3. It was formerly wholly sustained by the forced labor of slaves,
purchased at Vera Cruz at $300 to $400 each.
4. Abolition in this section was effected not by governmental
interference, not even from motives of humanity, but from an irresistible
conviction on the part of the planters that their pecuniary interest
demanded it.
5. The result has proved the entire correctness of this conviction; and
the planters would now be as unwilling as the blacks themselves to return
to the old system.
Let our Southern brethren imitate this example. It is in vain, in the
face of facts like these, to talk of the necessity of maintaining the
abominable system, operating as it does like a double curse upon planters
and slaves. Heaven and earth deny its necessity. It is as necessary as
other robberies, and no more.
Yes, putting aside altogether the righteous law of the living God--the
same yesterday, to-day, and forever--and shutting out the clearest
political truths ever taught by man, still, in human policy selfish
expediency would demand of the planter the immediate emancipation of his
slaves.
Because slave labor is the labor of mere machines; a mechanical impulse
of body and limb, with which the mind of the laborer has no sympathy, and
from which it constantly and loathingly revolts.
Because slave labor deprives the master altogether of the incalculable
benefit of the negro's will. That does not cooperate with the forced
toil of the body. This is but the necessary consequence of all labor
which does not benefit the laborer. It is a just remark of that profound
political economist, Adam Smith, that "a slave can have no other interest
than to eat and waste as much, and work as little, as he can."
To my mind, in the wasteful and blighting influences of slave labor there
is a solemn and warning moral.
They seem the evidence of the displeasure of Him who created man after
His own image, at the unnatural attempt to govern the bones and sinews,
the bodies and souls, of one portion of His children by the caprice, the
avarice, the lusts of another; at that utter violation of the design of
His merciful Providence, whereby the entire dependence of millions of His
rational creatures is made to centre upon the will, the existence, the
ability, of their fellow-mortals, instead of resting under the shadow of
His own Infinite Power and exceeding love.