We ask your attention to the injuries inflicted upon you and your
children, by an institution which lives by your sufferance, and will die
at your mandate. Slavery is maintained by _you_ whom it impoverishes and
degrades, not by those upon whom it confers wealth and influence. These
assertions will be received by you and others with surprise and
incredulity. Before you condemn them, ponder the following
considerations and statistics.
We all know that the sugar and cotton cultivation of the South is
conducted, not like the agriculture of the North, on small farms and
with few hands, but on vast plantations and with large gangs of negroes,
technically called "the force." In the breeding States, men, women and
children form the great staple for exportation; and like other stock,
require capital on the part of those who follow the business of rearing
them. It is also a matter of notoriety, that the price of slaves has
been and still is such as to confine their possession almost exclusively
to the rich. We might as well talk of poor men owning herds of cattle
and studs of horses, as gangs of negroes. When an infant will bring one
hundred, and a man from four hundred to a thousand dollars in the
market, slaves are not commodities to be found in the cabins of the
poor. You are moreover aware that the great capitalists of the South
have their wealth chiefly invested in plantations and slaves, and not as
with us in commerce and manufactures.
It has been repeatedly stated that Mr. Carroll, of Baltimore, the former
president of the Colonization Society, was the owner of 1,000 slaves.
The newspapers, in announcing the death of Mr. Pollock, of North
Carolina, remarked that he had left 1,500 slaves. In the account of Mr.
Madison's funeral, it was mentioned that he was followed to the grave by
100 of his slaves, and it is probable that the women and children were
not included. The following article, from the _Gospel Messenger_ for
August, 1842, gives us some idea of the feudal vassalage prevailing on
the estates of some of your lordly planters. "A NOBLE DEED.--Dr. Mercer,
of Adams county, Mississippi, has lately erected, at his own expense,
and for the advantage of his _vast_ plantation, and the people on his
lands, a neat church and parsonage house, at the cost of over $30,000.
He pays the salary of the minister, $1,200 a year, besides his meat and
bread. On Bishop Otey's late visit to that congregation, he and Mr.
Deacon, the incumbent, baptized in one day _one hundred and eight_
children and _ten_ adults, all belonging to the plantation."
At the North a farmer hires as many _men_ as his work requires; at the
South the laborers cannot be separated from the _women_ and _children_.
These are _property_, and must be owned by somebody. Now when we take
this last circumstance into consideration, and at the same time
recollect that the very value of the slaves debars the poor from owning
them--and connect these two facts with the character of the cultivation
in which slave labor is employed; we must be ready to admit that those
who do employ this species of labor, cannot on an average hold less than
_ten slaves_, including able-bodied men, their wives and children. It
appears by the census, that of the slave population, the two sexes are
almost exactly equal in number; and that there are two children under
ten years of age, for every male slave over that age. Hence, if a
planter employs only three men, we may take it for granted that his
slave family consists of at least 12 souls, viz.: 3 men, 3 women, and 6
children. We of course estimate the number of children too low, since
there will be some over ten years of age. It thus appears that the
average number of slaves we assign to each slaveholder is probably far
below the truth; but we purposely avoid even the approach to
exaggeration. Now the number of slaves in the United States by the last
census, was 2,487,113; of course according to our estimate of ten slaves
to one master, there can be only 248,711 slaveholders.
The number of _white males over 20 years of age_
in the slave states and territories was 1,016,307
Deduct Slaveholders, viz. 248,711
---------
And we have the number we are now addressing 767,596
We are not forgetful that our enumeration must embrace some who are the
_sons_ of slaveholders, and who are therefore interested in upholding
the system,--but we are fully convinced that our estimate of the number
of slaveholders is far beyond the truth, and that we may therefore
safely throw out of account the very moderate number of slaveholders'
sons above 20 years of age, and not themselves possessing slaves.
Here then, fellow-citizens, you see your strength. You have a majority
of 518,885 over the slaveholders; and now we repeat, that with a
numerical majority of more than half a million, slavery lives or dies at
_your_ behest.
We know that this result is so startling and unexpected, that you will
scarcely credit the testimony of figures themselves. It is so commonly
taken for granted, that every white man at the South is a slaveholder,
that many will doubtingly inquire, where are these non-slaveholding
citizens to be found? We answer, everywhere. Is poverty of rare
occurrence in any country? Has it ever happened that the mass of any
people were rich enough to keep, for their own convenience, such
expensive laborers--as southern slaves? Slavery moreover is monopolizing
in its tendency, and leads to the accumulation of property in few hands.
It is also to be observed, that the high price of slaves, and the
character of the cultivation in which they are employed, both conspire
to concentrate this class of laborers on particular spots, and in
the hands of large proprietors. Now the census shows that in some
districts the slaves are collected in vast numbers, while in others they
are necessarily few. Thus, for instance, in Georgetown district,
S. Carolina, there are about 7.5 slaves to every white man, woman and
child, in the district. Now if from the white population in this
district we exclude all but the slaveholders themselves, the average
number of slaves held by them would probably exceed one hundred. On the
other hand, we find all through the slave States, many districts where
the slaves bear a very small proportion to the whites, and where, of
course, the non-slaveholders must form a vast and overwhelming majority.
A few instances must suffice.
The whites are to the slaves in Brook Co., Va., as 85 to 1
" " " Yancy Co., N. Car., 22 to 1
" " " Union Co., Ga., 35 to 1
" " " De Kalb Co., Ala., 16 to 1
" " " Fentress Co., Tenn., 43 to 1
" " " Morgan Co., Ky.,[1] 74 to 1
" " " Taney Co., Mo., 80 to 1
" " " Searcy Co., Ark., 311 to 1
[1] Mr. Nicholas, in a speech in the Kentucky Legislature in 1837,
objected to calling a convention to alter the Constitution,
because in such a convention he believed the abolition of
slavery would be agitated; and he reminded the house, that
in the State "the slaveholders do not stand in the ratio of
more than one to six or seven." Of course slavery is
maintained in Kentucky, through the consent of the
non-slaveholders.
There is not a State or Territory in the Union in which you,
fellow-citizens, have not an overwhelming majority over the
slaveholders; and the majority is probably the greatest in those in
which the slaves are the most numerous, because in such they are chiefly
concentrated on large plantations.
It has been the policy of the slaveholders to keep entirely out of sight
their own numerical inferiority, and to speak and act as if _their_
interests were those of the whole community. They are the nobility of
the south, and they find it expedient to forget that there are any
commoners. Hence with them slavery is the INSTITUTION of the SOUTH,
while it is in fact the institution of only a portion of the people of
the south. It is their craft to magnify and extol the importance and
advantages of _their_ institution; and hence we are told by Gov.
McDuffie, that slavery "is the CORNER STONE of our republican
institutions." To defend this corner stone from the assaults of truth
and reason, he audaciously proposed to the legislature, that
abolitionists should be punished "with death without benefit of clergy."
This gentleman, like most demagogues, while professing great zeal for
the PEOPLE, whose interests were for the most part adverse to slavery,
was in fact looking to his own aggrandizement. He was, at the very time
he uttered these absurd and murderous sentiments, a great planter, and
his large "force" was said to have raised in 1836, no less than
122,500 lbs. of cotton.[2] In the same spirit, and with the same design,
the Report of a Committee of the South Carolina Legislature, made in
1842, speaks of slavery "as an ancient domestic institution, _cherished
in the hearts of the people at the south_, the eradication of which
would demolish our whole system of policy, domestic, social, and
political."
[2] See the newspapers of the day.
The slaveholders form a powerful landed aristocracy, banded together for
the preservation of their own privileges, and ever endeavoring, for
obvious reasons, to identify their private interests with the public
welfare. Thus have the landed proprietors of England declaimed loudly on
the blessings of dear bread, because the corn laws keep up rents and the
price of land. The wealth and influence of your aristocracy, together
with your own poverty, have led you to look up to them with a reverence
bordering on that which is paid to a feudal nobility by their hereditary
dependents. Hence it is, that, unconscious of your own power, you have
permitted them to assume, as of right, the whole legislation and
government of your respective States. We now propose to call your
attention to the practical results of that control over _your_
interests, which, by your sufferance, they have so long exercised. We
ask you to join us in the inquiry how far you have been benefitted by
the care of your guardians, when compared with the people of the North,
who have been left to govern themselves. We will pursue this inquiry in
the following order:
1. Increase of Population.
2. State of Education.
3. State of Industry and Enterprise.
4. Feeling towards the Laboring Classes.
5. State of Religion.
6. State of Morals.
7. Disregard for Human Life.
8. Disregard for Constitutional Obligations.
9. Liberty of Speech.
10. Liberty of the Press.
11. Military Weakness.