuge from de- spair; or are precipitated into crimes which carry them to the penitentiary or the gallows. The vice of gambling is not confined to the supe- rior portion of the privileged order. It pervades the lower class also. There are blacklegs and gambling houses adapted to the taste and manners of all. To the business of gambling, the professional gam- blers from time to time, add several other occupations. They become passers of counterfeit money, horse- thieves, and negro-stealers. Nothing except the ex- treme poverty of the country, prevents them from organizing an extensive system of plunder. Horses and slaves are almost the only thing, capable of trans- 156 DESPOTISM portation, which can be stolen. In general, to pick the pockets of the planters by the help of a faro table or a pack of cards, is not only a safe, but a surer operation than to attempt it in any other way. Party politics, state and national, afford the only topic, to any extent of an intellectual character, in whicli any considerable number of the southern pop- ulation, take any deep interest, or which serves to any considerable extent, to dispel the fog of wearisome idleness, by which they are constantly threatened to be enveloped. Politics at the south, are rather specu- lative than practical. Every slave-holding commu- nity is essentially conservative, and opposed to all change. The southern politicians puzzle and lose themselves in vain attempts to reconcile the metaphy- sical system of liberty acknowledged by their own state constitutions, with the actual system of despo- tism amid which they live. Their ablest reasoners, can boast no more than to be subtle logicians, and in- genious sophists. Statesmanship is a thing they have no idea of. Yet the study of politics, barren, empty and profitless as southern politics are, has saved many of the finest minds at the south from a total stagnation, and affords to great numbers a stimulant altogether more harmless than gambling and strong drink. Great numbers of the southern planters are as great adepts in political metaphysics, as the Scotch peasantry are or were, in calvinistic divinity. Grant their premises, — which for the most part are utterly false, — and they reason like a book. There have been enumerated above, five capital de- fects in the character and conduct of the privileged class at the south, viz : ferocity of temper, improvi- dence, idleness, drunkenness, and gambling. It is but justice to say, that the female portion of the privileg- ed class are in general entirely free from the two last mentioned faults, nor does ferocity of temper exhibit itself among them, to any thing the same extent as in the male sex. Idleness and improvidence are their greatest and most striking defects. IN AMERICA. 157 Among the men however, the whole five arc palpa- ble, obvious, undeniable. As to this matter there can- not be any dispute. It must be confessed, however unwillingly that these faults are characteristic of the southern people. It has been shown how they are all aggravated, and rendered incurable, by the existence of slavery. Any attempt to remove or palliate them, while that cause of aggravation remains, can have only a partial and limited success. It is impossible to make men virtuous or happy unless by giving them some steady employment that shall innocently engage their attention, and pleasantly occupy their time. The most essential step in the progress of civilization, is, to render useful industry, respectable. But this step can never be taken, so long as labor remains the badge of a servile condition. SECTION II. Personal effects of slavery upon the members of the unprivileged class. Extremes meet. The truth of this proposition, in a physical point of view is evident from the fact that every motion upon the earth's surface describes an elliptical curve. Experience would seem to show that this proposition is almost as true in morals as in phy- sics. At all events it is a curious fact, that the exist- ence of slavery in a community, instead of producing such diversities as might be supposed, does in fact, in many very important particulars, operate almost ex- actly alike upon the masters and the slaves. Fero- city of temper, idleness, improvidence, drunkenness, gambling — these are vices for which the masters are distinguished, and these same vices are conspicuous traits in the character and conduct of slaves. 14 158 DESPOTISM 1. Ferocity of Temper. The first access of suf- fering softens the heart, the long continuance of suffer- ing tends to harden it. Suffering when long continu- ed, begins to be looked upon as a thing of course. He Avho constantly fears to feel the whip upon his own shoulders, ceases to weep because it falls upon another. Those who are accustomed to see authority exercised almost solely in the infliction of pain, form present- ly a close association between the two things. They seem to be inseparable, and a liberal use of violent means comes to be looked upon as the only method of showing one's power. Now the love of pov/er, or to speak more correctly, that love of superiority, which the exercise of power is a means of gratifying, is one of the native, and one of the strongest impulses of the human heart. The slave feels it like other men. He indulges it, when, where, and as, he can, upon his wife, his children and the horse he drives, or upon such of his companions as superior strength, or the appointment of his master has submitted to his con- trol. He exercises his authority in the same way in which authority has been exercised over him. In this as in many other respects, he closely copies the exam- ple of his master. Let it be recollected also that ferocity of temper is a peculiar trait of a savage or barbarous state of society. In civilized countries, it is principally to be seen among the most ignorant and least refined. Civiliza- tion is perhaps more remarkable for its effect in soft- ening the tempers of men than for any other single thing. Slaves are purposely kept in a state of barbar- ism and ignorance. That they should have little con- trol over their tempers, and should give way to vio- lent and sudden gusts of passion, is a matter of course. 2. Improvidence, Among freemen, the pleasures of accumulation are perhaps not inferior to the pleas- ures of consumption. The pleasure that a house keep- er enjoys from knowing that he has laid by a stock of provisions sufficient to support his family through the winter, is sufficient to counterbalance a great deal of IN AMERICA. 159 saving and self-denial. But the pleasures of accumu- lation are pleasures which a slave cannot enjoy. His sole pleasure consists in consuming. It is therefore his object to consume all he possibly can. To gratify a present appetite is almost all he ever thinks of He knows that his master will not suffer him to perish for want of absolute necessaries. Any thing he should lay by, he would be in constant danger of losing, be- cause property is a thing which the laws do not allow him to possess. When he has consumed a thing he is sure of it, and only then — Be fair or foul, or rain or shine The joys I have possessed in spite of fate are mine, Nor heaven itself upon the past has power, But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. The slaves never read either Horace or Dry den, but they feel and they reason in the same way. The spirit of improvidence has for its associate on the part of the slaves as well as on the part of the masters, a remarkable disposition for hospitality. But the hospitality of the slaves may justly be regarded as a virtue of a much higher order, than the hospi- tality of the masters, inasmuch as the slaves bestow out of their necessities, whereas the masters in gener- al, give from their abundance. Sunday for the most part is allowance day, and on those plantations where meat forms a part of the allowance, it often happens, where the vigilance of masters or overseers does not prevent it, that within six hours, the portion of meat given out for the whole week, is consumed in treating friends and acquaintances from some neighboring plantations, where meat is a luxury that forms no por- tion of the regular allowance. The slaves are as fond of nocturnal entertainments as the masters are of din- ner parties, and the profuse liberality with which, from the scanty means within their power, they con- tribute to get them up, shows them in point of good fellowship, to be not less free hearted than their mas- ters. 160 DESPOTISM 3. Idleness. The natural stimulus of labor is, the hope of reward. The expectation of reward is capa- ble of exciting the most strenuous exertions, and when properly presented, never fails of effect. Where this motive does not exist, industry is unknown. The fear of punishment cannot produce it. The most it can do is, to produce an empty appearance of it, which is in fact little better than idleness in the dis- guise of labor. But it is not alone the absence of reward that makes a slave necessarily idle. In his mind labor is asso- ciated indissolubly with the lash. Pain, weariness, fear, the sense of inferiority, these are in his eyes, the natural companions of labor. What wonder if he regard it with disgust? On the other hand, idleness, to his limited view, appears to be the distinguishing badge of freedom, and with freedom he associates every idea of pleasure and content. Idleness again, in point of fact, is in the case of a slave a real luxury, a true delight, much more so, than it ever can be in the case of a freeman, and that for three reasons. First, because rest is ever delightful to the weary, and those who labor by compulsion are always weary. Second, because being idle, as has been shown in a previous chapter, is a sort of means whereby the slave is enabled to regain, as it were, a certain portion of his liberty. Third, because idle- ness is a means of lessening the value of that stolen labor upon which the master has seized, and so of in- dulging that indignation and hatred which the slave naturally feels. Do we not commonly destroy our property, whether public or private, whenever that is the only way to save it from falling into the hands of an enemy ? To make men industrious, who have all these mo- tives for idleness, is out of the question. The experi- ence of the world has proved ten thousand times over, and every individual who will but consider his own motives of action, must be abundantly, satisfied, that the only stimulus that can be relied upon as able to IN AMERICA. 161 produce a life of regular industry is, — the hope of re- ward, — -a fair prospect of being permitted to enjoy un- disturbed, the fruits of our labor. 4. Drunkenness. The excitement which drunk- enness produces is of so very pleasurable a kind, that those who have once experienced it, have need of very strong motives to enable them to resist the temptation it holds out. Especially is this the case with those who lack that steady, regular yet innocent stimulus sup- plied by a daily occupation in which they take pleasure. When occupation is wanting, or when instead of be- ing pleasurable the occupation to which a man is obliged to submit, is irksome and disagreeable, there results a miserable weariness of soul, against which drunkenness offers an opiate so tempting that even the most intelligent and best educated are not always able to resist it. That the slaves as a body should greedily snatch at it, is not surprising. 5. Gambling. That same wearisome state of mind, which among both bond and free is the greatest temptation to drink, proves also the strongest induce- ment to gamble. The human mind craves excite- ment. It is the very vital air of the soul, as essential to- it as motion is to the health of the body. If this desire cannot be gratified by innocent means, means of gratification will be devised which are not inno- cent. Of these means gambling is one of the most po- tent, and pernicious ; and a means as popular among the slaves as among the masters. It ought to be observ- ed however with respect both to this vice and to that of drunkenness, that both of them prevail to a much less extent among the slaves than with the free, be- cause the opportunities, means, and facility for these kinds of indulgences which the slaves possess, are far inferior to those possessed by the free. It is proper also to observe that the five great de- fects of character and conduct common as we have seen to the privileged and the unprivileged classes at the south, all exhibit themselves among the free, in a form more aggravated, and more disgusting — 14* 162 DESPOTISM at all events in a form far more pregnant with mis- chief than among the slaves. Slavery it would seem is but the foster-mother of vice ; tyranny is the real parent, — for the privileged class at the south have not yet reached that point of refinement indicated by Burke, at which vice by losing all its grossness loses half its evil. The ferocity of the slaves is a mild thing compared with the ferocity of the masters. It is rare to hear of a slave murdered by a slave, while the murder of white men by white men, is an every day occurrence. The instrument of vengeance which the slave most commonly employs, is his fist, or at most a club. The master uses pistols, dirks, knives, and double barrel- led guns. With all the bad reputation of Spain and Italy, assassinations were never a quarter so common in those countries as they now are in the south-western states of the American Union. The chance or rather I might say, the probability of dying a violent death is far greater in the states of Mississippi and Arkansas, than in any other part of the known, world, not even Texas excepted. Idleness we must consider, presents itself to the slaves under the aspect of a pure good. In them it cannot be regarded as a vice. Is it a crime to evade as far as possible, the violence of robbery ? The privileged class on the contrary, are able to view idleness in its true light. It is not only the cause, and to the privileged class perceptibly the cause of all those evils traced to it above, but the love of idleness is in fact, the real foundation of slavery. The masters wish to enjoy without working ; to reap where they have not sowed, to gather where they have not strawed. This is the whole secret of the social system of the south. This unjust desire, which in the nature of things never can be fnlly gratified — for the enjoyment thus obtained is poisoned and cor- rupted by a certain secret inherent flavor of bitter- ness — * IN AMERICA. 163 — Medio de fonte leporum, Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus an gat, — this unjust desire to possess without labor, may be looked upon as the fruitful source of all the evils which the system of slavery involves. Under such circum- stances, idleness ceases to be merely a vice, it becomes a crime, and a crime too of the very blackest die, for it is the immediate cause of all kinds of crimes which men have agreed most to stigmatize, and those crimes too not perpetrated one by one, and in defiance of law, but perpetrated wholesale and systematically, not by individual upon individual, but by one half the com- munity upon the other half, and that too with the sanction of legislatures and tribunals. As regards improvidence, drunkenness and gam- bhng, on the part of the slaves they are comparatively venal offences. The harm they can do is limited, and is confined almost entirely to the person of the offen- der himself. There is no danger that by giving way to them, he will precipitate a whole family into pov- erty and distress. There is no danger that his ex- ample will have a pernicious influence upon society at large. What is the example of a slave? Nor is there any likelihood that by giving way to these temptations he may render useless gifts which prop- erly exercised might have redounded to the benefit of the community. The only talent proper to a slave is the talent of handling a hoe. With him, these vices ter- minate for the most part in themselves. The seconda- ry evils which they produce are comparatively speak- ing, inconsiderable. Among the privileged class these indulgences give rise to a train of secondary evils of which the mere catalogue would fill a volume ; evils, which instead of confining themselves to the person of the offender, overflow, spread abroad, sweep away whole families, and inundate society. No language is too strong to describe the dangerous and fatal char- acter, which when practised by the privileged class, these vices assume. 164 DESPOTISM SECTION III. Poi?it$ of diversity in the character of the 'privileged mid the unprivileged classes. 1. Courage is one of those chivalrous virtues much boasted of among the freemen of the south. They are brave beyond question. All freemen are so. Courage is a virtue which always exists in the great- est perfection among freemen, because among freemen, it is most esteemed and most cultivated. Courage is essential to the maintenance of liberty. When it happens that freemen are also tyrants, courage is cul- tivated and fostered for the additional reason that it is essential also to the maintenance of tyranny. What importance is attached to this virtue at the south, may be conjectured from the braggadocio spirit, which so universally prevails there. Listen to southern conversation, or read the southern newspapers, and one would suppose that every m.other's son of the free population, was an Orlando Furioso, or a Richard Cf£urde Lion at the least. What wonder if courage abound where it is so highly esteemed and so greatly encouraged. The slaves, on the other hand, are cowards. A brave man may be found among them here or there, but cowardice is their general characteristic. If it were not so, the system of slavery would be very short liv- ed. To organize a successful insurrection, something more than mere courage is no doubt necessary. But courage alone is sufficient to produce a series of un- successful insurrections, and however individually un- successful ; a series of insurrections would shortly ren- der the masters' empire not worth preserving. If the slaves are cowards, it is a vice to which they have been diligently trained up from their earliest childhood. Were a tenth part of the pains bestowed to make them brave, which are taken to render them otherwise, they would be as courageous as their masters. The IN AMERICA. 165 boldest heart very soon becomes subdued, when every indication of spirit, every disposition to stand at bay is shortly visited by the whip, irons, or a prison. 2. The Chastity of their women is another chivalrous virtue, much boasted of by the freemen of the south. The southern people have reason to be proud of their women. From the most disgusting vices of the men, they are, as we have mentioned already, in a great measure free, and such active virtue as is to be found at the south, at least the larger portion of it, is to be looked for among the female sex. If however the women have escaped to a certain ex- tent, the blighting influences of tyranny it is because they are sedulously shielded from its worst effects. Chastity like courage is to a great extent, an artifi- cial virtue, the existence of which principally depends upon education and public opinion. Both education and public opinion are stretched to their utmost influ- ence to preserve the chastity of the southern women, while the free and more luxurious indulgence which the men find elsewhere, causes the seduction of free women to be a thing seldom attempted. Among the slaves, a woman, apart from m.ere natu- ral bashfulness, has no inducement to be chaste ; she has many inducements the other way. Her person is her only means of purchasing favors, indulgences, presents. To be the favorite of the master or one of his sons, of the overseer, or even of a driver, is an ob- jectof desire, and a situation of dignity. It is as much esteemed among the slaves, as an advantageous mar- riage would be, among the free. So far from involv- ing disgrace, it confers honor. Besides, where mar- riage is only a temporary contract, dissolvable at any time, not by the will of the parties alone, but at the caprice and pleasure of the masters, wliat room is there for any such virtue as chastity ? Chastity con- sists in keeping the sexual appetite under a close re- straint except when its indulgence is sanctioned by marriage. But among slaves every casual union, though but. for a day, is a marriage. To persons so 166 DESPOTISM situated, we cannot justly apply ideas founded upon totally different circumstances. If we choose how- ever to understand by chastity the restriction of one's self to a single partner, chastity is very far from being so rare a virtue among the women of the unprivileg- ed class as is often asserted, and generally supposed. Though the union may be dissolved in a moment, at the slightest caprice of the parties, such separations are much more rare than might be imagined. More husbands and wives among the slaves are separated by the hammer of the auctioneer, than by the united influence of infidelity, disgust, or the desire of change. 3. Fraud, falsehood, and dishonesty are represent- ed by the masters, as distinguishing traits in the cha- racter of the unprivileged class. This charge is un- founded. It has been shown already, that as between master and slave, from the very nature of that rela- tion, mutual confidence, trust and reliance, are out of the question. To deceive his master is almost the only means of self-defence in the power of the slave. What ground of mutual confidence is it possible to es- tablish between the robber and the robbed? To hold those promises binding which are extorted by force, to maintain that one is obliged to keep faith with a plunderer, is to surrender up, to the hands of violence, through the influence of a Aveak and cruel superstition, or a piece of miserable and empty sophistry, not the body only, but the soul ; not only actions, but the will ; the future as Avell as the present ; — it is to strip v/eak- ness and suffering of their last defence, and to give omnipotence to tyranny. In their transactions with each other the members of the unprivileged class at the south, are by no means deficient in the great and necessary virtues of truth, honesty and fidelity. The difficulty of inducing them to betray each other is proverbial, and is a matter of grevious complaint among masters and overseers. There are among the slaves, as among all bodies of men, some who set up honesty for sale, and who be- come instruments of tyranny in the hands of the pri- IN AMERICA. 167 vileged class. There are others shrewd and slippery, upon whom no dependence whatever can be placed, even by their friends and relations. Characters of this sort, are quite as common among the privileged order. Indeed more so. There has been already mentioned that great class of professional gamblers, whose sole business it is to prey upon the community, to inveigle the unwary, and entrap the ignorant. There is no such class among the slaves. There is still another great class among the privileged order, who live al- most wholly upon the plunder of their richer neigh- bors, the receivers, namely, of stolen goods, the keep- ers of the petty trading stores, scattered throughout the south. They take in the corn, cotton and rice stolen by the slaves, and give in exchange whisky and other luxuries. This class of traders is very large. The severest laws have been enacted to suppress them, but without success. Lynch law is now and then administered upon them in all its sever- ity, but the nuisance cannot be abated. These men, compared with the slaves, are wholly without excuse. They live by constant violations of laws, by constant breaches of a social compact to which they have them- selves assented. This is a case in which the receiver, even in a legal point of view, is a thousand times worse than the thief. Yet to speak within bounds, for every five or six acts of theft, (or what is called so,) committed on the part of slaves, there is at least one act of reception committed on the part of some freeman. We may therefore consider it to be reduced to an arithmetical demonstration, that so far as relates to violations of property, the offences of the free are greater than those of the slaves. To this conclusion we must come, even without taking into account the appalling fact that the entire existence of a large part of the privileged class is but one constant, steady vio- lation of all those principles upon which the very idea of property depends, and upon which the virtues of truth, honesty, justice and fidelity must rest for their only sure support. We may apply to the southern 168 DESPOTISM IN AMERICA. slave-holders, dijeii (Tespintoi Talleyrand's. A certain person was complaining that every body consider- ed him a worthless, infamous fellow, yet said the complainant, I do not know why, for I have never committed but one fault in my life. " Ah !" said Talleyrand, "but when will that one fault be end- ed?" To those accustomed to look only at the outside of things, the results to which this chapter has brought us, will no doubt seem strange. It is impossible, they will say, that men whose circumstances are so contra- dictory, and whose Avhole appearance is so different, can after all, be so much alike. Such readers will do well to call to mind the lines of Shakspeare, — Through tatter' d clothes small vices do appear ; Robes and furr'd gowns, hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it. That gold however, with which the system of south- ern slavery is plated, is not the true metal. 'Tisbuta fairy, shadowy, imaginary gold which cannot cross the running waters of truth, without being changed back again to its original worthlessness. CONCLUSION. The slave-holding system had been introduced into the southern states of the Union, and domesticated there for many years, before the attention of any body was much attracted towards its evils consequences. It had spread even to the north, and of the thirteen provin- ces which first confederated to form the United States of America, there was not one, in which slavery did not exist at the time of the union, to a greater or less extent. For a considerable period however, prior to the re- volutionary war, the people of Virginia, — that state in which the system of slavery had originated, and whence it had spread south and north, became aware of its evil effects, at least to a certain degree, and grew exceedingly urgent with the mother coimtry to put an end to the African slave trade, or at all events to the importation of slaves into Virginia. This boon was denied, through the influence with the government at home, of those British merchants engaged in the African trade ; and this refusal is specially set forth in the Declaration of Independence, as one of those grievances which justified the Revolution, and the civil war by which it was attended. The revolution led to a general discussion as to the nature of government, and the foundations of civil society ; and gave an almost universal currency to a metaphysical theory of human rights, fully stated in the Declaration of Independence and elsewhere. This theory, though it is not a true one, and has led, and always will lead to great errors and mistakes, if logic- 15 170 DESPOTISM ally carried out, — is nevertheless a noble and a glo- rious theory, and the cause of humanity has been not a little indebted to it. The axioms of this metaphysi- cal theory of rights, — which remains to this day, the generally received doctrine throughout the United States, — are at total variance with the whole system of slavery, and in a very short time after those max- ims began to prevail, they came into conflict with it. In those states in which the slave-holding interest was weak, to wit, in Massachusetts , NetD- Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New- Yoi^k, New-Jersey and Pennsylvaiiia, the metaphysical theory of human rights triumphed, sooner or later, over the slave sys- tem, and slavery was abolished in all those states. Being abolished however not upon a full, clear, sound and philosophical view of the matter, but merely upon certain points of metaphysics, no proper means were taken to ensure to the enfranchised class the practical enjoyment of the rights bestowed upon them; and they remain to this day, a degraded caste, subject in every one of those states, to legal disabilities greater or less, and to social disabilities without number. In the states farther south, the matter worked dif- ferently according to the different situation of those states. In Delavmre, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, the evil effects of the slave-holding system, even in its economical operation, had become very apparent. This was an argument easily felt and understood ; for it is a fact too true, that most men feel and reason best through their pockets. Accord- ingly in these four states, the metaphysical theory of human rights made a goodly struggle with the system of slavery. All the great men of those states, at that time, Washington, Jefferson, Henry, in fact every citi- zen who attained to any eminence during the revo- lutionary struggle, was in favor of emancipation. The reason given by Washington for not at once emanci- pating his slaves, was, that emancipation, in order to be effectual for the public good and the benefit of the emancipated, ought to be universal, brought about by IN AMERICA. 171 a general law, — and for such a law he always pro- fessed himself ready and desirous to go. This argu- ment in favor of retaining one's slaves, did not how- ever prevail with the more ardent and entliusiastic, and even with the most sober and discreet, inchiding Washington himself, when they came to sit down calmly and make their wills, it seemed to lose the greater part of its force. Thus it happened that al- though no attempt was made to obtain any general law of emancipation, — ignorance, selfishness and pre- judice being too prevalent, — it nev^ertheless came to pass that by private manumission, the number of the emancipated began rapidly to increase. In South Carolina and Georgia the state of public opinion was different. Slave labor in those states was still very valuable, and their leading men, with a few honorable exceptions, were great sticklers for slav- ery and the slave trade. Indeed they absolutely refus- ed to become parties to the Federal Constitution, unless the Federal Government would renounce the right to prohibit the foreign slave trade, prior to 1808. As regards the growing empire of the north-western states, O//./0, Indiana^ Illi?iois, Michigan and Wiscon- sin, they owe an eternal debt of gratitude to Thomas Jefferson, who was the original author of that celebrat- ed section of the ordinance, of 1787, by which the in- troduction of slavery into the territory north-west of the Ohio, is forever prohibited. That ordinance, at the time of its passage, embraced all the unsettled territory be- longing to the United States. Vermo7il, formed out of lands the possession of which had been disputed between New-York and New- Hampshire, and Maine, a more modern offset from the vigorous stem of Massachusetts — were free states from the beginning. Ken li/ckj/ and Tennessee, setoff from Virginia andNorth Carolina, inherited from their mother states, the infection of slavery. Meanwhile the struggle between the metaphysical theory of human rights, and the slave-holding system, still went on in Virginia, Maryland and North Caro- 172 DESPOTISM lina. But by degrees the spirit of despotism gained the ascendency ; and fearful lest individual humanity should accomplish that emancipation by private be- neficence, which the Legislatures refused to bring •about by any general law, the force of public opinion, as well as of legislation, was brought so to bear, as in a great measure to put an end to voluntary emancipa- tion. The existing regulations upon that subject, in the several slave states of the union, have been stated in a previous chapter. So jealous has the slave-holding spirit of the south become, that in those constitutions which have been latest remodeled, the Legislatures are expressly deprived of the pov/er of passing any general act of emancipation. It may be stated as a general fact, to which only some slight exceptions occur, that ever since the con- clusion of the revolutionary war, the slave-holding sph'it of the south has been growing more violent, bit- ter and exclusive. This fact is easily explained. A careful comparison of opinions and prices current, will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the attach- ment of the southern people to the institution of slavery, has always been most precisely graduated by the mar- ket value of slaves ; — a circumstance well worthy of observation, because it goes' very far to show, that after all, the question of slavery at the south, is neither more nor less than a mere question of money, and a question therefore, which, money, after all, may be able to settle. During the revolutionary war the value of slave property in Virginia and the neighboring states, sunk to a very low ebb ; and the people at that time, ex- hibited a certain disposition towards emancipation. When the war of the French Revolution had created a vast foreign demand for American agricultural pro- duce, the value of slaves rose, and the disposition to emancipate, sunk in proportion. Thus it happened that when in the year 1803, the territory now comprised in the states of Alabama and Mississippi was obtained by the United States, from IN AMERICA. 173 the state of Georgia, by purchase, it was no longer possible to make that section of the ordinance of 1787 which secured perpetual freedom to the states north- west of the Ohio, applicable to this newly acquired territory. Indeed this territory by an express article of the compact of cession, was excluded from the oper- ation of that section of the ordinance of 1787, though all the other sections were extended to it. In this way, Alabama and Mississippi became slave-holding states, and were admitted as such into the union. Nor did Mr. Jefferson, when by his famous treaty with France, he doubted the geographical extent of his country, and acquired the vast territory of Lou- isiana, deem it prudent to bring forward any ordi- nance for the perpetuation of freedom through those vast regions. The state of Louisiana was admitted into the union, just before the commencement of the war of 1812, a period of great political excitement upon other topics, which precluded, as is probable, any dis- cussion of the question of slavery at that time. When however, in 1819, the territory of Missouri ap- plied for admission into the union, the question whether slavery was to be allowed to spread unchecked over the vast regions of the west, came fairly up for dis- cussion. In the decision of the Missouri question, the friends of freedom, have been generally represented as having sustained a severe defeat. This representation how- ever does not seem to be entirely correct. Slave-hold- ers with their slaves had been allowed to settle in Missouri, and they had formed a state constitution, by virtue of which slavery was tolerated. Under these circumstances it was not easy to refuse the State ad- mission into the union, nor was it easy to dictate what kind of a constitution it should have. That contro- versy was finally settled by a compromise, according to which it was agreed, that slavery should be allowed in Missouri and Arkansas^ into which territories it had been already introduced, but that throughout the whole remaining portions of the Louisiana territory, 15* 174 DESPOTISM it should be forever prohibited. By virtue of this compromise, the new territory of Iowa will presently take its place among the free states. It was just about the time of the Missouri contro- versy that the territory of Florida, was ceded to the United States by Spain, This territory had at that time some small Spanish settlements, and the slave- holding system had existed in it for some two centu- ries. An ineffectual attempt was made to prohibit the introduction of new slaves into the Territory. But the friends of freedom had been discouraged by the result of the Missouri controversy, and the attempt proved unsuccessful. Florida will therefore come into the union a slave state. Upon this question of slavery the United States may be classed as follows; 1st. Free Slates, viz, Maine, New-Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecti- cut, Rhode Island, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsyl- vania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, fifteen states ; 2nd, slave states, viz. Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky, four- teen states. Whole number of states, twenty-nine. It is hardly probable that any addition will be made to that number for many years to come. It was well settled in the first Congress which as- sembled under the Federal Constitution, that the gov- ernment of the union possesses no power to abolish or to modify, the institution of slavery, within the limits of any of the states. This decision is generally as- sented to, and has never yet been seriovisly called in question. It is maintained however at the north, and even at the south it is generally conceded, that the Federal Government does possess the power to abolish slavery in the Federal District of Columbia, and the power also to abolish the domestic slave-trade, as between the different states, that is to say, to prohibit the transportation of slaves from one state to another for the purpose of sale. \' AMERICA. 175 It is upon these points, that the friends of liberty in the United States have of late concentrated their po- htical etforts, and it is to be hoped that they will steadily persevere till both these points are carried. During the period that elapsed from the settle- ment of the Missouri controversy down to the year 1833, the value of slave property having greatly di- minished especially in the more northern of the slave-holding states, and the Southampton insurrec- tion having attracted public attention to the dangers of slavery, a considerable disposition was at one time exhibited, especially in Virginia, to do sometliing for the emancipation of the slaves. Tlie plan however brought forward at that time, connected as it was with the colonization scheme, of which further men- tion will presently be made, failed to be adopted, and has since been generally abandoned even by its warm- est advocates. Since that time, the tide has set decidedly the other way. The spirit of despotism has grown more obsti- nate and violent, and a sect has arisen at the south, which boldly maintains that the system of slavery ought to be perpetual, because it furnishes the only solid foundation for a free republican government ! At the head of this new school of politics, stand Mr. Cal- houn and his friend and first disciple, Mr. McDuffie. Some superficial, or prejudiced observers, have as- cribed the late exacerbation of slave-holding ferocity, to the reaction produced by the proceedings of those people in the northern states, known as abolitionists. The true reason is to be found in the excessive prices of the slave-market for the few years past, caused by the high price of cotton. As that great staple of slave production has again settled down to a price barely sufficient to pay the cost of producing it, the value of slaves will fall also ; and as that value falls, it may be hoped and expected, that the south will grow more soft-hearted, rational, and humane. Notwithstanding the bold paradoxes mentioned above, as having been recently advanced by Mr. Cal- 176 DESPOTISM houn and his disciples, touching the advantages and the permanancy of the slave-holding system, it still remains a pretty universal opinion, at the south as well as at the north, that slavery is a bad thing, and that sooner or later, it must be and will be abolished. That slavery is a bad thing, the preceding pages have perhaps gone far to prove ; that it will sooner or later be abolished, may be reasonably concluded from the universal past experience of the world in similar cases. That same sort of slavery which disgraces and dam- nifies the United States, existed half a century ago throughout the whole extent of the American conti- nent. In all the independent states, late Spanish American colonies, it has been totally abolished through the influence of political revolutions. In Hayti, the slaves hav-e vindicated their liberties, with their own strong hand. In Jamaica and the other British West Indies, those subjected to servitude have obtained emancipation through the bounty of the Eng- lish people, a piece of philanthropy on a larger scale, than the world's history had before that time afforded. The same causes which have carried emancipation thus far, will sooner or later extend it to Brazil, the French West Indies, the Spanish West Indies, and the United States of America. It is obvious that all the means whereby an eman- cipation of the slaves in the United States can be brought about, may be classed under one of these two heads, 1st, force, 2nd, the consent of the masters. I. Force. If the system of slavery in the United States be not first extinguished by some peaceable means, it will sooner or later, come to a forcible ter- mination. To those who have read the foregoing pages it must be obvious, that any unassisted insurrection on the part of the slaves alone, is very unlikely ever to be successful. But nevertheless there are still three ways in which the slave-holding system may be forci- bly terminated. I. Foreigti wars. Should the United States be- IN AMERICA. 177 come involved in a foreign war wilii Great Britain, France, or any other first rate power, tlie slavc-liold- ers would have every tiling to appreliend from a foreign invasion accompanied as it would be, by a proclama- tion of freedom to the slaves, at the announcement of which all the civilized nations of the world would shout Amen ! In such a contest the sympathies of all mankind would be against us, and wl'iat is worse, our own better feelings too. That such a project of invasion was planned dur- ing our last war with Great Britain has been already mentioned. The reasons which then prevented its execution, exist no longer. It is to be observed too that the recent improvements in steam navigation, have rendered the Atlantic a much less protective barrier than once it was. These things «ire not wholly over- looked by the southern people. The excessive flutter- ing with which our late difficulties with France about the treaty of indemnity, and our present difficulties with Great Britain touching the boundary question, were and are regarded at the south, are a sufficient proof what peculiar terrors the idea of a foreign war has, for that part of our country. 2nd. A dissolution of the Union. A dissolution of the Union, would almost certainly be followed by a war between the separated states. This subject has been already treated in the introduction. Such a war could not fail to prove fatal to the slave system at the south. 3d. Political disturbances a7id civil war in the slave states themselves. Such events are perhaps much nearer and more threatening, than most people ima- gine. Hitherto that portion of the free population, impoverished and degraded by the influence of the slave system, has found an open asylum by emigration to the new states. That asylum is fast closing up. Already the poisonous influence of slavery is almost in as full operation in the nev/ states as in the old. In some of the new states its operation is even more obvious and more terrible than in the old ones. The 178 DESPOTISM old slave states were originally all of them free com- munities, inhabited wholly, or almost wholly, by free citizens. It has thus happened that there still remains to a greater or less degree, in all those states, a certain rel- ish and tincture of freedom, which not all the deleteri- ous influences of slavery, have yet been able wholly to eradicate. Some ideas still prevail there, and exercise a certain degree of hifluence, which are wholly averse to the existing state of things, — ideas derived from the days of ancient freedom and equality. These same ideas have been transplanted into Kentucky and Ten- nessee, and prevail there to the greater extent on ac- count of the smaller proportion of slaves to be found in those states. Mississippi on the other hand, and the same is true to a certain extent of Alabama and Louisiana, may be regarded as states which have been founded, and have grown up, under almost the sole influence of the slave-holding system. Slavery appears there in all its horrors, totally stript of that patriarchal character with Avhich it is sometimes more or less invested in some of the older states. Almost every planter is a slave-trader, as well as a slave-holder, and the slaves driven in gangs from Maryland and Virginia, are sub- jected to new severities, compelled to harder labors, and under new and unfamiliar masters, wholly deprived of all those privileges, presents and holidays, to which at home they had established a sort of prescriptive right. The masters too, emigrating from the older states, and for the most part young men, leave behind them all those prejudices, and remnant influences of free- dom, which still prevail at home, and all restraint thrown ofl", act out the character of slave-masters to the full pitch. Who does not know the terrible condi- tion of society m those states, in which, it may justly be said, that there is no tolerable security either for property or life. In all the southern states, and most of all in those states in which the evils of slavery have reached the highest pitch, there are great bodies of desperate men, ERICA. 179 belonging to the privileged class, without property, or any other stake in the institutions of society, from whom there is hardly any danger that may not be reasonably apprehended. Such are those bands of gamblers of whom an account has been given, and who can hardly be expected to keep any terms with a community, which keeps no terms with them. These bodies of destitute and desperate men, are rapidly in- creasing, since the southern states throughout their whole extent aie beginning to be exposed to the full force of those causes, by Aviiich the privileged class in every slave-holding community, is necessarily divided into two distinct portions, — a few rich, and many poor. That these desperadoes should sooner or later plan, and carry out a political revolution of which the un- privileged class would be the instruments, and the few rich the victims, is by no means improbable. Indeed if we can put reliance upon the stories told in south- ern newspapers, such schemes and conspiracies have been already formed. There are many circumstances which would lead to the conclusion, that every year adds to the likelihood of such attempts, and to the probability of their success. Any such enterprise, if successfully carried out, or if only partially successful, would of course involve the overthrow of the system of slavery. If the system of slavery in the southern states should be brought to an end by any of these forcible means, however beneficial the ultimate result might be, the immediate consequences must of necessity be excessively disastrous ; and roots of bitterness in such a struggle, would be left deeply planted, to spring up and bear fruits centuries afterwards. Are these not then peaceable means, means of con- sent, whereby this disorder of the body social and politic, may more easily, more safely, and more pleasurably be eradicated ? Is it not possible to devise a method, by which the extinction of slavery, instead of being brought about by the conflict of all the bad passions of human nature, in fact by that very operation 180 DESPOTISM in which slavery first had its origin, to wit, by war, — may on the contrary, be charmed, as it were, ont of life and being, by the potent wand of knowledge and human ity '? Glorious idea ! — that this evil of slavery, the great- est evil to which human society is subject, because it consists in fact, of a combination of all possible social evils, — may yet be made the occasion for an exercise of virtue and of wisdom such as the annals of the world have not yet furnished an example of ! If the American States, after the close of the eight year's war, by means of which they secured their emancipation from the yoke of the mother country, sat down calmly and peaceably to make a constitution for themselves con- formable to the prevailing theory of human rights, a thing which no nation had ever done before, — why not too, upon this matter of slavery, act also, in a calm and peaceful way, and again do, by consent, a great thing which, as in the other case, has been hitherto accomplished in most other countries, onl)^ by force? Two methods of consent, have been already brought before the public, for the emancipation of the slaves. Each of these methods, in its practical application, is capable of being indefinitely modified ; but it would seem that all possible schemes of emancipation, must conform in their general principles, to one or the other of these two proposals. The one may be distinguished as the Colonization scheme • the other, as the scheme of Abolition. 1st. The Colonization scheme. This scheme is found- ed upon existing prejudices, and is therefore well cal- culated to catch the fancy of superficial thinkers. It takes for granted, that there is a natural incompatibil- ity betAveen the two races, which renders it impossi- ble, or at least, highly inconvenient for them to live to- gether, in any other relation than as masters and slaves. This idea is not peculiar to the United States, nor is it confined to the natural relation of the English and African races. Whenever the circumstances of the population have been similar, the same ideas have IN AMERICA. 181 been current, llumbold in his Essay on New Spain, speaking of the condition of the aboriginal inhabitants of Mexico, at the beginning of the present century- has the following passage. '' The lawyers whodetesi innovation, and the Creole proprietors who frequently find their interest in keeping the cultivator in degra- dation and misery, maintain that we must not inter- fere with the natives because on granting them more liberty, the whites would have every thing to fear from the vindictive spirit and arrogance of the Indian race. The language is always the same, whenever it is proposed to allow the peasant to participate in the rights of a freeman and a citizen. I have heard the same arguments repeated in Mexico, Peru, and the kingdom of New Grenada, which in several parts of Germany, Poland, Livonia and Prussia, are opposed to the abolition of slavery among the peasants." At the time this passage was written, the Indian race throughout Spanish America, was in a condition, not greatly superior in point either of law or fact, to the existing condition of American slaves. Since that time Indians have been emancipated, and raised to an equality, in civil and political rights, with their Creole neighbors. Those countries have since been much distracted by civil wars, but in no single instance has there occurred a war of races. All these wars have grown out of the quarrels of the Creoles among them- selves. The colonization scheme, founded upon this idea of the incompatibility of the races, proposes to abolish slavery by transporting all the slaves to some distant country, — the coast of Africa is generally proposed — thus leaving the remainder of the population, white and free. That this scheme is totally impracticable, and that any attempt to carry it into execution must be attend- ed by the most fatal consequences to the economical prosperity of the south, has been abundantly shown, both by the enemies and the friends of emancipation, by 16 182 DESPOTISM Professor Dew of William and Mary College on the one hand, and by Thomas Jefferson on the other. The value of land and of all other property at the south as well as elseAvhere, is dependent to a great extent upon the density of the population. The scheme for shipping off all the laboring hands of the south, is a scheme for reducing all those states to a condition of miserable poverty. It is indeed proposed by the defenders of the colo- nization scheme, that this process of transportation shall be exceedingly gradual, and that as fast as the col- ored laborers are shipped off, white laborers shall flow in to supply their places. If white laborers would flow in, even then the evils of slavery would be in- definitely protracted; and during the long period in which the transportation was going on, the state sub- jected to its operation, would be kept at best, in a condition perfectly stationary. But in point of fact white laborers would not flow in. If it be desired to rear up at the south, a system of free industry, the system of slave labor must first be razed to its found- ations. It is utterly out of the question to be pulling away the slave system at the bottom, and at the same time to be building up the free system at the top. It has indeed been so clearly demonstrated, that this colonization scheme can never accomplish the eman- cipation of the slaves, that even in the minds of its most ardent supporters, it has dwindled down into lit- tle better than a means of expatriating the free colored population. In the slave states, this part of the pop- ulation is regarded as a nuisance, and it is generally thought that the colonization society may be usefully employed as a means of abating that nuisance. Its merits, in that respect, this is not the place to discuss. 2nd. The Abolition Scheme. This scheme pro- poses the full emancipation of the whole unprivileged class, and their elevation by due degrees, to an entire participation in all the political rights of citizens. There has, it is true, been a vast deal of dispute about immediate and gradual emancipation ; but among IN AMERICA. 183 those who arc actually in favor of emancipation at all, any differences upon that point, might, it is prob- able, be easily reconciled. The greatest sticklers for the most gradual emancipation, are for the most part, those Avho are desirous of making emancipation so very gradual as to render it in fact, no emancipation at all, or at least to put it off to the last possible day. Those who are most afraid of revolutionary move- ments and sudden changes, if indeed they arc really sincere in their avowed love of freedom, must at least admit the policy and the desirableness of a total repeal, throughout the slave-holding states, of all those laws by which voluntary emancipations on the part of the masters, are embarrassed or prohibited. In the present state of public feeling, such a change in the laws of the southern states, could not fail to be followed by very important consequences. Three objections are principally relied upon, by that portion of the southern people who profess to regard slavery as an evil, — that is to say by the great major- ity of the privileged class, — as standing in the way of the abolition scheme. 1. It is objected that emancipation would not in fact improve the condition of the unprivileged class ; — and the degradation of the free colored people, — that is to say, of the emancipated slaves, at the north, — is refer- red to, as proof to the point. It must be confessed there is much plausibility in this objection. It is a sort of ar gumenhini ad horn- iiiem, which a northern man does not find it so easy to answer. It is to be hoped however that the efforts now making by the friends of freedom at the north, to elevate the condition of the colored people, and to render the gift of freedom valid and available, will shortly blunt the edge of this objection. 2. The prejudices and false opinions, heretofore mentioned, as lying at the foundation of the coloniza- tion scheme, are brought forward, and urged with much vehemence and great apparent sincerity, as pre- senting an unsurmountable obstacle to the abolition 184 PESPOTISM proposal. It is alleged that there is such a natural re- pugnance and antipathy between the two races, that it IS impossible for them to live together upon any terms of equality. That either one race or the other must rule, or one race or the other must be extermi- nated. Let us reply, that the whole tenor of human liistory, stained as it is by violence and blood, gives the lie direct to this narrow and cruel theory, the greatest hbel upon human nature ever yet propounded. All the nati(ins of Western iMirope, the most civihzed and enlightened conuuuuities in the world, have been fornTed by an intermixture of races so complicated that it is ulterlv impossible to trace it. KvtMi that Saxon blood of which we boa^^ is far more (Ydtic than Teutonic, formed by the intermixtuni of two races, utterly diverse in thrir appearance, their instifutions, their temper and their manners, who lor centuries al- lernat«ly reduced each other to slavery, and who are set down l>y all aulicpiaries and historians as being natural and irreet^ucilahle enemies. lie who reads the story of the human rare wiih a calm, an impartial, a philosophic mind, will learn to rise above the prejudices, and ])assions, and narrow notions of those wiio have written it. He will learn t(^ reeeive with proi)er distrust those libels, whicli un- der the name of histories, men have written of each other ; he will learn, before makim? up his mind, to examine deliberatelv, both sides oft-very controversy. The Slavonic tribes, in the days of ancient preju- dice, were denouneed by llH'ir Teutonic neighbors as fit only for servitude: and the word slave is derived to our laui^uaiie iVom their name. Has not Koscuesko, liave not the latter days of unhappy Poland shown, liow undeserved was that reproach ? With n^spect even to the African race, the liistory of America during the present century has done much to dissipate the blunders of itrnoranre and the prejudices of self conceit. Of all the new Kepublics, our neigh- bors, Avhich have lately sprung up in the two Amen- , IN AMERICA. 185 cas, not one is to be found, the government of which has been so stable, and on the whole so mild and iust as that of Hayti. Those who hold up Hayti, as a raw-head and bloody-bones to frighten us out of reason and humanity, are not perhaps aware that the eastern portion of that island, is principally inhabited by a white population,— the descendants of the first Span- iards who ever emigrated to America,— and that in the Haytian Congress, men of all colors, from pure white to pure black, meet upon terms of perfect equal- ity, and the best good felloAvship. In all the Spanish American states, the African race enfranchised, and permitted to aid in the struggle for liberty, has contributed its fair proportion of civil and military talent to that great enterprise, and in several of those republics, the mixed race, sprung from the intermarriage of the Spaniards and the Africans, fur- nishes a large proportion of the most enterprising, trust-worthy, and respectable of the people. The British West Indies are about to give a new lesson upon this subject, the force of which, it will not be easy for prejudice itself to withstand. 3. Hut it is objected thirdly and lastly, that the emancipation of the slaves, inasmuch as it will deprive their masters of a vast amount of property legally held under the constitution and laws of their country, would demand, on the part of the state governments, by whose authority alone the emancipation could take place, an amount of compensation wholly beyond their power to pay. Beyond all question, the emancipation of the slaves at the south, so far from diminishing the total value of southern property, would, if not immediately, yet certainly within a very short time, greatly enhance it. On the whole then, the pecuniary loss would be no- thing. It must be conceded however, that such a rev- olution of property could not take place, without very severe losses to particular individuals. Every change, however beneficial to society at large, is in the neces- sity of things, always attended with a loss, greater or 16=^ 186 DESPOTISM IN AMERICA. lesSj to some individuals. This loss, considered merely in itself, is an evil. It is in fact a small evil which we ixre obliged to submit to, as the price of a greater good. It is the part however of a beneficent system of legislation, to reduce this price of evil, to the small- est possible limit. If indeed the problem of emancipa- tion can be reduced to a mere question of money, assuredly it is solved already. The resources of the slave-holding states, are no doubt ^mall ; but the re- sources of the union are vast and ample ; and where is the northern citizen who would hesitate to strain those resources to the utmost, could he thereby com- mand the means of compounding a lotion, potent enough to wash out from Id^ country's future, the fatal twin plague spots of sjjjKtude and despotism 1 END. CATALOCiUK OF mm.iTm¥KffmM. - Slave's Frienijniin»nti', - . . - \\'« -I'lv itn An|^^la\erv Review, I \\ I !i v*i* TlioinP^tf* oil Sl.iverv, \\ ar in Texan, by Henj. Limdv, West India Cliicttion, l>v ('liarlri> Stew art, TRACTS. St. Dorui: po, ... Fnjfwi .««in^|p 70 16 104 25 1 25 1 fi2 1 121 . €4 S6 .11 6 ()«i lU 24 86 8 121 84 121 IM fiO 2| a 24 121 12* •J} rRi\T<». he r\ I »/V t l» . «JI M 1 1. I). Tbr ^ JLv. " I). . : Vtcwi ' > , Our C Th.N. A. P' »• . i. t ••trriKtB. A I View of AnMriraB SUvrr; Pn K I . i ii-ture («allrrj . Tlvxiiipt >n'» I'l'ttrjil, C..' C!. Illn.T, , . Ml.^ic. 1 M.w liutjK;? : Li»»««rtv n*|l. h' Ai I)r K. IV R. J Ay'* \ lew, J IV r.n tl,.- r .n,-!tt;r,ri rf Frr*> Cnlnrttl fr the Author ofArchy Mo«r«, 1.. 1 .•1 1 > 1 10 10 9 l-'t 1 2.% 1 M 5 00 1 041 10 50 1 6 60 » 1 20 ' s SO I2i 1 20 2 19 •» 19 2fc .1 19 1 00 10 50 b 50 4 40 4 40 IsUnd of Cuba. IJ r 1,1 <>t»r I -if LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011 899 845 5